In their course are the celestial bodies kept by our blood royal. In secret they hold their art, though rumour upon rumour places a ceremony at each coronation or the deathbed of a monarch, the possible passing of a flame from each reigning Prince and Princess of Unicornkind. Such glories do our sovereigns wield! For by their wisdom are the sun and moon and unnumbered stars kept in their proper paths, and thus in their hooves rests ultimate supremacy over the world entire. Generously are these same blessings given unto the lesser pony tribes and other races…
The book rambled on; blue light from the tip of Rarity's horn breathing life into the yellowed pages. Her gaze narrowed, searching for any hint, any clue, anything beyond ‘secret’.
The strain of holding the magic tingled painfully down Rarity's horn, and she released it with a wince. The darkness of the surrounding dusk washed back in, turning the world around her to a morass of silhouettes and half-glimpsed forms once more. Her weary eyes welcomed the respite, and she rubbed at them with her one good forehoof.
Red on her left side, blackness on her right, each opposite horizon brushed by the still sun and moon. Above and between, an expanse of deepest indigo dusted with the faintest stars and marred by wandering clouds.
Before her, what had once been the Whitetail Woods. Incentive of a sort.
She sat on a ridge, the grass underneath her damp with recent rainfall. Rarity shifted so that her weight came down on her good side, coaxed a dim blue light back into existence, and resumed reading.
After a few more minutes, when it stopped talking about celestial mechanics altogether and started wittering on about the then-recent coronation of Princess Platinum, Rarity closed the book and flicked it to one side. It tumbled down the grassy slope she lay on, joining a pile of several others. Useless, each and every one.
This ridge was a cold and exposed place to do her work, the journey through the tangled forest to get here was a hard one, and Rarity was already tired. But she rose, as she always did, and looked up into the sky.
Her light fell away, but the flickering aura around her horn persisted. Tottering slightly as her withered, crystal-blistered left side threatened to fall, Rarity closed her eyes, breathed, and sounded up into the dusk.
There, as always, on the edge of her magical perception, the Sun and Moon, vast and unmistakable, whirlpools of utter entrancing magic amidst the vast arcane sea. Suspended in motion.
Still.
Dead.
Rarity reached further, straining herself with the force of the rising grasp, her gaze and attention up, her grasping magic groping upwards, onwards, onwards. A painful stretch, her limits reached and tensed and creaking with effort.
And with the last of her strength, she felt her magical grasp glide briefly across the edge of what might have been the outermost extent of the moon. The shortest of touches, and then freefall in the dark as Rarity collapsed, landing on her crippled side and gasping with the pain of that and her aching horn both.
Her vision swam back into focus, light and lines bleeding back into the fogged darkness. She tried to conjure light to let her see clearly, but the effort made her almost black out with the pain from her horn, and she fell back.
The moon and sun shone at the edges of the twilight expanse, fixed and unmoving. As they always did. As they always would.
Useless, useless, useless.
Eventually, after what felt like hours, Rarity awkwardly rose to her hooves and coaxed a little light forth. She trudged towards the discarded books, intent on collecting them into her worn saddlebags. It would be a hard walk back.
“Rarity?”
The voice rang out at her back, clear and sweet as any bell, and Rarity turned to her younger sister, Sweetie Belle. The young mare cantered towards Rarity on long, powerful legs— a grateful genetic inheritance from their father. Worn saddlebags obscured the curving clef that was her cutie mark. Her mane tumbled around her head in rose and mulberry curls, and Rarity couldn't help but imagine the contrast with her own prematurely-grey-streaked-blue mane. Bright green eyes regarded Rarity with concern, and the long wooden stave Sweetie held at her side in a magical grasp fell into a resting position.
“Good timing, Sweetie,” said Rarity, smiling in spite of her fatigue. “I was about to take these books home, and my magic's feeling a little strained. If you could be a dear and help me get them into my bags -”
“Sol's sake, Rarity! You shouldn't keep coming out here by yourself. It isn't safe. At least ask me to come with you.” Sweetie rushed up to Rarity’s side. A thread of green magic lifted Rarity's saddlebags into the air and started gathering the books off the ground and into it.
“You're busy most of the time, Sweetie. Working hard to keep us going. This is a daft old mare's hobby, and I shouldn't -”
“Daft? No arguing there. Suppose a timberwolf found you? Or any hungry predator? Or the less friendly sort of wanderer? If I'm away and can't come to help … what happens then, Rarity?”
“Thank you for being concerned, Sweetie. But it'd be no great loss if -”
Sweetie Belle snorted bitterly and slung Rarity's saddlebags onto the end of her stick, releasing her magic and couching it under one leg like a bindle. “Don't.”
Rarity fell quiet. Sweetie Belle trotted at her side, still supporting her, and together they began the long walk back down through the tangled forest and rough-ridged valley to where they called home, or at least shelter.
At their back, Rarity knew, the slope would descend down into what had once been the Whitetail Woods. But no trees grew there now, no green or growing things beyond a few paltry saplings struggling up through the blackened, cracked earth into the meagre light.
One place, amongst so many in Equestria, where armies had once marched. Where the Equestrian Legions and the Grand Alliance had fought and screamed and butchered one another amidst the forest with the mad desperation of fighting dogs.
One place amongst many which had been bathed in light when all the stars seemed to rise at once. When they rose, and came falling back to earth to send tides of fire screaming across the world. Across Equestria, and maybe beyond. Who knew? Who was left to know?
Rarity nuzzled Sweetie’s neck gently as they withdrew into the shadowed forest. “I'm sorry, darling. Ignore what I say.”
Sweetie Belle was silent for a moment, and then returned the nuzzle. Her smile was weak, forced; her eyes, Rarity saw, were red-rimmed with her own tiredness. “Sure. Why break a good habit?”
Green light flourished from her horn, and cut through the murk before them. The rough path ran on, and they followed its course. Rarity let Sweetie Belle guide their descent.
There was nothing else she could do now.
Cold woke Sweetie Belle, as it did often these days. No warming sunlight meant that the dying of the fire was her timepiece.
She shrugged off thin blankets and gradually rose to her hooves, shaking her head to try and drive out fatigue’s cobwebs. A brief questing with her magic alighted upon the wood-heaped scuttle. Several pieces were lain gently into the dead embers and Sweetie Belle ignited them. Light spilled across the dinginess of their shelter, hit Sweetie Belle with a welcome blast of warm air, and illuminated Rarity’s sleeping form.
Rarity lay still on her right side, leaving her ravaged left to absorb the fire’s heat. Her legs were withered, her ribs pressed hard against her seared and hairless hide. Little crystalline growths sprouted along her legs and flanks, red and sore around the edges and glistening orange in the firelight. Her eyes remained closed and her chest rose and fell gently, so gently that it could have been mistaken for stillness. A haphazard pile of books sat by her head, and one by her hoof.
She’d contrived to twist free of her own blanket in her sleep. Sweetie Belle gathered it up and covered her anew, taking care to tuck it in. Satisfied, she left her sister sleeping and gathered up her stave.
There was work to be done.
She wriggled out through the narrow opening of their home, taking care not to scratch herself on the splintered planks, and entered the twilight woods. First, as always, she took a moment to get her bearings and take in the world. The full scale of the secluded valley spread out before her, and no abnormal or dangerous noises came from it. No scuffles, no tramp of distant hooves from lone wanderers, no keens or screams or sign of anything on the move. Just the murmur of the wind through branches.
Sweetie Belle breathed easily, summoned a small amount of light, and trotted down into the forest. The trees rose tall and pale around her, bark flaking from their branches and trunks, their few leaves rustling. Scarcely enough light for the poor things. Fruit was hard to come by these days, no matter how far she dared wander.
Less so for mushrooms, though. She brightened when her gaze caught a cluster of them half-hidden in a rooty crevice, checked that they were edible, neatly plucked them from the ground and fed them to her saddlebag. Throughout, she recalled where the valley’s berry bushes were and which she’d taken from recently. They’d fared a little better than the trees, though their growing seasons were similarly haywire and rare.
Sweetie Belle continued to criss-cross the valley, sticking to the routes she knew, stepping over roots and crushing mulch and thin grass underhoof. A song built up inside her as she went and she gave it release, crooning snatches that seemed to fill the forest’s emptiness.
Maybe a bird or two would hear it. Some still flew overhead from time to time, making for the west and the sun.
Time slipped by, as best she could gauge it, and eventually she decided to return home. Her saddlebags bulged slightly with the mushrooms, berries, and low-hanging nuts and acorns she’d dislodged with her stick. Not much, but enough to keep her from regarding their food stores with too much dismay.
Only one job, and more yet to come. Collecting water, watching the high passes for any beasts or ponies that might be on the road, maybe taking down one of the ailing trees for fresh lumber.
But those could wait. Rarity and the day’s meal beckoned.
She trudged back up through the forest, returning to their ramshackle wooden hut. Thin trails of smoke, all but invisible against the dark sky, trickled up through the heather roof. Rarity must have risen and kept the fire going.
Sweetie Belle slipped in through the warm opening, and saw Rarity sitting with a book suspended before her snout. The older unicorn looked up as she entered and lowered the book, revealing a frayed smile. “Good day, Sweetie.”
“Hey. Feeling better?”
“Considerably. Thank you for asking.”
Sweetie Belle made for the back of their home, past Rarity, their beds, and the fire. In the cramped space, boxes and rusty scuttles and small crates were stacked. Gathered food and old tins, rope and sawn wood, nails and fabric and spare blankets. Anything she’d scavenged that might be useful.
And in one crate, the largest and the one closest to Rarity, books. Sweetie clocked a few of the titles on top as she passed by, titles she recognised from Rarity’s reading last night. Lives and Times of the Magos-Princeps. Theories on Celestial Mechanics and the Motion of the Stars. Sun and Moon, Love and Magic: The Princesses and Their Domains.
Their supplies shared space with little decorations and knick-knacks, some made and some scavenged. A little silver figure of Luna resplendent in flight. Little sewn wall hangings, splashes of colour in the murk. And at the back, half-covered by boxes and covering the gaps in one wall, a small and lovingly-made tapestry of old friends. Sweetie Belle never looked at it for long. At least it had kept Rarity happy while she’d been making it.
She distributed what she’d gathered between the appropriate containers, keeping some aside and drawing out a stand and an old kettle, half-full with water. “I’ll make a mash. Enough for today and tomorrow. Sound good?”
Boiled and mashed mushrooms, berries and nuts was something of an acquired taste, judging by Rarity’s protests when the dish had been first conceived of, but Sweetie Belle didn’t mind. At least conscious intent was usually required when cooking it in order for burnt carbon to emerge.
“Sounds lovely,” said Rarity with only the smallest of winces. “Just a little bit for me.”
“‘No proper figure was ever gotten by grazing alone’,” Sweetie Belle recited as she emptied the ingredients into the kettle and suspended it in the stand above the fire. She twirled her stave and started methodically pulping the mixture with the clean end of it. “‘A lady must enjoy a full and balanced diet if she is to maintain her healthy and appealing build.’”
“It is considered unseemly in polite society to turn one’s elder sister’s wise words upon them, Sweetie darling -”
“‘Neither should one turn their snouts up at fare generously cooked and offered, for to snub it is to dismiss the spirit in which it was given.’ I listened to some of the things you said, you know.”
“To my abiding regret, indeed you did.” Rarity sighed and put the book back into the crate with its companions. “Scarcely useful, that one,” she muttered to herself.
Sweetie Belle chose not to respond. “Give it a few minutes and then we’ll eat,” she said, as the liquid in the kettle began to simmer. She tapped her stave across the brim to dislodge a few clinging drops, and stepped back to regard it with appreciation. “I put the bowls somewhere. Do you remember - ?”
“I want to make another trip to Canterlot.”
Silence descended as Sweetie Belle bit her tongue. She turned back to the mash and stirred it with her stave, gaze fixed upon it.
“I’ve worked through the last haul. None of them helped. Told me nothing I didn’t already know, or what they clearly didn’t know. But there were other libraries. Other archives. One of them will surely have something. The Palace’s own shelves - there was surely something there I missed.”
Sweetie Belle tapped the stave against the kettle’s brim, with more force than she intended. “Remember the last trip, Rarity? It was hard enough that afterwards you nearly - ” She scowled and resumed stirring, stirring up furious whirls in the liquid. “Not again. Not until you’re properly rested. Not unless you’re sure there’s nothing in what you’ve already got.”
“I’m sure, Sweetie. On both of these counts. I’m quite myself again.” Her voice softened. “And I … you know I wouldn’t ask this unless I was sure it was necessary.”
Sweetie Belle watched the mash thicken as the liquid steamed off. She unhooked the kettle from the stand and set it on the ground. “I could go by myself. Make you promise to stay in here and just use the food and wood we’ve got stored, hide the entrance with a screen of rubble and branches, I could go to Canterlot and check the libraries for what you might need. I wouldn’t want to leave you by yourself for so long unless I had that first promise, though.”
She regarded Rarity as she found and drew out their two bowls. Rarity returned the look only briefly before turning her gaze to one side. “I’m sorry. But -”
“Of course you are.” Sweetie Belle poured measures of the mash into each bowl; short and sharp dips of the kettle that left a few stray splatters on the floor. She pushed one bowl in front of Rarity and sat down heavily next to her own.
One more moment of silence. A moment that could have been mistaken for Sweetie Belle coming to a decision.
But she’d known what she’d decide from the moment Rarity had made the request. As she always did.
Dragging one hoof down her face, she resignedly muttered, “I’ll need time to get our things together.”
“No rush,” said Rarity quietly. “No rush at all.”
One meal and a prolonged packing later, they were ready.
Rarity’s saddlebag was light upon her back. Due in part to the nature of the journey - only enough food to get to Canterlot and back, with room for things to be added - and partly because she suspected Sweetie Belle had shifted most of it to her own bags.
She wanted to protest. She should have done so, insisted on carrying at least her share. But her body would rebel, sooner or later, as it had done before.
Generosity is a luxury indulged in by the strong, dear. And you’re hardly what you once were, are you?
Vile thought. Rarity pushed it from mind as she ventured with Sweetie Belle to the eastern ridge of the valley. The last shelter before the world’s end.
She was already breathing heavily before they cleared the tangle of boulders and tall bushes that curtained off what had once been Equestria. Partly from exertion, and partly from the tension that coiled tight around her gut whenever this view threatened. The same wound rubbed out from the same scar, time and time again.
Sweetie Belle regarded her. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
“Yes, Sweetie, I am,” she lied. Gathering herself, Rarity fell in behind Sweetie Belle as she bludgeoned a path through the last barrier of foliage. They broke out into the open, over the rolling landscape far below, over Equestria under dusk.
Great grey ribbons had been flayed across the rising and falling hills around, blazing wide and curving lines across the bellies of fields and ravines, through forests and buildings. The impact of the Grand Alliance’s great spells, falling from the sky to wreak destruction and leave ash and bitter silt in their wake. The last act of a savage war, a spiteful parting shot after the armies had been worn down, after the armies had already wrought far too much.
Past a rise of small hills, on the border of the scarred Everfree, there rested the ruins of buildings. Skeletal, ash-dusted frames clutching like claws up at the sky. On the edge, a farmhouse’s outline sat at rest. Elsewhere, a grey and shattered boutique.
Roads and rises and the scorched remains of meadows where she’d once walked. She could still imagine them now, feel the memory of a summer sun’s warmth across her back. Feel dew under her hooves, hear the voices of ponies raised in chatter, song, bickering, love.
Feel the heat. Hear the drums. See the fire.
Rarity’s breath hung solid in her throat. How long had it been since that last day, fifteen or however many years ago? Since the Great War - that distressing but nebulous entity of frantic newspaper headlines, rationing, troop drafts, and crippled homecoming soldiers - came to Ponyville.
She could close her eyes and still hear the cries and barked commands from the tight formation on the main street, unicorns and earth ponies standing wither-to-wither behind hasty barricades. A cordon of pegasi in the air above them, calling out observation after dreadful observation - “Crow outfliers, at least a hundred!” “A capric force at the canter, coming from the south!”
Rarity had been in the fleeing refugee column. Where else could she have been? What could she have offered to the formation behind her, the mix of townsponies and Equestrian Guard, standing lonely against the oncoming pipes and drums?
They’d moved slowly, and she’d looked back all the while. Saw her friends. Saw the onslaught, saw the world painted red with blasts and spellfire. The sky blackening and the buildings burning. The bodies strewn hither and thither, lying like broken dolls. Twitching. Screaming.
A day after, a day too late, she’d stepped mutely through the ruins, circuited the outskirts. She’d called out, time and again, desperation mounting, for anypony, anypony to answer her.
She’d found Applejack - and the Apples - dead in their home, dead where they’d made their stand. Black feathers and broken horns and so much blood. Hewn, nearly unrecognisable. And a distance from them, in Fluttershy’s home, the pegasus herself with her slain animals. A single arrow, and the deed had been done.
To go fighting, or go quickly. One consideration amongst countless others that had drummed in the back of Rarity’s mind after that black time, when she’d had no time for anything but remembering and considering. Was one preferable? Was it a fool’s game to even try to rank the choices?
Either one was surely at least preferable to the ibex she’d found and kept well away from, a female officer in battered barding and a wound in her neck, staggering blinded by spellfire through the town centre, croaking feebly for help, her friends, water, another voice, anything.
Sometimes, Rarity still dreamed of that. And if she was lucky, in the dreams, she reached out. Or at least spoke before turning her back.
“Rarity?”
...But never mind that. She had work to do, here and now.
She steadied herself, forced the memories from mind, and followed Sweetie Belle down from their high point and into the grey wastes. The thin grass underhoof was replaced by clammy silt, and then by cracked and blackened earth covered with the finest layer of ash. The odd green sapling, the occasional striving blade of grass, little more. Fire, here. It had been ice that had fallen elsewhere. Razor-edged wind, choking darkness, a storm of crystals. There had been so many particular dooms.
They said - those few who’d gathered together and fled to Canterlot in the wake of the first great spells, back in the day - that the Capricious Crown had called upon dark magic, had ordered mass blood sacrifice from its own capric subjects and corvid allies to empower the great spells. Bleeding Capra and Corva dry to get equal satisfaction across the border, in the name of a conquest that had become a pitched slaughter. Rarity could well believe it. So many things had been made believable in the final tally.
Maybe Equestria should have had crueller rulers, who could have promised to return the favour. A balance of destructions, so that neither could ever occur.
Or maybe that would have been a fool’s game as well.
They took a looping route around Ponyville, following the sweep of the long scar in the earth. Blackness below them and darkness overhead as they strove for a distant strip of green overlooking the main route to Canterlot. It was a prolonged, hard trot before they made it there, to scramble thankfully up the cool green slope and huddle amidst the thin treeline.
Sweetie Belle motioned to a spot on the ground, and Rarity let her saddlebags fall there, suddenly aware of how tired she’d become. She plodded her way to a patch of earth, sat down heavily, and looked to Sweetie Belle. The younger unicorn surveyed the land further east of the trees with her eyes narrowed. Looking for any sign of danger.
“We’ll chance a fire,” said Sweetie Belle after long deliberation. “There’s no movement on the road ahead, as far as I can tell. Nopony and nothing coming this way.”
Rarity relaxed. She’d ventured a glance west as well, but only a cursory one. Who or what travelled into the darkness these days? Few enough were left to journey into the light. And those few …
The monsters.
The mad.
The broken, lost and wandering.
Those who’d barely survived under the shadow these long years.
Those who’d thrived in it and sought more prey.
Those without names.
Tiredness rolled over her like a tide, as she settled down and Sweetie Belle attended to a fire, chattering lightly as she did so. She’d pushed herself far today. She deserved a rest. Both of them did.
Warmth seeped into her weary bones and sleep took her without warning or resistance. The last thing she saw before dreams of sunlit fields greeted her was the white circle of the moon, low in the sky, a distant silhouette stark against it. A sharp spur of mountain, jagging up into the sky, a city hanging off one side.
Canterlot.
One more day should do it.
The next rising came reluctantly for Sweetie Belle. Their fire had died early in the night and she was cold on waking, colder than usual. She forced herself to struggle upright, kick her legs and shake her head; coaxing the warmth of motion back throughout her body.
Breath fluttered in and out of Rarity, whose blanket was once again curled up beneath her. Sweetie Belle sighed and spread it out over her again, before trotting to the ridge’s edge. The grass there was thin, but better than nothing, and an early graze would be a welcome bit of ballast.
She stepped to the edge, lowered her head to nip at a tuft, paused with her eyes wide, and smiled.
Who said the east was dead yet?
Along the trail trundled half-shadowed familiar shapes, creatures she’d seen coming from the far and mysterious east before. Wandering pines, their trunks dark and pitted, their branches all but bare and their few leaves pale. Half-a-dozen of them made their way along the old road to Canterlot, great tangles of roots beneath them dragging them forwards with grasping tendrils.
Poor, peaceful things. Her heart sang for them, and she hoped they’d finish their journey to where the sun never stopped shining. At least that wouldn’t be a problem for them.
A low note came almost involuntarily from her throat, rising in pitch and volume. She shifted it, modulated it to a sweet and nonsense stream of noise expressing delighted welcome and little more. Sweetie Belle imagined that the trees responded, that their branches waved back to her. There was a shift in their line of travel to her approximate direction. A soft rumble came from the large dominant in their midst as its roots briefly rustled against each of the others. It heaved itself up onto the slope with ponderous effort and continued its stately wander, passing by Sweetie Belle. She stepped to one side, giving the cluster a generous berth as they lumbered by, rustling through the grass and crashing against smaller trees.
A cough at Sweetie Belle’s back broke her from her thoughts as she stared after them, and she turned to find Rarity, tottering upright and smiling blearily. “Good day, Sweetie. Woke up when I heard the ruckus here. When was the last time these beauties came wandering by us?”
“Couple years, maybe?” Sweetie Belle regarded the backs of the pines, mumbling at each other as they pressed on towards the sun. “It’s amazing they’re still around. They must have been surviving on moonlight and little else. Hope they make this last stretch okay.”
Rarity didn’t respond, smiling vaguely at the retreating pines for a few moments before dipping her head to graze. Sweetie Belle looked to them for a minute longer, before turning back to the east and gauging the land.
The moonlit landscape before the distant shape of Canterlot rolled like the sea, overgrown and fallow fields pockmarked with buildings gone to wrack and ruin. Broad slashes of ash-black earth and glittering permafrost ran across it; shrapnel from the volley of spells that had descended onto the city itself. She could see the trail left by the wandering pines, but no other sign of movement.
A gentle wind blew from the distant mountain and across the land, setting the fields to shivering, and Sweetie Belle sniffed. Nothing suspect, nothing but the faint scent of old vegetation, the mustiness of long-cold ashes …
And smoke, fresh and sharp. She frowned and sniffed again, turning her gaze from side to side to try and find the source. It was too new to just be their own fire. Where, though?
“What’s the matter?” said Rarity.
“Smoke in the air. There’s a fire somewhere.” Sweetie Belle’s frown deepened as she focused on one of the buildings. Was that smoke in the air above it, or was she just seeing things? A scrap of mist? Frost on one of the nearby hills? “Might have been made by somepony. Might be natural. Can’t tell.”
“Ah. Advance with caution, then?”
“Yeah.” Sweetie Belle scrutinised the trail ahead, and sighed when she failed to see anything. “We’ll keep off the main trail wherever we can, wherever it’s gentle enough to let us keep a fair pace and not trip us up too much. Keep our eyes and ears open, and be ready to hide if we have to. We’ll be safe if we make it to Canterlot. Last time we were there, I didn’t see anypony else’s hoofprints in the dust but ours from the time before that.”
“Nopony goes there anymore. Good for us, I suppose.” Rarity turned back towards their camp. “Race you there?”
Sweetie Belle grinned despite herself, and saw that everything was cleared away. Their belongings were packed, their fire’s ashes were dispersed until there was no sign they’d been there apart from a scorched impression in the earth.
They set off once again, keeping the old winding road over the rolling hills in their sight, a surviving signpost at the side pointing the way towards Canterlot. The grassy hill underhoof rose to a peak, and then broke apart into hard, charred flakes of what might have once been stone. In the shallow between hills, they entered a village. The outlines of old buildings watched them like ghosts as they passed. A toppled and eviscerated water-tower groaned as the breeze brushed over it, its body melted and all but fused with the ground.
Here and there, a fragment of bone. A half-skeleton slumped between two pillars. Scorched lance heads in the dirt.
They pressed on, the burnt body of the village silent in their wake, and found thin grass growing under their hooves once again. Low tangles of bushes and prickly briars sprouted around them, dark and hard to spot under the moonlight. Rarity produced a little light from her horn to light the way. Barely enough for her to see by, and hopefully faint enough to not be spotted if there were any watchers.
Sweetie Belle caught a glimpse of the main road to their left, its surface slick with mud. She stared at it, her eyes still good enough to make out details in the moonlight.
In its flurried surface, she saw hoofprints. Several, many - she couldn’t judge the number. But they were recent, that was certain.
Her breath caught in her throat, and Rarity said, “Is there trouble?”
“Hoofprints on the main road.” Sweetie Belle gestured at them. “I’m not sure how many. All I can tell is that they passed ahead of us recently. If we set a slow pace, we can stop early tonight and hope to miss them if they move even further ahead.”
“Maybe,” said Rarity reluctantly. “We’ll see how they run on. Perhaps they’ll turn down a different route.”
“It’s okay if we take it slowly. You’ll get the chance to rest a bit more. Canterlot isn’t going anywhere.”
“No. No, I suppose not.” Rarity’s grim stare remained fixated on the city, though, until Sweetie Belle nudged her into motion.
A low and broken stone wall blocked their path out of the overgrown field, and Sweetie Belle took a few minutes to clear a section of it to let Rarity through, working as quietly as one could with large lumps of stone. A few more minutes of walking through a thin strip of forest, and then they came across the next wound in the world.
Before them, the land turned into a sea of dark and pitted rock, blistered across its surface with a sea of little glistening crystals, white under the moon and starlight. A glittering sea reflecting the stars above.
Sweetie Belle swallowed. She’d felt how the little crystals could tear open the base of a hoof, and leave a pony limping and trailing blood for days afterwards from wounds that refused to close. She’d seen what happened when a pony fell from the wounds to their hooves, screaming as their whole body writhed with pain, tearing themselves to bloody scraps across the ground.
She’d escaped and recuperated under Rarity’s care, back in those early days after the spells had fallen, when she’d been too young and Rarity had still had some strength in her. Her attacker hadn’t been so lucky.
“We’ll go back to the main road,” she said quietly. “I’ve cleared a trail there before, and we can pass through quickly and hop back to the side when the land’s normal again.” She paused, and looked at the breadth of the crystalline scar. A half-hour’s careful work… “Or I could clear it here. No sense in taking risks.”
“I’d take the main trail, if it was only up to me. But I’ll go with your best judgement, Sweetie.”
Sweetie Belle thought about it, and then turned to the side. “Main trail it is, then.”
They cut a path towards the main road, the crystal river on one side and the sparse forest on the other. Sweetie Belle was acutely conscious of Rarity’s increasingly laboured breaths behind her. The older unicorn was striving to meet the pace, but even when Sweetie Belle slowed down, it was still a struggle. She’d end up running herself ragged. Maybe open the wounds around her crystal-blistered side again.
This would be the last time, Sweetie Belle told herself. No matter much it hurt. No matter how much she had to stand firm, extract promises, watch Rarity’s heart break. She wouldn’t endure another.
At least they could try to make this last one count. They’d bring home all the books they could haul, as many of those left unread as possible. That would keep Rarity satisfied for a time.
A last hillock, all but solid with scratching undergrowth, that they climbed to overlook the main road. It swept before them in a cleft between shallow hills, little paths snaking off from it to smaller villages and isolated steadings. It ran into the crystal river, with one thin trail made dark and safe.
Hoofmarks clustered thick in the mud. They turned off to one side, leading down a path that led to a battered and abandoned farm building some several hundred metres distant. Smoke crept from its chimneys. Light flickered past a broken window. Voices - one laughing, one whimpering, one squalling and several others too faint to be discerned - could be heard inside it even from afar.
Sweetie Belle froze and crouched low, and Rarity stopped beside her, sinking with a pained grunt to her own haunches.
For a long and heavy moment, the universe around Sweetie Belle and Rarity held its breath as they watched the distant farmhouse. Their eyes tracked its windows, watching for any watchers. Sweetie Belle swore she could see an occasional shape glide past, a brief silhouette against whatever fire burned within.
“Forge a new path, then?” whispered Rarity.
“Yes,” muttered Sweetie Belle. “Yes. Damn it.”
They retraced their steps through the gloom, as quietly as possible, trying not to freeze with alarm whenever a heavy patch of starlight or a beam of moonlight peeked past the gathering clouds. Once securely distant, it was nigh an hour’s hard clearing with stave and magic before a safe path had been made. Sweetie Belle, her horn aching with the prolonged effort, guided Rarity across, the older unicorn’s light extinguished long ago.
Once on the other side, they took a few moments to slump in the grass and breathe before Sweetie Belle caught the voices from the farmhouse on the breeze.
They exchanged glances, rose to their aching hooves, and set out once again. It was still a long road to Canterlot. But they had no other choice but to keep walking it.
An age passed, and the ache gathered. Rarity tried to force it to one side in her mind, but every step on her weary hooves sent new fatigue throbbing up through her body. Press on! Press on, you useless bag of bones, she instructed herself. You have a duty!
She scraped some amount of motivation from it, some small amount of fuel for the engine of bloody-mindedness that was keeping her going. Onwards the road to Canterlot ran, and whenever Sweetie Belle looked back at her with concern in her eyes, Rarity forced a reassuring smile and kept on trotting.
The great quiet ruin of Canterlot grew ever closer, toppling and skeletal. Sections of buildings and walls gleamed with a coat of deep-biting frost. Others glittered crystalline. And some were burned darker than the sky. Nothing grew for hundreds of metres all around; nothing lived.
The gatehouse before the road up the mountain loomed before them. Rarity’s heart swelled with mixed parts relief and trepidation to see it. It was the end of the day’s road.
Another painful set of memories, seared into the vaults of her mind.
“They shall not pass!”
“Rarity?” said Sweetie Belle. She’d looked behind her, and Rarity thought she must have betrayed a tremble. She realised she’d frozen, and the weight of the trail and memories both made it hard to take another step. “Rarity, are you alright? Come on, we’re nearly there. Let me take your bag.”
The refugee column had trailed into Canterlot, their path across the country lit by what looked like stars streaking overhead through the sky, thundering in the distance where they landed. Corvid outfliers had nipped at their heels all the way, and they’d no sooner passed through the gates when the sound of horns had started blowing from Canterlot’s tallest towers. A host moving on the city itself, marching under Grand Alliance banners, heralded by the thunder of distant drums.
“They shall not pass!” So the constant cry from the rainbow streak in the sky over the gates had gone, wheeling and clashing with crows and wyrdling ravens in the smoke-filled skies. At the gates themselves, Dayguard and Nightguard and what ever militia had chosen to throw themselves into Hell’s teeth struggled with the seething host of Capric soldiers. Spellfire from ranks of unicorns and ibexes volleyed and thundered; earth ponies and goats and musk oxen and diving crows turned the courtyard into a bloody pit, a place of death and screams from either side, choked over by black and red.
One last flash of blue as Rainbow Dash, blood streaming from both wings in bright red ribbons, flew down into the next wave advancing over the shattered teeth of the gate. Impact, screams and curses, the brief clash of steel before the cries of “They shall not pass!” ceased. The wave surged into the courtyard, and the barely-recovered ranks clashed anew.
And from there, Rarity could only watch before she was pulled along with the rest of the fleeing refugees, towards the waiting and guarded entrances into the tunnels beneath Canterlot. She’d lost track of Sweetie Belle; lost track of Pinkie Pie, whose singing could yet be heard as she helped guide the others down through the tunnels; lost track of Twilight, who’d gone to the other princesses in the highest levels of the city.
Lost track of everything.
She was vaguely aware of being pushed gently along the road, and was startled to find it was Sweetie Belle rather than a ghost from memory. She put up no resistance, even when her bag was tugged from her back and draped over Sweetie Belle’s own. They trotted into the courtyard, everything within had long since been charred black, and passed into a building at the side. An old guardhouse, its door gone and its windows melted and its interior devastated. Rarity slumped down in the quiet darkness, while Sweetie Belle dumped their bags in a corner and busied herself, drawing out wood and placing it in an empty fireplace.
“Sis? Talk to me,” said Sweetie Belle. Rarity felt warmth and light beat against her aching body. “Tell me how you are.”
“I - I’m fine. Just a funny spell that came over me. I’ll be quite alright once I’ve had a rest.”
“I’ll believe that when I - oh. Oh, Tartarus. Your scars have opened.”
There was a curious dampness and painful itchiness at Rarity’s side that she’d semi-consciously attributed to building up a lather and a cramp during the march. But she looked, and sure enough, the crystals seared into her side had rubbed too hard against the flesh. Thin trails of blood ran down her legs.
“Oh. Well, there’s a bother.” Rarity reeled away from the sight, her composure holding on by a thread. “Could you be a dear and see if there’s a cloth nearby?”
Sweetie Belle quickly drew out a piece of fabric from the saddlebag and rushed to Rarity’s side. Rarity heard a brief gurgle of water from a hollowed-out calabash, and then felt the bliss of a cool, damp cloth being pressed onto her side. It brushed against her with soft, long motions; a jolt of pain where it touched each wound followed by cold relief.
Sweetie Belle worked in silence, her face unseeable from Rarity’s position. Rarity took the treatment in silence as well. The only noise in their little circle of firelight was the mutter of the fire itself, and the faintest whispering of the wind outside.
“I’m an old fool,” said Rarity aloud, as Sweetie Belle withdrew the bloodied cloth and sloshed another measure of water over it. “What am I thinking?”
“Hush.”
“I can’t do this,” said Rarity. “Get the sun and moon in motion again? Hah. Just a stupid old mare with a head full of regrets and too many things to try and undo. What can I do? What have I ever been able to do apart from burden you?”
“Hush. Don’t say those things. You’re not a burden. And you’re doing your best. You just ...” Sweetie Belle gesticulated with a hoof, a scratchy note in her voice. “You just need a little more help than before to do what you need to do. That’s all. This time, you’ll get what you want. We’ll take home enough books to sink a cargo ship, you just watch.”
“Will we? Or will you, while I dodder around at the back?” whispered Rarity. “I shouldn’t be the burden. I shouldn’t be the one who has to take and take and -”
Her voice broke away as her shoulders began to shake, and the only thing steadying her at that moment was Sweetie Belle who settled down next to her uninjured side. A magical grip gently pulled her close, and Sweetie Belle nuzzled the side of her neck.
“You’re not a burden. Please believe that. You’re my sister, and you wouldn’t be a burden even if I had to push you places in a cart,” murmured the younger unicorn. “I’ll Pinkie-promise that if you like.”
Rarity didn’t reply, instead waiting until she could make an effort at wiping at her eyes. “Can I do this?” she eventually said. “Please be honest. Do you think I can bring the sun and moon back?”
A hesitation. A second too long before the answer came. “Of course you can,” replied Sweetie Belle. “We’ll make this haul of books count. We’ll get it right this time. You’ll see.”
Rarity could at least take heart from the letter of the words, if not the spirit. Sweetie Belle’s close heartbeat lulled her towards rest, and the warmth of both her sister and the fire saw her slip into sleep.
No sun, moon, or stars greeted her in her dreams. Only darkness.
And then, the caverns.
“They’re falling back. They’re falling back!”
The cry began to go around the tunnels packed with refugees and civilians, and Rarity needed a moment before she comprehended it. She was tired and hoarse from hunting through nigh-endless and teeming caverns, calling frantically for Sweetie Belle all the while. She had fallen almost dead on her hooves near the entrances, and was in a fatigue-induced daze, swithering between struggling on with the search or breaking down into tears where she sat.
“The Alliance is pulling back! We’ve got them on the run!”
The words finally registered, and Rarity hunted around for their source. Up near the barricaded cavern entrance, where scattered rays of sunlight filtered down into the glittering depths, a unicorn stallion in rent barding stood. Blood matted his exposed hide, a broken lance trembled in his magical grasp, and the expression on his face was pure exhilarated delirium. “The Princesses broke their spine. Killed the corvid’s Cormaer herself and the Capric general in the streets! We’re winning!”
A ray of sunlight pierced the stormclouds, lonely and beautiful. For a moment, the tired despair that had filled Rarity’s world for the last long while ebbed. A brief relief, a turning point, oh please, oh please, an end…
Past the stallion’s shoulder, there was a stroke of light through the sky. Like a star falling to earth.
Then there was light, a screaming flash that slammed into the back of Rarity’s retinas and sent her toppling backwards with the shockwave that followed. She spun backwards through darkness, blinded and burned. Heat descended with searing force, and Rarity all but felt flames lick at her hide.
She landed heavily on her side, choking out a pained gasp as the impact rasped the stone against sections of her burnt hide. “Hah - ah - ah,” emerged in whimpers from her mouth, whilst all around her, ponies screamed and flames crackled. Retches and shrill gasps and splutters sounded throughout the depths, and from the distance, there came the thunder of collapsing stone.
Find Sweetie Belle.
The thought slid into her mind like a blade. Countless expressions of pain all around her, but not a single one she recognised.
Find Sweetie Belle.
Her strength had left her, and the smallest motion of her legs made her gasp with agony. She rose regardless. She blinked and violently shook her head and blinked once more, trying to force out something like sight. She stumbled forwards through the murk of light and darkness, vague shapes reeling and shifting around her. “Swee - Sweetie-” she rasped before breaking down into coughs. “Sweetie Belle?”
Elsewhere, another distant peal that trembled through the rock under her hooves. The very air grew colder, and many of the cries ceased. Rarity whirled her head from side to side, her heartbeat pounding like a drum within her skull. The shapes sharpened, some moving, some still. “SWEETIE BELLE!”
A song, travelling across the length of the chamber past the screams and din of ponies. A clear, high voice raised in song. Pinkie Pie’s. Calling ponies to safety in a secluded chamber. Sweetie Belle might be that way, might be safe there. Or she might be elsewhere. Still exposed to the bombardment.
Rarity wheeled away from Pinkie’s song, stumbling back into the darkness. Her calls emerged hoarse, her steps were laboured. The vague forms around her were very nearly solid.
To her side, from the entrance, another stroke of light. Another falling star.
The bottom fell out of Rarity’s gut, and she cast her gaze around frantically. Next to her, tiny and stumbling, the shape of a foal, whimpering with pain. A filly? A colt? Sweetie Belle?
Thunder rolled in from the outside, and in the instant after, the few remaining voices near the top of the entrance were silenced.
A half-second’s thought. No light to see by, nothing but terror and pain in the darkness. Nothing left to survive for, no Sweetie Belle in sight if she was even around at all. Beside her, a hurt foal, as exposed as she was.
Rarity breathed out a sob. She had so little left, so little left to give.
But she could at least give this.
She lunged forwards, throwing her body between the foal and the razor wind that came shrieking down from the entry in the second afterwards. It hit her like a hammerblow, and her whole world fell away.
Darkness hit her. Her senses fell away, bar one. Pain overwhelmed her, stretching out through long moments, and her thoughts were nothing but one long continuous scream. Let it end, let it end, let me see them again, please, I’ve done it, let it end.
The pain persisted and the world around Rarity whispered back into existence, inch by painful inch. Quietness all around her, save for a few rasping whimpers and distant hoofsteps striking stone. Her vision swam, and she saw the foal. A dark figure in a world that now shimmered with a crystalline lustre.
Still. Silent. Red. Red all over, with crystal growths embedded in their body here and there. She strained to nudge them with a hoof, and they didn’t respond.
A ragged gasp escaped Rarity then, and she lay back onto the ground, letting the songless silence fill the world. Let the ground take her. Let the pain ebb. Let the quiet night fall.
Scuffled hoofsteps nearby. She remained still. A familiar whimper. She raised her head, the motion feeble.
A little white unicorn, her hooves speckled with red and her gait limping. Her mane tumbled down around her head, marred with dust. Sweetie Belle’s watering eyes alighted upon Rarity, widened, and she hobbled towards Rarity as fast as her injured hooves would allow.
“S - Swee -” Rarity tried to raise her body, and fell back with a cry when her left side refused to comply. It had caught the spell’s blast side-on, and it felt stiff, as if it had been pierced through with shards. “Y - you -”
“Shush, shush, don’t move,” whimpered Sweetie Belle, leaning down beside Rarity and nuzzling her. Her eyes were wet with tears, her mouth was a hard line. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’ve got you, sis. You’re going to be alright. I’ll look after you.”
The cold of the dead fire woke Sweetie Belle.
That, and distant hoofsteps.
She rose upright as sharply as she dared and staggered over to the guardhouse’s window. It offered a view of the road winding down from the shattered gates.
Far away figures trod down it, eight or so, too distant to make out properly, making for the gate of Canterlot.
“Rarity, wake up,” Sweetie Belle hissed, turning to her older sister. She turned and murmured, fitful in her sleep. “Rarity!”
“Hmm?” Rarity stirred, and her eyes cracked open. She blearily rose to a sitting position. “What is it?”
“A group of ponies coming up the road. No idea whether they’re friendly or not. Can’t risk hanging around.” Any stray items were seized and roughly bundled into Sweetie Belle’s saddlebag as she pulled Rarity to her hooves. “Come on. We have to move.”
Rarity rose, and once Sweetie Belle looked around one last time to check that any obvious signs of their presence had been removed or hidden - going to far as to levitate the ash from the fireplace under a bench - they scrambled outside and made for the back of the courtyard. Before them, a road wound up around the mountain to Canterlot proper.
They kept themselves close to the side of the mountain as they climbed in silence, only moving from it onto cleared trails whenever hoof-tearing crystals lay before them. Sweetie Belle dared a glance over the side at those moments, straining to see what she could of the ponies below.
Eight for certain. Six of them, a mixture of earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasi, stallions and mares, trudged close together at the group’s centre, emaciated and ragged. All of them wore interlinking, hobbling chains around their legs. Squat magical inhibitors had been jammed down around the unicorns’ horns, the wings of the pegasi were bound. Against one of the mares, she saw the swaddled shape of a new foal. The little thing squalled thinly as the group marched through the gateway.
At the fore and rear, two other ponies, an earth pony stallion and a unicorn mare, both sleek and well-fed. Each wore rough, piecemeal barding, scavenged and repaired many times over. Spurs and sharpened shoes clicked on the ground where the stallion trod. The mare casually twirled a shortened lance in a magical grip, and jabbed it at the backs of the fettered ponies to keep them moving.
Sweetie Belle breathed out in alarm, and leapt back from the road’s edge when she thought she saw the mare lift her gaze in her direction.
“Definitely not friendly,” she whispered to Rarity. “We have to keep moving. Come on.”
“To the palace complex,” murmured Rarity, taking a moment to catch her breath. “Large enough to hide us. There’s a library or two in there as well I’d like to investigate. We’ll hole up and be productive.”
“Fine. Good thinking. Keep moving, though. They look like they’re heading up the mountain as well.”
They carried on, their gait quickening as the city’s entryway neared. Sweetie Belle clocked familiar debris along the path. The remains of old barricades. Fallen weapons, rusting lance heads and blades and steel claw-sheaths. On one wall, dark with ash, the imprint of a pony in flight, wings stretched and their horn upright. Sweetie Belle hurried past that one.
Eventually, they rose from the path to find the last gateway into Canterlot, past a bridge over a little river. It yawned open before them, the portcullis reduced to a cold heap of melted metal on the ground and the stone of the gateway and walls black with scorch. They hurried through, and the ruins of Canterlot rose up all around them.
Onwards at a swift canter through the silent grey streets. Wind whispered through the cracked and crumbling buildings all around them, looming like pale ghosts overhead. The ground was strewn with crystals, shattered glass, picked-over bones, overturned and rotting tables from old outside restaurants. A flag dangling from a pole flapped feebly in the breeze.
The palace rose into view after several minutes hard cantering, its towers shattered or cracked where they weren’t simply empty and desolate. Sweetie Belle let Rarity halt to catch her breath just outside the entrance, and almost immediately hurried her along again when she heard distant hoofsteps behind them.
They slipped in through the open doors, and were greeted with a rising staircase. The carpets that had once covered the floor were now a thin smear of ash. An open door at one side, Sweetie knew, would lead to an empty throne room with a shattered throne, open to the elements through windows where the stained glass had been melted clean away.
So it was for every room in the palace which had been open to the outside at all. There were other rooms, however. Cloistered away past sturdy walls, undamaged and safe. Relatively speaking.
“Where to? Which library?” said Sweetie Belle.
“Celestia’s own, I think. The one connected to her study. Deep inside. Should keep us hidden and safe. And there’s a shelf or two there I’d like to rake around in.”
Sweetie Belle nodded and looked up the stairs. “Sounds good. Let’s go.”
They hurried to where the rising floors devolved into a maze of twisting little passages, old closets and offices and servant’s quarters jostling for space. Deep within, sheltered from the scant light outside and from the force of the old spells, the furnishings remained intact and smeared over with dust. Mouldy carpets ran on underhoof, and when Sweetie Belle conjured light to see by, a green aura flowed over the paintings and tapestries lining the walls.
In here, there wasn’t even the whispering of wind. Only their own heartbeats and hoofsteps, and from far away, the sound of different hooves on lower floors.
“They’re following us for sure,” whispered Sweetie Belle. Even pitching her voice as softly as it could still be heard by Rarity, she winced at the volume. “We get to that library. And you stay in it until it’s safe, understand?”
“Understood. You stay in there with me as well.”
Sweetie Belle didn’t respond, instead closing her eyes as she narrowed in on the nature of the hoofsteps. Two sets, one heavier than the other, doubtless the leading stallion and mare from the group she’d sighted. They must have left their prisoners behind, chained up and helpless.
After too long an age, they emerged into one final stretch of corridor leading to a decorated wooden door, engraved with stylised images of the sun. Sweetie nudged the handle open, and ushered Rarity inside, closing the door behind them.
Inside, what had been the private office of Celestia herself. Nothing special to look at, and homely in its comfort and simplicity. A pile of cushions rested before a low desk, the surface of which was strewn with half-finished paperwork and empty ink-wells, little pictures in frames and pieces of small arcane materials, scattered books and open journals and candlesticks. The only nod to the previous user was a blade on one wall. The ancient and ceremonial Sun Blade, golden-hued even in the green light Sweetie Belle produced, nestled within a frame. It was long and hiltless, intended for magical wielding alone, and the dull sheen around its edges still betrayed a wicked sharpness.
An old relic, once revered and now all but forgotten. It had been gathering dust even before the spells fell.
It was a bookshelf at one side that interested Sweetie Belle the most. A large candle-holder stuck prominently out from it. No small respecter of tradition, Celestia, but at least it had made her private library easy to find in the first place. Sweetie Belle pulled on it, and the shelves swung ponderously outward, revealing a chaos of packed shelves and teetering book-piles in a small room past it. They creaked loudly as they did so, and Sweetie Belle nearly cursed. If that sound had travelled…
The world offered up several decisions in that moment, as the hoofsteps of the intruders seemed to grow nearer and nearer. None of them were pleasant. Most of them sent cold coils of dread to tighten Sweetie Belle’s gut. She swallowed, and decided.
“You go in first,” she said to Rarity, ushering her through with a hoof. “I’ll be right behind you. You remember how to open it from the inside, right?”
“Of course. But - but why? Are you not -?” Rarity took in Sweetie Belle setting down the saddlebags inside the entryway, holding her stave upright, almost seeming to tremble with the stillness with which she held herself. “Oh, no. Sweetie, no.”
“I’ve done it before, Rarity. With any luck, I can just scare them off. They’re probably not used to targets that fight back. I’ll be okay. I promise.”
“You - no. It’s too risky. Just come inside the room with me and they’ll wander right by, it’s hidden.”
“It’s the most obvious hidden room there could be, short of hanging a sign out the front,” Sweetie Belle croaked, wondering where all the moisture in her mouth had gone. “They already know to search here, surely. If they break in, and you’re in the thick of it when I fend them off? That’s too risky. I’ll be okay. You know I’ll be okay.”
“No!” Rarity’s shout emerged hushed, and the stamp of her hoof was like a feather’s fall. “Get inside with me. I’m not risking you! I won’t let you risk yourself! I’m your older sister, and I’m telling you to go inside the room.”
Sweetie Belle just met Rarity’s gaze, forcing herself to try and look stoic in the face of those pleading blue eyes. “Stay quiet. Stay safe. I’ll be right back,” she said, and with one firm but gentle push of her magic, bundled Rarity into the room. The older unicorn opened her mouth to protest, and Sweetie Belle closed the door on her face.
Stillness and darkness pervaded once more. Sweetie Belle held her stave tightly, and turned away from the door. Light spilled down the outside corridor, yellow and luminous, and she pressed herself against one of the room’s walls. Reducing her shape in order to increase the chances of taking them by surprise, of getting the upper hoof. The stave’s tip lowered to angle shallowly towards the ground, ready to be thrust up and forwards.
The light grew brighter. The hoofsteps rang out ever closer. Sweetie Belle’s breath froze in her throat.
And in the instant before she was ready to lunge out of sheer nervous anticipation, a figure rounded the corner and shone a fierce golden light upon Sweetie Belle. It hit her eyes and she stepped back, blinking and dazzled.
Blinking desperately, she saw the light and blurred silhouette resolve itself into the figure of the armoured unicorn mare. Golden light blazed from her horn, a match for her golden eyes and a contrast for her dark dun coat. A wintery smile passed across her face as she briefly met Sweetie’s eyes, and her light dimmed as she drew the half-lance forth to hover at her side. She spoke, her voice surprisingly light. “Here’s the culprit, Bracken.”
From behind her, the earth pony stallion, Bracken, stepped into view. What little of his coat showed past the barding was blue-grey, and his eyes were the dark green of forests in shadow. His own expression shifted to a casual smirk, and he scraped one sharpened shoe across the ground as he regarded Sweetie Belle.
“Well, isn’t this a prize,” Bracken said. “Good day, lovely filly. We’d imagined Canterlot was deserted, and you’re a very welcome surprise. Don’t you agree, Briar?”
“Immensely.” Briar kept her lance’s point trained upon Sweetie Belle, and Sweetie found herself unconsciously raising her stave into a guarding position. “Wasn’t there another one we saw? Saw them both on the road. Pity not to meet both.”
“Whoever you both are, this doesn’t have to get unpleasant,” started Sweetie Belle, hoping the tremor in her voice was concealed. “Me and my sister are just interested in this room here. The rest of whatever’s in the palace is all yours, if you want to salvage anything. We won’t get in your way.”
“Very generous. We’ll take you up on that. Just as soon as we’ve been properly acquainted. Is that a door posing as a bookshelf? If your sister’s behind there, call her out. It’d just be a bother for everypony, having to make the search. Or having to draw her out.”
Bracken ventured out further into the room, flanking Sweetie Belle. She turned to try and keep both him and Briar in her sight, aware of his gaze on her all the while. Wandering. Contemplating. She shivered and angled the stave’s tip further in his direction. “Leave us be. We don’t mean you any harm, and if you just leave us alone, we’ll stay out of your manes.”
“No fun there,” said Briar. “You want her for the herd? The other one looked ailing. Not worth taking. This one could endure some rough handling and marching, though.”
“I’m inclined to agree. I say we take her if the rations will stretch that far, and just smash the other’s brains out. I’ll take this one for a while if you want to play with the other.”
“Music to my ears. We’ll sweep this place once they’re dealt with and this one’s shackled.”
“Good.” Bracken smiled at Sweetie Belle. “Think about your next move carefully, dear. This doesn’t have to hurt too much.”
“Stay away from us. From me, and my sister.” Sweetie Belle hadn’t appreciated the growl she could produce when stress threatened. “You think I’m afraid to fight back?”
The two shifted their poises, and circled Sweetie Belle with slow, deliberate movement. A screech rang out where Bracken’s spur met the floor. Sweetie’s eyes flicked in his direction, and Briar sprung forward with her lance in that instant.
Reflexes born of practise and terror brought Sweetie Belle’s stave around to meet the lance in mid-air, and the whirl and clash of combat filled her world.
“Tartarus,” whispered Rarity, leaning against the door’s side, her voice barely there at all. “Tartarus, tartarus, tartarus take it.”
On the other side, her little sister was keeping her safe. Keeping Rarity safe by plunging headlong into battle and possible injury and death and goodness-knows-what at the hooves of these intruders. Alone.
She deserved anything better than a foolish, dependent older sibling who was too stupid to know when a cause was hopeless, too feeble to meaningfully help, and too much of a liability to be anything more than a hindrance out there. Sweetie Belle had been right. She so frequently was.
Muffled voices filtered through the thick door, and Rarity wretchedly turned away, not wanting to hear what was being said, not wanting to know what was threatened or desperately bargained. She’d been given another gift. Sol willing, it would not be costly for the giver.
And no matter what, she would make sure it was put to good use.
Rarity willed light, and there was light, spilling forth in a soft blue stream to illuminate the books all around. She made for where she knew the few histories to be, past piles of other texts. All different kinds in every pile. The professionally published and bound. Shoddily-sheathed dross. Personal and plain diaries and journals.
Amongst the history piles, she’d once hunted for the former, hoping for any professional examination of the powers of the old unicorns. Everything she’d found had come up short. And so now she set her eyes on the smaller and more informal accounts. Truly ancient some of these, with pages that all but cracked in the turning.
Some of them, she noted, had had labels attached to their covers, denoting them in what could have been the neat hoofwriting of Celestia herself. One caught her attention, fallen near the bottom of the pile. The personal journal of Prince Cobalt of Unicornkind, covering his early years and the beginning of his reign. Marked as restricted.
She glanced away from it, intent on a more detached account, but stopped where she stood. Memories from recent failures stirred like dying embers in her mind.
That rambling book had spoken of the powers of the unicorn princes themselves having been bound up in the whole process. If anypony could confirm that one way or another…
Scarcely daring to breath, Rarity picked the book up and flicked through it, hunting for the point where it could offer anything at all. She alighted on a promising page.
The Prince is dead, long live the Prince: is the phrase coldly rehearsed on every unicorn’s lips in the recent days. Cyprium, dearest and most inscrutable of fathers, withers on the vine and my ascension draws nigh. All is a flurry of preparation and whispered words, in which I seem the single still point. To be Prince Sovereign rather than Prince-In-Waiting is a prospect I cannot deny I relish, but its inevitable and ever-closer price leaves me hollow...
Shafts whirled and cracked together in the air, too fast for Sweetie Belle to discern and almost too fast for her to react to. Twice now, the lance head had come whipping past an inch from her face, and twice now she’d hastily withdrawn with startled squeaks.
Bracken lunged in at her side, and she whirled around Briar to buy herself space, trying to avoid being cornered or caught. The movements of the pair were lazy, casual. As if they were playing rather than facing anything worthwhile.
The realisation curdled her gut, and then set a fire burning within it. How dare they? How dare they?
She pressed forward into Briar, her stave once again meeting an overhead swing from the lance and straining to press it up into the air. Briar’s eyes flashed, and her horn blazed as she let loose an arcing blast of magic in the open space between them. Sweetie Belle ducked with scare inches to spare, felt it singe her shoulder as it surged past, and felt the heat of the eruption as it struck an old painting. The room was turned to a pandemonium of flickering light and dancing shadows.
Dazzled, she was too slow to prevent an almighty kick from Bracken landing in her ribs. Pain thundered up from her side as she was sent reeling across the room to slam side-on into a wall. Something jarred under the surface of her skin, and she rasped out a sob. Something had been broken.
Briar filled her front, and there was the flash of metal as the lancehead came flying right at Sweetie’s face. As if through red mist, she sought for her fallen stave and raised it just in time to stop the attack digging in. She heaved with effort and forced the bound lance to one side. Briar blinked, and in that moment, Sweetie Belle leapt forwards with her horn angled.
The sharp tip slashed into Briar’s cheek. The unicorn howled and recoiled, blood spraying from the wound. The collision had disrupted Sweetie’s magical energies, and she sought once more for her fallen stave, racing to turn and fend off Bracken.
Too late, she realised, as the grey shape of the armoured stallion flew right at her. Another kick crashed into the same spot as the first, and constellations of agony wheeled through her vision. She shuddered against the wall and brought her stave around in a desperate sweep, trying to fend Bracken off.
He adroitly caught the stave in the crook of one leg and twisted suddenly, catching her by surprise as he snapped the stave clean in two. She stared at the splintered ends, screamed internally, and then choked as one last savage kick slammed into her chest and knocked all her air away. She crumpled to the ground and rolled onto her side, legs feebly trying to kick and keep her upright.
Over her, Bracken loomed. He smiled and stamped one leg down between her rear hooves.
“Now you’re going to call that sister of yours out,” he purred, leaning down closer. “Shout or scream. Take your pick. Don’t feel obliged to rush.”
Sweetie Belle’s vision wobbled with pain, and she sought about for anything which could help her, anything lying free as Bracken descended.
She found something, Her magical grip tightened around it, and she swept it around in one swift and savage motion.
Bracken leaned down, and then stopped just above her. His face paled, and he choked, Blood emerged in spurts from his mouth, and pumped out in a rivers’ worth where the broken end of a stave had been jammed straight into his neck.
He tottered, and Sweetie Belle strained to reach up and shove his twitching frame to send it crashing to the ground. She gasped and caught her breath, her mind reeling and praying for a moment, just a moment-
Behind her, Briar screamed.
Sweetie Belle struggled to rise and face her, and twisted upright just in time to meet the berserk mare tearing right at her. Immediately, she reached out for the other piece of the stave, her attention turning to it.
A hoof smashed across her muzzle with thunderous force, sending Sweetie Belle staggering back as the world dimmed into a screaming haze. Briar said something, she wasn’t sure what, but the meaning shortly made itself clear. Metal flashed in the air, and a lancehead punched right into Sweetie Belle’s left wither with enough force to knock her to the ground.
She lay stunned on her back, unable to gather the breath to scream, unable to move her stricken foreleg. Pain bubbled up along with the clammy wetness spreading down her hide, and all she could do was raise her functioning forehoof to try and feebly bat away Briar’s oncoming hail of blows.
“Brood-mare!” screamed Briar, her tear-streaked face contorted with fury as she straddled and hammered down at Sweetie Belle. “Tartarus take you! Cerberus mount you! Burn, you mewling piece of -”
Past Briar’s shoulder, barely visible to Sweetie’s blurred sight, a flash of gold. Steel given hue, gleaming in the firelight.
One last effort.
She reached up past the pain, past the volley of blows, shielding her horn alone with her hoof to keep the magic constant. Reached up for the Sun Blade mounted on the wall above, scrabbling for a secure grasp as she strove to pull it free.
Briar’s hoof smashed her own aside, clouted her horn with eye-watering pain, and the magic dissipated, its job only half-done.
Gold descended through the black haze, and Sweetie Belle saw it fall apart into stars as darkness overwhelmed her waking mind.
His face was serene, if strained, as he told me it all. Our legacy explained, and the need for secrecy amongst our dynasty. Father, ever a stallion for the dramatic, made hushed and serious beyond measure.
No workings on our living part keep the objects of the heavens in their course, no pilot walks the green earth. To ensure their movement, Father explained, each passing sovereign chains themselves to the sky. A passing of the soul to the sun and moon and stars, our very selves harnessed so as to draw them along their course.
What better pilot, what better pony of burden, than one whose time in their mortal coil had passed?, he said. One ritual on the deathbed, one he begged me to help him with, and then the passing of the vigil, on the earth and in the heavens. A duty relieved only when the next Prince Sovereign takes it in turn. Long has my grandmother, Princess Rhodium, been at her duty. Her rest is earned thrice-over.
Thus are we Princes, for we take this burden as our own, our gift to our people and all lesser beings whose lives are in our charge. Thus is the knowledge safeguarded, for to sow it amongst the common do-gooders would wreak chaos in heaven.
Thus was I enlightened, and thus did I watch my Father die and pass into the stars.
The spell-workings that I was instructed in, I copy overleaf. A duty for myself, and my descendants in time.
Long live Prince Cobalt of Unicornkind, they cry out from every streetcorner and castle tower in our land, so I am told.
Stars save me and watch me, I do not know what to do. I do not know what to do.
I will do my duty.
Rarity sat still, the pages before her lit under her soft blue light.
The spell’s workings were laid out, a somewhat garbled but still comprehensible series of arcane notation. It was the sort of thing Twilight - dear Twilight - could have unravelled in full, comprehended in depth, have been spared from as an alicorn.
Rarity closed her eyes.
For Applejack. For Fluttershy. For the fallen of Ponyville. For Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie. For the other princesses. For the caverns under Canterlot, and for the foal she’d been too slow to save.
For Sweetie Belle, who deserved a better world than this one.
“A gift given,” she whispered. “Forgive its lateness. I’m coming, girls. Please, let it -”
Her voice caught in her throat, and she took a moment before she rallied.
“Let it be what’s needed.”
Rarity looked over the arcane notation and held the first few lines in mind.
She dipped into her magic, and started to play it through.
And though it was almost certainly a trick of her tired mind, once the last complicated sequence had been passed through her horn and magical light pealed through the air, she felt a weight pass from her shoulders, as if the sky was beckoning.
Cold light filled the world, and Rarity let herself fall up into it.
Sweetie Belle lay in darkness for long minutes, simply shuddering and trying to draw enough breath and strength into her battered body to move again.
Atop her rested the still form of Briar, her eyes glassy and her armoured midriff pierced straight through by the Sun Blade. Blood pooled around her, sticky as it dried. Sweetie Belle heaved her off with the utmost effort, and groaned as she sought about and tore off anything that could stanch her wounds - a piece of tapestry, the edge of some old robes.
Sweetie Belle finished binding herself up, and picked up the Sun Blade. Her stave was broken, and she could at least lean against the relatively blunt middle as a walking stick. She supported herself, wobbling all the while, and hobbled past the fallen forms of Briar and Bracken, making for the library door.
“R - Rarity?” she coughed as she pulled on the lever. “It’s safe. They’re - they’re dealt with. Might need a helping hoof with putting on some of the bandages we ...”
Sweetie Belle’s voice trailed off. Before her in the library, Rarity lay on her side. The motions of her chest as she breathed in and out were tiny; her hide had lost its lustre. Her eyes fluttered vaguely open, some sparkle diminishing in them. She craned her head up, and managed a smile. “Sweetie … Sweetie Belle. Glad, so very glad you’re, you’re not -”
“Rarity? Rarity, are you hurt? What happened to you?” Sweetie lurched forwards, her own aches briefly forgotten as she fell down at Rarity’s side. “Lie still for a second. Get some fresh air. I’ll get out the water and we can...”
“No,” murmured Rarity. “No. No need. Little … little point.”
“What do you mean? Please, you have to take care of yourself. Let me take care of you. I - ah!” Sweetie leaned too far and winced as her bludgeoned left objected. She subsided, Rarity’s eyes on her all the while.
“Oh, darling, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” said Rarity. Her breaths were getting shallower and shallower, her chest barely moved at all. “But I … I did it. Will do it. Get them moving again. There’ll be a dawn again. A dusk again. Our - our world again.”
“You...” Sweetie Belle stared, uncomprehending. “How?” Dread tricked cold around her insides. “Please, how?”
“Gave myself to the sun. The moon. Can keep them moving, if my spirit is their pilot.” Rarity’s voice was softer than a feather’s fall. “Just give myself to them. Drop by drop. Get them moving. Steer them right.”
“Rarity, what did you do?” Sweetie Belle’s voice trembled, threatened to break. She cast her gaze around, and saw an opened old book on the floor. Several of its pages had been torn out, and ash dotted the floor.
“One last gift.” Rarity’s eyes fluttered. “Felt … appropriate. No more failures. They’ll turn forever. My gift. Freely … given.”
Sweetie Belle’s eyes blurred anew. “You can’t. No, please, please undo it. Let me - let me share the load. I could help. Just let me take you back home. You’ll have your books there. You, you’ll be able to read them from the ridge you like so much.” Her voice shattered for good. “Rarity, please!”
“Proud.” A last gasp of air. “So proud. You’re … beautiful. Every way. For … forgive ...”
Rarity’s eyes slid closed. Her chest heaved once more. Something like a breath escaped her.
And then she lay still next to Sweetie Belle, her mane falling across the younger unicorn’s legs.
Sweetie Belle’s mouth opened and closed, as her hoof tapped at Rarity’s wither, as if trying to coax her up. She glanced away, looked back at her sister, averted her gaze with more force, and then leaned back down to nuzzle the side of Rarity’s neck. A soft whimper escaped her; an attempt at words before she shrunk in on herself and wrapped her foreleg around Rarity, holding her for whatever warmth was left.
She sniffed once, shuddered, and her eyes screwed shut. Sweetie Belle hugged Rarity close and began to cry quietly to herself in the cold darkness of the room.
It was a long time before she felt able to rise.
From a very long way away, a sound pierced the walls of the palace. A foal, squalling.
Sweetie Belle sat still, and then leaned on the Sun Blade to rise, gulping out one last sob and wiping her eyes dry.
There was work to be done. Chains to be broken, offers to be made, shelter to be offered.
A duty, unending.
On a moonlit rise overlooking what had once been the Whitetail Woods, Sweetie Belle sat at rest. Her torso and injured wither were wrapped in bandages, carefully applied by the farrier in her group’s midst. A gold-hued blade, as decent a walking stick as any, rested on the ground by her hooves.
Before her, the starlit night stretched on. The moon shone high above, subtle white trails marking its stately progress through the sky. A river of stars guided it along its path, and brightened the darkness all the way to the horizon.
Behind her, there were the sound of movement and ponies working in the valley. The farrier had been reluctant to let her move so far away from the group, but she’d insistently excused herself. She had that right. The sounds of hammering and wood falling were carried in the breeze that stirred her mane.
A shelter built for two could hardly accommodate seven and a foal, after all. There was a lot of building to be done.
Sweetie Belle looked up to the sky. To the course of the moon and the stars, gently and slowly twining around their larger protectorate. A motion with design behind it. Craft and care and love, in equal measures.
Her injured leg itched beneath her and she shifted. Soon, she’d rise and head back to the others. One day, they’d get back in touch with the patterns of sleeping from dusk till dawn, their paths charted out by the skies rather than the biting cold. But here and now, she’d watch the night and the artistry at its soul.
A murmur escaped her lips, building into a clear note. Part of a tune, snatched from memory. But recrafted, made for the moment. She drew it out, and thought of what would follow it; the first note of a new song.
So many possibilities. So little time in which to pursue them. So much work and rebuilding and hardship and striving to be endured in their own turns.
But those could wait, wait until Sweetie Belle left the rocky rise and headed back home.
She leaned back on her haunches, nestled her head between her forehooves, and waited for the dawn to come again.
