Kingdom of Loving: Fear and Loving in the Crystal Empire

Chapter 14: You’re Not Alone

After several hours, the search was still ongoing.

Twilight lowered herself in a glowing pink bubble to a rocky outcropping several yards below the surface. Cadance and Shining armor followed, their horns glowing with luminous spells. The air was thick with dust and the smell of whatever had made this place, oily and acrid. Up above, the changelings had been subdued.

Something had happened. The swarm had halted its onslaught, and everywhere changelings sat confused, frightened, unsure of what they were doing. Common ponies were able to intimidate them, and with their sudden lack of direction that could only mean one thing.

Chrysalis was dead.

Twilight knew that if Chrysalis had been defeated when she fell through the caverns, the swarm would have stopped then. It hadn’t. In fact, they spent several more minutes of fending off wave after unrelenting wave, trying to break through to the crater where Chrysalis and Sunset had plunged into the depths, but by the time they’d managed to make it to the lip of the cavern the swarm ceased its advance. Whatever it was, Sunset had done it, Twilight was certain of it.

But then, after waiting pensively at the edge of the crater for what felt like an hour, she had not come back.

Ponies were hurt much worse than she was, so Twilight volunteered to go search for Sunset. Shining wouldn’t hear of it, even though after the adrenaline wore off he realized he’d broken an arm. Cadance was riddled with cuts and bruises, her left eye swollen and purple. Despite their fatigue, despite their aches, despite the kingdom needing them far more than she could ever imagine, neither one had let Twilight come down into this dark pit alone.

She was afraid that meant they both knew what she just refused to accept.

Squinting into the gloom, Twilight could just barely make out the signs of a cave-in, a catastrophic one. Rubble was piled up from the ceiling to the floor. It was as if part of the cavern’s support structure had just crumbled in on itself. There were cracks and openings in the stone that looked like they might fit a pony, but excavating this would be impossible. Surviving it would have been just ridiculous.

“Twi?” Shining called from one of the side corridors. She looked to where his faint pink light was illuminating a tiny section of the gloom and he beckoned her over. It took a lot to not break into a sprint, fear and hope all tangling inside her.

When she saw what he saw, her heart nearly stopped. A tiny crevice, barely even a crack, between two rocks was glowing with faint green. There was no time for her to consider the structural integrity of the mass of rocks in front of her. She dug her hands in, scraping them against the rough texture and jagged edges, pulling and heaving even though her magic would have been more effective.

The little barricade gave way in a sudden collapse of dirt and pebbles. Beyond it was a gap just big enough for a pony to fit through, and more faint green light. Twilight squeezed ahead, ignoring Shining’s shout to wait. She was thin enough. She wished she weren’t completely naked as her skin was torn and cut by the rocks, but a little pain was nothing next to what every other pony today had sacrificed. She needed to see, and she needed to make a difference if she could.

As Twilight writhed through the blackness and emerged into a new opening, she saw something that made her stomach knot and her heart race. Kneeling in the center of a barely-there clearing was Sunset. She was her changeling self, her orange gossamer mane draped over her face, carapace nearly invisible in the black. On one arm she had a serious gash crusted with dried green blood. The tip of her horn was glowing very faintly with a similar spell to the one Twilight was using. Her eyes were closed and her head lowered, but she was facing something solemnly as if in quiet vigil.

The rocks in front of her were large heavy things. They would have been impossible to move even with a whole team of excavators. Laying across several was the broken upper body of Queen Chrysalis. Her green eyes were dull and lifeless, her jaw hung open, and her tongue was splayed wetly across the stones. Following the line of the rocks, Twilight saw one of her arms was also sticking out, rising upwards towards the ceiling.

Chrysalis’ long fingers were wrapped around an enormous stone that was propped up by her paralyzed limb. If they were to let go, the stone would fall and crush Sunset. No - if she had let go, it would have crushed Sunset. Had it been intentional?

Twilight remained silent for a long while. In the eerie quiet she could hear her brother and Cadance trying to maneuver through the tiny crevice that led to the solitary shrine where only Sunset had been witness to the last act of Chrysalis’ reign.

Twilight slid onto her knees and wrapped her arms around Sunset. She didn’t open her eyes, but as soon as the unicorn was settled in, she turned her head and pressed it into the curve of her shoulder, sobbing.

Twi leaned her cheek against Sunset’s strange, gossamer mane and rubbed her shoulder and back between her dragonfly wings. They simply sat until Shining and Cadance pulled aside a chunk of the debris and saw them both with wet tears flowing down their muzzles.