In a decorated abode near downtown Canterlot--two stories of gold-trimmed marble and alabaster, fancy in any other town but practically quaint in the center of high-class unicorn real estate--an old fellow lingered, dreading and awaiting his passing time in mostly equal measure.
Two unusual figures entered the scene.
"Fancy that." Looking down over his thin and grizzled beard, Lithe Wing watched carefully as his two grandchildren entered the room, not yet fully discernible in the poor lighting. But he knew them. "Finally, finally would you trouble an old fellow with your time and company. Perhaps, I wonder"--lacing that word with a feeble but undiluted sarcasm--"if hearing of my latest illness did prompt this sudden change of heart. Will you, then, mind your elder today?"
"Stuff it, pops." The older progeny, wreathed all in different shades of scarlet, snorted gruffly. "I know as well as you or anyone that your will could not be honored properly if we were not here to witness your passing. And soon, I shall ensure it. It will be honored!" He fluttered his own wings and grinned, pompously proud in the knowledge that he would receive much of his grandfather's estate.
Rising almost like a cat from under a rug, the younger child sidled in front of her sibling and stood tall, presenting all of her sandy-colored frame, though still meek and diminutive when compared to her towering brother. She cleared her throat, but stumbled on the words to follow anyway. "A-actually...there-there's supposed to b-be a c-cure for your ailment--th-they want to help you--if y-you would just r-r-return home, we-we'll take care of you a-a-a-a-and m-m-m-make sure..."
The increasing trembling in the little sister's body and voice were not inspired by an objecting brother, as one might expect. Instead, the sharpening scowl on the elder's face had caused it.
"If you knew what I forsook--if you knew what I set aside to make your lives possible--" His condescending gaze at the two youths shattered as he was consumed in a coughing fit--then he groaned in utter discomfort--and then he winced at some pain triggered by the groan. He inhaled after the internal pain subsided, then sighed, now carefully, while staring up at the unadorned ceiling. He relaxed a bit in forgetting the challenges of the next generation and remembering his own little world--a pastiche of friendly thoughts and cherished ideals from a time he would never know again. Lithe Wing remembered harmony.
But the next generation gathered at his side while he did this. He reluctantly returned to reality and glanced over them, remaining calm.
"You know that I cannot leave this place. It is my home. It shall forever be my home. But equally so, it cannot be yours. So the tides of history and power politics have dictated."
"Well--fine! We don't want to live in this wretched place anyway! All this foulness, this corruption--I can smell it in the air. I can smell it everywhere. It makes me want to hurl!" The scarlet brother growled and kicked the ground. The sandy sister crouched away from him, darting her eyes to Lithe Wing and wondering if he might take exception to the display.
But he did not--or at least not directly. "Others have already raised you with a certain understanding of the ways of the world. But since you are here, I thought that I might share a special insight--something you would never hear in a school. Do you even care to know--or are your minds still too full of conviction to hear me?"
"Unless you're going to teach me some of those secret combat maneuvers I hear about"--the scarlet brother almost choked on his sarcastic words, finally feeling a little grief in this grave encounter--"...I think I'll sit this one out." After a moment's hesitation, he huffed and plodded off to the corner.
"U-um, well...yes, okay." The sandy sister remained by his side.
Lithe Wing hummed in mild satisfaction, then inhaled deeply. "I don't really know where to begin, to be--" Suddenly, his body tumbled and writhed on the bed, and he let out his breath in a pained howl. As the howl let on and on until it ran soft, he finally coughed and spasmed in a short fit. The scarlet brother looked on, expressionless, a statue in the dim room's corner. His sister, however, was scared out of her wits, caught between the urge to reach out to hug her grandfather and the urge to shy away from the sick and decrepit creature before her.
"Just..." The sandy sister whimpered, caught on her conflicting emotions. "Just say what's important, please. While you still--" Then she turned away, already overcome, and started to sob quietly.
Lithe Wing looked over the poor thing with one eye, groaning gently. But he did not wait for her to recompose: he just began his story.
"There is no time... That is what you would say. But indeed, all the time in the world remains for us. And that was our aim. That was our standard, flying high over Equestria. Your children may never know such a scale of war--nor may you ever reckon a single moment where the survival of everyone you know hangs in the balance. Your teachers, your tales have taught you of our greatest warriors--and of the Great Initiative and the Lunar Rebellion." He muttered the next line. "They may even tell you of the diaspora."
Then his eye tensed in anger, and his full voice rang out for the first time. "But they will NEVER tell you what I had to forsake for our future." The sandy sister peeked an eye toward the elder, still frozen in fear but now also getting a little confused.
"And you think they'll let you now?" An icy tone emanated from the corner, the one where the big brother reclined.
"They will not have a choice, for knowledge cannot be reined. This knowledge I impart with you today." The elder turned his good eye out the window, where the sun had not quite risen above his viewpoint. The beacon of warmth overshadowed his grayed and scarred face, and his mood mellowed again. "When you see that sun, children, remember. You must remember what my brethren and I forfeited.
"And remember these ponies--remember them exactly for what they are." His eye then followed a mailmare as she entered the small viewing range, buzzing through the streets lazily until she found her next postal target--departed from view as suddenly as she had entered. That eye perked with a strange mirth.
"I-I-I don't know what you mean. You sound so..." The shy sister might have finished, "so cryptic" or "so bitter" or "so senile"--but she never did.
"You know that I flew in the First Squadron--and that I later occupied the ranks of Princess Celestia's own retinue. But you do not know what happened before. This is a secret I have kept from all, on pain of death. But--" Another breath casually flowed from his nostrils. "But there is no further pain to inflict now."
The scarlet brother fell to all fours, but he remained in his corner. He focused on the elder, recognizing a glimmer of hope of understanding something that had been bothering him for some time.
"If I had to wager, the young ponies of this land have already been led to believe there was an...ambiguity in the manner of the conflict's beginning. In a hundred years, or a thousand, that matter's truth may be lost entirely. But I tell you now that one pony began this war. And that pony remains with us."
Not a sound could be heard from the youths now.
"Fearsome genius, isn't she?" he growled, once again not minding his weakened state. "And I believed her. I believed in her. I was as one of Celestia's own children, such was the extent I was taken by her, such that I was totally loyal to her." His good eye squinted and aimed to pierce that morning sun.
"But you will never know that loyalty, children. In fact, I reckon you will come to know that you know nothing--nothing except your vigil against this land."
"Hear, hear!" barked the scarlet brother.
"A vigil borne by her own malign intentions. The Day Queen shall yet be hoisted by her own fiery petard!"
"Hear, hear!"
"A vigil carried out by anger-tainted idiots blind to the very means of their existence!"
"Hear--what!?" The brother hurriedly stomped up to the elder and shoved his sister out of the way, unsure of quite how or why to be upset but very upset nonetheless.
The old warrior's battle hardness returned, all somberness departed. "Hear me now, whelps, that you may neither be totally worthless in your heritage, nor vain in your ambitions!"
The brother sternly awaited this information, all attention summoned and standing in the middle of the room--a world apart from the disinterested brute who had sought only land and power in this visit.
"And you as well, little firefly!" He attempted a smile through the chronic pain, otherwise disguised by the forceful tone of his voice. "You must know your past to forge your future."
But the little sandy sister was still sobbing on the floor, filling the cracks of the floorboards with tears. With all eyes on her, she finally recognized the need to speak up.
"Please, this can't be right. You need to come home with us. We need to be together again. We need to be a family again! I miss you, Grandpa! I miss you so mu-u-uch!!" She stood up briefly and then lost herself in grief, mumbling and crying into Lithe Wing's arm.
"THIS WAS OUR HOME!!" The elder could contain himself no further, and he slowly righted himself on the bed, moving with such force that he dragged the sandy sister with him on his arm. A well-styled unicorn couple in view of the window were shaken by the outburst, startled for a moment--but they then quickly returned to their daily affairs.
"When Celestia spoke with me before the war, she spoke as a confidante. She spoke of the troubles Equestria had seen before her reign--troubles she still had seen with her own eyes, in her own long life. She spoke of the need for"--he could not hide his derision toward the thought--"friendship. She recognized that I, the paragon of my race, would need to ensure that friendship among us continued as long as we both lived.
"But as you now know, that friendship died before either of us. Still--what fearsome genius it took, turning pony against pony...as an excuse to hide her mistrust of us!"
The sandy sister was now seated with him on the bed, she at the far end and he with his back against the wall. She was practically apoplectic in a gut-wrenching blend of sorrow and confusion, trying to combine this new information with what the schools had taught her. "What are you saying? W-what are you saying? W-w-we didn't do anything!" She had to gasp to breathe after that, almost forgetting herself entirely.
"Many ponies...could Celestia understand with her heart and her magic. But she could not understand us. Only her sister Luna could truly commune with our kind, to feel compassion with us--however much I tried. I tried. By the powers, I tried!"
And in the next moment, trembling and morose, Lithe Wing felt the onset of final pains.
As he recognized the vital failure within, his voice grew somewhat frantic and desperate. "I have to tell you. It's not right what she did. I told her..." He curled up momentarily, giving in to the stresses--but he fought it out. He looked to his sandy-colored bundle of sorrow, and he regained his nerve. "I told her, 'Though our interests in the land cause occasional conflict by our very nature, we intend no harm. My liege, in your wisdom, you must know this very well.'"
Breath grew short, and no trace of inner calmness remained within the great gray beast. "We negotiated, and I...succeeded in ensuring our future. 'In this land, your kind shall know no end.' More than the vows exchanged with my mate--those were the most important words I'd ever heard." Though the wizened fellow could no longer summon a smile, he sought with his gaze the good spirits of the scarlet child.
"And then she..." He fell to a slouch, wincing more and more with each strained shout, rushing through his emotions as he recalled everything. "She made me swear never to tell. I--" His one eye sharpened, and tears of multiple agonies flowed out. "She cursed us all--turned us into machines of war! Magic-resisting masses of talons and hatred! She did it all! And she made me watch them all turn! My brethren...turned against me..." Utterly exhausted by that effort, the next words came on wheezes. "I fought them. Fought for...my liege, my Celestia. Fought...and killed...and won. Said it was...a plan...for peace to last." He gasped sharply for the next breath. "When Luna fell...exiled...all, save me... Ponies celebrated...the end of evil...her plan complete."
The next words were scarcely heard. "I killed them. My...m-my own..." Not a soul answered this dire confession. Lithe Wing wept.
For one more moment, he focused on his younger grandchild, who was trembling and nestled on his stomach, his voice trickling just above her head. "You...I hid...from the curse...hope of all our race...you have to keep going..." Pains wracked through the elder's spine, and even the voiceless wheezes came with difficulty. "One day...come back home...love them...love the ponies. She was wrong. But love. Be loyal...to love. You must...try. Always...try..."
Then the behemoth slumped forward, no longer able to fight the ravages within, and faded from the world.
In a moment, everything swirled around the sandy sister, who was far too incapacitated to realize what was happening. Shapes shifted and misbehaved about her, and she seemed to shrink where she sat. Then, with a blue flash and a magical WHOMP, she fell into that shrinking swirling place, gone from all sight and mind--banished to Tartarus.
A very tall and regal mare quietly left the scene from its center, her stride parting clouds of red.
In an inconspicuous and unbothered nest of Equestrian luxury, the lone inhabitant of a dim and colorless room--shorn from all friends and family, shunned by all other survivors, encircled by oblivious allies, carefully guarded and detained by a once-trusted master--would dissolve into the ages, only once known as the last Dragon Lord in Equestria.
