[...] your valour is vain, and his victory will be swift and complete:
so complete that none can foresee the end of it while this world lasts.
Gandalf, about Sauron, The Return of the King
Remains of the Day
What used to be Canterlot is a ruin etched on the mountainside. What the battles, the purges and the spite of the Nightmare didn't destroy is now mostly devoid of sound, and nine times out of ten it's only the wind moving through empty streets. This time's it's her. The sound of her hooves echoes around the walls, but it's dulled out by debris and rickety plants; already what used to be the capital of Equestria is starting to be hollowed out. Like a gutted fish. How many days have been since she had seen a fish?
She has been counting days. Another small act of defiance. She doesn't speak with ponies anymore, so her tongue rests in her mouth and as of late has started to feel like a foreign object, a vestigial organ; ponies now divide time in nights. What point might there be to that, it eludes her.
She stops to tug at her cloak with her mouth. No teal glow of magic to put it – well, rags, cloak is more a term of endearment than anything else – back into shape. Magic could attract guards. She doesn't want to attract guards. She barely escaped the last confrontation. They learned to not underestimate her, and the fact, that would have once been reason to feel pride, has since long turned into a cause for concern. Rags back into place, to cover all the orange in her coat, and the gold and red of her mane, she comes back to scuttling through empty streets. The hood on her muzzle bobs as she passes through rubble; she could do little to hide her horn. She could try a glamour spell, but illusion has never been her greatest area of expertise. And of what Celestia tried to teach her, she has lost the most important lessons. Oh, nothing about magic. She's the most learned unicorn of her time. Strongest of her time. She used to have a destiny. Still has. And yet, from time to time, a nagging suspicion that the most important lessons had been lost on her scratches the edge of her mind. She has learned to tune it out, and she does the same now.
She turns at a corner and looks around for signs of danger; she crosses the road with slow steps, trying to draw the smallest sounds out of the pavement. Stone had turned and soil sprung out, but in parts like these, where the walls are less decorated by scorch marks and more with ancient graffiti, the old city still retains intact patches. A yawn dawns on her lips. Part of her needs to reach her destination as soon as possible. Another part of her, her aching joints, the dull pain behind her drooping eyelids, longs for a quick respite. She looks around, and up to the sky. Beneath the Moon, scorched with craters she knows much too well, not a movement. No pegasi cut through air, no patrols. She tries a tentative tug with her magic, and a soft teal glow cuts through the dark. It's dangerous, more dangerous than lighting up a candle in a powder keg; tendrils of power reach out in the streets, looking for anything to set them off. At a first glance, there's nothing out there.
She tries again.
By the third time, she thinks she can push her luck. Experience taught her caution.
Horn unlit once again, she walks the streets looking for a safe place. She can't reach her safe place yet. These roads once spread around the residential district of Canterlot. What rich, influential ponies walked these Sunlit streets now do the same in the restored Midnight Castle. She has seen it from time to time. It's not hard to spot the soft blue glow in the middle of the dark patch that's the Everfree, even less so up here in the mountains. It looks so far away, like the Nightmare's talons couldn't reach out and snatch her away. She has learned otherwise.
This particular hole in the wall seems promising. Part of what used to be a tower has cut the wall in two, and the right half is a pile of rock, but the other half has been preserved by some miracle. She enters through the hole, and there's the remains of a bed and curtains; sheets are damp, because the Sun doesn't dry them up anymore, but it's better than sleeping on naked rocks. Sleeping is not the right word for what she's about to do, though. She hasn't slept since the first days after the Nightmare’s coming. Dreams turned into infective things, playing with minds of ponies and beasts alike, hollow tunnels from which they begged to wake up, and wake up they did, once they pledged their loyalty to the Nightmare. Most ponies broke after a few of them. She never broke. She used to be Celestia's personal student, she's always been stronger than that. Strongest unicorn of her time. She started to turn her sleeping hours into safe patches, break it apart before dreams could come and infect her. She used a clock at first. But that was when there were still a few of them, when there was still something capable of resistance in these streets, when she and her comrades tried to set back the clock of destiny, if only by a few minutes. That didn't last long, and she was left alone to wander the roads of Canterlot and travel the rest of Equestria, looking for one final weapon. She started to use an hourglass, simpler, less prone to signalling her position, but the hourglass broke one day. Her own inner clock had been in disarray ever since the onset of this longest of nights, so she threw its remains away and started to relay on her mental skill and honed discipline to nap a quarter of an hour, every hour.
It did a wonder on her. What little sense of time she retained was lost, and she wandered her hours as if they were isles, jumping from one to the next, in an endless stream with smudged edges. She had been feeling her body's warnings for some time, but what could she but ignore them? Let herself be gobbled up by the Nightmare? Just as she was searching all of Equestria for her last hope, the Nightmare was looking for her beneath every rock.
She was used to this life now. At least this time she has a soft – if damp, and dirty – bed on which to take her nap. Sleep always comes to her like somepony threw a curtain on her eyes. She is awake one moment, and then she blinks, and she is in the dark. The safe kind of dark before dreams.
There is nothing to gobble her up in this dark.
Then she blinks again, and her trained, if tired body, signals her the quarter is past. She shakes. These naps feels like taking drugs: for a few moments she feels better, more grounded. Magic flows to her horn unimpeded, her hooves sharper, her muscles less sore. Then wear and tear bit back into her, and she crashes back into reality. She turns her head and tugs with her mouth at the sheet; she folds it and knots it around her body. This would come in handy; she is about to leave when she stops to look at something, fallen next to the bed. She turns it with her hooves. A picture. Glass falls down with a sharp tinkle, and she tenses.
Waiting for the sirens to shout. Pegasi to flow down from the heavens. Earth ponies to keep her in their grasps – a discoloured patch on her shoulder pulses at the memory of that particular confrontation – Unicorns to lit up the night, horns ready to fire.
Silence.
A whisper of wind tickles her mane, bringing no signs of dangers.
She lets out her breath. Turning the picture to keep more of the glass from falling, she puts it on the bed, face up.
Two adult ponies, a yellow stallion and a white mare, smiling at the camera. Two fillies snuggled up at their feet. She doesn't know their names. And whoever they might be, they were part of the Nightmare's forces by now, for sure. Everypony who resisted she knew by name. She takes the picture out of the glass, out of its frame, and into the sheets knotted around her body. She will add it to the rest.
Back into the streets. The accident with the glass is making her extra careful, and she puts down every hoof as if she's afraid of setting off a magical mine. Most of times, that's an exaggeration. She keeps on walking, heading for the old castle; thoughts wriggling in her mind, coiling like snakes. It has been a long time since she found another picture. This was pure dumb luck – the first she had in a long time – because she thought she had took all of them. Yet, some part of her is heated by a shining defiance and satisfaction. Yet another small piece the Nightmare won't be able to gobble up. Yet another small piece held up for memory.
She's alone as she enters the ruins of the old castle. It's unusual for her, going so long without even spotting a patrol. This doesn't mean she's in luck. It means there's something going on, so, before she opens the door to her sanctuary, she reinforces a few guards. Guarding spells are another kind she never perfectly grasped. Oh, she's great at them, just like she's great at pretty much any other kind of thing, but she's not perfect. She used to have help with wards. She makes up for quality with quantity. Seven layers she waves around the door, a few of them to conceal spells presence itself, and the soft glow of her horn sizzles and burns with efforts, sparks lighting up this corner of the castle with shifting shadows.
At last, when she's left panting and with a dull ache at the base of her horn, she deems herself if not satisfied, at least sedated in her fears. The decayed hall looks the same to anypony's eyes. Even trained unicorns would have a hard time spotting the lingering traces of her spells, and even they wouldn't be able to unravel them on their own. This kind of effort, though, it's necessary, for she's alone against many. Leaving the ruined city behind, she walks through the opening, and slides back into another kind of darkness, into the old caves beneath Canterlot.
Legends has it that they had been carved by unicorns hungry for gems; some of the ridges and tunnels still hold tracks, eaten away by rust. She has explored them those times she didn't feel like going out, or until her provisions ran out, and then she had to. She has found no monsters, she has found no hidden treasures, she has found not even a solitary bone. Like outside, she's alone here, but it's the kind of solitude she can trust. When she used to have her band of fighters, they lived in the castle. When the castle was still somewhat whole. It is part of her strategy to have her base in the same spot; it is the last place the Nightmare would suspect.
She reaches her safe place in a few more steps; it's not that far removed from the entrance, for even she would eventually get lost in this maze, but far enough to confound anypony who would enter unassisted. She has arranged what little furniture she could muster in the same way of her old room, back when she was still Celestia's prized student. The bed in the middle – now a pile of hay with tattered sheets throw on top – the mirror on the wall – she brought here one with the same general shape – and her provisions – mostly dried up apples and jugs of water – on the far side. The two most important things are on the far ends of this particular cave. She lights her horn up to take a few books off the racket.
Her library is not as large as it used to be back then, nor it's as intact. She has only found so many tomes in the ruined city, and what little she could salvage before the castle crumbled; she has a collection of spare pages, but most of them are useless. Gardening instructions. Cooking tips. Happier pages for a happier world. Maybe outside this kind of book is still being written. Maybe there are happy ponies baking happy pies for the Nightmare or for themselves. Maybe they're getting used to this kind of life. Her hoof trembles on the side of the book. Getting used. Forgetting what used to be.
Not her. The book held in her magic, she walks to the other important thing. A flicker of fire from her horn, and she lights a candle. Then another. And another. She could use her hooves to do so, dipping one small flame into the next, but she prefers to use her magic, at least for this. At least here. It's a wall. Covered with candles and frames. She scouts the city for three commodities: food, water, and purpose. This is the most important one.
She shakes off the sheets from her back with a flicker of her magic, and with another she floats her cloak away, staying in the flickering light of a hundred candles. It's a warm glow, a golden glow, that goes well with her orange coat and her gold and red mane. It draws out her eyes. It's the closest memory she has of the Sun, an ephemeral day of her own making, a fleeting dream of dawn. She falls down on her rump, and still using her magic, she floats the picture she has taken in the city and hangs it with the other, using a drop of wax to fix it to the stone. Dozens of pictures look back at her, ponies waving, ponies smiling, ponies under the Sun.
In the centre, there's a single picture. It depicts six ponies, mares and stallions; they are not as happy and carefree as the others, and they stand in a dim-lit room, the night sky lingering at the edges. She's in the middle, her smile still with a ghost of her old confidence. Her gaze caresses the form of a tall white stallion next to her, a grim expression on his face.
Then she snuffs out the candles. There's not a lot of wax left in Canterlot, there's not a lot of wax left in all of Equestria. Bees were among the first to fall, devoid of the Sun, and the surrogates the Nightmare released into the wild are far less friendly. These were all the candles she was going to get, and as impressive as the pile was, every time she uses them it's one time less.
Purpose renewed, she comes back to the most important part of her day. She used to be a student, and it's a habit she never truly abandoned. Chief among the things she learned under Celestia: knowledge is power. She even wrote the line on a wooden plank standing on top of her library. Research brought her this far. Even alone, even with all the world against her, she never stopped doing what she did best. And in time, she stumbled upon something that might change the tide. She opened up the book, and turned page after blackened page. She found it in the middle of the old Canterlot library, somehow untouched by the fire that destroyed most of it. Of all the crimes the Nightmare committed, this was the second direst to her eyes. At first, she had deemed the book a collection of old silly stories. She only read it one day, when she had finished all the other, useful, books in her library. The irony! In this unassuming tome, she found the true story behind the coming of the Nightmare. The younger alicorn sister, her bitter hatred at not having what she felt it was her due, her attempt at revenge. Parts of her shook with shame when she first read that. It struck a little too close for comfort. And then the Elements of Harmony! The book depicted them as stones, or gems, or necklaces, but she knew better. In old books such as these, illustration were always at best symbolic and at worst deceitful, and their true meaning ran deeper than shades of ink. Even Celestia's mane was depicted a dull white and pink. No, no, she knew what gems and stones were supposed to depict. Weapons. These were weapons, the only kind capable to destroy the Nightmare.
And as Celestia bore them once, now it was her destiny to do the same. Since she learned about the Elements, everything in her life clicked into place. She had been trained and honed by Celestia for this purpose and this purpose only! Gone were her silly dreams of greatness before the grave task that lay before her. What little did they mean to her now, she who had walked through fire, she who still eluded the Nightmare's grasp, the thorn in her hoof, the single resisting pony able to overthrow her rule! How must the Nightmare be afraid of her coming deeds! And with every little piece she put together, she came closer to find and use the Elements. Or at least, to confirm a series of places were they weren't hidden. They were supposed to be six, but only five were accounted for. She knew the Nightmare must have kept them close, and she knew they must have still be out there somewhere. The proof was in the very same patrols that tried to catch her. They were trying to stop her from getting to the Elements, which meant the Elements were still out there. Which meant she could still bore them. Holding all six of them was going to be hard, but she had trained with magic items before. And Celestia chose her for this, and that was all the guarantee she needed.
She keeps on wondering about the Elements for a while until her body timer clicks once again, and she puts her muzzle on her hoof, slipping away for the quarter she allows herself. She blinks.
Blinks again, and wakes up. She reads for a little while, using up the brief respite of a clearer mind. One of the benefits of having shed the need for continuous sleep was she could stay focused on the same topic for a whole hours, for days, even. And the Elements tugged at her mind time and time again.
At last, after a few more naps and hours of study, she puts the books she used back into the rack, and treats herself to a dry apple and water. She can't drink the water here in the caves. Too high risk of poisoning. And who knows what traces of heavy metals might linger in it, from excavation days?
Then she turns and traces her hooves on a large map of Equestria. Crosses cover many places. She has spent the last few years tracking down the Elements, to no avail. All she managed to get from these travels were disappointments and a bleaker and bleaker picture of a world getting used to the Nightmare. Foals were being born in this very moment who knew nothing of the Sun. Her hooves trembles with rage and the weight of her purpose. She glances at the wall covered with pictures and candles, barely visible in the teal light of her horn. She is doing this for all of them. And there's few places left to look for anyway. The chief is Midnight Castle in the Everfree. This was the old castle of the Sisters back in the day, as the book said. That it was renewed and turned into the capital of Equestria, as Canterlot used to be, was a strong hint the Nightmare sat closest to the instruments of her undoing. It was what she would have done. The other place was the small village of Ponyville, next to the Everfree's western edges. She has only been there once, in a visit with Celestia. Sunlit streets and pastel houses, happy ponies, busy with earthly labour and selling flowers and throwing parties. At the time it had seemed all so very pointless.
She now lets out a sigh at the fond memory. Then she steels herself in her determination. The Elements. The Elements were the key to brought it all back. And Ponyville it was. She would leave the Castle for last.
She gets out of the caves, donning her cloak and a magic-enhanced iron mace. She's getting into the enemy's den, better be ready. As she passes through her wards, she prods at them and finds with relief they haven't been touched; she reinforces them with another tug of magic, and then she slithers away in the alleys.
She has learned how to be silent; another irony, that the Nightmare's night serves her so well to avoid her minions. Today she has seen less action than usual; maybe they have been recalled for some emergency? She dares not hope the Nightmare relented in her search. She has made the same mistake before, and once was enough. The maul dances on her back as she walks towards the edge of the mountain. It's all slopes and trees until the plains, and there, sitting like a blue jewel in the middle of a dark cloth, there's Ponyville. She hasn't looked there for a while, and the pastel houses she remembers now shine with the hollowed light of the Nightmare's lamps. It looks larger, and has tall walls surrounding it. She remembers a time when walls like these were used to keep things away, not to keep ponies in. She could teleport for a short distance down the mountain's edge. That would save her the hardest part of the travel, but what of the teleportation's light? What of its trace? Shaking her head, she keeps on walking down empty streets.
Or, at least they look empty. A small vibration at the base of her horn, and the magic-detecting enchantments sparkle like fireworks. She stops, breath already heavier in her lungs. There's something here. A decoy. A trap. She prods with but the tiniest sliver of her magic, so little that only the tip of her horn shines teal, and a thread of magic searches down the road for signs of danger. Nothing. Nothing. No-
She turns the thread back. There's something there. It's but a fleeting sensation, the memory of something rotten, something out of place. She prods again. A glamour. It's well-made. Devoid of power if not skill, the unicorn who placed it must have known their craft. Still, it's full of weak points. Unravelling it would be tempting. But what of triggered alarms?
Better to take another way; she turns back and slides around corners, walking on rubble with but a slight pressure of her hooves. She doesn't like glamours. Never even spent the time to truly know how to cast them. Useless, she thought them. Better to show her strength in earnest than to cover it. She used to be so naive. She keeps her detecting spell lit all the time now. The small light it shines it's a low price to pay, and she pays it in earnest; it dangles ahead of her like an anglerfish's lure, shedding teal glow in front of her mane. And then something sets it off again. Another glamour, in the middle of the road, a web of silky enchantments, thin enough to avoid even careful inspection.
Another detour. A few steps down the road, another glamour. There's still another way, less known. She slips beneath a hole in the rubble and starts to crawl. The air is thin and reeks of dirt, but it's another way out of Canterlot. And yet... right in the middle, another glamour. This one is stronger than the others, as if it had been placed there last. Whoever did this studied their trap with care. She slithers back to the mouth of the tunnel, detection spells in full force, now not just for magic but for ponies, for movements. Her horn now casts a pale glow around, head kept up high, eyes scouring the sky for any signs of wings.
Nothing. Were the glamours lay earlier? She did leave Canterlot for a while, looking for the Elements. Maybe they thinned surveillance for when she would set the alarms off. But this seems like lazy work, and if there's something she has come to know for certain, is that the Nightmare doesn't work lazy. Slow, on careful hooves, she steps back towards the castle. She will wait a few more days. She still has apples and plenty of water. Can still think about the Elements. Find a better day to get out. Her eyes dash to the sky. There! There was something flying around! Fuelled by paranoia, all caution threw to the wind, she lets wards upon wards coat her body in shimmering layers. Teal upon teal. Protection from energy spells. Protection for weapons. Protection for unravelling magic. Truesight. After the last, glamours lit up the night.
She's standing on top of one.
The truesight spell burns through it like fire; patches of black start to eat away at the glamour, revealing the simple pavement below. A truesight-triggered glamour? That was a clever one. Part of her mind is amused. Another part screams with honed instincts. One moment later, the siren wails in the night. And from up above, a torrent of wings is unleashed from the shadow. She panics.
"No," she whispers to the air, and a burning wave of magic is unleashed from her horn: teal at first, then yellow as it spreads, red licking its edges, following the pegasi closing on her. Screams shred the silence of the night as she runs for cover. No time to be subtle, and kindness is a relic of a world long past. As she dives, she hears bodies hitting the pavements, and not all of them moan in pain. This might either be a good thing or a bad thing, and she doesn't stop to verify. A corner, an alley, a flight of broken stairs, and she's out beneath the sky again. Truesight signals nothing. She closes her eyes and drawn beads of power around her body: string of pearls connect to magical nodes of time and awareness. Foresight spells are among the hardest to weave, and are only taught in secluded, guarded covenants. She taught this spell to herself when she was a filly, to make sure she was really going to be Celestia's student.
Red threads dangle on her eyes, and some more tug at her muscles. Take the left path. Wait for three breaths beneath this arch. Throw that rock that way. As she walks, foresight starts to eat away at her consciousness, and a smile curls her lips. Flashes of events appear before her mind's eye. Celestia frowning, Celestia laughing, Celestia throwing her out. Her comrades in their last assault. They start to overlap with her natural sight by the time she's starting to see the castle's ruins. No pegasi in the sky, and no immediate danger, so she dispels it. She shakes her head to chase away the cobwebs of the spell, flashing before her eyes like after-images from looking into lights. Truesight still works though, and that's a good thing, because not a moment later three shrouded pegasi flow down from the sky. They appear like holes in the world, only visible thanks to her spell. She ducks beneath one and lashes out with ropes of fire, a whip that sizzles against the wings of the nearest pegasus, sending her tumbling from the sky, her forelegs against the blackened scorches. The other two don't stop to help her; turning around, they fly in formation, trying to catch her off guard. The nearest one, a blue stallion with dark mane, attacks first, but it's a ruse; she turns and unleashes firebolts at the one sneaking behind her. Then another leash of fire streaks his coat and sends him screaming into a heap. She tried not to hit anything vital. From time to time she fails, but maybe not this time? She hopes so, and runs away, the staccato of her hooves on the pavements losing itself into an echo.
She turns the corner, and finds herself into a square; a quick look above. No pegasi. But this place is choke full of glamours. They are the same old thing, devoid of power, she can almost pick them up on pure instinct, but the pony making these might actually know their game. Earth ponies erupt from illusory doors and pillars, shouting and clopping as they converge to her. Always trying to drown her in numbers. But these ones have warding spells against fire. No matter. A quick switch at the source of her spell, and the water in the air, so damp without the Sun, turns into droplets of ice. Sharp, sharp ice. And then sharp, sharp cries of pain, as the stallions stop and back away, some of them hitting a few of the droplets on their way back, rising their hooves in panic. To them they are caught in a cage of invisible cuts. She would leave them to that idea as she teleports away. She drops the ice spell shortly after; she's starting to run dry of magic with so many spells at the same time, but she's the personal student of Celestia, and she won't relent. Strongest unicorn of her time. Not even after she cuts another corner, and three unicorns are waiting for her. How come she didn't see them? Their forms are shrouded, the signature of the glamour is the same as ever, but this time there's something different there. She avoids a glassbolt and two lines of shivering thunder, only shredding the night instead of her coat, skin and flesh; she retaliates with a few waves of congealing magic, but she's just trying to buy time to think. Knowledge is power. What's different? Oh, that's different. She turns and prepares an unravelling spell before something grazes at her coat; it burns like frostbite. She pats at it with a lick of healing magic and has only the time to see a few shards of ice coming off of her back before she turns, cries, and unleashes the dispelling, focused on the closest unicorn. It wriggles, then is sent on her back by the sheer force of the spell, revealing a dark blue coat and mane. The intensity of the glamour goes down by little more than a third. Shared magic pool. She turns and ran across the square, capitalizing on the shock and shifting, balancing energies of the spell. A hit with her mace, and the other stallion goes down with a stunted cry, revealing brown coat and white mane. The third one, a mare, has time to lay a force ward, but she learned from the best when it comes to wards, and she shatters it with a fleeting thought, and with another hit of the mace, the third mare goes down. She doesn't stop to look at her coat; there's still somepony here around. She counts in her minds as she scans the streets. A dozen pegasi and earth ponies, three unicorns. This isn't a simple patrol. This is a dispatched party. Organized. The magic consumption is eating away at her concentration. They are coordinated. And the mind behind it all... there, a shifting of magical energies, and she hits the spot with three fiery meteors, blowing up a wall. The rest of the house moans and falls upon the empty space; a wave of debris and a cloud of dust settles around, and all seems quiet.
Seems. She closes her eyes for a second and prepares a reckoning dispel. It comes in handy a moment later when her truesight detects black movement. She lets it erupt from her horn, waves upon waves of white light, fuelled by her own spells being unravelled; it sparkles when it finds glamour nodes, eating at them. It's acid. The metaphors falls true when with a shriek the shivering form of a blue unicorn with a silver mane wriggles on the pavement; her eyes are shut in pain. She comes closer and hits her on the head with her mace, and the unicorns goes down cold. She lift the reckoning dispel a moment later, and the unicorn stops sizzling, though her muscles still twitch. She lays down a coat of healing magic for the four of them; it's but licking at their wounds, but this much she can offer. Her tattered conscience tugs at her. What about the pegasi? Earth ponies she just grazed, capitalizing on skin's sensitivity to sharp pains rather than serious wounds, but she sent a couple pegasi tumbling from the heavens. What about them?
What if she stays there in the roads long enough for them to dispatch another party?
She shakes her head and cover herself with another ward, then runs away for the castle. She will go to Ponyville another day. As she runs and covers her tracks with a ward here and there, the memories of the pegasi still flash before her eyes. She was afraid, and she had been startled, and unleashed too much magic, unrefined, searing. She will do better next time. Even her own words ring hollow to her ears. And there's something else wrong with what happened. This attack was coordinated. Then why did she feel like the last unicorn she knocked out wasn't the mind of the operation? She was the one dealing with glamours and illusions, the signature spell was always the same. Skilled, that one, if disappointingly weak. She might have wanted her in her resistance, back when it was still going strong. They were a few, but were coordinated. And her strategies always paid off, in a way or the other.
She turns on the road and enters the castle. Her wards are still up; she reinforces them again, using as much of her magic as she could. That, in hindsight, is a mistake. But she feel calmer when she enters the caves, and she even takes her time tending at her wounds. That ice bolt had been sharp and strong, and capable to render her hind legs stiff, if she had given it the time. It still aches. She refuses to limp as she goes further down the cave, though. She still has her pride. Her pride, and her sense of smell. She smells smoke. A grip of fear on her chest, she dashes down the corridors, as the smoke grows to choke her nostrils. No. No. An orange light draws out the tunnel’s edges from the darkness.
She turns and enters her burning room. Her bed and books are being eaten by flames as high to lick the ceiling; candles litters the floor and from the walls the remains of her pictures curls in death like leaves in winter. And in the middle of the inferno, armoured and black against the burning light even though his coat is white and his mane is blue, stands an old friend.
She opens her mouth to say something, but he is quicker. Maybe because he doesn't feel pricking tears behind his eyes.
"The caves. Clever. The Princess wouldn't suspect them."
Words. She was supposed to say words. All that came out is a wail.
"I, on the other hand, know you much too well."
Details. Details work themselves in her mind. The glamour magician. The attack. Her apparent luck in finding... yet another picture, now held up in his hoof. She manages to spit out words.
"A bait. Tracking."
He nods.
"We wondered which one you would pick up first."
She ignores him, lost in her reasoning. Even after all this time, she can't help it but putting all the pieces together. He knows this, and waits.
"The attack. A ruse. You came here and..."
The book on the Elements, the cover with the golden unicorn, burns together with the others.
"Cleaned up." He took a step forwards and started to come nearer. She takes a step back, still half-blinded by the fire and tears. She tries to raise a few wards.
"Shhh," he says, and the wards are swept away by a flash of magic and a wave of dispelling. She stumbles on her back hooves. She learned from the best. But he's still the best. He comes closer; there's something odd in his appearance, something different. Other than his armour of burnt silver, and the horseshoes, and the tall curved helm. Once Captain of the Guard, always Captain of the Guard. Then it clicks.
"You look so well-rested," she says. A chuckle, and he nods.
"The moment I had time to sleep between an ill-thought plan and the next."
She shakes her head, burnt pride starting to make itself known against the dull ache coming from the fire.
"They were sound plans. We accomplished much."
"You accomplished nothing, and only thought of yourself. The Princess is much displeased at your deeds."
The Princess. She blinks.
"There's only one Princess," she says, her voice low. Low like a tumbling thunder.
"But She is far more generous than logic or pride would benefit Her, unlike somepony we both know. The Princes-"
"There's only one Princess!" She hits the ground with both hooves, drawing a toll. He goes on, unimpressed.
"Indeed. And the one true Princess is giving you one last chance. Let go of your old ways and be reborn. You were once an apprentice. Be an apprentice again." He holds out a hoof. So enticing. So inviting. Just let go and take it, and get back to sweet sweet slumber. A few nights of sleep and all this would look like a bad dream, lost in a memory. She would look like him, maybe even better. Maybe she would finally be adored as she deserved, like she never was under Celestia. The Nightmare rewarded ambition. Just sleep, and dream it all away. Her aching muscles pleads her to do so. Her mind, dulled by the constant use of magic, beckons her to give in. Logic, her most trusted possession, informs her in no way she would be able to best him in a direct confrontation. Not like this. Once, maybe. Not now.
And, beneath it all, beneath logic, beneath pain and duress, beneath her tired heart, embers burn. The memory of a smile, the memory of a dawn. Celestia used to be so proud of her student.
She stands up. Would she be again?
A grin splits her lips; she looks at the last remains of her books, of the life she tried to build. Then she looks straight into his eyes, the grin growing into a chortle. Strongest unicorn of her time. Would Celestia be proud of her once again? Can she sees her from her prison? Can she see her standing tall just like she used to be? She doesn't know. All she knows are the words she used to say before their raids. Let them sting.
"Praise the Sun."
Coda
In retrospect, she might even have won. Were she as well-rested as her opponent, weren't she dulled by rage, and desperation, and regret didn't tug at her reflexes, she might even have won. Strongest unicorn of her time, Celestia once deemed her. Little good amounted that praise now. But the memory of it, the memory of that praise, the memory of those eyes, keeps her going.
One leg limp, panting, smoke coming from the dying fire, and the burning craters her diverted spells blew up, choking at her mouth, while her opponent stands with barely a dent in his armour. Enchanted armour. Reflective. Tied to fire magic and energy magic in general. Seven layers, self-repairing, linked to magical nodes. Immune to all attacks, and damn if she tried! Her mace is useless. She might be able to dispel the shields if she had, say, two hours. She doubts she's going to last two more minutes. And there's more. There's something else in the corners of his magic, something infective. Something that has augmented his already formidable defences, the touch of the Nightmare. Again, she might have been able to withstand it. On another day.
He raises his head, and another wave of wards hits against her. They are usually still, keeping things on the outside. But weaponized use of wards was among the first tactics she devised. The irony stings as much as her sides as she stumbles against the wall, hard rocks hitting all the right places to make her scream. If only she could get past him. A layer of spheres around his body tells her she's not going to.
"Look at you," he says mocking, as with another tug of his head a wave sends her up against the ceiling. Then she drops down with another cry of pain. Did... did those pegasi feel like that? "Look at you." His eyes like somepony looking at a particularly bad example of modern art, half disgusted, half uncomprehending.
"You broke my mirror," she manages to choke out, and he snarls.
"Always with the witty retort. How many of those did we have to go through working beneath you? How many times did we put our lives in danger for somepony as self-absorbed as you?"
She blinks. She remembers a few times when his words might have struck true. But only a few times. She doesn't have the time to think of others. She has to think of ways to beat him. With only three legs out of four and her horn aching like it had been broken, but still. Strongest unicorn of her time. Useless to answer. Better let him talk.
He tugs at her with his magic and she's encased in shining shackles; he throws her against the wall and again, and again, each time she discovers new degrees of pain. Maybe letting him talk isn't that good an idea. But still. Strongest unicorn of her time.
"I believed your lies. I believed we were working together."
"We were," she whispers. She treasured them all, still does. She put her pictures up, she lit them up to remember the dawn. She tried to find ways to overthrow the tyrant. She was so close to finding the Elements. She could then use them.
"It was always about your plan, your choices, your directives. Student of Celestia," he spits out the name and titles as a wad of rotten apples, "prized pupil, strongest unicorn of her time."
Right. The one capable of using the Elements. Celestia raised her for the task. It was her destiny. The memory of a smile burns beneath her opponent’s words. There's a small rock in front of her eyes. It's surprisingly symmetric, in a way her trained eyes can appreciate even in this predicament. Symmetric. Symmetric. She blinks, slow. That's it. She cups it with her hoof.
"And look at you. The Princess might find uses for you, but I do wonder whether it won't be better to deal with you myself. For old times' sake."
She grins, and strikes with an enchanted dart against his wards. It slides against the shields as leaves on a stream. He snorts. Good. A bait for a bait.
"Before," she chokes, "before... you do that, please accept my apologies. I thought we were friends."
His eyes turn to slithers.
"You don't know the first thing about making friends."
"That," she says with another cough, and to cover the blink of magic she puts inside the pebble, "is true. Again, accept my apologies. And please bring them to Fancy Pants. And Lyra. And Fleur. And Cadence." At the last one, his nostrils flares in rage, and the shackles at her legs tugs. It hurts, but it's the reactions she wants. A ruse for a ruse. "I'm sorry." Then she lets the pebble fall to the ground. And he comes closer and closer, his wards moving with him: and they slide past the pebble, because he's the one pushing them and the pebble has no harming magic in it.
"And another thing," she says, voice straining. She's too cocky for him not to feel like something is going on, so with another flash of magic, she reinforces his wards. By now, not even a direct blast from all of her concentrated magic – on a good day – might be able to harm him. Perfect. "You are right. I may not be the strongest unicorn of my time. I may not even be the most clever."
Something tinges his lips at the mention. He knows there's something going on, because he knows her too well, but he's so focused on her and her horn, that he doesn't even notices when the pebble slides past all of his wards and touches his left shoehorn.
"But I'm clever enough."
What happens next is both flashy and surprisingly simple. Reckoning dispelling wouldn't work with a gauntlet of wards like that, nor would a simple concentrated dispel. Wards would make any attempt at disrupting them bounce off. But not attempts at adding to them. Like, say, a simple magical node turning the direction and magical vectors of the wards inside out. Simple and symmetric. Celestia would be proud.
He has barely the time to shout as his wards turn on their metaphorical head, and she has barely the time to jump away as the shackles disappear, before he's encased in a prison of his own making. It resembles a buzzing crystal of solidified magic. And given he's in the pivotal point of all the nodes, there's no force in Equestria, save for the Nightmare herself, to move him from this predicament. He's frozen in time, his face a motionless grimace between surprise and rage. At a quick glance, he would stay in this state until the wards wore off, which, considering the pony in question, might take the best part of a year.
Behind him, the flames finish their job at destroying all signs of her past refuge. She grabs the charred remains of a few apples and a water jug and leaves this place. She feels dizzy, but she's just tired. Just tired. She's been tired for years, it's no matter.
It's only when she's up on the surface that she lets go of the wards surrounding the entrance. No need for them anymore. She won't try the same trick once again and hide. The base of her horn buzzes as if it had been sawed off, and she still has a limp, which slowly, but with distressing confidence, is starting to make its pain known to her body. And there's the fact she still hasn't slept. Hasn't slept in years. The simplest tug of detecting magic now burns as coals against the back of her mind. She lets it drop. No use. She can probably be wiped out by a strong gale right now. The rush that allowed her to survive until now is dying. So she walks.
She walks across empty streets and down broken squares, she climbs upon rubble mounds and turns back a few times, giving her last goodbye to the city that elevated to greatness. Up above, the Moon shines and keeps her unrelenting dance. Are those craters forming the profile of her mentor larger today? Is she proud? Is she proud of her limping, broken form?
Before she leaves Canterlot, though, she comes back for the forms of the pegasi fallen from the sky. She gives the last drops of her magic as healing. Then she searches for any others, but finds none. At last she turns and doesn't look back anymore.
She's not going to Ponyville. No use in losing herself in a crowd: the first time she closes her eyes, the Nightmare would snatch her. And no use in taking another nap. Years of habits beckons her to just let go for a moment, to let herself be drawn into the brief sleep. To Tartarus with sleep. She swoons on her legs, and it's not just due to the limp, but she keeps on going down the mountain. A part of her mind knows she's too weak to come up there again, but it doesn't matter. Not like she has anything else to lose. She follows the old road, and looks at the few ruined houses on the side. There might be something valuable inside them. It doesn't matter. And no sleep. She forgot her mace. No matter.
All that matters is the Castle in the Everfree. The Nightmare wouldn't suspect this move. She's going to go directly into the timberwolf's den, and retrieve the long-lost weapon, the Elements. The weapon only she can wield. She looks up again, and stumbles and falls and she gets up and keeps on going. No sense in looking up for answers. Celestia is already proud of her. Praise the Sun. She will find the Elements – they looked like gems, so maybe they are in the treasure room? Is there even a treasure room? And make her mentor proud. A lopsided smile tugs at her lips. She will see the Sun again. The wind, the rose-tinted sky. She will eat honey again and lit up candles and there's going to be a lot of candles now. The road wriggles beneath her hooves and she falls. No matter. She can crawl. Strongest unicorn of her time. She can do it. She will do it. Even if it's getting darker. So tired. Sleepy. No, no sleep. How will she lift the Elements once she finds them? Darker and darker still. No matter. She will find a way, she always finds a way. She already sees Celestia smiling at her, she sees how proud she is. She remembers her scent, she remembers her warmth, and they will be together once again and she can say she's sorry, so sorry, she only tried to do what she did best, and why is it getting so dark but it's no matter she will find the Elements she's practically there already, she can see the Castle, she can see its blue light but it's a darker blue, and it's no matter Celestia is holding her and was her smile always so sharp and were her eyes always with those slitted pupils and her wings so coarse and why is she laughing is she laughing at her it's no matter she's home again at last and she can let go and she draws one long breath because everything is going to be just fine just fine as it has always been and there's one final thought taking shape in her mind, the amber light of those embers burning their last at the bottom of her soul, and she exhales their dying glow with one satisfied breath, a scent of honey and dawn. Celestia is going to be so proud.
Praise the Sun.
