One more dawn, to grace the land
Twilight Sparkle found her in the parlor. A private room, banned even from guards and nobles, where the shining Sun Princess could be merely Celestia. Hot chocolate stains and scorched walls told memories of Twilight’s old lessons here, and they were not the only imperfections. This was a special room within the gilded palace – a worn, happy shrine of Celestia’s, and Twilight felt guilt twitch in her breast. She was here uninvited, and on serious business. Both were heresy in this place.
Celesta faced away, gazing through the window that was the parlor’s eastern wall. A fading yellow glow around her horn spoke of magic just cast, its effect made evident with the rising sun. It glowed golden and happy within the perfect spot: high enough to crest the horizon, low enough that it wasn’t occluded by the thing blotting the sky.
The thing was visible in the window, but Twilight did not look. She arrested her gaze at the sun and brought it carefully to her mentor. The angle let her see the face, though the old princess still did not turn. Celestia looked to her own sunrise with the neutral frown she reserved for thinking. Her wide pink eyes did not blink, and her face – unchanged since Twilight made those chocolate stains – gave a blank affect that made her appear slow-minded. An illusion, of course. Thirty lifetimes of courtly manners had turned Celestia’s expressions to costumes of thought instead of instinct, discarded when she did not care to put them on.
The look was comforting to Twilight. It meant thinking, which meant planning. Planning meant a chance for victory. Celestia was no stranger to desperate battles, and Twilight herself had seen a dozen in her young two centuries. Surely they could save Equestria, just like all those times before. Even the ponies knew it. No rioting, no panic, as tendrils thick as mountains hooked into the earth, creating prophetic devastation as they pulled the planet to the Doom above.
Twilight opened her mouth.
Celestia spoke first. “The dawn.”
She did not explain immediately. A slight, frustrated grimace broke the blankness of Celestia’s face as she went on.
“I have not fancied the dawn beautiful for a long time. Even now, trying as hard as I can, I do not see it. I roused from the library this morning and said, ‘I want to learn what ponies see in my sunrise.’ I want to claim some new happiness to take with me into the dark. But I cannot. It seems the chance is gone.”
Celestia sighed, and blinked her eyes from the window. She turned to Twilight and shook her ancient, youthful head. “I am sorry.”
Twilight said nothing. Words of enthused hope died on her lips, and Celestia continued. “Harmony, friendship, love… I taught you these things. You and all the ponies. I thought it was right. Love was eternal. Friendship could conquer all. I thought they were more than just our own inventions, but immutable laws of the universe. Stars above, I was wrong.”
A hard, mirthless laugh barked from a throat more used to kindly chuckles. “Ha! ‘Stars above.’ How many times did we utter that phrase, as though the stars could see and change our fate? How madly right we were, and who would have guessed?”
She turned, and stared above her sun to the pulsing, writhing Doom set low in the sky. Twilight did not follow the gaze, keeping her eyes fixed on Celestia as the princess spoke.
“This thing. I cannot call it a monster – it is more law than creature. An unchangeable existence beyond our own. I read of it, but I never believed. I could not believe the universe was a dark thing of madness and despair. I could not believe such a thing could be real. Eater of a million worlds, across billions of years. And each of those worlds like our own: love, harmony, gone! How strange it felt to look up last night and realize I am an infant. All this time, and I knew nothing. Love, harmony… all I thought I knew. Nothing.”
A white hoof raised and pawed the ground gently, betraying the stone face above. “It did not come easily to me. While Luna tried in vain to delay its course, I studied. I unearthed tomes older than Equestria, and glanced through every prophetic sight I possessed. My eyes which saw every threat and answer I’ve ever faced saw only doom. No answer. This…”
She paused. Swallowed. “This is the end, Twilight.”
Celestia’s white form turned, though the world had grown blurry. Twilight could not see her face, but heard the gentle tsk. “Please do not cry. You have most of two centuries behind you. That is better than most, and all things die when their hour comes. That we all share the same few hours is a grim thing; twice as sad for those who’ve not yet had a chance to live. But that is out of our hooves, and we must cling to what joy we may find. To that end, my dear student…”
“…I ask you a boon.”
Twilight ran a hoof across her eyes. Celestia crystallized in her sight, looking to her with a soft, kindly frown. “I know it is selfish. Twice as much for the one who taught you so wrong. It is why I ask, without order or condemnation. Will you do something for me, who did her best for so long, with such mistaken knowledge? In thanks for my intentions, if nothing else?”
Looking to Twilight seemed to have an effect on Celestia. Her eyes watered, her throat bobbed, and she turned at once back to the window. “Do not do it for sympathy. I am old enough that I am not overly fond of life. I do not mourn my own passing. But a vain, private fear has long beat within my breast: that my death would accompany Equestria’s end, and so for all my years and deeds I would go forever unremembered.”
“I want you to watch me, Twilight. I want you to watch me fight and die. And then remember me, so I might outlive myself. For as much or little time as you have left.”
Expectant silence fell. Then, “Will you do this?”
Twilight did not have to. She had friends and family she could spend the last hours with, and there was no other way she would rather die. A few jokes, a fond farewell, and a last, long embrace. Or she could join Cadence’s schemes for salvation, and spend the remaining hours in a frenzy of mad hope.
But Twilight nodded to her mentor. Seriousness consumed the fear, leaving her eyes clear as she grasped the ancient desperation in Celestia’s request. To remember, for even a few moments more… Twilight could do that. Her final act would not be one of love or hope, but duty. Celestia had tried, same as the rest of them. She was owed this much and more, for the many peaceful years now gone.
They hugged – awkwardly, briefly. They forced their minds elsewhere, refusing the grief. Twilight could feel the tremble in Celestia’s limbs as she hugged back.
Warm words went unsaid. Celestia pulled away quickly, losing to her despair. Tears fell down the alabaster face as she opened the windowed door. She looked wide-eyed to the sun, then back to Twilight – not as the doomed queen, but warm, kind Celestia with cascading eyes and broken voice.
“The dawn. I wish I could see its beauty.” Celestia reached a hoof to Twilight. “I wish we had…”
She recovered, retracting the hoof with a low sigh. The tears remained, but the crying stopped. The voice was plaster. “No, that is useless. Regrets flow easily at the end.”
She wiped her eyes. Unfurled her wings as she passed through the door. Spoke one more time before taking flight. “Farewell, Dear Twilight. You are loved.”
Watching Celestia meant watching the thing, for that is the direction she flew. Twilight steeled herself on the parlor balcony and looked upwards. It was so huge in the sky it filled the vision, but Twilight was no longer afraid. The Doom pulsed and writhed without malevolence, stupidly pulling their world towards it with five fat tendrils from the insane mass. One was plunged into southern Equestria, its tug sending low earthquakes through the continent. One had hit the badlands, and three more launched tidal waves from the oceans. Another two ponderously reached for the planet, their distance creating the illusion of being aimed for Twilight.
And there, amidst the howling winds: a white speck flying directly towards the brackish new sky. Twilight spread her wings and followed, and Celestia made her blow before even the first detail came to sight. A nimbus of soft yellow engulfed the white dot and expended itself in a beam upwards. It struck the impossible bulk of the thing and vanished without sound or wound.
Twilight rose, thinking to earn a closer view, but Celestia’s distant voice came loudly across the air. “Stay back, Twilight!”
“I can’t see,” Twilight called back.
“Then let your touch be your eyes.”
Out of the cool air, heat poured down onto Twilight. Like stepping suddenly into a warm room, it washed uncomfortably across her as the nimbus came again, this one white like a star. Spots danced in her vision as it shot up and exploded into the Doom’s squid-like flesh.
A crater appeared, with as little effect as those on the moon. And Twilight saw, or thought she saw, the sun flicker for just one instant to a duller orange.
Celestia’s amplified voice carried across the distance, led by a chuckle. “You didn’t even notice, did you? But you will, I think, so long as I can remember how this goes.”
Twilight’s mind puzzled for a second before she realized Celestia was not talking to her. The young princess stared – and then, darkness.
No… light. She had been gazing right at its source, and even her alicorn eyes could not handle the shock. Bulbous flesh and thick tendrils loomed as outlines in the sudden whiteness beneath the Doom. Twilight glanced down, wondering if the light killed her color. No – gilded Canterlot on its gray mountain stood beneath, though both glowed from the light.
Squinting, bracing, Twilight cast her gaze back upwards. The horizon was yet blue, and the orange sun seemed only a picture above the too-bright Earth. The Doom’s brown form was now crossed by thick black lines – shadows of its own tendrils, cast by the brilliant light above Twilight’s head.
An explosion sounded from within the white. Celestia’s next attack, but why did the glow remain? With the spell cast, the light should be gone from its source.
Not the source. Conduit. Twilight saw the shaking, gasping form of Celestia, the winking of the reddening sun, and made the connection. Celestia: teacher, mentor. Conduit. Perhaps even pawn.
A singed white feather drifted past Twilight’s eyes, and again came the heady chuckle from above. No words followed this time as Celestia’s right wing stretched towards the sun. Ribbons of white answered beneath the Doom, washing like rivers into the princess from her own dawn.
Twilight saw Celestia twist and spasm in the air as the white flowed over her. She wanted to call for Celestia to come down… but no. Useless.
Twilight’s vision blurred and her eyes stung, catching her by surprise. Not tears, but sweat. The wash of heat was now constant. Warm air billowed down on Twilight as if from a vent.
The air cooled abruptly. The rivers of white ended. Twilight saw Celestia’s horn glow with gentle yellow. A familiar color of happy times. Sleepovers, magic lessons, and hot chocolate, backlit by the blast of the discharged spell.
Had it hit Equestria, the explosion would have robbed the world of atmosphere and life. Perhaps even break it apart. A tiny fragment of the tremendous sun, cast through its chosen pony.
But which was larger: the sun, or the Doom? Hots winds thrashed wildly across the land, snatching the air from Twilight and then returning it in a rush. She looked up – merciless stars, the thing was barely wounded! A fresh and huge crater, black and smoking, and not a single thing more.
Twilight told herself to not be disappointed. If the Doom could be simply overpowered, all would have been right by dinner. But she did not listen. She growled out loud in frustration, snarling wordlessly at the tiny pock-mark five hundred miles wide.
The world had grown dim. Twilight attributed it to light-shock until it brightened abruptly like a rapid dawn. She turned eastward, and saw the sun returning from red to orange, and then – almost – to its homely yellow.
Wild laughter from above interrupted Twilight’s growls. She looked up again, and flinched. The buffeting winds had either raised her or lowered Celestia, letting greater details emerge. She could see Celestia, perhaps for the last time.
The wings were not supposed to bend like that. The horn was not supposed to make ugly grey smoke. Celestia’s laughter seemed forced through a rictus of pain.
Then she was gone. Celestia’s horn and wings glowed white. Power again flowed from the sun, heating the air and dissolving the princess within the bright halo.
The glow was hotter than the last time. Twilight coughed as desert winds passed uncomfortably into her lungs. The light was brighter and larger, too, though Twilight was braced this time. She squinted carefully along the periphery – saw the sun turn a worrying brown, and the aura double in size. But stars be damned, still not larger than the Doom!
A fit of harder coughing broke Twilight’s view, doubling her over as her throat realized its dryness. Stars, it was hot! Hotter by the second. A pegasus could not have endured this close, and as she opened her eyes, the ground below flared brighter in reflection.
She looked upwards, just in time to see the wings grow out. Six of them, made of white magic and jutting like daggers from the aura. So hot that blue rimmed their edges. They curved out and upwards, stretching long across the breathless miles to… yes, stretch around the Doom! But they looked so thin next to it...
With the center lost to sight, Twilight could only hear Celestia strike again. The shock-wave hit Twilight like a thunderclap, sending her tumbling down. She saw precious Canterlot shake precariously, though it became steady in a wide blue spell. She saw forests launched from their roots, and distant avalanches as mountain snow melted. Even Twilight’s own wings had snapped, though such things an alicorn could correct in flight.
But what of Celestia, so close to the impact? The white halo remained. Twilight could not see. She called the name to no avail.
The Doom was visible between the wings. Stars! – Did it just shudder? Or did Twilight only see the same throbs and twitches that had coursed for eons through its great bulk? The fresh wound was invisible in the white, but surely it was mammoth. Perhaps there was hope; perhaps the sun had power enough to defend its children. Though it looked so old, now – a deep and sinking orange that grew no brighter.
Celestia’s voice sounded from the white. It sang regal and loud, and it seemed to Twilight’s dizzy ears that another spoke alongside, giving masculine echo to the words.
“Are you afraid!?” Celestia and another boomed. “Can you even be afraid? That which was built is not so easily torn down!”
The echo departed, leaving Celestia alone with a fearful call. “Are you watching, Twilight? Watch me, please, but stay far!”
The aura had never dimmed, but now it grew. Doubling again in size and brightness. The blue-white wings were joined by another six, and now they were the only light! The sun was lost to view, hidden or dissolved.
Twilight covered her gaze, again caught by surprise. Too bright, and too hot.
She took a deep, shaking breath. Thought once more of gentle yellow and chocolate stains.
Twilight opened her eyes wide, and turned directly to the light’s wild center. No blue rim there, just the white hot space in which no color could survive. Yet amidst the white, a thin, hazy outline of a winged pony remained. Celestia’s legs could be seen stretched wide and away, as if affixed to some torture device. The wings of flesh did not flap, but crumpled and stretched with each heartbeat passed.
The horn was lost to white and heat, but something else flickered where it should be. The ghost of an impossible color, somehow whiter and hotter than the deathly glow around it.
Twilight’s pained eyes gave in the instant she saw. The world went dusk-like and smoky, and she tore her gaze from the white. But everything was white! White and heat, heat and white, cascaded from the princess to her land. Smoke beneath them spoke of flash fires in fields and thatched roofs. The top of the palace – so high and near to the battle – had caught ablaze.
This was the end. Twilight knew it. Whether devoured by the monstrous being or annihilated in defense, the world was ending.
Singed, burning feathers began flaking from Twilight’s wings. She flew lower, and felt the flames go out.
The heat’s roar deafened her, and the heat itself robbed her of smell and touch. There was nothing to do but look again, and so she turned to the periphery. The twelve dagger-like wings now enwrapped the creature. Still so thin, but long enough to meet on the other side. The aura webbed between them, encasing all Twilight could see of the Doom. But to what end? Celestia surely did not think to catch the monster.
The gears in Twilight’s head turned, and produced the answer. Explosions lost strength as they dissipated. To contain it, even from one direction…
Not as much sound this time, as Celestia struck. Perhaps it was lost on Twilight’s buffeted senses, or perhaps the webbed aura staved off the worst. The blast came with a crash of distant thunder as the white fell away. Green earth, blue sky.
Twilight blinked. Wondered. The final blow? So soft compared to the earlier ones.
The webbing ripped. Only in one place, but the heat, force and sound blasted Twilight to the mountain below. She shouted, trying to raise her head as it forced her to the dirt. This last blow, contained and directed, and surely the last. She had to see!
Twilight won the fight. She raised her head to the scalding air and forced her pained gaze upwards. Saw beyond Celestia’s aura, and this time she did not growl when she saw the Doom. It seemed larger than ever, spilling out above the fading webbed wings.
So fast it nearly lifted her, the force of the last attack ceased its press on Twilight. She righted herself, adopting a more comfortable position in the sloped earth. Nothing left to do but watch, and remember. Half-lidded eyes took in the scene as the great white wings crumbled, bringing the whole of the Doom into sight.
Her eyes shot wide.
The thing wasn’t larger than ever. Out there, still so huge in the airless space it was breaking up. chunks the size of planets rose up and away, crumbling from its annihilated, smoking front. Even its rear had burst outwards, detonated by the final effort, and the sides were following suit.
Twilight’s heart raced. Her breaths came rapid in the chilly – chilly? – air, and her pained eyes darted wildly across the sky. Blue, and the brackish brown of the shattered Doom. Blue, brown.
Blue, brown.
Blue, brown, white.
Sped by magic and fear, Twilight was aloft before her wings unfurled. Up to the white speck, which as she closed became a white, wingless pony plummeting to the ground.
Twilight caught Celestia as gently as she could, shivering at the touch. So cold, fresh from outer space. Missing so much – horn, wings, hair. Ugly black burns where they all should be, and smoke pouring from her eyes and mouth.
Hideous. And beautiful. Twilight held her close, spreading purple wings wide to slow the descent.
She looked as she fell, shuddering at the fate of Equestria. The Doom had been blasted to space, but three of the heavy tendrils were falling across the land and sea. She saw tidal waves loom above Manehatten, and the summit shake from Canterlot’s mountain. Forest fires had grown out of control, and now swept into the dry summer plains. But it remained cold, and a look upwards showed the sun an old, tired brown that grew no brighter.
Amidst the orange flames and blue tides, though, unnatural colors shimmered. She saw her brother’s shield around Manehatten, and his wife’s and daughter’s move through woodland villages. Luna’s blue held falling Canterlot steady while airships swarmed to its evacuation, and even the twisted green of Chrysalis pushed a dead, falling tendril from over Vanhoover.
It was not enough. Many were dying. But some would live, and that was a strange thought today.
All of it was vain without a warming sun. Yet Twilight was a scientist and magician, and her brain already turned against the question. Magic could revitalize it, perhaps. Or magic and industry could forge alternatives for heat and crops. Or, if all else failed, the right spells might lead to a new home elsewhere.
Much to plan for. It could wait. Twilight brought herself to flat earth and set Celestia down in the dirt. The grass was roasted this close to the battle, but the ground retained a comforting warmth against the growing chill.
Again, not enough. Celestia shivered, so Twilight stretched a wing and settled it over the massacred body. She leaned in close, smiling gently as the wide pink eyes stared at her, seemingly without comprehension.
Celestia spoke the first half of Twilight’s name, but the rest proved beyond her burned lips and throat. The effort collapsed to a coughing fit that Twilight quickly redressed with a spell of comfort.
Twilight nuzzled Celestia, working in another spell to ease the pain. “Shush. It is alright.”
The magic returned Celestia’s voice. It came as a whisper, beneath haunted eyes. “But will it be?”
“It will.” Twilight’s words were even softer. She knew what was happening in the cold white form that grew no warmer.
Celestia smiled. She nodded gently, and settled her head on Twilight’s leg. Twilight leaned in, embracing the prone body with wing and side. She felt the gentle nudge as they breathed in tandem, swaying each other like babes in cradles.
“Rest,” Twilight said. She kissed a blackened ear as Celestia’s eyes drifted shut. “You are loved.”
The ear flicked once in understanding. Twilight sat motionless, watching the hope and cataclysm unfold around them. She saw Canterlot fall as the last airship departed. She saw the sun grow high, and… yes, warm. Stubborn heat emanated from its midday point, warding away the hollow chill.
Twilight made to speak of it, but closed her mouth without a word. The gentle sway was ended, and Celestia had ceased to breathe.
Author's Note
"Glory, Hallelujah,
And Truth is Marching on."
