The carriage interior felt crushingly tiny.
Twilight likened it to sitting inside a soup can, cold, claustrophobic and smelling faintly of mushy vegetables. Aside from a few Cloudsdalian flairs, the walls were blank, sterile metal, devoid of personality, and far, far too close. There were times when her exceptional brainpower made things difficult; it was very hard to get it to stop thinking. And right now, there was very little that Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship, wanted to think about.
She had long ago run out of the logic puzzles and mental exercises that she usually tried to distract herself with. Twilight counted the walls’ every rivet (eighty two) and scratch (one hundred and three) for the thousandth time. Anything that would keep her mind away from her purpose. And away from the vehicle’s only other occupant.
Naturally, this centred all of her thoughts on the pony in question. Brains, indeed, are wonderfully irresponsible monsters.
Twilight’s gaze skirted the floor, climbed up the leg of the bench, and crashed into fur and feathers the colour of the midday sky.
Rainbow Dash, curse her loyalty, sat to Twilight's left, her unblinking stare locked onto the lone, circular window as the pegasus watched the wispy clouds soar by.
Twilight ached for conversation. The silence, disturbed only by the soft magical purr of the engine’s cloaking matrix, crushed down on her like a suffocating mountain of marshmallows. Yet she couldn’t think of what to say to break it. What could she say to a doomed mare that wouldn't be highly inappropriate? For the past four hours every word she had developed to cut the tension was analysed and shot down before any could pass her lips.
They continued to sit in silence, not even three hoof-lengths between them. But the distance felt like miles.
The carriage’s side door slammed open. Freezing winds wailed into the compartment, chilling their bodies. Through the disorienting lens of the carriage’s invisibility spell, she could look down at the world below them. Gray-orange wasteland sprawled in all directions, nothing but dust and stone. Though a badlands to ponykind, they were a breeding ground for all sorts of festering, carnivorous predators. Today they thronged under the sun, the earth teeming with masses of creatures. They could be seen quite clearly by the naked eye, despite the vast altitude. Hordes upon hordes of chittering bodies swarmed across the land in the opposite direction from where Twilight and Rainbow were travelling. Twilight suppressed a shudder. She knew the changelings’ destination.
Equestria.
Home.
The word struck deep into her most vulnerable places. Thoughts spewed unerringly through her tired mind, calling up base facts and moral arguments, trying to convince her to call off the entire endeavour. Then there would be no need for further sacrifice. No more fresh pain. No more atrocities. No more guilt.
She fought them all down, locking them within a prison of logic. Twilight’s mind was keener than even her brother’s razor-sharp blade. A blade which now lay within a pale, birch coffin.
The image hardened her heart. There would be no more debate. No more planning. No more screaming confessions and no more doubt. It all boiled down to two choices.
It was either their home, or ours.
The carriage door slammed shut, ripping Twilight from her internal reverie. To her exhausted brain, there were still only two ponies she could see. But of course, as always when changelings were concerned, things were not as they seemed.
“How…?” Twilight croaked. The lack of speech over the last few hours had left her throat parched. She swallowed and tried again. “How is it?”
There was a click of a button, and the pegasus’ cloaking device shimmered and destabilised.
“It’s… just like the predictions.” Pulling his dusty goggles over his blue striped mane, Soarin wiped the dirt from his face. Turning to Twilight, the leader of the Wonderbolts gave his report. "There’s so many of them. Changelings are just… pouring out of the main hive. All air defences have been moved to the front line. They're relying on their numbers to repel any kind of counter strike."
Twilight nodded. She ought to be relieved, but the sickening feeling inside her only grew. Perhaps a part of her wished that the changelings had devised some sort of protection that would render their operation moot. Then they could all forget about this awful plan, go back home and have a Pinkie party.
That word again. Home. Twilight smiled weakly at Soarin. "Good job."
Soarin saluted, then turned to Rainbow. The two pegasi stared at each other. Soarin’s mouth hung open, as if he were trying and failing to find something to say. Twilight knew that feeling, she'd been going through it for hours. Perhaps noticing the stallion’s hesitation, Rainbow stood and placed a hoof on Soarin’s shoulder. Despite everything, she was grinning.
“You keep an eye on Scootaloo, okay? That kid’s Wonderbolt material for sure!”
Soarin blinked in surprise, then smiled. “Anything for you, Dash.”
He half-turned to leave, hesitated, then pulled Rainbow into a rough hug.
“…Say ‘Hi’ to Spitfire for me, alright?”
They parted, gave each other passionate salutes, and then Soarin vanished into techno-ensorceled obscurity. Twilight barely registered the door opening and closing on its own.
The silence remained. But the encounter with Soarin had kick started the formation of a thought. A question that began to froth and burble past Twilight's societal standards.
How did Rainbow keep smiling?
Twilight took a deep breath. At long last, she was finally prepared to shatter that persistent silence.
"Five minutes to target." The pilot broke it first, stunning Twilight speechless once more, emotion welling up in her throat.
Five. Minutes. The notion sounded like a death knell in her mind. It was an unthinkably tiny amount of time.
Five minutes was all the time she would ever have left with her friend. "Rainbow..."
"Hey." A strong hoof clasped her fetlock. Twilight looked up into those proud, violet eyes. "Don't you go getting soft on me now, Twilight." Amazingly, Rainbow Dash smirked. "This is going to be the single most awesome thing I ever do!"
Twilight choked. How had it ever come to this? How could she be sending this wonderful, selfless, beautiful mare to her doom? Her friend! Her cherished, beloved friend! Rainbow Dash, who would give up everything for the sake of those she cared for, had volunteered for oblivion.
"Rainbow... There's still time..." The words tumbling from her mouth were empty and useless. Both of them knew it. This moment had been decided long ago.
"If you flake out on me now, Twilight, I'm so going to kick your flank!" Rainbow's boisterous bravado couldn't completely suppress the undercurrent of terror in her voice, but she fought against it with hoof and claw. "Now come on over here and turn this thing on!"
Twilight managed to tear her eyes away from memorising Rainbow's face to focus on her harness. The machine that Twilight had worked with Rarity to design, requiring just as much magical infusement as it did tailoring genius, fitted tightly to Rainbow’s barrel. It had a black metal casing covered in a colourful assortment of dull gemstones. Their resemblance to Hearth's Warming lights had clashed terribly with Rarity's aesthetic sensitivities, but Twilight was adamant about functionality. Two funnels, one attached to the base of Rainbow's dock and the other to her skull, hid her prismatic mane and tail from view.
Necessity had been the driving force of its creation. Now Twilight could barely bring herself to look at the thing. What she had created was a terrible monstrosity of arcane engineering. Fanciful theoreticians had for millennia considered the peak of weaponised magic to be of apocalyptic proportions. Yet now Twilight was about to witness it first hoof. The consequences of her actions would live on for centuries, and her name would be both revered and reviled.
The guilt began to set in once more.
"Four minutes."
Twilight got to work, activating each gemstone in the correct sequence with a touch of her horn. If it hadn't been for such a devastating purpose, Twilight might have been proud of her accomplishment. Indeed, any mage would have lauded her work. The funnels were designed to catch the raw magical output of Rainbow's tail and mane during her incredibly powerful sonic rainbooms. The device would then bounce that magical energy between the gemstones, relaying and multiplying the arcane force. At the climax of the rainboom, the amplified magic would be released. It would be a spectacular rainboom. The largest in all recorded history.
It would also completely vaporise Rainbow and her surroundings for several kilometres.
"Three minutes."
Finished, Twilight stepped back. Rainbow's harness hummed with the gemstones' harmonising frequencies. The sight of her friend, as full of vigor and life as on the day they met, conjoined with a machine that could only create misery and death… Twilight felt bile in her throat. Good thing she had barely eaten in the last few weeks or she would have decorated the carriage in breakfast.
"R-Rainbow..."
"Don't." Rainbow's voice broke, but she maintained her bravado. "Don’t even think about it." She gave Twilight a strong hug, then stood back. "There's no stopping those things. Not with words. Not with treaties. Not with swords. Too many have paid the price for finding that out."
They both looked to their hooves. They both thought of Applejack.
Twilight tried to keep from completely breaking down from her own faults, instead focusing on their other friends. Rarity would have utterly abandoned her dressmaking career after her part in making Twilight's device if Rainbow hadn't adamantly convinced her to swear otherwise. Fluttershy had confined herself to her cottage, promising to speak to nopony, especially Twilight, for as long as she lived. She might have, if Rainbow hadn't spent her last night with her childhood friend, comforting her and promising a better future. Pinkie was a bundle of positive energy as always, but she was never very good at hiding her genuine feelings. It was easy to tell when her mirth was forced. Her 'Until Next Time, Rainbow Dash' party had involved the entirety of Ponyville, and Rainbow hadn't tainted it with thoughts of her impending destruction, but used it to celebrate her life’s accomplishments.
And Applejack... Perhaps Applejack was the reason that Rainbow had volunteered. The one time she had failed her friends, unable to save her despite fighting side-by-side as they met the endless waves of invaders in combat. All that had been salvaged was Applejacks' hat, her body eviscerated by the voracious creatures.
Twilight thought of Applebloom, the hat's current owner. The stoic little filly had gotten her crying over with and now went to work in a hat slightly too large, abandoning her pink bow for hair ties.
"Two minutes."
Twilight could feel the moisture in her eyes. It was all she could do to not burst into tears and huddle in the corner. The world as she knew it was broken. And this was only going to shatter it further. Whatever hope she had left fled, and her mind began to turn to dark thoughts.
Rainbow stomped her hoof. “Hey Twilight?”
Twilight looked up.
“What kind of pants do storm clouds wear?”
Twilight blinked, dumbfounded. “...What?”
Rainbow’s face was darkly serious, her voice deadpan. “Thunderwear.”
The two mares stood staring at each other for some time. Twilight's overworked trains of thought all came crashing to a halt, tripped by this unexpected absurdity.
For the first time in what felt like an eternity Twilight smiled, hoofing her own face and giggling. “Rainbow, that is the dumbest joke I've ever heard.”
Despite all the fear and loss and misery and guilt… It all went way for one cherished moment, like sunlight peeking through a gap in the clouds.
"One minute to target…”
Rainbow’s face faltered. She moved to the door and opened it, the cold wind ruffling her wings. When she turned back, Rainbow wore the same confident smirk Twilight remembered from the very first day they met. The day they’d stood side by side and faced down Nightmare Moon. That look that promised the impossible. That no matter the challenge, she would meet it head on. This was a pony for whom the words ‘backing down’ were as much incomprehensible ink in a dictionary.
“I bet I'll be breaking my own records for this one.”
Twilight nodded and tried to quip back, but her tongue was suddenly dry.
“Ten seconds.”
Their eyes locked. Twilight couldn't bring herself to say goodbye, to give Rainbow the send off she deserved. There was still a part of her that desperately clung to a tiny fragment of hope. Some miracle. Anything.
“Target reached.”
Rainbow opened her mouth. Twilight leaned forward, desperate for Rainbow to quit, to give up and discard the terrible device. But it never came. Rainbow turned away from the last pony she would ever see, and leapt out the door.
And that was it. Another friend gone.
Twilight closed the door with her magic, unable to move from where she stood. The carriage lurched as it turned, speeding up to escape the area. The movement jolted her off her hooves and she tumbled into the corner. There she laid, counting out the seconds she’d spent months calculating, until that final gruesome cue.
Even though Twilight shut her eyes and the last wellspring of tears finally squeezed their way out, she was still blinded by prismatic light as the carriage drowned in deafness. Her little soup-can world rocked and rattled from the shockwave of an indescribably violent, yet undoubtedly awesome, explosion.
