Twilight Sparkle Must Die

by B_25

Rating: teen
Tags: Tragedy, Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Spike
Length: 5667

Madness. Madness has overtaken Twilight Sparkle. The world ends when her spell is complete. Twilight has to die—and Spike has to kill her. But he can't. He loves her. So back in time he goes, learning to hate so he may complete the deed.

Madness. Madness has overtaken Twilight Sparkle. The world ends when her spell is complete. Twilight has to die—and Spike has to kill her. But he can't. He loves her. So back in time he goes, learning to hate so he may complete the deed.

Published 2018-10-14 16:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2018-10-14 16:00:01 UTC

End of World

Twilight Sparkle Must Die
B_25

Why? Why!? In all the years and all the repeats and beginnings and endings and everything between did the universe reset to this exact moment?! Her and I trapped atop this dammed tower, enslaved to a repeating history?

“Don’t do this!” I screamed up into the night sky of gray clouds and thick darkness. “The world doesn’t have to end! There’s still hope. We can still fix this. We can still—”

“Hope?” Lighting struck across the darkness in flashes of pure purple. “Dragons know nothing of hope. They are prideful. They are greedy. Tell me, what does a dragon have to hope for?”

“That you’ll snap out of this!” I cried into the storm, drawing the blade that hung over my back. “Please snap out of it, Twilight. It’s me, Spike.”

“Spike?” Light struck across the sky, though its glow softer than before. “How do you know my name, Spike?”

“Because I’m your number-one assistant!” I twirled the hilt of the blade in my claw, pointing its tip into the sky. From the steel came a golden glow. “You’re the one that hatched me, that taught me, that… loved me.”

“Loved?” Lighting flashed in endless streaks of every color imaginable, and if it weren’t for the world ending, they would have been a beauty to behold. “A princess once loved… a… dragon?”

“You did,” I said with a crack in my voice. The blade suddenly became heavy and lowered it to my side. “And I love you, Twilight, so please, please just… remember me, okay?”

“I don’t understand!” the voice roared as the world cracked in the half. Everything was ending; everything was beginning. “How could a dragon ever care for anything but itself? Tell me… tell me!

I lowered my head and clenched my teeth. “Because I love you, Twilight. That’s all. Please, remember me.”

There were no other sounds than that of the whipping winds tearing trees apart, flames and fires consuming grass and leaves below the tower, and the distant, horrible explosion of sounds so terrible that not even the countless repetitions have rendered them a description in my memory.

“I… I remember you, Spike,” a voice spoke from beyond the clouds, and at once, I could hear my best friend talking. “But… but it’s too late for me. We don’t have much time, and I’ve already lost my mind.”

“Don’t speak like that!” I screamed into the cooling storm as I held my blade tightly. “We’ll find a way out—we always do! Our love can—”

“Your love can’t stop the world from ending,” the voice of Twilight spoke with an ever-growing edge. “It can’t stop me from losing myself. But hate, hate can! Hate me, Spike, for everything leading to this moment, for everything I’ve ever done to you!”

A body descended from the sky. It was small and lavender and its horn was glowing. The sides of the body were without wings. It didn’t float but fall into the surface of the tower, rolling to before my feet. Friend. Best-friend. Family.

The body of Twilight Sparkle was at my feet.

“Listen to me closely, Spike,” the voice said from afar and not from the body of my friend. “It’s too late for me. The madness is taking me over again. But it’s not too late to save yourself. It’s not too late to save the world.”

My body felt heavy and my legs suddenly weak. “B-But how?”

“You have to kill me, Spike.” Thunder returned, and the lighting was blinding. “You have to drive that blade deep into my heart. Hate me, Spike, so you may kill me. Set this world, and myself, at peace once and for all.”

The body of Twilight Sparkle laid before me. I loved her like I loved no other because she was the one pony that was always there. She was great and kind and lost her soul to the throes of misfortune. All she had to do was be saved! Have her heart cured of darkness, her mind saved from corruption! It was a task any one of her other friends could do.

But it was always I who was stranded atop the tower.

The end of the world lingered on its edges. An ending hurling toward me. A beginning to be found inside the pierced heart of a dear friend. I gazed at her body and remembered all that I loved her for. Then, holding the hilt of my sword with both hands, I thrust the blade down, past my friend and into the stone behind her back.

“I… I can’t do it!” I fell to my knees hunched over the body, sobbing into its fur. “I love you, Twilight, I love you too much to…to...”

“Pathetic,” Twilight Sparkle said to me, and this, this was the last time she ever spoke anything to me ever again. “The world ends because of you!”

A familiar magic enveloped me as I fade into its existence.

“Hate. Hate! You must come to hate me!” The end of the world spun around the tower just as the magic began to vibrate. “Begin your life again! Hate it! Hate me! Let hate fill your veins! Everything you love about me you must come to hate!”

Everything became white.

“Hate me, Spike,” Twilight whispered. “Hate me so the world may live on without me.”

And then time reset.

“And who’s a good baby dragon?”

I laughed and giggled and clapped my tiny little claws together. “Me! Me! I'mma good dragon!”

“That you are!” Twilight levitated the spoon of chocolate ice-cream inside my mouth. “Now swallow!”

I swallowed the treat, delighting in the taste of its thickness, of sweet chocolate goodness I could never get enough of. Twilight seemed happy with my smile, so much so, she opened her mouth in a gesture.

I opened my mouth in response to show my empty maw.

“That’s a good Spikey!” Twilight rubbed my head with her hoof, eliciting a warmth in my body, in my cold-blooded veins that I could get from no other. With her horn alight, a brown leathered book floated to her side, and upon opening it, Twilight checked off some box. “Feed a baby dragon, check.”

I reached out to grab the books. My stubby arms couldn’t reach past my seat.

“This is my book!” Twilight joked as she read the next entry. Her eyes settled on me afterward. “Now then, I want you to try saying my name, okay? Twi-light sp-ar-kle.” She smiled at me. “Think you can do that?”

I did her one better.

“I loave Twight Spakle!”

The book dropped from her magic once my words entered the air. The corners of her eyes teared up, and in leaning forward to embrace me, she whispered into my ear.

“And I love you too, Spike.”

I guess I was close enough.

The curse always lurked in the background like a backseat spectator inside my own damned head. It could watch, it could speak to my subconscious, and though I was always aware of it, I could never be conscious of its existence.

Death frightened me. An endless dream; an eternity of blackness. An unknown. Everything about it was unknown. I hated death and death didn’t hate me. I had once said to Twilight: “I’d rather keep living my life over and over again than to die.”

But then Twilight looked at me funny. “But wouldn’t you get bored of it? Especially if everything you did was exactly the same. Give it enough time, and eventually, you’ll want the alternative or succumb to madness.”

“I’ll just have myself forget about the time before,” I had told her, and in being cheeky, threw my arms around one of her legs. I hugged her tightly. “Besides, I’ll never get bored if you’re always in my life.”

She looked ready to slap me until I said those words. Once I said those words, her eyes became watery and she sat down. She then pulled her other hoof around me, holding me against her soft, lavender chest, something wet landing on my green spines.

“I love you, Spike,” her voice had come from somewhere above. “You know that, right?”

I smiled and cried. “I love you too, Twilight Sparkle.”

In just a blink the years happened to skip.

Canterlot. We’re in Canterlot. It’s all fuzzy because I’m young. Very young. Baby young. Proper baby young and not child baby young—ponies get confused about that last part a lot.

“Spike!” Twilight shouted from below my ladder, causing me to look down and over my shoulder. She had her eyes narrowed and muzzle scrunched. “What are you even doing up there? The floors were supposed to be swept an hour ago!”

“Just adjusting the book collection!” I smiled down at her as I grasped the sides of the ladder, using them to slide down to the floor. “You forgot about the top shelf! Y was mixed with C!”

Twilight’s face switched from mad to sad. “They were?”

I nodded, smiling. “I was going to tell you, but you seemed kinda busy with that letter you were writing.” Panic banged against my heart, causing me to step backward. “Figured I could, y’know, do that… for you?”

“Oh, Spike.” Twilight stepped forward and lowered her muzzle. “I can just be the worst sometimes, can’t I?”

I tilted my head, more confused and concerned than I was scared. “What would make you say something like that?”

“Because I thought you were goofing off!” Twilight’s gaze dropped to the floor. “I was going to give you a lecture on being responsible and to help out more. And here you are, being… you!”

I frowned. I never liked it when Twilight was sad. So I stepped forward, and on my tippy toes, wrapped my arms around her neck. “It’s okay, Twilight. I understand. You’re just stressed because Princess Celestia is paying us a visit.”

“Thank you, Spike.” Twilight put her hoof over me again, except this time, I was big enough to hug her back. “But I really shouldn’t assume things even when I’m stressed out. It’s unfair to you.”

“I don’t mind,” I replied. “But…”

“But what?”

I pushed myself deeper into her softness, letting fur fill my vision. “It’s just… when you get mad at me…”

Twilight, instead of pushing me back, held me close to her body, not needing to see my face to understand what I felt. We shared a connection beyond the physical, and at that very moment, we were one and the same. “What is it, Spike? You know you can say anything to me.”

I don’t know how I had managed it, but in the tiniest, broken squeak, I said: “D-Do you… still, love me?”

Twilight heard me clearly because she held me tightly. She peppered my head with kisses and rubbed up and down my back with her soft, soft hooves. It was better than a bed, and no blanket could bring this kind of warmth. Love. I was loved.

“I will always love you, Spike.” Twilight’s voice was above me again, but still warm and still soft, loving of the one she held against her chest, close to her heart. “No matter what happens between us, no matter how angry or mad I get, I never stop loving you—not even for a second.”

I nuzzled her chest. “Not even a second?”

She laid her muzzle atop my spine, kissing my scales. “Not even for a millisecond.”

I wished there was something I could say, something I could do, something or other that was within my control. But I was a helpless witness. I watched and listened, experiencing and enjoying all the delights that were Twilight Sparkle.

You’d think my life would be boring after the hundredth time. I could recite any line from any time. No mysteries remained. My life played the same time as the last, always repeating, never changing. After a while, I was worried about my life losing meaning.

I loved Twilight Sparkle. I could tell you the exact moments that I fell in love with her because I experienced them over and over.

Fears coursed through my mind. Would I stop loving Twilight if I kept repeating my life? Would the genuine seem fake if repeated an endless amount of times? Would I notice things differently a second or four-hundredth time that would change how I viewed a scene?

I stopped focusing on my thoughts and returned to the sights of my life. Day. It was a cold day. Outside and inside of me. A frozen pond laid before me. I was sitting just before the ice, shivering and in the snow.

I was very sad.

“Spike?”

I was even sadder that Twilight had found me.

“What are you doing here by yourself?”

I huddled closer into myself. “Go away.”

“Spike…” I couldn’t hear much from beyond my body. There was wind, the crunching of snow, and something heavy settling down next to me. “Don’t be like this. The girls are worried about you. I’m worried about—”

“I hate them!” I shouted and cried without meaning, without wanting the truth to have ever left me. “The girls! They’re all so nice and yet, and yet they’re taking you away?”

“And just what do you mean by that?”

There was anger in her voice. It was tamed by will, but I heard it there, anger for me. I had said something wrong. I had felt something wrong. Twilight was angry about something about me. Twilight was angry with me!

“I-I didn’t mean it!” I replied in a hushed whisper. “Just leave me alone. I’ll come home later. We don’t have to talk about this.”

“You’re right.” The words were direct and stabbed past my scales. “We don’t have to talk about this.”

Snow crunched as something rose. She was leaving. Twilight was leaving. I said for her to leave and she was going to leave me. That’s not what I wanted. I never wanted her to leave me. I didn’t want to be alone. Why did I tell her to go away?

But she didn’t go away. Twilight came around me, laying down around my body, between her legs, and against her stomach. It was like she was guarding me against the cold, from the wind, from the outside world. She was with me and not at the same time.

And she kept silent. She didn’t say anything but warm me with her love. Love. Twilight was angry with me yet still very much loved me. How was this possible? How could somepony be angry and yet loved that which they were angry with?

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I know.”

“I didn’t mean it,” I also said.

“I know.”

The wind blew.

“Will you tell me what you meant?”

Hyperventilate. I was hyperventilating. The breeze cooled my burning lungs. I stuck my head against her chest, snuggling up to the warmth. “I just miss you, Twilight.”

“Miss me?” I could feel Twilight raise her head. She must have been looking down at the purple mess of scales huddled against her body. “But I haven’t left you, Spike. We wake up in the same room every morning.”

“But… it’s not the same!” I cried and whined. “We’re together until we finish breakfast, then you go and hang out with your new friends.” I whimpered into her coat. “They’re going to take you away from me! I don't want that! Don’t leave me, Twilight!”

“Shhhhh.” Something soft wrapped around the back of my head. “You don’t have to cry. You’re not going to lose me. I love you.”

She kept stroking me and I kept crying.

“I just happened to make some new friends in my life, Spike,” Twilight said, almost whispering into my ear. “And I’ve just… never had pony friends in my life before. I’m really excited to have them, Spike. And I’m sorry if I made you feel left out.”

My crying slowed and my whimpering began.

“This is a new chapter for both of us, Spike.” Twilight finally pulled away this time, letting me face her in this time at need. I was exposed and vulnerable, a breeze chilling me. “And I can’t promise to always be there for you, only that my friends are your friends as well.”

Twilight lowered her muzzle until our snouts were touching. “But you’re my first friend, Spike, and my best-friend at that.” She pulled an inch back all so she could kiss my cheek. “And never forget that I love you, Spike.”

Although I was cold, I somehow smiled. “I love you too, Twilight.”

The past never changed.

It kept happening and kept being real. Those moments always evoked the same feelings and thoughts. I tried to hate them. I tried to hate this curse. Over and over my life kept happening without change.

This was the alternative to death.

I wasn’t sure which one to call a curse.

But I suppose this was the better option. Life went on. I could still live and think. And life didn’t have to be like this. Redemption still existed. Redemption, the kind to end this curse, was found in hate.

Hate. Hate! How I hated the word hate! For so long I’ve felt it with every fiber of my now non-existent being. I hated being trapped inside myself. I hated having to endure this life forever. But I hated something more. I hated something more than I hated hatred itself.

I hated how much I loved Twilight Sparkle.

I could hate her, too! Oh, how I hated how she left me sometimes. I hated her broken promises. I hated it when she spent more time with her friends than she spent with me. Twilight Sparkle could summon the vilest hatred out of me, but no matter how much she or I tried, I could never, ever hate her. Not then. Not now. Not the next life and the repeat of that.

“Sugarcube?” I’d kicked the tree, and I’d kick it again, my hate fueling my work. “Ya okay?”

I returned my foot to the dirt and turned around. Applejack stood at my waist, looking up past the rim of her hat, smiling but eyes stern.

“I’m alright,” I replied as I walked passed her. “Just blowing off some steam.”

I went to kick the next tree, but couldn't. Applejack stood in front of it, staring me down. “And Y'all ‘bout to blow some trees off their roots with them kicks of yours!” She gestured a hoof downward. “Just take a step back and take a deep breath. Think ya can do that fer me?”

It’s a bad idea to say no to your boss. So I step back, breathe deeply, exhale sharply, and feel a strange calm fill out from within my body. I do this a few more times. The lighting that controlled my limbs seemed to have faded.

“Feeling better?”

I opened my eyes. “Much.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be.” Applejack looked up to the hill we stood next to, pointing a hoof at a stack of hay at its top. “Fancy a break? Won’t dock it from yer real one.”

A therapy, in which, I made the profit? “Deal.”

So we climbed the hill in silence, made it to the hay in silence, and sat down on the hay with me blathering about my feelings. “I’m worried about Twilight?”

“Whoa, Nelly.” Applejack took off her hat and held it against her chest. “Now what kind of worried are we talking about here? Do we need to rally the girls?”

“Nah.” I shook my head. “Nothing like that.”

“Thank Celestia fer that.” She put her hat back on and then quickly blinked. “No offense, of course.”

“None taken.” I sighed and clasped my claws, letting my head fall just over them. “It’s just… she’s been different lately. Obsessed with something.”

Applejack rolled her eyes. “When ain’t Twilight obsessed with something?”

“It’s not like that,” I replied. “This isn’t like any time I’ve seen before. She’s just not sleeping over her study-desk anymore—she has her study locked and sometimes refuses to come out!”

“Now ain’t that somethin’.” I turned my head to see Applejack raise a hoof, resting her chin on it. “You got any clue to what has her mind so wound up?”

“Just some spell!” My head rose at my exclamation. “Something from some meaningless past. The spell doesn’t even do anything special!” I huffed and shook my head. “You think with only a few days left, that I, that we… we would…”

Something soft laid itself on my shoulder. Looking over, Applejack smiled at me. “Yer going to miss her, aren’t you?”

The corners of my eyes burned. “I don’t want to leave her.”

“Becoming a Royal Guard ain’t no special feat, Spike.” Applejack rubbed my arm, something drawing a circle or two. “It takes effort and dedication. It’s a heavy duty ya got on your shoulders, and all of us are counting on you to play your part—Twilight included.”

“Oh yeah?” I turned my head and looked away. “Why has she been avoiding me for some spell then?”

I felt her hoof leave my arm.

“Goodbyes are never easy, sugarcube,” Applejack said to me. “Especially when ya hate them as Twilight does.”

I never saw Twilight much after that. We shared a stunted goodbye at her door, which never opened, and would never open again. I became a guard. The first dragon to fight and defend alongside ponies. I felt useful; I felt lonely.

Twilight wrote to me. In the dim barracks and surrounding by my sleeping brothers, I read her letters under a candle, smiling at her writing. I loved it when she wrote to me; I hated how I didn’t write her letters anymore.

We didn’t talk about much. We always started with how much we missed each other, and then, after filling her into the life of a dragon guard, she would tell me how much closer she was to cracking that spell—and how much weight she lost.

We’d end our letters in love. I loved her; she loved me. A world separated us, but our words still reached each other. We couldn’t hug in words, but even still, her love, her warmth still reached me.

But things started to change when the letters stopped. I inquired and found no answer. The girls wouldn’t even write back no matter how many letters I spend. Days were covered in clouds and the sun was hard to see.

So one day, after having almost lost my mind, I had gone to go and see Princess Celestia. She too was worried. She said I was free to leave. So I took the first train to Ponyville only to find none were available.

So I walked, and then I ran, and then I flew.

I’d grown wings.

Twilight wasn’t there for that.

So I flew over the city. So I flew over the landscape of grass. So I flew over the forest where a zebra once live. So I flew over the gaping hole that’d once been a city. At the sight, at the past removed, I fell from the sky, unable to right myself.

I slammed into the dirt before the hole. I was weak. My body hurt. There was a storm above my head. Everything blurred once my eyes opened. It took a few seconds for my body to work again, and when it did, I stumbled onto my feet, falling back a few steps.

My home, gone. My friends, gone. Twilight Sparkle, gone.

I cried and I cried. I rubbed my eyes only for there to be more tears. I kept rubbing and rubbing and there wasn’t much point but I kept doing it anyway. I stood and did not know why. I wanted to fall to my knees and curse aloud but then I found her.

Twilight Sparkle floated. Above the hole and in the epicenter of a transcendent purple sphere. She was blurry. Her horn was glowy. Eyes closed but body bright. Then her eyes opened and I had to look somewhere else.

From beneath the hole that was once a hole something rumbled from the depths of the underworld. It was large and narrow and rising toward me. The ground shook and I lost my balance, falling into the hole—and against the top of the tower.

I laid on my back as everything rose into the air. The ground I was on sunk below and the sky above became near. Looking over to my right and over the edge of the tower, I saw the sphere containing Twilight raise into the black sky.

I blinked from inside myself. This life went by much faster than the last.

How could that be?

I was becoming focused on myself. I was losing sight of what was once my life. It passed in only a few scenes rather than a full sequence of events. I was losing time. I was losing myself. I was forgetting things.

And as the ending began again, I realized something horrible.

Soon I would live my life over and over, and in those times, I would forget to live.

This time. This final encounter. This had to be the last fight. I couldn’t risk another repeat, not when I would lose myself, not when this curse could win! I had to hate, hate! I had to hate Twilight Sparkle!

“Kill me, Spike,” Twilight Sparkle said to me, “so that this world, and myself, can be free once and for all.”

I couldn’t do it. Looking down at the soft body of my best friend, I knew that I couldn’t drive the blade into her beating heart. Even though this was the last chance I had at freedom, at saving the world and my friends, that I was too much of a coward of love to earn the courage of hatred.

But I didn’t thrust the blade downward. No. Not this time. I loved Twilight Sparkle. She made my life worth living. I’d gladly give it up for her if I could.

And I would.

Hate broke the curse. So I held my hilt high into the air, using the length to point its tip at my chest, closing my eyes.

“Spike?” the voice of my best friend spoke to me, the first new thing in the hundred and ten repeats. “What are you—no!”

I drove the blade into my chest, piercing through scales, meat, and bones. It cut my heart. Everything hurt. I was suddenly light. Falling forward, more of the blade cut into me, killing me, my body held up by my hilt.

Everything began to fade. I was in pain. Below me was the body of Twilight Sparkle. It rained around me. Twilight didn’t get wet. My body blocked the water. She didn’t get wet. My blood trickled on her coat.

And then I died.

White.

Everything was white. I couldn’t move, but I could see. I tried to speak only to find that I had no mouth. I was alive. Or I was alive in my death. White. White. White!

“Welcome,” a voice said next to me. “Please do not be frightened. You are dead.”

A figure manifested before me.

“Princess Celestia?” I said, blinking. I brought my claws to my lips to find that I had a mouth, and in the next second, realized that claws are a part of arms and arms connect to a torso and that I had a body again! “What are you—”

“We are not your princess,” Celestia said to me. “You are in the realm above that observe life. We are what you needed to see most.”

“I… see.” I floated on nothing. Funny. I’d always wanted to go to space. “What’s that down there?”

Celestia looked down at where my claw was pointing. It was a blue sphere that kept rotating. “That is where life roams free.” She looked at me. “That is where you are from.”

I let my finger drop. “Oh.”

We said and did nothing.

“Is it… is it okay?”

Celestia stared at me.

“Life I mean,” I continued. “Did it… go on without me?”

“That is why we have brought you here.” Princess Celestia ignited her horn in a golden glow, expanding the small sphere until it filled out the nothingness. Our bodies were transparent in a physical street of Canterlot. “To show what has come of your sacrifice.”

I looked around from the street corner. Ponies walked the sidewalks and carts barreled through the streets. Some ponies talked to each other and some ponies sat alone. There was no storm but the sun was out. “The spell… didn’t work?”

“The spell never existed,” Princess Celestia said to me, coming to stand by my side. “Much like you.”

I turned to face her. “What did you say?”

Princess Celestia only smiled. “Look behind you.”

I did and wanted to cry.

“Girls!” Twilight Sparkle said not to me, coming up the street and to the corner I was on. Wind prodded from her sides with a horn inactive. “I’m here! Over here!”

I looked over my shoulder to see five friends. They were chatting amongst themselves, each of their ears perking, and finally, they saw her, my best friend. They waved and smiled as the group moved toward her.

“B-But how?!” I said, laughing. “She looks happy! Twilight Sparkle’s alive and looking happy!”

“Because you never existed.”

My laughter stopped, and my eyes blinked. “What now?”

“This is all your doing, Spike.” Princess Celestia nudged her muzzle in the direction of the friends all now hugging one-another. “This world is very much the same from which you left, but since you died before the world reset, there was no baby dragon to return to.”

I blinked, looking back to my friend… to Twilight’s friends. “You mean… I never existed in this world. Like, at all?”

Princess Celestia shook her head. “You were never born at all, and because of that, the end of the world never occurred. The one known as Twilight Sparkle never lost her mind to madness.”

“But… why?”

“Because you were not here.”

I took a step back from the princess. “No… no!”

I raised a claw to repress the beatings of my heart only to feel nothing. No beat. No thump. No anything. I felt at my chest only to feel scales and a big hole where my heart was supposed to be.

“Something about your existence drove Twilight Sparkle to madness,” Princess Celestia said to me. I covered my chest with a claw. “Something about you, or something that you did caused it. Something said or something done. Even we do not know the reason.”

I shook my head and kept clutching at my chest. “So… so… I.. I-I d-d-drove Twilight c-c-crazy?”

“Something about you did,” Princess Celestia replied. “You may have offered her a book at the wrong time, or said something that created an idea. The reason and origin for her madness are unknown and will forever be that way.” She stepped before me. “But let there be no mistake. You caused her madness.”

I looked back over my shoulder and at the group of friends. All happy, all hugging, all without me. The world went on unaware of my once existence. Ponies walked through me. I had no matter and mattered to no one no more.

“Twilight…” I started to say as my voice was weak, “... she’ll be okay though, right?” I turned to face the deity. “And the world too?”

“Everything is as it should be,” Princess Celestia said to me. “The return to harmony was at the cost of the life. You chose your own. The world, instead of you, has finally reset.”

“And what will happen to me?”

“Your fate is yet to be finished.” Princess Celestia laid a hoof on my chest—it was not warm, not cold. In fact, I felt nothing. “Those who oversee the world are not done with your existence. You will return to life.” Her hoof phased through my scales and into my hole. “And you will return without a heart. That you lost and cannot gain back.”

I shook my head and stepped back, leaving her grasp. “Does that mean ponies will see me again?”

“They will.” Princess Celestia also stepped back. Her body began to fade, and mine began to become real. “Once more you will be a dragon of the world. Live as you wish.”

The smooth pavement of the sidewalk greeted my feet as I could feel myself entering the world. Princess Celestia was nowhere to be seen, but I could still hear her from above. “Live with but one curse in this world—do not contact Twilight Sparkle.”

And that was that. At once ponies were bumping into me, either apologizing or cursing me, something which I ignored in any case. The first thing I did was feel my chest, a scar covering it, and if I pressed a claw against my pec, I did not feel my own heartbeat.

I sighed and let my claw drop. I walked forward, merging with the crowd, moving slow, going nowhere. I risked only once glance, one peek over my shoulder, catching sight of the five friends.

And at the center of them all, surrounded by warmth and love, was Twilight Sparkle. She was smiling. Without me, she lived her life, met the same friends, and became the Princess she was fated to be. In the grand scope of things, I was nothing to her, and they, them, they were her everything.

And even with this revelation and curse, there was only one thing I still felt.

I felt hatred.

I felt hatred for how much I still loved Twilight Sparkle.