For now we see through a glass darkly...
Sparklefly stared up at the vast expanse of blue that stretched boundlessly above, the blinding luminance of the sun making for a picturesque moment. Her one good eye moved to follow a glowing red ember that climbed higher and higher, making an arc through rising clouds of smoke that were infringing on what otherwise would have been a beautiful day. She dropped the flare gun she had been holding.
The sound of magical explosions, warrior’s cries, and the lamentations of sorrow and dying echoed across the heights west of Apple Loosa. The stench of charred metal and blood filled Sparklefly’s nostrils, some of it her own. The devastating injuries that had been inflicted upon her mere moments before were nothing short of catastrophic, and she well knew it. She just had to get somepony’s attention, to let them know that the command center had been wiped out. Someone needed to take charge and lead the army.
The mortally wounded pegasus examined herself again. Her abdomen had effectively been shredded by hot bolts of changeling magic. Her only recourse had been to pack dirt into her belly to slow the bleeding, but with seven distinct exit wounds that she could see, at least one of which had severed her spine, there was nothing to be done. She would be dead soon, joining everypony else that had been around her, dozens that had been mangled beyond recognition in the surprise attack.
Concerned that her time might run out, Sparklefly dug in her combat harness for paper and a pencil. Her eye seemed unable to focus on the task at hoof initially. She tried scribbling down some instructions anyway, but ended up only smearing blood across the page. In frustration, she threw down the soiled instruments.
While she had no sensation below her upper torso at all, her head felt incredibly stifled in her helmet. As her time grew short, it seemed to serve no purpose to continue in any more discomfort than she must, and she fiddled with the strap to remove it. Using the piece of armor as a makeshift pillow, she propped her head up and waited.
‘Somepony will come,’ she thought to herself. ‘Just keep breathing. Save what strength you have left.’
Her heart beat heavily, seeming to work all the harder to keep life flowing even as it was ebbing away. Her eyes darkened, sleep threatening to take her. She shuddered slightly, not willing to give in for fear she would not wake again. Despair loomed within, ready to overwhelm rational thought at the futility of it all.
A sound caught Sparklefly’s ears. Somepony was moving about nearby. She strained her eye, trying to see, but everything was out of focus. She took a deep, ragged breath and tried again. Her vision cleared somewhat, and she saw an orange pegasus surveying the destruction. Sparklefly knew her, but was having trouble recalling her name. What was it? She watched for a long moment before it came back to her.
“Scoo-“ was all she got out before a fit of coughing lit her lungs aflame.
Her vision blurred, but she could make out that her friend had seen her. Even so diminished, she could read the look of horror on Scootaloo’s face. The orange pegasus rushed forward and dropped to the ground, skidding to a stop near the prone mare.
“Medic,” Scootaloo rasped. “I need to call a medic.”
Shaking her head, Sparklefly replied, “It’s too-“ she coughed. Blood sprayed from her mouth. “It’s too late. I’m sorry. I should have stayed on leave.”
“It’s not your fault,” Scootaloo answered, her lips quivering as if to form more words that didn’t come.
It made Sparklefly all the more sad to see her friend hurting. She wished there were something she could say or do to help, but it would have been in vain. Time was running out, and she needed to say a few things while she was able. Scootaloo slid herself under Sparklefly, pushing the helmet aside and using her own lap as a pillow. It was quite an improvement. The dying mare took a breath.
“Brax is dead,” she mustered what reserves of strength she had to get the words out. “I don’t know if Pacer made it out or not.”
“He did,” the orange pegasus assured her, “He is rallying the center.”
“Good... that’s good...” Sparklefly felt some relief.
At least the enemy hadn’t taken them so off guard that they would be able to slaughter them all as lambs. They were still in the fight.
“Scootaloo,” she continued, “you need to take command. Get the Assault Corps out of here...”
Sparkelfly’s heart grew heavy again as her vision dimmed once more. The things that she would be missing, the opportunities that had been ahead, the lives that she’d have been able to touch. Such things would all be lost.
“I wanted to see it through, to see the end... of the war. I wanted to rebuild Sweet Apple Acres with your friends,” a tear escaped Sparklefly’s good eye, washing away grit and running down her face. “It was a trap. I fell for it...” she cursed herself under her breath for being so naive, “they fooled me.”
Scootaloo jumped to her friend’s defense, “There was no way you could have known.”
Sparklefly would have smiled at that, had she the strength, “Don’t wait for the rest of the pegasi to return. Save everypony you can. This place is death.”
Breathing had become quite a struggle. It began to feel as though lead weights were on Sparklefly’s chest, pressing it down. She felt so heavy, as though she were a mountain and would merge into the very land beneath her. Letting the air out was almost a relief. Her thoughts wandered to her brother, and her medic friend... her special somepony. The memory of how they met, the medic watching over her brother while he’d been deathly ill and later their first kiss, all flooded sweetly through her mind. A second wave of sorrow filled her.
“Watch after my brother and the medic... Medic... I never even knew his name.”
“Beigh,” Scootaloo’s throat caught on the word, “his name is Beigh.”
“Beigh,” Sparklefly said as fresh tears filled her eyes, “Get him and Duster out of this place.”
“I will,” Scootaloo spoke with an imperative confidence unlike any Sparklefly had heard before. “I will keep them like they were my own brothers.”
“Brothers...” Sparklefly heard the word leave her. “Always causing trouble.”
Her vision became hazy again, and the next thing she saw was her mother scolding both herself and her siblings. Somepony had run, covered in mud, through the clothes line where all of the clean towels had been hanging. They were spattered and splashed with mud all over.
“I didn’t do it...”
“What?” her momma mare asked expectantly. “Didn’t do what?”
“I didn’t do it, Momma Mare,” she pleaded to be believed, the words coming far slower than they should. “Don’t be angry.”
Her mother pulled her in for a hug and squeezed her tightly, “I’m not angry. I know it wasn’t you.”
Relief flooded the younger pegasus, “Thanks, Momma Mare.”
Sparklefly laid there in her mother’s comforting embrace as the older mare stroked her mane. She sang a soft song to her daughter. Sparklefly saw her father, smiling after a hard day pushing clouds to irrigate the orchard outside Apple Loosa. She saw her brothers and sisters running alongside her as they danced around the edge of the plateau just near town.
It didn’t feel quite right. Sparklefly struggled to awaken. She felt as a mare who was near drowning. She had touched the bottom for the last time. She would not rise to consciousness with her own strength again. She remembered… she was in the command center, and her friend was there. What was the command for their retreat strategy?
“Scootaloo...” she forced the words out. Everything was so heavy, “One last order,” even to her own ears, her voice was hardly a whisper. “Broken arrow...” she took a breath, unable to know if she’d been heard, “broken arrow...”
“Broken arrow,” Scootaloo confirmed.
Sparklefly felt herself sigh in relief. She was finished. There was nothing else she could do. Her strength was exhausted, but the message had been delivered. The war, the army, none of it was any longer her concern. Scootaloo could handle the rest. They would be okay. She stopped fighting, just allowing herself to rest as her final stores of vitality became depleted.
She slumped, and the air felt cold like ice around her as she drifted off. It was funny that it seemed not unlike sleeping.
A feeling somewhat like awakening was the next sensation.
‘Am I dead now?’ Sparklefly thought to herself. ‘No, that’s silly. If you were dead, you couldn’t be thinking about it.’
Sparklefly wondered how long it would take for everything to end. She felt so impossibly heavy, unable to move, just a great weight lying down. All perception of the outside world was gone. A tingling, almost like a fire burned through the mare from one end of her being to the other. It wasn’t exactly painful, perhaps being most likened to stepping into a hot shower on a cold day.
Sparklefly felt her stomach heave next, as though it were spinning while she lost all sense of lying down. It was incredibly disorienting for a moment, and she was certain that if she had any contents to draw up that she would lose them soon. Her own weight against her hooves caught her quite by surprise. It almost felt as though she were standing.
The bold scent of freshly brewed coffee filled the mare’s nostrils. She inhaled its aroma in a deep draft, relishing in the gusto of the sensation.
“You’re early,” a stallion said.
It gave Sparklefly pause, ‘What is happening?’
The mare opened her eyes. She was standing in a kitchen, her old family kitchen from their house in Apple Loosa, from before the war had taken it away. The stallion that had spoken...
“Daddy?” the mare’s voice came out at a whisper.
The stallion smiled. It was him; she had absolutely no doubt about it. The impossibility of the situation was not wasted on the mare. Gallant Bullwark had died over a year before, defending Apple Loosa in the battle that began the war.
“How is this possible?” she asked.
“It is. Can’t that be enough?”
She tilted her head questioningly.
“I didn’t expect you quite so soon,” he continued as he poured coffee from the carafe into a cup.
She hesitated, “I didn’t expect you at all. I thought I was dying, out on a battlefield.”
Sparklefly checked herself. Not only was she neither wearing armor nor wounded, but her eye that had been lost many months before was now working perfectly.
“That all did happen, just as you remember it.”
Her brow furrowed as she tried to wrap her mind around her present conversation. Everything she understood told her that it couldn’t be happening, and yet, it was.
“I don’t understand,” she finally ventured.
With a smile he answered, “I guess that’s just one of life’s little mysteries.”
Sparklefly frowned. It was not the first time her father had ended a line of questioning with that answer. It still left her unsatisfied. Physically, she felt perfectly whole. It seemed to her that if that were actually the case, however it had happened, returning to the fight would be the thing to do.
“Can I leave here?”
He shrugged, “Where would you like to go?”
“Back to the battle.”
“There are no battles here.”
“I was in one just moments ago, before I was here.”
His pleasant demeanor faded somewhat, “You mean back beyond the Veil. None who come here can go back.”
“So... I am dead?” she couldn’t escape that conclusion, but she felt silly to ask.
“Do you feel dead?”
Something akin to amusement distracted the mare for a fleeting moment at the question.
“No, I don’t. But you didn’t answer my question. Where are we?”
He took a sip of coffee, “Have you ever gazed into a mirror that was so perfect that you could no longer tell where reality ended and the illusion began? That may be a more accurate description of the way things really are, except… The life you lived, everything you knew… That’s part of the reflection, a shadow of all there really is.”
Sparklefly felt her head swimming from the odd things the stallion said. She believed it was her father, even though reason screamed he couldn’t be. Still, considering her own wounds, either she was dreaming or she really had died. She decided that as a dream would end eventually and not matter anyway, she would press the other front.
“I would really like to know what happened. You said everything I remembered did happen like I remembered. So did I die?”
“Yes, you did,” he smiled disarmingly. “It wasn’t all that bad, now was it?”
She felt herself shrug, “It is certainly not what I expected.”
Gallant Bulwark took a deeper drink of his coffee. Sparklefly’s thoughts turned to the last things she’d remembered of the battle. Their position was being overrun, putting their entire force at risk of being slaughtered. If what she was hearing were true, there was nothing she could do about it. Her shoulders slumped at the futility of this. Her head sank and she found herself staring at the worn wooden floor. It had a gouge that she remembered putting there as a filly.
“What’s wrong?” her father asked.
“I guess... it was all just so pointless. Everything I did, everypony I tried to help. It didn’t matter at all.”
He cocked his head to one side, “I would say it mattered a great deal. You spent your life helping others, protecting them from danger by putting yourself in harm’s way. Do you know how many thousands of lives you touched through your actions?”
She looked back up to the stallion.
“So you didn’t do it perfectly. Who does anything perfectly? Did you give it everything you had? Did you do your very best?”
She considered his questions.
“Were you selfish? Did you harm others for your own personal glory or gain?”
Sparklefly took a breath to answer, “I tried to do my best. I tried to not hurt any pony I didn’t have to.”
“Indeed; from what I saw, you did far more than that. You helped everypony you could.”
Sparklefly felt her ears fold back, painful memories forcing themselves to the forefront of her mind. Her involvement in battle that had taken place in Hoofington, where she had personally been responsible for killing civilians due to a misunderstanding, had never felt right to her. Her party had been attacked and then did what was necessary to survive. What else could they have done? And then there was the cave beneath Canterlot... she shuddered.
“Dark thoughts fill your soul,” her father said grimly.
“It’s a small matter,” she replied vacantly. “I killed our own civilians. I also gave our enemy information, and I fell for a trap that got many, probably thousands of ponies killed.”
Her heart grew heavy.
“Ash Eater,” he spoke the name as though he had full understanding of everything it meant to the mare.
Sparklefly felt chilled in her bones for a moment, “How did you know that?”
“It would be difficult to explain precisely, but... let’s just say I have been watching, in a sense.”
“You can see through the... the Veil?”
“No,” his brow furrowed as he took a sip of coffee. “Nopony can do that. As I said, it is difficult to explain. It’s more that I can get a sense from you the things that you have done and seen, not your thoughts exactly...”
A wave of warmth filled Sparklefly and joy with it. She didn’t understand exactly how, but she knew what he meant. As he stared at her, it was as though she shared the thought with him.
“The Knowing,” she said.
Her father grinned, “Yes, that exactly. As surely as I knew that you questioned within yourself who I was when you arrived, deep down you also knew who I was.” Becoming serious again, he continued, “The civilians attacked your party. You had little choice but to defend yourselves. What happened to you in the cave... nopony could have expected you to endure that.”
All too vividly, Sparklefly was back in that pitch black hell, chained to the floor by an iron collar about her neck. Two changelings had grabbed her hind legs; Ash Eater was on top of her, ready to violate the only innocence she had left, whispering threats in her ear. She shuddered as the terror returned.
Her father continued, “Some managed more... but most were coerced with far less. What is of more interest to me is how you continued on afterward. You forgave the vile creature that did that to you.”
Sparklefly’s fear eased somewhat.
“More than that, you never hated the changelings. You understood that as sentient life, you were far more equal than not, the differences between you being trivial. You only judged others on their choices and actions, their character. I could not be more proud of you.”
A half-grin wrinkled her muzzle, “I just did what you and momma mare taught me.”
“It’s more than that. You endured suffering and remained true to yourself. There is little that is so precious as truth.”
A second warmth filled the mare. This was somewhat more familiar, as it was the result of being praised. Gallant Bulwark turned back to the counter and took the carafe, pouring the fragrant coffee into a second cup. He passed it across the table to Sparklefly. The rich scent made her shiver.
“Drink up, we have a long day ahead of us.”
“A long day?” She tilted her head, “You don’t mean more ‘battles’ to be fought?”
“Not at all, my sweet girl,” he smiled at her. “Those days are finished for you. Now it is time to rest. Besides, you’ve earned it.”
“If there are no struggles, what will we do? I thought this was the end.”
“End?” His grin widened, “This is the beginning. This place is not defined by suffering or heartache, toil or death. Here, all things are made new. No pony has seen nor even imagined the wonder that awaits you. There are a great many things to do, but first I thought I’d show you a few of my favorite places. I’ve missed you and am looking forward to spending time with my daughter.”
She returned the smile and picked up the ceramic cup; she had missed him as well, deeply. The regrets she held were still foremost on her mind. She hated how dirty she felt for how Ash Eater manipulated her in the cave; she wished that she had told him nothing, even if he had followed through with his threat to assault her. She remembered the face of each pony she had killed, all of which she would have avoided if it had been possible. She would have done anything to continue helping Scootaloo and the others.
Sparklefly took a sip of the coffee and felt all of these dark thoughts begin to melt away. She had passed beyond such things, and it was indeed time to rest. A brighter joy laughed up from the deepest wellspring of her soul, so much so that if it could get through, she might rival the sun for brilliance. It was funny, the flavor of the coffee seemed the same as she remembered from before, but it was not at all offensive to her taste anymore. Somehow, it was just perfect.
