A young alicorn, alone in the darkness. She is weeping. She has never been so alone. A hopelessness more complete, more entire than any she has known before pervades her soul. She knows with a bleak certainty that she will never see the sun’s golden rays again. She will die down here, in the same way she has spent the past few weeks, eking out an existence from salty water licked from the stalactites and her own dwindling reserves of strength. She will die alone.
Amore shakes off the vision. They have troubled her all her life, and she is more than used to it. Her erstwhile twin — for what else could the alicorn be, the face so similar to her own, half-glimpsed in mirrors in an unfamiliar palace — is somewhere too far away for Amore’s own magic to reach. She can do nothing but offer the same mute comfort she always has.
Since Amore was a foal, she has felt the auras of those around her. Anger, thudding red and ugly through the air around a pony, or joy, green and sweet as springtime. And most wonderful of all, the soft flowering colours of love, shimmering tremulous in the air between two young ponies, or swirling in solid bonds stronger than steel between two old. Love delights Amore, it entrances her, and nothing makes her happier than to see the Empire spiralling and eddying with love. The Crystal Faire is almost nigh, and Amore’s favourite day of the year is about to commence.
The only shadow on the bright morning is that of her twin’s despair.
Cadence hammers her hooves against the stone until they bleed, screaming, screaming — for Shining Armour, for her aunt, for anypony.
But nopony comes. Even her sister can offer nothing more than vague sensations of comfort and sympathy, but they are tinged with distraction — the unicorn mare is busy, wrapped up in preparations for some big party, one large enough to rival the wedding that Cadence herself had been planning.
The wedding that somepony else will now enjoy, while no one notices anything is amiss. A stranger wearing Cadence’s face will cut the cake and say the vows, and nopony — not even those who know her best — will suspect a thing.
Even from this distance, half a mile or more in the caves beneath the city, Cadence can still feel the distant pulses of joy from the ponies above. Never has she wished more that she was not an empath. Their happiness is salt in her wounds. If only somepony could hear her too, feel the sorrow and misery pouring off her in waves.
But the only one who can hear her lives in a country so distant that Cadence has never managed to discern even its name.
Pressing her forehead against the rock, hard enough to feel the bulges and raised sections cutting into her flesh, Cadence tries to send a message to her sister.
Help me. Help me.
The pink alicorn — though she was once a unicorn like Amore herself — is the only pony Amore can feel from a distance. Since their foalhood something has bound them together. Amore cannot remember the day she first became aware of her spirit-sister; she has simply always been there, like Amore herself. They grew up together.
Amore has tried to investigate, of course. But the city in which the alicorn dwells is foreign beyond her imagining, filled with bizarre technological wonders and magical advancements that Amore’s limited perception of her twin’s emotional reaction to them is scarcely able to comprehend. The elderly white alicorn that her twin loves is a stranger to Amore, nothing like the young alicorn siblings that Amore knows.
She has asked Celestia and Luna about her twin. When she visited them in their distant land; the infant country with its infant princesses. But they had only shaken their heads, mute with puzzlement. They themselves were the only alicorns, as far as they knew.
So Amore and her twin had grown together, separate but joined, and had gained cutie marks that were almost the same. Amore had watched her sister fall in love, had felt her sister’s joy when Amore met her own mate, Gyrescope. Amore’s twin had been the only one able to reach her during her agonising labour, and had felt too the swellings of love for little Carino, her son.
But several days ago the emotions from the alicorn had taken a much darker turn. Somepony had stolen something from her — somepony had laughed as they threw her into a pitch-black cell — somepony had taken her face and used it to mock her.
Never has Amore’s twin suffered so much.
And Amore is powerless, utterly unable to affect the fate of one of the ponies she loves the most in the world.
Cadence completes her circuit of the cave for the fortieth time that day. Nothing has changed. Nothing is ever going to change. Shining Armour has abandoned her, is in love with another. That it is not of his own volition does not make it hurt any less.
She tries once more to light her horn, to teleport out, to lift a boulder, anything, but it is as useless as ever. The crystal caves have stolen her magic as surely as the changeling queen has stolen the love that rightfully belongs to Cadence.
Amore paces her own room, swallowing hard and trying — for the millionth time, but harder than she ever has in the past — to get a real reading on where the alicorn is. If she could somehow find her, help her — but it was futile. All she ever receives are emotions. Nothing concrete.
Her twin is suffering; but Amore can ill afford to spare the time. Her own subjects need her here, need her to power the Crystal Heart and lead them all in joyous song. They will not understand the pall cast over her spirits.
For a moment she considers asking Gyrescope to help; but her husband has never really understood her bond with this intangible stranger. In the early days, when she tried to describe it, he performed a dozen magical experiments, found absolutely nothing, and from then on seemed to dismiss the pink alicorn as a harmless personality quirk. Amore is not even sure if he believes in her twin. Certainly he would not be willing to ask the Guild to aid her in a magical wild goose chase that would likely end in failure.
The sound of song drifts in through her open window. The festivities are beginning.
How many days had it been? Fourteen? Sixteen? Perhaps even longer. Cadence is starting to lose count. She tries to keep track based on when she senses her sister resting. But the pale pink unicorn leads a busy life and keeps odd hours, always rising early to meet with advisors or waking in the night to tend to her infant son. It is difficult to measure the passage of time through her.
“And — now, everypony!” Amore stomps her hoof to give the signal, and the dance begins.
The crystal ponies split off into groups of three pairs, everyone executing the intricate steps flawlessly. They have all been practising for weeks, and Amore tries to feel as proud of them as she had hoped that she would. But the smile on her face is tremulous, and in her mind’s eye she can see her twin’s golden-shod hooves, pacing round, round, round her little cell.
Cadence takes a breath and tries to pull in the ambient magic from the air around her to charge her spell, just as Auntie Tia taught her all those years ago. But it is like trying to drink in the desert sand — there is no magic to be had. This place is dead and empty, and the cold of trying to draw it into herself numbs her horn to the point of pain.
As Amore gazes out from her podium, past her dancing ponies, her unseeing eyes fixed on the far horizon as she watches her sister suffer and struggle alone, something catches her eye. A movement. Something dark. Something rigid and regular, lurching its way along the road to the Empire.
Forcing down the exhaustion, Cadence bucks the boulder with earth-shattering force. But her golden shoes rebound, and it barely moves even an inch. With a sob of frustration, Cadence sinks back to the floor. Her magic is gone, her flight useless in this confined space, and even her great strength is of no help.
What sort of princess is she? She cannot even escape a cave.
Shaking away the crushing despair from her sister and the heady delight of the crowd, Amore blinks, and raises a hoof to rub her eyes. That dark undulation is still there, still slowly advancing.
“Gyrescope,” she nudges her husband, and he raises his eyes to hers. “Do you see that?”
Obediently, he looks, and a frown crosses his face. “What is it?”
Amore turns to her guards. “Quickfeather, will you go and see who it is?”
Quickfeather salutes and darts off, her purple wings almost a blur. Amore watches the silver-armoured shape recede, until it is almost over the black mass. In horror, she stares as a quick blast of red magic shoots up and hits Quickfeather square in the chest. She cries out as her faithful guard falls. The black shapes slither over and around the pegasus, smothering her completely, and then it is like she was never even there at all.
Something moves, out in the darkness beyond Cadence’s vision, and Cadence strains to hear it. Is it the witch-queen, drunk on love not meant for her, back to torture her some more?
“Everypony, get to the palace!” Amore’s heart thuds with terror — her own and the thousandfold emotion she feels pouring off those around her. The air is thick with the stench of it, with the screams and sobs of panicking ponies as they gallop for shelter.
Sombra is returning. The Empire’s long-lost son, home at last.
And he brings with him an army. Every soldier armoured in the same faceless black helmet, eyes devoid of life.
They have reached the outer limits of the Empire now; they have decimated Amore’s guard. Those who fall are gifted with their own helmets, and rise to fight again for the conquerers, their wounds forgotten. Amore can see brother fighting brother, mother fighting son.
It is carnage.
“Who is it?” Cadence screams into the black, her sister’s plight almost forgotten in the midst of her own desperation. “Who’s there? Show yourself!”
There is no answer. But the slow thuds against the caved-in wall continue, and Cadence can hardly bear it. She is beginning almost to hope — to think somepony might have found her at last.
But perhaps that’s just what the monsters want her to think. They want her to suffer, so that her despair, when they come to drink it, will be all the sweeter.
“Take him!” Amore screams, thrusting her son, her precious Carino, into Halberd’s hooves. “Take him and get out of here!”
“Your majesty, I can’t leave you!” Halberd flares his wings in distress, but he cradles the little prince close. “The other guard—”
“—Have fallen! Please,” Amore is begging now. “Please, Halberd, save my son. Save him.” Tears are pouring down her face as she looks into her foal’s big blue eyes. A colt that she is almost certain she will not now live to see become a stallion.
The door shakes from the blows of the battering ram, and Amore’s shield is faltering. Then comes an explosion of red magic, fuelled with more hatred and fury than Amore has ever felt before, strong enough to smash her spell into pieces. With the last of her strength, she shoves Halberd and Carino toward the window, and the stallion, wide-eyed and pale with terror, takes wing as the baby begins to wail.
A low, menacing laugh shakes the room, and Amore turns to meet her fate.
Cadence is digging, digging, for all she is worth. The pounding has not stopped, and even if it is all a trick, she must try. She must escape, she must save herself and her beloved Shining, and then she can save her sister. Save her sister’s son.
“Sombra, please,” Amore pleads, though she knows it will do no good. She is bargaining not for her own life — which is as good as already lost — but for that of her son and the pegasus bearing him south to Equestria and to safety. “Radiant Hope would not want this. For her sake, you must—”
“Don’t speak her name to me!” he spits, and his words are venom. “What right have you to talk of her?”
His horn, that red curved horn that is not his own; it flashes again, and Amore feels the spell begin. Already her hooves are black crystal, and it is spreading fast.
“—Sombra — don’t—”
It can’t be — it can’t be! That face looking down at her, that square-cut purple mane. Can it really be her?
Just as the alicorn’s heart blazes up with hope, Amore feels the crystal reach her own. The jagged black shards sink their hooks into her, and she feels her pulse give one last shuddering beat. She sees Sombra, her erstwhile young protege, raising the mace high over his head, that crimson horn flaring with sickly red light. He brings it smashing down towards her, and there is no trace in his eyes of the sweet-natured foal she once knew.
Then everything is shattered.
Cadence feels the blow as though it had thudded into her own body, ripped her own flesh. She stumbles and falls, and that glimpse of lavender she saw blurs and vanishes. Where Cadence has always had a low, pulsing awareness of somepony other than herself, an empath just like she is, there is now only a blank space. A dark, empty void. Cadence shudders, cries out. Her sister is gone.
She is drowning in it, in the silence.
But a voice is calling her name. “Cadence! Cadence!” A voice not in the far-away place that her almost-twin is. A voice echoing within the same confines of the cave that Cadence herself has been trapped in.
When finally her blurred vision resolves itself into the frantic face of Twilight Sparkle, her other almost-sister, Cadence can hardly tell what is real. Is Twilight just a slightly different hallucination? Or worse, a minion of the changeling queen in yet another mask?
“Cadence, Cadence!” Twilight is sobbing, her hooves pressing all over Cadence’s thin face, her bony flanks, searching for signs of hurt. “I knew that monster wasn’t you — I knew you would never have become somepony like that.”
Love pulses out of her, love for Cadence — so steady and true that Cadence knows at once that this is reality. Like always, emotions are real. They ground her. She grasps them, and nods, exhausted. “…Twilight,” she says, dazedly. “I was…she was…”
“The false Cadence,” Twilight spits, her voice flashing with uncharacteristic hatred. “We won’t let her get away with this.”
“No…I…” Cadence searches for the words, but does not know how to explain that that is not the mare she means. Doesn’t know how to explain that she has had a double for almost all her life. A real double, not the imposter that has stolen her face and her fiance. A twin that has always lurked just out of sight, just out of mind, and is now…gone.
Cadence is found, she is no longer drowning alone in the dark.
And yet she is now somehow more alone than she has ever been before.
