Love Languages

Chapters

xenia
philia
philautia
eros
agape

xenia

Twilight Sparkle lived the same way that she died: calm, collected, and covered in blood.

Rarity couldn’t blame her much for the blood though—it wasn’t her fault manticores were full of the stuff, nevermind the fact she cut quite a striking figure standing there drenched in a crimson that bled so starkly through the once-white fabric of her blouse.

The air around them tasted like copper.

The manticore was dead.

“Right,” Twilight said, and turned to Rarity. Her voice was level and unbothered, as if they were merely discussing the weather: cloudy with a chance of showers, especially for those in range of ruptured arteries! “Should we head back to the library now?”

Rarity shot the manticore’s body a pointed look, and then Twilight an even sharper one. “Like that?”

“Like what?”

“You— You know!” She gestured up and down. “Like that!”

They’d be the talk of the town if they returned looking the way they did, wouldn’t they? She, Rarity—the vampire, the dangerous one—and her, Twilight—the human, the victim—emerging from the Everfree a bloodsoaked pair? Nothing to see here! Don’t mind the mess; it’s not hers, I promise! She’s perfectly fine!

Ponyville would play hopscotch with conclusions, they would. Rarity refused to ever supply them chalk.

“We’ll go to mine,” she said instead, and crossed her arms for good measure. “You’d have eventually come to me to salvage what you’re wearing anyway; Celestia knows I’m the only one of our friends who knows or cares enough to get any sort of bloodstain out of fabric.”

“Oh.” Twilight wrinkled her nose. She reached one hand down to peel her soggy blouse from her stomach with a wet squelch. “Honestly, at this point I might as well throw these clothes out.”

“WHAT?!”

Rarity’s voice might have shattered glass, had they not been in the middle of the most feral and uninhabited forest known to monsterkind.

“Or, maybe Spike could burn them? I could ask.”

“No, no, no! A thousand times no!” In her shock Rarity couldn’t stop herself from trying to defend her case: flitting circles around Twilight; pulling at her sleeve here, her collar there; maneuvering behind her to take the yoke of her blouse between her fingertips and tug. “I can’t possibly let you destroy such a lovely shirt. The construction of it alone speaks to both the price and quality of its design! And your trousers”—she hooked one finger through a belt loop to turn Twilight back around—“barely caught any of it; plus blood is hardly ever an issue to clean from black, you know, and—”

“Rarity,” Twilight interrupted, now nose-to-nose with her and wearing the barest traces of amusement in her eyes, “if I say yes, can we start heading back?”

“Hm?” Rarity blinked. “Oh!” She removed her hand from Twilight’s hip and cleared her throat. “Well, I mean, if you do, then I suppose we can. We came for the manticore, and the manticore is dead, and so as long as ‘yes’ means you agree to not go waltzing through town in such a way as to paint me as some sort of woman-ravishing opportunist like that bastard Bluebl—”

“Rarity,” Twilight repeated, and nearly smiled. “Yes.”

It was hard to think thoughts sometimes, especially when exhausted, but it was also sometimes equally as hard to not think thoughts. Their trek back to the boutique had Rarity firmly in the latter category—Twilight didn’t seem in the mood for conversation, and that meant Rarity’s thoughts had nothing else to do but think.

...Mostly about Twilight.

Rarity knew she wasn’t alone in that regard, though. Their whole circle of friends, the entirety of Ponyville, and almost all of Celestia's court surely thought about Twilight Sparkle just as much. And who could blame any of them?

Who could blame anyone for being curious about the human who willingly lived in a town of monsters?

Well, if she truly IS one, Rarity thought to herself, then immediately wished she hadn’t. That was a pesky one; a thought her mind had planted the day she’d first met Twilight—nearly a year ago now, wasn’t it? It must have been, yes. The Summer Sun Celebration was just a month away.

She’d first met Twilight Sparkle the so-called human nearly a year ago, and yet in all the time since then Rarity hadn’t managed to shake off the suspicion that she wasn’t.

Because humans and monsters didn’t mingle much, of course. Humans didn’t trust monsters and their fangs and furs and feathers and other not-human traits, and monsters trusted humans and their magic just as much. Sure, they were civil, and no one went round shouting slurs at the other kind if they saw them in the streets—if they wanted to keep their reputation, they’d do it in private or preferably not at all—but with Ponyville as one of Equestria’s last remaining monster havens, Rarity couldn’t fathom why any human would stay for more than a moon.

(Unless, perhaps, that human wasn’t really one at all—)

Well, what could she even be, then? Rarity snapped at the voice in the back of her head. Not out loud; she was still with Twilight, after all. It bothered her to be so suspicious of a close friend, but oh did it bother her even more to not be close enough of a friend to know why.

She risked a glance at Twilight out of the corner of her eye. The stars and moon above them shone down cold, but bright. Moonlight cast Twilight’s profile in a rather fetching silver, Rarity found, then snapped her gaze back to the trail in front of them before she found anything more.

No visibly inhuman traits. Just like always, and like every time she’d checked before.

Perhaps a vampire, Rarity decided. Though, she didn’t put much confidence into her guess—she knew too well how to spot another of her kind; could too easily sense both bloodborne and turned alike.

Twilight Sparkle showed no signs and raised no flags. Vampire was a truly terrible guess.

She guessed it anyway.

Just in case.

“Here,” Rarity called down the hall. “These should fit.”

“Should?” Twilight called back. She stood in the boutique’s foyer wearing blood and uncertainty, too polite to walk her mess any further inside and too callous to care about the stench of gore sticking to her skin. She’d been able to walk through the front door without an invite, though that didn’t mean much—Rarity had surely invited her inside dozens of times before.

“It’s the best I have on hand,” she answered, knowing full well that everything else in her closet was too tailored to fit anyone else, and made her way back to Twilight with what she’d found. “We’re two different monsters, after all. People,” she quickly corrected. “Don’t take that the wrong way, though. I certainly don’t have the figure to wear what you’re wearing right now, you know.”

“You don’t have to be polite,” Twilight snorted, a smile in her voice but not on her face. “I’m pretty sure it’s impossible for anything to look bad on you.”

“But I can’t just say that about myself,” Rarity teased. “Though I certainly won’t stop you from saying it.”

She passed the neatly-folded pile in her arms over to Twilight: a plain, slightly oversized blouse she sometimes wore as a nightshirt, and a pair of trousers she’d last worn three New Year’s resolutions ago. They were only as close as they’d been in the Everfree, but the scent of blood seemed even stronger inside. Rarity could hardly keep her fangs from forming at arm’s length; Twilight still remained focused—and fangless—nearer to the manticore’s blood than her own.

“You know where the washroom is, don’t you?” Rarity managed.

(Of course she knew. Rarity had put her up for a night just the month before.)

“Mhm,” Twilight nodded, then slipped one bloodied, muddied loafer off after the other on top of Rarity’s doormat and went to the bathroom to change.

She was alone for a bit after that, save for the few fleeting seconds she’d taken to knock on the bathroom door and request that Twilight hand her the Outfit before she got into the bath. After all, she certainly wanted a good soak after that mess of a mission, and she hadn’t been the one who’d done all the heavy lifting—so if Twilight was going to take some well-deserved time to unwind, then Rarity thought she’d better get started on the Outfit in the solitary meantime.

Blood never did like to remove itself.

The motions were all too familiar; ones she’d had to perform not only for herself and the bedsheets she’d never buried with their corpses, but also for spilled wine on tablecloths and paint on Sweetie’s brand-new-everythings and the general mess and muck of life that came with following orders penned in dragonfire and sent directly from the Divine.

Rarity wrinkled her nose at that, and sat herself down beside the washbasin.

A year ago she’d been but a seamstress. Well, look at me now, she thought dryly, with all the bitterness of someone who’d gotten exactly what she’d wished for. She rolled her sleeves up to the elbow and spun the faucet on. Immediately the water heater sent its protests through the plumbing in response.

Hot water for both the washroom and the laundry room? Unforgivable.

She tossed in Twilight’s underclothes as the basin filled and clutched the bloodied blouse tight between two fists.

Her, Rarity, as one-sixth of some Plan that not only had her fighting ferals in the Everfree on a near-weekly basis, but also doing laundry afterward out of her own free will?

Unbelievable.

The basin filled. She turned off the tap, listened to the sound of running water tap-tap-tapping in what was surely a shower and not a bath, and set to work.

It was just as easy for Rarity to lose herself in chores as it was in anything else she set her mind to. On one hand, it was a blessing: time passed quickly, and she soon found she’d finished with everything except the dreadfully sullied blouse.

On the other hand, getting lost meant it was far too easy for Twilight Sparkle to scare her out of her skin.

“What should I do with my towel?”

Contrary to some humans’ beliefs, vampires did indeed have heartbeats. In that moment Rarity was certain hers had nearly jumped right out of her throat.

“Don’t do that,” she hissed, then twisted around to give Twilight the sternest of glares before answering, “And you can leave it by the sink. I’ll throw it in with the rest of my linens tomorrow.”

Twilight met her gaze with an all-too-familiar indifference. The towel in question lay draped over her shoulders like a cape. Her bangs were damp. They stuck to her forehead in a way that made Rarity want to run a comb through them once or twice. “The clothes fit me,” she said eventually and redundantly—redundant, because Rarity had already glanced over her clothing before she’d looked for the towel. The trousers were a bit too loose at the waist; too short in the leg, and the neckline of the shirt veered lower than it ever had on her. And, the half-length sleeves hardly reached—

“Your arms,” Rarity blurted out before her mind could catch up with her eyes and mouth. “What’s happened to them?”

“Hm?” Twilight blinked. “Oh,” she realized, and raised one bare arm up from her side so Rarity could see it better. “I didn’t realize you hadn’t seen them yet.”

Thin white lines marked her skin from wrist to elbow and then above. Rarity had thought them scars initially, but now with better light she could make out intricate geometry and script-like markings that could only have been intentional.

“I suppose you could call them tattoos,” Twilight continued, and flexed her fingers absently. The markings shifted slightly against her skin.

Can’t be a vampire, was Rarity’s first thought—they healed far too fast for even piercings, much to her disappointment. Then came her second thought: “Why?”

Instead of answering verbally, Twilight hummed under her breath and tipped her head to the side. Then, she gave the index finger of her extended hand a twirl, and suddenly a familiar magenta light lit up over the towel slung around her neck.

“It’s a human thing,” she explained. The towel rose from her shoulders and began to fold itself midair. “Well, a magic thing, really. We can’t just pull it from thin air.”

It gathered to halves, then quarters. And for the first time—because it was the first time Rarity could remember Twilight in a shirt without long sleeves—Rarity could see that the markings on her skin pulsed faintly with the very same magical glow.

Then the magic faded and the now-folded towel dropped gently into Twilight’s waiting hand. She held it out to Rarity, then hesitated. “This was kind of a pointless gesture.” Her brow creased. “It still needs to be washed. I didn’t really save you any work.”

Rarity snorted. She took the towel. “Darling, if I were human, I’d fold as many unwashed towels as my heart desired.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Why would being human have anything to do with that?”

“I can already fold towels by hand, Twilight,” she said, and resisted the urge to refold the one she’d just taken to emphasize her point. “I meant with magic. Just like you humans can.” A sigh escaped her lips before she could catch it, so she kept going: “You can’t fault a woman for being a bit envious of your kind’s natural inclination.”

Twilight’s brow somehow creased further at that. “It’s hardly natural.”

“Hm?”

“I— You know most humans can’t use magic like I can, right?”

That was news to Rarity. “...I didn’t,” she admitted, and sent a silent curse to her past self for making such an assumption. “Though to be fair, you’re the first and only human I’ve ever befriended. And as you probably know, when it comes to humans, us monsters aren’t exactly...” A memory of Twilight’s first day in Ponyville sprang to mind—more specifically, a memory of how Twilight’s normally-neutral expression had cracked to irritation when she’d skimmed some of the literature her new home held. “...accurate,” she finished lamely.

“Oh, I know,” Twilight agreed. Thankfully she seemed to relax a bit, and the furrow between her eyes faded back to a crease. “But, yes. Most humans go their whole lives without ever using magic.”

“Because they don’t get the opportunity to learn it?”

“Well, that, too, but...” Her voice trailed off, and for a moment Rarity thought her eyes looked much farther away than they should have. “Even if a human wanted to learn magic,” she said quietly, “they’d always have a threshold. It just varies from person to person.”

Rarity frowned, and tried to ignore the oddly nervous feeling twisting in her gut. “Yours must be quite high, then.”

“...It is.”

“After all, you beheaded that manticore with hardly the flick of your wrist! I’d say Applejack works harder chopping firewood than you do slaying those dreadful beasts.”

“If it looks easy,” Twilight said carefully; coldly, almost, “then I should probably consider a career in acting.” Suddenly the air in the laundry room turned electric; charged. “Because I promise you it’s not.”

Silence.

It held for a while, if not a bit longer than that. Then—

“I’m sorry,” Twilight mumbled. She exhaled sharply and ran one hand roughly down her face. “I—”

“No, I should be the one apologizing,” Rarity interrupted. She brushed the towel off her lap and got to her feet, taking just enough steps to put Twilight within arm’s reach but not any closer than that. “You must think me disrespectful for assuming that being good at something makes it easy.”

“You were just curious,” Twilight replied, her voice still quiet. “And... I know I don’t exactly wear my heart on my sleeve.” There it was again—that foggy, distant look that on anyone else Rarity would have called sad.

“You don’t,” she admitted, then took one step closer and tugged Twilight down for a hug. “But that’s not an excuse for me to trample on it. I’m terribly sorry.”

Twilight’s hands fumbled against her back, then gently squeezed. “Me too.”

Rarity held their hug a second longer than she should have before finally pulling away. “Do you have an idea of the time?” she asked, careful to move the subject away from magic, but not too far. “Don’t let me keep you. I’m sure Spike will worry if you’re not home by dawn.”

“Oh. Right.” Her gaze drifted around Rarity to land on the washbasin. “You don’t want me to stay until you finish?”

“I’m a vampire, Twilight, not a sadist. I won’t have you waiting hours for me to do laundry.”

“But—”

“I'll take it by the library when it’s done. Tonight at the earliest, I’d think—perhaps we could do dinner if I’m up in time. Does that work for you?”

“...That sounds nice,” Twilight managed, whatever protests she’d come up with never making it to Rarity’s ears. “Alright. How much do I owe you, then?”

“Pardon?”

“For the cleaning. I’ll need to send Spike to the banker today if you’re coming tonight.”

Rarity couldn’t stop a surprised laugh from leaving her lips. Emotions were such funny things; hard for her to handle and even harder for her to keep at hand. “I shan’t accept a single bit for it,” she said to the tail end of her laugh. “Just consider it a gift from me to you.”

As always, Twilight Sparkle remained calm and collected even while confused. “But why should you give me a gift?” she asked slowly, as if she’d somehow forgotten the very element Rarity now was blessed to bear.

Because you did all the work on the mission today, she could have said.

Because you let me save such a lovely outfit from a fire pit, she could have said.

Because you folded your towel, she never could have said, but nearly considered.

“Because you’re my friend,” Rarity said instead of anything else. She smiled with her mouth—not just her eyes—and put one hand on Twilight’s shoulder to guide her to the door. “I don’t think I need more of a reason than that.”

It was only later, when she turned it inside out to assess its sorry state, that Rarity noticed scorch marks in those same tattooed patterns seared into the lining of Twilight’s shirt.

vam·pire

[bloodborne]

1. a fanged nocturnal monster sustained through the consumption of mortal blood

2. not Twilight Sparkle

[turned]

1. a human cursed to vampirism by the bite of a mature bloodborne

2. also not Twilight Sparkle

Author's Note

i have been cooking this since july and what better way to finally kick my own ass to finish it than the impending deadline of halloween!!!! this whole thing is written, so you'll get a chapter drip fed to you daily whenever i remember to post.

basically, since i am the MOST friend ever and also the most stubborn, i refuse to ever willingly break a promise—even if that promise means "write 20k words from the POV of the one character whose head you can't get into". i am shaking and sobbing and cursing my past self for doing this, but at least my prereader's reaction was entirely worth it. hope yours is too :)

thanks for reading!

philia

It took Rarity longer than she would have liked to return the shirt to white, but she did it.

(Eventually. And with many home-brewed solutions adjacent to bleach.)

But even after putting in those extra hours and going to bed well past noon, she still made sure to set her alarm clock for a quarter past six—plenty of time to get ready and get to the library for seven, even if it wasn’t exactly plenty of sleep.

Of course, the walk into town gave her even more time to think about it. Her thoughts had bounced back to the topic again and again while she’d washed, like some sort of twisted game of racquetball:

What kind of monster could Twilight Sparkle be?

Being human-passing took most options off the table, but Rarity thought she’d come up with a rather good guess for that evening. More probable than a vampire, more reasonable than a human, and something easy enough to verify without being obvious.

Yes, she thought to herself as she marched up the library’s footpath and raised her fist to the door. It’s a probable, reasonable guess.

She knocked on the door.

(After all, she knew some zombies once were humans. Before their second life, at least.)

She’d barely lifted her knuckles before a pair of footsteps pounded from inside, and moments later the door flew open to reveal a breathless and slightly-disheveled Spike.

“Hey, Rarity,” he wheezed, as if the both of them didn’t know he’d run all the way down from his room to get the door. He straightened up and tucked his tail behind his ankles before asking, “You, uh, doing well?”

It was adorable, in the same sense that Sweetie Belle was adorable if you didn’t look past her ‘brunch’ and into the kitchen. At least Spike had a leg up on her for that—Rarity didn’t know if cooking was a dragonborn thing or a Spike thing, but she appreciated his skill for it all the same.

“Quite,” Rarity answered, and smiled politely. “And yourself?”

“Oh! Yeah, I’m good. I’m good.”

“That’s lovely to hear.” She paused for a moment. When he didn’t move, she continued, “Now, shall we continue this conversation inside, or...?”

“Oh!” Spike repeated, and quickly scooted to the side. “Sorry, sorry! Come on in; you know where to put your shoes, and I can take your coat—” He blinked, remembered that the weather wasn’t cool enough for a jacket, and corrected, “I can take your bag, yeah, that’s what I meant—”

Rarity suppressed a giggle as she entered. “Thank you for the offer,” she said, and held up the parcel she’d so carefully packed that evening. “But I think it’d be best if I returned these to Twilight myself.”

Spike closed the door behind her, then shuffled back into view while she removed her shoes. “Huh. Did she forget something last night?”

Just her clothes, Rarity nearly said, but stopped herself for poor Spike’s sake. “I did a bit of cleaning for her as a favour,” she said instead. “Well, a favour to myself, really. Such a lovely shirt soiled—not beyond repair, mind you—and her first instinct was to have you burn it!”

She gave him a Look. Immediately he puffed out his chest and declared, “I would never.”

“Exactly. And, well, I’m nothing if not a miracle worker. Plus I know my way around blood better than most. So it’s a bit of a win-win situation: Twilight gets a clean shirt; I get the satisfaction of saving it, and maybe a nice meal too—”

“Oh,” Spike said suddenly, and Rarity could nearly hear a lightbulb ping above his head. “That’s why Twilight had me defrost those steaks.”

...Hm?

Spike chattered on as he led her to the dining room and got her settled in, but Rarity hardly heard him all the while. Because, what little she knew of Twilight was that Twilight cared little for food; that she preferred to survive on what was most convenient rather than most fine. In fact, Rarity would have bet her last bit that anything in the kitchen not canned or takeout was only due to Spike.

Calm, collected, and mostly uncaring. That was Twilight Sparkle—on life, on friends, on other living beings. She had every right to think of food the exact same way.

But only mostly, Rarity recognized, and felt the intrigue sleeping in her bloodstream rear its crimson head. Because tonight we’re having steak.

And no uncaring human—or monster—would ever have bothered to remember a friend’s favourite meal.

It took Twilight a bit of time to finish in her office that evening, but Rarity didn’t mind the wait. The kitchen and dining room were adjacent, and she was content to chat from her seat at the table while Spike started on dinner.

He was so responsible, Rarity found herself thinking time and time again. He could use the stovetop; the kettle; vegetable peelers; knives. All without Twilight’s supervision! Honestly, the kitchen might have been in more danger had Twilight been the one cooking instead.

...It was so terribly hard to not think thoughts, especially when they were true.

Of course, Twilight just had to come down to the dining room as Rarity was wrestling with those fully-formed thoughts she wished were easier to not-think. She raised one hand in a wave to acknowledge her and dearly hoped her face didn’t betray her brain.

Unfortunately, it did.

“I know that look,” Twilight said slowly. She sat herself down beside Rarity and turned to face her with her eyebrows barely raised.

“What look?” Rarity protested.

“Is it the one where you’re thinking something funny to yourself you know you can’t say out loud?” Spike chimed in, and popped his head around the corner to check. “Oh. Yep. It’s that one.”

“I have multiple looks?”

Twilight pursed her lips, painting herself with a Look that Rarity was sure meant something between ‘pondering politeness’ and ‘bluntly stated fact’. “It’s not an intentional categorization,” she said eventually.

“But I do have—”

“Do you think we have time for tea, Spike?” she continued over Rarity, and nailed their conversation back into its coffin before it could even come alive. “I could do with a hot drink.”

“Already got the kettle on,” he said. His head disappeared back into the kitchen, and Rarity heard a cupboard open and close before he called back, “What kind do you want?”

“Whatever we’ve got the most of,” Twilight started to reply, then stopped.

She turned to Rarity.

“Oh,” Rarity said, caught a bit off guard. “Er, would you have Darjeeling?”

Twilight turned back to the kitchen. “Spike, do we have—”

“Yeah,” he answered, “we do. I’ll put it on.”

“Thank you,” Rarity added, just in case Twilight didn’t. The same sort of odd sensation she’d had at the mention of steak washed over her again—another instance of a supposedly uncaring creature attempting to care.

It was awkward, and perhaps a bit unnatural, but incredibly earnest. And Rarity wasn’t sure what she was supposed to think of that.

So, rather than waste much more time thinking unsure thoughts, she pulled her parcel from the floor and held it out to Twilight with one hand. “White as the day you first bought it,” she said, if a little bit too proudly. “And you can verify that as fact for yourself if you’d like.”

“Hm?” Twilight switched her gaze from the kitchen entrance back to Rarity, then glanced down at the parcel with an expression of mild surprise—almost as if she’d forgotten the very reason for Rarity’s visit.

(Almost as if she didn’t care—

—but no, she’d planned for steaks; she’d asked for her tea. In no good conscience could Rarity label her response uncaring, even if it stung.)

“Oh,” Twilight said after a second slipped past in silence. “Of course.”

She took the parcel.

It remained the rest of the night unopened at her feet.

The wait until dinnertime was nothing short of bland: Spike brought their tea, and then, after they’d had a half-hour of small talk filled with the warmest nothings, tabled dinner too. He was too modest to call it ‘fancy’, but Rarity couldn’t miss the proud glow radiating from his facial scales—a pride oh-so well deserved, she noted. The steaks bled rare, the greens blistered soft, the mashed potatoes held lovely pools of butter at its peaks, and the gravy at the centre of the table was thick enough to wobble when he took his seat at the table across from Twilight.

“It smells wonderful,” she told him, before she could take too large of a mouthful to talk, and his scales somehow beamed brighter in response.

Their conversation remained frivolous and sparse while they ate, until eventually Rarity mentioned the manticore offhand and the topic turned to their mission the night before.

“No way,” Spike breathed between bites. “All by herself?”

Rarity hid her smile behind a sip of tea. “All by herself,” she echoed, and shot Twilight a coy, sideways glance that wasn’t returned.

“You helped,” Twilight protested.

“With the cleanup, certainly. But I had nothing to do with the actual disposal of that beast, darling.”

“Tracking it down, then,” she tried, but once again Rarity shook her head.

“Don’t give a thought to any befores and afters,” she said firmly. Her hands sliced her steak to delicate slices as she spoke—if she was to occupy her mouth with words, at least the rest of her could do something useful in the meantime. “The mission was the manticore; nothing more or less than that.”

...That was how it always was, wasn’t it? She and Twilight were assigned partners on paper, but the meat of their missions always had her standing on the sidelines. And if Rarity thought about things long enough perhaps she’d have been able to come up with a time that she’d done the slaying instead—but nothing stood out in recent memory. It was always Twilight and magic and ferals and blood, then Rarity and cleanup and nothings and guilt.

“Befores and afters are still important,” Twilight said quietly, and the uncharacteristic softness of her voice broke Rarity out of her thoughts. “It’s like you said yesterday, isn’t it? I may make magic look easy, but I think you’re the same with everything else you do.”

Rarity blinked. Was that a compliment?

“Well, I bet I make cooking look easy,” Spike chimed in. He scraped the last of his potatoes into his mouth, then pushed his chair back and stood up with a mischievous grin. “But since you guys are so much better than me at dishes...”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she grumbled. “You’re excused.”

He gave both of them one last smile before bolting out of the dining room and up the stairs. A second later Rarity heard what she assumed was his bedroom door slam hard enough to shake the rest of the library.

“I usually do the dishes anyway,” Twilight explained. Her plate was still half-full, compared to Spike’s empty one and Rarity’s with only a bit of cut-away gristle remaining. “I think it’s a fair trade.”

“Mm,” Rarity hummed. “I suppose it is.”

Her eyes and mind wandered while Twilight returned to her meal, and eventually they landed on the pale, tattoo-marked skin peeking out beneath her sleeves. Now that she was closer she could see that the patterns didn’t end at the wrist like she’d assumed, but instead turned finer and fainter as they branched from hand to fingertip.

(And, she didn’t see any scars, or signs of stitching. Most zombies should have had at least one of those things visible throughout their form.)

“Why do you need those?” she decided to ask. “Those tattoos, I mean. What do they have to do with magic?”

Twilight frowned around her fork. “It’s a bit complicated,” she warned.

“And I’m a bit curious. I don’t mind.”

“...Alright. If you’re sure.” Still a bit reluctant, Twilight took one final bite of steak, then pushed her plate away and sat back in her chair. “I suppose potential isn’t too hard of a topic to grasp.”

“You mentioned that yesterday,” Rarity said slowly. “That each human is different, right? And that your potential is far above the average I’d assumed.”

“Right. Imagine the average is, um...” She glanced around the table and, once her eyes landed on the napkin holder, lit her hand with magic to pull four paper napkins from its grip. “Think of it this way,” she said. The first three napkins folded themselves midair to simple squares, hovering between her and Rarity in an evenly-spaced column nearly a metre tall. “Celestia’s at the top, and humans with no magical potential are at the bottom. But if the average is this middle one, rather than being exactly between...”

The middle napkin floated lower until it was barely an inch above the bottom one. To Rarity, it seemed the gap between the middle and top napkin had stretched to an imaginary mile.

“...it’s really more something like this.” Twilight gave Rarity a moment to process that, then folded the remaining napkin into a star-like shape. “Now, pretend this napkin represents me.”

“I can see the resemblance,” Rarity teased, then quickly backpedalled when Twilight’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Sorry, sorry. I’m listening.”

“Pretend this napkin represents me,” she repeated. Much to Rarity’s surprise, it floated down beside the middle napkin, then dropped half an inch lower than that. “This was my natural magical potential. My innate threshold.”

You said that in past tense, Rarity wanted to point out, but held her tongue.

“However, this obviously isn’t my threshold anymore. Today my potential is probably around...” The star moved up, and up, and then further up, until it stopped only a few inches beneath Celestia’s. “...here.”

“And that’s because of the tattoos?”

“Partially,” Twilight agreed. The star moved back down until it was an equal distance between the bottom square and the top. “On their own I believe they only raised my potential about this much. Which is already quite high,” she added, and flicked her finger to wiggle the bottom two squares as a reminder. “High enough to get accepted as Celestia’s student, at least.”

There was still so much missing information that Rarity hardly knew where she was allowed to start. But if Twilight kept going she also knew she’d have no chance of getting un-lost, so she grabbed the first question she could catch and quickly asked it:

“Did they hurt?”

“Yes,” Twilight admitted, and her eyes took on a distant look for a moment that made Rarity think she wasn’t in the present any longer, but in the past. “I mean, I was also quite young. But kids are resilient, and the younger you can get your veins opened, the better chance you have of a higher thr—”

“Wait,” Rarity interrupted. “Veins?” She knew quite a bit of opening veins—and knew even more that in humans it wasn’t exactly something good for them.

“Not the literal ones,” Twilight corrected, and pushed one of her sleeves up to the elbow for Rarity to see. “Magical ones. The tattooing process releases them and maps out channels for stronger currents. See?”

Magenta light pulsed through her once-white tattoos, just as they had when she’d folded the towel the night before. Then, when she lit her other hand and lifted more objects from the dining table—Spike’s plate and cutlery, the gravy boat, the teapot and all their mugs—Rarity watched the light grow stronger and brighter still.

“And, now if I try to use magic with potential far beyond my natural threshold...”

She moved the teapot through the column of napkins between them and clenched one fist. Then—

Lightning snapped. Ozone sizzled across the air. Suddenly the magic running through Twilight’s skin turned pure electric—it hummed and crackled and hissed and spat and struck a sort of terror into Rarity’s nervous heart that screamed, humans aren’t supposed to sound like that—

The teapot’s lid clattered. Steam whistled out between the gaps and through its spout. Twilight finally relaxed her hand, and as soon as she did the magic died back down to its silent and deep-pink glow.

“I hope that was enough of a demonstration,” she finished.

And Rarity could only stare, awestruck, at the now-boiling teapot hovering midair. “Plenty,” she breathed. Oh, she had many unanswered questions and even more questions that probably didn’t have answers she’d ever understand, but in the moment all that mattered was the wonder and amusement and novelty of a magic she’d never have. “Shall we continue this discussion over tea?”

It took Twilight a moment to put the pieces of the question together. “Oh,” she realized, and moved their mugs between them as well. “Sure, I suppose we can—”

And once again Rarity cursed her element; cursed the blessing she embodied as much as she cursed herself, because at the same time Twilight moved to again drown their tea bags in their mugs, Rarity reached out on autopilot to take her own mug from the air—forgetting, of course, that Twilight didn’t need her help with tea any more than she needed her help with their missions.

Twilight went to fill Rarity’s mug first, and Rarity’s mug was no longer there. And with nowhere else to go but down, the boiling water splashed down in a scalding stream across Twilight’s lap.

(Her expression never changed even as burning water plastered her trousers to her thighs.

Could she even feel it? Did it hurt?

Had she lied about feeling pain when she’d first gotten her tattoos?)

“Stake me now,” Rarity swore, and shoved her mug at the table so she had both hands free to figure out what to do. “I’m so sorry!”

And again in her forgetfulness she reached out to right the teapot—the metal, scalding-hot teapot held upright by magic and not skin. Immediately Twilight yanked it out of reach, but in doing so only splashed more water over herself: forearms, stomach, legs. “Don’t,” she warned. The evenness of her voice betrayed no amount of pain. “You’ll burn yourself.”

“You already have!” Rarity argued, and reached again—

“I hardly feel it,” Twilight said with all the truthfulness of someone who’d only stubbed their toe. She placed the teapot and everything else back on the table before releasing the remains of her magic, then got to her feet. “It’s alright. I’m fine.”

(Even if she couldn’t feel it, Rarity could see the blisters forming on her one bare forearm; had proof that Twilight Sparkle wasn’t a living corpse but a being with a beating heart.)

“I’m sorry,” Rarity repeated, mortified and distressed and guilty all at once.

“You don’t need to be.”

“But,” she protested, “you’re burned—”

“And you aren’t,” Twilight finished, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I don’t think you need to apologize for something like that.”

The next time Rarity had seen Twilight wearing the shirt she’d so carefully laundered, she couldn’t keep a bit of smoke from spilling with her words:

“Finally made sure it’s as white as I promised, have you?”

And Twilight Sparkle, in a voice as calm and collected as the rest of her unbothered self, had sincerely replied:

“I never doubted you enough to check.”

zom·bie

1. the reanimated corpse of a human or mortal monster

2. not Twilight Sparkle

philautia

Celestia’s hunting orders rarely required all six of them at once; most ferals were easy enough to deal with in their recommended pairs. Sometimes they’d have threes or fours, but always at least two. Pairs were the minimum to enter the Everfree, no matter how confident—like Rainbow—or competent—like Twilight—they were.

But sometimes, when pairs just weren’t enough, they went as six.

(Whenever one of their missions required full assembly Rarity couldn’t help but remember that fateful night nearly a year ago. She’d been just a seamstress, for hell’s sake! What a cruel future from Fate she’d found, borne on the wings of the court’s own chariot and disguised as a human who knew nothing but collected and calm.)

Of course, for all the pomp and circumstance around full assembly, at certain times Rarity thought them a touch unnecessary. Multiple ferals? Quite reasonable. Massive, magic-resistant foes that no single prodigious human could hope to confront on her own? Also entirely fair.

But a single Ursa Major?

“It feels like a waste,” Rarity repeated to the remains of her audience. “I don’t see why she couldn’t have sent just me and Twilight to handle it.” Well, really just Twilight, but even she still needed to follow the rule of pairs.

The three of them sat in the backroom of Sugarcube Corner: her and Twilight shoulder-to-shoulder on the little wooden bench between the pantries, and Pinkie perched on a three-legged stool she’d pulled from behind the flour sacks. Fluttershy and Rainbow had long since left—they hadn’t needed any patching up—and Applejack had headed out just a few minutes after she’d bandaged her shoulder.

“But the letter said six,” Pinkie pointed out, and fixed Rarity with a curious, unblinking stare. “Are you saying we shouldn’t have listened to it?”

“I—” Of course that wasn’t what she meant, but—

“Orders are orders,” Twilight said sternly. She nudged her leg against Rarity’s; a bleeding-red reminder of why they were still stuck in the back room, then added, “Though, I think Rarity does have a point.”

“Thank you,” Rarity huffed, and tore another strip of gauze off the roll with her teeth.

Pinkie stared at them a moment longer before shrugging and straightening up on her stool. Her ears twitched once, twice—a telltale sign of nerves. “I mean,” she said slowly, “even with the rest of us there, you still got bit.”

Twilight’s mouth tensed into an almost-invisible frown. “I did,” she said. “What of it?”

“It’s just, maybe if we all weren’t there the way we were, that Ursa woulda got you even worse.” She hesitated. “Like, y’know. Bit your whole leg off, or, um, something else more important that you humans need to live.”

Even if it wasn’t the most eloquent, the meaning behind Pinkie’s words rang true: if we weren’t there tonight, would you have died?

(It was terrifying to see Twilight wear her own blood, and not a feral’s. It didn’t happen often, but that evening as Rainbow had prepared for another dive at the Ursa, and as Fluttershy had dragged a wounded Applejack to safety, and as Pinkie had shouted for Rarity to watch her left, suddenly there had been burning ozone and an electric crack and one calmly furious human materializing midair before the Ursa’s gaping maw.

It bit down on her leg at the same time she thrust both hands against its starry brow and squeezed.

And then suddenly the Ursa was dead.)

“Again,” Twilight said coolly, “I’m fine. And I promise it’s not some sort of bravado—this sort of injury won’t ever come close to threatening my life.”

And wasn’t that interesting? Rarity wanted to say, but didn’t. Humans were supposed to be terribly fragile, weren’t they? Why should Twilight Sparkle hold such confidence in herself; be willing to risk such surely-fatal injuries without even a hint of fear?

...What type of monster would also act in such a way?

She let her thoughts wander against the backdrop of Pinkie’s response, and turned her attention back to Twilight’s leg. She’d cut off the leg of her trousers already—sadly too shredded to salvage—and disinfected the line of massive punctures near encircling Twilight’s thigh.

(She hadn’t flinched at all, even when Rarity had switched out water for alcohol. As if fangs, chemicals, and caring hands all felt the same.)

Still, though, she treated Twilight with the same careful motions any other feeling creature would have wanted. That I would have wanted, she noted idly. Not that she’d ever know if Twilight or anyone else was willing to do the same kind of care for her. Vampiric healing was such a shame in that regard.

Her hands brushed across more of those barely-visible tattooed markings when she pulled the last of the wrappings taut, and it was only after she’d made sure everything was secure that Rarity decided to voice one of her many thoughts:

“Does an injury like this cause problems?”

Both Pinkie and Twilight turned to her—perhaps she’d interrupted them. Rarity hadn’t been paying them much attention, really.

“Problems?” Twilight replied. She glanced down to where Rarity’s hands rested atop her thigh, then back up to meet her gaze. “You mean, for my magic?” When she received a nod of confirmation, she echoed the motion with a shake of her head and said, “It’s not an issue. I’ve still got plenty left intact.”

“But that bite cut clean across some of them,” Rarity continued. “You called them veins before. I wouldn’t think any sort of vein would appreciate such severance.”

“What d’you mean, ‘severance’?” Two cloven hooves hit the hardwood, and suddenly Pinkie was there, peering down at Twilight’s bare leg and entirely invading Rarity’s personal space. “Huh! That Ursa really gotcha good, didn’t it?”

Twilight scowled—well, as much as her expressionless demeanour would allow—and gently pushed Pinkie’s head away by her horns. “I’m fine.”

“The same way Rarity’s fine?”

“Darling,” Rarity reminded her, “I’ve been fine for the last twenty minutes.”

“...Oh. Right, duh; of course you are.” Pinkie shot Twilight’s leg a solemn look and sighed, “Poor Rarity. Healing so fast that ol’ Pinkie here went and missed it.” Her ears twitched again, this time in the way that Rarity knew as an ear-to-ear smile. “Must be sort of boring, Twilight, don’t you think?”

“It sounds convenient,” Twilight answered. “If I were a vampire, I suppose I could appreciate that.”

“Ooh, that’s an idea—vampires kinda suit you, huh?” And, before Rarity could realize what was happening, Pinkie clapped her hands together and asked, “If you were a monster, Twilight, what type of monster would you want to be?”

No! Rarity wailed silently. You can’t just ask her that!

Because, what if Twilight truly answered? What if she dropped the act and revealed her not-human self and proved that all of Rarity’s guessing could have been solved with a single question all along?

It was a silly, insignificant game that only she was playing, but hell if she wasn’t too invested to have it end.

But thankfully—so thankfully—Twilight just shrugged her shoulders and replied, “I’ve never thought about something like that.” And of course, in typical Pinkie fashion, that answer then opened the door to a brand-new sort of guessing game; one so similar to the one Rarity had already started but this time with two players instead of one.

So a vampire, Pinkie said again, but no, that wouldn’t do—Twilight may have appreciated their practical aspects, but she just as quickly listed off their detriments: the ever-present hunger, the impracticality of needing an invite into even a carriage, and of course the inescapable danger of the sun.

Maybe a werewolf, Pinkie tried next, but again Twilight shook her head. She considered it if only for a second longer than the first suggestion, much to Rarity’s chagrin, but once again counted out traits she wouldn’t want—becoming a slave to the moon’s strict cycles of course being the largest strike against it.

Then all sorts of inhuman monsters were struck down just as quick: harpies, dragonborn, centaurs, and even fauns, though that last one was apologetic enough that Pinkie didn’t seem to take it personally. Twilight made sure to emphasize her distaste was due to being quite accustomed to feet and skin and four appendages, and nothing more.

Each of Pinkie’s following guesses were turned down as quickly as she could think of them, and while Rarity quietly listened to their playful back-and-forth, a guess of her own started bubbling at the back of her mind.

Twilight knew quite a lot about monsterkind, even for a curious human.

Wasn’t there a certain type of monster that would also benefit from such detailed knowledge?

...Perhaps, one that might need to mimic the physical characteristics of a monster close enough so as to not ever be discovered.

“Well,” Rarity finally chimed in, “if I weren’t a vampire already, I’d certainly like to be a changeling from how the two of you are talking.” Her gaze never left Twilight the entire time she spoke. “Perhaps I’d even try my hand at being human.”

But Twilight’s reaction—or lack of one—didn’t give anything away. She simply raised her eyebrows a fraction of an inch and asked, “You’ve thought about it, then?”

“Hm?”

“About being human.” Her head tilted slightly, enough to shift her bangs and send a bit of her hair curving out over her shoulder. “Have you ever wanted to be one?”

What a silly question. “Of course not,” Rarity replied at the same time Pinkie shook her head and chirped out a cheerful, “Nope!”

Twilight tilted her head further to the side. “Really?”

“I like being me,” Pinkie said matter-of-factly. “If I were human, that’d be a different me. And that’s not the same thing, y’know?”

“Hm. I see.” That answer seemed enough for Twilight, at least. “And you, Rarity?”

Rarity blinked. Suddenly, explaining her answer seemed more daunting than even the angriest Ursa Major in the world. “I mean,” she said slowly, “I can’t say I haven’t entertained the idea of magic. And of course I envy anyone able to survive in sunlight, but...” She hesitated. Why had she been so confident in her response? Why was she so certain that she liked being a monster; a vampire?

Could I ever hate the negative aspects of myself enough to relinquish the positives?

“...I suppose my answer is the same as Pinkie’s,” she realized. “I’m quite fond of the person—well, monster, really—I am. And of course my sense of self isn’t all inconvenient sleep schedules, or draining dry out-of-towners no one’s wont to miss. It’s my background; my identity, in a way.” It was the connection she instantly had with other vampires, even far removed from home, and the way that strangers could feel more familiar than all other monsters in the world. “I don’t think I could trade that for anything.”

(She’d recognized herself in Fluttershy that fateful first night, long after the curtain had gone up and the stage had stayed bare and that calm, collected human had run out backstage door and toward the forest. She’d recognized herself in Fluttershy when blue lightning had severed air and too-close heads as a second human—no, former human—had appeared above the stage: the same panicked eyes and trembling hands and a fear so strong it strangled even screams.

Perhaps she’d known then. Perhaps that had been why she’d grabbed a stranger’s hand and dragged her along to safety when she’d fled. They were sisters by bond, even if not blood, and even if later Fluttershy had clarified that her bond was only half. Rarity didn’t care.

Whatever bond they shared was the reason they’d gotten out of that mess alive.)

Twilight remained silent for a moment after her answer, and Rarity didn’t need expressions to tell she’d lost herself in thought. Then—

“Monsters and humans must be similar,” she said to break the silence.

...Oh?

“Because, in the same way you both have never wanted to be human, I’ve never wanted to be a monster.”

Her words were confident and calm as ever, but it was only then that Rarity knew they were true—not because Twilight Sparkle was a liar, mind, but because such a statement wasn’t one many humans could truly state. After all, what lambs didn’t wish they’d been born lions? What could prey ever do but hope to wake one day with claws for fighting back?

“I don’t think most humans would agree with you,” Rarity said, careful to keep her voice even instead of accusatory. “Especially if your magical abilities are as out-of-the-ordinary as you’ve described.” A thought came to her, then, and she voiced it immediately: “Without magic, would you still be satisfied being human?”

(Changelings had no pride in their identities. How could they, if they spent all their time as someone other than themselves?)

She’d expected that Twilight would take some time to consider such a scenario—if not a good minute, then at least the same amount of time she’d taken to think about her and Pinkie’s answers just a moment earlier. But by the time the tail end of her question slipped past her tongue, Twilight had already dipped her head into a nod.

“I think so,” she said slowly, and Rarity could hardly believe her ears.

“Even without your magic?”

“Mhm.”

“Even,” she tried again, “if you weren’t anything but ordinary?”

Twilight nodded. “Even then,” she said, then carefully shrugged her shoulders up and down. “Besides. That’s the best part of being human.”

Pinkie’s eyes widened to nearly the size of saucers at that. “Being ordinary?”

“That you get to make yourself extraordinary.”

Rarity could clearly hear the smile in Twilight’s reply—even if she didn’t wear one on her lips. It sounded like satisfaction personified, with perhaps a hint of pride, and if it were anyone else she might have laughed at the very notion that a human could be anything but ordinary or insignificant or weak, but—

But she’s Twilight Sparkle, Rarity reminded herself. Her laughter died in her throat, and a sort of nausea rose from its corpse instead.

Just how far away from human was the threshold of ‘extraordinary’?

Her gaze dropped back to Twilight’s injured leg; back to those nearly-invisible veins and the wound she hadn’t felt, and a second question soon twisted into thought:

And what would a human have to do to surpass it?

It was so subtle that Rarity didn’t notice it until much, much later, curled half-asleep in satin sheets with thoughts of extraordinary humans coiled tightly round her mind.

Because, while Twilight Sparkle had said she’d never wanted to be a monster, and while Twilight Sparkle had said she’d still want to be human if given the choice...

...at no point could Rarity remember Twilight Sparkle ever saying that she was.

change·ling

1. a shapeshifting monster capable of transforming into human and monster alike

2. someone lacking a definitive sense of self or identity (derogatory)

3. not Twilight Sparkle

eros

Dawn crept closer by the second.

Rarity still remained hopelessly lost.

Of all the places, she whined internally, and nearly tripped over a rock she swore she’d already tripped over an hour ago. And of all the times!

Because of course her stupidly calm and infuriatingly collected human had led the way into the Everfree, and of course the laces on Rarity’s boot had to have come undone at the same time a feral’s screech had pierced the air, and by the time she’d triple-knotted and straightened up—

—Twilight was already gone.

(Her human. Not that Twilight was anyone’s property, mind, but more that if anyone had any right to be a bit possessive, it was Rarity.

After all, they’d spent so much time together; more than any other unintentional pairing of their little clique. Perhaps some of the blame lay with Celestia’s missions—but no, Rarity couldn’t fool herself there. Missions didn’t make dinner plans every Thursday. Missions weren’t why she secretly suffered through another chapter of another incomprehensible magic textbook each evening before bed.

And, most glaringly, missions weren’t the reason Rarity’s guessing game had turned from mere interest to curiosity and then to something else.

Infatuation was a funny thing, she knew. She knew her own heart better than anyone else, and knew even more of its unfortunate tendency to slide from affectionate to affection before she could catch it. As a child she’d called them crushes. As an adult, she’d found “heartaches” and “headaches” more suitable descriptors.

Because infatuation was a funny, absolutely irritating thing—especially when its subject had the emotional range of a rock.)

It’s like you don’t care, she thought to herself. Then, either out of spite or exhaustion or both, Rarity cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted as loudly as she could, “It’s like you don’t care!”

Silence.

Scowling, Rarity lowered her hands. She’d stopped walking somewhere between her last thought and the one before, though wherever she was now was no more familiar than the rest of the damned forest. And even worse: the sky had lightened.

Time was running out.

Some level of physical attraction was necessary for romance, Rarity could admit, and her current heartache was certainly no exception.

She was beautiful in the way that men usually weren’t, and handsome in the way that women sometimes were. And though Twilight Sparkle wasn’t exactly the vampiric prince from her long-decided fantasies, Rarity didn’t think she minded much anymore.

Except... even as she’d felt her feelings shift, and even as she’d subtly switched a few pieces of herself from friendly to flirty in response—a hand lingering too long here, a suggestive remark there—her usual probing tactics had, for the first time, fallen completely flat.

No reaction. No response. Just calm, collected, controlled neutrality, with no sign of reciprocation anywhere in sight.

It boiled Rarity’s blood, it did; right in her non-magical veins. Forget romance—what kind of friend could act like that? What kind of being could act so indifferent to anything and everything? Was it even an act? Did she care for a single person outside of the scope of duty?

Was she capable of feeling at all?

Her soon-to-be-grave was the least muddy and most shady spot she could find on the forest floor: a leafy patch half-beneath a shallow outcropping of rock and tree roots. If Rarity curled her knees to her chest and pressed her back against the mossy stone, she could just barely manage to keep all of herself out of the rapidly-strengthening sun.

(In a rapidly-shrinking shadow, mind. But Rarity didn’t want to think too hard about that.)

It was a horribly ironic setup. Such a dense forest shouldn’t have let much sun through its canopy at all! But no, that made too much sense, and the Everfree absolutely couldn’t have any of that, could it?

“Could have had a bit of paper and ink at this point,” Rarity mumbled into her knees. “If we’re on about not making sense and all. Forgot to pen my last will and testament this morning, see; quite silly of me, I know.”

Her one hand fiddled absently with the latch of her satchel as she spoke—the same satchel she’d searched a dozen times for anything she should have packed but didn’t. Sunblock, blood packs, flares, water, a leash to keep herself tethered to the one person capable of fighting ferals alone in the forest at the expense of her designated mission partner and supposed friend—

“If I die out here,” she breathed, barely above a whisper, “I’ll haunt you. All of you.” Her throat felt more parched than hell itself, but Rarity didn’t have the strength to care. Talking was a nice distraction. Better than thinking. Easier than thinking. “Celestia first—I’ll finally get to see Canterlot in sunlight won’t I? I could make a whole day of it, even. Would take the edge off of being dead, I’d surely hope.”

Oh, where to begin with Canterlot?

With Celestia herself?

“Perhaps I’ll finally ask you why,” Rarity said. Her thoughts ran into each other at the back of her mind at that: why she’d sent Twilight to Ponyville; why she’d chosen Rarity to bear an element; why she’d sealed her sister only until that fateful night and no longer than that; why she hadn’t bothered to come down and kill her herself.

Why the moon lich had needed to die by the hand of harmony, and why the moon lich had even been able to die at all.

Rarity knew Celestia would take those secrets to her grave—her impossible, immortally distant grave—but it didn’t stop her from wanting to ask about them anyway.

“I’ll go back to Ponyville after that,” she decided. “Surely Pinkie would have planned my funeral by then. It’d be terribly rude to miss it.”

She took some time to cross off each acquaintance and friend and family member on a mental list, wondering which of them would show and which would not. An imaginary procession played behind her bleary eyes as she did—tears and flowers and speeches and black dresses and a human in pitch-black suit—

“You’re last,” she interrupted herself. Even the Twilight of her imagination was aggravatingly calm, calm, calm. “I’ve a lot to say to you, so wait your turn.”

Surprisingly, the imaginary Twilight dipped her head in a nod. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll wait.”

Rarity blinked. Once, twice.

…That was new.

Maybe I’m a little less lucid than I’d thought.

When the hallucination didn’t go away even after a minute of blinking and a few pinches to her thigh, Rarity gave up and gave in: “What do you want?” she grumbled. “Here to see me to the afterlife, are you?”

Twilight, in her all-black funeral attire, tipped her head to the side and echoed, “What do you want?”

“To go home,” Rarity replied immediately. She pulled herself further back against the rock, but even curled as small as she was, the sunlight still tickled the toes of her boots. “To not die.”

The hallucination crouched down beside her and rocked backward onto her heels. She looked far too put-together for the Everfree—she didn’t make sense, and so of course that made the most sense to the Everfree instead. “You won’t die,” Twilight said simply.

“You don’t know that.”

“But you do.”

“I certainly do not,” Rarity hissed.

“You know I’m out there looking for you,” the hallucination continued. “You know I’m at least capable of concern.”

“I—”

“You know it’s not my fault you’re lost.”

Rarity snapped her mouth shut and glared back down at her knees. Any protests and complaints she came up with immediately withered in her blood-dry mouth. The hallucination was right.

(She’d stopped to tie her boot the same time a feral had sounded off a warning screech only a little bit ahead. Before Rarity had even processed how close it had been, Twilight had turned down to her and shoved one open and glowing palm toward her face.

“Wait here,” she’d said.

And Rarity had heard a bit of her collected calmness splinter at the force behind those words.)

“I wanted to help you,” she argued. The sensation of her laces knotting beneath her trembling fingers played over and over against her skin. “I could have helped you! You’re not untouchable; if something like that bite happened again—”

“You’re not untouchable,” the hallucination repeated in Twilight’s voice. She leaned in closer to Rarity, her expression uncaring and unchanged. Rarity so badly wished that she could shove her away. “I’m not untouchable, but neither are you.”

(She’d scrambled to chase after Twilight’s rapidly retreating shadow as soon as she’d pulled the knot taut. Whatever amount of concern she’d imagined in Twilight’s voice paled in comparison to her concern that the feral ahead was as bad as the Ursa or worse.

“Hold on,” she’d yelled, desperate to have her voice catch up even if her body would not. “Don’t you dare just tell me to wait!”

And her legs had pounded and her arms had shoved branches out of her path and her words had landed before they’d reached Twilight’s ears, and she’d stumbled out of the underbrush and into a clearing suspiciously more open than anywhere else in the forest—

—and then one, two, three timberwolves had collided with the brilliant magenta bubble that appeared around her with an electric snap, and four, five, six timberwolves had immediately leapt at the human who’d switched from slaughtering to saving without a second thought, and in that brief moment before claws met skin Twilight Sparkle had met Rarity’s terrified gaze across the clearing and calmly ordered, “Run.”)

“What does it matter?” Rarity breathed. Her voice came barely above a rasp; parched and gratingly dry. “I’m dying either way.”

The world was dark now, despite the sun burning down like noon at dawn. An empty blackness ringed the edges of her vision—empty and cold, a stark contrast to the heat creeping over her toes she could feel even through the leather of her boots.

“You won’t die.” The hallucination spoke again. Rarity could hardly make it out anymore.

I’m just about to prove you wrong, she wanted to reply, but couldn’t.

Perhaps if she’d listened to Twilight’s orders the first time she’d have avoided this whole mess entirely. No, not perhaps—of course she’d have avoided it. Because Twilight didn’t need her help with missions any more than she needed help with tea or laundry or folding her towels, and even if Rarity could justify her stubbornness with worry, well—

I’ve only gone and made my worry worse.

She’d listened the second time. And though her immediate obedience meant she hadn’t seen what happened next, her ears had still caught what her panic-wide eyes had not.

Humans aren’t supposed to sound like that.

Laughter. Anger. Panic. Tears.

Despite any physical differences, all monsters bore the same emotions within their souls. Rarity could always feel them eventually and with time enough: some volatile and some tranquil; some freezing and some boiling; some muted and some deafeningly, ear-splittingly loud. Emotions were what made them monsters, after all. Without them—and ignoring little things like consciousness or sentience—a monster would be no different than a feral.

But then came lightning and ozone. Collected and calm. A hollow and magical void where emotions should have been, yet perhaps never were.

Rarity had only ever met two beings with such an absence.

One had once been human.

The other was still pretending that she was.

The taste of sun-spoiled blood pulled Rarity back to the waking world in an instant. It soured on her tongue in clumps, and by the time her eyes snapped back open her throat had already closed into a dry, heaving retch.

“What,” she coughed. Blood bubbled over the curve of her bottom lip, then dribbled down. “What the hell is—”

And then Twilight Sparkle was there—the real one, dressed for ferals instead of funerals. She knelt in front of a makeshift canopy made from propped up branches and her claw-shredded jacket, a half-empty blood pack in one outstretched hand and the other clumsily thumbing away the red from Rarity’s chin.

“Sorry,” Twilight said quietly, her face faintly backlit by the sun. “I thought it’d still be good.”

You’re alive, Rarity tried to voice. It came out as another cough instead.

“The other pack’s just as warm, but you can try that one if you think it’ll—”

Rarity immediately shook her head and pushed Twilight’s hands away. It’d be no use. Blood kept its potency outside of bodies only in absence of sun. Too much light and too much heat was as good to a vampire as stepping outside into the sunlight herself.

At least Twilight had been prepared, she thought, though perhaps more bitterly than was appropriate. Even if spoiled blood was as useful as rotten meat.

Twilight said something else to her, but in her deep delirium Rarity didn’t hear. Her eyes drifted downward from Twilight’s instead—across exposed tattoos beneath a shredded shirt, over the still-seeping wounds peeking out beneath makeshift cloth bandages, and along the clearly self-cauterized scorch mark seared into the flesh of her stomach.

For a human, Rarity decided, Twilight Sparkle wore blood better than most. No, not just for a human; as a human too. Even starving, such a scent as copper tasted more perfume than wine.

She swallowed hard. Her fangs pressed needy to her lip. When had those formed?

But before she could will them away Twilight leaned forward again, and suddenly the heady stench of human metal was all her tongue could taste. It bled through her nostrils and ran between her lips and twisted through her starving, empty guts—how wretched of her, Rarity despaired. What wicked being could so cruelly taunt the dying with a lifeline dangled just a heartbeat out of reach?

...It was so terribly hard to not think thoughts sometimes. Especially when starved out of her mind.

Because even though the rational part of Rarity knew Twilight was just trying to help, the rest of her thoughts so easily drowned it out: she’s a monster; she MUST be; and a demonic one at that—

A word—a guess—immediately popped into her mind.

Succubus.

Desire came in all forms, be it carnal or primal or something else and more. And the same way different kinds of monsters could still call themselves the same, succubi needed only share the same modus operandi between them:

Lure. Corner. Strike.

And, Rarity realized with dawning dread, I don’t believe I can get much more cornered than this.

Her voice didn’t work. Her back was quite literally up against a wall. There was nothing she could say and nowhere she could run, and now that she was at her most vulnerable and most helpless, all Twilight had to do was unveil her true demonic form and shed her human disguise and sink her claws into Rarity’s heart and— and, well—

And then her thoughts didn’t get much further than that, because a hand gently nudged her head forward, and Rarity suddenly found herself staring down at a canvas of pale and bare tattooed skin.

What.

“Are you still with me?” Twilight asked. Her voice rang an inch away from Rarity’s ear, the muscles of her neck shifting slightly as she spoke.

Rarity wondered if she’d perhaps forgotten how to breathe. Somehow, she managed a nod.

“Okay.” The hand on the back of Rarity’s head nudged again. This time, she also registered the arm wrapped tight around her waist. “Try and be careful with my veins if you can.” A pause. “Both sets of them, please.”

And oh, how badly Rarity wanted to taste her; how badly she needed to feel Twilight’s life against her tongue. But she couldn’t—she couldn’t—

Not without knowing—

“...Why?” she choked out.

A single word. Dry as ash and just as painful to force up through her throat.

Twilight hummed a thoughtful note. She remained so composed; so nonchalant and calm. “Where else am I going to find blood in the Everfree?”

She nudged Rarity again. This time, Rarity let her head dip until her nose met the curve of Twilight’s neck and her lips pressed against the hollow of her throat.

Trembling, she closed her eyes.

She could feel two heartbeats, then: her own, erratic and rapid and desperately pounding against her ribs, and Twilight’s.

Slow and steady and uncaring and unbothered and bored.

She tasted human. She should have been human.

But Rarity now knew for sure that she was not.

suc·cu·bus

1. a lesser carnivorous demon known for seducing prey with unfulfilled desire

2. not Twilight Sparkle

agape

One year ago, the Summer Sun Celebration set the wheels of the Plan in motion.

That fateful evening the human ran out through the backstage door, and the moon lich appeared above the stage, and Rarity and Fluttershy and just three others managed to escape from the town hall in time. They didn’t dare look back; only forward, and only toward the cursed forest that had swallowed the visiting human whole.

(“We go after her,” Rainbow had decided immediately. No one had dared try to disagree.

“Because she’s alone,” Fluttershy had reminded them, again and again. She’d held Rarity’s hand so tightly in her own the entire trek. “She doesn’t have a pair.”

“And she’s a human,” Applejack had added. The full moon had pulled the beast from under her skin, and—in what seemed a stroke of luck—she’d soon taken charge at the front of their group with her nose locked sharp to the human’s scent.

“Which,” Pinkie had finished for her, “means she’s in danger.” A pause. “Or already dead.”

“Or,” Rarity had said slowly, “she’s working with that terrible lich.” She hadn’t wanted to say it, but she’d known it weighed on all their minds regardless.

The moon lich had also once been human, after all.)

The trail ended where the castle began—a castle Rarity knew existed from legend, but hadn’t ever expected to see with her own two eyes. The forest’s influence still clung to it, but as they carefully climbed its crumbling steps the atmosphere around them turned muted; distant. Like the tightly-wound ends of a string about to—

SNAP

Light erupted from the castle’s foyer the second Rarity’s foot hit the final step. It flashed through the empty entrance and the ghosts of its long-rotted doors in an instant, blinding and brilliantly bright.

Then it faded.

And then Rarity saw the human turn around.

(Even back then there was no word more fitting for Twilight Sparkle than calm.)

“Oh,” she said, and lowered her still-sparking hands. “You followed me.”

Her face was pale from the moonlight and overcast from the shadow of the circular pedestal towering over the centre of the foyer. The remnants of magic danced between her palms—no, not just her palms, Rarity realized, but also across the surface of the massive stone sphere atop the pedestal and the five smaller orbs splayed outward from its base.

“Yeah,” Applejack bit back, “we did.”

“Hm.” The still-unnamed human’s gaze raked over them, piercing yet entirely uninterested at the same time. Her eyes never met Rarity’s; they looked through them. As if she weren’t even there. Then, she turned back to the pedestal and raised her hands without another word.

Another flash. Another snap.

That time, Rarity saw lightning arc from the human’s fingertips to the orbs.

“What are you doing?” she called out. Cautiously; accusatory.

Flash. Snap. No response.

Fluttershy squeezed her hand just a little bit tighter. “Rarity,” she whimpered, “maybe we shouldn’t—“

“You know something about what happened back there, don’t you?”

Flash. Snap. Still no response.

“Are you trying to help us?”

Flash. Snap.

“Or are you working with that lich?”

Fla—

The human squeezed her hands to fists before the next burst of light could escape. It smothered to darkness in her grip at the same time her shoulders tensed and the heels of her boots pressed harder into overgrown tiling. “I’m not,” she said, her voice ice.

“Right,” Rainbow snorted. She cocked her wings. “Like it’s just a coincidence you show up the same day as—“

“I’m not.”

She whipped around to face them again, and this time her collected demeanor cracked crooked down its porcelain centre—lips pulled taut and narrowed eyes beneath a furrowed, shadowed brow. “I,” she answered coldly, “was sent here to stop her.”

Pinkie tilted her head quizzically. “Sent? By who?”

“I don’t have time for your questions.” She pointed one finger toward them—no, past them—and warned, “She’ll have followed me too. So if you’d like to avoid becoming collateral damage, I’d suggest that you leave.” Flash. “Now.”

CRACK

(Rarity remembered a good many things about that night. The following moment in particular stood out as strong as a photograph. Though, memories weren’t limited to only visuals; she’d felt and watched and heard and smelt so many different sensations combined as one:

Felt the air turn hot against her skin.

Watched the orbs flash white behind the human, then remain charged; electric and magical.

Heard the air split. Heard an unnatural crack.

Smelt metal. Iron. Blood.)

Blue lightning tore through the air and across the foyer in an instant. It burst from the entrance behind their backs—grazing Pinkie’s shoulder and catching Applejack’s foreleg with shock strong enough to make her yelp—before slamming into the human and knocking her past the pedestal into the opposite wall with a bang.

Ah, Rarity managed. The human slowly crumpled to the floor. Collateral damage.

Metal surged again against her nostrils, chemical and burnt—

“MOVE!” Rainbow screamed.

And then the lich fired another bolt at their backs, and then the world shattered to pieces in Rarity’s grip.

Her eyes snapped open seconds—minutes?—later staring into stone. Something like firecrackers exploded in her peripherals. Her skin felt like fire. The right side of her body screamed with a sensation Rarity knew only then as agony. Get up, she tried to tell herself. The numbness in her legs was almost painful. Get up, get up, get up!

Somehow, despite the ringing in her ears and the pounding inside her skull, she managed to lift her head enough to catch a glimpse of the rest of the room.

Applejack lay dead-centre in the entranceway, her fur smoldering and charcoal black. Rainbow mirrored her motionless pose not even a metre away; Rarity could smell feathers burning; could see the smoke rising from limp and broken wings. She let her head roll to the side a little, and soon Pinkie entered her vision slumped against a half-smashed pillar. There was no sign of Fluttershy, but visuals alone didn’t matter—her hand clung to Rarity’s even through complete decimation, unmoving yet inseparable in the blind spot at Rarity’s side.

Get up, she reminded herself. Her temples throbbed with every word she thought. She raised her head a little more, enough to catch her chin on the corner of a bit of shattered tile and prop her vision up—

“You’re nowhere near strong enough to kill me, child.”

The lich spoke like a lunar desert. Her voice rang cold and dry and empty of any sort of life; a hollow tone dragged unwilling out of a bored, unfeeling void. She towered over the central pedestal in tattered robes that extended far past where bare feet walked on air, silvery fabric dangling black against ancient flooring like a softer sibling.

Her words landed at the foot of the pedestal. There, the human stood—but barely; Rarity thought her shaking legs might give way beneath the added weight of her gaze—with one hand flat against the only orb in reach. A magenta-tinted bubble of magic separated her and the pedestal from reach of the lich. Her other arm dangled limp at her side. Red oozed dark against her hair and scalp. Blood caked her clothes from collar to boot.

“I can’t kill you,” the human deadpanned. “You’re a lich.”

“Ha!” If liches could smile, perhaps the corners of the moon lich’s mouth would have twisted into a glee-filled grin. “I’d forgotten you’d believe that of me. A well-read and well-informed human; it’s quite nearly cute. Or...” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Am I perhaps mistaken?”

“Am I?”

Light flashed from beneath the human’s trembling hand. Electric magic surged up from the orbs again, and this time the current didn’t stop—it hissed and popped and burned upward through the human’s arm to her shoulder in a crackling current of pure white energy—

—only to sputter out to nothingness before even a second passed. The human exhaled sharply as it did. Her barrier wavered. Smoke snaked out between her lips. “I’m not trying to kill you,” she gasped between heaving breaths. “I don’t want to kill you, and without knowing where you’ve sealed your soul I can’t.”

The moon lich nearly raised her eyebrows. She lazily flicked one finger toward the human, and instantly an electric blue bolt collided against the barrier with a hollow crack.

“I just need to— I just need enough magic—”

“Potential is limited,” the lich cut in. “And I think it’s clear to the both of us you’ve reached yours.”

“No,” the human protested. Her voice cracked from strain; not emotion. “I found the Elements— I’m the one Celestia chose to stop y—”

Lightning struck. That was the only way to describe the blinding light that seared Rarity’s vision to white, then black, and the only way to describe the sound of a magical barrier shattered to splinters. The smell hit her before she could blink her eyesight back—chemical, burnt, and tangibly static on her skin.

Ozone.

Her temples squeezed her skull. Despite the pain, another thought forced its way forward:

Get up, Rarity.

(She wasn’t quite sure how she did it. Even memories had gaps in their reels. But one moment she was facedown at death’s doorstep, and the next she was on her hands and knees, and then before she knew it she was standing—wounded and shaky, but still standing nonetheless.)

“Come on,” she hissed through gritted teeth. Her eyes were half-blinded, but it was easy enough to reach back down for Fluttershy’s hand and pull. “Come on, get up, get up.”

For all the blood she tasted in the air, Rarity knew that no source’s pulse had stopped. Not hers. Not any of her friends’.

And, surprisingly, not even the human’s.

The silhouette of the moon lich cut through her vision with strong, sharp lines. She’d lowered herself to stand on mortal ground, ankle-deep in the ocean of her silver-black robes and with one extended arm pinning the human to the pedestal by the throat. The bare skin of her back and her arms seemed brilliant blue for a moment, until Rarity blinked the fuzz from her vision and the blue retreated to a pattern of haphazard, spiderwebbed lines of light across her skin.

To Rarity, those lines looked the same as shattered stone.

“My sister sent you?” The lich’s voice remained even, despite her sudden shift in poise. Her fingers tensed. Skin yielded beneath their tips. “How aggravating.”

The human opened her mouth to reply, but no sound—or air—came out.

“Well. I doubt those all-seeing eyes of hers have blinded,” the lich continued. “By now she will have seen I have not changed. That I will not, and cannot change.” Her grip slackened slightly, enough to let red rush back to whitened skin, and enough to allow the human to draw a slow, shallow breath. “If I am to be a monster because of her, then it is only fair I behave a monster in return.”

Rarity tensed at that. Behind the lich, most of her friends’ bodies did the same.

“She knows not of the compulsion a lich has to fill their void, child. She knows nothing of emptiness, or of want.”

“You’re dangerous,” the human rasped.

“I cannot change that.” The lich raised her other arm. Suddenly, the patterns along her skin pulsed so blue they seemed brighter than white. “My sister was a fool to send you.” Her free hand clenched to a fist, and immediately the orbs atop the pedestal lit up with crackling blue. “No human of your potential could withstand the Elements, and no human of your potential could ever use them to take my life.”

One by one the orbs—well, the Elements, as Rarity decided they probably were—quivered in their cradles. Just like before, the magical lightning spread until the entire pedestal was coated in a thin electric veil; unlike the human’s attempts, the lich’s magic then easily sank beneath their stone surfaces until not a single spark remained.

And immediately, the air thickened in a way that made the hair on the back of Rarity’s neck stand up on end.

“They won’t... kill you...” the human echoed. Her hand frantically repeated the same flash and snap pattern she’d done before, but to no avail. “Just... destroy... body.”

“Celestia told you that, did she?” Her grip tightened again before the human could speak. “And you fell for it?”

The human’s hand stilled. She drew a weak breath through gritted teeth; enough to gasp out, “Fell?”

“Though...” The lich squeezed harder. Somehow, despite the pressure surely strangling her, the human remained upright and conscious and calm enough to return the lich’s curious gaze with a cold, determined glare. “...perhaps her lie served another purpose, too.”

The human’s eyes narrowed further. Magenta light blazed to life beneath the nearly-sheer white of her blouse in response—

—just as the Elements detonated in an explosion of light.

Rarity’s instincts kicked in before her mind, and before she knew it she’d pulled Fluttershy up and back from the centre of the foyer just mere seconds before a chunk of what was once an Element slammed into the ground they’d occupied a heartbeat before. “Hells below,” she swore. “Darling, are you—”

“My leg,” Fluttershy whimpered. The ruins trembled beneath their feet. The light refused to fade. “I think— I think it’s still broken—”

Damn it. “Alright; don’t move.” Rarity eased Fluttershy back down to the floor, this time behind a broken pillar just tall enough to shield them both from the glare. She’d forgotten, then, as she often did, that half-bloodborne healed only half as fast, if that. “Stay here, okay?”

“The others,” Fluttershy tried, and grabbed one of Rarity’s hands with both of her own. “Are they—”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you—”

“I’ll try,” Rarity finished, before the question was even asked. The light wasn’t like the sun’s, but her fear reared its head all the same at the prospect of venturing into its range. And toward the lich. But she had no other choice. From what she’d already seen, no one else was in any state to save themselves.

Vampiric healing was such a shame in that regard.

Slowly, and only after she managed to extract her hand from Fluttershy’s grip, Rarity peered out from behind the pillar to survey the room. The explosion seemed a one-time event—thankfully—and though the ground still shook, it seemed stable enough to hold. The rest of her friends lay scattered near the entrance, appearing no more injured than before but still injured all the same.

Then something at the foot of the pedestal moved.

Rarity’s gaze darted over in time to see the lich toss the human’s body back against the floor. She landed hard; hard enough to smack her head against the pedestal with a crack, and yet no sign or sound of pain escaped her in response. Instead she merely lay there, motionless and with a glare so cold the lich seemed at risk of frostbite.

“It won’t be enough,” she told the lich. “You know that.”

The lich did not respond. Above them, the light from the Elements churned as a writhing sphere.

“Celestia told me how to help you. I can save you.”

“You’ll kill me,” the lich said flatly. “You’ve not been told the entire truth. Such a plan as purification will never work on me.” Finally, her gaze dropped to meet the human’s with an icy-cold stare of her own. “And even if it could, you certainly couldn’t be the one to perform it.”

That was good enough of an opportunity for Rarity; with the lich now looking directly away from her, she would hopefully be too focused on her conversation to pay anyone else any mind. Quickly, she pushed herself to her feet and tiptoed along the edge of the room toward the others as fast as she could. Pinkie was the closest—she groaned weakly when Rarity knelt down at her side, but her breathing remained shallow and her eyes stayed closed. Head injury, she guessed. Not good.

“It’s alright,” she whispered, even if her words weren’t completely truthful. “You’re fine.”

A few metres away, Applejack’s ears twitched at the sound of her voice, and she began to stir. “Rarity?” she grunted. “That... you?”

“Hush, dear. But yes,” she added, “it’s me.”

“Everyone... alive?”

“As far as I can tell.”

“Wish I weren’t,” Rainbow croaked from Applejack’s other side. “I want to die. Let me die. Everything hurts.”

“Hush!” Rarity hissed. “The lich will hear—”

“Good; maybe she’ll put me out of my misery—”

“What’s the plan?” Applejack cut in. She’d lowered her voice as much as possible, but it still came out halfway like a growl. “Run? Fight?”

Rarity shook her head at that. “No, we can’t fight. Escaping is the only thing I can think might save us.” She hesitated. “But...”

“The human.” It wasn’t a question; Applejack knew. That, despite their noble intentions, the only thing they’d accomplished by following the human was putting their own lives at risk. Sunk-cost at its finest, and at its worst.

“...I don’t think we can help her.”

“Mm.” Slowly, Applejack raised her head. Her haunches shuddered from strain, but eventually she managed to push herself to stand on all four legs. “Alright,” she agreed, and fixed Rarity with a pained yet pointed look. “We run.”

The plan was for Applejack to carry Pinkie, and for Rarity to support Rainbow, and for Fluttershy to follow them as soon as her leg had healed. It was risky, and perhaps a bit cruel to abandon the most timid of them all even temporarily, but it was the only plan Rarity put any stock in that had a chance to save all of their lives.

Unfortunately, plans—and especially ones with a capital P—never seemed to work the way she’d hoped.

The Summer Sun Celebration had happened exactly a year ago.

(And, it also was happening that very day, Rarity pointed out to herself, because that was how annual holidays happened to work.)

“You seem distracted.”

“Not distracted,” Rarity replied, slipping from memories back to reality in an instant. “Just thinking.”

She stood behind Twilight in the centre of the same crumbling castle ruins she’d seen seconds ago in her mind’s eye. The empty pedestal cast a thin shadow over them just barely visible under the bright moon. This time it was just the two of them—no friends, and no moon lich. And if not for the circumstances, Rarity might have found their current arrangement preferable.

(A year hadn’t changed the castle much, she found. Not in the same way it had changed her.)

“It’s hard to not think about what happened, you know.” She kicked a bit of stone to emphasize her point; it skittered across the ground until it bounced to a stop in a bit of dirt. Perhaps it had once been an Element. Perhaps it hadn’t. “Coming back here tonight of all times... Well, I can’t say I’m exactly thrilled.”

“It’s just a mission,” Twilight said slowly. She looked over her shoulder at Rarity and tipped her head. “Orders are orders, right?”

“...Right.”

Twilight turned back to her scroll, and Rarity resumed trying to stare a hole into one of the sleeves of her shirt. She recognized the cut of it; recognized the white fabric she’d so painstakingly bleached all those weeks before. It almost made her hesitate—but no. Glares were glares, and Rarity wasn’t going to let something as silly as a shirt stop her from being as bitter as possible.

Because Twilight Sparkle was a liar, not a human.

And Rarity was pretty confident her next guess would be her last.

What sound did human bodies make when overloaded past the limits of their potential?

Rarity hadn’t intended to find the answer to that question the night the moon lich died, but she found it before she’d even thought of asking it, and at the exact same time she slung Rainbow’s arm around her shoulders and pulled her battered body to its feet:

Firecrackers?

An electric pop-pop-pop rang out from the centre of the foyer, followed by a terrible crackling noise and the heavy stench of ozone mixed with burning flesh. Rarity flinched at the the sound of it and whipped around to see if they’d been spotted—

She made eye contact with the moon lich.

Hells below and heavens.

They were doomed.

The lich hovered above the pedestal, completely enveloped in the Elements’ light and with her own electric-blue magic pouring from the cracked lines across her skin. Even if she was no longer human, it didn’t take much thought to know that no being in all of Equestria was meant to look or be or sound like that.

And as Rarity remained frozen beneath the moon lich’s terrifying gaze, and as Rainbow muffled her pained cries into her shoulder, and as Applejack struggled to lift Pinkie onto her back, and as Fluttershy scrambled to drag herself away from the lich and toward the rest of their group—

—the lich calmly raised one burning, smoking arm toward them, and snapped.

And then the world shattered to pieces again.

If only for a moment.

Because then the light faded, and the world returned, and somehow, Rarity found she was still alive.

The remains of a magenta-coloured bubble winked out of existence around her and the others before she could even process it had appeared. Startled, she glanced up at the moon lich, but only found the ghost of her own shock reflected in her expressionless and magic-scorched face.

In fact, no one seemed more surprised at what had just happened than the human slumped against the pedestal with one shaking arm outstretched.

“Oh,” said the human. Her face twisted to an expression Rarity nearly mistook as confusion before settling back to calm. “That’s... odd.”

Odd?

The lich raised her arm to strike again, and this time Rarity clearly saw the human move even faster than that—an electric snap, a magenta wall, and the terrible crash of blue lightning colliding just inches away from her face. Yet, throughout the entire motion the human’s expression didn’t change.

“Odd indeed,” the lich echoed. Her once-dry voice had taken on the qualities of magic: sharp and charged enough to hurt. “Perhaps your potential is higher than I’d thought.” She lowered her arm. “Perhaps even half as high as mine.”

The moon lich was fully aflame, now. The ends of her hair dissolved to ashes and light; the patterns across her skin no longer just mimicked cracks, but truly were. Rarity knew her own expression must have been one of horror, and yet despite it all both the lich and the human remained collected, composed, and calm.

How could they?

“You shouldn’t die,” the human said slowly, though now her words didn’t seem as certain as before. “You’re a lich. Your body doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t be so certain.”

The light was fading, now. Whatever power the Elements had released seemed to be running out. As they dimmed, so too did the lich and her presence—she faded and floated downward to walk among mortals as a dying star. When she landed beside the human, calm as ever, Rarity swore she saw something akin to pity reflected in her gaze.

“You tried your best, child,” the lich said, and reached down toward the human with one electric, sparking hand. “Now, rest.”

Rarity felt Applejack tense up behind her; felt Rainbow try raise her still-broken wings in fury. But instead of fear or anger, Rarity only felt guilt bleed from the pits of her heart. Was that it? For all their efforts, could they not save a single being other than themselves?

Why had they tried at all?

And then—

“Don’t!”

Rarity blinked. Whose voice was that?

Then the lich turned to her, and then she realized: it was mine.

“Wait your turn,” the lich intoned, and thrust her hand downward toward the human’s skull—

CRACK

Her palm collided with a tangible lightthat sparked to life between the human and her hand. It was the same bright white as the Elements, and just as electrically charged—the lich’s arm rebounded in a trail of smoke and scattered sparks. Then, as the lich stumbled back a step, Rarity felt something light a fire beneath her ribs, and then that same something was under her skin and in her lungs and around her tongue and between her thoughts.

Give and help and save and try and

Monsters didn’t have magic.

hold and never take your share and

But if they did,

give and give and give and give

somehow Rarity knew that terrible incompatibility would have felt

until you’ve nothing left to bear

a lot like being possessed.

Magic was a monster itself, see. Suddenly she wasn’t just Rarity, but something more. The Element that had claimed her whispered nothings of fate and destiny and Plans into their shared ears in passing, as if the fact she and the others had gotten mixed up in its mess was everything else but chance—but Rarity knew better. Rarity knew the truth.

Because, magic was meant for humans. But it seemed the Elements preferred finding humanity in monsters over giving themselves up to the lich.

We’re a blessing, hers had told her, and she’d believed only as long as it had stayed. Time moved in eternities and all at once in its presence. The seconds between the Elements breaking free of the moon lich and splitting to new hosts passed as slowly as a hundred years. But they were hosts in plural only physically, if that—in that centurial moment five other minds moved in tandem against her thoughts so quickly she almost mistook them as her own.

Then the human raised her arm again. Light sparked against her palm.

Rarity felt a hand wrap around her borrowed magic the same time the human’s fingers curled around air, and in that moment she was everyone and no one; a vampire and a seamstress and an Element and a monster and a curse disguised as a blessing so very desperate to be freed—

—and one-sixth of the overcharged magical circuit the human unleashed on the lich.

Lightning. Ozone.

Flash.

SNAP

Rarity blinked.

Suddenly, her thoughts were her own again.

Suddenly, the Elements were gone.

Twilight’s shirt remained white and unburned.

Rarity remained sullen and scowling and hurt.

Everything she wanted to ask, she couldn’t, and everything she could have asked she didn’t want to.

Can you feel anything? Can you care?

Does what happened a year ago weigh on you at all?

The moon lich lay motionless in the centre of a smoking crater cut clean through the ground. Her skin had charred. Her eyes were still.

She did not move.

A great burden lifted from Rarity’s shoulders at the sight of her body—only to immediately be replaced by a different, heavier weight. If, truly, they’d somehow killed the lich, what then? What of the lives lost back in Ponyville? What of the Elements; the magic? What of us?

So many thoughts, but so little energy to think. Rarity couldn’t bring herself to voice a single one.

“...Liches can’t die like this.”

The human’s voice calmly cut the heavy silence in half. Rarity nodded along to her words, even if she didn’t fully understand them. Right. Of course they couldn’t.

“We’ve... It’s just her physical form. That’s all.”

Couldn’t they?

Because, the body in the crater looked remarkably dead to Rarity’s experienced eyes. Dying at the minimum. Sure, she hardly tasted any blood that wasn’t cinders, but that wasn’t exactly a good sign considering the rest of the lich—burnt and blackened and broken, with dying embers in place of the once-blue patterns along her skin. If they’d been shattered glass before, now they were full fissures empty of whatever life they’d once carried as spiderwebbed veins.

Then, she noticed the moon lich’s eyes.

Oh.

That wasn’t supposed to be possible.

She’s... crying.

Two impossible possibilities ran together that moment in the tears of a dying lich. Her body lay still and her expression remained stone, but those tears bubbled over beneath blank eyes all the same. And while Rarity didn’t completely understand their conditional immortality, she did know one thing for certain: liches, without their souls, didn’t and couldn’t cry.

“Hm.” The human spoke again, this time as she used the side of the pedestal to push herself to her feet. “That’s odd, too.”

“Isn’t she a lich?” Rarity whispered, having finally found her voice.

“Yes. She is.”

“But—”

“She is,” the human repeated, and oh how sure she sounded then. Rarity had no grounds to doubt her with that tone. “It... it must be an involuntary response. Some sort of leftover signal from her physical body, carried through whatever life it has left.” Her expression chilled at that. She took a stilted step toward the crater’s edge and raised her arm. “Here. I’ll put her out of her mis—”

The lich moved.

She jerked upright before Rarity and the others could protest the human’s words, her tear-drowned eyes wide and unblinking and aligned inches from the human’s outstretched palm. Rarity flinched at the sudden motion. The human did not.

Then, with her crumbling body and the rivers running down her cheeks, the lich reached one charcoal arm up and pressed the human’s hand down against her forehead.

“Do not,” she rasped, “end up... like me.”

She and the human held their gazes for a moment longer than a heartbeat.

Somehow, Rarity thought it looked like they’d both recognized a stranger.

But then the moment ended, and then the human’s palm crackled to life with light, and then the lich fell away from the human and back to the ground with eyes no longer dying but dead.

(That hadn’t been her plan, Twilight had confided in Rarity months later, when she was no longer just a nameless human but the human and friend Rarity so hesitantly loved. She’d blindly followed orders as a cog in some grand, divine machine only one person in all of Equestria knew how to operate, and as a result had impossibly managed to kill the unkillable.

The moon lich had been right.

“But you still work for her,” Rarity had pointed out then, side by side on her little couch.

“I do,” Twilight had answered.

“Well, I know I would be more than a little upset if I were in your shoes, darling.” Nevermind that she wore her own shoes already, and had unwillingly become part of the Plan’s machine herself.

“I... I can’t blame her for hiding the truth.”

“Why not?”

“Because I understand why, now,” she’d said softly, “and I wish that I did not.”)

It was the Summer Sun Celebration.

The moon lich died.

Celestia lied.

Twilight Sparkle moved to Ponyville.

Do not end up like me.

Back at the castle, the end of Rarity's mental film reel ran to a halt, and the dam pushing back against the pressure of her emotions finally broke.

“I’m only here because you wanted to follow the rules,” she finally blurted out. “You just needed a pair. I know the letter you got tonight didn’t include my name.”

She was fully present, now, back from all her memories of the not-so-distant past. The ruins hadn’t crumbled any more while she’d been gone, and Twilight hadn’t moved an inch from where she stood. At the sound of Rarity’s voice she looked up from her scroll again and nearly frowned. “Maybe I wanted company, too,” she said.

“Ha. Very funny.”

“I’m not joking.” Twilight carefully closed the scroll with a soft snap and turned to Rarity before continuing, “Pairs were an excuse. I’d rather you were here than do this alone.”

Her eyes, Rarity noticed, then. They’re almost scared.

At that, her anger crumpled away to a dull sort of worry at the pit of her anxious stomach. She may have felt slighted; she may have been hurt; but none of that mattered in the face of the impossible—or, in the face of her dearest friend feeling an impossible pain.

“What’s wrong?” she asked immediately. “What kind of feral does she want this time?”

“Not a feral,” Twilight corrected. “A spell.”

“A spell?” That was new. And considering how annual holidays worked, and what day—night—it was, Rarity didn’t exactly know how to feel about that.

“It’s not that I don’t know how to do it. I’ve been preparing for a ye— for a while, but—”

Rarity felt the blood drain from her face at that. It was only a minor trip of the tongue; a single slipped syllable, but in the context of who they worked for it was as damning as a stake.

“A year,” she whispered. “You said a year.”

A pause. Then: “Rarity, I—”

“This is part of her Plan, isn’t it?”

(A Plan that Rarity barely knew existed, much less what it was meant to do. She’d only pieced parts of it together from a few glances at dragonfire letters, and a few passing conversations she wasn’t sure weren’t planned for her to overhear. Sisters. Ferals. Celestia. The moon lich.

“A year should be enough time, Twilight.”

And, in the heading of the letter she’d caught a glimpse of that evening before Twilight had tucked it away:

Tonight.)

Twilight hesitated. That was an answer in and of itself. “It won’t affect you,” she tried, “I promise, just listen—”

“Show me the letter.”

“Rarity—”

“Show me the letter, Twilight!”

She didn’t have any right to victory, then. She was just Rarity. She wasn’t any sort of threat. Twilight could have ignored her or subdued her or torn her right to shreds—but she didn’t. Instead, she stood in silence for what felt like a full eternity before she relented and slowly raised her hand.

“Fine,” she said quietly, and raised her arm with the scroll—the letter—clutched tight within her fist. “Just... promise you’ll let me explain afterward. Okay?”

The air turned to ozone. Her tattoos crackled to life with light. She tossed the scroll across the room to Rarity, then turned away.

The Plan had started.

Rarity caught it with trembling hands, and read.

My faithful student,

Tonight your role in my sister’s rebirth comes to an end. I am sure that receiving this letter is enough to confirm your suspicions, but for the sake of formality—and perhaps a bit of self-indulgence—allow me to pen your instructions a final time. You have done so well; it would not do for my negligence to cause failure at your final hurdle.

However, before I do so, permit me a word of caution not as your ruler, but as your mentor: do not exceed your limits tonight. I recognize the steps you have taken to increase your potential under my guidance, and while I appreciate your dedication to my cause, your actions after last year’s events have given me cause for concern. Failing to withstand the Elements did not mean you failed me. There was no need to take another step down such a risky path; I already had full faith in your potential and in your abilities. Was the moon lich not warning enough? It is senseless to make your only weakness the source of your strength. I can only pray I do not need to choose a second student come tomorrow, for both our sakes.

Now, with this in mind, your instructions this evening are as we have previously discussed. Return to my ancestral home. Channel the Elements. Make a connection to the Place I Cannot Tread. You have released enough of the forest’s beasts to facilitate a single deal; I trust that one attempt will be sufficient.

When she returns, give name to her vessel. She will be human again. Make sure of this—she cannot and must not ever defy me again as a lich.

Call her Luna.

That is all.

Necromancy.

That was the Plan, Rarity realized. Of course it was—how had she been so blind? What other purpose would dead ferals serve? Why else would the Divine need a mortal for their dirty work?

What kind of sister would want hers summoned as a thrall?

But it was too late for questions then. By the time she’d finished the letter and snapped her gaze up from its text, Rarity saw that the surface of the empty pillar in front of Twilight had already begun to ripple with electric light. No, not just the pillar. She was magic too, with both palms raised parallel to her shoulders and with the horrible sound of firecrackers sparking beneath her skin.

Hells below and heavens, and all else in between.

Then Twilight pressed her hands against the pedestal. Light flashed blinding.

Rarity’s heart dropped to her stomach.

SNAP

Unlike the last time, the Elements didn’t fizzle out within Twilight’s grip. Instead, they answered her call from the fragments of their former selves, heralded with a chorus of thunderclaps and ushered by ozone into a body whose potential had somehow become enough—but barely, and only just. The stench of ash joined ozone all too soon. Tattoos burned deeper. Hair caught flame.

Oh, how badly Rarity hoped her guess was right.

Twilight’s hands twisted outward, and suddenly there was ice around Rarity’s neck in an imagined noose. Wind whipped up from nothingness; her vision chilled to a greenish-blue hue; her heartbeat drowned in the deafening roar of an endless ocean invisible beneath her feet. Hell came with high waters, after all, as well as with the wails of the doomed—a grim reminder that the sea of souls lay merely a realm away.

Hands clawed at Rarity’s ankles. What felt like them, at least. Her overcast eyes saw nothing amidst the storm but Twilight, burning to ashes from the inside out, and herself, frozen at the edge of their reality. She couldn’t find the strength to kick the hands away. She couldn’t move at all.

Then Twilight said something beneath the wind, and the ocean screamed.

(Rarity hadn’t ever thought that forests could bleed, but that was the only way she could describe what happened next.)

Ghostly pale light ran liquid from the Everfree itself: from stone, from trees, and from the very air. It poured downward into the forest floor, seeped between their realms, and vanished into the unseen sea. And, as the forest bled itself dry, a similar light began to pool atop the central pedestal in an equivalent amount.

A single deal, Rarity remembered. One attempt.

The ocean drank and the light pooled and the doomed howled louder than the wind. Another set of fingers wrapped around Rarity’s calves. The light above the pedestal grew larger and larger, surpassing even the largest of humans with its formless and liquid shape.

Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, Hell pulled its oceans away from their realm with a static snap. Instantly the wind and sea and screams vanished to deafening silence. The hands slipped back beneath invisible waves. The chill vanished, and the world regained colours other than greens and blues: the purples of moonlit shadows, the oranges of embers burning away to black.

Twilight removed her hands from the pedestal in the stillness, and the Elements released her even faster than the sea. They left in a cloud of smoke and starlight exhaled thick between her lips, and immediately the rest of her magic followed suit. The scent of ozone faded, and her skin dimmed, and a rainbow of reds again blossomed through the fabric a once-white shirt.

“Right,” she said calmly, as if they’d merely weathered a summer shower, and turned back to Rarity. “Looks like it worked.”

And Rarity could only stare at her, dumbfounded, with a thousand curses rattling round the inside of her skull. It was so hard to think coherent thoughts sometimes, especially when all of them were true.

“That’s the hard part out of the way, really. So if you give me another minute finish up, we might be able to make it back to town in time fo—”

“To Ponyville?” Rarity blurted out before she could stop herself. “Like that?”

Twilight blinked almost innocently. “Like what?”

“Twilight Sparkle, if you make me repeat myself again, so help me—”

She didn’t get to finish her sentence. A thunderous screech tore through her words before she could, and just as the thing on the pedestal convulsed in her peripherals, a magenta bubble popped into existence around her and Twilight a split second before something electric collided against it with a crack.

“Oh,” Twilight said calmly, and spun back around on her heel and raised her hands. “That’s not right.”

And indeed it wasn’t. The remnants of the liquid light had finally solidified to something human shaped, but the similarities ended there—its electrically-charged hair spilled in a too-long twisted waterfall over its pale and naked body; its limbs ended in pointed claws instead of nails and fingers; its skin stretched taut over a bestial skeleton it wasn’t meant to fit; and its once-expressionless face was filled with gaunt black voids for eyes and a gaping maw of drool and fangs. It stood atop the pedestal hunched on two legs, but barely, and in a body meant to walk on four.

Somehow, its throat rasped an agonized wail. Impossible tears spilled endlessly out from pools of black.

“The moon lich,” Rarity breathed, horrified. “That’s her.”

“But that’s not right,” Twilight repeated, her face calm despite the unusual strain rising in her voice. “The deal worked; our survival makes us living proof of that. She should have”—another bolt tore from the beast and hit their shield—“come back as a human. Her original physical form.”

“But something is clearly wrong if she’s not right!”

“I know that. If you could just give me a second to think—”

The next strike shattered their shield to splinters. Immediately, Twilight reached back and pulled Rarity in by the shoulder, then wrapped them in a much smaller bubble in time to block the bolt after that.

“Well,” Rarity hissed between her teeth, “I can’t imagine your omniscient mentor didn’t account for this in her Plan.” She could see the glow from Twilight’s tattoos beneath her bloodied shirt; could hear the hum of magic through the arm looped around her neck. “Surely she’s watching. Why don’t you try asking her?”

“If this was part of the Plan she would have told me,” Twilight argued.

“Oh, sure, darling. The same way she told you about murdering the moon lich, right?”

“That’s— That was different—”

“Enlighten me.”

“I—”

Golden fire burst from nothingness between their too-close glares. Twilight, oddly enough, started at the sight of it, which gave Rarity just enough time to snatch the scroll that fell from it and clutch it tight against her chest. “See?” she said—gloated, really.

“Rarity,” Twilight said flatly.

“I’ll read it out loud, don’t worry.”

“It’s meant for me.”

“And I’m sure Celestia knew I’d want to open it,” she snarked. She popped the seal with her thumb at the same time another bolt shook their shield, which gave the action an impressive sort of impact. “Don’t worry.”

Twilight opened her mouth to protest again, so Rarity quickly shook the paper out of its roll and began to read:

“My faithful student,

You have done so well tonight. Words alone cannot express how proud I am of you.

Do not worry about my sister’s temporary appearance; it is merely a consequence of her exchange. After all, no amount of feral souls will ever create sentience—how could they, when sentience is what sets apart monsters and humans from simple beasts?

Thankfully, this wretched form of hers has a simple solution. Ponyville is just outside the forest, in case your little monster friend isn’t quite enough, but one sentient soul should be more than enough to...”

Rarity’s voice faded out against her will. The scroll slipped from her hands before she could finish it. Suddenly, the arm around her shoulders felt more threatening than the thing outside.

She didn’t want to believe that Twilight would even consider it, but—

What if she did? She couldn’t care about her, so—

But what if she did?

Can you feel anything? Can you care?

“Let me go,” Rarity blurted out. “Get me out of here.”

“It’s alright,” Twilight tried. She squeezed her shoulder in an awkward attempt at comfort that felt more like silver on bare skin. “That... I’m sure that was Celestia’s way of making a joke. I obviously wouldn’t ever hurt you. Don’t worry.”

“But you still would do it?” Rarity whispered. Terror seeped out between her words and the beats of her pounding heart. Her panic surged. She shrugged Twilight’s arm from her shoulders and stepped back far enough that her spine bumped against their shield. “You’d still follow Celestia’s orders? You’d kill a monster; someone from Ponyville; someone we both know?”

“No, I...” She hesitated once again, but this time her hesitation felt more of a question than an answer. “Do you really think that of me?”

There—right there, beneath the controlled and even rhythm of her words: a tremor.

Rarity had never before heard Twilight voice such a vulnerable sound. How wrong it felt! Perhaps most humans were meant to sound like that, but from her it just felt wrong, wrong, wrong. Guilt immediately squeezed her heart, and she opened her mouth to reply; to recant—

Another blue bolt cracked against their shield. Twilight visibly flinched forward at the impact, and her magic shattered to pieces a second time. Rarity stumbled off-balance when the bubble vanished from her back, and before she could catch herself her feet tangled and her knees buckled and she hit the ground hard enough to knock all the air from her lungs.

The creature howled. Lightning sparked.

Rarity cursed beneath her breath and tried to stand—

“Run,” Twilight ordered, her voice the least composed it had ever been. “Now!”

Blue met magenta with a thunderous crack, and before her mind could catch up to her body Rarity found she was already scrambling and standing and panickedly scanning the foyer for the best exit before bolting as fast as she could—and without a single question or protest ever joining her scattered thoughts.

Twilight turned to light and firecrackers in her peripherals. Pink-white magic fired at the pedestal—but the beast leaped over the bolt before it struck and hit the ground bounding toward them with a furious howl.

Rarity forced herself faster. Light flashed to fill the foyer. Something heavy crashed into the ground behind her, and something horrific screamed with a feral’s mouth.

She didn’t dare look away from the exit. She didn’t dare look back.

Not when shattered magic fried the air with a chorus of pops; not when something lighter hit the ground with a human grunt; not even when the earth shook beneath her pounding feet as a faster and bestial chorus of footfalls closed in on her from behind. The castle’s steps soon rose into view through a ruined archway just a dozen paces away—

Flesh and claws collided. A colossal weight knocked Rarity flat against the floor.

No!

Terror forced pure adrenaline through her shaking limbs, and somehow she managed to flip herself free from her attacker and onto her back—but then the whole of the beast crashed down upon her and pinned her to the ground.

“No!” she shrieked aloud. “No, no, no!” She kicked up at the creature’s stomach; thrashed against its claws; fought to no avail. It screeched hot breath and spittle down between fangs inches from her face, and before she could draw breath for another scream its mouth unhinged and surged downward faster than a guillotine toward her neck—

—and only then

How human you have been

did the blessing she’d never asked for

to love the loveless selflessly enough

decide it was time

to reap reward in barren soul

to settle its debts.

That time, the endless eternity of the Elements felt slightly different.

She’d been used before, Rarity knew, against her will and without consent to become a murderer by proxy, if not outright. Her Element had forced its magic through every fibre of her being like some sick puppeteer picking out a new toy for its show. And while she’d had power and she’d been magic, she also had no longer been Rarity. She’d been her Element. She’d been all the other Elements, and all her friends.

A second stretched to a century.

Rarity remained entirely herself.

There were no foreign thoughts; no whispered promises in her ears or at the back of her mind. It was quiet. Calm. They didn’t use her at all like before—because they didn’t need her, some part of Rarity helpfully supplied. She could rest. This time someone else had taken the burden of everything all at once.

Then—

No no no no no no no

—a single train of thought collided against her with the force of all six Elements, and even more:

I can’t lose you.

Oh, Rarity realized. Time began to turn again.Light flashed blinding, and the world shattered.

That’s her.

And then the moon lich was gone.

Rarity jerked upright to sitting the same time her body heaved a gasping breath, her eyes snapping open as wide as they would go and her heartbeat pounding staccato in her throat. The weight pinning her down had vanished to nothingness—there was no feral corpse or impossibly dead lich with ash in her veins. No trace that she—or it—had ever existed. Just... nothingness.

A silent flash of light was all it took.

“Oh,” said a voice, and when Rarity glanced up across the foyer her eyes met Twilight’s calmly panicked stare. “You’re... safe.”

She was covered in blood again, like she often was, but this time it was so obviously her own. The Elements had opened wounds when she’d first used them that evening, and the second time seemed to have done her in for worse—split skin along scorched forearms; smoking, open wounds beneath her clothes. A nosebleed, some bruising, and a shirt more red than white. But despite it all she was still standing—so then surely she was fine, wasn’t she?

(Because Rarity knew for certain that Twilight was not a human.

She knew why she couldn’t feel, she knew why her magic had so much potential, she knew why the moon lich had warned her with dying breath, she knew, she knew, she knew.)

But.

Rarity’s thanks died on her lips the second her eyes dropped to the neckline of Twilight’s shirt. They’d fallen there perhaps on purpose, and perhaps intentionally to the same spot she’d so carefully tended days earlier, where she now saw charcoal black instead of white. Empty fissures. Burnt-out vein-like patterns exactly like the moon lich’s shattered marks.

Do not exceed your limits tonight.

Her heart stopped—but only metaphorically.

Maybe things would have been easier if it actually had.

Once again her body moved before her thoughts could think, and before she knew it Rarity was up on her feet and stumbling and sprinting and then catching, her arms outstretched and her heart in her throat as her wonderfully infuriating, endearingly awful human crumpled forward into her panicked embrace.

“No,” she choked out. “No. Not like this.”

Twilight made a noise against her shoulder that could have been mistaken for a laugh. “Like... what?”

And Rarity did trip on a gasping laugh, then—a single syllable that petered out into a sob. “Like this,” she breathed, and clutched her tighter. “Just tell me you’ll be fine; tell me she wasn’t right—”

“Rarity,” Twilight interrupted gently. Her shoulders shook with strain.

“—and that we can head back to Ponyville and fix you up—”

“Rarity.”

“—and that you won’t end up like her—”

“It’s too late,” she breathed, her voice a ghost. “I... I was going to tell you. Was going to explain... tonight.” Her weight sank heavier into Rarity as her legs weakened, but somehow Rarity still managed to keep the both of them upright. “I’m... the same as her. Not human. Just like—”

“Yes, you’re a lich,” Rarity snapped. Oh, how badly her voice trembled with every word. “I managed to figure that out all by myself, thank you. And—” A sob cracked through her words, but she kept going: “You’re the stupidest, most idiotic one in existence for re-sealing your soul in your veins!”

“...Oh.” Twilight made the same not-laugh noise into her shoulder again. “Was it that obv—”

“The one damn thing the moon lich told you not to do!”

“Because I needed potential,” she explained calmly—somehow. It was a different calm than usual; instead of ice or indifference it felt far more resigned. “It was... risky. But... the only way to use the Elements. All six,” she added. “And it worked. Tonight.” Her breath shuddered. “Twice.”

The storm around Rarity’s emotions surged, and a wave of anger spiked above everything else. “Oh?” she hissed between her teeth. Her tears spilled over with her next blink, and her vision blurred wet. “It worked, did it? You’re not going to die from over-channeling magic through your soul?”

She wanted to slap her; she wanted to scream; she wanted to hold her dying, bloodied body tight enough to stop the ashes of her sealed soul from scattering to an invisible sea. It was so hard to think any other thought than why, over and over: why is this happening, why can’t I stop it, why did you do this for me?

And then—

Twilight lifted her head just enough for Rarity to see her face. “It’s alright,” she whispered, and Rarity immediately froze at the sight she saw so clearly through her tears.

Because Twilight was smiling.

“...Even though I lost my soul,” she said, her eyes locked warm to Rarity’s, “I think... I learned to love again without it.” One of her arms lifted trembling from her side up to Rarity’s cheek, and limply brushed against it. “I felt something... a year ago. I think it started then. When you... and the girls...”

“When you saved us,” Rarity finished for her with a whisper, still hardly able to believe her eyes.

“I couldn’t lose anyone then,” Twilight continued. “I couldn’t lose you tonight. It... felt the same as then. But a hundred times,” she said, and her voice wavered soft. “A hundred times stronger. At least.”

“You can’t just say that—”

“And I made a choice... based on emotion. Instinct.” Her hand fell limp against Rarity’s collarbone; her eyes blinked slower; her breath grew faint. “A sacrifice no unfeeling lich would ever make.”

Rarity felt her veins slow; heard her heartbeats thump farther and farther apart until they stopped.

Tears fell.

Words failed.

She matched her gentle smile with a silent, agonized sob. And—

“For you,” Twilight finished with her final breath, “I am glad I made that choice.”

lich

1. a former human who exchanged their soul for conditional immortality

2. a soulless being incapable of experiencing emotion

3. not Twilight Sparkle