Path of a daughter

The throne room of the Castle of The Night is near-pitch black. A millennium before that, it used to be the original seat of power of old Equestria where two alicorn sisters ruled over the united species of ponies. Twenty years ago, it was an abandoned ruin known as the Castle of Two Sisters. Everything changed with the return of a banished alicorn going by the name Luna, sister to the ruler of Equestria at the time. Unfortunately, what truly returned was only a hollow shell possessed by the god of destruction and entropy. Whatever little personality and willpower was left of Luna was destroyed shortly after, and the entity now called Nightmare Moon started her campaign of domination and later destruction.

However, now’s no time for history. There will be no more history. The planets have stopped rotating, the stars have faded, the universe has gone silent, the avatar of entropy won, all because of what happened on an otherwise unremarkable ball in near-endless space called Equus.

Yet, as said earlier, the throne room isn’t entirely dark and silent. A flickering oval of black and purple flames is hanging in the air, slowly swirling around and there are twenty black equine figures standing in front of it, all emaciated to a level seemingly incompatible with life, ribs visible through rubbery, thin, chitinous carapace with only the faintest dark blue tint stretched over the bones. Now’s no time for biology and pondering how a species with both an exoskeleton and an endoskeleton came to be either. Their legs are shaking with exhaustion and fear while watching the oval with hollow, blue eyes, and breathing the thin air that’s still remaining on this dead piece of rock.

The final figure is a unicorn mare slumped on the marble floor. Her horn has been cut off, her mane and tail are gone, chunks of her flesh and both her eyes have withered away, revealing smooth bones and eye sockets, yet she is smiling as she’s gripping a rotten and torn purple, pointy wizard’s hat decorated with faded stars, the same pattern that’s on the tattered remains of a cloak on her back. She’s not breathing at all until she needs to in order to speak.

“It’s already a miracle that you’ve managed to make this portal-” she lets out a whispering wheeze, easily audible in the complete silence of the dead world broken only by the shallow breathing of the twenty others, “-even with the help of somepony as great and powerful as myself, so stop staring and go through,” the mare chuckles, “Unless you want to keep me company until the air runs out or you starve. I know a joke or two, I used to be a travelling performer.”

The female leader of the equines standing directly in front of the dark portal and pointing her horn at it is taller than the others and, unlike them, possesses a blue mane and a tail, both matted with dirt, sweat, and some kind of green goo. With the outside frozen over, hygiene has been on the bottom of the survivors’ list.

“Come with us,” she leans towards the visibly undead unicorn, her voice low and caring,“You’ve done so much to help and you’ll have about the same chance of survival as we will.”

“Tempting, if only to punt your father in the nuts for not killing me like he promised to when I helped him escape this wretched dimension, but no. We’ve all done too much and seen much worse. What I want is peace, and I hope you’re better at keeping your word than he was.”

“I don’t know if I can break Nightmare Moon’s curse-”

“I do,” the unicorn drags herself forward and a hint of desperation creeps into her voice, “We’ve been over this. You reverse-engineered this dimension portal spell just from my instructions and the trace of magic that coward left behind while escaping almost two decades ago. Your energy manipulation instinct may even be better than his, so surely you can unravel a god’s curse preventing me from dying. Come on, give it a shot! If you don't, I'll find a way to haunt you, little Queen,” her joking demeanor returns and she grins a half-fleshy, half-skeletal grin.

The Queen smiles back, faces the remaining nineteen members of her kind, and speaks out:

“Most of you have been with me since the beginning twenty long years ago-”

Shadows jump as the portal flickers and crackles. The Queen’s kin shoot the hole in the fabric of reality a glance as worried as their weary eyes can still muster.

“Less talking, more jumping into the unstable dimension hole that’s as likely to blend you as it is to lead them towards you father,” comments the undead unicorn.

“Right,” the Queen nods, nervously facing the portal again, “Who wants to go through, now’s the time. I must go last to keep the gate open.”

None of the others hesitate, all walking one by one through with number 3 being the first. The lack of agonized screams caused by shoving their faces into a surge of barely stabilized magic emboldens everyone going in after 3.

Once alone with the blue unicorn, the Queen concentrates on the magic that’s preventing the undead from finally finding peace. The closest simile to unraveling the powerful curse is untangling a particularly twisted knot.

The portal flickers again, and the Queen hesitates, her eyes darting towards it.

The more time she spends here, the lower the chance of her successfully leaving. One one hoof, the rotting undead that used to be Nightmare Moon’s archmage Trixie is responsible for most of the horrors over the past two decades which led to this moment and the death of the universe, all done out of insecurity and deep-seated hunger for power and respect. If there’s someone who would deserve remaining locked here until even time ceased to exist, it would be her. On the other hoof, by twisting the genetic material of the Queen’s father Trixie helped Nightmare Moon create the Queen and her kin - the army responsible for purging life from the planet.

The moment of hesitation passes.

Thread by thread, second after second, the Queen destroys the spell binding Trixie who, as her strength fades and her body begins to turn into dust, only lets out a barely audible whisper:

“Thank… you… for…” she only mouths ‘not leaving me’.

The Queen smiles.

“I promised.”

With those final words, the Queen steps through the collapsing portal, leaving the dead universe behind.