‘Come out, come out wherever you are, Princess.'

Opaline's own voice pierced her memories as the alicorn ascended the stairs in the main hall of Princess Twilight Sparkle's castle, following her cutie mark up to the second floor.

Opaline had largely used words and clandestine actions to slowly spur on unrest throughout Equestria centuries ago. There had actually been next to no magical combat on her part, and what very little there was, took place in this building, and it hadn't even lasted sixty seconds.

When it got to the top of the stairs, the floating cutie mark continued up the second, shorter set of stairs to the left, and then made a right down the gently curving hall. It slowly curved around to an open doorway, which had no doors on the hinges, and she immediately remembered why.

‘And here it is… The last stand of the Princess of Friendship, with all the magic, nowhere left to hide, and no friends left to help her.’

Her floating cutie mark slowly drifted into the dark, circular room. She wondered why it had taken the long way in, at the other side of the hall.

‘Retracing my steps, no doubt,’ the alicorn thought to herself.

The centuries had taken their toll; the giant chandelier made out of the roots of a tree had long since rotted away, and the gemstones that had hung from it were now scattered around the table and the surrounding floor. Opaline’s cutie mark gently pushed these out of the way as it made it’s way over to the throne on the right side of the table, one of six.

Well, seven, counting the smaller one to the right of the throne her cutie mark was heading for.

There, just above the seat of the chair, hovered a flickering purple flame, and Opaline had absolutely no second guesses as to who it was as her cutie mark rose above the throne, and its luminescence increased, revealing Princess Twilight Sparkle, staring sullenly out towards the center of the table.

The room was silent save for the sound of Opaline’s hooves as she approached the princess. Rather than sit in the throne to the left of hers, she merely decided to approach the table and sit down on the floor.

Nearly half a minute passed in silence as Opaline glanced from gem to gem on the surface of the table, the light of her cutie mark being refracted in each one.

“Am I supposed to know what to say?” Opaline finally asked, her voice barely carrying across the cavernous room, not yet looking at the echo of the alicorn that had banished her to the edges of the nation centuries ago.

“I suppose not, no,” Twilight replied, her tone sad. “Even after all this time, I don’t know quite where to start either. Other than, that perhaps maybe we were supposed to fall. Equestria, that is.”

“Do not coddle me, Sparkle!” Opaline spat. “I am not following my mark across this land to be told that my choices were not my own, that my fate was preordained!”

“I’m not telling you fate,” Twilight answered, finally looking up from the table over to the dark orchid alicorn. “I’m telling you what I told myself. The only explanation, the only words that brought me the smallest comfort as everything I helped build collapsed around me… As more and more ponies let their prejudices and preconceptions take hold, and forgot the core tenets of what made us strong. You don’t pass every test. Sometimes you fail… You fall… And when you do, the real strength is getting back up.”

Twilight’s gaze returned to the gems scattered across the table.

“You did not fall. Our duel barely lasted a single minute,” Opaline told her. “I imagine whatever piece of yourself you’ve left behind is feeling quite proud… Seeing me like this after all these centuries.”

Opaline noticed Twilight’s form shudder.

“Are you really still so lost?” Twilight asked, looking over to Opaline again. “That you would imagine that the Princess of Friendship would take pride in how you must be feeling right now? Because I don’t. No one should feel that empty, and alone, and scared. No matter what they’ve done. Is that what you think, Opaline?”

“I don’t know what to think. I don’t know why the others have come along, what they think I can do to help, who I’m supposed to help, or why my mark has been leading me across Equestria to all of you… Or if this sojourn will even help me get it back! I don’t even know… Know if…”

Opaline’s words trailed off as her eyes widened at the possibility, wondering why it hadn’t occurred to her weeks ago upon first stepping out onto that beach from the ruins of her castle and tree.

“Am I even alive?” She asked Twilight. “For the past several weeks, I have done nothing… Nothing, but follow my mark. I have not eaten, nor felt hungry, have not slept, nor felt tired. And if I get too far from my mark, I feel cold. Cold and terrified that I will vanish into nothing.”

“I don’t know,” Twilight answered. “And that’s the truth. If this echo, memory, whatever you called it, of myself was left behind, does that mean there’s something after this? Am I here to help solve something unanswered, unfinished? If that’s the case, what is it that you want, Opaline?”

Opaline’s words to her mark played in her mind.

‘I need to tell her that I am sorry.’

The alicorn’s eyes widened in another realization; that this had all started with an apology… From Celestia and Luna. Knowing that they had regretted how they had treated her, regretted it for all this time… Something changed inside her.

“I don’t know what I want. I don’t want power anymore. Because what I thought was power, I had it. I had it all. And it was all for nothing before Equestria’s unity. Powerless before a song. I need to tell Misty I am sorry. That is what I want, Princess Twilight Sparkle, and I will follow my mark to the ends of Equestria to get that opportunity. But as for how you all think I can help? I haven’t the faintest idea, how when it comes to unity, to friendship, how it could not possibly be too late for me.”

Finally, Twilight moved, and got up from her throne, taking the few steps required to stand next to the sitting Opaline.

“It is not too late. Something is coming, and you could be the deciding factor,” Twilight began, looking up at the cutie mark floating above them. “Your mark has been leading you to our echoes, to the pieces we left behind. I have a feeling that if you want it back, you’ll have to make yourself worthy of it.”

Twilight paused to look down at the ethereal peytral around Opaline’s barrel.

“If they believe you can make a difference, then who am I do doubt them?”

Opaline again scoffed softly in frustration.

“So I am to wield a power that I have never experienced before, against a threat that none of you can tell me about? Because you believe that, once again, I am meant to? So I was self-exiled from Skyros, denied every chance at what I believed to be my destiny, cast down by you, spent centuries in solitude, cast down again, only to be stripped of my mark, and now, called upon, at what could be the very end!”

Twilight took a quiet breath, and sat down next to Opaline.

“Your choices were always your own, Opaline, and they still are. There were many threats to Equestria in my lifetime; power-hungry leaders, oppressive warlords, reality-warping demigods, shapeshifters… From a millennium-old alicorn to a sociopathic child… And I would not deny any one of them the opportunity to experience the magic that defined my life. Some of them saw the light… And some of them did not. The choice was always theirs to make, and it is yours too. So after everything you have experienced, after you have seen what the power of friendship can do, are you going to seek it out, or turn away from it again?”

Slowly, Twilight reached over, and offered Opaline her left front hoof.

Opaline shifted uncomfortably, as she still struggled with the unfamiliar knot in her stomach, as she reached over, and placed her right hoof onto Twilight’s left, and just as it had happened four times before, the apparition of the Princess of Friendship vanished, leaving only the purple flame, which traveled up her leg, and settled into the top socket of the peytral, leaving only the center one empty.

She got to her hooves, and looked up at her mark.

“Onward, I suppose?” She asked it.

The sudden speed at which the mark flew out of the throne room almost caused Opaline to scream, before scrambling into a gallop to chase it out of the throne room, into the hall, and back down into the foyer, worrying that she was going to trip over a vine or tree root, and lose sight of it, and that would be the end of this journey.

But deep down, she knew that her mark didn’t want to lose her, that it was just spurring her on, to an unknowable destiny that was rapidly approaching.

Author's Note

Sorry about the delay, after such a rapid release of chapters. My weekend was spent watching the Halo World Championship, and in addition to that, this chapter was something I really, really want to nail.

I hope I pulled that off.

I also don't quite know how to bridge what I've written so far to what I always envisioned to be this story's conclusion, and honestly, last Thursday's TYT episode didn't make that any easier.

I also don't know if I'm going to be able to settle on just one ending, in terms of Opaline's final fate. Perhaps this will be another project of mine that gets multiple endings.

In the meantime, thank you very much for reading!