Still

Celestia’s morning sun radiated a pleasant and comforting warmth, bathing the small, quaint town of Ponyville in a summery, yellow shade. And yet, Roseluck wished she was still in bed.

Brushing a foreleg across her tired eyes, she continued on toward the main road of Ponyville. She gave the harness strapped around her withers a harder tug, and the wooden wagon it was attached to followed at the resulting increased pace. After a brief glance back to make sure the array of carefully cultivated florals inside maintained the quality her work was known for, she focused once more on the path ahead.

Every so often, she would pass by another pony, either going for an early morning walk or, similarly to her, traveling to get to their early shifts on time. However, for the most part, the roads were vacant. That was one nice thing about the early mornings: the warm, quiet ambience; the stillness of everything. She was very much a social pony and enjoyed the company and noise of others, but even she liked to balance that out with silence and solitude every now and then.

After letting out a wide, drawn-out yawn, she turned onto the next road ahead. Up in the distance, among the other shops and roadside stands in the Ponyville Market, her own flower stand sat, empty and waiting to be decorated with the assortment of flowers she pulled behind her. As she approached her shop, she looked around to see if anyone else had been preparing to open. She was pleased to see that, across the street from her stand, Applejack was setting up a vending wagon, fastening it with open barrels of fresh, bright apples she had no doubt tasted as good as they looked.

Slowing to a stop, Roseluck reached around her back and unclipped the harness, before turning to the orange farm pony across the road. “Morning!”

Applejack paused amid pushing another bucket of apples to load onto the wagon and looked in Roseluck’s direction. She then gave her an acknowledging nod. “Mornin’, Roseluck. Good weekend?”

“Eh,” Roseluck replied, grabbing a vase of bulbs in her mouth and placing it on her hoof. “Wish it was just one day longer.”

“Don’t we all,” the orange pony chuckled, lifting the bucket and topping off the left-most barrel.

Roseluck placed the bulbs on the shelf of her stand above a pre-placed price tag. As she went to get another batch of flowers, she heard a sudden bark in Applejack’s direction. Sending a curious stare her way, she saw the farm pony behind her wagon, rotating her hoof in a beckoning motion.

“C’mon, Winona, let’s get ya up at the front." Applejack rounded her wagon once more, and a small, brown dog with a patch of white fur on its chest followed suit with enthusiastic, leaping steps.

The corners of the flower pony’s lips instantly lifted into a smile. “You brought your dog!”

“Heh, yep,” Applejack said, stroking the dog around its ears. “Figured she’d act as an extra bit of customer incentive.”

“Customer incentive,” Roseluck repeated with a cocked eyebrow. “Usually vendors will offer, y’know, discounts or free samples. I haven’t heard of ‘bringing your dog’ before.”

“Well, ah’m doin’ all of the above today since ah’ve decided to start a fundraiser.”

“Oh? What for?”

Applejack took on a somber look. “Well, maybe you’ve heard, but there was that meteorite that landed in Dodge Junction, destroyed lots of ponies’ homes and what not. So, ah figured ah’d do mah part and donate half of the profits from today’s sales to helping the families who lost something from the collision.”

“Wow, Applejack,” Roseluck said in admiration, “that’s really nice of you.”

The orange earth pony returned an appreciative nod at the compliment and turned to her hyperactive pet. “And ah’m hoping this goofball here—” she gave Winona more head rubs, which she eagerly accepted with the swift wagging of her tail, “—is gonna help me get the sales ah need to make a proper difference.”

Roseluck giggled at the charming sight. “So, what's Winona's role in this unique marketing strategy of yours?”

“Pretty much just to stand here and look cute. That way, when ponies start comin', they'll go, 'Aww, what an adorable dog ya got there,' and ah'll go, 'Thanks—hey, since you're here an' all, care to purchase some of the most delicious apples in all of Equestria?' It's practically foolproof.”

“I see,” Roseluck said with a quirked eyebrow. “And if they say no?”

“Ah ain't worried about that,” Applejack replied, looking over with a sly smile.

Roseluck shook her head with a chuckle. Then, off to the left, she saw Applejack’s little sister, Apple Bloom, slowly trudging her way toward Applejack with a heaping basket of apples on her back. With an exhausted sigh, she dipped the front of her body forward, allowing the basket to slide along her back and onto the grass. “Phew… got the last batch of apples, sis.”

“There ya are,” Applejack said with a slightly raised tone. “What took ya so long?”

“It was heavy!” Apple Bloom retorted with a frown, but upon looking in Roseluck’s direction, her frown faded in favor of a warm smile. “Good mornin’, Roseluck!”

“Good morning, Apple Bloom,” she returned, placing the last of her flowers on the counter of her stand. “No school today?”

“Nope. It’s a ped day!”

Roseluck put on a mock expression of shock. “And your big sister is making you work on your day off?!”

“Ah know, right?”

“Apple Bloom,” Applejack scolded.

The filly rolled her eyes with a giggle. “Ah’m just teasin’, sis. Take a joke every now and then.”

With a sigh, Applejack lifted the basket her little sister had brought, momentarily stumbling in the process. “Oof… you weren’t kiddin’.”

“Told ya’,” Apple Bloom said, before sitting on the grass to give Winona some much deserved affection.

Now that Roseluck was done setting up, she began to wonder where her two coworkers were. She looked in the direction of the Ponyville clock tower, which currently read two to eight. Usually they were here by now, helping her set up early.

Thankfully, after a short scan down either direction of the road, she had an answer for at least one of her coworkers. A little ways away, she spotted her amber maned friend, Lily, approaching the stand, and furrowed her brow at the frazzled condition her friend’s mane was in, as well as the deep bags under her half-shut eyes.

Upon reaching the stand, Lily gave her an acknowledging nod. “Thanks for setting up.”

“Uh-huh,” Roseluck said. “Just saying, you better hope Rarity doesn’t see you like this. We might just end up watching the world end.”

“Ugh,” Lily grumbled, brushing a hoof through her mane like that would magically fix it. “Celestia, I feel like garbage.”

Roseluck shook her head with a disappointment that was half playful, half genuine. “I told you you probably shouldn’t have gone to that party the night before an early shift.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

After another observation of the road, and a glance at the clock tower, the yellow earth pony turned to her friend once more. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Daisy is, would you?”

Lily suddenly went wide-eyed, before smacking a hoof to her brow. “Right—shoot, I was supposed to tell you, she took today off. One of her relatives was killed by the meteorite that was in the news yesterday, so she went to be with her family.”

Roseluck let out a gasp. “Oh no… that’s so sad.”

“Yeah, so it’s just gonna be us two today—probably the next couple days as well.”

Roseluck looked downward in thought. She always hated to hear of somepony she knew experiencing a loss, and it especially stung knowing one of her closest friends had lost a family member to such an unfortunate circumstance, such to the extent that she wished there was something she could do to help...

She then remembered her conversation with Applejack moments earlier. An idea popped into her mind. “Hey Lily? Applejack told me she’s raising funds to help families impacted by the meteorite. You wanna do something similar today? I think it would make Daisy feel good knowing we used our business to help with something her family was affected by.”

A moment passed. Then, Lily looked up at Roseluck with a smile. “Yeah. Yeah, that’d be nice.”

“Then it’s settled!” Roseluck exclaimed, excitedly. “But first things first, if we want customers period, you seriously have to do something about that mane.”

Lily sighed and rolled her eyes. “Happen to have a brush I can use?” A brush suddenly hit her in the chest and fell into her instinctively raised hooves. She looked up at Roseluck with a cocked eyebrow. “You just… had that on you?”

“It’s my emergency brush. You never know when you might need one.”

After holding her confused stare for a few more seconds, Lily decided not to question her further, and went about tidying herself up.

In a short amount of time, ponies began to fill the roads, and the once uninterrupted singing of the light morning breeze was drowned out by animated conversation and the bustling of hooves against concrete: the other side of the ambient balance Roseluck loved.

As the morning passed by, her and a freshened-up Lily started to see their typical influx of customers, requesting something simple for home decor, or something meaningful to leave on a gravestone. The gratification they got from their sales was amplified by the donations they received from passersby upon announcing their last-minute fundraiser. They had not quite prepared theirs to the extent Applejack had, but it helped that Ponyville’s citizens were some of the kindest and most sympathetic ponies she knew. She loved Ponyville for that.

The afternoon came, and along with it, the frequency of customers slowed. Line-ups in front of food stands began to stretch further, and outdoor restaurant tables sat ponies of all ages, opting to enjoy a meal before continuing with their day.

“No postal service today?” Roseluck asked her newest potential customer.

“I decided to take the day off,” Derpy said, before lightly ruffling the mane of the filly beside her. “My little Dinky hasn’t been feeling good lately, so I’m taking her to the hospital.”

“Aw, that sucks.” Roseluck looked down at the smaller, similarly colored pony. “Hope you feel better soon.”

Dinky beamed. “Thanks, ma’am!”

“By the way, we’re raising funds to help families impacted by the meteorite that hit Dodge Junction,” Lily chimed in. “Even as little as one or two bits would be greatly appreciated.”

“Ohh, I heard about that. That was terrible what happened, those poor ponies… I don’t have much, but…” Derpy reached around to her saddlebag and searched through it, before dipping her muzzle inside and pulling out two bits between her teeth. “’Ere you ‘o!” She then set them on the table in front of the two vendors.

“That’s more than enough, thank you so much, Derpy,” Roseluck said appreciatively, scooping the two bits into a pouch below the counter.

Derpy then wore a puzzled frown. “It’s weird though… The princesses control the sun and the moon, so... wouldn’t they see a meteorite like that coming and stop it? I mean, unless it just appeared out of thin air, but… meteorites can’t do that.”

“That’s… true, actually,” Roseluck admitted after a moment of rolling the thought around in her head; how could pricesses who kept an eye on space objects never notice a space object getting dangerously close to the planet?

Derpy shrugged. “Eh, the princess can be pretty ditzy at times. I guess I just have a strange feeling about it…” Beside her, a tiny sparkle of light along with a popping sound caught her attention. She looked down to see her daughter swaying lightly with a discomforted moan, her horn producing sparks sporadically. The filly’s head then drooped, her legs buckling under her, but Derpy was quick to react, swinging a wing around her torso and catching her limp form.

“Oh my gosh, is she okay?!” Lily said, alarmed.

“She has a condition with her magic, and it sometimes makes her faint,” Derpy explained with a melancholy tone as her daughter stirred and began to regain her footing. “It started happening again this morning, which is why I was taking her to the hospital, so I should get her there now.”

“Yeah, of course. Talk to you soon, Derpy.”

“Thanks again for the donation!” Roseluck followed up. With a final goodbye wave, Derpy made her way down the market road with Dinky by her side, still supporting her with a wing.

"That was scary..." Lily commented quietly.

"Yeah." As Roseluck watched the two leave, she spotted a familiar purple unicorn passing by beside them. “Hey, Amethyst. Care to leave a bit or two for our fundraiser?”

“No thanks,” the unicorn deadpanned, continuing onward without batting an eye.

“Yeeahh, I figured,” Roseluck muttered under her breath, then turned her attention to her colleague. “So, getting back to our earlier conversation—”

“C’mon, Rosey, leave it alone already!” Lily wined with a roll of her eyes.

“You’re not even gonna tell me how cute he was? You can’t get me all interested and then just drop it like that.”

“He was…” A sigh. “He was average, alright?”

“Ooh, he must have been drop-dead gorgeous! So, what did you two do?”

“…What do you mean?”

“I mean, did you two… y’know…”

“Ugh, that’s none of your business, Rosey!”

“You didn’t deny it!”

“I’m not confirming or denying anything, you nosy... freak.”

“Okay, how about this: you owe it to me for setting up all by myself this morning.”

Lily lifted a hoof up behind her ear. “Sorry, what? Gosh, I can’t seem to hear you over all the noise,” she said, pretending to not be able to hear Roseluck over the sudden fit of barking echoing from across the street.

“I think you can hear me perfectly well.”

“What? Man, I saw your lips move, but I just can’t make out a word you’re saying over… actually, come to think of it—” Lily cast a concerned frown across the street. “Hey Applejack! Is your dog alright?”

“Ah dunno… she just got all agitated outta nowhere,” the farm pony called back over, before sitting and brushing a gentle hoof across Winona’s fur. “Shh, calm down, girl, it’s alright…”

Despite the touch of her owner, Winona hadn’t calmed down in the slightest. In fact, she seemed to get even more agitated, growling aggressively with her eyes trained upward at the sky.

On a hunch, Roseluck followed the pet’s line of sight. After a few seconds of only seeing cyan and whisps of gray from slowly moving clouds, she noticed a dark, moving form that appeared to be growing—approaching, by the look of it. She could not make out the details of it until another few seconds had passed, when the form began to take the shape of a pegasus—one she identified to be Thunderlane, based on what she remembered of his gray coat and silver mane, trimmed in a style she wondered how he ever thought was a good idea. She also knew him as a member of the Wonderbolts, and an impressive one at that, which is why the way he was flying seemed… off.

“Poor Thunderlane. Still can’t get along with animals even when they’re a hundred feet apart,” Lily commented with an amused chuckle. However, Roseluck hadn’t reciprocated, or even acknowledged the words of her friend as, after the shape of Thunderlane got even closer, she discerned that, not only was he approaching fast, but it didn’t look like he had any control of his flight. His wings flailed while his figure spiraled toward the ground, and he didn’t even seem to be attempting to stop himself. That, paired with the frantic barking of Winona, caused a nervous feeling to well up within her stomach.

Once the gray pegasus had come dangerously close to the ground, having not showed any signs of slowing down, Roseluck instinctively prepared to shout him a warning, but did not have time to get a word out as Thunderlane, a spinning ball of feathers, bulleted across the market and dive-bombed straight into the carrot stand neighbouring her and Lily. Thunderlane’s body quickly disappeared underneath a shower of collapsing wood planks, a massive plum of dust expanding from the wreckage.

“Faust’s name!” Roseluck heard Lily say as she stood up from the ground, having ducked from the assumption that it would be their own stand that fell victim to the destructive weapon that was Thunderlane’s body. “You’d think he’d have sobered up by now, what in the world?!”

“Well, he’s lucky it wasn’t ours he crashed into, otherwise the injuries from the crash would be the least of his worries,” Roseluck said, casting a wary look at the wooden panel among the rest of the debris revealing nothing more than two gray hind hooves sticking out from below.

“I dunno if lucky’s the right word, I can’t see Carrot Top taking this very well either.”

As if on cue, they saw the owner of the now unrecognizable pile of wood and carrots marching angrily toward the wreckage, away from a vendor she had been conversing with down the road. “WHAT THE HAY DID YOU DO TO MY FREAKING CARROT STAND?!”

The slowly amassing crowd of ponies who had heard, or seen the destruction quickly stepped aside to clear a path for the storming manifestation of fury, each of them wearing patent ‘oh boy…’ expressions on their faces.

Lily stepped forward to address her. “So, uh… Thunderlane—”

“Yeah, I saw!” Carrot Top interrupted sharply, forcing any words that would have followed back down her throat. “Thunderlane! Surely you can tell the difference between a runway and the love of my freaking life!”

Apple Bloom stared up innocently at her big sister. “Applejack? Is she going to kill him?”

“Yeah, probably,” Applejack replied simply. With the sudden commotion in the market, she had been distracted from Winona, who not only continued to bark wildly, but also hadn’t taken her gaze off the point in the sky Thunderlane had come from.

Once Carrot Top arrived at the ruins that were still emitting flakes of dust, she scanned the remains, as though looking for anything that could possibly be salvageable. Then, with reinvigorated rage, she grabbed hold of the wooden panel covering the entire pegasus and lifted it off him, throwing it to the side. She ignored the sudden gasps of horror emanating from nearby ponies as she stomped back around the panel.

“You better hope the Wonderbolts pay you some good money, because…” She cut herself off almost instantly, backpedalling and collapsing to her haunches with a horrified scream. With that, Roseluck had been given a clear view of what had scared Carrot Top, and the other ponies around.

She wished she hadn’t looked.

Thunderlane’s body was riddled with long, deep red gashes etched deep into his skin like claw marks, gushing blood across his discolored fur and over the pile of wood on which he lay, unmoving. But the most haunting part was his face: eyes unblinking, his final expression one of pure, raw agony…

She was certain his injuries weren’t from the crash.

“H-he’s dead… oh Celestia, he’s dead!” a stammering voice rang out among the jumble of frightened whispers in the area.

“Applejack, what’s goin’ on…?” Apple Bloom said fearfully, her view currently being shielded from the corpse by Applejack’s foreleg.

“Don’t look, Apple Bloom. Ya hear?” Applejack ordered sternly, then faced the ever-growing assembly of ponies who, in response to Carrot Top’s scream, had come and witnessed the horrifying sight. “Okay, listen everypony. We need someone to get to the hospital and tell them what happened here. Understand? And don’t y’all be standin’ around starin’!”

Apple Bloom could only see the reaction of the ponies in the area and imagine what they were seeing, and she didn’t like what her mind was coming up with. Gulping anxiously, her attention was grabbed by the frenetic dog next to her. Winona had not given up her incessant barking, still facing the same spot in the sky.

Although, her gaze had lowered ever so slightly.

Roseluck raised her hoof. “I-I can go.”

“Are you sure…?” Lily muttered.

“Somepony has to.”

“It’s just… I mean, you saw those marks on his body. I’m getting this feeling like… like something did that to him.” She swallowed. “Something alive.”

Roseluck glanced briefly back at the dead body, her view occasionally blocked by the crowd that had begun to disperse. “Look, whatever the case, Applejack’s right. We can’t just—”

The air was suddenly pierced by an ear-splitting crack, like the powerful crash of thunder. What accompanied it was a bright, round flash of purple light in the middle of the road. Roseluck instinctively brought a hoof up to shield her eyes from the sheer brightness of the light and held it there until she saw the resulting shimmer along the edges of her foreleg flicker, and then finally fade back to normal.

When she lowered her hoof, she saw that, in place of the purple glow, a circular region of now blackened cobblestone gave off streams of wavey, dark smoke, and in the center of that region, a purple pony stood there. Upon making her first assumption that it was a pegasus, Roseluck spotted the horn on the pony’s head, ending not at a tip, but at a jagged surface. After examining the pony’s dirty, matted purple fur, and the hectic, deeper purple mane, she pieced together who it was.

Standing there, in the middle of the road, was Twilight Sparkle, only, a very different looking Twilight Sparkle than the one she knew. Aside from the dirty features and broken horn, she almost looked… taller. Older, in fact.

With a heavy blink, Twilight Sparkle’s head jutted upward, her eyes rapidly scanning her surroundings. Roseluck could now see the panicked expression on the alicorn’s face as she almost appeared to be processing what this place was.

With another head rotation, Twilight spotted the body lying in the ruined carrot stand, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks. “No... nononono, please tell me I went back far enough!” She spun in the opposite direction, her head facing the clock tower.

The time had just turned 12:30.

In that instant, the alicorn whirled around, took a deep breath and shouted, “DON’T MOVE!!”

The sudden, panic-laced shout from the recognizable voice of the princess brought the multicolored crowd of scattering ponies in the market to an immediate standstill. Just like that, it seemed as though time had frozen, everypony opting not to question a warning that had closely followed Thunderlane’s mysterious death.

“Twilight?” came Applejack’s voice. She took a step toward the alicorn. “Twilight, what’s goin’ on?”

“No no, stop—STOP!” Twilight screamed, pausing Applejack mid-step. “Listen, everypony needs to stay still! If you don’t, you’ll die!”

A blend of bewilderment and fear was plastered on every single pony’s face, several gasps emanating from the grim consequence Twilight had stated.

From down the road, Amethyst approached the scene. “So, what’s going on, now? Another weekly villain come to hand out a couple bruises and dent some buildings?” she scoffed with a monotone voice.

“Look, no, you don’t understand,” Twilight reasoned, a hint of frustration in her distressed tone. “Something bad is coming. I can’t explain what exactly, but I need you all to trust m—STOP, DON’T MOVE!”

Roseluck followed the sudden shift in Twilight’s gaze to the front of an ice cream shop on her left, where a gray colt with a combed back, darker gray mane stood completely still as he had been instructed to do. His brow furrowed nervously. “Why, w-what’s going on…?”

Winona’s gaze had left the sky, now focused just down the road.

As the colt noticed several anxious glances aimed his way, his confusion swelled further. “What...? Is somepony gonna explain what’s going on, or…” No sooner had he begun to demand an answer for the strange looks, than he got his answer once his eyes landed on Carrot Top’s destroyed cart, going wide with horror upon seeing the pony lying on top of it, bloodied and limp.

“Thunder?! WHAT HAPPENED TO MY BROTHER?!” he cried, rushing out into the road after the body of his closest sibling.

Twilight’s eyes widened. “NO, DON’T—”

CRRACK!

The colt’s head abruptly lurched back as a deep gash tore across the left side of his face, followed by a slash down his stomach, and a burst of blood from his chest to his shoulder all in such quick succession that no one had even processed it until the boy’s mangled body unceremoniously dropped to the ground like a ragdoll, matching his brother in death.

A nearby stallion let out a horrified scream, stepping away from the young corpse. A sudden, guttural gurgle escaped his throat as his stomach, neck, and chest exploded with similar, gaping wounds all at once, like an invisible cleaver was hacking into his body. Like the colt, he fell backward, dead. The market crowd erupted into a flurry of chaos, screams ringing out as ponies tried to run from whatever had killed the colt and stallion, before lacerations ripped across their bodies, and they too collapsed limply onto the road.

“STOP! EVERYPONY, PLEASE STOP!!” Twilight pleaded, tears streaming down her face. To her utter horror, ponies weren’t listening. The crowd continued to dwindle as bloodied, mutilated ponies dropped left and right, the discordant cacophony of wet gurgles and horrified shrieks drowning out the alicorn's desperate screams as she helplessly watched the ponies she had come to save die in front of her.

CRRACK!

CRRACK!

CRRACK!

CRRACK!

A thunderous boom resonated through the air, and among the sea of bodies now littering the ground, a small fraction of ponies stood, their movements restricted by a transparent, purple aura. From where Roseluck stood, also unable to move, she could see Amethyst across the street to the left of Applejack’s wagon, eyes screwed in absolute concentration as the large, equally colored aura engulfing her horn swelled and burst with bright, erratic sparks.

“Nrrgg… none of you better move… a single damn muscle when I drop this spell…!” the purple unicorn managed to get out, beads of sweat rolling down her brow. Shortly after, she let out a fatigued exhale as the aura around her horn faded like vapor along with those outlining the only surviving ponies left.

Roseluck stood with petrified stillness, her tear-filled eyes sweeping across all the stallions, mares, colts and fillies that, mere seconds earlier, had been alive and well, and were now discolored, unmoving bodies on the red cobblestone road. Her gaze then lifted, going from survivor to survivor as she named them all in her head. Twilight, Carrot Top, Apple Bloom, Applejack, Derpy, Amethyst, Dinky, Bonbon and, to her relief, Lily, who stood before her, facing away and breathing uncontrollably.

“R-Rosey…?” Lily called out, not daring to turn her head were she to follow the same fate as the ponies on the ground.

“…I’m here,” the yellow flower pony reassured. She could see Lily’s leg muscles relax, and a heavy, grateful breath leave her lungs.

In the middle of the road, surrounded by bodies, Twilight Sparkle stood, devastated, the fur on her cheeks matted with tears. “N-no… I was… I was t-too late…”

Still breathing from her prior effort, Amethyst’s eyes moved to the mourning alicorn. “Twilight, now would be a good time to tell us just what the heck is going on!” The words came out shaky, but concise.

Twilight’s fixation on the ponies she had failed was broken by the purple unicorn’s demand for information. At the realization that there were still ponies to save, her posture straightened with renewed determination. “Everypony, listen. The things that are here—those creatures—they can only see things that move. That’s why you have to stay still, or they’ll know where you are.”

“Wait, what creatures? I don’t see any creatures!” Amethyst said.

“Th-they’re invisible, or to us, anyway. The way ponies’ eyes work doesn’t allow us to see them… but I should be able to put a stop to this.” Twilight lowered her head, just barely, toward the saddlebag against her side. “I created a spell that will make them visible to us. By knowing where they are, it will be possible to concentrate a spell on their location and destroy them.”

The alicorn’s broken horn crackled with magic impossible to use to its full potential. Her eyes squinted in focus, attempting to lift the contents within the bag, but she only managed a faint, flickering aura that fizzed out as soon as it appeared. “Come on… you did this with Tempest, just focus…” In that moment, a purple glare flashed in the corner of her eye. Distracted from her efforts, she looked up where she saw it. Her stomach dropped.

Standing across from her was a noticeably shorter and younger version of herself, staring with a pale face at the bodies scattered across the cobblestone road. With a quivering lip, the younger alicorn spoke, “W-w… what happened…?” Her eyes then landed on her nearly mirror self. She did a double take, before her anguished eyes swapped with a glare.

“Twilight, wait. Don’t—” the taller, battered version of Twilight Sparkle began.

“Who are you? What the hay happened here?!” her clone shouted fiercely, taking confrontational steps toward her.

“DON’T MOVE!!” But it was too late. A red streak slashed across her younger self’s neck, then another down her ribs, and a final one through her chest that propelled her onto the ground. A pained wheeze escaped the taller Twilight’s throat as she watched, with petrified eyes, her younger self lying there, convulsing and clinging desperately to life, but failing slowly but surely as blood streamed copiously through the wounds on her body.

“Oh no…” With time running out, she quickly scanned the remaining survivors, before landing on the pony she was searching for. “Bonbon, the creatures are called Wraiths, use whatever you know about them to help everypony get through this ali—”

And then she simply vanished. Like two pieces of film spliced together, the older version of Twilight Sparkle was just gone, erased from existence as though she were never there in the first place. The saddlebag that had hung from her back freely dropped to the ground, its contents clattering within, before being drowned out by a thick silence, interrupted occasionally by the fearful sobs and whimpers of the current survivors.

“What the… w-where did she go?” Amethyst stammered, eyeing the spot now only occupied by Twilight’s saddlebag in disbelief. “Damnit, she was the only one who could help us! Where did she go?!”

“A-Applejack…” Apple Bloom sobbed.

“Ah’m here, Apple Bloom,” her older sister said, unable to hide the terror in her voice no matter how hard she tried for her younger sibling. “Just… just don’t move, like she said, ya understand?”

“Everypony… they’re all… W-Winona…”

“Ah know… Ah know.” She wished she could do more than say comforting words—hold her, cover her eyes from an exposure to death no one should have had to witness at her age—but the last thing she wanted to do was cause her little sister to lose another family member.

“Mommy… are we going to die…?” a trembling Dinky whimpered, wet eyelids screwed shut.

“No, Dinky, we’re not going to die. Mommy’s here to protect you,” Derpy reassured with words she didn’t believe, failing to hide the fear in her voice.

The pit in Roseluck’s stomach grew hollower and hollower as her eyes darted between the ponies that were still alive, watching and listening helplessly. Between the death of the princess of magic, the disappearance of her duplicate who was the only pony who knew what was happening, and the small number of remaining ponies struggling to find sense or hope in the situation they had been thrust into, the cold and despairing feeling in her chest deepened, overwhelming her completely.

“…What are we gonna do…?” Lily whispered bleakly. The yellow flower pony didn’t respond right away. “…Rosey?”

“I don’t know.” That was all she said. It was the only answer she had to give. After all, what could they do when actions meant a swift, brutal death?

“This… this isn’t real… it’s gotta be some sort of bad dream!” Carrot Top mumbled, blinking rapidly, shutting her eyes tighter and tighter each time as though expecting the bodies to disappear when she lifted her eyelids. But after her next blink, what she saw instead, out of the top of her vision, were winged bodies of various colors dropping like rain out of the sky. The crashing of wood and glass, accompanied with the sickening crunches of fractured bones, echoed from a distance, inciting startled cries from various survivors, including Carrot Top herself, who had now begun to hyperventilate. The rooves of nearby restaurants caved inward from pegasi falling much like Thunderlane had, riddled with injuries matching those carved into the bodies on the road.

A red pegasus suddenly struck the ground before Carrot Top, all limbs simultaneously twisting into unnatural positions and spraying blood in every direction, particularly all over the golden earth pony. The last of her composure gone, she shrieked, stumbling backward off her hooves and onto the ground. She realized her mistake immediately. “NonoNONO—” A gash split her head down the middle, violently thrusting her head backward.

“Carrot!” Bonbon cried out, helplessly watching the body of her friend crumple into a heap on the ground among the vast crowd of corpses.

Amethyst, reacting spontaneously, shot a beam of magic that soared across the street and shattered the building window above the dead Carrot Top. “Can’t even tell if I hit it or not… I can’t do anything if I can’t see the damn thing!”

After another few moments of shocked silence, punctuated by the most recent casualty, the purple unicorn decided to take the initiative. “Alright, we… we need to come up with some sort of plan. Something, anything—we can’t let anypony else die.” Remembering the taller Twilight’s last words before vanishing, her eyes shifted leftward in their sockets. “Bonbon, Twilight told you the name of the creatures. She said to use whatever you knew to help us... do you know what these things are?”

After an initial bite of her lip, Bonbon sighed. “Yeah, I do. But, before I explain, I guess I owe everypony an explanation...” She took a breath. “Something you should all know about me is that… I’m not actually ‘Bonbon’. My real name is Sweetie Drops, I’m a special agent for the organization, S.M.I.L.E, working under Princess Celestia. I was stationed in Ponyville to ward off monsters that posed a threat to the civilians of this town.” Her ears wilted guiltily. “I’m sorry for keeping this a secret from you all…”

“If you have information that can help us, you could be Tirek’s secret spy for all I care,” Amethyst said. “What are these creatures, and how do we stop them?”

“Um…” Bonbon shut her eyes, sifting through her memories. “I don’t really know much about them; the agency always treated the Wraiths as an urban myth—”

“But what do you know, Bonbon?”

“F-from what I remember, they’re ancient, celestial entities dating back to the first era. Supposedly, they fell to Equus from the stars at the last synchronized stellar rotation and were then weaponized by some of the most talented wizards of that time using forbidden dark magic. I can’t remember the specifics, but… Wraiths don’t exist in the same plane that we do. They can’t see like ponies can, but they can pick apart movements and identify where things are in relation to them.”

“So… why are they here? And how did Twilight know about this?” Derpy asked.

“That’s the part I can’t figure out. So, the story goes, the Wraiths were banished back to the stars by the same sorcerers that weaponized them, but the next synchronized stellar rotation isn’t supposed to be until decades from now. The only way they could be here, on top of Twilight knowing about it is if…”

“What, are you implying she’s from the future?” Amethyst sarcastically suggested.

Bonbon seemed to take the suggestion seriously. “Well, wouldn’t that make sense with what’s been happening? A taller version of Twilight without a horn comes to warn us of an attack before it even starts, and then when the version of Twilight that looks much closer to the one we know dies, she just… vanishes. In fact, it explains how she knew I was a secret agent, since up until now, the only one outside the agency I ever told was…” The next word caught in her throat, realizing that there was a pony who wasn’t among them—who had never gotten Twilight’s warning. “…L-Lyra…”

Amethyst let out an incredulous exhale. “Look, regardless, what does what you’ve said about these ‘Wraiths’ actually tell us besides what we already know? We can’t move—that’s a given. But we can’t just stand here forever. Eventually, we’re going to need food and water, and even that depends on how long we can stay standing in one place; we need a plan of action!”

“Guys…” came Apple Bloom’s quiet, hoarse voice. “Twilight’s bag is still on the ground. Didn’t she say she had a spell to make us see the monsters?”

The attention of the survivors moved to the lone saddlebag in the middle of the road, which had almost gone forgotten amid the tense turmoil surrounding the group

“You’re right… hold on.” Tongue between her teeth, Amethyst lit her horn, focusing on the bag and willing it to rise from the ground. However, upon her attempt, the aura around her horn simply popped pathetically, and fizzed out into a flurry of minuscule, ember-like particles. A bewildered frown creased her brow. “I can’t…” She tried once more to lift the bag with her horn, and yet again, her magic was reduced to falling purple sparks. “I can’t lift it…”

“What do you mean you can’t lift it?” Lily questioned. “Didn’t you just hold everypony still with your magic?”

“No, I mean I literally can’t use my magic on it, every time I try, it’s like it cancels out.”

“It sounds like a resistance enchantment,” Bonbon informed, her voice rougher than before. “It blocks spells from being cast on an object, I’m guessing Twilight put one on it.”

“But then how are we supposed to…” A light bulb flashed in her head, and she reached her magic out to a broken plank from the wreckage of the carrot stand. Levitating it behind the bag, she began to pull, but as soon as the plank made contact, the aura surrounding it flickered away, and the plank hit the ground with a thud. “You’ve gotta be kidding me!”

“Are you able to lift what’s inside the bag instead?” Roseluck suggested, when she noticed, out the corner of her eye, one half of the market road mysteriously getting darker.

“I don’t know what’s in there. I can’t lift something unless I can see, or at least picture it,” the unicorn reasoned, and then let out a frustrated groan. “Come on, there’s gotta be something… the princesses… maybe I can get a letter to them. Does anypony have some sort of parchment and something to write with?”

Her request was met with the total lack of a response.

“Hello?! Did you all forget how to speak or what?”

“…I don’t think there’d be a point in writing a letter…” Derpy’s trembling voice spoke, her eyes trained upward at the sky.

“What the hell are you talking about? The princesses would be our best bet… at…” she then took notice of how Derpy was not the only one fixated on the sky. In fact, every single survivor, with shared expressions of dread, stared upward in the same direction as though in a trance. The next thing Amethyst saw was, along the ground at a certain point, the luminance of the sun faded gradually into a dark shade. Apprehension slowly welled up within her, but it was when she finally checked to find out what had caught everyone’s attention that a feeling of dread captured her as well.

The once cyan sky was now split into day and night, the sun hanging in the center of its respective half while the moon gradually and ominously crawled up the dark blue, starry canvas behind it, slowing to a stop at the same height as its celestial counterpart. The same thought crossed each pony’s mind: there was one instance where this had happened before, and in such an instance, Celestia and Luna had gone missing. For it to happen again, now…

“You… y-you don’t think…” Lily stuttered, her voice laced with denial.

“It can’t be…” Applejack reciprocated.

But there it was, right above them: the two celestial bodies, sitting idly in the sky, no longer anchored to the magic of the two sisters. Right there in the sky was the evidence for a fact the remaining survivors refused to accept.

That the two most powerful ponies in all of Equestria had too fallen victim to the horrors of this waking nightmare.

Just like that, it was as though a light had been extinguished. Each pony’s gaze remained directed at the sky, trying to will it to be anything other than what it was. Even those who had remained strong for somepony else wilted under the oppressive presence of both the sun and the moon occupying the same space, unmoving as though frozen in time. A thick stench of hopelessness permeated the air, and grew ever stronger as the reality of the situation truly began to set in. If the princesses had not survived, was there truly a chance for any of them?

Applejack snapped out of her fixation when she heard the heavy weeping of her younger sister, looking down to see her tiny body shuddering with visible, heavy sobs. “Apple Bloom, a-ah know you’re mighty scared, but ah need you ta compose yourself…”

“…Big Mac… Granny… Applejack, t-they didn’t get the same warning we did…” Apple Bloom said in broken sentences through violent bursts of tears.

“Now don’t go assumin’ things,” Applejack responded in a voice that tried to be reassuring but came out almost as broken. “there’s no way to be sure they ain’t managin’ just like we are—”

“They have to be dead, Applejack!” the filly retorted, her voice cracking. “They… they couldn’t have known to stay still… a-and if the princesses didn’t make it…” her sobs grew more hysterical. “…Scootaloo… Sweetie Belle—”

“Apple Bloom, listen to me,” Applejack began with as brave a tone as she could muster. “Ah’m here, ya understand? We’re both here, and we’re still together, and ah’m not gonna let anythin’ change that. That’s a promise.”

The passionate vow of Apple Bloom’s older sister sank in, and little by little, the emotional storm wracking her mind settled.

Amethyst watched the interaction between the two siblings, a blank expression on her face. Her eyes then locked onto the saddlebag in the middle of the road. “We have to get that bag.”

The determined statement drew the other ponies away from the foreboding omen above. “But how?” Lily said. “If you’re the only one that can use magic, and the bag’s enchanted…”

“There’s got to be a way,” Amethyst replied firmly. “I might be able to teleport over to the bag and take the contents out from there…”

“That might not be a good idea,” Bonbon pointed out. “Teleportation might be a type of movement they can detect. I know we saw Twilight teleport here earlier, but that might not be indicative of what happens to you. It’s risky.”

“I know, that’s what worries me.” After a moment of deep thought, an idea popped into her head: teleporting one of the bodies on the ground, regardless of being dead, might have been a reliable way to test if it was safe to teleport herself. Determining it was worth a shot, she directed her magic at Carrot Top’s bleeding corpse. The yellow body glowed with pulsing magic, and, with a strenuous grunt, Amethyst cast the spell. The body blinked from its spot, reappearing at a point several inches away—

CRRACK!

Everyone flinched as the corpse burst with three more jagged slices into its chest, hurling into the building behind it with a grotesque flop, and slumping sprawled out against the ground once more.

Amethyst grit her teeth. “Damnit… not taking my chances with that. Okay, come on. Think…”

“Why would you do that…?” Derpy muttered, her tone low and unsettled.

The unicorn’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Obviously to see if teleportation was a safe option, why else?”

“How could you use her dead body like that?”

Her confusion turned to irritation. “You think that I should have, what, risked my own life instead and ended up as a rotting corpse on the ground, losing you the one pony who can realistically do anything in this scenario?”

“I—”

“We need to do what’s necessary to survive! The last thing I’m focused on is treating dead bodies right.”

“She… kind of has a point, Derpy,” Bonbon uncomfortably agreed.

The gray pegasus had her mouth open to respond, but ultimately held her tongue, a look of dismay aimed at her hooves.

Soon after, Amethyst came up with another plan, but as she opened her mouth to say it out loud, she hesitated with an uncertain grimace.

“What’s wrong, Amethyst?” asked Roseluck.

After another momentary delay, the unicorn answered. “I’ve got an idea, but… it’s really risky.” She paused again, as though afraid to propose it.

“What is it?” Bonbon prompted.

A breath in and out. “During my last year at the School for Gifted Unicorns, we were taught a shield spell to block magical and physical attacks, and I still remember how to cast it, so… what I’m hoping is that the shield will protect me while I’m moving.”

Bonbon’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re going to… walk over to the bag?”

“It’s the only way we’re going to get it.”

“Well… not that I’m a fan of the idea, but couldn’t you test it on…” Bonbon cringed, “…o-one of the corpses, first?”

“I’d have to shield and levitate it at the same time, and I can’t cast two types of spells at once,” Amythest explained. “I’ll just have to wing it and hope it doesn’t kill me.”

“Well, then there’s gotta be something else we can do. You said it yourself, you’re our best asset right now.”

A moment of doubt passed over Amethyst, before she spoke with a tightened resolve, “Whatever’s in that bag is our only chance at surviving this. My magic is useless if we don’t go for it. Whether I die now, or we all die later makes no difference.”

“Are you sure about this…?” Lily’s voice this time.

“…No, but… I don’t see any other choice.” There was no other counterargument like part of Amethyst was hoping for; any reason that would make her any less resolute on her decision. With a tremulous inhale, she lit her horn and began to cast the spell from memory. Out of thin air, a geometric sphere made up of transparent, crystalline hexagonal faces encapsulated her from her hooves to inches above her horn, blinking in and out at first but stabilizing soon after. When that was done, the unicorn set her sight on the bag in the middle of the road. Now, all she would need to do is take a step…

That was when anxiety kicked in at full force.

The sphere of magic around her flickered away along with the purple outline on her horn. Amethyst’s eyes sunk slightly, her stomach expanding and contracting faster. “Come on…” She conjured the shield once more. She just had to take the step. The solution to surviving this relied on getting that bag.

Yet, each time she pushed her foreleg to move, it was as though her body was rejecting the request. Her heart drummed harder in her chest, a cold sweat drenching her brow. She just had to take the step. But the longer she stood there, faced with the prospect of it being the last thing she would ever do, the mental barrier keeping her hooves anchored to the ground grew even stronger.

She looked up at the surviving ponies watching her with clenched jaws, expressions of anticipatory apprehension on their faces. Her eyes fell back to the bag. “Just do it… just do it, Amethyst, get over yourself and do it!” Her gaze was caught by a body lying beside the bag, shredded like a slab of fresh meat, its eyes glassy and aimed at nothing. She just had to take the step.

She took another breath in. Let it out. In. Out. Heavier and heavier each time. Her eyes screwed shut. Then, with a shrill scream, she took a step.

CRRACK!

The spherical shield flared with a bright purple shimmer, blinding white sparks exploding outwards in all directions. Gasps escaped the lips of flinching ponies believing the invisible creature had effortlessly torn through the magic shield and killed the pony within. However, as the brilliant light died down, the shield emerged, still intact, three glaring, parallel jagged marks at the point of impact fading to the brightness of the rest of the sphere.

And at the center of it, Amethyst was still alive.

“It… it worked!” Roseluck exclaimed, her tone rich with reinvigorated hope. Her voice prompted the shivering unicorn inside the shield to open her eyes. Once she had, it immediately dawned on her she had been able to open her eyes at all. Not only that, but she didn’t feel any kind of stabbing pain like she had otherwise been expecting, and when she looked down, she confirmed it was not because of adrenaline-induced numbness. Rather, there was not a single scratch on her body.

“I’m okay…! I’m okay!” Amethyst sputtered in pure disbelief, her veins coursing with surreal relief. She was alive. The shield had worked, and, knowing this, determination welled up inside her. She could make it.

Without wasting more time, she took another step forward. The bright light blaring all around her caused her to squint instinctively. She took another step, then another, each strike against the shield piercing her ears with the high-pitched cracks of sparks flying off the shield accompanied by otherworldly screeches, like the distorted scraping of metal against metal.

As she trudged, closer and closer toward the bag, a buildup of strain at the base of her horn started to become noticeable. Amethyst winced, worry sprouting inside her as each impact against the shield quickly brought that strain to a new height, eventually translating into increasing waves of pain that shot through her skull. Soon, the effort needed to maintain the shield had become immense, her magic feeling as though it would give out any second.

The unicorn quickly froze in place with a loud groan. The thunderous cacophony of the shield’s resistance and the supernatural roars echoed through the air one more time before fading along with the glowing cluster of long, thin marks across the entire shield. With a moan of pain, she cut the spell.

“Amethyst, are you okay?!” Roseluck shouted concernedly, her eyes wide with stress.

Amethyst collected herself, sucking in air through grit teeth. “It’s getting harder to keep the shield up. I just need a second before I keep going.”

“You’re doin’ well, sugarcube! Almost halfway there,” Applejack encouraged. Upon checking her progress for herself, Amethyst found that the distance between her and the bag was now only a few feet. It would likely only take five or six more steps to reach it.

“I got this. Okay…” It took longer to conjure the spell this time, the first attempt producing no more than a few pitiful sparks, and the second, albeit successful, requiring a significant deal of exertion through the resurgent aching in her horn. She lifted a foreleg off the ground, and without delay, the relentless assault of the unseeable force pounded against the layer of protection around her. Her hoof remained suspended in the air as the brightness died down, reluctance seizing her briefly, before she brought it down in front of the other.

She fueled her horn with as much energy as she could muster, taking another step, then another, while fighting back against the fierce, violent onslaught of strikes that came with each one. Tears trailed down her face as her head pounded with the unbearable toll of her efforts, which, at one point, had resulted in the shield vanishing for the smallest fraction of a second.

“GAH!” A searing pain exploded in Amethyst’s left foreleg, causing her to stop mid-step. The ensuing burst of adrenaline allowed her to keep the shield up for just a little longer before it fell apart in time to block the final blow.

Her head was already tilted downward, and with two forceful blinks, the moisture blurring her vision cleared to reveal the injury she had sustained. Starting halfway up her foreleg, a narrow, fleshy slit ran down to the edge of her hoof, filling slowly with blood before overflowing and spilling onto the ground below.

“Oh no…” she heard Bonbon gasp.

“I’m okay, I… I don’t think it’s bad,” Amethyst assured jaggedly. While she suffered a moderate amount of bleeding, the wound was in no way fatal. That didn’t change the fact that it hurt like hell, and paired with the burning sensation in her horn, it took much willpower not to fidget from the pain.

“You have to rest,” Lily said. “You’re injured, and you look like you’re pushing your limit!”

Lily’s imploration tempted Amethyst, before she saw how close she was to her goal. She could just barely see over the opening of the saddlebag on the ground. The ticket to her survival was only one step away, and for that reason, she could not wait, lest she be killed by that thing and lose her chance to reach Twilight’s spell.

So, to Lily’s dismay, the unicorn’s horn glowed once more, her face contorted in sheer strain while only producing tiny crackling sparks that drifted to the ground like an ignited fuse for the first few seconds. With a labored roar, the shield finally reappeared, hopping between visible and gone until she could muster whatever magic she had left in her reserves to keep it consistently visible.

Amethyst’s horn screamed in protest, and she felt herself shaking heavily. It was now or never. With a push off her back legs, she lunged forward. The shield radiated blinding light, bellowing from the damage dealt to it. She felt the weight of the shield threatening to give out, but she pushed back with everything she had, withstanding valiantly until all four hooves were grounded. The attacks against the shield ceased, and Amethyst, given this window of opportunity, dropped the spell, allowing the shield to dissipate into speckles of harmless dust.

“I made it…” she sighed with a grin, laughing between exhausted gulps of air. “I made it.”

“Good goin’, sugarcube!” Applejack said, also bearing a smile. Derpy let out a gratified cheer, and others exhaled in alleviation. The overall atmosphere was brimming with higher spirits for the first time since the conflict had begun. Despite everything that had happened, the fact they now faced a chance at putting an end to this nightmare brought a sense of joy where hopelessness once reigned.

As Amethyst wallowed in the success of her endeavor, she recalled the bag for which she had put her life on the line and came back to her senses. Looking down, she could clearly make out the contents inside: a pile of bronze runes, and a face-down piece of lightly wrinkled parchment. The spell.

She felt another small pang of tension. Now was the moment of truth. She summoned her magic, moaning from the returning discomfort, and attempted to lift the parchment. Another elated laugh escaped her lips upon seeing her magic encase it. Although, the aura was faint, and lifting the parchment felt equivalent to what she imagined lifting an ursa minor was like. It was obvious the shield had weakened her magic substantially. She was just hoping she had enough left in the tank to cast Twilight’s spell so she could finally see where that damned creature was.

“Look at her go,” Lily chuckled. “I think we’re gonna be okay, Rosey.”

“I don’t know...” came an odd response from her friend, lacking any of the enthusiasm she had expected.

“Huh?”

“Something’s been bothering me.”

Lily was very confused. “What do you mean?”

Roseluck held a wary look on her face. “Well… if the Twilight who warned us wrote that spell in the future, and our Twilight died, then—”

“Wh… w-what the hell is this…?!” Amethyst suddenly yelled.

“What? What is it?” Bonbon asked

Amethyst was frantically flipping the parchment suspended by her magic over and over again, denial etched on her face. “There’s nothing written on here. I-it’s just a blank piece of paper!”

Derpy cocked an eyebrow. “Wait, I thought Twilight said she wrote a spell to help us.”

“Yeah, there’s a reason why I risked my life to get this!” The unicorn snapped, rummaging through the runes in the bag for any other pieces of parchment, but finding none. “I-I-I don’t… I don’t get it, why would she say she had a spell but then bring back a blank piece of paper?!”

“The spell was never written,” Roseluck spoke up.

Amethyst looked over at the flower pony, brow furrowed. “The hell are you talking about?”

“When our Twilight was killed, it erased her older self’s existence. That parchment likely did have a spell written on it, but when she was erased…” a dispirited pause, “so was her history of writing it.”

Several moments passed with Amethyst’s expression remaining unchanged, as though she hadn’t heard Roseluck. Then, she laughed again. There was no joy in her laughter this time. The aura around the scrap of paper vanished, and it waved gently on its slow path to the ground. “Of course. Of course that’s what happened—I mean, Celestia forbid something go right for once.”

“N-now, let’s not get our knickers in a twist,” Applejack said with hesitance. “Ah’m sure there’s another option—”

“What other option, Applejack?!” Amethyst exploded, glaring daggers at the farm pony. “That spell wasour only option! We can’t go anywhere, any possible help is gone—what else can we do?!”

Applejack’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water as she searched for any idea or course of action to respond with. Eventually, though, her lips came together, her eyes dulling as it sunk in that she didn’t have an answer.

This only amplified the emotions within the purple unicorn and, with a face screwed up in fury, she let out a fury-packed scream. The other survivors cringed, a pronounced forlornness circling among them. With all their immediate options expended and the only pony capable of helping them breaking down, any shred of optimism was replaced with the grim outlook that there truly was no solution to this, and that they were destined to die where they were, standing with a motionlessness that would only delay the inevitable.

The last resonations of Amethyst’s scream faded into a deafening silence, and she looked down at the blood-stained road, stewing in a poisonous brew of frustration and fear. Her aimless gaze wandered upward, where she noticed Bonbon staring at her, particularly fixated on the incision-like injury streaking down her foreleg, her face drawn in a fretting expression.

“Do you mind?” Amethyst snarled with a deep growl that made the earth pony blink with sudden awareness, her eyes flicking down to her hooves.

In the corner of her vision, a sequence of spastic flashes drew her attention shortly to the right. Its source was the light purple filly by Derpy’s side, whose horn crackled with sparks like a broken electrical wire. She also appeared dazed, glassy eyes half-lidded as her body began to lean just barely to one side.

As soon as Derpy saw this, her face paled, blood running cold. “Dinky? Dinky, you have to try and stay awake, okay? Please try and stay awake!”

“Oh no,” Roseluck muttered with trepidation, remembering the last time this had happened, and realizing what would follow.

“What’s happening?” Bonbon asked, the urgency from Derpy, as well as Roseluck and Lily alike causing a rise of tension in her gut.

“She’s going to faint!” Lily answered with her ears pressed flat against her face.

“Dinky!” Derpy cried as her daughter, despite fighting her own body for consciousness, began to lose the battle. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets, her legs beginning to give out.

Before gravity could pull Dinky to her death, a dim, purple aura encompassed her, keeping her on her hooves while her muscles were inactive.

A shade of red overtook Amethyst’s face as she forced her incredibly weakened magic to hold the filly’s body up. The swirling glow around her horn was barely visible, brightening and dulling repeatedly, and spitting out stray, glittering particles. “I… I can’t hold this for long…!” she grunted. “Derpy, you have… to—nrrgg—wake her up!”

“S-s-she’ll only wake up o-on her own…!” the gray pegasus sputtered, an utter panic-stricken mess while her daughter’s life hung in the balance, one small error away from a swift end.

As hard as the purple unicorn tried, she felt her magic slipping. The aura around Dinky began to die away, and Derpy lost all composure, begging incoherently for her daughter to wake from unconsciousness. It appeared as though that had actually worked when, in a stroke of fortune, the filly’s eyelids finally began to flutter open, ears twitching as she recovered her senses.

The sound of Amethyst’s horn resembled broken static as the illumination around it dissipated, leaving Dinky’s body unsupported. Fortunately, the sudden weight of her body kicked the filly’s mind into complete consciousness, and with a horrified gasp, she promptly locked her legs, balancing her body before its mass could drag her to the ground and cement her demise.

The immediate release of tension among the group was palpable. While everyone else released breaths they hadn’t realized they had been holding, Derpy fell into relieved hysterics, babbling her gratitude for Amethyst while battling the urge to hug her daughter tightly and never let go. Dinky, herself, was heaving tremulously with a vacant gaze as she realized what had happened, and how close she had been to death.

Meanwhile, the filly’s saver held her eyes shut briefly, nerves eased from alleviation. “Thank all that is holy, that was too close…” She winced as her horn throbbed with pain. When she attempted to conjure a very simple illumination spell, her horn did no more than trigger a measly spark from its tip before a numb feeling expanded from its base through her forehead. She quickly cancelled the spell, discerning easily that was not a good sign.

“My magic is spent. I just used up the last of what I had, it’ll be at least an hour before it recovers enough to do anything substantial,” Amethyst informed, then turned to the filly she had protected. “Dinky, I need you to transfer your magic to me.”

Derpy’s sobs silenced. “…What?”

Broken from her near-death stupor, Dinky was stunned by the instruction. “Um… h-how do I do that—”

“Sweetie, wait,” Derpy interrupted, then addressed Amethyst again. “I-I don’t want you taking her magic.”

“The longer we wait around, the more likely it is someone else will die,” the unicorn argued. “I need my magic restored as soon as possible, taking hers would not only do that, but also make my magic more capable.”

“It’s dangerous for a unicorn if they lose their magic, she could be hurt really badly!” the mother countered firmly.

Amethyst’s lips twisted back in a snarl. “You’re really on a roll today, aren’t you? It wasn’t enough telling me earlier I should have gotten myself killed rather than punch a few more holes in an already dead body—”

“I wasn’t—”

“Now, you’re willing to risk everyone’s lives to keep a single pony from getting hurt. I just saved your daughter’s life, in case you forgot. The least you could do is consider yourself indebted.”

“For yer information, Amethyst,” Applejack piped up venomously to her left, “a unicorn losing his or her magic can be irreversible, and at worst, fatal. Ah figured a former student at Celestia’s School fer Gifted Unicorns would’a known that.” At the mention of the loss of magic being potentially lethal, Dinky gasped, a look of fear careening across her face.

Amethyst gave Applejack a sideways glare. “And what would an earth pony like yourself know about magic?”

“Mah friend is the princess of magic, in case ya forgot,” the farm pony replied coolly, “and I won’t tolerate you believin’ that, because you saved Derpy’s kid, she owes you the right to put Dinky in harm’s way!”

“Look, I get you’re trying to get on some moral high horse, but that isn’t going to get us anywhere. We need to think about what’s best, and as for taking Dinky’s magic, ‘can be fatal’ and ‘will be fatal’ are two different things.”

Lily’s jaw dropped in shock. She began with a furious tone, “How can you—”

“Lily,” Roseluck whispered sharply behind her, cutting her off, “don’t antagonize her.”

“Did you hear what she—”

“Just don’t get on her bad side,” the yellow earth pony insisted. “Trust me, I know how she is.”

Amethyst hadn’t caught the conversation between the flower ponies with Applejack having challenged her once more. “So, what do ya suppose you plan on doin’ with her magic? ‘Specially since a minute ago, it seemed like ya didn’t have a plan.”

The unicorn was silent for a moment. “I’ll figure something out.”

“So, lemme get this straight. You’re concerned about waitin’ around too long, but ya got no problem puttin’ a filly’s life in danger for her magic when ya ain’t even got a dang clue what to do with it?”

“What, am I suddenly the bad guy now?!” Amethyst lashed out. “After everything I’ve done, risking my life to get to this bag, using every last ounce of my magic to save you ponies? I’m trying to do what I need to do to protect us.”

“Us, or you?”

The purple unicorn’s next words froze in her mouth as she processed the farm pony’s question, her irritation blending with suspicion. “Wait a minute, what are you trying to say?”

“Well, let’s face it, you put an awful lotta effort into savin’ that filly’s life just to want ta put it on the line seconds later without a second thought.” Applejack raised an eyebrow. “Lemme ask you, did you save her ‘cause you cared, or so you could get what ya needed from her?”

Amethyst’s brow creased. “Why does that matter? Who cares if I saved somepony for the right reason or not? She’s alive!”

“Ah care, especially when you’re usin’ that as justification for tryin’ ta put that same pony’s life in jeopardy!”

“There’s no guaranteethat it’s fatal!” Amethyst growled. “It’s a possibility. My magic is the only hope you all have, and if I need that filly’s magic to strengthen my own and have a higher chance of putting a stop to all of this,” her eyes moved to Dinky, “then that’s a risk worth taking right now!”

Dinky whimpered, scared tears leaking from the edges of her eyes.

“No!” a young voice shouted. It clearly hadn’t come from Dinky, and so Amethyst looked to the only other pony it could have been.

Feeling her stomach tighten momentarily from the sudden attention of everyone else, Apple Bloom steeled her resolve and continued. “Dinky is mah friend! Ah don’t care if it’s just a possibility, ah don’t want her ta risk dyin’ for me, or any of us. Just ‘cause you saved her life doesn’t mean she owes ya hers!” She scowled at Amethyst, before giving her classmate a supportive glance.

“Well said, ‘Bloom,” she heard her big sister say, and felt pride well up inside her chest.

Amethyst’s eyes gradually slid from left to right in their sockets, observing the other survivors. Each pony—aside from Roseluck—either had a glare trained on her or reacted to Apple Bloom’s speech with a murmur of agreement. “So that’s how it is?” she uttered darkly. “You’ll all turn against me because I’m the only one with the proper sense to do what’s logical rather than—”

Boom!

Every single pony simultaneously looked up toward the low, thunderous sound that caused the ground below their hooves to tremble. What followed were screams and equally horrified gasps at what they saw.

Overhead, blocking nearly the entire cyan half of the sky, Cloudsdale drifted rapidly in the direction of Ponyville in a downward trajectory, roaring a deep grumble that shook the air around the survivors. In its wake, a massive streak of thick, black smoke trailed off into an infinite distance. As the giant floating metropolis got closer, more details became clear, such as the running streams of once rainbow liquid along the edges of the city having transformed into an ill, brown color, as well as the raging fires that swallowed nearly all the cloud-built houses and buildings, and finally, what could distinctly be deduced as the catalyst for the havoc wreaked upon the city. The weather factory had been completely reduced to ruins, whatever was left smothered in a vicious inferno that reached the height the building itself once had.

A dark shadow blanketed the market road as Cloudsdale passed over the town in its descent, closer and closer to the ground. To everyone’s fortune, the colossal city continued past Ponyville, sparing the town from collision. However, this did not serve as any substantial consolation to the survivors, who came to realize they would still not be safe from the effects of the impact as the distance between Cloudsdale and the ground shortened to mere meters just shy of the mountain holding Canterlot.

Not soon after, another boom rang out, this time, louder and heavier. The ground beneath the fallen city erupted with a mix of dirt and rock, shooting into the sky with great force. At the center of the uprising of earthy debris, Cloudsdale practically fell apart, the structures of the city collapsing inward on themselves with a blast of gray dust and dissipating cloud.

The light quaking of the ground underneath Ponyville intensified to powerful tremors. Throughout the market, the rattling of glass and shuttering of nearby wood structures could be heard along with the distant bellowing of the crumbling city.

“Rosey?! Rosey, are you—”

Roseluck didn’t hear the rest of Lily’s words over the sudden, shrieking explosion in the distance. In seconds, Cloudsdale was engulfed in a blazing ball of fire, emanating a near solar level of brightness that made the flower pony squeeze her eyes shut. The tremors in the ground escalated even further, and it took a great deal of focus to remain balanced on her hooves.

Once the presence of light through her shut eyelids dimmed, she slowly lifted them. Where she once laid her gaze on a mist of dust around a destroyed Cloudsdale, she now saw an expanding canopy of fire and smoke rising from its charred, unrecognizable remains. She had little time to let the reality of what she had just watched sink in before she noticed trees on the horizon lurching excessively in the direction opposite the explosion, before closer and closer trees replicated the same behavior. Suddenly, leaves on the ground just down the road leapt into the air while restaurant chairs flew onto their sides.

“Brace yourselves!” Roseluck shouted. On cue, the left side of her body was slammed by a heavy gust of hot wind. She quickly shifted her weight off her left hooves and dug her right hooves into the pavement, pushing as hard as she could. She felt her body tilt ever so slightly, and with the ongoing shudders in the ground, she was afraid the pressure of the powerful current would have its way. Thankfully, the wind began to subside before it could successfully push her to her demise, and after transferring her weight once more, she recovered her equilibrium completely.

“Rosey?” the voice of Lily called out, a voice she was instantly reassured to hear.

“Still here,” Roseluck responded, then looked up. “Is everypony else okay?”

As her eyes panned from right to left, she saw immediately that Derpy and her daughter were still standing, as well as Bonbon. Though, she caught something strange about the three of them, namely the dread-filled sorrowful expressions on their faces.

“A-Apple Bloom…?”

The anguished, hitched words of the farm pony made their way to Roseluck’s ears by the time her eyes landed on her, where they then remained glued, shrouded in horror.

Applejack’s face was paralyzed in an expression of distress, her pupils shrunk to dots inside her widened eyes as they stared down at the limp body in front of her—the body of Apple Bloom, mangled and twisted unnaturally, bleeding from grisly gashes marking the entirety of her body, discoloring her yellow fur and pooling onto the ground below.

Applejack shut her eyes and opened them again. The yellow filly remained unmoving on the ground in a rapidly growing red pool. So, she blinked, again and again, her logic clouded by desperate denial. Over and over, she frantically shut her eyes, praying that she would open them and Apple Bloom would be alive—that this was just a delusion being played by her twisted mind.

But her little sister never blinked back.

“A-aa…” Applejack’s breaths grew more and more sporadic until she was full on hyperventilating. Her face contorted, crazed with agony. Then, from the depths of her being, a long and terrible shriek tore from her throat.

“Applejack…” Roseluck uttered, but she could not figure out what to say. Applejack was shaking badly—she had to say something. “I-I’m so sorry—”

“Apple Bloom!!” Applejack’s voice cracked, laced with the rawest form of pain and hysteria. Her breaths were ragged, eyes shaded a deep red as they locked onto her dead sibling. “Ah… ah promised you… a-ah promised—!”

“Applejack, listen to me, this isn’t your fault,” Roseluck said, but her words merely fell on deaf ears as Applejack continued to whimper between frantic sobs, muttering unintelligibly to herself.

“Ah’m s-sorry… ah failed you… m-ma, pa, ah failed you…”

“Applej…” the name caught in Roseluck’s throat when she saw the farm pony’s hoof budge just slightly—an act done seemingly without a care of the potential lethality of such a simple movement. Moreover, the expression Applejack directed toward her little sister had changed. From the layers of anguish and guilt, more features emerged: anger, loathing, and that which scared Roseluck the most. Intent.

She spotted Amethyst out the corner of her eye, still standing. “Amethyst… your magic, quickly…!”

“I can’t…” the unicorn said quietly, a grim, yet static look aimed at the ground.

Roseluck heard the lone sibling breath heavier, almost in a preparatory manner. “Listen, Applejack, whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t—”

Applejack closed her eyes, then threw herself to the ground, toward her sister.

“NO—!!”

CRRACK!

As soon as she heard the otherworldly screech, Roseluck’s eyes screwed shut, blocking out the sight she knew well was coming. She only wished she could block out the crunches of punctured flesh, and the heavy thump of the body hitting the ground. Even after the horrible sounds died away, she didn’t open her eyes, unwilling to face the torn and bloodied body of her friend. However, her mind conjured awful images out of the vivid stains in her memory of the bodies strewn across the road, and the sobs and weeps of the ponies around her, and when she recognized her imagination was no better of an alternative, she inevitably lifted her eyelids and confronted what she wished beyond anything she would not have to see.

Through the blurring of her vision, she could distinctly make out Applejack’s motionless, marred corpse, face down on the ground, one foreleg extending out across the grass while the other was draped over the chest of her younger sister, holding her with no intention of ever letting go.

She immediately regretted looking, but now that she had, she could not pull her eyes away. They were cemented by a sick fascination of the two bodies on the ground, of the two sisters, unseparated even in death.

The irony was cruel, yet poetic. Applejack had promised Apple Bloom that as long as they were together, she would not let anything change that. And, whether out of impulsivity, or out of resolution, she kept that promise.

***

Time had passed, but Roseluck could not initially tell how much as the sun had not moved an inch.

The only evidence that time had even turned in the first place was the clock tower at the end of the market road, which told her it had been nearly an hour since Applejack and Apple Bloom’s demise.

Since then, the environment among the remaining survivors had reached its lowest point—a point of despondency and desolation from which she knew it would never recover. The death of the two Apple sisters had been the straw to cement the acceptance that their survival was merely a sadistic method of torture designed by fate rather than an incredibly fortuitous chance to live.

Not a single word had been spoken by any of the remaining ponies. The only sounds Roseluck heard came from Lily, sniffling silently, and Dinky, weeping softly as she lamented the death of her school friend. Derpy made no noise but had a visibly puffed and reddened face from having cried earlier. Meanwhile, Bonbon looked down dolefully with a hint of tenseness in her features, eyes darting between her hooves and Amethyst.

Amethyst’s facial appearance was hard to read. Her eyes hung dully, brows held in a permanent frown. Though, rather than conveying any specific emotion, she looked… detached. Contemplative. Roseluck could not assign any specific term to the unicorn’s expression, but it worried her. There was something off about it.

Amethyst’s eyes snapped in her direction, and Roseluck promptly looked away.

After another few minutes had passed, the silence began to agitate her. She felt compelled to say something. “Lily…?”

“…Yeah…?”

She realized then she had no clue what to say. “H-how are you holding up?”

There was no response from her friend at first. Since she could not see her face, it was hard to tell if Lily had heard her or not.

“…My legs are starting to hurt, but I’ll be fine, I guess. You?”

“I…” she drew a blank, understanding now how foolish her question had been. Physically, she was okay. Other than that, she was scared. Demoralized. Everything that was happening still didn’t feel real to her. It had all changed so quickly; just a few hours ago, she was happily selling flowers amid a vibrant, energetic town, laughing with her best friend and conversing enthusiastically with customers and passersby alike.

Then, suddenly, Death’s impatient gaze was observing her just inches away, waiting for one wrong move to step in and do its dirty work. Suddenly, hundreds of carefree ponies going about their day without a worry in the world had been reduced to lifeless corpses piled offensively on the ground by the cold and twisted blade of fate.

It all felt like it should have been a nightmare—that her wish to have still been in bed had been fulfilled and she would wake up to reality, get ready for work and head off with her wagon of beautiful flowers, crafted from passionate hours of delicate handiwork.

The continual whirlwind of thoughts tortured Roseluck’s brain, and after all of it, the only response she could conjure was: “…I don’t know.”

The silence returned, remaining uninterrupted this time. She was itching for a distraction from her own mind, from the fear she felt for herself and the ponies around her, from the guilt she felt over Applejack’s death and having not done more to stop it, regardless of the illogicality of her self-reproach.

She just needed to stop and think differently. She was alive, and so were others. That had to mean something. Things could not have been completely hopeless if they had been given a chance to live. In fact, they had gotten that chance because Twilight Sparkle had come back to give them a warning, because she believed there was a chance for them to live through this. The key to their survival was there, they would just have to work harder to find it, bring their heads together to figure out a solution. There was simply no way they could have exhausted all possible ideas. After all, they had magic on their side; it had been an hour, and Amethyst had said her magic would be restored by now. If they were to just put some critical thought into their available options, then—

“This really is it, isn’t it?”

Lily’s words snapped her back to reality, unsettling her with the dark undertone they carried.

“There’s no hope for any of us, is there? The princesses are gone, Cloudsdale is destroyed, everypony around us is dead and now we’re slowly being picked off… is this… i-is this the end…?”

Roseluck heard the young voice of Dinky break out into sobs once more.

“We can’t give up,” she said with optimism that was blatantly forced. “I’m sure we’ll figure something out, we just have to think.”

“Rosey… the world is ending around us. You can see that too, right?” Lily left room for a response, and when one didn’t come, she continued, “What hope could we possibly have in all of this? Maybe… maybe we just need to face the fact that we’re not going to live through this…”

“Cut it out,” Amethyst growled bitterly, which took everyone by surprise. She then looked away from the ground for the first time in an hour, scowling icily at Lily. “Who are you helping with your whole ‘we’re all gonna die, everything’s hopeless’ spiel? Have you actually tried thinking of ways to fix this before deciding the only option is to just give up?”

“As far as I’m concerned, we’ve gone through all our options,” Lily replied faintly, seemingly apathetic toward the unicorn’s targeted harshness. “You said it yourself, didn’t you?”

“No… no, actually, we didn’t go through all our options.” Amethyst’s glare shifted to Derpy, deepening as it did. “It’s just that some ponies would rather be selfish than do what’s right.”

Derpy noticed the hostile gaze aimed at her and adopted a bewildered look. “Selfish…?”

“You want to know what’s interesting?” Amethyst continued. “Applejack and Apple Bloom’s deaths were preventable. If I had Dinky’s magic when I asked for it, I would have been able to save them.” Her lips shaped into a snarl. “Do you have anything you’d like to own up to, Derpy?”

The pegasus made a face like she had been shot, her lip fluttering open but forming no sentence. Her pupils contracted, staring off blankly as she was overcome with guilt.

“H-how dare you!” Lily spoke out in disgust. “You’re suggesting their deaths were her fault?!”

Amethyst’s expression remained unchanged as her eyes fell back on the earth pony. “You’re talking like it’s not true.”

“It isn’t true!” Lily exclaimed adamantly.

“Lily, I told you not to—”

Roseluck’s sentence was immediately shut down, “I don’t care. She can’t get away with saying stuff like that!”

“Saying what? That I was right?” the unicorn snapped back.

“It doesn’t matter! Dinky shouldn’t have to risk her life for any one of us! Applejack and Apple Bloom didn’t want her to do that for them.”

“Yeah and look what happened to them! It’s the same thing that’s going to happen to us if we don’t start doing what’s necessary to get through this!” Amethyst’s frantic eyes began darting from pony to pony. “Oh—but you’d all rather just give up, right? You’d all prefer to put our lives at risk in favor of a single pony because, Celestia forbid, we don’t remain pure? Fine then, if you’re all refusing to take the clear option, then surely one of you must have another idea in mind! Anyone?!”

There was not a peep from any of the other survivors as they all bore nervous downcast looks.

This infuriated the unicorn further. “Nothing? Not one single idea from any of you?!” She leered rightward. “How about you, Roseluck? You haven’t said much this whole time, got anything to share?”

The request seemed to startle the flower pony. She bit her lower lip, and for just a moment, she glanced at Dinky, her mouth moving to speak, but then her eyes wandered downward while she opted to remain mute.

Thankfully, Amethyst didn’t stick on her for long. “Lily? Anything to say that isn’t lamenting how the world is ending and we should just give up?”

Lily pursed her lips, exhaling exasperatedly through her nose. “Look, there’s a chance an opportunity might show up if we just wait a—”

“How about you, Derpy?” the unicorn interrupted abruptly. “Since you evidently don’t have our best interest in mind, you’d best hope you have something helpful to say for once.”

“I… I do have everypony’s best interest in mind!” Derpy insisted, voice shaking as she fought tears from Amethyst’s accusations.

“Then prove it, because either I take Dinky’s magic, or you better have an alternative in that brain of yours that impresses the hell out of me.”

“Y-you’re not taking her magic…”

“By all means, the floor is yours. Let’s hear what you got.”

Derpy’s eyes flitted about. “U-um…” Her eyes then brightened as an idea came to her. “Well, Twilight said she wrote a spell to help us… maybe we can try to write that spell ourselves?”

Amethyst rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, let me just grab some parchment and quickly scribble down something that takes months—even up to years to develop.”

Derpy’s face fell in dejection. “I-I’m sorr—”

But Amethyst wasn’t done. “Way to keep up your streak of dumb ideas, telling me I should have died rather than damage an already dead body, getting Applejack and Apple Bloom killed over a slim chance of death, and then topping it all off with yet another example of the stupid, useless pony you are!”

“LEAVE MY MOMMY ALONE!!” Dinky screamed, her face crumpled in a mix of anger and tears. Amethyst seemed taken aback—startled, almost—by the raw venom in the filly’s outburst, and the sheer hatred Dinky’s narrow eyes bore into her.

Amethyst’s lips twitched lightly, as though looking for words, but her mouth stayed shut. The expression on her face had not changed once since she had first spoken after the hour-long lull, yet there was a noticeable difference in the way she carried herself. Her eyes averted slightly from Dinky’s hostile gaze, remaining that way while she made no sound, leaving only Derpy’s sobs fighting off the silence. However, that didn’t last much longer.

“Bonbon, if I see you stare at my foreleg one more time, I’m going to do something you’re not going to like,” Amethyst warned with an eerie calmness that leaked animosity.

Bonbon blinked sporadically, evading the unicorn’s line of sight with a stuttering breath.

Upon addressing Bonbon’s fixation on her injury, she noticed just how much it was hurting. She groaned, a grimace finally changing her facial expression.

“Celestia, why does it hurt so damn bad?” she hissed, looking down to check her foreleg. Even through her fur, her face visibly paled.

A ghastly, deep purple color traced the long gash, spreading outward and blending into a perfect red that shaded nearly her entire leg. While the entire inflamed area ballooned past the point of normal swelling, the purple skin around the injury itself bulged to the point where it looked as though it would burst any second. It was blistered, with black, vein-like streaks running across it, as though hookworms were burrowing underneath the skin.

It didn’t take a medical degree to understand that this was no ordinary infection. This was something else. Something worse.

“Wh… what…” she muttered, scrunching at the festering welt pushing from her skin, like it had been boiled. “…The hell is happening t… h-how is it already this bad?!” She focused magic into her horn, wincing initially from the flaring soreness, but managing to get a visible aura. However, upon attempting to cast a general healing spell, her horn merely crackled and faded back to normal much like when she had tried to lift Twilight’s bag.

“No no no, that can’t be…” She lit her horn again, directing her magic at a body beside her before raising it several feet into the air. With confirmation that her magic had restored itself, she frustratedly tossed the body to the ground, where it collided with an audible snap. Again, she willed a healing enchantment upon the inflamed area on her leg, and again, her magic fizzled out like a torch extinguished by heavy wind.

“Th-this doesn’t make sense…” she uttered in a faltering tone, before seemingly remembering something and looking up. “Bonbon, you know about these creatures, what happened to my leg when it got me?”

Bonbon went stiff, as though put on the spot. “I-I don’t know.”

The odd delivery of the earth pony’s reply didn’t slip past Amethyst’s attention. “…Yes you do.”

“No, I don’t—I-I swear I don’t,” Bonbon asserted, failing to hide the stress in her demeanor, and unfortunately for her, it was spotted.

Amethyst’s furrowed brows lowered. “You’ve been looking at my leg ever since it was injured. Even right after it happened, you went ‘oh no’ like you knew it meant something bad.”

“I…” Bonbon started, but then sighed, grimacing in resignation.

“Thought so.” The unicorn’s glower intensified. “Now I’m going to ask you one more fucking time: what is happening to my leg? And don’t even try lying.”

Bonbon’s lower lip trembled in hesitation. Every time she opened her mouth, she was seized by an anxiety that forced her lips back together.

“Spit it out!”

With a startled tremor, the earth pony caved. “The creatures’ bodies… they contain some sort of poison—I don’t know if it’s a venom, or an infection, but…” she paused, steeling herself for what she was going to say next. “Injuries from Wraiths are… f-fatal.”

The last word left Bonbon’s mouth, and in that moment, the anger in Amethyst’s face faded, and raw, unadulterated terror progressed its way across her features. With shrunken eyes and a face drained of all blood, her entire body went rigid in cold shock.

“What…?” she stuttered weakly.

Bonbon didn’t say anything more, avoiding the scrutinizing gaze from the unicorn desperately seeking any evidence that the revelation of her impending death was some sort of fabrication.

“I warned you about lying to me…” Amethyst said, her voice wavering.

Bonbon refused to meet Amethyst’s eyes. “It wasn’t a lie.”

There was no sign that the earth pony was bluffing. Amethyst’s lungs suddenly began working overtime. “H-how much time do I have?!” she demanded.

Further overcome by distress, Bonbon closed her eyes. “Um… an-another h-hour, I think…”

“…An hour…?” Amethyst whispered. A laugh escaped her lips. “You… y-you’re telling me now… that I’m going to die in an hour…?”

“I… I thought it would be easier if you didn’t know—”

“Easier?!” Amethyst erupted hysterically, spittle shooting from her mouth. “How the hell does that make anything easier?! Tell me how to stop this fucking infection!”

“There’s no known cure!” Bonbon admitted, her stomach twisting tighter as the worst of the news was pressured out of her—a fact revealing that Amethyst’s fate had been sealed the moment she had been wounded by the invisible entity.

A fact the unicorn refused to accept. “No… I’m not buying it. You know the cure, you’re just not telling me.”

“I really don’t know, I swear!”

“Sure you do,” Amethyst snarled. “You also swore you didn’t know what was happening to my leg, and that was a lie. You’re hiding it from me, aren’t you?” She then stopped, a vicious expression coating her features. “You want me dead, don’t you?”

Bonbon’s eyes widened in shock, “Want you dead…?!”

“That’s it, isn’t it? What is it, you don’t like the way I think? Because I don’t meet your ethical standards, I should be killed? Is that it?”

Bonbon’s lower jaw fluttered, her thought process unable to conjure a response, which Amethyst’s manic mind only took as a confirmation of her suspicions.

“Tell me the truth!”

Tears gathered at the corner of Bonbon’s eyes. “I don’t know a cure!”

“TELL ME!!” Amethyst shrieked, her horn flaring with purple light. A magic aura suddenly materialized around Bonbon, who let loose a terror-stricken scream.

“Amethyst, no!” Lily shouted, earning no more than an ear flick from the unicorn.

Derpy, watching from the sidelines as Bonbon let out fearful, pleading gasps in the confines of the magical hold, felt a fuse light up inside of her, and the bubbling anger she had been holding deep down exploded to the surface. “LET HER GO, RIGHT NOW!”

Amethyst’s crazed eyes snapped over to the pegasus, taking on a sharp coldness on discovering who had spoken. Her horn dimmed, and Bonbon felt her motor functions return to her, a flood of relief evoking a fit of sobs and pants.

Derpy, on the other hand, felt her limbs freeze under the unicorn’s narrow glare, but with the built-up indignation in her gut, her courage returned anew. “You don’t use your magic on her like that!”

“Stay out of this,” Amethyst muttered, her voice hardened and cruel.

Derpy didn’t back down. “No! Y-you have no right to treat her, or anypony else that way!”

“I’ll treat anypony anyway I want. And I’m not going to let you—a waste of space who only knows how to get ponies killed—tell me what I can and can’t do.”

“Shut up!” Derpy yelled. “I won’t let you walk over me anymore. I am not the reason Applejack and Apple Bloom died!”

Amethyst’s jaw clenched tightly. “Yes you are. You’re they reason they died, and you’ll be the reason all of us die, because you can only think of yourself.”

“You’re the one who only thinks of herself!”

At that, Amethyst’s brows rose. She let out a genuine sounding chuckle. “Me? I only think of myself? Is that why I nearly killed myself trying to get Twilight’s bag? Why I saved your daughter’s life? All that compared to you, who can’t give her daughter up to a small chance of death to save all of us?”

“You don’t know that it would save us! You even said you didn’t have a plan for what to do with the magic.”

“It doesn’t matter!”

“Yes, it does!” Derpy retorted, nostrils flared. “You say you want to protect us, but you want to put my daughter’s life at risk for something you don’t know will work!”

“It’s better than waiting around and dying anyways,” Amethyst growled, her cheeks flushed with rage.

Derpy shook her head, the unicorn’s aggressive demeanor no longer bringing out any signs of timidity from her. “I don’t think you believe that,” she firmly stated.

Amethyst said nothing in response, her curled lips flattening almost warily.

“You just threatened Bonbon even though she said she didn’t know a cure. For somepony who wants to protect everyone, you have a very odd way of showing it.”

“Derpy…” Amethyst stammered, her muscles twitching.

“You threatened her because she didn’t have what you needed, didn’t you? That’s why you seem to have no problem harming my daughter. You need her magic, and she won’t matter to you anymore once you have it. It’s why you freak out at everypony who doesn’t agree with you or say what you want to hear.”

“Shut up…!”

“You just see all of us as a means to an end. You don’t care about saving us, you care about saving yourself!”

Roseluck was fixed nervously on the growing fire behind Amethyst’s eyes, a welling sense of dread roiling in her stomach. “Derpy, don’t—”

But Derpy could not care enough to hear it. “You’re nothing but a selfish bully who goes against ponies that don’t benefit you! If there’s anypony here that’s useless, it’s you, and if that infection in your leg kills you, you'll be just as useless as you were before!”

Amethyst’s horn fired up. Derpy suddenly glowed with a purple aura, and without warning, her entire body lurched forward, sending her stumbling to regain her balance. She only had time to get out a horrified gasp of realization.

CRRACK!

Roseluck’s desperate hope that her worst fear would not come true shattered, watching with absolute terror as the pegasus’s body erupted with gash after gash, convulsing with each tear that carved itself into her flesh, before dropping to the ground with the heavy thud of loose limbs. Derpy’s final expression of fear and betrayal gradually relaxed into a haunting blankness.

“MOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!” Dinky shrieked hysterically, breaking out into distraught wails as her mother, marred and blood-soaked, lay motionless on the ground in front of her.

“Amethyst… w-what did you…. what did you do?!” Lily stuttered, seized by a petrifying shock as she processed the murder she had witnessed.

Derpy’s killer stared at the winged body on the ground with a morbid apathy, her face vacant apart from a mild frown. Each breath in and out was shaky but rhythmic, her body trembling lightly while she, herself, appeared composed. Despite her features displaying a distinct surprise at her own actions, she showed no signs of regret or remorse for them, completely unperturbed by the mangled corpse or the piercing screams of the filly frantically begging her mother to wake up.

Bonbon heaved gasps of air, interrupted by erratic sobs. “Y-you killed her!” she choked out. “You psychopath! You killed he—” She suddenly felt her body go stiff as a cloak of transparent purple magic surrounded her once more. She cried out, a stark panic shooting through her.

Amethyst’s deranged eyes moved off Derpy’s body and to the scared earth pony. “What is the cure?”

“I told you, I don’t know!” Bonbon shouted emphatically, hyperventilating as she was held in the same magic that had killed another pony moments earlier.

“I don’t believe you,” Amethyst pressed. “You conveniently knew these things could infect ponies, but you don’t know how to stop it? Bullshit. What is the cure?”

“You going to kill me too?” Bonbon asked, her voice quavering.

With no change in the unicorn’s expression, her horn’s luminosity intensified, and Bonbon felt her body unwillingly lean slightly off balance, provoking a terrified whine from her throat.

“Let her go, Amethyst!” Lily demanded loudly, an overwhelming sense of powerlessness swarming in her gut as she watched the torment Bonbon was being put through, incapable of doing anything to stop it.

“Do not test me. I’m the one in control here,” Amethyst asserted. “This is your last chance. What is the cure?”

Realizing that the unicorn would not let her go unless she gave her an answer, Bonbon threw out the first thing that came to mind. “H-healing spell! A highly c-concentrated healing spell can take care of most infections!”

Amethyst raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I already tried that. How do you figure?”

“With powerful enough magic, there’s a chance it will stall it from spreading,” Bonbon reasoned. “There, I gave you what you wanted, now just let go of me, please!”

A bitter look crossed Amethyst, but before she could speak, a gleaming light in the corner of her eye caught her attention. When she looked, she saw Dinky with her moisture-layered eyes squinted in concentration, face screwed up in malice and exertion while her horn pulsed with all the magic she could muster.

Not a second later, a splitting pain erupted through Amethyst's temple while whatever caused it carried enough force to throw her head violently to the side.

CRRACK!

Bonbon immediately felt the grip of magic release her and steadied herself on her hooves. A wave of relief swarmed through her, but she didn’t spare time to recollect herself as ears were stabbed by the supernatural screech that marked an attack by the invisible creature, and her eyes were blinded by the massive purple blast of radiance expanding before her.

The blast began to fade rapidly, revealing the transparent shield underneath launching sparks in every direction, and within, a still alive Amethyst, pouring everything she had into the defensive spell she had managed to conjure just in the nick of time.

The shield dissolved into tiny particles, and Amethyst yelled out, her face contorted in agony. She stared down with wide eyes at the deep slit that reached around her shoulder, flowing with a gush of crimson fluid that streamed down her foreleg. However, her attention was then caught by the warm trickle crawling down the side of her face, and at the same time, over her shoulder, she spotted a sizeable rock on the ground, speckles of scarlet decorating one side.

Her wicked eyes slowly shifted in their sockets until they met Dinky, who cowered under the threatening glare that now bore into her.

“That was a mistake,” Amethyst said calmly. Her next actions betrayed the tone of her words as her horn, followed by Dinky’s body, glowed with a rippling, transparent light.

“Amethyst, no!” Bonbon screamed as Dinky cried out in terror, panicked tears trailing down her cheeks. “She’s a kid! You’re really going to stoop that low?!”

“She tried to kill me,” Amethyst muttered, her trained gaze unbroken.

“You murdered her mom!” the earth pony retorted, her voice cracking with emotion. “Amethyst, please stop! What happened to you?! You used to be kind and considerate—for Celestia’s sake, you volunteered as Ponyville’s lead organizer to help ponies, why are you doing this?! Please, don’t kill her!”

Amethyst had no reaction to Bonbon’s plea, or so it seemed at first. Her lips then pressed together, and she exhaled deeply through her muzzle.

“I’m not going to kill her...” she finally said, cancelling her magic and letting the crying filly free. “...I still need something from her.”

Bonbon’s momentary relief quickly turned to apprehension.

“Dinky,” Amethyst began, “give me... your magic... now.”

The filly whimpered with sudden dread. “N-no...!”

A malicious sneer. “Give it to me, NOW!”

“You killed my mommy! I’m not giving you an-anything!”

Several seconds of silence passed. An icy shadow masked the older unicorn’s features.

“Last... chance.”

Dinky continued to stand her ground, refusing to back down to Amethyst's demands. Meanwhile, Roseluck was focused once more on Amethyst, and noticed that same fire from earlier building behind her eyes again.

So, she acted before Amethyst could. “Dinky, do it.”

Dinky reacted with a gasp, looking to her with confusion and fear, while Bonbon targeted her with a shocked stare of disbelief.

“Rosey!” Lily exclaimed, stunned by what her friend was suggesting. “What—”

“She’ll kill her if she doesn’t!” Roseluck argued solemnly. “She has to.”

“B-but...” Lily’s breath trembled with distress and anger. She looked to the unicorn in desperation. “Amethyst, you can’t do this!”

Amethyst paid her no heed, having not taken her sight off the source of the magic she desired. “What’s it going to be, Dinky?”

The weeping filly looked to the other survivors, but instead of finding reassurance, she was met with despondent expressions of acceptance that Roseluck was right about what needed to be done. The last pony she looked to was the yellow earth pony herself, who wore a grim look that tried to be consoling upon meeting her eyes.

“You have to do what she says, Dinky. I’m sorry...” Roseluck said with disguised urgency.

The filly conceded with a fearful moan. “H-how do I...” her question was interrupted by convulsive sobs.

Amethyst didn’t need to hear the rest. “Just ready your horn like you’re performing any ordinary spell. When you feel the pull of my magic, your natural reaction will be to resist it. Don’t.”

After several more tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, Dinky took a deep, stuttering breath, then grimaced with effort as she transferred energy into her horn, which slowly but surely glowed a bright purple.

Without warning, Amethyst cast her own magic, and a deeper purple aura layered itself over Dinky’s. The filly yelped, feeling the flow of magic that wasn’t her own attempt to infiltrate her reserves. Acting on a programmed instinct, she blocked the flow of energy at the base of her horn, preventing the foreign magic from getting through.

Amethyst winced, and growled in frustration. “I said don’t resist.”

With an uncomfortable murmur, Dinky concentrated on reversing her body’s natural defense mechanism. Much like how she would manipulate any regular spell, she tried to will the blockage her magic had created to dissipate, and after several moments, she felt it begin to loosen. That was enough for Amethyst’s significantly stronger magic to push through. An abrupt yanking sensation surged through her forehead, causing her to scream loudly in pain, before thousands of pins and needles stung her, like the feeling of pinching a nerve, but everywhere on her body at once.

Between the two unicorns, a bright purple line of undulating light stretched from the younger’s horn to the older’s, forming a continuous stream. While Amethyst flinched from her system’s efforts to merge unfamiliar magic with her own, Dinky let out high-pitched whines of pain as she felt her magic not just being removed, but violently ripped from her.

“Stop it! It’s hurting her!” Bonbon cried out, earning no acknowledgement from Amethyst.

Both the protests of Dinky’s body having its magic unwillingly torn away, and the vicious coursing of exterior, controlled magic within her combined to hold her in a persistent world of torture, such to the extent that she was unable to handle it anymore and attempted to block the point of transfusion at the base of her horn once more. However, the presence of magic much stronger than hers would not allow her to do so, and instead, a wave of nausea washed through her as she felt her reserves drain faster, the energy she had discharged to block Amethyst’s magic instead contributing to the faint stream connecting both their horns.

When this happened, Amethyst’s horn glared slightly brighter, then expelled a short array of white sparks which knocked her head back an inch. A pained grunt escaped her lips, carrying a small but distinct trace of fright.

Despite the suffering she experienced, Dinky had been aware enough to catch Amethyst’s reaction to the sudden acceleration of the transfusion. With a vocalization of strain, she charged her horn with magic again. The sickness flooding her body intensified, and the flow of light between their horns picked up speed. Just like before, upon reaching Amethyst’s horn, it bloomed and sparkled uncontrollably, and the unicorn grit her teeth, struggling to stabilize the larger sum of power rushing into her system. “Don’t do that!” she said sharply.

It was now clear to Dinky, with Amethyst’s response to the increased intake of magic, as well as the resulting pressure against her horn, that her body wasn’t capable of absorbing large amounts of energy at once, and this clarity led Dinky to a revelation.

She now had a way to fight back.

However, what she realized upon this discovery was the cost of doing so. She would have to drain the energy in her body entirely, and likely faster than what was safe. The words of Applejack rushed back to her of the dangerous and potentially fatal consequences of losing magic. She felt the swarming, scalding heat in her limbs, and the creeping nausea from the magic she had already lost. If that already carried its own risk of death, there was no question that emptying it all at once to retaliate against the murderer before her bore the strong probability of amplifying that risk to a certainty.

But when her eyes dropped to the ground and saw her mom lying there, cold and motionless, having been heartlessly taken away from her, she was no longer afraid of that probability. A raging fire erupted inside of her and, with a roar of vengeful grief, she pushed all the energy she had left through her horn.

The string of magic between the two unicorns flared, and Amethyst gasped as the heavy concentration of magic hit her horn, thrusting her head off center again. Her horn scattered sparks every which way, the purple aura around it slowly shifting to a red hue.

“Gah! Dinky, stop!” she shouted urgently. Unfortunately for her, the filly did not listen, and the flow of her magic came even faster. Amethyst felt her horn protest with an intense ache, unable to merge the input of magic at the sheer rate Dinky was transferring it. In a panic, she tried to cancel the spell, but the buildup of raw, unprocessed energy crammed into the base of her horn would not allow her to do so. Acting on desperate inclination, she attempted anything her frantic mind could think of—pushing back against Dinky’s magic, stretching the stream of magic between them to break the connection, reaching out and dragging the filly to her death—but the overabundant energy inside her horn acted as a blockage, barricading her own magic from getting through.

Powerless to stop what was happening, her composure evaporated completely. “Dinky, stop! I’m sorry about your mom, okay?! I can bring her back! I-I know the spell, I can bring her back to life! You want to be with her again, don’t you?! DINKY!!”

Dinky heard each of Amethyst’s pleas, intending to take advantage of her young and susceptible mind, and she saw right through them. She was determined to make Amethyst pay for taking her mom away from her, and with a final anguished, arduous scream, she pushed the very last of her magic into the stream. The relentless rush of energy aggravated Amethyst’s horn to a smoldering red that chaotically bursted with showers of bright particles. The emitted light grew brighter and brighter, escalating to a blinding shine.

Suddenly, it exploded with a thunderous crack, expanding into a white flash of plasma that launched Amethyst off her hooves and onto the ground, before dissipating into flickering dust. Stricken with a cold dread, the unicorn rapidly mustered the magic for a shield, only for none to appear when she cast the spell. The reason was quickly revealed when her horn, severed completely from its base, landed on the grass beside her.

CRRACK!

Amethyst’s head ruptured, blood and brain matter projecting from her new featureless face, and jerked to a grotesque angle, dropping to the ground like a stone. Her body jolted several more times as rows of gashes ripped through her chest and stomach, before going completely still.

There was a shared lull between the survivors who had watched the fallen unicorn meet the end karma had planned for her. Unlike every other death, there was no mourning this time, but there was no happiness either, only the unanimous satisfaction that justice had been served.

Bonbon spent little time reflecting on Amethyst’s demise as sudden concern rang through her mind. “Dinky! Dinky are you okay?!” she called, her eyes spinning to the light purple filly, and felt the warmth of relief suffuse her body when she saw that Dinky was still alive and standing. Though, that relief would be short lived, as after her first glance, further observation of Dinky’s appearance implanted her with a seed of rapidly growing horror.

Beneath her charred and smoking horn, Dinky’s eyelids shuttered, covering over half her fading eyes. A river of sweat drenched her brow while her mouth hung open, drawing strained, ragged breaths. Her head began to hang ever so slightly, and her body slanted on quivering legs that threatened to give out any second.

“Dinky? Hey, Dinky!” Bonbon said with a raised voice. To her dismay, Dinky hadn’t seemed to hear her, only responding with a weary moan as the shaking of her legs became more noticeable.

“It’s her condition,” Roseluck said, her tone bleak. “She’s fatigued from losing her magic and that’s triggering it again.” Her eyes fell, a tear trickling down her face. “She’s going to faint no matter what we do.”

The bitter revelation struck Bonbon like a physical blow, terror rushing over her as she now noticed that Dinky was exhibiting the same signs she had displayed earlier before fainting. She subconsciously looked over at Amethyst’s lifeless form, and then back at Dinky, a deeper despair piercing her heart.

“No...” Lily muttered in denial. “No, no, there has to be something we can do! Ameth...” She trailed off, the harsh reality sinking in that there was now no one who could save her. “Dinky! You have to try and stay awake!”

But it was fruitless. Before long, Dinky’s eyes proceeded to roll backward as her head dipped forward. Her muscles slackened, and her supporting limbs gave way underneath her, leaving her to drop into the jaws of death.

The world suddenly slowed for Bonbon. As she watched Dinky’s legs fold, letting her body fall freely, something switched inside her. Whatever concern she had for her own life disappeared in an instant, and a protective urge rose up inside her—the same urge that had motivated her to become a secret agent, setting her life on the line to protect ponies from dangerous threats.

Dinky had been through more than anyone else—endured more hardship than any other survivor—and, despite that, she had been the bravest of them all, risking her life to stop Amethyst from hurting more ponies. Now, fate was going to repay her with a pitiless death.

And Bonbon could not let that happen.

Instincts taking dominion over her judgment, she rushed from her spot, blitzing toward the unicorn filly, who was inches away from collapsing to the red-stained road. She heard the distressed cry of her name from Lily, but it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered at that moment was saving Dinky, regardless of the cost she knew well would befall her. With a great push from her hooves, she launched herself over Dinky and shielded the smaller body with her own larger frame.

She could almost feel the unearthly, shadowed presence of the creature closing in on her, but she didn’t feel scared. In fact, in an odd way, she was glad to be going out the way she was. She would be able to see Lyra again, and she was certain her best friend would be proud of her.

Roseluck could not bring herself to look as the monster’s bellow cracked through the air, and the crunches of flesh and bone made their way into her ears even while being pressed flatly against her face. She could not bear to see another friend be ripped to shreds before her, and after the horrible noises stopped, her gaze remained on the ground as she silently grieved for the earth pony with a lasting respect for her self-sacrifice.

Lily’s lamenting abruptly went silent, and a choked, high-pitched gasp left her throat. “Oh no...!”

The short sentence instilled a foreboding anxiety within Roseluck's being. When she, against her own inclination, finally looked up, a sick part of her was suddenly glad Bonbon had gone out the way she had.

Because at least that way, she would never have to know she was too late.