The alicorns were going away.
Cadance tucked her daughter under her wing, looking back at the aged love of her life, tears slipping down her cheeks. She was love incarnate, so whatever pain the others felt, she felt it magnified. Her legs buckled, her heart jittered, her very mind felt hazy. None of this was real, but it was. It was. Alicorns were born out of the desires and whims of ponies--now, they had everything. There was nothing left for them here except to follow Discord and the swarm to another barren place; perhaps they would live among the dragons for a while. Perhaps they would chase after the last of the griffons.
Perhaps they might find Megan’s rainbow bridge.
“It’s a little late in the game to leave us,” Prince Blueblood said, stepping forward. On his head was a crown--it had been Celestia’s crown. He looked to Rarity, who was Princess but not his princess. “I still do not see how I am you and she is she.” For the first she, he gestured toward the white, aged socialite. On the second she, he gestured toward grand, elegant Luna.
Rarity narrowed her eyes, crows feet barely showing. “I do not understand why Spike must go.” She was bitterly jealous and had no shame in showing it.
Luna lifted her chin, speaking for Celestia, who had done this enough time to be sick of explaining herself. “Spike is a dragon, Rarity. When you ponies lose control of yourselves, he’ll be tempted by your weakness to become king. And, while I know you would live to rule with him as your beloved, he cannot have that much power.” She swung her eyes to the still baby dragon. After eighty years, all that had changed was his mind. He was forever trapped in that zen mode of sorts. “He would kill everyone.”
“And, the windigos won’t?” Shining Armor asked, tears threatening to spill from his pink eyes. This was the most unfair to him. He was having his wife, his daughter, his sister, and his little brother taken away from him all in one devastating blow. He was left to rule the Crystal Kingdom alone in his old age. While there would be plenty of fillies desperate to make the prince content, he could not love him. Cadance was his true love; she had put on the mask of mortality just for him. She had done the impossible--she approached Leon, who was born from the union of Luna and a mortal--to tell the secrets of how to give birth to a child when one was an alicorn.
Twilight Sparkle, emotions quashed so long ago when she knew that she would have to do this one day, leave her friends and not even follow them in death, merely answered very honestly. “You’ll be dead by then.”
“But you will still let ponies die,” Armor retorted. He blew through his lips. “Whatever. Do what you want... I--I don’t care anymore.”
Everyone knew it was a lie, but they let him say it because he had to be bitter and let his sorrow out somehow.
Celestia only acted as if any of this affected her when the sole child of Rainbow Dash spoke up. There were secrets--so very many--but her great grandson tugged on her heartstrings in a way that even her own daughter couldn’t have done. “Princess?” he asked. His mane was pastel rainbow, a mixture of Celestia’s and his mother's; his coat was indigo, evidence of his father. “Where are you going.”
Celestia merely looked down at him, pink eyes wide, wider, and eventually even those tear ducts dusty with years leaked a single tear. “Away,” she merely whispered. “Far, far away.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t ne--”
“DON’T YOU DARE SAY THAT!” Rarity screamed. Tears fell freely down the old mare’s face. Blueblood did nothing to comfort her. While they were co-rulers, the years had done very little to patch things; if anything, it made their clashing all the more obvious. “WE, WE WILL ALWAYS--”
“What Rarity means to say,” Blueblood interjected, “is that we want you.” He looked into each of the women’s eyes, settling finally on Skyla, who had known no other life than that of an Equestrian. “We will always want you.” He had loved the filly, though she was ten years his junior, when he had been thirty and she had been a spry young fifteen. He always kept at bay; then, because she was too young. Now, because she was both too young, too distant, and one day, would be too old. She would be too jaded for him should she return and he by some miracle still alive. He would be old, toothless, and infantile. She would be strong, grown, and the mother of a nation or nations or the world. Alicorns could die--this he knew, when the Princess of Hearts of Hooves day was slain, according to history--but with such strong alicorns to learn from, he doubted she would be slain by anything less than another of her own kind.
Purple wings spread, looking toward the sunset. They would go west; they always went west until they were coming back to the east like the multitude of bodies in the sky. “It’s time.” She took off, no goodbyes and no emotions. Celestia took off, perhaps fleeing. Cadance hurried Skyla along, nearly blind with tears. Luna left last, sparing them all a glance.
She knew best what it was like to be abandoned and so understood; but it was best for them.
In the same way a forest fire cleared land for growth, the decline of pony society would keep problems of peaking from killing the race.
“I shall miss you all,” Luna said finally.
Everyone watch as the princesses all flew off in the night. Blueblood was the first to return inside. Rainbow Dash’s son follow shortly after, eager to see what his mentor might show. Rarity and Shining Armor remained.
She stayed because this was a balcony and she didn’t trust him on it. He stayed because the edge was close but Rarity was closer, and his life and lover were just beyond the edge and his lifetime.
“Your train leaves at eight,” Rarity said, as the moon’s ascension signaled eight o’clock. “They will wait, but your guards...” She looked at him, reminding him of duties. “What will they think?”
Shining Armor rose, walking stiffly toward the train below in Canterlot. He paused on the balcony, considering the friend of his sister and his wife’s favorite grooming artist. “Will you... will you visit?”
She considered his eyes, whether it would be good to bring up the part or to let it die, and then spoke. “Of course.”
“With the Apples?”
“You know only Applejack and Applebloom will be able to come.”
“Yes.”
Rarity looked him over. “You know, my sister is still there. She is no Cadance, but she has always admired you. Her husband was recently killed in duty...”
Shining Armor’s ears drooped. “I... your sister deserves better.”
“Well, we all do.”
She was right and that was there was to it, but Armor was stubborn so he left without a goodbye as well because he was angry with every right to do so. Rarity comfortably sat in the night, her new domain. She touched the moon with her magic and felt the connection. The weight of it almost crashed down on her brain, but she held it up almost as if just to spite Luna for leaving them.
Perhaps they did not need the alicorns; perhaps they only wanted them. She looked up to the mountain above Canterlot, which had once been capped with snow and had been one of the few places in the world to find a windigo.
There was a flurry forming.
