The sun filled the sky until it had nearly consumed the entirety of the space. Only slivers of angry red remained along the horizon, the final hold out against the encroaching inferno. The once cheerful yellow orb pressed down as a blazing weight of death upon the very land it had breathed life and warmth into for millennium. Smoke rose from the blackened wasteland, whipped up into churning maelstroms by the scorching winds.
The earth glowed like fresh coals under the intensity of the sun’s brilliance, all save a tiny patch of land that had been cast into the deepest shadows. A column of blackness stretched upwards from the spot, spearing towards the sun to mark where the moon hung in a last desperate, final defiance of her sister’s wrath. She had thrown herself between the deadly conflagration, and the last sanctuary of life.
The Crystal Empire blazed with light, the palace tower a shimmering beacon within its center. Though full within the shadow of the moon’s eclipse, the sun’s might could not be fully denied, and the very substance of the ancient city caught that angry light and reflected it until it could fill every nook and cranny and dark corner. The heat was held at bay for a time at least, unable to yet pierce the azure veil that covered the city.
It wouldn’t last much longer though. Twilight Sparkle found a certain dark comfort in that knowledge as she gazed out over the balcony’s railing, in the certainty that there just wasn’t anything left to be done. Weeks of study, of sleepless nights and hectic days, of forsaking food and rest, of nothing but what few tomes she had managed to salvage before being forced to flee to the protection of ponykind’s final stronghold. Just her books, and her magic, and an impossible task.
Now that she was willing to admit defeat, to allow herself to realize that this was indeed a problem beyond even her power, the strain was somehow lessened. Though she was sad to know it would all be over soon, it was a relief to not have to struggle against the inevitable anymore. In Equestria’s final hours, Twilight amazed herself by finding peace with the situation.
She smiled sadly to herself, reflecting on just how much she had changed over the centuries to be able to face the greatest disaster of all time without disintegrating into an emotional wreck. Far more than the crystal city had changed for certain. The glittering metropolis looked very much as it had all those lifetimes ago when she had first laid eyes upon its wonder. She had been much smaller then, in mind, body, and magic. She had grown so much since then, since coming into her true nature.
Twilight now stood tallest of all alicorns, almost a full head above even Celestia. She had long since traded in the stumpy little legs of her old body, gaining limbs both long and slender, yet strongly built. Her figure had grown out to match the graceful lines of her legs, the flow of her form smoothly transitioning from limb to body to wing, even when the great feathered spans were tucked tight against her side.
Her mane drifted, caught up on the astral wind of her magic. Pure thought flowed down from the base of her long, elegant horn and through the ethereal strands, soft incandescent blue bands that twisted across the darker purple hues. For the first time in days the lines of Twilight’s thoughts had smoothed out from the frantic tangle of illumination that had made it hard for anypony to even look at her without shading their eyes.
“Twilight?” a voice chimed out, so pure and perfect in pitch that the sweetness of it made her heart skip a beat. Her mane flared into brief azure brilliance as the voice touched her emotions, bringing everything she was feeling into complete and utter focus. The bittersweet peace of knowing it was all futile slammed down on her, clawing at her mind like a panicked animal even as the raw love from the speaker lifted her heart and spirit alike. It was a terrible, wonderful surge of undiluted feeling, the emotions completely bypassing the filtering of experience. They were not tempered or shaped by memory, to be fitting neatly within her perception of how she should feel them. It was to be a small filly again, to know her emotions without preconception.
“Cadence,” Twilight replied hoarsely, her tone raw with the strength of the sensations. She tried to turned eyes blurry with tears upon her fellow alicorn, but the effort was beyond her at the moment. Even more than her voice, Cadence’s form held the power to sharpen emotions to their purest state. The two together were overpowering, and the light of Twilight’s mindscape blazed a golden white along her mane as she struggled to bring her thoughts in check.
Gradually she reigned in her emotions, the discipline of centuries letting her build up a wall between herself and her feelings. She shoved them away as hard as she could, her mind falling into the cold but comfortable realm of fact and logic. The diffused glow along Twilight’s mane sharpened, the light lessening and reshaping itself into crisp, ordered spirals. She regarded her mind, and found nothing but harsh, sterile truth. Knowledge and fact and logic. Purest thought, without room for emotion, without concern for ethics or morality.
Twilight let out a soft breath, and with calm deliberation, cracked open the wall within her mindscape a fraction, letting a trickle of her feelings sweep back into her. Enhanced as it was by Cadence’s mere presence, that trickle was potent enough to restore Twilight’s mind to its proper balance. Finally she allowed herself a second glance at her sister goddess.
Cadence stood in patient silence, waiting for Twilight to gather her wits. Her eyes were closed and bound by cloth, as her gaze was something even her sisters could no longer resist. She was cloaked and hooded, for hers had become a beauty that was literally beyond words, for never before had something existed to require such descriptions. Hers was a beauty too dangerous to be seen, too powerful to be resisted. The heavy cloth that covered her practically shone just because of who wore it, shimmering elegance within every stitch. It had come to the princess as a thirdhoof cast off, and no work had been done to prepare it for her, nor had any care been granted it in the nearly three centuries she had worn the tattered rags. It fit as if crafted especially for Cadence by the greatest masters of all time, and she wore it to shame the finest dresses ever imagined.
“You’re not in your study,” Cadence chimed, the slight accusation in the tone slamming a spike of bitter fear into Twilight’s mind.
“No, I’m not,” Twilight replied easily, shoving the intruding emotion back behind the wall. “I’ve realized there is only one thing left that can be done.”
“You found a solution?” Cadence said eagerly, sweet hope bubbling through the cracks of Twilight’s mental defense.
“No, I haven’t,” came the answer, and the hope suddenly turned rotten, spoiling into despair.
“But…but then…”
“While I’m sure a solution exists, it is beyond me, beyond any and all of us,” Twilight told her calmly. “All that is left is to embrace the change to come.”
“Embrace it?” Cadence’s spat, and even in her scorn the sound was a gentle pleasure to the ear. The surge of acidic anger that came with it less so however, and Twilight was forced to seal away her emotions entirely before the fury could infect her thoughts.
“Yes,” she said, her voice flat and devoid of inflection. “We are not limitless Cadence. We grow in power as always, but we have not grown in our ability to handle that power for more than a century. We are breaking from the strain, and we are breaking the world with us.”
The cloaked alicorn flinched, from the words, or her tone, or both. Twilight didn’t care, could not care. There was no room for it in her mind at the moment. She waited, now her turn to give Cadence the opportunity to collect herself. She sensed the pressure against her mind lessen as her sister brought her own emotions back in check, and Twilight let herself feel again.
“Couldn’t we just…give up some power?” Cadence suggested timidly, and Twilight smiled, her mane flashing.
“That’s what we’re about to do, actually.”
“Oh,” came the soft reply. “What will become of us then?”
Twilight shrugged with her wings, feathers ruffling. “I don’t know. I never did get around to my research into the possibility of the existence of an afterlife.” She laughed gently. “It seemed an easy thing to keep putting off once I was able to stop worrying about aging. Still, I think we won’t be gone completely.”
“What do you mean?”
Twilight turned her gaze back out over the city. “We’re more than just who we are. We are what we are, embodiments of fundamental forces. Twilight Sparkle may end, but magic and knowledge will continue. If there is an afterlife, perhaps I’ll end up there, or maybe I’ll be reborn here, to carry on in the new world.”
There was a long silence after that as Cadence came to stand beside Twilight at the railing, looking out over the city that had been her domain for countless generations.
“Do…do you think that I might get to see my Shining Armor again?” Cadence asked as a gentle flow of old but still potent love crept along the edges of Twilight’s mind.
“Maybe,” Twilight answered in a whisper, draping a wing over her sister goddess in a hug.
“I’d like that.”
“Yeah, me too…”
The two stood there on the balcony, each leaning into the other for support and comfort as the sun continued to press ever closer, as the moon began to soften and glow a soft yellow orange, as the barrier around the city began to flicker and fail. Without a word, Twilight bent her head to touch her horn to Cadence’s, lending her magic to the task. The barrier darkened with streaks of violet as it once again held strong against the firestorm outside.
More time passed, and Twilight was vaguely aware that they were no longer alone. Somepony stood on her free side, their gaze skyward as the first molten drops of the moon began to rain upon the dome of magical will that encased the city. The drops became splatters, and then great hammering fists that slammed against the protective shield, each blow leaving behind more and more weight. Lava flows started to snake down the barrier in blazing rivers.
The overwhelming brilliance of the sun grew brighter.
“I’m sorry sister,” Twilight said gently, making the pony beside her jump as if she had forgotten she wasn’t alone.
“Don’t be,” Luna replied, her voice heavy. “I knew what would happen. I knew…knew what the price…” Her words failed her, and she shook her head. Her sky blue mane hung limp and plain, the stars within faded away.
Twilight extended her other wing, bringing Luna into the hug. The smaller alicorn resisted for a time, holding herself stiff and aloof even if she didn’t exactly try to break free. But as the minutes passed her posture loosened, and she leaned reluctantly against her sister goddess. The molten rivers grew in size and numbers, until they began to obscure the sky. The hammering fists became muffled by the layer of liquid moon spreading across the barrier, though the weight continued to grow ever faster.
Then there was a single, massive hand that slammed down upon the shield, that pressed upon it with the weight of mountains. Cadence cried out as she collapsed to her knees under the impossible pressure, the aura around her horn sparking wildly before guttering out like a snuffed candle. Twilight groaned as the strain of the barrier passed entirely to her, as she tried to resist as the sun tossed down the broken remains of the moon. The blazing brilliance that filled the sky was replaced by a sudden, sullen darkness as the molten mass covered the entirety of the city. The sun was finally blocked out, but the glow of the molten corpse of the moon shed a new, eerie light of its own. Shadows flickered in the streets as reddish orange light danced across the rooftops.
And then she felt Luna’s horn touch hers, and her sister’s magic joined with her own. It was so feeble. Luna’s power was not just drained, but broken. The moon, her moon, had been destroyed, and it had torn her magic apart. She had nothing but drops left of the oceans that had been hers.
But she gave what she had to her sister goddess, and utterly useless though the magic itself was to the task at hoof, the gesture held power enough. Twilight felt her heart swell even as it threatened to break, and she knew, knew with utmost certainty, that she could not fail Luna at that moment. Her mind hardened as she brought her will and feelings to bear, and locked her magic onto the singular focus of holding the barrier.
Time was a thing rendered meaningless, there was only her magic, and her sisters. Cadence rejoined the effort, quickly or eventually, Twilight could not have told which. Together the three stood in defiance to a force that would have torched them to ash even as it crushed them into the earth. Together they held fast as the barrier bent and buckled under the impossible strain. Together they waited as the weight slowly ebbed, the greater majority of the mass above sliding down the curved wall of the shield as it continued to bubble and boil under the fury of the sun.
The dim, ember glow of the moon’s remains began to brighten as the heat grew, as the sun’s power continued on inevitably. Dull oranges transitioned to brighter yellows, to incandescent white. In time the light became its own force, pressing mercilessly down upon the trio until, alicorn though they were, even they were forced to retreat into the relative safety of the palace interior.
Twilight lead the small group, her wings still draped across her sisters’ backs as she steered them down the halls until the light dimmed enough for them to see properly again. The lavender alicorn blinked tears from her stinging eyes until her vision finally cleared, and she was able to turn her concerned gaze upon her smallest sister.
Luna was subdued and listless, walking along under Twilight’s guidance in numb obliviousness. Her eyes were upon the crystalline floor, the tears still flowing free down her muzzle. She leaned so heavily into her larger sister, Twilight was certain she would have fallen without the support. She was equally certain she wouldn’t have bothered to get up again.
The three made their way down the winding passages of the tower, passing through layers of light and shadow as the trip brought them closer or further from the exterior of the structure. Where the light blazed the air itself had started to shimmer, while the shadows seemed to bite like arctic wind in comparison. At one point the entire tower gave a shudder, and the floor was tilted to one side by several degrees.
Twilight continued them on undaunted, until at last they stood before the great double doors to the throne room. Her magic pressed against the entrance to the heart of the empire, but a force within resisted her efforts. She sighed, the thought-lines through her mane whirling in mild annoyance. She was reluctant to take any more of her might and attention away from maintaining the barrier, and instead walked forward until she could put her shoulder against the door.
Cadence slipped out from under her wing, adding her own strength to the effort. Luna remained tucked protectively against her side however, seemingly unaware of anything else at the time. Twilight did not begrudge her in the slightest, and focused simply on shoving against the pressure holding the door shut. Their hooves scrapped against the floor, digging into the smooth surface in order to gain purchase.
A crack opened between the doors, and sunlight erupted forth in a fountain of heat and light. Luna shivered and ducked her head under her sister’s wing as Twilight and Cadence continued, ignoring the prickling across their skin as the furnace hot air swept over them. The door swung inward ponderously, reluctantly, but inevitably. They reached the tipping point, and then the force was pressing against the outer surface of the door, tearing it away from the alicorns and slamming it back against the wall.
Free of only the least of her burdens, Twilight pulled Luna even closer to her side as she strode into the chamber, turning to shield the former goddess with her body. Cadence walked upon Luna’s other side, the soft aqua glow of her magic warding the little alicorn from the ever present inferno of the air as they crossed to stand before the crystal throne.
Celestia lay upon the ground before the throne, her body curled around herself in a miserable little ball, her face squeezed tight in pain. She shook with whimpering sobs, her tears evaporating from her face as fast as they fell. Her mane had become a blaze to mirror that of her raging sun, the soft pastel hues consumed by flowing orange and yellow, the smooth edges of her ethereal hair turned jagged and flickering. Her coat was a bed of ashen coals, angry red light glowing beneath. The golden aura of her magic wavered feebly around her horn, all but invisible beside the power coursing mercilessly through her body.
Twilight gently passed Luna to Candence, who accepted the nearly catatonic alicorn without comment, tucking her under a silken pink wing that slipped from the gloriously tattered rags she wore. Careful to keep herself between the two eldest sisters, Twilight ascended the dais up to the throne, and calmly lay herself down beside her old teacher.
“Celestia,” she spoke softly, gently passing a wing across her sister’s face to brush back her hair. She ignored the sudden stench of burnt feathers, her focus on her former mentor’s features. With painful difficulty, Celestia opened an eye, red and swollen from crying.
“Twilight,” Celestia wheezed, her voice the barren wind of an ever burning desert. “Is…is there any way…?”
“No,” Twilight said, somehow managing to smile for her sister’s sake. “There is nothing to be done.”
“Then we’ve failed.”
“No Tia, not at all,” she disagreed. “It was not for us to keep the world forever.”
“But it was for us to keep it safe,” Celestia protested weakly.
“And we did, as best we could. We made it a place that a pony could live happily in, a place a pony could be proud to be born, to live, to die as a part of.”
“There are no more ponies though.”
“And that makes it all for naught?” Twilight asked. “Tia I’m surprised at you, don’t you remember? What you told me after my ascension, when I was overcome with grief at knowing I would have to watch my friends grow old and die?”
Celestia squeezed her eyes shut. “The deeds of a pony do not end with their life,” she whispered. “Their value is more than their presence, it is how they touch us, and how that in turn shapes the world through those so touched.”
Twilight nodded. “My friends may be gone, but who they were still held power over the world, because it still held power over me. And from me it spread to those I knew, and to those they knew, and ever onward and outward, careless of time and distance. And what was made of that may be ending, but it is not diminished for being less than eternal. It existed, and it was something good and wonderful. It was something that should have been, and I am so proud to have had my part in making it. I am proud of their part in making it.” She beamed at Celestia, her mane flashing with lightning like streaks as the countless memories related to her sister raced through Twilight's mind. “And I am so proud of you sister. Nopony has given more, has tried harder, has placed so much good on this world. Nopony could dare have asked more of you, because you always gave it your all. And it was never for naught, no matter how it ends.”
Celestia gave a coughing laugh. “Oh my faithful student,” she said fondly. “My precious sister…”
“Now come on,” Twilight said encouragingly. “It’s time to let it go. Luna could really use her big sister right now.”
Celestia nodded weakly, and with a great sigh, the aura of magic around her horn winked out. At once the flames of her mane died, leaving behind tousled pink strands. The heat and light vanished from the throne room in a rush of wind. And outside, the world trembled as the sun’s final leash was undone.
Cadence lead Luna over, helping her navigate up the stairs until the two stood before Twilight and Celestia. The former princess of the night continued to stare unseeingly at the floor in front of her for a time, before her eyes blinked in a single long, slow motion. Her gaze shifted, and her eyes met Celestia’s.
“T-tia?” she breathed. Her body shook, her lungs working unevenly for a moment, and then she half fell, half threw herself against her sister. “Tia!” she wailed. “She took my moon from me! She took her!”
“I know Lulu,” Celestia choked out. “I tried to stop her, I tried so hard…”
Cadence joined them on the floor before the throne, all four pressing together in a tangle of embracing wings and necks, holding on to that which was most precious to them in the world. Twilight felt her strength fade, her magic ebbing as the world shook under the might of the sun unchained. She couldn’t hold it back much longer. Hundreds of centuries, countless lifetimes, and now there was but minutes left.
She clung to her magic as tightly as she did her sisters. It would change nothing really, if she were to just let it go as well. Nothing really to be gained by fighting to the very end, except a few final minutes with those she loved.
She held on, for them, for as long as she had the means to do so…