Rarity was practically panting in the streets of Canterlot. Rainbow Dash had thought that she looked drained before, but now she seemed like somepony watching their own murder through a scrying glass. Her eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. The strange hood she had been wearing had been cast aside, and Rainbow recoiled with shock to see the glowing runes carved into the sides of her head.
“I’m marked,” Rarity hissed, as if struggling to breath. “Rainbow, I saw her.”
“Rarity… oh, Celestia, what did she do to you?”
Rarity laughed. Her magic grabbed ahold of Rainbow’s simple weatherpony uniform and jerked her in closer. The pegasus squirmed, but she couldn’t break the iron grip. They were muzzle to muzzle.
“She rides my mind like a foal at a mayfair revel,” seethed the once-so composed unicorn. Rainbow saw her eyes watering. She smelt the stink rolling off Rarity in waves now, it was impossible to ignore. “I cannot sleep, I cannot do anything to relax or escape her. She rides me hard, from one survivor to the next.”
“What the hell—“
“My story is my last generosity,” choked Rarity. “So at least you’ll know. So you’ll have some idea before you walk in there.”
“Rarity, let go of me!”
“Don’t you feel watched?” Rarity continued. Her eyes bored holes in Rainbow’s own, and yet Rainbow knew that Rarity wasn’t looking at her. She wasn’t looking at anything. “Don’t you feel watched, all the time? Eyes on you? I do. I did, before, but now I know that it isn’t just simple anxiety or fear of the dark.”
Rainbow pushed with both forelegs against Rarity’s chest and they both went sprawling on the cobblestones.
Rainbow took deep breaths, trying to recover some semblance of herself, but Rarity was still babbling.
“Rainbow, do you remember? Do you remember what happened?”
“Of course I do, you idiot! Everyone… they…”
“No! You’re just like me.” Rarity was already back on her hooves, and Rainbow backed away. “You’re exactly like me. You saw it, didn’t you? They talked about necromantic magic in the papers, or blood magic, whoever was writing the story made up some new malady because there was no way to describe it! None of that fit! She saw something! We all did.”
“I just saw the explosion,” Dash growled. “And so did you.”
“The fabric of creation, she tore a hole into it, so we could see the outer dark, and then that too she tore away, until… until…” Rarity’s wide eyes gleamed in the torchlight of old Canterlot. Two mares, former friends, stared each other down.
Rarity sat on her haunches, and buried her head in her hooves.
“Rainbow, we’re the last.”
Dash’s ears flicked. She was seconds from bolting. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t you understand? Didn’t you suspect something? We’re the last ones. She has all the others. Poor… I visited the book seller last night, you see. You were the last. She helped me find you. She pushed me forward, dug into me until I screamed. It’s only you and I that are left outside of the valley.”
“Someone would have noticed,” Rainbow said, but already her mind was working. When was the last time she had seen anypony from Ponyville? When was the last time she had seen another survivor? A week ago?
“Oh, they have. They’ve been watching you, just like they’ve been watching me. They’re terrified, and they should be. You and I? One moment we’re there and the next we aren’t. We slip right through their clever clutches. It’s not because we want to. I could have walked right past those guards. She was there. She was always there. She’s with you too.”
“Get away from me. You’re…” Rainbow spat. “You’re wrong. She’s dead. She died in the library. The mare that doesn’t sleep is a lie, Rarity.”
“I’ve seen her.”
“You saw wrong! You…” she wanted to say it again, but she could not.
“Do you remember? Do you remember what happened when she showed us all what the truth was? Do you remember that terrible secret?” Rarity edged in closer. Dash backed away. “Have you begun to remember? We all saw it… I know I did. My mind put up walls around the… the revelation, but they were breaking bit by bit. The weaker I became, the more I knew I had to go back. The more I felt the need to know. When I’m… when I’m done she’ll… What do you remember?”
“Flying,” Dash replied, her voice a hoarse rasp. “Flying, and then… light? Sound? I crashed. Somepony pulled me.”
“You flew towards the light,” Rarity said. “I remembered that part a few months ago, before I went in.”
She had. She remembered it. “I… but…”
“Rainbow,” Rarity began, “Twilight sent me to you. She sent me to the others. One by one, I’ve visited them and then she…”
“No.”
Rarity tore the robe off. Dash saw the new mark on her flank and recoiled.
“What is that? Sweet Celestia, what did you do?”
“She did this! This is her mark. It’s on you too. Yours just isn’t visible! She already has you. She wants me to say… to say…” Rarity choked. Rainbow hesitated, torn between fleeing the obviously troubled mare in front of her and trying to help, but Rarity ended her indecision by holding a hoof up.
Rarity shuddered. “She wants you to come back. She wants them all to come back. How much do you remember? Do you have a way to stay out of the shadows?”
“I already told you, I—“
Rarity moved forward before Rainbow could elude her. Rarity held her head in a vice between her hooves and stared at her eyes. She wilted, flinched as if slapped. She backed away.
“No, maybe… maybe if you just… if you didn’t go home. If you kept running… flying, I mean,” she began to babble to herself. “Chase the sun, go far away until you were beyond her and her city. You could keep to the light and…” Rarity began to sob. “I don’t want to be the last one!”
Rainbow fled towards home.
She slumped inside of her doorway.
Rarity hadn’t followed. She’d been crying in the street, and Rainbow had left her there to her madness. It was madness, she was sure of that. Rarity was delusional. Oh, Dash believed the first part of her story—the way she’d talked and acted, it wasn’t hard to believe she’d somehow gotten inside the quarantine surrounding Ponyville. Idiot! Of course she would. Always so nosy, always having to know… and now look at her, ranting about impossibilities. Like Twilight. Twilight was dead.
Yet, Rainbow’s heart rate was slow to return to its normal pace despite her certainty. The mind was convinced, but the body doubted.
Some of the things Rarity had said bothered her, that was true. The dreams… but that was easy to explain. It had been a traumatic day for all of the survivors, of course there had been dreams. The being watched was obvious. They’d all been cleared and officially declared clean of corruption by Celestia herself, but Rainbow would have been nervous about ponies who had been so close to whatever the hell Twilight had done if she and the guards positions had been reversed. Her memories were fine, weren’t they?
No, they weren’t. She tried to remember the explosion, but couldn’t.
She remembered… flying. She remembered a noise of some kind. Light.
The harder Dash tried to remember the more her heart hammered in her chest. The closer she got, the more her wings twitched to fly her anywhere but here. The less sure of Rarity’s madness she was, the less she noticed her apartment.
The air was cold, but it had been a cold winter for Canterlot. The light—the one electric light she kept on at all times—was out. The candles throughout had not yet been lit. Darkness wouldn’t do. She couldn’t stand it, couldn’t sleep in it. When she was in the dark she couldn’t help but think in lieu of see.
Rainbow Dash shuddered.
And then, before her in that total darkness, she saw them. She saw the unblinking eyes that glowed with a jade fire invade the sanctity of her living room. The fires were out. The light had failed. Rainbow tried to will herself into flight but her body would not obey. Only now could she feel the slightest touch of magic like a faint electric current over her wings, pinning them to the door.
The eyes came closer. She tried to say something, anything, so as not to die quiet. All that came was a pitiful, low groan of denial. Twilight had stolen her voice. She was doing something else, something Rainbow couldn’t see, but what did it matter? The air was thick with the electric thrum of magic.
And the eyes were so large now, so close, taking up more and more of her vision until they took up the entirety of it. There was nothing for Rainbow to see but the backlight of her eyes and the way the dark twinned abyss at the center of each waited to swallow her up.
Breathing on her face, on her ear, like a blizzard-wind. A voice, unchanged by time or calamity, in her ear.
“I’ve missed you, Rainbow.”