//------------------------------//
// XIV - Raising the Sun, Waking the World 
// Story: Into the Dark 
// by Corejo 
//------------------------------//

He woke the next cycle to the tinny hum of magic.  
 
Slowly, the quiet fog and solitude of hooves intertwined lifted from his mind, and he opened his eyes.
 
A faint purple aura wafted from his body in wispy curls, like steam off a pot of hot water.  Everything felt unusually warm.  He lifted his head, ears perked, and raised a hoof to better inspect the glow.  The humming grew louder when he brought it before his eyes.
 
“Good morning, Champion,” Cadance said.  She fluttered up from the lower regions of his abdomen and took a seat on his ribs.  Even without her extra warmth, it was obvious she wore a knowing smirk.  “Have a good dream?”
 
He glanced at the ground and smiled.  He blinked, and the purple mist curled about as if dancing for his attention.  He craned his head back to get a better look at his chest.  The magic steam rising from it smelled like the dew-laden grass and waterfall mist of Luna’s dreams.
 
Cadance giggled.  “That’s Twilight.  She’s been working all night to help get you back on your hooves.  You can kinda see it already.”  She swept up behind his collarbone, just beneath a patch of newly grown fuzz where the slime monster had boiled away his skin down to the bone.
 
He touched a hoof to it, but it couldn’t be real.  He had felt the firewater, watched the skin slough away to blistering sores and pus.  But as his hoof brushed across his skin, the grey fuzz whisked with it like new grass, soft and springy.
 
The ghost of a long-forgotten pain still remained, along with its soreness and aches, but he could move and twist with little discomfort.
 
The purple mist abated, and a raspy voice gasped for air.  He bristled at the spark between his shoulder blades, but after it settled down to a more accustomed place in his chest, he shivered away the feeling.
 
Good morning, he traced.  It was a greeting of sorts, it seemed, one he was eager to share regardless of what it might mean.
 
“Good morning,” Twilight said, groggily.  “Feeling better?”
 
He nodded, smiling, then shook himself from head to hoof as proof.
 
She laughed.  “Glad to hear it.  Whew!  That took a lot out of me.  But now at least you should be able to deal with anything this place can throw at you.  And don’t worry about how bright that might have been.  I was keeping an eye out just in case.”
 
He stood on stiff legs, wincing at the cracks and pops and general aches of overworked muscles.  She might have healed his skin, but her magic hadn’t done as much for the beating he took as he would have liked.  He stretched out his legs, rolled his shoulders and neck.  Perhaps it was a good thing they were a ways off from the brazier.  It would give him a chance to work out the kinks on the way there.
 
Luna’s wings flitted at his sides.  They seemed perky, their wingtips curved to reach just above his flanks.  He had never bothered checking, but was pretty certain they had never done that before.
 
“Good morning, Champion,” Luna said, jaunty yet authoritative.  “I trust you slept well last night?”
 
He stretched out like a cat one final time, gave her wings a smile, then started along the shoreline.
 
In time, the stiffness in his muscles subsided, and he found a near lightness in his step.  Twilight was dozing somewhere in his abdomen, and Cadance and Luna chatted about things from the real world.  It wasn’t his business, so he kept his attention forward on the darkness.
 
Though, it was apparent that with every step he took and every word from Cadance’s lips that Luna’s wings clenched tighter at his sides.  Her voice maintained the stoicism he always admired about her, yet no matter how well she kept the feeling from Cadance, she couldn’t hide her worries from him.  He couldn’t help but feel the same.
 
They were close.  No matter how much Luna loathed the moment as much as he, it was clear she longed for her sister and, whether she meant to or not, pulled him onward the longer they went.
 
He paused at the sight of the brazier.  Its massive brass gleamed in the lantern light, seemed to soak in and return its rays.
 
He stepped up to it, gazed at the whorled embossing of the Sun and happy ponies prancing beneath it.  He touched a hoof to it, and its warmth spread through him like hearthstones beneath a fire.
 
“Champion,” Luna said.
 
He looked down at his hooves in his customary equivalent of looking at her.  She hovered in her special place near his heart.  The others had taken up residence lower down near his stomach, giving them space to talk.
 
“It is…  It is time.”  A pause, and a whisper: “when you are ready, Champion.”
 
Another moment’s gazing at the ground, then a nod.  He unhitched Sunlight from his bandolier and tossed it in.  A distinct metal clang sounded into the darkness, and he stared in uncertain wonder at the growing light licking over the rim.  The princesses gathered in his chest, silently gazing with him.
 
Twilight’s spark sputtered forward.  “Is...  Is that it?  Where’s Princess Celestia?”
 
He felt the answer before he heard it.  A ball of golden light shot downward from the darkness, like how Luna had come to him in the hilltop cathedral all those cycles ago.
 
It touched his forehead and ran down his face and withers like warm water poured over his head.  It shrouded him in an armor of warmth that the chill of the Devourer’s gut couldn’t penetrate.  Though nopony stood before him, the vision of a smiling face filled his thoughts.
 
“I am here.”  A gentle voice, one that he imagined would have belonged to Mother, had she a voice to share.
 
“Princess Celestia!” Twilight said.  The warmth coalesced beside the others, and the spark leapt to its side.
 
“Do not fear, Twilight,” Celestia said.  “We are all together now.  We will fight back the darkness.”  The spark and warmth unwound from their embrace, and he turned his attention to the void around them.  All was still.
 
“Huh,” Cadance said.  “I would have expected something a little more dramatic, now that we’re all free.”
 
“Then let us entice it.”  Luna spread her wings wide.  Her cold flame hovered beside Celestia’s radiant warmth, made it her other half, and a golden glow lit atop his forehead.
 
He crossed his eyes to stare at the silvery translucent thing protruding from his skull before Luna’s voice resounded like the waves of a waterfall.
 
“With me, Sister!  Twilight, lend us your aid and let us be rid of this place once and for all!”  Luna and Celestia’s flames became one, but Twilight fizzled out lower down in his stomach.
 
“M-me? What can I do?  I don’t know how to help.”
 
“You are magic incarnate, Twilight,” Luna said.  “All of us are merely shadows of ourselves, but with your aid we can attain something comparable to our full strength.  Without you, we cannot hope to defeat the Devourer.”
 
Twilight halfheartedly floated up toward them.  “W-what about Cadance?”
 
The tiniest hint of Luna’s flame nuzzled Twilight.  “She is not our aid, Twilight—” she turned a smile inward, toward him “—She is our Champion’s.  She has and will play her part in the battle to come.”
 
“Oh, Aunt Luna,” Cadance said, sidling up beside her.  “You give me too much credit.  You’re the smitten one.  I’m just the liaison.”
 
“Save your raillery for the waking world, niece,” Luna fired back, to which Cadance giggled.
 
Celestia’s warmth redoubled in the tips of his hooves, perhaps also a smile.  “Smitten, Luna?”
 
“’T-tis nothing, Sister.”  Her chill faltered before redoubling in intensity.  “L-let us be on with it.”
 
A moment passed, then came a reserved chuckle from Celestia.  Laced with the static of Twilight’s spark, their power intertwined, and the glow at his forehead blossomed until all turned gold.
 
A twisting, turning sensation yanked him through an impossibly small hole.  He couldn’t breathe in the half-moment span, but there was no distinct need to, only a need to come to grips with this sensation and the weightlessness of being thrust into a darkened room.
 
He staggered sideways, hooves spread for balance.  The tang of burnt hair wafted beneath his nostrils, and his ears rang in the silence.
 
He shook his head, and the slabs of stone before him took shape as the thrones of Sun and Moon, visible in the glow of the projection from his forehead.
 
What was this thing?  He touched it, and it was warm with the heat of Sunlight.
 
“Have you never seen a horn, Champion?”  Celestia asked.
 
He shook his head, but Luna supplemented his answer.  “There are many things lacking in this dream of mine, Sister.  But as to our quest, it would seem there is your problem, Cadance.”
 
She drifted high toward his collarbone to note the darkened sky.  “I feel the Moon is close.  Just over the horizon.”
 
“And the Sun,” Celestia said.  The ebb and flow of her warmth was an enigma.  She wanted to raise the Sun and banish the darkness—that much was clear—but something about the flatness of her voice considered an alternative.
 
Luna picked up on it, too.  “What is it, Sister?”
 
“It hasn’t stirred.  There’s no doubt that it realized we’ve escaped, but it must be waiting for something.”
 
Why not just raise the Sun and Moon? he traced.  A moment passed, as it seemed Celestia needed it to process this new form of communication.  
 
“It could possibly be waiting for that very moment, when we are at our most vulnerable,” she said.  Her warmth centered toward his right rib.  “I think it would be best to raise them from my balcony…  That, and I couldn’t deny a small desire for a sense of normality after so long.”
 
“From your balcony?” Luna asked.  “Your idea would be to climb to the upper reaches of the castle and trap ourselves there when it comes?  And what of its foundations should this thing decide to burst up from beneath us?”
 
“Last I checked, Luna, we have the advantage of flight and an entire castle to pit between us.”
 
He unconsciously looked back at her wings, and she spread them halfheartedly, nervous.
 
“I-I cannot fly, Sister.  That has…  That has caused us enough hardship already.”
 
“But you didn’t have Twilight then, did you?”
 
“I…”
 
“However I can help, Princess Luna.”  Twilight hovered to her side encouragingly.  “I’m right here.”
 
Her chilling flame shrank in on itself, but she rebounded and took her place beside his heart.  It was as true a smile as she had ever given.  
 
“Then let us be off,” she said.
 
He stared at the thrones a moment longer.  These princesses worked together, just as everypony in the village did.  But still theirs was a different kind of helping, less a desire to seek an end and more for the sake of the others.
 
Luna had shown this… this… compassion?  Was that the word?  She had shown it time and again on their journey, and now they shared the feeling as one, sought after it, more than the Sun and Moon itself.  Was this the friendship Cadance mentioned?  Or was it more?
 
“Champion?” Luna said.
 
He took a deep breath and set off for the side door Celestia leaned toward.
 
He and Luna had explored the lower levels of the castle, and those were an enormous twisting maze in their own right.  The upper floors, however, were twice that.
 
Hallways sat gilded in dust and threadbare rugs of faded velvet.  Tapestries hung in tatters along the walls, chests of drawers and tables topped with silver cups and bowls and silverware stood like sentries that had never left their post.
 
Above, the ceiling webbed with cracks and the decay of time.  A stale hint of something he had never smelled before—possibly the old stones themselves—tinged the many winding corridors with a heady sense of emptiness.
 
“Your attention to detail is impressive, Luna,” Celestia said.  “I was expecting a more… amorphous dream, especially with how quickly you secluded yourself that night.”
 
“I will admit I was angry with you after our conversation, Sister, but I find comfort in the intricacies of dreamweaving, especially my own.”  Luna moved about his chest, as if perusing the details of the hall.  “It seems luck was on our side that I had detailed this one so, or ours might have been a more difficult task.”
 
Celestia had no rebuttal, but her warm radiance turned to mute roiling beneath his skin.  “Indeed.  We will have much to talk about when we return, Luna.”
 
A pause, before, “That we will, Sister.”
 
Silence returned for the length of the corridor, until Twilight spoke up.  “Is...  Is this what the real world looks like now?  This can’t be what’s happened out there.”
 
“I daresay it is not,” Luna said.  “Not everypony fell victim to the Devourer.  I am sure they have kept order in the time being.”
 
“And… how long do you think that’s been?”
 
Luna didn’t answer immediately.  “I am not sure.  Were I to chance a guess, perhaps a year.”
 
“It seemed like much longer than a year, Luna,” Celestia said.  “I’m not the expert on dreams, but are you so optimistic about that timeframe?  Left, Champion.”
 
He turned left, and there he climbed a switchback staircase of heavy wood railings.  It was smooth to the touch and shimmered like wet rock in Celestia’s horn light.
 
“It was two months I spent seeking out the whispers, Sister, centuries within my dream.  Time is irrelevant, but is at the very least stable once it is set.”
 
“I hope you are right about that, Luna.  Right, Champion, and follow the hall.”
 
Here the ambiance changed.  What was once gaudy and overbearing in decoration took a turn for the elegant, if spartan.  Faded paintings and simple brass light fixtures lined the walls, and the velvet carpets had changed to a fine weave he had never seen within the walls of the village.
 
“Here,” Celestia said.
 
He stopped, turning to face a tall set of doors whose golden Sun shone proud even in the darkened hall.  He placed a delicate hoof against it, and it swung open as if on fresh hinges.
 
Within lay a room of gold and silver trinkets, shelves of books and reams of parchment, portraits of important-looking ponies, all spared the touch of time.
 
“Wow,” Cadance said.  “This really does look like your room, Aunt Celestia.  Like, exactly.”
 
Celestia’s warmth rose up to his sternum.  She had a stillness about her for a long moment that nopony dared break.  “You…  You did all this, Luna?”
 
“I was angry, Sister, but that will never stop me from caring.”
 
Celestia shifted left, then right, then low down in the center of his chest.  “No.  No, it wouldn’t.  To…  To the balcony, Champion.”
 
He stepped through the quiet room, careful not to disturb its odds and ends, and emerged on a small balcony where, had the Moon still shone above, would have surely been an awe-inspiring view of the city below.  His heart beat in those silent moments as Luna and Celestia’s flames merged.
 
“Are you ready, Luna?” Celestia said.
 
“I-I…  Are you, Champion?”
 
He stared at the railing in thought.  There was no other option.  He had made his choice.  For her.
 
He nodded.
 
“Then we begin,” Luna said.  “Hold fast, everypony, for I do not know what will happen.  And if the worst befalls us, know that I love you all, and that I am sorry.”
 
She clenched her wings at his sides in a hug, then spread them full, their feathers trimmed in Moonlight as her flame spread to every inch of his body.
 
“I’ve little magic to call my own in this form, but even so, the Moon and I are one.  With me, Sister!  Raise high the Sun and let us end this demon’s reign!”
 
As if charged with her words, Celestia’s warmth expanded to match Luna’s flame.  Together with the lightning storm of Twilight’s spark, their magic erupted in a flash of white light that blinded him from the inside.
 
His body seized up, and his eyes filled with fire.  The inferno collected in his skull like water defying gravity, and when the flames built to an unimaginable pressure, they surged up Celestia’s horn.  A non-existent wind cooled the sweat from his brow, and in the unfathomable moments he spent with forehooves lifted from the floor, it became clear exactly what was happening.
 
Far beyond the distant towers and high walls of Canterlot, beyond the valley, beyond the furthest reaches of the world, rose a faint glow that silhouetted the distant saw-toothed mountains.  It was the barest fraction of the Sunlight in Luna’s dreams, but glorious all the same in this world of darkness.
 
In the city below, the night creatures rose their wails to the sky in strident chorus.  They fled to the shelter of whatever shadows and darkened holes they could find among the rubble and ruin.  But something about their terror seemed off, not directed at the Sun.
 
A tremor shook the castle beneath his hooves, and the princesses gathered together.
 
“It is here,” Luna spat.
 
An explosion rocked the foundations of the castle.  Crunching rubble, yawning steel, and collapsing buildings drowned out the world fallen back into darkness, the Sisters’ grasp on the Sun and Moon lost.  
 
Above the chaos rose a terrible roar that blew him back on his haunches.  He clenched his teeth, put his hooves to his ears to soften the stabbing pain.
 
“Well, I think we woke it up,” Cadance said.
 
“To your hooves, Champion!” Luna shouted.  She spread her wings and beat them, kicking up a torrent of dust as Celestia lit her horn.
 
He rose, head low and at the ready, but without sight beyond a dozen meters, all he could do was stare anxiously into oblivion.
 
“Do you hear that?” Twilight asked.  He couldn’t.  The Devourer’s roar had blasted all sense of hearing from him.  It was only by whatever magics that bound the princesses to him that their voices still rang true inside his head.
 
Cadance pressed herself up against his ribs.  “It sounds like… wind.”
 
“It’s coming,” Celestia said.  She thrust herself against his sternum in command.  “Jump, Champion!”
 
The power in her voice jolted him to action.  He leapt over the railing, and the balcony’s white stone vanished into the darkness over his shoulder.  He felt more than heard the balcony explode in a shower of rubble less than a moment later.  
 
The shockwaves sent him tumbling forward, but Luna was quick to twist her wings and bring him upright before he had even a chance to shout.  Still, they fell in a chaotic glide through the abyss.
 
“Twilight!  Lend me your aid!”  Luna’s voice rang of desperation.  Her primaries bent upward at their tips, and he seized up at the sensation of his bowels rising into his stomach, far too reminiscent of their flight over the wolf.
 
Lightning coursed through his veins as Twilight poured her energy into her.  The sensation was like having a hot iron pressed against his insides.  His vision blurred, but a quick shake of his head brought him back to reality.
 
“I’m sorry, Champion,” Twilight said.  “I’m pulling some of my magic from your lifeforce.  After trying to raise the Sun and Moon, I don’t have much left.  I can’t do this by myself.  Just let me know if it’s too much.”
 
It hurt, whatever it was, but knowing how high up they must have been, the alternative was far worse.  He nodded, then gritted his teeth.  The lightning surged into his back and up Luna’s wings, where it sent filaments of static twisting along her individual feathers.
 
Luna gave a triumphant grin in a blaze of frostfire, and she heaved a powerful thrust of her wings that snapped his chin to his chest.  They slowed to a moment of weightlessness where his bowels again reached up in that unsettling manner.
 
“Maybe a little less gusto next time, you two,” Cadance said, rising up from his lower abdomen, like she had been flattened against the floor along with his innards.
 
Twilight settled into the niche between his lungs.  “Sorry,” Twilight said.  “This is weird.  I’m not used to this.”
 
She sounded ragged, and he imagined this little filly sweating as if she had run a dozen laps around the village wall.  She drew more from him than before, just to keep them afloat.  Beads of sweat ran down his face as if he were running full sprint, and that hot iron pressed squarely into the inside of his spine.  At this rate, neither of them would last long.
 
Celestia’s horn redoubled its light—or maybe regained what it had lost in the transfer of energy.  All was dark, and his ears still rang, deaf from the Devourer’s roar.
 
A deep bass rumbled in his heart and across his back.  He instinctively looked over his shoulder, but saw nothing.
 
“Dive, Champion!” Luna shouted.
 
His heart leapt to his throat at the suddenness of her command, and he snapped his body straight down.  The wind cut against his face, but he felt behind him the whoosh of air displaced by a monstrously huge body.
 
Luna pulled back on the crest of her wings, tearing him out of the dive, his head dragging downward against his chest.  They levelled out, and the powers inside him shifted from cold to warm.
 
An ember built at the base of his skull, and the light spiraling up Celestia’s horn grew that much brighter.  “Toss your head over your shoulder,” she said.
 
He whipped his head around with the wind, and as if physically thrown from his forehead, a dazzling flare streaked into the darkness.
 
In the moments he spent staring, a network of scales, each twice his size, glimmered for a brief moment as the flare skimmed by.
 
“Eyes forward, Champion.”  Luna regained a foothold on her courage, and it resounded from her special place beside his heart.  “We do not know how low we are, and some buildings of Canterlot enjoy themselves a commanding view of the rest.”
 
Twilight shivered, held her spark close to Cadance atop his collarbone.  She affected strength in her voice, but the way she fizzled said more than anything about how the fight had drained her.  
 
“What was it?” she asked.  “I can’t tell what it is.”
 
“It doesn’t matter what it is or what it looks like,” Cadance said, wrapping Twilight in a hug.  “We have to fight it anyway.
 
“All of us, together,” Cadance whispered.  Hers was a soft voice, softer than she had ever sounded.  He knew without question she spoke only to him.  Maybe she could also tell that Twilight was hurting more than it appeared.
 
Though, despite the truth in her words, he couldn’t stave off an overwhelming sense of helplessness.  He had no control in this fight.  All his movements were reaction to the princesses’ commands.  He hadn’t even the means to communicate between the moments of sudden death, only the ability to follow orders—flee like a roach from stamping hooves as he heaved for breath.
 
A massive wall of stone slipped past him at the edge of Sunlight, there and gone in an instant, before the rumbling crack of stone tore through the darkness.  That much even he could hear.
 
“Take us up,” Celestia said, and Luna complied with a swift beat of her wings.
 
He craned back his head to help her climb into the darkness, shrugging his shoulders in time with her wing beats.  It wasn’t clear if it helped, but it felt better than doing nothing.
 
“Give me another shot, Champion,” Celestia shouted over the muffled silence.  He felt the fire collect at the base of her horn, and he snapped his head over his shoulder.
 
She sent another flare crackling into the darkness.  This time, it lit up the Devourer’s face as it passed by: four sets of jaws split radially from the center.  Teeth the size of ponies spiralled inward toward its throat, grinding and scraping together like some terrible machine.  It had no eyes, but when did a monster like the Devourer ever need them?
 
Celestia drew up a massive inferno to the forefront of his skull, so much so that his sight went white with its power.  She sent it screaming on the tail of the first, where it exploded against the Devourer’s upper jaw and forcibly wrenched its head backward.
 
The Devourer unleashed an ear-splitting cry as the light dispersed and darkness swallowed the world.  He clutched at his ears, screamed his own silent scream beneath it all.  Blood ran warm on his hooves.
 
Luna tilted her wings to catch the air and pull them higher into the dark, hopefully out of its reach.  “We cannot keep fighting like this.  ’Tis to our disadvantage, this precarious dance but a single mistake away from death.  And we are not winning the war of attrition.”
 
He didn’t need prompting to know she meant Twilight.  Her little spark rested low down in his abdomen.  Every one of her labored breaths rippled like static through his stomach.
 
“I’m… I’m okay,” she said.
 
“Nay, Twilight, we must find a place for you to rest.  We cannot hope to maintain this fight without you.”
 
“I don’t think it’s going to give us the chance,” Cadance said from somewhere behind his shoulder blade, as if trying to look behind him.
 
Celestia took command of his chest, redoubled the light at her horn tip.  “We’ll figure something out.  If we had the Sun and Moon above, I’m sure it would weaken the Devourer’s hold on the dream.  And anything that loosens its grasp on the dream is an advantage we’ll need.”
 
“But that would mean stopping,” Luna said.  “’Twould mean landing, exposing ourselves.  You would ask we put all or nothing into raising the Sun and Moon with that beast on our tail?”
 
“You said it yourself,” Celestia said.  “We’re losing this battle.”
 
“Yeah,” Cadance said.  “As hard as Aunt Celestia hit it just now, I think she only made it angry.
 
“This isn’t good,” she whispered to him only.  “We’ll need to figure something out.  We need your help, Champion.”
 
Luna carried them higher still.  Every beat of her wings pressed the iron harder into his spine.  He gritted his teeth, the only way he could fend off the pain without impeding Luna’s flight.
 
Cadance was right.  Things weren’t looking good.  Twilight hardly put off any of her own strength anymore.  Almost all of her magic she leeched from him.
 
Still, she seemed hesitant to draw too much.  He could hear it in the strain of Luna’s voice.  They wouldn’t be able to fly much longer, and Celestia couldn’t fend off the Devourer as it was.
 
There might be one way, though, if they were thinking all-or-nothing.  If Twilight had been drawing only so much power from him, what would stop her from drawing more?  What about all of it?  Would that be enough?
 
Something about him must have changed, because Cadance came up beside his heart in a manner different than ever before.  She whispered solemnly, “Be careful what you wish for, Champion.  It just might come true.”
 
He lingered on her words a moment, let their weight drag him down from the thoughts in his head.  She was right.  It was a dangerous thought to entertain.  But more importantly, she could read his thoughts?
 
Though it was a sober conversation they shared, she spared a moment to laugh.  “We all have our talents to contribute, Champion.  Twilight has magic.  Luna has her wings and the power to raise the Moon.  Celestia has her horn and the Sun.
 
“And I’m the Princess of Love.  I can feel every whim your heart desires.  I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that before.  I just wanted a chance to get to know you the way I would have in the real world.  As a friend.
 
“I know my place in this dream isn’t to tell you what to do or how you should feel.  I’m only here to remind you of what it is you truly want, and what lengths you’re willing to go to for it.
 
“What… sacrifices you’re willing to make.
 
“I don’t want to say it, but I… I really don’t think there’s any other way.”  She put a gentle but firm hoof on his heart.  “You know what that’ll do, though.”
 
He did.  The pain was already more than he could bear.  It was like Twilight had taken a second hot iron to his stomach at the same time.  She couldn’t have known, though.  She didn’t seem the type to do that willingly.  Luna surely wouldn’t have let her, had she known.
 
“She will hate you, Champion.”  Her words lingered in his heart, a tone whose weight knew only crushing truth.  “She will hate you for a long time.”
 
Those words cut deeper than even Twilight’s magic.  They knew this moment would come.  They knew for a long time.  But that still didn’t make it any easier.
 
He had felt her flame grow colder as they neared their goal.  Luna hoped, perhaps even more than he did, that they would find a way to defeat the Devourer without sacrificing himself.
 
Yes, she would hate him for making this choice.  But for her, that would be okay.
 
He closed his eyes—he didn’t need them anyway—and centered himself, on the point where Twilight’s magic hurt most.  There was a presence there, almost impossible to describe—like himself but more, as if it was his very being opened up for the first time.  Whatever he did, he must have gotten it right, because Twilight jerked away.
 
“Wait,” she said.  “Champion, no, you can’t do that…”
 
Luna’s flame snapped toward Twilight, her wings stiffening mid stroke.  “Can’t do what?”
 
Twilight shuffled farther away.  “That’ll…  That’ll kill you.”
 
It would do more than just kill him.  But that wasn’t what mattered.
 
The wind pulled Luna’s wings limply upward.  “What is it?  Champion, no!  Whatever it is you are doing, stop!”
 
Twilight hovered near him, near this whatever-it-was that he held, sensed his gentle insistence.  Though only a spark, he pictured her looking up at him with large eyes and her ears folded back.  She held up a hesitant hoof.  
 
“I…  Are you sure?”
 
He nodded without hesitation.
 
“I…  Th-thank you.”  She reached out a filament of static and flared at the touch.
 
The sensation was unlike anything he had ever felt.  There was pain, but not in any describable sense—like an eggshell broken open and its contents sucked through the cracks.
 
Her spark erupted in a thunderstorm that consumed him from head to hoof.  Rampant arcs of energy ripped through bone and organ, uncontained by this little wide-eyed filly in his chest.
 
As if with a trembling hoof, Twilight focused what few forks of lightning she could toward the other princesses.  Celestia’s horn flared brighter than the Sun to leave a trail of fire in their wake, but Luna refused.  
 
“You can’t do this, Champion,” Luna said with quivering voice.  Her flame all but vanished.  “Not this close to the end.”
 
“Luna, it’s too late!” Celestia shouted above the roar of wild magic.  “He’s already done it!”
 
Her omnipresent warmth coalesced beside Luna, held her in an embrace both empathetic and stern.  She spoke softer than any of the princesses ever had before.  “Don’t waste this gift.”
 
In the silence, Cadance whispered, “She will hate it.  But in time, she will understand.”
 
Despite the pain, he managed a tiny smile.  Even if she didn’t, it was still worth it.  
 
He chose this.
 
Luna huddled up against his heart.  “Please…  Don’t make me do this.”
 
He held his hoof up to his heart, lowered his chin to meet her, and closed his eyes.  In a final ease of release, he let the last dregs of his soul slip into Twilight’s grasp.
 
The world washed white beyond his eyelids, so great was the Sunlight at Celestia’s horn.  All he could tell in the moments that followed was that his jaw fell slack, and everything to come was beyond his control.  With the final slivers of sanity left to him as the magic flooding out from that little spark dissolved away bone, then flesh, then fur, he thought of Luna, smiling at him in the meadow, one last time.