The final beam of light vanished to the moon—the inhabitants of Trottingham and Las Pegasus were safely banished. Beside me, Starlight looked away. She was still crying—the drawback of having a heart. I had been the same once. Thinking about it, Auntie Celestia must have done the same as I the first time her world ended. I should have asked. Instead, I wasted time trying to find a workaround.
"Was that it?" Starlight muttered. "Is everyone...there?"
"Mostly." I glanced up. "Are you ready?"
"Give me a few minutes."
Grief—another useless feeling I could no longer understand, but I would indulge her this once. As the final piece of my puzzle, she had earned that right. A few minutes would hardly matter, not after the years I squandered.
Two decades and change. That was how long it had taken me to get prepare for this moment. Looking back, I could have completed it in four years. In her idiocy, Rainbow Dash had given me precisely what I needed. Her useless death had turned everypony against me, but it had also drawn out Big Mac's love. I could have killed him there and then, and maybe I should have. Or maybe not? Things take time to blossom.
"I say, jolly good timing, old boy." Fancy Pants leaned against me, waving an empty bottle in the air. "I just found that we're out of liquor. Shameful, that. I thought I'd been saving a case of Celestial from 891. Turns out I finished it yesterday."
"Accidents happen, Fancy," I said, enduring his drunkenness. He had been my one loyal supporter through all of this. The years had made him a wreck. If it wasn't for Auntie's magic he'd be long dead. "Nothing that can't be fixed."
"Ah, yes!" He hiccuped and made an attempt to stand up straight. "Nothing that can't be fixed. Capital."
"I'm ready," Starlight said, brushing away her tears as she returned to my side. "What do I do?"
"You cast the spell." I glanced at the the moon, trying to ignore Fancy Pants as he muttered a eulogy over his bottle. "When the first cutie mark is separated from its owner, I'll transform it into energy and channel it through you. Then you'll have the power to take the rest."
"And at the end I take my own." She looked at me. There was no need for me to nod. She was smart, and was wearing my cutie mark. "I understand. Will I survive to see the new world?"
"After I assimilate your cutie mark and my own, I'll drain Equestria of its remaining magic and cast the creation spell. If you're alive by then, you might." I lied. It was impossible for Starlight to survive being a conduit. She would most likely die before she could remove her own cutie mark, but by then I'd be able to do it myself.
"I see," she said, turning her eyes to the moon. "So I only need to reach one of them?"
"No." I could have placed a hoof on her shoulder, provided her a bit of comfort. Twilight would have done it. I wasn't Twilight. "Not them."
It took only a moment for her to understand. There were things that had to be done. Fancy had been by me all this time, my indestructible pillar that even alcohol hadn't managed to corrode. Now we was going to help me once more—as the spark that would ignite the change.
Starlight's horn lit up. The thousands of aether strands that composed her spell wove together into a bolt of blue light. So simple, yet so elegant. It flew through the air, striking Fancy Pants’ cutie mark. Chrysalis could never have copied such an intricate composition.
Fancy’s ears perked up. Even in his drunken state, he could tell what was happening. He glanced at the cutie mark peeling off his flank, then turned towards me. I expected scorn in his eyes, an outburst of rage, but instead he gave me the warmest smile I had seen since Big Macintosh passed.
"Finally," the unicorn said. His features relaxed; without what must have been a practiced mask, his true age and weariness shone through for one fleeting moment. Then he collapsed.
"Continue with the spell!" I ordered. I could sense Fancy’s heart stopping, popping under the shock of the spell, but I had to go on.
The three-crown mark floated before me, held in the air by Starlight's magic. I gazed at it for a second before casting Twilight's devouring spell. A heat surpassing the depths of the sun swept through me as the spell activated. My magic surged, making my fur light up the world with its glow. It was far more power than I expected, but not more that I could handle. Spreading my wings to their full span, I redirected part of the energy to Starlight—just enough for her to reach the moon. Even at this stage, I could not risk her turning against me.
"Now the rest," I said, and her body lit up with the intensity of a star.
My thoughts lingered on our research with Twilight for an instant. Such a waste. If only she had been male, if only she had sacrificed her love of ponies...how much we could have achieved. Tens of thousands would be still alive or transformed into mana. But even trapped in her delusions, Twilight had helped me. The spell she had given her brother, the spell she had transformed herself into, had the power to destroy anything and convert it to energy. No doubt she hoped to cast it on me and return what I had gathered to Equestria, giving everypony a few final months of bliss. Such a plan was foolish and sentimental; her failure had been a blessing.
A wave of light fell upon me as Starlight’s spell fired, bringing me to my knees. It took all my strength to stay upright, bombarded by hundreds upon hundreds of cutie marks. Like snowflakes they rained from the moon, devoured into nothingness by my spell before I could even make out their patterns. I glanced at Starlight. Her mane was charred by the intensity of the magic, yet she kept on casting. I could have thanked her in these last moments. Her body would melt into the aether for her efforts, but at this point it didn't matter.
The ground shattered beneath my hooves, incapable of withstanding the magic that ran through me as Starlight fed me every cutie mark she could tear away. The spell grew even greater in magnitude, absorbing what was left of the unicorn and forcing me to take over drawing in and eating the last thousands of cutie marks. Yet I still needed more power to do what the dragons couldn't. In their greed, they saw Equestria as little more than stone and ore and gems, but they were mistaken. There was dormant magic in every leaf, every pebble, every speck of dust, in the air itself.
"For Equestria," I said, casting my final spell towards the horizon. It was time for the old to be consumed so it could give birth to the new.
A smell of ozone filled the air, the first I had felt in an eternity. My thoughts went back to that dreary night it had all begun. I had been suffering from dreamless nights for days, maybe more, living through what I thought was a nightmare. I remembered bumping into Shining Armor—something about his child being sick—before Raven took me to my Aunt. There was no way I could have known that a decade later Raven would be dead and I would be engaged in a war with the Crystal Empire.
If I had refused my wings that day, would the outcome have been different? Perhaps Auntie would have offered her wings to Fancy Pants or Shining Armor, or another honorable stallion instead. Would he have walked the same path as I, or allowed Equestria to slip into oblivion as Twilight wished to? Could he have found a better way?
The sound of crackling magic echoed in the distance as my strength was drained by the spell. I gasped for air, fighting to remain on my hooves. My insides felt as if I was drinking molten iron, but I wouldn't give in, not until I had created my new world.
A red flash flickered in front of me—a teleportation spell. A blue shape emerged before me as the horizon evaporated.
"Trixie," I said. Another set of shapes took form behind her. Three more deathless ponies I had created, three more foolish pacts I could not undo. But what interested me was the Alicorn Amulet Trixie wore around her neck. "I wondered where that trinket had gone. Now I know."
The ruby of the amulet flickered. Trixie had planned her moment well—attacking me while I was at my weakest was her only chance of success. Why had she brought the fillies, then?
I spread my wings and cart a protection bubble around me. This was no time to take chances, even against a mere unicorn. As I did the amulet round her neck pulsed, red streaks spreading deeper into her skin.
"You missed your chance," I said, glancing at the walls of white light in the distance. It was moving closer, bringing the horizon with it. Already the edges of Equestria were visible to the naked eye, devoured by the second. "It is insulting that you thought you could harm me with that pathetic toy."
“As if I ever had a chance.” Trixie cast a protection bubble of her own, levitating herself and the fillies into the air. “You've won, haven't you? I just wanted to be here to witness the fruition of this grand scheme of yours, to see what I had to betray my friends for.”
The hatred she and the others held for me boiled in their eyes and froze the air; I responded with a contemptuous glare. If it hadn't been for their unimportance and their sisters, they would have long been dead by now.
"The bubble won't protect you from the devouring spell." I rose into the air, borne up more by sheer power than my wings. "When it reaches you it will eat that too. Then it will drain your magic, followed by your flesh and bone, and reduce you to nothing."
"That's it?" Trixie laughed at me. "Your grand plan is to destroy Equestria before it can fade away? Wow, Blueblood, you really are an idiot."
The sound of my name brought a bittersweet sensation to my tongue. Blueblood was a naive fool too compassionate and caring for his own good. There was no place for him in this remnant of a world, though maybe a pony like him would return in the next.
"Good thing you went to another world before you cast that spell," Trixie continued. She seemed to be making an attempt to mock me. "You didn't? Well, better luck next time. Oh." She moved a hoof in front of her mouth, as if to cover a gasp. "There is no next time. Oops?"
"Once Equestria is devoured it will release an unimaginable amount of magic," I continued when Trixie was done making a pathetic show of herself. I looked below. Only Canterlot remained, floating in a sea of whiteness. "All that magic will be compelled to merge with the single remaining piece of Equestria, and that is me."
Trixie's face twisted in horror. Flashes of red light shot out of her amulet adding layer after layer to her protection bubble—a desperate attempt to stop the inevitable.
"Don't waste your magic." I spread my wings. "Even if you succeeded, it wouldn't matter. How do you think you've remained immortal? The spell I cast on you, on all of you, made you part of me."
"He ain't lying, Sugarcube," the crown on my head said.
"When the spell merges with me it will latch onto my memories and build a new, better Equestria." I braced myself. Only the palace remained. "There will be new seas and mountains, new fields and forests, and new ponies." A final tower was left standing, a needle in an infinity of magic. "My little ponies, that will look up to me and worship me—"
Trixie's spell burst into hundreds of glimmering sparks, no larger than a speck of light. Like a swarm of bees they jetted in my direction, tearing a pinprick hole in the fabric of reality inches from my head. Without hesitation I cast a disabling spell, wrapping the ruby of the amulet with my own magic. I had no intention of giving Trixie another opportunity. There effects of her spell, however, were still visible.
As the devouring spell closed in I stepped back from the hole, arching a brow towards Trixie in confusion. She scoffed at me with a crooked smile, her hoof rising to point at the dot she had made in the endlessness surrounding us.
“Did I ever tell you how I saved Equestria with Discord once?” she asked. The miniscule red dot that blemished the whiteness began to grow, turning into a purple tear. “I was magnificent back then, so magnificent that he shared a secret with me.”
The rip in space was nearly my size now and growing further, but Trixie didn’t stop running her mouth.
“He told me how to find his realm. Not how to enter it, of course—he thought I was too ‘simple’ for that—but I could still find it. With enough magic, I can call it to me.”
A door formed in the purple tear, and a second later it opened.
"Discord?" a pony asked, one I hadn't seen in over a decade. Her yellow, pink-maned face stared into mine, eyes filled with confusion.
Then the creation spell drew upon all the power I had hoarded, completing itself. The entire essence of Equestria, gathered into a tiny ball of light, jetted through space and planted itself on Fluttershy's forehead.
"Eek!" The Element of Kindness fell back into the pocket dimension she had appeared from and the rift closed, leaving me behind.
Of course. I laughed. Of course the world I knew would choose a pony with a heart.
“Congratulations, Blueblood, you've won,” Trixie jeered. “Welcome to your new world, filled with your own creations.” Behind her, the three fillies stared through me, their gazes emotionless as my own.