Cyclone was dead.
As gargantuan of a thought as this might otherwise be, right now it concerned her far less than the fact that, despite being dead, she was still conscious.
The biggest question known to ponykind, ‘will something come after death?,’ apparently had a simple answer: yes.
That was rather nice... particularly for her, given that she was dead and all. But what was it? Where was she?
Nervously, Cyclone looked around to- HOLY CELETSIA WHAT HAD HAPPENED TO HER WINGS?
Her wings! they were! were! were...
... gray? Silver?
Cyclone gulped. Had she aged? A minute ago, she’d only been thirty-two years old. She lifted a limb to see if it too had changed. Nope, still the soft, blue color it had always been.
She looked back at her wings. They were still silver.
Okay, so she had silver wings. Big deal. But, where was she?
She looked around. There was nothing. Well, there wasn’t literally nothing, of course, but there also wasn’t really anything, except for a plain wide field of... dirt. Hopefully, wherever she was wasn’t like this everywhere. It wouldn’t be fun at all to spend the afterlife all by herself.
Cautiously, she flapped her new, silver wings. They worked just like... no, wait a moment, they didn’t. They were... stronger? Yeah, they were stronger. Cyclone had already been a good flier, but now she was quickly flying at a speed that would otherwise have taken a lot out of her. Now it was easy.
So death gave her better wings? Okay, that was... nice?
Cyclone gradually slowed her flight, eventually coming to a landing at a spot almost identical to the one she’d been before.
... still. Where was she?
A trillion miles above Equestria, there is a large crystal sphere.
Every now and then, several moving lines meet at a single point. Then, sometimes, a tiny piece of white sails down, too quick for any mortal eye to see.
And there is a rift on the surface of the sphere. Through it, control and order seeps out, out, out...