One noticed, when waking up in the Arctic, when they were alone.
Even with the sun cast down further from us than it had ever been before, when the last torch had been extinguished in the angry, howling world, and everything truly was black, I knew immediately. Up north, it was like a sixth sense. I'd originally thought it was simply me, but it was one of the first things I'd noticed about the Crystal Ponies when I'd interrupted their unbroken solitude. When the last fire was spent and they were truly facing the cold, they gravitated towards eachother by instinct all the same.
Awaking into solitude in the arctic was one of the most horrific feelings I'd know since I'd left Pillory.
My horn pierced the infinite darkness, and the tent fell into a soft green glow.
"Celestia?" I said, but I knew she wouldn't be there. I felt my world collapsing upon itself.
I hadn't heard the junker's engines, and when I stumbled out into the whiteout, the fresh hoofprints weren't heading in its direction.
"No," I said aloud, as I followed them onwards. "No, no, no, gods above please—"
The words died as torchlight cut through the whiteout, dancing off the glass of The Last Recluse like a firefly in a jar.
"No," I said one final time, the word dying in my throat as the desperate plea it had always been.
There she was, I could see the unfastened strap of her harpoon gun dancing below the ship's gondola.
We met on the same side, and her hooves skidded across the snow as her eyes went alight with terror like a spooked cervine.
“Get away from me," she growled, her voice as shaky as the rifle held in her hooves. "Stay back!"
I went deadly silent. Everything happened like it was in a vacuum. I heard Celestia snarling and crying and I offered my pathetic justifications, but it all happened as though I wasn't even a part of it.
I knew it was fruitless. She was far too emotional to let this go, but if she ran from me...
I wouldn't be the only one who would suffer. Erisia itself relied on her, she was their last damn hope, and she'd made it too far on luck alone to make it any further.
I tried to tell myself, as the pounding in my head drove my thoughts to plans, that what I was about to do was for Erisia...
And I knew it was a lie. It was for her. All for this feral slumrat from Cyclosa.
She took another step back, and again the pounding was worse.
No no no no no. The same begging word, over and over. Not this. I couldn't do this to her. Anything.
Her horn lit and my mind panicked. I heard my ponies shuffling about behind me in the snow just as the beam from my horn sent her sprawling backwards, her head striking the gondola with terrifying force.
I galloped across the snow after her, as she slumped horribly against the airship balloon, her eyes rolling back.
The gods-damned pounding was deafening as I struggled to stay lucid. I couldn't see the rise and fall of her chest through her parka, and she was as cold as everything around us.
"Help me with her!" I snarled to the Crystal Ponies in Kanquitut. They were staring in shock at the alicorn crumbled and bested before them—this figure I'd been telling them was a demigod laying broken and bloody by my own hoof.
I'd never been their leader, truly, and I read their blooming fear towards me in their shocked expressions. Striking Celestia had already been a blade into my own chest, and their horror only twisted it deeper.
"Help me!" I snarled again, and the words overrode any malicious intent I may have had in their minds. I grabbed her and slung her over my back. She was already taller than me, and I admittedly didn't make it far. Although as malnourished as I was, they sprung into action beside me all the same.
"I'm sorry, Celestia, I'm so sorry," I was nearly sobbing as we carried her to The Last Recluse. The words meant nothing—even if she did awake—and Erisia wasn't sentenced to an entirely hopeless fate—her fear and desire to escape would not simply go away.
Her eyes fluttered with movement as we laid her down onto the ship's dining table, and my near-ecstatic relief flared for but a moment before giving way to horrifying dread as I illuminated my horn.