Starlight opened her eyes, and her heart stopped.
The azure crystal of Twilight’s—or rather, her—gifted bedroom, wasn’t there. Nor the plants she had neglected to feed, or the wok station with its layer of dust.
There was simply nothing.
She shot up and in the blink of an eye found herself on four hooves, the bed out of sight no matter where she looked. Damp heat, her panting, hit her in the face. A closet? Starlight gazed upon what she expected to be a ceiling, but instead found three pairs of beady white eyes based with crestfallen arcs.
Starlight shuddered. “What are you?!” she exclaimed.
‘Help us, Starlight,’ said four voices—-female. The faces didn’t move. ‘They’re coming to destroy us. We don’t want to die. We don’t want to die!’
“Go away!” she cried, covering her face and cutting off the shadows. “I don’t want anymore of this!”
A weight so gentle caressed her mane, scratched behind her ear. Three claws joined, one caressing her racing chest, and another upon her withers. “You’re going to do great things, my little Light.” It was her father and the mares in one. “Your worth... deeper than that.”
But she was exhausted. Just so tired of heartache. “And you will know heartache,” they said.
“And only heartache,” added a familiar, motherly voice. “Until the end of your days… and as your teacher I am so, so proud of you.”
The encouragement lended the strength needed to open her eyes.
An abyss she awakened to. No eyes or masks of despair pleading. Just a large gemstone in the distance, glowing soft like a star. ‘We don’t want to die!’ it cried, before six hooves of the Elements, bigger than tree trunks, crashed down and shattered it.
“NO!” Starlight’s heart broke in half. Rage consumed her. “You idiots, you always act before thinking! All of you,” she whimpered as pony-shaped shadows, millions of them, sprung up all around: an audience, eyes like pilot lights fixated on her, analyzing her every move for all time, “all of you act without thinking, without feeling and I’m sick of it!” She didn’t care how she looked—they needed to hear this. “If you stopped thinking inside yourselves and talked for once, you’d be a lot happier, I promise!”
Starlight couldn’t stand it, the sight was too much. Far too much for her, and she sprinted blindly ahead without daring to peek open at the road ahead.
And she ran, and ran, and ran. When she couldn’t run anymore, she had no choice but to see where her choice had taken her.
Herself, she found, upon a throne-shaped visage construed of beating hearts, healthy and red and shaped not anatomically correct, but akin to the classical cartoonish rendering of them. This Starlight’s legs were crossed, hind and fore both, smirking with a disgusting sort of self-satisfaction she recalled in her own, swelling breast. She was proud of herself, Starlight realized. It was intoxicating, so lovely was the sight and Starlight didn’t know why. Especially as the mirror of her had hooks stretching the smile—pale hooks, warty and tipped black with talons. Upon her head, a jester’s cap.
“This is fine,” the queenly Starlight hissed through her teeth.
A scream belted out of the real one’s breast, and she whirled away.
Only to find herself once again, now lying upon a bonfire greener than the most sinister of emeralds. The timber feeding it looked familiar, as if shaped like Canterlot. All around her friends were gathered—Twilight and the Elements, the princesses, Sunburst and Fizzle—shedding tears, smiling.
Trixie and Maud were farther back, however, the latter of whom uncharacteristically wailing albeit without a sound.
“I’m sorry for hurting you all,” mumbled the burning, broken-horned unicorn. Not a burn appeared upon her coat, she was utterly fine despite the green flames consuming her. “I really am. But if this will keep you warm then I’d do it again and again. Because I love you all, far more than I do myself. You’re all worth so much more than me.”
Starlight, horrified, scanned up the column of smoke. It was a faint pink and teal, and within the gloom a starburst hummed gently.
‘Empathy,’ mused the quartet from before, ‘a natural growth stemming from friendship.’ The starburst seemed to grow a ponytail of teal smoke. ‘A necessary piece for it to be complete.’ The tail split into two. ‘A forgotten element, you could say.’ The symbol, striking Starlight in the heart, dizzying her with a nostalgic onslaught, erupted into pink embers which rained all over the darkness. Everywhere.
Like stars in the night sky.
Starlight returned to find her visage’s eyes shut, a magical aura leaving out her horn and taking the form of a leaping foal. The teal magic turned soft pink, grew a mane done up in pigtails. She smiled at Starlight directly, despite lacking a horn and boasting a gaping hole in her chest.
“When I grow up,” she cheered, “and ponies feel bad like me, I wanna do everything I can to help them!” The filly reached behind her and donned a jester’s cap. “But that’s okay,” she continued, smiling at Starlight. “I don’t care what happens to me. I don’t care if the ponies I love hate me for it. Because at the end of the day, I understand how they felt, and I made them happy.”
“But it’s so selfish!” Starlight herself cried. “You don’t even care how they feel, how can you be okay with that?!” The filly just smiled sadly, and shrugged.
Beyond her, beyond the awful, green-inflamed horizon, the sun rose and dispelled the wicked sight. It gleamed rays of six brilliant, beautiful colors. Starlight was alone again, but calm of heart.
“Right,” she realized. “That’s why.”
And the four voices enwrapped her heart, encircled her mind, urging her, ‘Look back, Starlight Glimmer. Always look back and you will never be afraid again.’
With no choice, she had to obey. Her hooves shook as one hoof after the other rose, swung around, pivoting her to whatever horror lay beyond her.
It was Twilight, tears rolling down her cheeks, but smiling nonetheless. It was Trixie, face frozen in utter heartbreak, but alive. It was Maud, drawn within herself behind closed eyes, but smiling. Beside her stood Pinkie, smirking—oddly enough—with eyes upturned in a manner Starlight could only describe as confident. The other Elements were kneeling, wearing faces at peace, despite the bandages crossed upon the gaps in their breasts.
It was all of Equestria, boasting a similar visage—hurting, but seeing Starlight, and healing.
It was, deep down, all she ever wanted.
But Starlight didn’t understand, she couldn’t possibly fathom what they had to be happy about in the face of such tragedy.
“See?” said the filly’s voice from somewhere. “This is worth it. All of it, everything was worth it. Doncha think?”
“‘Everything?’” Starlight gazed behind her, searching the prismatic sunrays, but she only saw them burning away the darkness to an open sea of blue—the sky, cloudless. “Are you saying I’m going to hurt these ponies?” Her innards writhed.
“You should know better than anypony by this point!” scolded the filly. “That sacrifice is at once a beautiful and dangerous thing. But friends will understand! And everypony will be your friend, so at the end of the day, it’s fine!”
Fine. Fine. It always had to be “fine.” Never “good” or “great.”
The sun was now high in the sky, boasting seven different rays now. She hadn’t a chance to see the bottom one, a pink so soft and gentle that even she failed to see it until having taken it all in.
It was quiet; silence had enveloped her completely, pounding in her ears. “I really ought to stop rushing into things without thinking.”
The sun’s blazing face flickered, distorted. Dark shapes she at once recognized and didn’t but only because she didn’t wish to, flashed before her:
A silhouetted mare upon a throne of ponies grinned a wicked white smile, hugging a two-pronged scepter grasping a magic-tailed starburst. She had friends who would never leave her, who she understood were hurt like her, and she was happy.
‘From outside we’re together,’ chanted an indecipherable amount of voices: the four from earlier, her many friends, her own and the filly’s.
‘But deeper at our core.’ The mare tumbled from her throne, shoved by a broken-horned unicorn with pale tears rolling down her face. She fell, and fell, and fell for what felt like forever. ‘But deeper at our core, deeper at our core! DEEPER AT OUR—’! She fell into the open-forelegs of a winged shadow with a straight-cut mane.
The silhouette without a horn plummeted from above, straight into the wicked unicorn, and they came together unflinchingly.
‘With hearts made one…’
She gently pushed the alicorn away as a pair of wings sprung out from her sides. The taller princess lowered her muzzle, rose a knee.
‘...there is magic… forever… more.’
And the image pulled back, revealing the whisperers all standing at the new princess’s sides, some smiling, and others frowning.
‘Forevermore...’
Faster it zoomed out, uncovering more ponies in rapid succession, more and more and more until an entire country seemed to fit inside the sun’s warm embrace.
‘FoReVeRmOrE.’
The echo hissed inside her brain, at the back of her head. Starlight’s neck prickled. She whirled, and found the ghastly Ladies of Flutter Valley gathered around a rotten box titled, “The Old,” in crude black marker.
At once, their heads snapped to her. “We HiJaCkEd YoUr DrEaM,” they said as one, the four voices from before—with the fourth female’s taking the place of the demon’s, and speaking loudest of all. “To GiVe YoU cOmFoRt. EvErYtHiNg HaPpeNs FoR a ReAsOn, StArLiGhT. yOu KnOW iT iN yOuR hEaRt To Be tRuE, wHy YoU aRe WiLLiNg To BeAr SuCh SuFfErInG. yOu KnOw It MaKeS oThErS hApPy, HoWeVeRmUcH yOuR fRiEnDs HaTe It.”
Starlight didn’t know what to say. Her heart did, though: “I know, I… I know.” She wiped the welling pressure, the blurriness, and the burning pain from her eyes. “Everything I’ve been through was a lesson. They’ve helped me understand creatures even as awful as you.”
Except she didn’t. She didn’t know why she was saying these things, only that it was right.
“LoVe. SeLf-SaCrIfIcE. EmPaThY.” They stepped away from the box, revealing their fingers entangled in strings gleaming seven distinct colors. “tHeSe CoMprIsE tHe MaRe YoU aRe NoW.”
She couldn’t breathe—her breast filled with air but it wasn’t enough. Starlight gulped, gasped, and gulped cyclically. “If I can give myself to others…”
“...tHeN yOu WiLL. It’S jUsT wHo YoU aRe AnD hAvE aLwAyS bEeN.” The strings stretched and stretched with each step they took, separating from one another, fading like spectres in the sun’s righteous light.
A sliver of purple rose from the “The Old” box, and Starlight heard a voice. Her own.
“I think this just needs,” she echoed as a winged marionette of Starlight Glimmer rose, contentment painted upon her spherical wooden head, “a little bit of empathy.”
“That’s all,” she felt driven to breathe, happy and crying and she didn’t know why. “That’s all a hurting heart needs.”
The witches, ghosts, froze on the spot. They said, “I like you, Starlight Glimmer.”
And in the blink of an eye, the witches were gone. “The Old” was gone. The marionette held in midair for one glorious moment before plummeting, clattering woodenly against the abyssal ground. Starlight didn’t feel the need to save it, because this, too, felt right.
Even though she was alone, despite everything horrible and wonderful she just witnessed.