The Crystal Empire
It was the smell. The smell of lilacs and roses woke Prince Radiant Star that night. He’d just gotten to sleep, the task of running an entire empire without his mother, wife, or sons weighed heavily on his old frame. He’d thought about quitting more times than even Twilight could’ve kept track of. He hated it, he hated the show, he hated the grander, and he hated having to pretend like he was okay.
He was not okay, he was anything but okay. Every day was nothing but pain and sorrow. Every single day that passed felt like the worst in his life, and they just kept getting worse. Each day he’d wake up and notice—first thing—that she wasn’t there. She wasn’t by his side. For how could she be? She was gone... lost... dead.
Firestar; his wife, and in his not unbiased opinion, the most beautiful mare that had ever lived. The mare that showed him life was worth living, that he could—and should—live for something other than himself. The mare that brought him happiness, that showed him what happiness even was. She had been taken from him, snatched in the worst way possible. She had been killed by his mother, Princess Cadance.
No, that wasn’t right. Princess Cadance hadn’t killed his wife; rather, she had been used as a tool to kill his wife by the monster Mindsink.
Twelve years ago, Radiant Star had exacted his revenge. Blessed by the power of the god Eros, power that had been delivered by his spirit of his love, Radiant had conjured a blade capable of cutting the world itself in half and split the psychopath in twain.
That was the day that taught Radiant the worst truth the world has to offer: revenge solves nothing. Yes, he killed his wife’s murderer, something most would take pride in; even more so because Mindsink was a demigod on par with his niece, Princess Shimmering Night. But that didn’t change the fact that Firestar was dead.
Nothing could change that.
Ever.
He could be considered luckier than most, Radiant Star was given Eros’s blessing through his dead wife. The God had parted the veil between life and death and allowed one final moment between the two. Radiant got to talk to his wife, to hold her, and to kiss her one final time. He got to say goodbye, he got to tell her how much she meant to him, and to hear about how happy she had been with him. How fulfilled he had made her in life.
And, in a double-edged blade, he got to know, to truly know that her love for him was just as deep as his love for her, if not deeper.
That boon came with one last request. The hardest vow he had ever had to uphold. Harder than surviving a titan falling on him, she’d asked him to keep going. She made him promise to carry on, for her, and for their sons. Her last gift to him.
Had he known it would be this hard, he might have said no. No, he could never tell her no for anything. She got her way one-hundred percent of the time. As in life so in death, as, even dead, he’d still been unable to tell her no.
So he did like any good soldier: he followed orders. He followed his wife’s orders. To Radiant, there was no higher authority on the planet. He played the part, with the help of Twilight and Night, he kept the Crystal Empire running, he was there for his sons. He watched as Flash and Vela developed a rather… inappropriate relationship with each other, but nopony that saw them could ever doubt how they felt for one another. He watched as his son Blaze found a rather… interesting companion in a colt. It made Blaze happy, so Radiant didn’t say anything.
Radiant’s happiness? That was waiting for him on the other side. Sure, he was happy for his sons, proud even as he watched them come into their own. But he himself couldn’t be happy, not without… her.
He had stopped crying himself to sleep each night four years after her death. It hurt, it left a gaping hole in his heart, but he simply had no more tears to cry.
Or so he thought.
On the tenth anniversary of her death, he cried again at night. And he’s cried himself to sleep ever since for one important reason: he could no longer remember her voice.
It was absurd. Every day of his life he’d held tightly onto her memory. He replayed her last words to him, the promise of that day, the last thing they had ever said to one another. He remembered it like it was happening right then. He visualised how she felt, how she smelt, the tears she cried, her laughter, her sorrow, and her beautiful smile.
Yet against all rhyme or reason, on that day, ten years after her death, Firestar’s voice, how she sounded, it escaped him.
The self-recrimination began soon after. He felt like he betrayed her, like he was forgetting her, he called himself every insult, every barb he could, and he cried again. He cried like a colt that lost his favorite toy.
He cried himself to sleep. Forcing himself to stay up as long as he could, to bare through the pain.
She was gone, and he had forgotten her, he deserved no less.
Her voice, her sweet voice was no longer in his memory. He just couldn’t… couldn’t remember.
That part of her was gone, lost to the true enemy, that bastard called time.
But her smell? That was still his, that he could never forget.
It was little wonder he woke up when it drifted into his nostrils.
The white unicorn with the cutie mark of two swords clashing shot up in a cold sweat. Firestar, Radiant thought. His eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness as they darted around the room. Looking for any sign at all of his beloved. Logically he knew she was not there, that she was gone, dead. But experience had taught him that anything was possible. That logic had little sway over the power of gods.
There was no sign of her. His room was empty, dark, and cold. The room was exactly as he had last seen it through his tear-stained eyes.
Radiant took stock of the situation. I’m dreaming, it was just… just a dream, he told himself. He shut his eyes and took three deep breaths, just as his mother Cadance had taught him all those years ago. In through the mouth, out through the nose. In through the mouth, out through the nose. In through the mouth, out through the nose.
When he felt his heart start to slow down, Radiant Star shut his muzzle, closed his eyes, and laid back down. He fully expected the tears to start up again at any moment.
There was activity with his eyes, just not tears. Radiant’s eyes shot open as he breathed in his wife’s sent through his nostrils again. He shot up and threw his covers off the bed. Taking another whiff through his nostrils, he smelt her once more, even stronger.
Firestar! Radiant’s mind screamed as he kept sniffing the air. He moved quickly, running to the other side of the room near the doors and windows. The scent was stronger the closer he got to the window. A window that was—for some reason—now open.
Radiant didn’t pause to try and figure it out, in truth he didn’t even notice. The old stallion stuck his head out the window and quickly looked around. His eyes darted to and fro, until, at last, they rested upon a spot in the distance.
In the local park, moonlight dripped down from above in a column of coalescent energy. It seemed to highlight the center of the park, radiating outward in a blessed light that seemed to flow in magical waves that closely resembled those of the Crystal Heart.
He knew without being told, that those waves were not coming from the Heart. The Crystal Heart was kept on guard twenty-four seven against anyone that might try and snatch it. Experience with titans had taught them that lesson.
Radiant teleported down from his room to the base of the Crystal Castle. He teleported and ran as fast as his four hooves could carry him. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Firstar, or at least her smell was coming from the epicenter of that light.
The white unicorn zipped past empty shops and streets. His eyes were locked upon the light illuminating the night sky. Not that he needed it to tell him where to go. Outside, this close, he could smell her. His wife’s scent was clear as day to him, the perfume she loved to wear filling his nostrils, granting his old bones strength that he otherwise would not have had.
He rounded the bend, his path having cleared the city streets and houses to take him right to the park. What he saw there, who he saw there, it took his breath away.
A tan pegasus mare with a sky-blue mane looked up from the center of the light. Her blue eyes locked upon Radiant’s and she did the most wonderful thing in the world: she smiled.
Radiant’s jaw dropped as he watched Firestar walk... glide over the grass to him. The mare’s eyes never left his, her beautiful smile never fell from her face.
He couldn’t look away. Not even if Firestar was a second Equestria-bound sun, one that would’ve blinded him for life, he would’ve gladly traded his eyes for this one moment a million times, no, a billion times over.
To his eternal delight, Firestar didn’t take her eyes off him either. The mare floated as if on the wings of an angel directly to her love. His body was overtaken by her scent, by her. As such he didn’t even realize when their lips pressed together. When he felt her kiss again, when he felt her warmth again.
A part of his brain, a part he’d lobotomized if it got in the way right now was screaming at him. It was telling him that this was impossible, that he was falling into a trap, that Firestar was anything but Firestar. That he was being dumb, that this could lead to greater trouble than he could possibly know.
The rest of his brain had that section duct-taped, straight-jacketed, muzzled, buried in cement, and thrown into the deepest ocean with ten-thousand pound weights chained to it.
The cold vanished from Radiant’s body the moment their lips had connected. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so warm, so energetic, so invigorated. It was as if her single kiss was the most welcoming fire he’d ever experienced. As if nothing else existed in all of Equestria.
The cold, the snow, the night, the building, the street, and even the grass, it was all gone, all melted away in that one moment.
Firestar pulled her muzzle away from his and tilted it in just that way he remembered, letting her blue and white mane fall over her right eye. The smile on her face, the way she held herself, the way her hair had fallen just so, it all said more than words ever could.
He answered her unasked question, her—did you miss me?—look the only way he could. Radiant kissed her again, and again, and again.
After the seventh time, she raised her hoof and moved it to his face, wiping the tears away from his eye. There was a look of concern on her face as she examined just how much he’d been crying, how much he’d been hurting.
Radiant responded by wrapping her in a hug and burying his muzzle into the side of her neck. At that moment a dam burst behind his eyes as they poured tear. The unicorn could only sob while inhaling her sent with every gaping breath he took.
A hoof wrapped around his neck, returning the gesture with an equal amount of force. Firestar let him cry out everything he had, everything he’d been building up for years. All the hurt, all the anguish, all of it, she took it from him, gladly.
Another part of Radiant joined the first in the ocean. It dared to doubt that this just might-possibly-maybe-could be, not Firestar. That Firestar would never put up with her prince sobbing like a filly into her mane.
Radiant Star’s body fell into the snow-covered grass. He didn’t even feel the cold, the wet snow, he just felt her, he just felt Firestar. For her part the mare simply followed her husband to the ground, not letting him go for even a second.
Enough time had past, they’d been apart for years. No more, not if either of them had a say in it anyway.
When she felt the tears stop, Firestar generally pulled her husband’s muzzle away from her fur and, without any malice at all, started to lightly chuckle at what she saw.
Confused, Radiant blinked twice—an action that felt like the first he’d done since he’d seen her—as he stared into his wife’s eyes.
There he saw it. He saw his reflection in those blue eyes. He saw his fur matted to his face, the—rather undignified—sobbing nature of his muzzle almost made him chuckle as well, almost.
Only Firestar would laugh at me at a moment like this. If there was any doubt that he might have had left that this wasn’t her, that action silenced it for good.
Radiant watched as Firestar’s giggle turned back into that lovey-lovey smile of hers. Again she pressed her muzzle against his own. The action seemed to share her warmth, her essence with the stallion all over again.
The wing she spread out started to glide gently down his flank in a smooth petting motion, hitting the spots only a true love could possibly know. Radiant almost purred like a newborn kitten at her touch. The softness of her fur, the way her feather teased, tickled, and satisfied all in one fluid motion, it was like nothing else in the entire universe.
After all, it was like her. And to the stallion there was nothing else like her in the universe.
He breathed deeply, refusing to let a single breath go by without knowing her smell, a single moment go by without knowing her touch, a second second to go by without seeing her all over again.
He’d already forgotten her voice, he refused to let himself forget anything else. This, whatever this was, a dream, a trap, a gift, a nightmare, he took it as an opportunity, an opportunity to never let anything else of hers go.
Never again.
Hours felt like seconds as he held on, as he remembered, as he experienced his wife all over again. The two did nothing, said nothing, they simply held each other, caressed each other, kissed one another. As such it felt like a shock to his system when the first rays of sunlight blinded the old stallion.
He blinked away the glare, an action that caused him no small amount of displeasure as it forced him to look away from Firestar. He rubbed his eyes with a hoof, desperate to see again, to ensure that she hadn’t vanished, that it wasn’t just a dream.
To his relief, she was still there, smiling at him when his vision cleared.
To his horror, she wasn’t fully there. The light seemed to pass right through her, almost as if she were transparent.
Radiant’s muzzle opened to speak, an action that Firestar put a stop to with another well placed kiss.
She smiled that smile of hers all over again as her form faded into the day’s rebirth.
Please find me, my idiot.
Radiant woke in a start. His breath heavy, his coat and bed soaked through with sweat. He found himself unable to catch his breath, unable to form conscious thought for the longest time. When thought returned only one thing raced through his mind.
Her voice… that was her voice… that was the voice of…
“Firestar.”