“Starlight, please!” Twilight reached out a hoof, helpless across the distance -- “you have to listen to me! You saw, you know what happens if you do this!”
“I only saw the future you showed me, Twilight,” Starlight snarled, testily pulling the parchment apart yet further.
Twilight froze carefully at that, seeming to Starlight, small, when measured against the great pieces of shorn parchment that framed her, pieces which now wafted delicately in the glow of her magic as they fluttered weakly in the strengthening wind, bridged only by the barest thread of abused fiber.
Twilight said something, bargaining. And Starlight noticed that her words, as drifted in the now howling atmosphere toward her, seemed to mean less and less to her as the long forgotten loss of Sunburst played freshly over in her mind, hurting more than she ever expected it could.
‘One day,’ the thought came again as it always did: one day had been all it took to turn her life into what it was now --
“Just...listen to me!” Twilight broke, drawing Starlight’s attention once more.
Twilight, now at the breaking edge of her patience, and having withstood the unbending silence poorly, spoke like a drowning victim, consigned to her fate yet willing to say anything which might avert it.
“Can’t you look past yourself for one instant!” Twilight yelled, chiding, drawing closer, “I know you may hate me and my friends, but this goes beyond your hatred! Beyond us!”
“Stay back,” Starlight whispered, physically bracing herself against the words even as she seemed to lack the strength to do much else.
“There are lives at stake, Starlight!” Twilight persisted in a half pleading, fearful and harsh tone as she drew closer. And the words, sudden as they were, stabbed painfully deeper into the increasingly antsy mare she closed in upon.
“I said, stay back,” Starlight demanded; once more, a tentative hollowness worked itself into her voice. She found it difficult to do much more, burning guilt having broken away whatever remained of her resolve.
Twilight, if she’d heard the request, didn’t listen. She pressed forward, driven, as if, by the haunting reality of the weight she now carried. The cold knowledge of the awaiting future prodding fearfully at her back as a jitter came over every limb and an uncertainty sabotaged her every step.
Before her, the world seemed to close, becoming a narrow smother of tunnel vision: in the center of which stood: Starlight. Intently focused on this center, Twilight dressed forward at what she could now see only as the source of a grievous problem.
Stopping to reach out a demanding hoof, Twilight, at last, spoke: “Give up the spell, Starlight. This just isn’t worth it.”
Starlight, for the longest time, was silent.
“Starlight...” Twilight spoke, a sympathetic brush returning to her trailing voice. Starlight could tell it had to be forced.
“I told you to stay back,” she whispered.
“Starlight, there are more important-”
“More important,” Starlight chuffed.
“Life’s always more important,” she repeated, a mocking cant playing at the words. “When is my happiness ever going to be as important as some admission to Canterlot university, Twilight?” she challenged, stepping forward on her own, now. “When are my goals ever as important as everyone’s special talent,” she emphasised the words with derision, waving the paper in time to her voice. “When are my friendships ever going to be as important as yours!” Starlight was now inches away from Twilight, fully shouting at this point, and she could feel herself shaking in the abrupt silence which followed.
“Starlight-”
“Well, you know what?” Starlight interrupted. “I. Don’t. Care.” She stamped a hoof with every word and, with a subtle intent of motion, tore the parchment fully in half.
“NO-!” Twilight shouted. Before she could do more than speak, space tore violently above their heads and, with an irresistible quality, dragged them both through.
Afterwards, there remained nothing but the crisp air of autumn...and a dragon atop a plot of cloud pavement.
“Hello?” Spike's voice echoed over the cloud tops. “Anybody?”
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The sky was awash in a pallet of misty whites and darkling grays; in it, she could see a dark mass of clouds swim quietly through, casting their darkness pointedly across the howling atmosphere of wind and dust which blanketed the earth below.
Before she could dwell on the sight, Starlight found her attention drawn back to the space before her.
There, the endless sandstorm calmed, settling with an unnatural quickness before dissipating altogether.
In its aftermath, Starlight saw that she sat in the center of an open plaza. Grey stone and marble pillars surrounded, standing tall against the darkling shine of the crystal city beyond them.
With every passing second, the stone structures and fashioned sculptures of the plaza came more and more into being, gaining an opacity as if they were, at that moment, fading into reality, a reality which, despite every change, seemed eternally locked under that grey sky which hung over them.
Drawing her eyes further downward, she noticed the crowd shocked passersbys as they looked over at her.
Starlight jumped to motion with a jolt. Leaping over the metal guard rail which stood between herself and the crowd, Starlight landed with a click on the stone tiled plaza. Looking about her, she saw the dark image of the city imposed between the pillars of stone and marble. With a cry, the cluster of ponies startled away from her, and through the parting crowd she saw a sight which chilled the strength from her bones. Before she realized it, she’d fallen to her knees, unfeeling as she looked on, with a numbed expression, at the crystal effigy of King Sombra which stood high above the jagged, broken skyline of the cursed city.
Even more terribly, in the far distance, she could see the crumbling remnants of Canterlot hanging desperately to it’s mountaintop home. She felt a distant sorrow watching it. It was still shining in the dwindling sunbeams which peaked through the cloud-cover to light upon it, seeming, to Starlight, to be the only source of light in the world.
A crash of hooves on stone attracted her attention once more. Twilight stood beside her now, looking with a hollow expression at that distant city as a slow stream of tears trickled down her mask-like expression.
“Twilight...” Starlight paused. Despite her best efforts unable to come up with anything to say.
“Well?” Twilight’s whispered voice cracked as she turned an ironical smile onto her. “You did it!” she exclaimed with a false cheer, huffing her words as if they were on the verge of sobs. For the first time, her expression broke from that measured calm which she’d worn in all those past encounters.
Starlight, who’d always hated, in her deepest heart, the ease and composure Twilight always brought to face her harshest and most fiery attacks, now found herself wishing for that old Twilight to return, to come back and to tell her what had to be done now…
“Twilight, I’m-”
“Don’t say it!” Twilight heeled about, jerking to a stop inches from Starlight's weary expression. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it!?" Twilight asked, "Isn’t it!?”
Twilight jerked back a step when she looked at the violet glow reflecting in Starlight’s eyes. Pointing a nervous, confused glance up at her horn, she wondered when it had begun to shine.
“Well?” Twilight, backed away several more steps, tears now bubbling from her eyes in a blinding stroll.
“I hope you’re happy!” Twilight snarled at last, turning away in a gallop and forcing her way past whichever pony couldn’t dodge her in time.
Starlight looked at the retreating mare with difficulty, feeling painfully the intense emotions of guilt and anger and self loathing which seemed to flood upon her. Emotions which, cruelly, were overshadowed by the object hidden just beyond her periphery.
Turning her eyes askance, Starlight felt her breath hitch and her heart stop as she saw that object. There, beyond the black, iron guard rails she'd just crossed, playing as the centerpiece of the cold, stony plaza, lay the remnants of the crystal map, broken and cracked and dull like ancient marble.
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Ever so often, whenever a sudden noise captured her attention or whenever she became aware of the fact that she hadn’t done so for a long time, Starlight peeked nervously over her shoulder.
Too late, she realized that she’d become lost in the shadowy catacombs and unfamiliar terraces of the crystal city, traversing past the familiar alleyways and imposing structures which splintered it into an unnavigable maze of darkness and obscurity.
Even the inhabitants were strange, she realized. Drably colored ponies passed by her on either side, eyes refusing to look at anything except the ground before them. And, at what seemed to be every corner and in the center of every street, a martial appearance was made. Soldiers and chariots rode through with quiet solemnity, putting forward an oddly subdued front despite their numbers as a veritable train of ponies, supplies, weapons, medical gear, and armor marched across every inch of the surrounding city.
Starlight, at first lost in the bustle, merely moved aside with every other pony, noticing the lack of attention paid by anybody to anything.
Soon, however, she found her bearing, reaching a clear enough patch that she could once again see the effigy of Sombra rise above the skyline, and soon after, she realized that there was an order to the madness. The marching ponies and passing chariots, for all their dizzying bustle, were, all of them, heading towards the statue.
Starlight, centering herself with reference to the ghastly landmark, wisely decided to head away from it.
The further she moved from the city center, however, the worse her surroundings became and, paradoxically, the more references to Sombra she saw.
Every park and fountain and mailbox seemed to bear some image of the warlock, and these reminders became more numerous and more haphazardly placed the further she strolled. She started avoiding the manholes after the third block.
The heights of the city were great, however, and they sheltered many secrets. For, after what felt like several hours of monotonous walking, a pace Starlight kept simply for the opportunity it afforded her to halt her darker thoughts, she discovered something.
Turning down a dark and abandoned corner, Starlight saw a light glinting, and headed calmly forward towards it.
Deep in the darkness of the stone walled alley, the space opened neatly into a small, abandoned pocket of wilderness. Starlight almost didn’t notice she’d stepped into it at first, and, looking around, realized with a lifting heart that, at last, she’d found a secluded spot which lacked any reminder of Sombra.
Surrounded by the falling twilight, Starlight took in the cozy seclusion of the place. A tall treeline closed tightly around her, and several large bushes obscured the alley entrance from view. And at the far end of the garden, half hidden in the shadow of the trees, stood a delicate statue of a mare.
Stepping carefully forward, Starlight placed herself at the foot of the statue, entranced by the glinting, shining, uncertain surface of the material which made it up. And, looking beyond at the bashful figure of the mare that sat, posed, hiding behind the strands of her mane, Starlight couldn’t help feeling something profound at the sight, she couldn’t be sure what.
On the pedestal, the words read: Here lies Radiant Hope, if only the world could have returned her kindness.
“A grave?” Starlight murmured, feeling suddenly self conscious.
“No,” a voice behind her answered, startling her around, “not a grave. A reminder”
“A- A reminder of what?” Starlight managed, managing, halfheartedly, to keep the shiver out of her voice, admirable considering it was King Sombra who’d answered the question, and who was approaching her at that very moment.
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