//------------------------------//
// Chapter Five: Honest Hearts 
// Story: Fallout Equestria: The Lost Empire 
// by CopperTop 
//------------------------------//

Because of you, Starlight Glimmer
Now the future's not a cold nightmare


The glowing orange orb floated in front of him.  He stared at it for several long seconds, as though trying to figure out why he had it.  He couldn’t remember.  It certainly wasn’t the first time that he’d forgotten why he’d walked into a room.  Perhaps if he left and came back in he’d know why―
Whose stuff was this?
The chest in front of him should have been filled with books and grimoires, but it instead held an assorted collection of knickknacks that clearly belonged to a mare.  One that he’d never seen before.  He was in the right house, wasn’t he?
That would certainly be embarrassing!
He spied the note, written in his griffon-scratch penmareship.  Curious about its contents, he floated the piece of paper up to his eyes to read it.  Apparently he’d misplaced his glasses again, as well as his memory.

Sunburst

	Put the orb in the chest 
Lock it
Go to the palace
Ask PM to erase your memory from this moment
If he asks: mention Shining Armor

Sunburst

He put the note down and returned his attention to the orb.  One that he now suspected contained his own memories.  There were already two others just like it in the chest.  Lying on top of the strange mare’s possessions.  As well as, some belongings that were sized for a foal, but he had no memory of owning as a colt.  Most of those things of his would have been with his mother anyway.
A strange mare.  A strange foal.  
‘Shining Armor’?
The stallion had been found hanging from the canopy bed that he’d once shared with his wife just a few months ago.
Ah...so that was it.  He’d had a family too.  One that, apparently, had not survived the war either.  He’d wanted to be free of that loss―that grief―lest he wind up like the late Prince Consort.  Very well then.
Sunburst placed the ord alongside the others and closed the lid of the chest.  He placed a lock spell upon it and took one last look around the room.  It was completely empty.
That was right, everypony’s belongings had been consolidated recently.  His were in the Academy.  Though, it seemed that his next appointment was to be in the Prime Minister’s office.  He’d presumably extracted...well, likely years of memories from his head recently.  Another few minutes would be a drop in the bucket compared to that, but he wanted to minimize it as much as possible anyway.  He also wanted to scold his past self for doing something this reckless.  With the sheer quantity of memories removed to erase a relationship like that, he was as likely to have ended up completely lobotomized!
As it was, he’d almost guaranteed the early onset of a severe case of dementia.
He must have really loved that mare.
The walk through the empty streets went swiftly, and nopony stopped him as he entered the palace.  Why would they?  Everypony knew who the Archmage was.  He ascended to the upper levels of the palace and found the Prime Minister’s office.  It was virtually a guarantee that the salmon unicorn stallion would be inside.  He rarely left these days.
Sunburst rapped his hooves on the door.
“Enter!” somepony yelled out before descending into a small coughing fit.
The blazed unicorn stepped inside, “you should get that looked at,” he cautioned the Prime Minister.
“It’s just a cold,” the older stallion waved away the concern, “without the Crystal Heart’s power, the temperature’s dropped a fair bit throughout the city.  A lot of ponies are getting colds as a result.  My family is already down with it too.  Bed rest and warm broth is all we need,” he smiled up at his visitor, “now, how can I help you today, Master Archmage?”
“I...need you to erase my memories, apparently,” Sunburst said lamely, waving around the note that he’d written himself, “everything from now back until I was standing in my house,” he thought for a moment.  Did he even remember going to his house or packing those things away?  No.  He’d already sequestered those memories.  It was just this one last loose end to tie up.
“And why would you need me to do that?”
“...Shining Armor.”
The Prime Minister’s slightly wrinkled face creased in confusion for a brief moment, then he looked on in horror, “Sunburst, you didn’t!”
“I apparently did,” he said lamely.  Nopony was more aware of the documented risks than he was.  He’d read over the new spells being developed by Equestria very carefully.  Most had been quite disturbing, if he was being honest, “I assume I had a very good reason for it, even if I don’t remember what it was.”
“I―…” the other stallion let out a long, defeated, sigh, “there’s no help for it now, I suppose,” he looked critically at the younger unicorn, “I wish you’d sought counseling though, instead of doing...this,” his disgusted tone was undercut by another brief coughing fit.
“I don’t remember if I did or not.  Please...Archibald, just do this for me.  I need to forget about forgetting,” he let out an annoyed snort at how redundant that statement sounded, “otherwise knowing that I erased my family could end up causing a psychotic break as my brain tries to fill in the gaps it knows are there.  For this to work, long term, I have to not even know that there was anything I forgot.
“I can’t remember making those orbs or seeing that box.  I can’t remember this conversation!” he sighed, “just...tell me I fell asleep on your couch or something.  I’ve been pulling long enough hours recently―haven’t we all?―that I won’t question it,” honestly, a genuine nap was pretty tempting.
“...Alright, Sunburst,” the older unicorn finally nodded, “I’ll do it,” he was quiet for a moment, “for the record: I don’t think this was fair to Starlight.  Or Moonbeam, for that matter.  There’s probably nopony else in the world who’ll carry on their memories.”
Sunburst noted that the mention of those names did nothing for him.  Which one of them was supposed to have been his wife?  He stepped over to the couch and laid down, staring up at the ceiling, “the world’s ending, Archibald.  Nopony’ll remember any of us soon enough.”
The Prime Minister stood up from his desk, retrieving a blank memory orb from a drawer, and walked over, “I don’t think you give these crystal ponies enough credit.  They’re a tough breed.”
The blazed stallion merely shrugged and wiped away at his brow.  He frowned at the mane hairs that came away with his hoof.  The stress was finally making him go bald.  That or the patrols he did along the circle of balefire that ringed the city in an effort to find a way through.  He wasn’t powerful enough to dispel it on his own.  A shame that the Ministry of Arcane Science hadn’t sent him anypony to help out.  He could have used one of their mages in his research.
Hopefully he’d remember to ask the medical staff to evaluate his radiation exposure.  It probably wasn’t good for him to be out there that long.  There were a lot of ponies getting sick, and it was doubtlessly impacting his immune system.  He’d catch his death of cold if he wasn’t more careful.
“Ready?” the older unicorn asked.
“Do it,” Sunburst nodded.
The orb drifted over his head and touched his horn―


oooOOOooo


Starlight Glimmer jerked awake.
The memory orb fell away, rolling to a stop next to the jet black case that it had been held in.  She replaced it and sealed the box before slipping the container back into her bag.  With a heavy sigh, she stood up and looked around the―now much messier―royal library.  She’d exhausted every book and reference in the room, and none of them had held the answers that they’d sought regarding the wendigos.  So she’d decided to pass the time until the others got back by taking a look into the last of the memory orbs that she’d found.
Archie had apparently been involved in helping Sunburst to forget all about her and their daughter.  The pink unicorn wasn’t sure how she felt about that.  Honestly, she’d sort of expected to find the locked-away memories of the Prime Minister’s own family, given how he’d reacted with surprise at finding their grave markers the other day.  Apparently he’d simply forgotten about his own family the way that most ghouls slowly lost their memories over time.
Starlight couldn’t imagine what it must have been like, to get here ‘the long way around’.  She’d closed her eyes in Equestria and opened them in the Wasteland two centuries later.  All her memories of how things had been were fresh in her mind.  Most of the events of the last few years were crystal clear in fact.  Her last few birthdays, Hearth’s Warmings, Hearts and Hooves Days, Nightmare Nights...she could look back on them with clarity and fondness―if a few bittersweet tears these days.
It wasn’t until she turned her thoughts to her foalhood that things got cloudier.  A couple birthdays stood out.  The Hearth’s Warming that she’d gotten that ‘Little Clover’s Magic Kit’ she’d been begging her father for all year.  That one nightmare that she’d kept having about a manticore hiding under her bed.
Events like that that were―for her―thirty years ago, existed as fragments and images for the most part.  How much less of them would she be able to recall in another thirty years?  A hundred?  It was likely a Celestia-given miracle that Archie could remember anything at all about the events of the war, no matter how significant they had been.  Forgetting about the details of his personal life were entirely forgivable, to include having known and worked with her husband.
The unicorn mare once again looked out the nearby window out of habit and then immediately rolled her eyes when she was unable to gauge the approximate time.  She couldn’t wait to be back on the surface again.  Snowy overcast or not, it was at least possible to know whether or not it was day or night!  She should have gotten a pipbuck or something on her way north,
Regardless of the time, one thing that was clear was that Archie and Aquamarine weren’t back yet from their patrol.  There was a quiet feeling of worry at that realization, she would admit, but she suppressed it.  Those two were quite capable ponies, and they’d seen nothing thus far that suggested there was anything particularly dangerous down here.  Anything that could reasonably threaten them would probably also cause enough of a ruckus that she’d be able to hear it from the castle.  Going out on her own in an effort to find them and check on them was more likely to see to it that they constantly missed each other and ended up wandering around in this place for days on end.
So Starlight resolved to stay put in the castle.
Which was not to say that she stayed exclusively in the library.  If there was one good thing that Starlight could say about the crystal ponies’ adherence to ‘tradition’, it was that it made navigating this thousands-year-old castle quite easy, as its layout was identical to the Crystal Palace that they’d built on the surface.  She’d visited the palace on quite a few occasions in―for her―recent years, so she didn’t get turned around too much as she wandered.
She wasn’t looking for anything particular.  Just...browsing.  Her thorough search of the royal library had resigned her to the fact that they wouldn’t find any useful knowledge here.  Those books had almost certainly been taken to the surface during the evacuation.  Worse than that, given that Starlight had already read through most of those historical texts in the Academy and had seen nothing referencing the wendigos or their origin, it was likely that those references simply no longer existed.  Either destroyed by Sombra, or lost in the Resistance’s noble effort to ‘preserve’ them by hiding them away where they would never be found again.
The origin of those spectral equines―and any hint as to how to truly defeat them―were probably gone forever.  Along with any hope the crystal ponies had of surviving.  The only hint that she had was a foal’s tale about three ponies talking through the night in a cave together.  Not exactly a lot to go on if she wanted to create a spell to mimic those effects and dispel the wendigos for good.
No, Starlight had pretty much given up on the idea of beating them.  Hopefully this city would prove to be safe at the moment and would keep the crystal ponies safe for a couple of decades while she researched a more permanent solution.  With enough research and time, the unicorn was confident that she could―eventually―come up with a spell.
She’d devised new magic before.  She could do it again.
The mare found herself wandering the upper levels of the castle, near the personal quarters of the royal family.  It was a part of the castle that she’d never gotten to see before.  Unlike Ministry Mare Twilight Sparkle, she hadn’t been a close personal friend and immediate family of the Princess and Prince Consort.  She’d hardly even set hoof inside the castle proper except to accompany Sunburst during official functions of the Court.  Aside from the Crystal Heart at the castle’s base, there hadn’t been all that much that held her interest here anyway.
Which wasn’t to say that she wasn’t at least a tiny bit curious about how the nobility lived.  Sire’s Hollow hadn’t exactly been a big city.  She’d strictly enforced a spartan standard of living in her proof-of-concept village to mitigate potential feelings of jealousy and envy.  Her Ministry salary hadn’t been able to afford much more than a one-bedroom apartment in Manehattan.  Even Sunburt’s home in the Empire had been rather conservative, especially given what his stipend as the Imperial Archmage had been.
Not that she’d pushed him to get a bigger place.  Their plan had been to put aside all of the money they saved to move to someplace nicer after the war.  A big home out in the country.
Best laid plans of possums and ponies, Starlight thought with a mirthless chuckle.
It seemed that royalty valued their space though.  The suite intended for the Empress and Emperor was bigger than every home Starlight had ever lived in combined.  What was even more surprising than its gratuitous opulence, the unicorn thought, was the fact that it also looked like it had been completely untouched!
Nearly all furniture in the homes throughout the city had been left behind, likely for the simple fact that it was large and bulky―two qualities that were anathema for belongings to be packed up for a proper evacuation.  However, it was clear that an effort had been made by those occupants to take with them those possessions which were of significant emotional value, even if they weren’t practical.  There had been suspiciously bare spots on walls where pictures had likely hung, gaps on tables and counters, a lack of jewelry, missing clothing.  Clear signs that the ponies that had once lived there had taken something of their old lives with them when they left.
Starlight saw none of that here though.  Aside from the dust, the imperial couple might have still been living in these quarters today, for all that the mare could tell.  If anything, the place was too neat.  It was less a living space and more an expansive shrine.  A memorial.
She was actually a little uncomfortable being in here, truth be told.  Like she was trotting on somepony’s grave.  The pink mare backed out and closed the door.
The next room she checked in this wing of the castle was much smaller, but felt very similar.  The noticeable difference was that it was clear only a single pony had lived here.  A stallion, Starlight guessed, judging by the cut of a suit of barding displayed on a rack on one side of the room.  A uniform was on display too, also looking like it was fitted for a stallion.  Between them was a small table arrayed with various pictures of a crystal stallion wearing said armor and uniform.  Most depicted him alone, but a few had him grouped with a trio of equally finely-dressed ponies.
One of whom she recognized.  Those sculptors had apparently done a remarkable job of capturing Princess Moonstone’s likeness when they carved her relief on the sarcophagus in the catacombs.
Starlight’s instinctive thought was Moonstone’s husband, but she soon amended that idea.  While it was clear that he’d been close with the Princess, the resemblance was too close, and she doubted that they’d have been quartered separately if that was the case.  Brother, she decided.  Princess Moonstone had had a brother.  One that did not have a crypt in the catacombs, she noted.  Nor did her parents.
Four members of the imperial family, and only one had managed to evacuate.  Had that been because the others had remained behind...or had there been nopony left but Moonstone by the time they left?  Starlight was leaning towards the latter.  Aquamarine had said that the reason that the Crystal Empire was ruled by a ‘princess’ was because Princess Moonstone had refused to take on the title of her parents.  Starlight had to wonder if that had been out of grief at having lost them.
Again Starlight left the room largely unexplored and turned her attention to the last of the chambers of the imperial family.  There was little doubt that it had to have been Moonstone’s.  At least she knew that the princess had made it out of here alive.
This fact reflected on her quarters.
Where the others had felt like memorials, these rooms reminded the pink unicorn mare of the other homes they’d passed.  Much remained, but it was clear that some things had been taken, like personal effects and mementos.  It still retained that same element of neatness though.  Likely the result of having a staff of maids at hoof to take care of such things.
These quarters Starlight felt comfortable exploring.  She was still walking in the hoofsteps of a long dead mare, but it was a mare who’d not died in this place.  Starlight didn’t strictly believe in ghosts, but it still felt intrusive to be in places dedicated to a pony’s memory.  That wasn’t the case here though.
She idly pawed through the princess’ wardrobe, taking a closer look at some of the more extravagant dresses that were present.  Starlight hadn’t paid all that close attention to the fashion scene, but she could appreciate a well-made dress.  Jewelry too―though she much preferred functional accessories to cosmetic ones.  A pretty broach was all well and good, but a broach enchanted with a few wards was much more practical in her opinion.  Not that she got much of a sense from anything in this room that any of it was magical.  Crystal ponies weren’t the type to place enchantments on any of their―
...Wait.
The mare narrowed her eyes and scanned the room.  There was magic here.  Not a kind that she recognized, but it was definitely pony magic.
Starlight’s horn began to glow as she sought out the source.  This was quite the unexpected discovery, to be sure.  Nothing that she’d come across in any of the books that she’d read in the Academy during the war had suggested that crystal ponies were capable of casting enchantments.  Oh, crystal ponies were certainly capable of manifesting their innate magic―as demonstrated every year during the Crystal Fair―but Starlight had been under the impression that had been a feat induced by the Heart itself.  Now she wasn’t so sure.
The mare found herself doing something she hadn’t done in many years and cursed the Crystal Heart’s recalcitrance in the face of her efforts to divine its nature and mechanisms.  Never before had an artifact been so determined to give up its secrets to her.  Indeed, it had almost been like the Heart had been intentionally uncooperative.
Perhaps though, the unicorn had been wrong all along it it hadn’t been the Heart, but instead the crystal ponies themselves who had been behind the magic all along?  That would certainly explain a few things, though not all of them.  There was still the fact that the Heart had rebuffed her attempts to charge its magic through conventional means.  How it was able to channel one form of pony magic but not another defied at least a few laws of arcanum, at least as she knew them.  Then again, the texts that had taught her those laws had been written by the same entrenched minds that rebuffed her pursuit of cutie mark magic.
Maybe that was the issue: she was keeping her mind too narrow.  She was looking for magic as she ‘knew’ it had to be, and leaving no room for the possibility that she was flat out wrong.  It was an idea that spurred some mirth, as that was a very similar critique that she’d had of the Ministry of Arcane Sciences.
Starlight paused, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.  There was energy in this room.  She had to not think of it as unicorn magic.  It needed to be more broad than that.  More primal.  She continued to breathe slowly and calmly as she began to strip down the barriers and mental blocks that most unicorns erected―most subconsciously―to insulate themselves from the world.
The reality was that their horns were something of a double-edged sword.  While they allowed unicorns to manifest their magic in a way that was very different from how other pony breeds did, it also left them vulnerable.  Equestria―indeed the whole world―simply teemed with all sorts of magical energy.  It practically permeated the air they breathed.  Raw magical energy that could very easily use a unicorn’s horn to flow back into them and do great harm if left unchecked.
It was one reason that young unicorn foals tended to exhibit a lot of magical potential at an early age: before they learned that control, the magical energies of the world just tended to flow into their horns and their little bodies instinctively forced it back out again when they became too saturated.  The results were unfocused, and thus quite powerful and unpredictable.  Nopony went through the ‘terrible twos’ quite like a unicorn foal with unbridled access to the aether of the whole planet!
For the first time in decades, Starlight was stripping away those instinctive barriers now though.  She was exposing herself to the innate energies around her, reflexively cringing as she felt herself becoming a focal point for them.  It was like the air around her had gotten suddenly thicker and was pressing in around her body.  She let it inside―though still with care so as not to overwhelm herself―and focused on feeling for the direction that the bulk of it was coming from.  She let her horn become a dowsing rod, leading her towards the source of greatests aetherial concentration.
‘Thock’
Starlight opened her eyes and looked up towards the point of her horn.  She was leaning against the wall.  It wasn’t even a particularly interesting point on the wall.  Just...somewhere in the middle of it.  With an annoyed frown, the mare erected her barriers once more and glared at the crystalline surface as though it had intentionally sought to thwart her efforts.  
She sat back and critically examined the polished surface in front of her.  This area of the room had been emitting an inordinate amount of magic, but why?  And from where?  Concentrations of magic this far above the general background layer had to have a tangible source.  Otherwise the laws of magical entropy would cause it to defuse over time.  Just as was happening to the Heart’s magic that had been absorbed by the castle.
So what was the source of this magic?  Surely it wasn’t the wall.  It wasn’t made of the kind of crystal that could retain an enchantment.  It was little more than shiny rock.  A genuine gemstone would have been needed.  Or at least something magically similar, the mare amended as she reminded herself that she was dealing with crystal pony magic, and the Crystal Heart had not been constructed of any commonly understood magically attuned gem type.
Something behind the wall, or at least within it?  That was far more likely, the unicorn thought with a nod.  Her horn began to glow again and a thin beam of energy lanced out at the surface, tracing out a delicate cut along the surface.  Doubtlessly there was some other less obvious means of getting at whatever was sequestered there, but Starlight had exhausted all her available patience that day futilely looking through the library and didn’t fancy trying to tug on every sconce and outcrop of molding in the room in the hope of stumbling onto the intended mechanism.
That same lack of patience was one of the reasons that the Castle of the Two Sisters was in a substantially worse state of repair since her visit.  It appeared that the former alicorn rulers had been stalwart fans of such hidden passageways and concealed levers.  Starlight had not been very respectful of those ruins and had instead made several improvised doorways of her own.
She kept the amount of destruction here though to a minimum.  The ancient palace was in such remarkable condition that she felt genuinely bad about damaging it.  Meanwhile knocking down a wall in the old Everfree castle had just been adding yet another crumbling wall to the long list of existing ones.
Her efforts were rewarded by the exposure of what indeed appeared to be some sort of secret compartment.  Not a very large one to be sure.  Not that it needed to be particularly large, given what it appeared to be intended to hold.  Starlight’s levitation magic reached out and took hold of the object, bringing it near for a closer inspection.
It was a crystal.  Which was actually more surprising than it might have sounded, given her current location.  For this was a propper crystal.  Six sides and tapered at both ends.  It also showed clear signs of containing an enchantment of some sort.  What effect it had, Starlight had no idea.  Nor was she clear on what it would take to invoke it.
It had to have been important though, to an extent.  Important enough to want to hide to keep it safe, but not quite important enough for Princess Moonstone to have taken it with her.
...Unless she had meant to leave it behind?
It had not been a hasty evacuation.  Everypony had been given ample opportunity to pack up what possessions they treasured most.  This one little crystal would have hardly taken up any room at all.  Starlight found it unlikely that Princess Moonstone would have forgotten about it, and she could certainly have taken it if she wanted to.  So if it was still here, then the evidence very strongly suggested that it had been left there intentionally.
Not as a message or warning though.  Such things were meant to be found and thus left out in the open.  This crystal was meant to be forgotten.  Starlight intended to find out why.
First she needed to find out what it contained.
That was easier said than done.  Crystal pony magic was not a phenomenon that Starlight understood well.  She debated waiting for Aquamarine to return, but figured that wouldn’t do much good either.  That mare was unlikely to know much about the innate magical nature of her own people.  After all, she’d grown up in a time centuries after even the Crystal Heart had existed.
She’d need to find a way to do this one her own.
Starlight began by setting the crystal down on the floor and taking a few steps back.  Even making these attempts were going to violate at least a dozen safety protocols established by both the MAS and any even reasonably respectable magic school.  Chief among them was: if you don’t know what the spell does, don’t cast it!  Only a complete moron would evoke an incantation with unknown effects.  Especially when the possible list of effects that a spell could have included―but was not limited to―altering personalities, tranmusting living creatures into fruit, and erasing cutie marks and talents.
“Safety’s for ponies who have time on their side,” Starlight said grimly as she closed her eyes and reached out to the crystal with her magic.  Tentatively at first.  She wanted to probe it.  Get a feel for its stability, perhaps even its basic nature if she could.  It was difficult though.  It was nothing like an enchantment made by a unicorn.  Those were structured.  Orderly.  This was…calling it a ‘mess’ wasn’t quite right, but it was in the ballpark.
The matrix was completely random.  Starlight could make out the vaguest hint of a method behind it, but it was like somepony had written out a message while looking at the paper upside down using a mirror.
At the same time though, the unicorn couldn’t shake the sense of familiarity to it.  She’d encountered similar magic before, she realized.  Recently, if fact.
Her eyes shot open in surprise, staring down at the crystal.  This was a memory orb!
Well, obviously not an ‘orb’, per say; and it didn’t feel like it contained a true memory, but Starlight was fairly confident that it did contain something of a pony.  On a hunch, Starlight closed her eyes once more and reached out to the crystal, gently applying her mind to it as she might with one of the glass spheres.
She was vaguely aware of a flare of magic from within the crystal.  The spell effect had activated.  However, she wasn’t pulled inside or immersed in a memory.  In fact...nothing at all seemed to happen after that.  Starlight frowned.  Had the spell indeed deteriorated after all this time, or―
“Des-caduss sahgen-ta cognumen…”
Starlight’s eyes shot open again in stark surprise at the sound of the mare speaking right in front of her.  She backpedaled away until she was flat up against the wall.  Standing in front of her was the ghostly image of a mare that she later realized had to have been none other than Princess Moonstone.  She was standing in the room, big as life, and looking directly at Starlight as she continued to speak in the long-defunct language of the crystal ponies.
After a few seconds, the initial shock subsided and the unicorn was able to once again start thinking critically about the situation.  For example, it was very unlikely that the long-dead princess was actively speaking to her specifically.  Even though the manifestation did seem to track Starlight’s movements if she stepped to either side.  The unicorn took this to be an intended effect of the illusion magic, otherwise it would be rather inconvenient if the projection were oriented away from the viewer, with no way to get around to the front of the princess if the room were small enough.
This was a recorded message, most likely.  One that Starlight had already missed most of by this point; and was in a different language.  Starlight concentrated briefly and cast a pair of spells.  First she interacted with the crystal again in order to re-trigger the recording from the beginning, and then she applied a translation enchantment to herself.  She already knew the language of the ancient crystal pony nation.  She just needed it parsed in real-time.
The image of the princess flickered, and then began again in what sounded to Starlight like Modern Equestrian, “The doctors have suggested to me that discussing my feelings will help to relieve my...anxieties.  I am doubtful.  What words could possibly compare to all that has transpired in so short a time?” the mare’s voice quavered as she spoke, “in the span of a month, I have become the last of my line, and my advisers are in agreement that leaving our home is the only solution available to us…”
The image was silent for a long while as the mare closed her eyes and took a deep breath, “though that is only because I am keeping from them a terrible secret,” Starlight’s ears piqued at those words.  She had not anticipated this message getting quite that interesting.  She only hoped that it was a genuinely worthwhile ‘secret’, and not just something that a high society mare thought was ‘scandalous’ but really wasn’t all that bad, “we do not have to leave,” oh, so it was going to be the former then, “they do not know what my parents―” the mare’s voice broke and she was forced to clear her throat before moving on, “...what my parents...achieved.
“Even now I am wracked with guilt, and I dare not speak aloud to any other why.  The guilt consumes me though.  I must speak it aloud.  To know that my admission exists, even if no other will ever hear it: my mother and father sought to save us, and I know in my heart that they did succeed,” the image of the mare reached out and drew an object into view from the side.  Starlight’s breath caught in her throat.
It was the Crystal Heart!
“The mythical Geodessa,” her voice cracked again, “a relic of legend crafted eons past by our ancestors to fight the lava wyrms and lost centuries ago, has been reforged anew,” she wiped her eyes and sniffled, “and it was done so at the expected cost,” she said in a haggard tone, “it would save us from The Horror, surely.  Only…
“...I dare not use it.”
Starlight was stunned.  Moonstone had the Crystal Heart.  An artifact known, even back then, to combat the wendigos.  Apparently an artifact that her own parents had died retrieving somehow.  Yet she did not want to use it?  Why?!  She’d rather have kept it a secret and fled to the surface than protect their home?  What could possibly have prompted her to do something so stup―
“I have watched my parents leave this world.  I will not expunge my brother along with them,” wait, what? “I do not care that he is not as he once was.  He is still my brother.  I would rather he exists as one of The Horror than not exist at all,” she sniffled again, staring defiantly at Starlight, “I will not be the instrument of his destruction!
“So I have decided that we shall leave this place.  We will find a new home and there…”
The princess said more after that, but Starlight had begun to tune her out.  Had she heard the recording right?  Her brother was one of The Horror?  Her brother was a wendigo?  How was that even possible?!  The more that she learned, the more questions she had, the unicorn groused.  She wasn’t likely to learn more from the manifestation of the princess either, whose recording was apparently nearing its end.
“...With any luck, my brother and the others will find some measure of peace in this place.  Perhaps they may even forgive us in time,” she sounded quite doubtful of this, and was silent for a good while before she spoke again, “the Long Watchers were bad enough,” she took a breath and straightened up slightly, “I ordered the crypt sealed off.  It is an order that should have been given centuries ago before this nonsense got so out of hoof.
“Once that is done, we will make our final preparations to leave,” the mare was silent again.  Then she took a deep breath, and the image dissolved.
Starlight’s gaze narrowed at the inert crystal as she stared at it for several long seconds.  Then she marched for the door and headed for the stairs.  It seemed that she had more to investigate.

Several hours later, Starlight Glimmer was sitting in the royal library once more, surrounded by a dozen open tomes that had not been present earlier.  As she had suspected: a sealed off section of the castle that had been intended to be forgotten had had very few of its contents removed and taken along with the evacuating ponies.  This had left the unicorn mare with exactly the sort of trove of answers that she had hoped the royal library would contain.
Which was unfortunate.  In that the answers she had finally found to the questions they had all been asking did not turn out to be the answers that they were expecting...or that they were hoping for.
It also had the side effect of leaving the mare completely nonplussed when Archie and Aquamarine came galloping back,the crystal mare panting for breath, bearing news that would otherwise have chilled Starlight to her core.
As it was, it was a revelation that she fully expected.
“Wendigo!  There’s a wendigo in the city!” the turquoise mare gasped, her eyes wide with terror.
In truth, the unicorn mare did feel a slight chill run down her spine.  It was one thing to ‘know’ an unpleasant fact, and quite another to have it independently confirmed.  Still, she simply sighed and nodded, “probably a lot more than one,” she said, much to the astonishment of the other two.  Starlight looked to the ghoul stallion with a wan smile, “it turns out that this is where the wendigos came from.”
“...Say that again?”
Starlight looked between the ghoulish stallion and the crystal mare.  It was hard to blame their skepticism.  She’d been half tempted to believe that the revelation in question had actually come from one of the many recreational texts which she’d merely mistaken for a historical reference.  Unfortunately, too much of its other contents had been independently verified through other sources in this very library.  It was a legitimate historical text; and as hard to digest as its contents were, they were genuine facts.
“The wendigos are crystal ponies.”
“How is that even possible?” Aquamarine demanded, aghast at the notion.
It was Archie who offered an initial guess, “you mean they’re another corrupted form?  Like the umbra ponies?”
The former Imperial officer didn’t seem to particularly care for that hypothesis, and that was verified by here horrified expression when the pink unicorn mare confirmed the Prime Minister’s suggestion, “you’re not far off.
“Umbra are what happens when living crystal ponies absorb too much magical radiation over a long period of time.  While the radiation causes necrosis in most other pony breeds, the more mineralistic nature of crystal ponies means that they react differently.  They become corrupted, and the absorbed energy stimulates recrystallization―your race’s version of regeneration.
“That’s what happens to living crystal ponies that are changed through exposure to too much of a certain form of magic,” Starlight reiterated, “the results are apparently significantly different depending on the type of magic involved.”
It was Archie’s turn to balk now, “are you suggesting that ancient crystal ponies practiced transmutation?!”
“That’s impossible,” Aquamarine insisted, fervently shaking her head, “crystal ponies don’t have the ability to use magic.”
“Incorrect,” Starlight said, noting the sensation of deja vu that she was experiencing at having to explain to another pony the inherent magical nature of equestrian equines of all races, “all pony kinds―to include crystal―possess innate magic.  Not just unicorns.”
“All that makes us different is how that magic is expressed,” the ghoul added.
Starlight nodded, “while it’s more obvious how unicorns are magical, the fundamental forces at work are present when pegasi manipulate weather patterns, when kirin transform into niriks, or when an earth pony bucks apples off a tree.  We’re all magical in some way,” she frowned now though, “but you are right that―under normal circumstances―crystal ponies don’t directly manifest their magical natures in the same way that a unicorn might when casting an actual spell.
“Which is not to say that it’s impossible, either,” the unicorn mare added by way of a caveat, “the best example of that is the Crystal Heart.  During the Crystal Fair, the crystal ponies are able to manifest that magic and physically transfer it into a receptacle.  The Heart then acts as a focus and uses that collected energy to create its enchantment of protection over the Empire.
“That means that it is possible for crystal ponies to create magical spell effects under the right conditions,” Starlight confirmed that her audience was following her explanations thus far, “and this book suggests that there was one other as well that was used.  A long time ago.
“The record indicates that this place was once under threat from a creature called a ‘lava wyrm’―a massive beast of fire that lives in the deep mantle of the world and would occasionally make its way to the city through the various volcanic lava tubes that seem to permeate this area.  They were apparently very dangerous and caused a lot of devastation during their attacks.”
“The Crystal Heart didn’t protect them?” Aquamarine asked, sounding surprised.
“This predates the creation of the Crystal Heart,” she looked back down briefly at the reference, “at least, the creation of the one that was brought to the surface.  The texts suggest that other Hearts have existed through the ages, but are lost in some tragedy or another.
“But, anyway,” she cleared her throat and got back to translating the covered events, “it seems that the ancient crystal ponies found a means to focus their magic into some of their fallen warriors and breathe a second life into them.  They’re referred to as the Long Watch in this book: soldiers that don’t tire, and are very powerful.”
“And unkillable,” Archie grumbled.
“These weren’t the wendigos,” Starlight shook her head, “they were a lot more like the umbra, actually, it sounds like.  And the lava wyrms managed to kill those resurrected warriors just like we did.  So they needed to continually create more.
“Then somepony had the brilliant idea to not use dead ponies,” the unicorn’s tone made it clear that she found the idea to be many things―vile, horrific, nauseating―but none were ‘brilliant’, “instead they used their best and bravest soldiers in the incantation.
“Those became the wendigos.  Cold, relentless, and immortal.  They drove back the lava wyrms once and for all,” she added with a mirthless snort, “and then...they turned on their creators.”
“Does it say why?” Aquamarine asked.
“They don’t come out and say it here,” Starlight admitted, tapping the tome even as her telekinesis levitated up a much smaller volume, “but this diary I found that was written by pony involved in their creation suggests that those ‘best and bravest’ didn’t exactly volunteer for the procedure.”
The other two reeled back in horror, “they forced them?”
“Tricked them, it sounds like,” Starlight nodded, “and it also sounds like those ponies that became wendigos included the son of the ruling Empress and Emperor, who was serving as the Imperial Martial at the time.  They were horrified when they found out what happened, but it was too late.  The prince and his comrades were wendigos, and their focus was no longer on keeping out the lava wyrms―”
“―but on getting revenge for how they were betrayed,” Archie finished, shaking his head in resignation.  Starlight nodded.
Aquamarine looked up hopefully, “does it say anything about how to stop them at least?  If they were created by a spell, then maybe there’s a way to reverse it?”
“Hypothetically,” Starlight began, knowing that she was going to almost immediately quash that budding optimism, “but that would mean having access to the original spell, and I haven’t found that yet.  I honestly probably won’t.  Because crystal ponies don’t cast spells like unicorns, I’m doubtful that they recorded them in spell books.  I have no idea where to begin looking,” her gaze darted towards the window, “and I doubt we have the time left to look.”
The others followed her gaze, and shared her furtive look.  There was at least one wendigo that had apparently never left the city and it was likely only a matter of time before it found them.
And they still had no means of effectively fighting it.  Perhaps…
Starlight was actually hesitant to bring up this one point that she’d found, mostly because it didn’t contain nearly enough information to be truly usable.  On the other hoof, maybe there was something to be gained by pooling the available―if limited―brainpower between them, “...the Crystal Heart is mentioned though,” this got the attention of the other two once more, “...it was apparently created by the Empress and the Emperor in an effort to combat the wendigos.”
The pair exchanged glances and Aquamarine eagerly prompted, “...and?!”
Starlight shrugged, “there isn’t an ‘and’.  The Heart was created...and Princess Moonstone evacuated to the surface with it.”
“It didn’t work?” the crystal mare asked, disheartened.
“She refused to use it.  She didn’t want to ‘kill’ her brother, even if he was a wendigo.  It almost certainly would have worked though,” she shrugged, “not that we have the Heart anyway.”
“You said one was created here,” Archie pointed out, “does that mean that another can be?”
“In theory,” the unicorn mare answered reluctantly.
“But?” the ghoul prompted.
“...But I don’t think that it was a coincidence that the Empress and the Emperor were killed when they made the last one,” Starlight finally answered, “remember how the Crystal Heart was referred to as ‘The Royal Spirit’ in some of the old texts on the surface?  I’m starting to think that ‘spirit’ in that context was a synonym for ‘soul’ or ‘essence’.
“I think the Heart was the Empress and Emperor.”
Those stunned looks were back again.
“Creating the Crystal Heart requires a sacrifice?” Aquamarine asked tentatively.  Starlight nodded somberly, “...then I volunteer.”
“Marine―” Archie began, only to be cut off by the younger mare.
“I am a colonel in the Imperial Guard,” she retorted defiantly, “I took an oath to devote my life to protecting the Empire, even if that service cost me my life!  If I can save everypony by sacrificing myself, then I do so gladly,” she looked back to Starlight, “do it.  Turn me into another Heart and use me to stop the wendigos,” the mare closed her eyes and straightened up her stance, as though she were actually expecting the pink unicorn to perform such a transmutation right this moment.
Starlight was actually a little appalled, “even if I knew how―and I don’t―I’m not just going to kill somepony!”
Aquamarine let out the breath she’d been holding and glared at the pair of unicorns, “but we can stop the wendigos!  We can save everypony!  One life is worth that, right?!” she looked at Starlight, and waved at the books, “there has to be something in there that talks about how to make another Heart.”
The unicorn was silent for several long seconds as she looked at the mare, considering her answer carefully, “...nothing in these books describes how to make a new Crystal Heart,” she noticed that Archie narrowed his gaze at her, but he remained quiet regardless.
The crystal pony let out an aggravated groan and stalked off, “we came all this way for nothing?”
“It wasn’t for nothing,” Starlight defended, “we learned what the wendigos are.  With that information, I can start to research ways to stop them that don’t involve the Crystal Heart.  With enough time, I can get rid of them,” and all of that was true.  She had a point from which to start.  It was all a matter of ferreting out the specifics of the magic that evoked their change and how to construct the necessary matrices that would undo it.  The development would take some time, and the field testing would be dangerous, but if she had Archie with her to help keep her safe during the initial trials, she was confident that she could pull it off…
“And you can do that in the month or two that we have left?” Aquamarine asked.
...And there was the ‘but’ that she’d been getting to, “it’s possible,” what she didn’t add was that it was highly improbable.  Reverse engineering magic used by a race of ponies for which there was no technical documentation on the nature of their magic, nor any currently living members that still knew how to manifest their innate energies?  It was a monumental task for any skilled unicorn, even one as accomplished as herself.
She was basically counting on getting lucky.
“Are you willing to bet our lives on ‘possible’?” the mare asked evenly, “the continued existence of the Empire?”
“It’s the best option we have,” again Starlight noted Archie’s look; and again she was grateful that he stayed silent.
Aquamarine took a deep breath and let it out slowly, “very well.  We should leave now,” she looked out the window, “there’s no telling when that wendigo will find us.  I’ll go make sure the coast is clear.”
The ghoul stallion watched the crystal mare leave.  Only when it was clear that she was out of sight did he finally break his own silence, “what are you not telling us?”
Starlight hesitated as she packed up the texts that would best aid her in her intended research.  She briefly entertained the prospect of playing dumb.  However nothing about the stallion suggested to her that he was an idiot.  He’d been able to figure out that she was holding something back after all, “...that the crystal transmutation array used to create the last Crystal Heart is still in place.  Swap out a few cracked crystals, get the sacrifice in place, activate the array...voila: one freshly minted Crystal Heart.”
The ghoul regarded her critically now, “why did you tell Marine you couldn’t do it then?  I understand if you’re squeamish about letting somepony die, Starlight, but you and I both know that there’s no way in Equestria you can pull off coming up with a new spell in a month.  Six, maybe―a year, ideally―but not a month.  It’ll take you two weeks just to tune the new matrix right
“And before you say anything,” he snapped just as Starlight opened her mouth, “you know that that ‘two week’ figure is already accounting for you being the magical prodigy I think you are.  It should take even a skilled unicorn two months.”
Starlight closed her mouth with an audible ‘click’.  He was right, of course.  Managing to come up with a stable matrix of any kind in just two weeks would be quite an accomplishment, honestly.  Most unicorns who knew about such things would be teetering on the edge of abject disbelief, in fact.  A month would be the next best thing to a miracle, yes; but they had no choice.
“It’s not that,” mostly.  A part of her was reluctant on those grounds though, “using Marine wouldn't work because it’s not the use of a live subject that matters.  It’s the qualities of the subjects; plural.”
“It requires a pair of ponies?”
“A pair of very specific ponies,” Starlight stressed, “the wendigos were described―accurately―of being ‘born of death’.  To create their counter requires the opposite quality.”
“Life?  No…” the ghoul stallion frowned.
“The promise of life,” the mare said, “the one thing that makes life worth living: love.  It requires two ponies who are in love,” she finally said bitterly, shaking her head, “and that doesn’t apply to any of us.  If Marine―or any of us―activated the array, we’d be more likely to create another wendigo.”
“...I see,” the defeat in the withered unicorn’s voice was palpable.  He finally began to pack up his saddlebags as well, “I guess we’d better start hoping you break whole new records in the field of matrix attunement.  Maybe we’ll get lucky and you’ll prove to be the next Twilight Sparkle.”
Starlight snorted, “please!  Twilight’s second-tier material at best,” she scoffed, “the only reason she was the Ministry Mare of the MAS was pure nepotism.  I’m the only reason her ministry did anywhere near as well as it did.  She’d get so laser-focused on something stupid like turning ponies into alicorns and let every other project fall by the wayside.”
The unicorn flashed a grin at the ghoul, “you’ll see; I’ll have that matrix slapped together in one week, and a working proto-spell in two!” she had finished packing by now and was heading for the door, bumping the stallion playfully as she walked by, “just try not to look directly at it during the first casting.  Wouldn’t want you to be the first pony―”
“―Blinded by starlight.  Yeah, yeah,” the stallion snorted in amusement as he waved away the bad pun.  He then noticed the look of shock on the mare’s face, “what?”
“...How’d you know that was what I was going to say?”
The ghoul quirked his brow, “because I’ve heard that one before.”
“You have?”
“I’m over two hundred years old,” the stallion smirked at the mare, “I’ve heard a lot of things before.  Don’t feel bad, it’s still pretty cute, Glimmy.”
Again the mare balked, looking at the stallion, “‘Glimmy’?  Getting a little familiar there, aren’t we?”
She had the satisfaction of seeing the ghoul’s withered features somehow visibly pale, “I’m sorry...I don’t know where that came from,” he frowned, pawing at his chin in thought for several seconds, “the words were out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying…”
The pink unicorn continued to stare at the Prime Minister.  Even among her closest peers, only a select few had ever called her ‘Glimmy’ outside of her immediate family.  Certainly none of them had been in the Empire.  Well, save for the one―
“Guys!” Aquamarine burst back into the library, “we have to leave, now!”
Starlight’s thoughts on other matters were brought to a crashing halt as the crystal mare’s warning took precedent.  They took their belongings and rushed for the castle exit.  Even as they ran, she was starting to feel the air around them noticeably cool.  Archie had his diamond-forge blade out, though Starlight was under the impression that it had no effect on wendigos.  His spell should help them though.  Assuming he could manage to get it to go off successfully.  Perhaps if she saw what he was doing up close she would be able to duplicate its effects and incorporate it into her own anti-wendigo spell.
Even now the back of her mind was racing to come up with possible avenues of approach where effective spell effects were concerned.  Wendigos were crystal ponies at their core, which implied some sort of resonance component maybe?  No. They weren’t tangible.  It had to be a fully energy-based approach, nothing physical.  Their aetherial matrix wouldn’t be like that of a normal pony though, it would have to be based off of what she had felt in the crystal containing Moonstone’s recording.
Maybe that was another piece of the puzzle: similar crystal had been used in the creation array; Starlight had seen it.  Something about the way that magic needed to be organized in order to interact with structures that unicorn magic couldn’t normally interact with!  Crystal ponies didn’t express themselves the same way, so their energies didn’t manifest the same way, so those energies didn’t interact the same way!  If she could recreate the spell matrix of a crystal pony and create a spell based off of that, then she might be able to―
Starlight tripped over something.
That ‘something’ had turned out to be Aquamarine.  The crystal mare had suddenly stopped running just as the trio had emerged from the castle.  The reason for that probably had something to do with the ivory spectral form of a wendigo which was perched directly in their path, staring placidly down at them with its pinprick blue eyes.
A sense of panic overwhelmed the pink unicorn as she instantly relived her recent encounter with the wendigo out on the fringes of the Crystal Empire.  Where she had been frozen solid and very nearly died.  It turned out that such vivid memories made it quite difficult for her to form coherent thoughts.  The crystal mare that she was tangled with likewise didn’t seem to know how to react when confronted by such a monumental threat mere yards away.
Fortunately for the both of them Archie was not similarly paralyzed.  The ghoul posted himself solidly between the wendigo and the fallen mares, glaring back at the spectral equine.  He didn’t close in for an attack, as he had to know that such an act would be pointless.  Instead, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  His horn began to twinkle faintly with a soft, yellow light.
Starlight hissed in pain and looked to her hooves.  Her eyes widened with fear as she saw them begin to be encased in ice.  The same thing was happening to Aquamarine and Archie as well.  The crystal mare cried out in a mixture of fear and anguish as the pain got to her as well.  The ghoul said nothing.  Starlight idly wondered if ghouls could actually feel the cold.  Whether he felt it or not, it was clear that the withered unicorn was not going to allow his concentration to be broken before he got off his incantation.
What was perhaps most disturbing about this encounter was how unmoved the wendigo seemed to be by any of what he was seeing.  It simply...stood there...staring at them, as they were slowly encased in ice.
Then Archie’s horn pulsed, and a halo of golden light expanded outward around them, slamming into the wendigo.  The creature recoiled slightly, but otherwise didn’t react.  The ghoul’s eyes creased as he concentrated more deeply, evoking a second pulse.  This one too washed over the specter, and while it was clear that the creature felt the effects, it was still not dissuaded.
Starlight wasn’t standing idly by either.  Archie had granted her several new tomes on the surface, and it was about time that she put them to use.  A trio of grimoires floated out of her bags, all flipping to specific pages.  She looked at one, her eyes taking in the incantation hurriedly before glaring at the wendigo, “burn in Tartarus, you bastard!”
It started as just a spark at the spectral stallion’s hooves.  A mote of orange candlelight that quickly blossomed into a tornado of fire and fully enveloped the wendigo.  The inferno grew tall enough to touch the ceiling.  Whirling flames that were hot enough to scour and scorch even the surfaces of the crystal cavern and would have left any living creature as little more than a pile of ash endured for several long seconds before finally fading away.
The wendigo didn’t even flinch.
The pink unicorn snarled and turned to the next spellbook.  Her horn flashed again.  The three ponies all began to glow with a soft cyan aura, but that was not the primary effect of the spell that Starlight was using, merely a precautionary measure to protect them from its true effects.
A shell of violet light surrounded the wendigo.  Nothing seemed to happen for several seconds.  Then a faint crackling sound was heard coming from all around them.  Rocks skittered across the ground, flying past them and adhering to the sphere.  Dishes and furniture as well.  Loose debris.  Then doors that had ripped from their hinges.  Chunks of buildings ripped from their foundations.  One of the castle’s parapets.
The sphere pulsed.  The massive collection of detritus slammed violently inward, compressing down within the magical shell surrounding the wendigo.  It crackled with lightning, growing brighter until it became difficult to even look at.  Then there was a final flash of light and the sphere and everything within vanished.
Everything except for the wendigo.
The ice was at Starlight’s shoulders now.  She was trying not to let the panic she was feeling consume her, but it was difficult.  She hated feeling helpless like this.  Even being this close, she couldn’t discern the nature of the magic that Archie was using.  It didn’t feel like any sort of magic she had encountered before.  It didn’t feel like anything to her, and yet it was clearly having an effect, if only a marginal one.  Unlike anything that she had just tried on the creature.  Had the ghoul already figured out the foundation for a crystal-magic-based matrix without realizing what he had?
“Argh!” the stallion cried out as he finally unleashed a third―visibly more intense―burst.  This one managed to actually physically throw the wendigo back, sending it sprawling across the courtyard.  It didn’t dissolve like the one in the Wasteland had, but at least the ice ceased to continue growing around them.  
Starlight used a pulse of her own magic now to shatter their icy casts, freeing all three of them to move once more.  Her gaze went to the prone wendigo.  It wasn’t gone, but it wasn’t moving either―for a moment.  It was an opportunity for her to try one last measure at least.
She withdrew the retracted bow from its holder and depressed the release that expanded it out to its full size.  The ivory bowstring of moonlight joined the tips and awaited the insertion of the jeweled ammunition.  Starlight wasn’t going to pull any bucks at this moment.  A trio of rubies, sapphires, and emeralds floats out and took up positions along the beam of light, forming instantly into magical arrows.
The unicorn took aim at the prone figure, and fired.  A bolt of fire, ball of lightning, and an orb of acid all struck the wendigo, enveloping it in a surreal firestorm that crackled with bolts of electricity, several of which lashed out at the surrounding buildings and edges of the cavern.  Yet, almost as to be expected, when the effects all cleared away, the wendigo did not look the worse for wear.  Much to Starlight’s growing consternation, “oh, come on!”
  “We have to get out of here,”Aquamarine yelled as she helped the visibly fatigued ghoul to his hooves.  His limbs were trembling, but he was at least able to stand.  Whatever he had done had taken a toll, that much was clear.  He nodded his agreement though.  The pair began to back away from the wendigo.
However, the pink unicorn’s attention was drawn upwards as her twitching ear caught a hint of a sound not unlike cracking ice.  Only, it wasn’t ice that was cracking.
It was the cavern’s ceiling, where it had been blackened but hellfire and lightning strikes.
“What in Celestia’s name…?”  Had her spells caused that somehow?
“It’s getting back up!” the crystal mare yelled and Starlight’s attention was once more drawn to the wendigo which was―as indicated―slowly rising to its hooves.  It seemed that their reprieve had been exceptionally short-lived.  Which was unfortunate for them.  Especially since it was quite evident that Archie would not be able to muster up a fourth burst yet.
Starlight was preparing to teleport the three of them at least to the Labyrinth of Sorrows entrance, when she heard a loud crash from overhead.
The defensive shield was up almost immediately as if on instinct.  Six months on her own in the Wasteland had made erecting the magical barrier second nature.  Which was very convenient for the three ponies right this moment, as it was the only reason that they managed to survive the next few seconds.  Unfortunately for Aquamarine, ‘almost immediately’ was not fast enough to deflect away a few of the fragments at the leading edge of the rocky rain.  One such sharp grazed the side of her head and she went down along with it.  Archie was at her side a second later, tending to the mare.
Fortunately, those first small pieces were all that made it through before the barrier solidified.  Shards of rock and crystal the size of skywagons rained down around them, deflecting off of her shield for several more seconds.  They were not alone either.
Something else, very large, very long, and very not a rock also fell to the ground.  Most of it bounced off of Starlight’s shield and slithered away.  A massive scaled head, which looked to be glowing with radiated heat reared up and let forth a deafening roar that shook the molars in the back of the pink mare’s mouth.  Though she had never actually seen one before, Starlight had little doubt in her mind that they were in the presence of a bona fide lava wyrm.
It even brought along some of its namesake, she discovered, as molten rock started to cascade down from the opening in the ceiling, which was apparently connected to a very fresh lava tube.  The unicorn closed her eyes and started pumping as much magic as she could into the magical shield surrounding them.  Partially in an effort to reinforce it, but also so that she could reshape and enlarge it.  The last thing that they needed was to end up trapped by the waterfall of fiery liquid rock.
The magical funnel that she formed caught the leading edge of the lavafall and sent it flowing towards the very creature that had allowed for its intrusion into the city.  The lava wyrm―unsurprisingly―did not seem to be particularly inconvenienced by the deluge of molten lava washing over it.  If anything, it actually seemed much more content.  What was somewhat disheartening was the lack of any reaction from the wendigo as well as it continued to stand, seemingly oblivious to the glowing puddle of rock seeping around its hooves.
Starlight grit her teeth as she continued to sustain the shield.  It was taking a great deal of power and concentration to maintain its shape beneath the incredible weight of the lava flow.  Thousands of tons of molten rock was being kept off of them, and it was incredibly draining.  Honestly, she could feel its cohesion beginning to slip.
“Run,” she said through clenched teeth, “I can’t hold it for much longer,” and she couldn’t.  Her horn was growing hot, and she could feel her own ley lines starting to fray.  She could see the lava in contact with her shield starting to cool and harden.  In another minute, it might even be strong enough to support itself and create something of a natural flume to keep directing the rest of the flow.
She wasn’t going to last a minute though, “get back into the castle!” It was too dangerous for them to risk being out in the open right now, especially with their crystal companion unconscious as she was.  Archie would need to hide with her inside the palace for a while, let himself recharge, and then they could make a second attempt at a getaway.
It was a pity that she wasn’t going to be joining them.  She’d really been looking forward to seeing if she really could have made that matrix in a week…
She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and assumed that it was Archie taking Aquamarine away.  However, she was only half correct: it was the ghoul stallion alright, but he wasn’t going anywhere.  Instead, and much to Starlight’s own horror, his horn started to glow.  A second later, its energy joined hers.
She screamed.  It very nearly cost her her concentration and meant the end of her spell and their lives.  However, she was quite surprised to feel something that she had not expected: her shield grew stronger.
The energy flowing from the ghoul’s horn perfectly complimented her own spell matrix and allowed her to maintain the necessary field strength with much less effort on her part.  The back of her mind raced with a hundred different questions, but decades of professionalism and training allowed her to push those thoughts aside in order to retain focus on the primary task at hoof: keeping them from being buried alive by a lava flow.  The seconds bled by.  The visible rock on the other side of the barrier darkened and cooled.  The weight that the shield was trying to maintain ebbed away...until it felt like they weren’t holding hardly anything up at all.
Finally, Starlight’s horn burned out and she collapsed to the ground, panting.  Her head hurt terribly with the exertion.  But they’d been saved.  The pair of them―impossibly―had warded off the lava.
“I think...I think we’re good,” Archie rasped, surveying the results of their conjoined spell.  He then turned and made his way to the side of the unconscious Aquamarine once more, “she’s breathing.  It looks like she was just knocked out.  I think we can bring her around again…”
Starlight wasn’t listening though.  Her gaze was still firmly fixed straight ahead of her, baby blue eyes wide with disbelief and confusion.  Her brain refused to accept what had just happened, because everything that she knew about magic―which even her greatest critics in life would have had to grudgingly admit was a lot―insisted that what had just happened simply couldn’t have.
Her magic had been about to fail her.  That wasn’t what was hard to swallow―mostly.  She’d known that it was a long-shot at the outset; a spell cast as a desperate last resort measure.  Failure had honestly been more expected than not.  There’d simply been no other option though.  She known that―felt it―in the moment.  Her matrix had begun to unravel as the spell lost cohesion and, with it, potency.  It wouldn’t have lasted for another five seconds.  She knew that.  She’d known that they were all going to die.
Then Archie had stepped up.  Starlight had seen his horn glowing and recognized his wordless intent.  She’d cried out for him to stop out of reflex.  After all, it would hardly have mattered.  Whether the spell failed because it lost cohesion on its own or was irreparably disrupted by a foreign mana frequency, the result would have been the same.  What harm was there, ultimately, in a death that came a couple of seconds earlier?
At the time, she’d assumed that the Prime Minister had to have known that what he was doing wouldn’t have any chance of actually working.  Somepony―some unicorn―in his position would have had to know that his supporting her like that wouldn’t work―couldn’t work.  The most basic and fundamental laws of unicorn magic forbade it!  He should be standing right here, in complete awe that they’d succeeded like this.  The ghoulish stallion should be just as surprised as she was, and trying to think of how it could be possible.
Because it couldn’t be!
Certainly not for the two of them!
Yes, unicorns working as a team to cast ritual spells did combine their individual magic into a singular cohesive effect.  Such practices became the basis for megaspells during the war.  However, there was more to it than that.  Those ponies worked together tirelessly for months, ‘feeling out’ each others’ frequencies in order to understand how to better compliment them and prevent the spells that they cast together from fizzling.  Even the most experienced unicorns took two or three weeks from the day they first met to be able to cast ritual spells together.
Starlight and Archie had known each other for three days!
“How?” she heard herself finally ask out loud, much to her own surprise.  Her confusion was simply too profound to be contained any longer.  The pink mare turned to look at the withered stallion, “how did you―how did we―just do that?”
Archie glanced up from where he’d been tending to their crystalline companion, “what do you mean?” the stallion even managed to sound genuinely unsure of what Starlight was referring to; which only served to make her even more irate.  He was a damned unicorn stallion!  This was magic kindergarten level stuff she was talking about here!
“That!” the unicorn mare shouted, jabbing her hoof back at the wall of cooling lava just a few yards away from them, “how did we do that!  You infused my magic with yours!”
Still the stallion didn’t seem to be grasping the central crux of her consternation, “...yeah?  I kind of didn’t want all of us to die…?”
Starlight gaped at him.  How could he still not be getting this? “So you jumped in and pumped mana into the spell of a unicorn that you just met, and whom you have never cast conjoined spells with before, and you thought that it would all go just fine?
“Do you know nothing about Abjurer’s Anthology of Arcane Axioms?  Specifically axiom fucking one?!”
Now Archie was looking almost as irritated as Starlight herself was, like she’d just given him a personal insult.  In certain ways, it could be interpreted that she indeed had; as her question would have been akin to asking a pegasus if they knew what their feathers were for, or if an earth pony knew plants grew from seeds.  It was a reference to something that was fundamental to unicorns as a race, “of course I know the First Axiom of Arcana,” he growled, then he proceeded to recite it as though he was reading directly from the original text, “‘All ponies possess a personal magical aura that is unique and distinguishable from the moment of their conception,’” he rolled his eyes and glared at the pink mare, “what does that have to do with anything?”
“Well what the fuck happens, Mister ‘First Axiom’, when two fields of ‘unique’ magical auras encounter one another?  Like, say, during the casting of a spell?”
Again, the stallion’s response started out as condescending as hers had been, “the frequencies would create an interference pattern that would quickly amplify and cause the spells being cast to f―” Starlight was able to spot the exact moment on the ghoul’s face when his clouded eyes filled with comprehension, “...fail.”
He blinked, going silent as it only seemed to now dawn on him how impossible what they’d just pulled off should have been.
Starlight was rubbing her head as her brain continued to try and make sense of all of this.  The chances of it all have been a fluke were too astronomical to even bother considering.  Yes, it was true that some unicorns possessed magical frequencies that, while different, were indeed close enough in similarity to not cause any magic they might spontaneously cast together to outright fail.  However, such instances would still result in such joint castings producing a spell that was overall weaker than an identical spell cast by either one of them would have been.  It certainly wouldn’t strengthen the result.  Only ponies that went through rigorous training could overcome that hurdle.
Okay, that might not have been entirely true, Starlight admitted to herself.  Groups of unicorns did manage to join their powers without needing a regimented and dedicated course of study and rehearsals.  Indeed, such occurrences were actually rather common; but the principles under which they operated were very different.  Unicorns who spent a lot―and Starlight meant years or decades―in constant close proximity to one another would often find themselves compensating subconsciously when casting magic together.
The younger a pony was when they started this process, the less time it would take and the more compatible the group would be.  During the war, it wasn’t practical to arrange for collections of young unicorn foals to grow up together to create the ritual groups of the future that they needed ‘now’.  Ministry Mare Fluttershy’s suggestion of using group counseling and mentoring sessions, in conjunction with trust exercises, had allowed the first groups of unicorns to cast megaspells after a little less than a year from the day they were brought together.  Starlight and Twilight Sparkle had taken that foundation and improved upon it to create the megaspell focus groups that they needed to help win the war.
Starlight Glimmer herself had been a part of numerous such groups during the war.  It had been another testament to her magical acumen that she could train herself to be compatible with so many other unicorns.  However, she was nearly positive that every single one of those ponies was dead and gone; and they certainly would have had to have recognized her anyway!  Archie had had no idea who she was when they met.  So he couldn’t have been one of her old coworkers.
Besides, none of them had been sent anywhere near the Crystal Empire prior to the end of the war.
Nor did Starlight have any siblings, cousins, or any other living family members that she’d spent any meaningful amount of time with that could have explained this.  Heck, she’d even only had the single childhood friend growing up; the same colt who she’d eventually married and started a family with.  Married unicorns were another demographic that almost always eventually adapted to each other’s magic after a few years without even trying.  After all, such ponies tended to spend a lot of time in ‘close proximity’ to one another.
But, Sunburst was―
...Wasn’t he?
The pink unicorn mare stared at the ghoul, only now truly examining him with any amount of scrutiny.  Among ponies, her husband had possessed a few physical traits that weren’t commonly seen.  His otherwise solid golden coat had been accented by white stockings on his legs and a blaze running down the middle of his face.  Familial holdovers, he’d once told her, from ancestors that migrated to Equestria from the Neighvada region, far to the southwest.  It had certainly served to help him stand out in a crowd.
However, looking at Archie now, it was genuinely difficult to tell what color his coat had once been, since his hide was completely devoid of fur altogether; leaving behind only his bare, leathery, flesh.  He was, however, about the same height and build that Sunburst had been.  Not that that meant much―ponies rarely varied too wildly from one another in such ways.  Half the stallions in Equestria would have been within an inch or two of her husband’s height.  There simply wasn’t any way for her to know whether or not that wild thought of hers could be validated.  Certainly not by merely looking at him.
Then something occurred to her.  A question that, up to this point, hadn’t seemed at all necessary to ask him: “what’s your name?”
The ghoul jerked in mild surprised, stunned out of his own deep consideration of the impossibility of their joint magical accomplishment a minute ago by the seemingly nonsequenture of a question, “I told you: everypony calls me, ‘Archie’,” he reminded her in his raspy voice that sounded nothing like her husband’s.
“As in...Archibald, right?”
“What?  No, of course not,” the ghoul curled his nose, “Archibald was the name of the previous Prime Minister before I was elected.”
Starlight blanched, “so then...who are you?  Why would everypony call you ‘Archie’?  And don’t you dare tell me that was part of some sort of weird crystal pony tradition for how they refer to the Prime Minister!”
“No―I mean, yes it is, but not how you’re meaning,” the stallion frowned, “I watched over and taught most of them when they were all very young foals.  Even before Archibald died,” he explained, “the children all started calling me ‘Master Archie’ because most of them initially had trouble saying ‘Master Archmage’.  After a few decades, I stopped bothering to correct the children and the name just sort of stuck through to adulthood.”
Her hind legs gave out as the shock began to set in, “you were the Archmage...before you were the Prime Minister...while Archibald was still alive.  You’re…” she couldn’t bring herself to say it.
The ghoul rolled his eyes and executed an overly elaborate flourish, “I have the honor of being the Crystal Empire’s first―and likely last and only―Head of the Imperial Academy of Arcana,” the stallion performed a mocking bow, “Archmage Sunburst, of Sire’s Hollow.
“Heh...it’s been...well, centuries since I used my actual name.  Sounds weird to hear it out loud actually.  I’ve been ‘Master Archie’ for what feels like forever,” then he seemed to hesitate for a moment, furrowing his brow, “wait a minute...you’ve used that name.  At the graveyard…”
The ghoul’s expression shifted again, as he caught sight of what his response had inflicted upon the pink mare.  To say that she was a ‘little surprised’ would have been like saying that The Crystal Empire was a ‘tad to the north’.  She looked positively dumbstruck; her lips moving in a soundless tremble, her head taking on a subtle denying shake that only escalated as the seconds wore on.
Then she finally began to form words.  Inaudible at first, but their volume quickly crescendoed, “nonononononoNONONO!” she was screaming now, her eyes glistening, “you’re lying!  You’re not him!  You can’t be; you just can’t be!  YOU’RE NOT HIM!”
Whatever response that the stallion had expected to receive as a result of the simple recitation of his name, this, had not quite been it.  The ghoul recoiled noticeably, taking several clumsy steps backwards from the raving unicorn mare, “what are you talking about?  ‘Him’ who?!” he demanded.  His critical tone probably wasn’t the ideal one to take with a hysterical mare while they were miles underground surrounded by magma flows that could burst through the walls of the cavern at any moment if the demonstrably powerful unicorn saw fit―in her apparent madness―to begin throwing spells around without due regard.  
To say nothing of the lava wyrm and wendigo that were just on the other side of the recently added rock wall nearby.
However, he was at a complete loss for why she should be reacting this way.  Who exactly did she think he was?!
For her part, Starlight wasn’t even consciously aware of why she was raving like this.  Surprise, she would later conclude.  Yet, all in all, even that sounded like a misleading answer.  After all, how could the revelation have been a genuine ‘surprise’ to her if the entire reason she’d directly asked for his true name in the first place was because she had already begun to suspect what the answer was?  No, she wasn’t ‘surprised’.
She was hurt.
This withered stallion, this husk of a pony who looked upon her with no hint of recognition―no hint of love―was indeed Sunburst.  This ghoul was her husband.  He was the pony that she’d come all this way across the Wasteland to find.  She’d waited for two centuries, survived two wars, crossed thousands of miles of genuine hellscape, all to find him…
...and he didn’t even know who she was.
That pain...it was indescribable.
A numbness came over the mare, perhaps in response.  It was far easier to remove her emotions from the present than to deal with them.  After all, the two of them had much more immediate concerns to deal with.  They were far from being out of danger, and Aquamarine was still unconscious, “we need to get back inside,” Starlight said in a voice that sounded hollow even to her own ears, “we’re not safe.”
The ghoul’s own expression was rather grim, not appreciating the sudden change in topics, but he at least recognized the gravity of their predicament as well.  He dutifully lifted the crystal mare onto his back and followed Starlight into the castle.  In their wake, they could hear the roaring and the thrashing of the lava wyrm as it rampaged through the city.
Starlight hesitated for a brief few seconds in the entrance gallery, her mind racing with where they should go next: up, or down.  Either could end up leaving them trapped when the wendigo finally finished dealing with the newly arrived molten serpent and came after them.  They might be able to make an escape if they went up, by performing a hasty exit through a window, but the lower levels of this palace was where the wendigos were originally created.  If there was any hope of finding something she could use to counter it, then it would be there.
“This way,” she darted for the stairs which would take them below the palace.  It was likely that she was leading them to their doom, but there was little help for it.
The pink unicorn had little trouble navigating the few twists and turns that brought the trio to the room she was seeking.  She’d been there only a few hours ago, after all.  It was where she had found the references which ultimately provided the answers to the origins of the wendigos, as well as the Crystal Heart.  Odd to think that they had been created through the same means.
Well, perhaps not that odd, Starlight admitted.  A ritual circle of unicorns was just as likely to create a megaspell that healed the injuries of a thousand wounded soldiers as it was to create a living maelstrom.  Intent mattered just as much as structure when it came to spellcasting for unicorns.  Perhaps it was not quite so different for crystal ponies as well.
She heard the door bar behind them and glanced over her shoulder.  Archie―or, rather, as it turned out, Sunburst―was sealing the reinforced door with a locking spell.  He’d already deposited Aquamarine carefully on the floor nearby.  Starlight wondered if it would be more of a kindness to leave her unaware.  She’d just die panicked and terrified if they revived her, after all.
“You must be Sunburst,” Starlight said mirthlessly, “your ‘lock’ spell is just as weak as his,” her own horn glowed now, and the ghoul’s eyes widened as he watched the door that he had just sealed become adorned with a curtain of ethereal chains and locks.  To his eyes, it even looked like the material that the portal had been made of strengthened considerably.
Despite how impressed the stallion was with the feat, he still shot an annoyed glare at the pink mare, “I’ll admit that I was never the most...potent mage in Celestia’s school, but my mastery of the more didactic elements are unparalleled.  I wrote my dissertation on ley line resonance.  It was published in the Canterlot Journal of Magical Science.”
“And you were completely wrong about sub-aetherial harmonics,” Starlight chided the stallion, for she had actually read his paper, “and you wouldn’t have been if you actually knew how to cast spells with bi-therial matrices!”
“They’re hard!”
“They’re supposed to be!”
Despite herself, the mare was unable to maintain her glare at the ghoul stallion and bowed her head as her lips cracked into a wry smirk.  She snorted, “Sweet Celestia, you really are him, aren’t you?” She’d had a very similar―if considerably much calmer and more constructive―conversation with her husband over that exact publication.
The withered unicorn snorted, “and that’s another thing: exactly who is it that you think I am?  Did we meet at some point during the war?  I thought you worked for the Ministry of Arcane Sciences.  I remember everypony I met from the MAS and I don’t recall meeting you.”
There was that pain again.  Starlight had to close her eyes tightly against it, “no...I suppose you wouldn’t…” there was silence in the room as Sunburst patiently waited for her to elaborate.  Briefly, she contemplated telling him a lie.  She could say that she’d just been some classmate that he’d barely spoken to.  Or that she was a distant relative of Prime Minister Archibald that knew about him from letters that they’d exchanged.  There were a dozen things that she could say to end this whole ordeal right here and now.
She looked back up at the ghoul and met his piercing gaze.  Another fresh jolt of pain.  Her husband had never looked at her like that.
Though that was because, in a great many ways, this stallion wasn’t her husband.  Whatever his name was, and whoever he might have been before the world ended, this pony didn’t have the temperament that their years and experiences together had molded.  Sunburst had been a very different stallion when she’d first arrived in the Crystal Empire.  She’d been a very different mare.
He wasn’t the pony she loved.  Not anymore.  That pony was still just as gone from her life, and forever would be…
...Or was he?
Starlight reached into her bag with her magic and withdrew the quartet of memory orbs.  They contained within them the sum total of Sunburt’s memories of her and their life together.  These were the experiences that had shaped them, “...because you put those memories in here.”
The ghoul looked skeptically between the pink unicorn and the floating orbs, “and exactly why would I do something like that?”
She cracked a wan smile, “Shining Armor,” the mare said, thinking back to the note that Sunburst had once left for himself.  There was confusion on the stallion’s face at first as he puzzled over her response.  Then comprehension dawned over his features.
“...You were my wife; is that what you’re saying?”  Starlight nodded somberly, “and I thought you lost in the balefire bombardment,” another nod.
It was the ghoul’s turn to avert his gaze now as silence returned.  Then, “...you look remarkably well for a mare your age.”
He certainly had her husband’s terrible sense of humor.  That, it seemed, had not been something that had been tempered by their relationship.  That was just a part of who the stallion was.  Despite herself, Starlight let out a short, chortling laugh, “well, I sort of cheated,” she offered with an apologetic shrug, “I ended up in a suspended animation pod,” her expression darkened again as she remembered what her own survival in the device designed for short-term sustainment had cost all of the other ponies in the bunker.
She may not have implemented the triage protocol which diverted energy from the other pods’ inhabitants to her own, but that did little to alleviate the lingering guilt she felt at knowing that scores had died―effectively been murdered―so that she would live long enough to be rescued, “I wasn’t even supposed to be there,” she said hollowly, “I was supposed to be on my way back to the Empire, but I’d heard...rumors...about what they were doing to our daughter.  So I took advantage of my Ministry access and dropped by for a ‘surprise inspection’.
“Then the bombs fell.”
The ghoul swallowed, “I had a daughter too?”
It was silly, Starlight knew, to talk about stuff like this right now.  Even through the thick walls of the castle, and below ground like they were, she could barely make out the rumbling of the lava wyrm and the wendigo doing battle.  A specter that encased its victims in an icy coffin was apparently having some trouble doing so to a creature that was nominally formed―at least in part―of molten stone.
Of course, the wendigo didn’t have a physical form, so Starlight couldn’t see any way that the wyrm might actually manage to win.  Inevitably, it would succumb.  Then, the wendigo would finally come for the three of them as well.
“For what it's worth,” the ghoul said, “I’m sorry.”
“You couldn’t have known,” she sighed, “I know how hard it had to have been.”
Sunburst managed to wrestle up a tiny little smile.  Then he looked past the mare and the orbs, his gaze going to what he quickly recognized to be a conjuration array built into the floor of the room, “I take it this is where the crystal ponies created the Crystal Heart?”
“And the wendigos,” she nodded, “and the Long Watchers,” she looked over the carefully arranged crystals, a few of which were cracked.  Very likely a consequence of having to focus and refine the vast quantities of magical energy that it had taken to create the ancient artifact.  She marveled at the similarities that the array bore to MAS ritual circles.
The ghoul wandered into the center of the circle of crystal and examined it, “efficient.  I see where they set up a sub-array to collect and redirect any residual energies that might bleed off.  Remarkable, considering this has to predate Pentarast’s Treaties on Aether Reclamation by...oh, two thousand years do you think?”
“At least,” Starlight nodded, allowing herself her own meager smile, “I don’t even think it needs LAmPs or support casters,” she gestured to the damaged crystals, “if we took those out and rearranged the intact ones to compensate, this circle would be good to go,” not that it would matter.
Sunburst realized this too.  He looked back at the orbs, “...even if we had the years that it would take for me to relive those memories, it wouldn’t matter.  As thorough as I appear to have been…I wouldn’t recognize those memories as being mine,” he stared hard at Starlight Glimmer, “even looking at you right now―even knowing that you were my wife―I feel nothing.  I mean, you’re smart and pretty enough that I could see why I’d marry you, but…” he shook his head.
“Nothing’s left of us up here,” he tapped his brow.
Despite herself, Starlight blushed upon hearing the compliment.  He was right though: if he were to experience these memories, they wouldn’t reintegrate themselves into his mind if he truly had been as meticulous as it seemed.  To him, it would be like he was watching the life of somepony else.  There’d simply be nothing there to serve as any sort of initial anchor point that the memories could start to integrate with.  That was also assuming―as he’d pointed out―that they had the years to spend for him to relive all those memories.  Of course...
“It doesn’t matter,” she shook her head, “most of the memories are corrupted anyway.  You never intended to get them back, so you just sort of crumpled them into the orbs,” she managed to frown at the ghoul with some amount of mirth, “these things are about as messy as you used to leave your office.”
The stallion chuckled, “that sounds about right.  I probably left a few hayburger wrappers lying around in them too somehow.”
Starlight smiled, her own mind filling with a half dozen examples of the food wrappers littering his work space in their house.  Then she inhaled sharply.
“...thistle nuggets…”
The ghoul raised an eyebrow, “I mean, I guess I might have left a few empty boxes of those around too…?”
“No,” the mare shook her head, “in the palace―the one above ground―the other day.  I joked about wanting a hayburger and you added that you’d pick up some thistle nuggets to go with it.”
“...And?”
“You hate thistle nuggets!  You always complain that they get stuck in your teeth,” Starlight watched as the ghoul’s own features creased in realization that she had correctly recounted his food preference, “but I loved them, and I’d always ask you to get some for me.
“Don’t you see?  You got rid of your memories of me, but you didn’t go after every stray thought you had about me whenever I wasn’t around,” she was bubbling on the edge of excitement, and she wasn’t even sure why.  It certainly didn’t help to change anything about their situation.  Honestly, it was more the simple excitement of solving a mystery than anything else, “I bet every time you went into a Burger Princess, even when it was just for yourself, in the back of your head, you would remember what I liked to order.  You probably weren’t even consciously aware of it.
“Even my ‘blinded by starlight’ joke!  I bet you occasionally thought about my bad puns even when I was nowhere around,” she ran up to the stallion, eagerly staring into his eyes, “there are still pieces of me in there somewhere.  You might have gotten out ninety-nine-point-nine percent of me, but there’s still something left up there in that head of yours.
“That’s what you’re grasping at when you chase away the wendigos: that dim spark of love for me that you didn’t quite manage to extinguish.  It’s not much, but it’s still there,” her lips cracked into a smile as she let out a chuckle, winking at the stallion, “you might even say: that it’s just a glimmer.”
The ghoul rolled his eyes, “but we still don’t have the time, and you said that the orbs were broken,” he sighed.  The stallion reached out a hoof and gently stroked her cheek, “I’m sorry.  I really am.  But there’s no way for me to get my memories back.”
Sunburst canted his head slightly, his ear swiveling.  His lips pulled back into a wan smile, “and it seems that we’ve run out of time anyway.”
Starlight listened now too.  It was quiet.  The rumbling of the battle raging outside was nowhere to be heard.  The wendigo had doubtlessly finally won and would be coming for them soon.  Her sealing spells wouldn’t last forever.  In minutes, it would track them down, and then...
Her face fell once more.  The mare racked her brain for another answer, but it was looking like he was right.  She may have proven that his memories could hypothetically be reintegrated, but they still weren’t accessible.  The orbs were useless, and there wasn’t anywhere else those memories lied.
...No, that wasn’t accurate.
Starlight looked back up at the ghoul, her gaze hardened in desperate determination, “I can’t give you back your memories,” she acknowledged, “but I can show you mine!”
Her horn flared to life and before the stallion could react, she touched it to his own.


OOOoooOOO


Sunburst blinked as he looked around.  He wasn’t standing in the lower levels of the ancient crystal palace any longer.  He was...well, actually he had no idea where he was.  It seemed to be an endless white void of some sort.  As he looked around, he caught sight of his own hoof and balked.  He brought his fetlock up and marveled at it.  The limb was no longer furless and leathery, mottled by radiation and age.  Instead, it was covered in a deep orange coat that ended in a white sock.  Looking very much as it had before balefire radiation had transformed him into the walking corpse he was now.
His whole body had been restored, he soon found.  His coat, his cutie mark, his mane...not his goatee though, for some reason.  That was odd.  There was something else that was a little off too. But he couldn’t quite put his hoof on it…
“Hello there,” he turned at the sound of the voice and found that Starlight Glimmer was in the void with him.  She smiled and gestured around them with a flourish of her hoof, “and welcome to Casa del Starlight,” she grinned at him.
The stallion thought for a moment, then his eyes widened in realization, “you cast a memory orb spell...on me.”
“Something like that,” she nodded, “I brought you into my head so that I could show you my own memories of us.  We can relive our lives together.  The good times.  The great times,” she grinned for a moment before her features smoothed once more, “...and even the not so great times.  All of it.  Everything that we went through, we’ll go through again,” she stepped up to the stallion, nuzzling the soft coat of his neck, “...so that we can fall in love just like before.”
She was grateful―so very grateful―that the blazed unicorn returned the nuzzle, almost instinctively, “there’s no way we have time for that,” he murmured, “the wendigo will find us in a few minutes.”
Starlight pulled away and shook her head, her grin still firmly in place, “Requim’s Required Respite.  A similar spell is used as part of a pipbuck’s Sparkle Assisted Targeting System.  Time will be suspended for as long as we need it to be.
“We can relive our lives together in the blink of an eye.”
Sunburst looked around them, “that feels like cheating.”
The mare shrugged, “eh.  Who cares?”
The stallion chuckled, then looked down at the mare, “speaking of: my goatee?”
She rolled her eyes, “but it’s so itchy!” the stallion leveled his gaze at her, amusement dancing behind his feigned annoyance, “...fine!” he felt his chin tingle and reached up to once more stroke the tuft that had fallen out centuries ago.
“Also, am I...buffer than I remember being?”
“I don’t think so,” the mare said in a tone that sounded convincingly innocent as she brushed up against the stallion, “you look just how I remember you.”
“Hmm,” not that he was complaining, “so...where should we begin?”
The mare smiled at him, “where else?”
The void melted away, replaced by the front stoop of his foalhood home, and a doorway that seemed remarkably large.  He quickly realized that this was because he was no longer a stallion, but a young colt who didn’t even have his cutie mark yet.  In front of him stood a little pink filly with a purple and teal-striped mane pulled back into a pair of tiny pigtails.
She smiled at him, “hiya!  You must be the new colt that moved into town!  My name’s Starlight Glimmer; what’s yours?”
The blazed colt looked at the filly for a few awkward seconds.  Then he smiled too, “...Sunburst.  Nice to meet you, Starlight.  Wanna play?”


OOOoooOOO


The spell ended.
Starlight opened her eyes very tentatively.  She didn’t quite trust the moistness that she felt behind them.  Nor was she certain that she wanted to be confronted with the results of her efforts.  It had just been a theory after all.  She’d found the crack in Sunburst’s attempt to remove her completely, yes; but she had no way of knowing for sure that it would be enough to allow his memories to be integrated.
To say nothing about letting somepony else's memories integrate themselves.  It was possible that it could work, but―
Her thoughts were interrupted as her body was gathered up into a tight embrace.  The stallion’s withered flesh was rough and cool to the touch.  No heart beat in the chest against which her ear was pressed.  It was so very unlike the thousands of embraces that she’d just finished reliving in her head.  Yet, the voice that she heard―though raspier―was undeniably her husband’s.
“Oh, Starlight, I’m so sorry!” the ghoul said.  His voice cracked, and not merely as a consequence of his undead condition.  He likely would have been crying if he was physiologically still capable, “can you ever forgive me?”
Tears were something that she was still capable of though, and they began to flow now despite her best efforts to hold them back, “you silly stallion,” she returned his desperate embrace to reassure him, “of course I forgive you.  You lose your keys, your glasses...why wouldn’t you go and manage to lose your memories too!”
She pulled back from him slightly so that she could look up into his still-distraught face, nuzzling his shriveled nose affectionately, “fortunately I’m here to help you find them again.  As always.”
A fragile smile cracked across the ghoul’s lips and he drew her back up against himself again, “thank you!  Thank you for coming back for me, too.”
“Sorry it took me so long,” she cringed at the snag in her own voice.
“You’re worth waiting for.”
They remained like that, wrapped in each others’ arms, for some time.  Unmoving.  Each afraid that doing so would end this fragile dream that they were in.
Starlight shivered slightly, pulling herself in more tightly to the stallion.  Her features slowly sank, “...it’s coming.”
“It is,” Sunburst replied.  His horn started to glow, a matching aura grasping at the crystals surrounding them.  Starlight joined in his efforts.  Those that were damaged were removed.  Suitable replacements were sought out.  Those that could not be swapped for intact crystals were rearranged to compensate.  Between the two of them and their combined arcane knowledge, it was foal’s play to restore the array.
“...Will this work with non-crystal ponies?”
“It should,” the stallion assured her, “other ponies are receptive to its effects at the Crystal Fair.” 
That was a good point.  The array was soon completed and ready to be activated, “...is it selfish to not want to do this?”
“I don’t think so,” he replied.  Then, after a few seconds he added, “we don’t have to if you don’t want.”
It was tempting.  They could teleport away.  Make their escape back to the surface...and then what?  Abandon the Empire?
To what end?  Run away together?  Become a pair of Wasteland adventurers?
No.  She didn’t want that.  All that she’d wanted from life was to learn the fate of her husband.  She had done that.  That they were together again was something that she could never have anticipated, but was immeasurably grateful for.  That was enough for her to die happy.  Even if, “...I don’t think I’m ready to die.”
“I don’t think that’s what this is,” Sunburst said after a few seconds of thought, “remember how the Crystal Heart refused to be charged with unicorn magic?” Starlight nodded, not pulling away from the stallion, “you thought it was because the crystal it was made out of just didn’t want to receive raw magic for some reason?”
“Yeah, so?”
“What happens when you try to syphon raw magic into a living pony?”
The mare frowned, “you can’t,” he knew that too, “a living pony’s own arcane essence rebuffs it―” her eyes shot open and she looked up at the stallion, who was smiling down at her, “you think the Crystal Heart was alive?
He shrugged, “it’s a theory.  Care to test it out with me?  One last magical experiment,” he let out a resigned sigh, “too bad there won’t be any way to publish the findings…”
“I’ll peer review it with you,” Starlight smiled, nuzzling the ghoul before leaning her head back against his chest once more.  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, “there’s worse ways to go, I guess.”
Her ear twitched as she heard the sound of somepony stirring nearby.  She looked over and saw Aquamarine moving, raising her head up and massaging what would surely develop into quite a fantastic bump.  The turquoise mare blinked at the pair of unicorns hugging in the middle of the array of glowing crystals, “wha...what’s going on?”
Starlight smiled at the crystal mare, “found my husband,” she nuzzled Sunburst’s neck, “we...sort of renewed our vows, in a way.  But, in a new twist, we’re going to be giving you the wedding present!”
“I don’t think the couple gets gifts for a vow renewal,” the stallion pointed out.
“Hush.”
“Yes, dear.”
The pair chuckled as the light from the crystal array grew brighter.  Starlight beamed at Aquamarine, “you’ll all be fine now.  Just do us a favor and try not to break this one any time soon, okay?”
The door to the room creaked.  Cracks formed throughout its surface.  The two unicorns glared at the room’s sealed entrance even as Starlight’s magic finally gave way before the arrival of the wendigo.  The spectral being stood stoically in the doorway, it’s piercing eyes staring at the ponies in the room.  It seemed to pay special attention to the pair of embracing unicorns.
Then, for the first time ever, Starlight saw signs of emotion on the wendigo’s skeletal face.  Realization.  It seemed to know what they were doing...and it was afraid.
Starlight’s lips spread out in a vicious grin, “love conquers all, bitch!”
The ghoul frowned at her, “‘love conquers all’?  That was the best one-liner you could come up with?”
“I suppose you think you could do better?”
He thought for a moment, “call a doctor, because you’re about to have a heart attack?”
Okay, that was actually pretty good―
The spell went off.

In hindsight, she probably should have been paying a lot more attention to which turns they’d taken in the Labyrinth of Sorrows.  That thing was a lot more daunting when coming at it from the ‘correct’ direction.  The Tower of Fire as well felt more aptly named on the way back up.  It hadn’t been any warmer, certainly, but the steep climb had certainly left her calves feeling like they were on fire!
Carrying all of this extra weight hadn’t helped matters any.
It was a great relief when she finally found the steps that had been carved into the last few feet of the scent, coming to an end at the sarcophagus that was actually a disguised door.  She stepped through it into the palace catacombs.  A shiver went down her spine as she felt the chill in the air.  It was a chill that she had not recalled being present in the dingy catacombs when they’d come down here initially.
As she ascended towards the surface and caught her first glimpse of the outside world, she understood why: the snow was much closer than it had been just a few days ago.  Much closer.  It was falling in the castle courtyard.  Which seemed to fly in the face of Master Archie’s―er, Archmage Sunburst’s calculations.  They should have still had a few weeks before it got this bad.
On the other hoof, if it was love and hope that powered the Crystal Heart, and by extension the magic that protected them, then it stood to reason that feelings of fear and despair would undermine those same magicks.  Such as the despair at losing track of a mainstay of their Empire, like the ghoulish Prime Minister, for several days.  He had doubtlessly been missing for far longer than whatever note he left had suggested.  They probably feared that he’d been killed.
They weren’t all that far off, she thought mournfully as she looked to her pack.
She took a deep breath and resumed her course to the outside with renewed determination.  It didn’t matter how near the snow was anymore.  If Master...Sunburst and Miss Starlight had been right―and she fervently hoped that they were―then this winter would soon be at an end.
The atmosphere was filled with the nervous chatter of fearful ponies moving about in a bluster of activity.  Nearly all of them were carrying a weapon of some sort, and those ponies who held high positions of rank in the military were barking unsure orders.  They had the rank, but none of the experience that went with it.  Honorary titles rarely came with substantial training.
She soon caught sight of the reason for all of this activity too.  Out in the falling snow, closer than they had ever been in recorded history, were the dark and corrupted forms of umbra ponies, prowling around the palace’s perimeter.  The last vestiges of the old Heart’s magic was keeping them―barely―at bay, but it looked like those lingering effects would fail at any moment.  When that happened…
No.  That wouldn’t happen.  She wouldn’t let it happen!
The mare spurred herself into a gallop, heading for the center of the courtyard and the pedestal that had seen nought but ceremonial use in two hundred years.  Tonight though, its purpose would be fully realized.
“Ponies!” she called out, struggling to be heard above the wind which was picking up as it never had before, “ponies, listen to me!” a few passing crystalline figures paused, more out of surprise than anything else, but she seized upon their moment of hesitation, “everypony needs to gather here, quickly!  I need everypony in the courtyard.”
“But, the umbra!  They’re―”
“They don’t matter,” the mare insisted vehemently, “we can’t fight them off anyway.  We only have a few diamond-forged weapons left; not nearly enough to protect everypony with.  Bring everypony here.  Now!” she reached into her pack and withdrew the shimmering piece of solid crystal that she’d carried from beneath the earth.  Upon catching sight of it, the faces around her gaped in vague recognition, “we don’t have much time.  Get everypony here!”
Those few who had stopped initially nodded absently and scattered.  It wasn’t long before other faces arrived; out of curiosity if nothing else.  Even if they only came out of need to confirm for themselves how it could be that a relic long lost could have reappeared, it was enough that they came.  That was all she needed of them: to come, and to stay.
When she felt that a significant portion of the Empire’s remaining population was present, she finally addressed them, “I know what you are all wondering, and I can tell you that, yes, this is the Crystal Heart!” Well, not the one of old, she admitted to herself, but it made no difference where these ponies were concerned, “this is the key to our salvation!
“But it will not be enough on its own,” she cautioned them now as she slowly positioned it onto the pedestal, “the Heart needs us just as much as we need it!  It needs us to be the crystal ponies that I know we can be.”
A vicious snarl tore through the air from nearby.  A pair of umbra ponies were skirting the edge of the courtyard, having moved even closer still.  Ponies recoiled from them, and a frightened murmur flowed over the crowd.  A few picked up their useless weapons to form a protective perimeter.
“Lay those weapons down!” the mare snapped, earning skeptical looks from those assembled, “your urge to defend your fellow pony is commendable,” she nodded sympathetically, “but this is not a fight that will be won by force of arms.  Instead, I need you all to look inward, to examine the origin of that same compulsion,” she urged them.
“We care for one another,” she went on, “our whole lives, we have relied upon the ponies standing here beside us.  It is a unity of community that predates the Wasteland,” she smiled at them, “and it is what will allow us to survive tonight too.
“I want everypony to take the hoof of the mare or stallion next to them,” the crowd hesitated, “please,” her eyes momentarily darted to the umbra which still prowled.  To the pinprick pairs of glowing blue eyes that hovered just beyond them.  Then she looked back to the crowd as they slowly began to take each others’ hooves, “look to those ponies.  Remember how you once helped them―how they once helped you.  Grab hold of that feeling...and let it flow between you.
“Let it flow out of you,” as she spoke, the mare placed her own hoof on the Heart itself.  She brought to her mind every memory she had of the Prime Minister.  How he’d fostered her desire to learn more about the history of their Empire.  How he’d comforted her in moments of grief.  Shared her moments of joy.  Before her eyes, she saw the Crystal Heart begin to glow more brightly.  It was a subtle change, but perceptible.
Then she saw the very ground beneath the crowd began to light up.  Tendrils of energy trickled along the polished crystal surface, tracing out a path toward the pedestal and the Heart sat atop it.  It grew brighter now, as bright as any torch, at least.
It was working, she thought, feeling relief beginning to well up inside her.  There was a chance!
“Think of our ancestors, and all of the hope that they had for us!” She shouted above the storm, “think of our responsibility to those that will come after us!  This Empire has endured for generations uncounted, and it won’t fall now!  We won’t let it fall!  Not to the umbra.  Not to the Wendigos.  Not to this unending winter.
“It will endure, because we will endure,” she proclaimed, “together!”
The torchlight was a bonfire now, and it showed no signs that it would cease to brighten any time soon.  The mare closed her eyes and bowed her head towards the Heart, whispering, “thank you.  Both of you.”
There was a blinding flash.
When it subsided...everything seemed to be different.  It was honestly a lot to take in all at once.  Everypony raised their hooves to shield their eyes from the sky, and the brilliant golden orb that was bearing down on them.  It had been generations since any of them had seen the sun.  It’s light would doubtlessly take some getting used to.
As―the mare suspected―would their appearance, which a few ponies were taking note of all well.  Everypony shimmered and glistened like living stained glass windows, their manes and tails adorned with jewelry and ribbons.  Never before had any of them been dressed so well, and she wondered if a gala had ever been held that could justify this level of grandeur.
Would it be permanent, she wondered?  It certainly explained why they were called ‘crystal’ ponies, she supposed.
“Former Colonel Aquamarine,” a stallion said from nearby.  The mare winced at the sound of the regent’s voice and slowly turned to face him.  He’d always been dressed rather nicely―as befitted his position―but his newly acquired appearance made him look quite regal now.  Intimidatingly so!
“How kind of you to finally return to us.”
Again the mare winced, bowing her head to the regent, “my apologies.  I just...I couldn’t sit by and do nothing,” she swallowed, “I had to know the truth.  I’m sorry for disobeying you.”
The red-hued―now translucent―older stallion sighed and looked around, “well, I certainly cannot argue with the results,” he smiled down at the mare, “so I see no reason not forgive you.  This time.
“Though, there is one last little matter that the two of us need to address,” he glanced at the crowd of gathered ponies, “and this honestly seems as good a time as any,” his eyes returned to the former officer and he cleared his throat, “though it would probably be better if you stopped bowing.”
The mare quirked her brow in puzzlement, but slowly rose back up.  Then, much to her utter shock, the regent bowed to her!  Along with the bearer of the flag of the Crystal Empire...and everypony else it turned out!  What was going on?
Then Agate began speaking, “this Crown, I have held in trust, on behalf of the ponies of the Crystal Empire; oath-bound to give it only to the rightful successor, or to the next regent that they might hold it in trust until such time.  So it is, by ancient oaths sworn, that I, Agate, Regent of the Crystal Empire, do so relinquish the Crown I have held, and return it to its rightful place.”
He looked up now, a glimmer of amusement behind his otherwise solemn features as he beheld her agape consternation, “All hail Princess Aquamarine!  All hail the Crystal Princess!”
“All hail the Crystal Princess!”
The roar of the crowd actually made the turquoise mare jump.  Her gaze darted around as she tried to figure out how exactly she was supposed to react to something like this.  What was even going on?!  The Crystal Princess?  Her?!  She’d just been fired from being a colonel a few days ago!  What did she know about running a whole Empire?
“Are you crazy?!” she hissed at the regent―former regent now, she guessed, “I can’t be the princess.  I don’t know what to do!”
The older stallion looked around at the restored landscape of the Empire, where there was no longer even a hint that it had been covered in several feet of snow only ten minutes ago.  It was even preposterously warm, too, “you seem to be off to a good start, if I may say so, Your Majesty.”
“Stop that!”
He chuckled, “my apologies, Your Majesty, but titles come with the position, I’m afraid,” the stallion stood up once more, “now, if you will pardon me, Your Majesty, with my duties finally executed, I think I might like to enjoy my retirement―”
“Oh no you don’t!” Aquamarine snapped, stomping her hoof.  The older stallion opened his mouth to say something, but she cut him off, “fine, I’m the Crystal Princess now, but if you think you’re off the hook that easily, I’ve got news for you, Prime Minister Agate!”
“Prime Minister is an elected position,” he protested politely, “you cannot simply appoint―”
Aquamarine turned to the crowd, “by order of the Crystal Princess, I am declaring that general elections shall be held right now!  I nominate Agate for Prime Minister,” she jabbed a hoof at the standard-bearer, “second the nomination, your princess commands it!”
“...Seconded?”
Again she looked at the crowd, “the nomination has been seconded.  All those in favor of making Agate the new Prime Minister, say ‘aye’!”
“Aye!”
Aquamarine had turned back to face Agate before receiving the response from the crowd to gauge whether it had actually sounded at all like a clear majority, “and the ‘ayes’ have it!  Congratulations!”
The newly 'elected' Prime Minister of the Crystal Empire smiled wryly at his monarch, “I don’t know that that counts as a lawful election.”
“Feel free to challenge it in court when I get around to appointing a Chief Justice.  Now be a good little Prime Minister and gather up the Small Council and have them meet me in the throne room in ten minutes.  Something tells me we have a lot of work to do,” Agate smiled again and bowed without further protest, trotting off to fetch the requested ponies.
“As for the rest of you,” the mare addressed the crowd of expectant ponies, “...feel free to go out and enjoy this nice weather,” she hesitated a moment, “and...I’ll do my best to live up to this position.”
A chorus of laughter and chuckles rippled through the crowd as they dispersed and began to wander out―cautiously―into the city which had been reclaimed from the winter.  They had a whole Empire to rediscover.  Soon Aquamarine found herself alone.  Er, well, except for the standard bearer.  The freshly-minted princess looked over the ensign, frowning, “could you...go put that thing at the top of the castle or something?”
“I thought you’d never ask!” the mare galloped off without hesitation.
Now she was alone.  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, still trying to process the change.  Both in her personal status as a reigning monarch, and the Empire as a whole.  It was honestly quite surreal.  Likely it would feel that way for a while yet.  In time, though, this would hopefully start to feel like the norm.
“We’re not out of the blizzard yet,” she murmured to herself, “our population’s still too small to be sustainable.  We need to reach out to the rest of the world.  Remind them we’re still here.
“But...we have a chance, and that’s what matters."
She looked at the Crystal Heart and offered it a wan smile, “thanks for that.”
Princess Aquamarine of the Crystal Empire turned away and began walking towards the palace.  She’d made it only a few steps before she hesitated and looked behind her.  She stared for a few long moments, narrowing her eyes at the heart that she could have swore had pulsed in response to her comment.  The mare frowned, shook her head, and resumed walking.  Obviously the stress of the position was already getting to her.