It was dark, in the city under the smoke.
Nopony came to this corner of Ponyville. There wasn’t anything left to burn, and the few charred husks of the most desperate had proven that even traveling out this far was risky.
For one, it was much too cold. Frost bit into ashen hooves as the mare - still barely more than a filly, really - pressed onwards into the gloom. There simply weren’t enough ponies to heat the way, and since the skies had darkened further, not even the dimmest ray of sun peeked through. And sure, the smoke insulated the city a little bit, but it also kept the warmth of the skies out.
Secondly, it was way too far from the supply lines. Pegasi could grow crops on clouds, they’d insisted, back when they still stopped their migration so close to Canterlot. Smoke wasn’t clouds, though. Scootaloo had told her that much, the last time she’d seen her. She said that maybe the Earth ponies could find a way to grow without real sunlight, too, but her parents’ hurried evacuation had given her a much different answer.
Apple Bloom… she didn’t blame Sweetie Belle. Not for being a unicorn, at least. It wasn’t her fault, she said, it was those alicorns, and Canterlot, and a million other phrases that everypony else shifted the blame to when things got worse. She hadn’t left Ponyville yet, but it was only a matter of time.
Sweetie Belle pushed through the freezing air as she made her yearly pilgrimage. They were all wrong, really, about whose fault it was. A few adults blamed Twilight, for it was she who’d discovered it, but Sweetie Belle knew better. If one were to assign blame, then every unicorn carried the burden equally. Living, dead, it didn’t matter. The dead were at fault for giving in, and the living were little more than a time bomb.
She sat in front of the shell of a building she could barely see and braced herself for what she’d imagine once she was inside. It hadn’t seemed real, when the news had reached Sweetie Belle. Twilight Sparkle, dead? Hadn’t she been at the prime of her life? Wasn’t she working on the secrets to limitless potential? How could she have even died?
Sweetie Belle pushed open the door, which slid against silk and linen and cotton alike, and winced as the memory of what it looked like flooded her mind, unbidden. The most gorgeous dresses, the most fabulous pieces of art any pony could ever hope to wear, in every color imaginable, one on top of the other and yet somehow never clashing… it was all right there, shrouded in blackness.
She’d seen it before, back when Rarity-
It didn’t take most ponies a lot of time to hear about what’d really happened, and took even less after that for the first unicorns to deem it worth the risk. Twilight had been right, after all, and she’d discovered how to unlock a pony’s limitless potential- or rather, a unicorn’s. There had been outrage, most of which she’d forgotten in the horrors of the skies filling up with black. Of the smoke from unicorns lighting their horns - literally - and burning their very souls for an hour or two of clear focus and understanding.
That was probably more dramatic than what the spell actually did, but the visual effects were the same. Their horns turned to smoke, burning down like a notched candle as the unicorns worked away in a fervor of clarity that they’d never experienced before, or again.
Through her tears, Sweetie Belle sat at the collapsed husk in the back of the room, bulging at the seams with stunning masterpieces.
Rarity had held out a lot longer than most ponies would’ve expected, but even she had succumbed to her curiosity eventually. She’d claimed that it felt like a completion of her cutie mark, that she could see what she was meant to do and how she could make it happen, and she couldn’t bear to spend a moment away from it when the answers were right there-
And Sweetie Belle had begged her to stop, to put out her horn, to save that little bit of time she’d had left because Sweetie Belle needed her too, and… it hadn’t been enough. Once Rarity started, she never wanted to stop.
Sweetie Belle prodded the shell of a pony that’d been left behind. Nopony else would’ve been able to recognize Rarity underneath the scorch marks, but sisters always knew better. It felt so fragile and hollow, like the shed carapace of an insect that’d gone on to do greater things…
She lit her horn. Really lit it.
Rarity could’ve stopped at any time, she could’ve accepted that perfection wasn’t worth it, but now, in the light of her horn, still small for her age, Sweetie Belle could see where her sister had stood, and where her body lay, and it wasn’t Rarity. Not the Rarity she’d known or loved or grown up with.
Sweetie Belle looked at the dresses, the life’s work of a pony consumed by creativity. Had Rarity been alive, she’d have given anything to be able to make a piece half as fine. Any boutique would be thrilled to have one, and charge a fortune for it.
Cloth, even the finest sort, hidden away in a building nopony could see enough to open, burnt rather well.
Only when it’d been reduced to ash did Sweetie Belle extinguish her horn. It dripped like wax against the ridges, painless yet asymmetrical as the drive she felt dimmed with it. She’d done it before, and she’d do it again. Minutes at a time, she’d rationed herself, first with Twilight’s lab, then with Luna’s paintings and Celestia’s gardens, and-
No, there was no time to dwell on the past, not when there was so much left for Sweetie Belle to do. There were still more unicorns to be remembered as they were, and forgotten for what they could create if they pushed themselves too far.
Perhaps if nopony saw what they could do if they gave themselves up to the fire, they’d be less tempted to leave the world behind to do so.