Fire Bolt shivered as the princess wailed in agony. The sound overshadowed the joy that everybody had momentarily felt as the phrase rang out again. “My baby! Where are you? My baaaby…” Cadance sobbed.
“Should we go… check on that?” Sapphire inquired in a whisper to the horrified faces around them. Sonar Moonshadow nodded shakily, so the five of them ran back out where they came in, and Marshmallow and Bolt flew up to the windows to see where the princess was located. Neither of them could locate any movement or shadows, even when Sapphire arose to join them in the search. The moans and sobs echoed throughout the entire palace and it wasn’t until Fire Bolt noticed a window hidden on the side of the castle that she discovered the source.
In a dark storage room, a tall shadow limped back and forth, shuddering with sobs. “Over here!” Bolt harshly whispered to the other two pegasi who then helped her try the window. It was unlocked luckily and squeaked open with a groan, and Marshmallow pointed to it for the unicorns below to see. Fire Bolt squeezed into the opening as quietly as she could but thudded to the ground as she lost her footing. Standing up straight, she could now see the state that the princess was in. “Where is my baby?” She wailed loudly, and the pegasus almost clapped her hooves over her ears at the sound. Slowly, Princess Cadance turned to face her.
It was a grim sight. Her one remaining eye wandered sightlessly towards the sound of Fire Bolt’s hoofsteps as she raised her good leg curiously. “Pegasus? In my palace? Can you help me find my baby?” Cadance’s voice was just above a whisper now. Bolt trembled with terror, unsure if the princess was dangerous or not, so she chose her words carefully.
“I can help you, Princess. Can you tell me what’s happening right now?” Her voice betrayed her confident words as it shook.
“I was… I need my baby. I can’t find her anywhere. Everything is black and I can’t see my baby.” Her raspy voice cracked as she spoke. “I don’t know what’s happening. You need to help me!”
“I’m going to help you, okay?” Bolt determined that the Princess was safe enough to approach, and she turned back to signal the others to enter, who stumbled in loudly. “Do you want to get out of this room and check around the castle?”
The truth was, Flurry Heart had been dead for decades. She didn’t even make it to adulthood before a stray blast of dark magic struck and killed her during a battle between the Crystal Empire and a creature called Malus. He was defeated quickly after that, but Cadance’s and Shining Armor’s grief was felt throughout the entire empire – ceremonies commemorated the young alicorn for about a year until the city recovered with the help of Princess Twilight Sparkle. Shining Armor had lived on much longer than a non-alicorn usually would, presumably from the love he shared with Princess Cadance, but now that the princess was alone, Bolt presumed that the Heart’s explosion had killed him, too. The empire never quite recovered fully after Flurry Heart, and perhaps that was why the royalty couldn’t keep the Nightfall out of the palace. Maybe love just wasn’t enough.
“Yes, please, I would like to leave this room. It’s dark in here and I can’t see,” Cadance sounded downright scared, and the hearts of the three pegasi broke. Her right eye looked like it had been violently ripped out ages ago with dried blood staining her cheek, and her left was glassy and a pale blue. The room wasn’t just dark, she was blind. Fire Bolt carefully trotted past the injured princess to push open the creaking doors of the storage room, holding her breath to keep from retching at the strong stench of rot that came from her, and the slightest bit of moonlight illuminated the hallway outside through the much larger windows.
“This way, your highness, follow my voice.” Bolt crept backward as Cadance limped into the light, showing the full extent of her existence. Her front leg seemed to have been gnawed straight to the bone, and a large gash tore open her forehead. As Bolt’s eyes traveled higher, her stomach dropped. Her horn looked like Misty Seeker’s – tipped with a deep black and slightly misshapen. “Everything’s going to be okay, alright?”
“The Heart… we should take her to the Heart!” Marshmallow quietly offered, and it was a fair option to introduce. They didn’t have much to work with, and with a nod, Fire Bolt started towards the stairs.
“Where are we? Why are the lights off? And where is my Flurry Heart?” Cadance was beginning to sound more and more like herself, but something was still slightly off. None of them could figure out why the memory of her daughter’s death from decades ago had seemingly vanished, but Sapphire chalked it up to her somehow living while dead, and bravely placed a hoof on the princess’s shoulder.
“It’s dark in here, your highness. Do you think you can go down the stairs with me? I’ll show you the way,” They asked quietly, seemingly unbothered by the texture of the bug-infested fur under their hoof. The princess nodded warily and allowed Sapphire to guide her down the stairs, pausing momentarily to fix her footing, but the rest seemed like muscle memory. As the two traveled cautiously to the bottom of the stairs, Marshmallow and Bolt took to flying around the palace in an attempt to locate the front room where the heart resided. The pink pegasus found it surprisingly quickly after shoving through door after door and exited the palace momentarily to usher the unicorns back inside.
“We found her, get in! Quickly!” Marshmallow hissed in a whisper, so Sonar and Jelly trotted inside swiftly.
“What is that? Who’s there? Will somepony please light a candle?” Cadance called out, voice hoarse, as Sapphire got her closer to the room containing the glowing heart.
“It’s my friends, Princess. Don’t worry we’re going to help you,” Bolt softly reassured her as she entered the softly lit room. “Can you feel that?”
She gasped as soon as she entered the room. “My Heart! You restored my Heart!” A smile full of rotten and cracked teeth stretched across her face. “I have to… I have to get Flurry Heart!”
Sapphire placed their hoof back on her shoulder. “Your highness, Flurry Heart isn’t in the palace.” Cadance’s face dropped into one of terror and grief. “She’s safe, but she’s far away from here, okay?” They grimaced through the lie, but nobody would contest it. There was no use in further distressing the undead princess, and Sonar was secretly terrified of what would happen if she faced reality too quickly.
“She’s… she isn’t here? My baby isn’t here?” Princess Cadance murmured just above a whisper. “Where…” With the blue light dimly illuminating her face, Sapphire noticed that decay was visibly decreasing by the second. Life almost seemed to seep into her face as the open wound on her forehead scabbed over unnaturally rapidly and her fur brightened to its normal pink. “My… I don’t understand, I thought she was here. But she’s…” Jelly Splash sucked in a deep breath, and Sonar suddenly realized how much she might’ve learned of the young alicorn’s death in her schooling. “She’s passed, hasn’t she?”
“She passed, but the Empire never forgot her,” Jelly spoke up softly. “Flurry Heart is a beacon of hope for all of us crystal ponies. She still lives in all of our hearts.”
Cadance's hooves trembled as her memory began to clear the fog of confusion. Flickers of realization crossed her remaining eye eye repeatedly, and she clutched her chest with her uninjured hoof as if trying to contain the overwhelming emotions threatening to spill over.
"I remember," she whispered, her voice fragile yet resolute. "Flurry Heart… my sweet Flurry Heart. She… she's gone."
The room fell into a heavy silence, the weight of the alicorn’s decades-long grief settling upon them all. Jelly Splash, her own eyes misty with tears, stepped forward, her hoof reaching out to gently touch Cadance's own. “I’m so sorry, Princess.”
Cadance met her gaze as if she could see, a faint glimmer of recognition in her eye. "Thank you, my dear," she said, her voice still broken but filled with gratitude. "I... I don't know how I got here, but I remember now. I remember everything. Are you… you are the final crystal pony." Tears welled in one eye, and Fire Bolt swallowed the lump in her throat.
“I am,” Jelly whispered.
The princess now looked like a living pony that survived an attack, her mane still matted and her fur still bloody, but she was… breathing. The exposed bone in one of her legs didn’t recover, but blood was now freely flowing from the wound. Sonar Moonshadow, with his calm demeanor, nodded in agreement. "Your highness… The darkness that consumed you is fading away. I could feel the dark magic from miles away. Your strength and the love of your subjects have brought you back to us.”
“Will you let us clean you up?” Sapphire offered before biting their tongue at the realization of the potentially offensive statement.
Sniffling and laughing through her tears, it was a moment before Cadance responded. “I suppose I’m overdue for a shower, aren’t I?”
In the royal salon, Fire Bolt dug through a closet and retrieved a half dozen candles. She found various places in the room to prop them up, and with the help of Sonar Moonshadow’s magic, the room lit up with cozy candlelight.
Jelly Splash was observing the princess’s head gash as she sat perfectly still and was completely starstruck that her city’s ruler was sitting mere feet from herself. Princess Cadance was never inaccessible to her subjects, but she certainly had been for the past several years. “I have medical training, do you have first aid anywhere?”
“I do, it’s… somewhere…” She replied. “I’m sorry.” Cadance’s blinded eye was still searching aimlessly.
“I’ll go look!” Marshmallow Creme offered and flew out to the hallway. Meanwhile, Fire Bolt retrieved a towel from a dusty shelf and ran it under water before gently cleaning her bloodied and grime-coated face as Sapphire carefully removed the remaining pieces of cracked metal decorum around her neck and hoof. The sound of clattering bounced off the crystal walls as Marshmallow rummaged through closet after closet, locating a small red box fairly quickly and flying back. Jelly opened the box and retrieved a couple of items with her magic, tossing a roll of gauze and antiseptic to the side for later.
“It looks like you’ve got a numbing spray. Can I stitch up your forehead? I can’t promise that it won’t hurt, but it really needs to be done,” She explained as she removed the blue-capped can.
“Yes, you may. It already hurts,” Cadance whispered. “Thank you.”
“Of course, your highness. I’m going to use the spray now, can you close your eyes?” When she did, a cloud of fog obscured her face for a moment as the numbing spray was applied, and she sighed at the quick relief. “Tell me to stop if you need a break, okay?” The princess firmly nodded once.
Jelly Splash removed the packaging from a sterilized needle as well as a suture kit before taking a deep breath and pushing the needle through one side of the wound, then the other. Princess Cadance didn’t flinch, so she tied the first stitch off easily and moved on to the next. After the fifth stitch was tied off, the unicorn glanced over to see her four friends watching her work with bated breath. Just at that moment, the princess spoke up with a clearer voice than anything else she’d said so far. “I would do it myself, you know. I don’t like having… servants. My magic, though, it’s…” The five of them watched as her black-tipped horn sparked with effort, but never generated magic. “I don’t think it works anymore.”
“It’s okay, I’m happy to do it for you. I’m not here as a servant, I’m here as a friend.” Jelly replied, resuming her work as Cadance smiled, careful not to move her face too much.
“I’ve seen that happen to a unicorn, and she was able to resume her magic.” Sonar’s half-truth wasn’t contested by Fire Bolt.
“That’s good news. May I ask… have I lost my vision?” Marshmallow Creme almost didn’t catch the hiss of breath she was going to let out as she cringed.
“You have one eye, your highness. It’s very glassy and discolored, and I fear that it may not recover. So yes, at the time being, you cannot see,” Jelly Splash delivered the news flawlessly, and Cadance didn’t budge as she tied off the final stitch.
“Ah… I worry that I may be of little use to Equestria, then. No magic, no sight…” She finally turned her head as Jelly pushed her mane back to inspect her work before dabbing the antiseptic across the area with great care.
“I lost my sight, too. Well, I was born like this. Blind. I promise you, it’s really not as bad as ponies make it out to be,” Sonar Moonshadow offered, and the princess reached a hoof to his direction in thanks, which he touched with his own. “You’re going to be okay.”
“Thank you. I truly appreciate everything you all have done for me. May I ask your names? If this… crisis ever ends, I will be sure to give you my highest gratitude next time you visit the castle.”
“My name is Sonar Moonshadow. Jelly Splash stitched you up, Sapphire Swirl guided you down here, Marshmallow Creme found the first aid, and Fire Bolt… found you.” He trailed off.
“It’s lovely to meet you all,” Cadance smiled despite the tears welling in her remaining eye. “I’m so used to saving everypony else, but it’s been quite some time since I needed some saving of my own.”
“I’m happy I found you when I did. And… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about… everything,” Fire Bolt said as her voice wavered.
“We’re going to be okay,” The princess echoed back, and Jelly Splash moved to sit behind her, rummaging through the salon’s drawers with her magic while she pulled debris from the tri-colored mane.
Meanwhile, Sapphire Swirl was wrapping the heavily bleeding wound on Princess Cadance’s arm after prompting her to raise it. Upon closer investigation, it seemed quite likely that she would either have to visit a magical specialist or get the limb amputated, but the gauze would at least stop the gushing blood. Cadance winced harshy at the first tug of pressure as Sapphire wrapped it tightly, who apologized profusely but did not cease their actions. Fire Bolt watched with admiration as Jelly finally found what she was looking for – a manebrush. She gently ran it through the alicorn’s tail, starting at the bottom to avoid yanking knots out and working her way up until the curls began to revive themselves. Her mane and tail were still dirty and unwashed, but it had to feel better to get the tangles and debris at the very least.
Nothing but the sound of brushing surrounded the room as Jelly Splash moved up to her mane, occasionally interrupted by brief hisses in pain as the hoof-wrapping continued until Cadance spoke again. “Jelly Splash, have you been in the Empire the whole time I was… gone?”
“Yes ma’am. How much do you remember, if you don’t mind me asking?” She replied as she worked through a particularly stubborn mat with the brush.
Quiet fell over the salon again for a long while before she replied. “Nighttime. It was night… everywhere. I couldn’t get in contact with Celestia or Luna, not even Twilight,” She started before pausing again. “We had a, um… a shield. A layer above the palace that looked like the daytime sky and could keep everypony safe, but this… this darkness kept creeping in. We tried to keep it stable, but I couldn’t even feel the layer failing which is just… that’s never happened before.”
“I remember. One moment the sun was there, the next it was the moon. I couldn’t feel it, either,” Jelly Splash murmured comfortingly, and the princess nodded.
“It was scary. Really, really scary. Shining Armor didn’t–” She was interrupted by her sharp intake of breath. “He didn’t like that we couldn’t keep everypony safe, and of course, I didn’t either. I can’t blame him for taking action more… recklessly. I mean, his sister was nowhere, that would scare me too.”
“But?” Sapphire asked as they tore off the gauze before picking up a cloth to wrap on top of it, as the material had already turned to a deep crimson.
“But fear isn’t good for the Empire. It’s always been our biggest weakness. He got frustrated and went to check on the Crystal Heart, but it just… I don’t know. I fear that the sight of their ruler in panic around the Heart put everypony on edge, and that’s how it…” She sighed. “That’s how it exploded. I saw it from the balcony of the palace. I saw him turn to… a pile of flesh. I’m sorry, I don’t remember enough after that–” Princess Cadance apologized as she got choked up from the memory.
“It’s okay, your highness. I lost somepony in the blast, too. It was a horrific day, especially for you,” Jelly Splash was seemingly now just brushing to soothe the princess, as the knots that halted its movement were long gone.
“No, especially for all of us. We’re all connected. It wasn’t any easier for any one pony, especially you. You’re very brave, Jelly Splash.” She assured her.
“Thank you, princess. I’m just… really glad you’re alright.”
“I’m glad that you’re alright, too. And please, call me Cadance.” She smiled.
