Celestia's head painfully ached, groaning as she regained consciousness. Immediately, she retched from the acrid stench of smoke rushing into her as she took a deep lungful of air. Compounding it, burning tears filled her stinging eyes for a few moments whilst she blinked, trying to see in front of herself. Despite open eyes she found herself still shrouded in darkness, her inner clock screaming at her that it should be far past dawn by now. She felt deathly exhausted and quite a bit disoriented, thoughts sluggishly chasing one after the other in her mind. Regardless, her duty was calling for her.
Without moving, she concentrated and connected the remaining figments of her energy to the Sun, guiding it to its rightful place in the sky and slowly bringing light over the ravaged field she was lying in. As the pitch blackness faded, she found herself face to face with the ship’s wooden alicorn, its broken horn barely an inch or two from poking into her eye.
So it begged the question in her mind, Where does that leave the ship?
Forcing herself to take short, shallow breaths, she slowly acclimated to the lack of oxygen, until the throbbing in her head dulled a little. Having regained a bit of her awareness, she realised that she was laying upside down, her wings strewn painfully and her limbs bent awkwardly. The shimmering, bubble-thin shield she'd cast had remained around her, however weak, though it dispelled the moment she tried to move her body, her magic almost completely spent from moving the Sun.
With more pain than she was expecting, she slowly crawled away from the figurehead and sat herself up, placing one hoof after the other carefully. Beyond the dull headache she felt and perhaps one or two cracked bones she seemed to be fine, her shield had done a stalwart job.
She grunted as she rolled her shoulders, slowly looking at the landscape. Barren remnants of trees lay around her, their charred, smoking bodies lacking leaves and smaller branches. As she took a careful step, the very ground cracked dryly under her hoof as if she was walking on charcoal. She turned around and saw a disturbingly large tar-coloured pillar looming high above the horizon, blotting out half of her precious Sun that she always worked so hard to raise.
Yet, as she kept staring at it, she realised the pillar she figured was perhaps a building at first was in fact a rolling column of black smoke. Her eyes slowly followed it down, and to her horror as she reached the source, she noticed the remains of the ship sticking out like the ribs of a great rotting carcass, its skin hanging loosely, smoke and fire belching from its insides. Besides the whistling wind and crackling embers, nothing else could be heard in her immediate vicinity.
Behind her, in the other direction, she saw black roiling clouds receding towards the sea. Smoke from the pillar wafted lazily towards it, as if the storm still tried to drag whatever remained of the ship with it. Despite the distance, she could still see the mass occasionally illuminated by lightning, vague shapes and figures shifting and twisting inside. She turned away in disgust.
She closed her eyes and tried to quiet the chaos in her head, but her thoughts were sluggish and disjointed. She was missing something, however upon hearing a faint moaning and whimpering, her eyes snapped right back open as she realised her folly. How could she have forgotten her ponies?! Her broken ribs ignored, she sprang to her hooves through the pain and began to desperately search.
She raised piece after piece of debris, no matter how exhausted she felt. Burnt earth and scorched grass were the only things to greet her under every stone and tree she upturned, until she sharply halted. Under the next fallen piece of hull, she found two beaten bodies. Celestia’s lips quivered and she stumbled back, tears filling her eyes.
The Count and the Countess shared one final embrace, illuminated by the dim light of the smoke-hidden Sun. A measure of peace was written into their faces, somehow preserved through the impact of the crash. Celestia reached out with her magic, and even though she still felt some warmth remaining in the bodies, their lives had certainly ended. Sadly, there was nothing she could do for them at this juncture.
She stared at her former subjects for a few more seconds, mourning their loss deeply. But if they were here, that likely meant… The thought jolted her from her daze and she began her search with twice the fervour.
Neither of them could have been far away. She'd lost so much in one day, but she could not lose them too. After fruitlessly turning over several heavy remains of tree trunks in her haste, she noticed a haphazard pile of trembling wooden debris. Regardless of her lack of energy, her horn blazed into golden light as she grabbed the whole pile and tossed it aside without a word. Nestled beneath it she saw the blood-spotted and slightly singed, but still breathing Heavy Wrench, and in her hooves still shielded by her body, the little lord Blueblood, now a count.
They looked up at Celestia with wide, unfocused eyes. For a moment everypony remained silent.
“I am so incredibly relieved to see you both again,” Celestia mumbled, fighting with her tears.
Wrench slowly sat up, a little shaky, raising her hoof into a weak salute. “I managed to snatch him while we were still in the air, Highness,” she said, her pride and happiness shining through her obvious pain. “Body hurts like Tartarus, but I think we’ll be just fine.”
Blueblood passed his vision over the desolate landscape surrounding them, then towards Wrench, before finally coming to a halt on Celestia. He took a ragged breath and opened his mouth to say something, but no words except a few ragged gasps came to his throat. A moment later, his shining teal eyes began to water as he began to bawl. His voice was raspy and forced, causing him to cough again and again.
With unexpected speed he clambered to his hooves and threw himself at Celestia, who gladly embraced him with her wings, pulling him close gently, but firmly. Slowly, he raised his hooves and hugged her back, burying his face into her chest. The two remained that way for a long time as Wrench looked on with a smile, whilst the last straggling fires continued to crackle and burn.
"I..." Celestia muttered, fighting her own tears. "I will take you in," she gently rocked him back and forth. "I will make you my little prince."