Twilight doubled over and vomited down a drain.
She didn’t remember the last time she felt so overwhelmingly alive.
It was horrifying.
Her limbs coursed with so much energy. Her horn crackled. How much had she taken? She hadn’t even cared when she saw Rarity in agony. All she’d wanted was to drink her until nothing remained.
Maybe she had…
Twilight doubled over and vomited once more.
All she wanted to do was go back and check if Rarity was okay, but she couldn’t… because then she’d see her again.
And then she’d feed again.
With her now returned senses, she could see how poor her maths had been. She had far longer than months, even without the magic from the sun and the moon. The grass would die eventually, but it was fine for now. As was all the bread and canned food that she’d eaten and felt like she was dying.
It was all fine.
The grass hadn’t been rotten at all, that wouldn’t happen for months.
The issue was that her body was rejecting it. Because she needed meat, meat and magic stripped from the pony she loved the most in the world.
She wished Fluttershy was here, with some of that chicken, and a kind word.
She wished Applejack was here, to tell her the hard truths she needed to hear.
She wished Rainbow was here, she’d stick by her no matter what.
She wished Pinkie was here, to make her laugh despite it all.
She wished Spike was here, because she loved him so much it made her stomach hurt.
But of course, none of them were here.
Twilight had killed them all.
She shook uncontrollably, barely able to comprehend it. She couldn’t comprehend it. Her mind simply rejected the horrifying truth.
She had killed princesses and every single one of her friends and family, and then she’d killed the entire world for good measure. Celestia had been right. Luna had been right.
Once again, her mind simply couldn’t take it in.
That’s why Rarity was in the crystal catacombs. She’d felt it before, in those early days when Twilight tried to feed off her responsibly, before she’d decided it wasn’t worth the risk and cut off all contact. So many months exchanging no more than heartbroken letters, Rarity begging her to come home. Holed up in Canterlot castle ignoring the warnings of Celestia and Luna, before murdering them and everyone else anyway.
Rarity must have known the feeling the second Twilight lost control for the last time. She must have been in Canterlot for the day, maybe trying to visit Twilight. And then she got as many ponies as she could down into the crystal catacombs, the one place her magic wouldn’t reach.
And now Twilight knew exactly where the last ponies alive were.
And now there was no more alicorn blood to feed on.
She smashed a shop window with her foreleg and grabbed a shard of glass, then pressed it against her neck. That issue did at least have a simple solution…
And yet, Twilight faltered…
What good would it do?
Rarity and the others, if they were strong enough to even shift those rocks, would come out to a world that would slowly die around them, and then they would die too. Without the magic of the sun and moon returning, the world would go quiet whether Twilight killed herself now, or whether she went back and drained them all dry.
Twilight screamed and punched more windows through. The shards ripped her leg again and again and again and again and she bled furiously over the previously undisturbed displays of wares from merchants that didn’t exist anymore.
Because they’d been eaten to keep her alive.
Twilight screamed harder.
She finally lost her balance and slipped onto her backside, regarding the mess around her through a fog of anger and tears. The ground was stained with great, heavy drops of blood from her arm. She flicked her tongue out, catching some that had stained her face in the fracas. It was coppery, sharp.
It felt disgustingly, enticingly, rapturously, shameful, like home.
She thought back to the last time she could remember seeing Celestia, stooped over, crying red tears for Twilight to suckle. Allowing herself to be consumed.
She had so much power. She felt like her old self. Even from that one feeding. Alicorns were truly remarkable creatures, unmatched in their potency.
Twilight turned and looked towards the palace, seeing the glint of the gilded roof of the principal tower, illuminated by the impotent sun. Its position was both functional, and as testament to the importance of what lay within.
Twilight allowed herself a humourless chuckle. Wasn’t it funny, after all she’d said and done, that she wasn’t really ready?
She rooted around in her saddlebag, forgoing the use of any magic. She withdrew that same photograph, and allowed her eyes to take it all in, not just her and Rarity’s little slice of space and time. All her friends, colleagues from the university, her family, Shining and Cadence.
But if Twilight was being honest with herself, she didn’t carry this photo around because it had so many of the ponies she loved the most in the world in it, she had plenty of photos like that.
She kept this one because she was still a unicorn, still her old self. There was no resplendency in her back then, no large stature nor coat or mane that seem to naturally organise themselves into the picture of immortal beauty.
No, this Twilight was a bookish mare in appearance as well as spirit. Her mane was brushed spartanly, her appearance an arrangement into mere presentability. She was plump, she didn’t get enough exercise and she was sitting on her tail, rather than fanning it out as so many other mares did. Rarity had always tried to get her to stop, but she liked doing it. She didn’t know why.
Twilight missed not needing to know why she was doing things.
She’d like to talk to this mare in the picture. She wanted to hold her, and tell her to stay in her library.
She was better in there.
The principal tower stuck out like a beacon, calling her to the end.
Stop herself from hurting anyone else? Try to find some mote of redemption, if one even existed? Give the gift of life, and never take it away, ever again?
Okay.
XXX
The Dias, like the rest of the whole world, was untouched. As she had made more than clear at the time, Twilight had no need for Luna’s lessons. They had never taught her anything, and had only been designed as tedious sermons to wear down her spirit until she agreed voluntarily to listen to all of her prattle about the nature of alicorns.
She wished she’d actually done so.
She wished she could have another lesson, from Celestia, from the mare who’d taught her all she knew.
She thought of other ponies that she’d killed.
Her legs gave from under her, and Twilight steeled her mind. This wasn’t about her. It wouldn’t do to give into despair now.
Twilight had already been taught about the Dias by Celestia. It was a marvel of magical engineering, and one of the most terrifying weapons ever created. Do a small spell on this, and it could amplify it out. The butterfly effect given perfect form. Give it a push, it could create a storm. Give it a storm, it could create an apocalypse.
Twilight was going to give it a supernova. Maybe it would be enough.
Because the amount of energy it would have taken to restore the sun and moon’s magic was nigh incomprehensible. Every unicorn in the world could have tried for the rest of their lives simultaneously and failed.
But the magic of an alicorn? The essence of an alicorn?
That might do it.
It was shockingly simple, really. All she had to do was tilt the mirrored surface so that it faced the sun, and then she needed to feed it. The moon, as it often did, would follow.
But she needed to feed them with all the energy she had.
Minus a tiny, near-inconsequential piece.
She needed that for something else.
In her walk over to the tower, she’d not really thought of anything. If she thought of the world she’d scoured clean, her legs would have abandoned her. If she thought of the task ahead, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to keep going.
Contrary to what she would have liked to have expected from herself, Twilight didn’t want to die.
Twilight wanted to live, she wanted to be reunited with Rarity.
Contrary to what Twilight would have liked to have expected from herself, she wasn’t consumed by self-hatred.
Twilight could recognise herself as a mare who acted without sanity, and that it had been taken from her by a new body and a new biology in which she never belonged. Twilight would have liked to hug that unicorn in the picture right about now.
But, more than that, she would have liked that unicorn to hug her.
The spell to burn her own essence in the Dias was almost insultingly easy. This wasn’t something that was going to take hours to set up. There would be no last meal, no eulogy. Twilight was in complete control. She formulated the process in her head, adding a small self-inhibitor charm to prevent her from stopping once she’d started, and she was ready to go at any time.
She didn’t want to go.
She didn’t want to do it.
Twilight felt a tear roll down her cheek and cursed herself, crying was a waste of energy and she wouldn’t get another injection of it.
She thought of Celestia, she thought of her mum and dad. She thought of her brother and Cadence. She thought of her friends. She thought that plump little unicorn who’d only ever wanted to learn, and help her friends.
She thought of Rarity.
That was all she needed.
Twilight breathed once, then twice.
She took that one small piece of energy, the one she had saved. She cast a teleportation spell, but stayed put. That would take effect a little while from now. She cast another spell, and in some far off place the sound of a dull, thudding blast rang out.
Twilight breathed again.
She, of course, might survive the process. The essence of an alicorn was potent stuff, of course. Maybe the spell wouldn’t need all of her to restart the sun and moon? Maybe she’d survive.
Twilight believed there was a chance she’d survive and she held onto it with every single bit of willpower she could afford to summon.
Twilight needed to believe she might survive. Twilight needed to believe she would survive, otherwise she didn’t think she’d go through it.
She very well might survive.
Twilight believed she would see Rarity again.
She breathed once more.
Twilight wasn’t sure what she believed anymore.
God, it felt good to breathe.
God, it felt good to be alive.
Twilight cast the spell.
XXX
Coquillage had gone to grab another one of the guards to help. To Rarity’s eternal shame, she didn’t actually understand Prench very well. A short while back she may have blanched with the admission, but times had forced a rethink of priorities.
She was comparatively relaxed, compared to those buzzing around ever. Ever since they’d come down here, she knew all she had to do was wait. She’d believed from the very first moment that Twilight was alive, that she’d find her. She’d never stopped, not once.
She took a shuddering, steadying breath.
Even so, it was nice to finally have it confirmed.
Belief only took you so far.
Rarity had no idea what lay behind the rocks she’d brought down. Sometimes she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to find out. But if Twilight was out there, then it couldn’t have been as bad as she was expecting.
“Rarity, we need to get the others and as many weapons we can grab. That thing might come back,”
She shook herself for a moment, trying to shake off the fog in her head. It had been a long time since she’d felt anything like this.
“Oh she will be back dearie, but there’s no need to get any weapons.”
Ivory, a large black pegasus that had been elected unopposed as head of the guard looked at her as if she’d gone insane.
They’d all thought she was insane, at first.
When she’d started screaming through the streets of Canterlot, trying to get as many as she could to follow her as dawn broke. Telling them they were going to die if they didn’t come with her right now. She imagined it was only her reputation as an element and as one of Canterlot’s leading designers that had gotten anyone to follow her.
And then, the sky lighting up brighter than anyone had ever seen probably convinced more than a couple too. ‘Bring as much food as you can carry, and follow me into the catacombs… otherwise you’ll die’. Rarity almost chuckled at the image, she must have looked insane. Laughter was a good way of dealing with all of this. It was at the very least more productive than despair.
“Rarity, I’m sorry but I have to insist, whatever that was nearly killed you.”
“Pish posh,” Rarity said with a wave of her hoof, she may have been fabulous but she was the furthest thing from vulnerable, “She’s not dangerous, darling, she’s scared and confused. All I need to do is speak with her,”
“You know this thing?” he asked, looking at the main air hole in the rubble with concern.
“She’s the reason we’re here, darling. That was Twilight Sparkle.”
Ivory dropped his spear.
Before he could say anything, there was a distinct cracking sound coming from the rock.
“Both of you get back!” Rarity yelled, shepherding Ivory and Coquillage to the back of the crystal catacombs’ entrychamber. For a moment, nothing moved. When the blast came, she could have wept for the shade of magenta that blew the rubble away.
Coquillage and Ivory hurtled back into the tunnels, trying to calm the rest of the ponies down there who had begun to head to the exit to investigate.
But Rarity was unconcerned with that. She was only concerned with who was outside to meet her.
So, heedless of what the new world may have been, Rarity ran as fast as her legs could carry her out of the sanctuary they’d made.
Because Rarity believed in Twilight.
But there was no one out here to meet her.
And the sky was still aflame.
From the tallest tower of Canterlot Castle, a beam of energy more intense and terrifying than Rarity had ever seen blazed into the sky, directly towards the sun. The sound was like rocks being ground to powder, it was like the collision of tectonic plates. It was like every wave in every sea crashing against her at the same time.
And as quickly as it had seemingly begun, the beam stopped.
Rarity lowered the hoof she’d instinctively raised to prevent herself from being blinded.
The sunlight felt warm on her fur, and the wind seemed to pick up. She felt strong again, in a way she hadn’t since this had all started.
But still, Twilight was nowhere to be seen.
XXX
Twilight fell from the Dias and onto the marble floor. She could barely think, she could barely breathe. She was spent. Some far off part of her could have almost laughed at how unspoiled she looked on the outside. Like she was completely normal. Like she’d never entered the tower at all.
She hadn’t the presence of mind to offer any contrasting commentary.
Twilight slipped into unconsciousness as her teleportation spell threw her to somewhere other than this tower.
She was at least still present enough to be grateful for that.
She wanted to die looking at something beautiful.