"We need your help."
Trixie stared incredulously at Twilight for several seconds before answering. "Those have got to be the four words I least expected to ever hear from you. 'I am a pumpkin' would have been less of a surprise."
Twilight took in the sight of the unicorn she hadn't seen in over a year. She looks good... WELL. She looks well. "Um. Can I come in?"
Trixie rolled her eyes. "I suppose," she said as she stepped out of the way. Twilight entered her dressing room, her friends barely a step behind her.
"Now, could you please explain to me how exactly I'm supposed to be able to help a unicorn who utterly showed me up when we first met, and who now has the Element of Magic perched atop her head?"
"Yes, please, Twilight," said Rarity, her tone cattier than an animal shelter. "Do tell us."
Twilight kept her tone as level as she could manage. "Rarity. Knock it off. I know you don't like her, but she has skills we need."
"An' how exactly are skills at showboatin' and takin' advantage o' groupies supposed to help us out here?" asked Applejack.
"I'm trying to get to that if you'd all just pipe down for a minute--"
"Heck with that," said Rainbow Dash, "how about good old-fashioned plagiarism?" Hovering by a hat rack holding Trixie's trademark star-covered hat and cloak, she jabbed a hoof towards a framed poster on the wall. The style was several years old, around when Twilight and her friends would have been just fillies, and showed a sophisticated unicorn mare wearing an identical outfit. "I knew your look was familiar. You stole your whole act from The Mysterious Midnight!"
"YOU SHUT YOUR GOD-DAMNED MOUTH, YOU LITTLE BITCH!"
Trixie's eyes were filled with rage. Twilight had in the past caught glimpses of Fluttershy's infamous Stare; her eyes contained a fury that could make gods hesitate, but behind it all was compassion, even for the recipient. The fire that burned in those eyes was, ultimately, one of love. Trixie's eyes held a similar fury, but driven by nothing but cold, murderous hate.
Rainbow Dash flinched briefly, but her bravado got the better of her. "Oh yeah? Why don't you make me!"
As Rainbow came closer and Trixie's horn began to glow, Twilight rushed between them and pushed them apart with her forelegs. "Both of you, STOP IT!"
Trixie released the energy she'd been gathering, but still kept her hate-filled eyes locked on the pegasus. Rainbow fluttered back a pace, opening her mouth to speak again before Twilight's magic snapped it shut.
"Rainbow, The Mysterious Midnight was her MOTHER!"
Twilight released her magic on Rainbow's mouth. The pegasus stared at the two unicorns before her, comprehension turning to horror as she processed what she'd just heard. One word, the worst, twisted her stomach into knots: "Was".
"OOOOOHMYGOSHOHMYGOSH I AM SO SORRY--"
"RAINBOW." Her attention snapped back to Twilight as she spoke. "Hallway. Now." She was out of the room before anyone realized she'd moved.
Twilight whipped around and faced the rest of her friends with a glare that could melt steel. "And if any of you have the slightest doubt in your ability to keep your mouths shut for two minutes while I talk to Trixie, you can wait out there with Rainbow Dash. GOT IT?"
Without a word or even a nod, the other four Elements ran out of the dressing room in a flash. Trixie watched them go with some satisfaction, but her eyes here still furious when they turned back to Twilight. "This had better be good."
"I know you'll probably scoff at this, but we need your magic. You're a lot better at fine detail and precision than I am in a lot of areas."
Trixie scoffed, as predicted, but her eyes lost their fury. "Please. Ego aside, you're way out of my league. No wonder you're the Element of Magic..."
"Yes, I admit, in terms of raw power I'm in a higher weight class than you, so to speak. But that's just inborn talent. I'm talking about skill, things you've trained at and made a living with."
Trixie sighed. "Look, Miss Sparkle, I'm flattered. Really. But... I'm an illusionist! A good one, granted, but still. You've been studying under the wing of Princess Celestia since you were a foal--"
"But I never studied illusions! Nothing advanced, anyway." Twilight levitated a scroll from her saddlebag, the one Celestia had sent her with the instructions for drawing the elder seal, and unrolled it in front of Trixie. "You're not just a good illusionist, Trixie, you're the best illusionist in Equestria. And right now, an illusionist is just what we need."
Trixie took hold of the scroll and read it, eyes growing wide, while a new sound added to the muffled cacophony outside: Artillery. The army had joined the fray.
Twilight stepped closer, resting a hoof on Trixie's shoulder. Her fellow unicorn met her eyes and saw them filled with a mix of determination and worry. "I know you're no coward, Trixie. When that Ursa came to Ponyville, you could've run. You'd have been smart to run. But you didn't. You stood your ground. No matter what anypony else might say about you, you stood, and you gave it your best."
Trixie tried to wrap her mind around what was being asked of her. "But... This symbol, it's protecting the city, isn't it?"
"For how long? The kraken's intelligent. I don't think it would have come here, or stuck around this long, without some kind of plan for getting past it. Heck, it might just be able to throw rocks at it from outside until it bends out of shape. All that's keeping it from doing so is the princesses. They're out there, right now, fighting this thing, and they're... they're..." Twilight struggled to control her breathing. "They're losing."
Trixie closed her eyes and released a held breath. She rolled up the scroll, returned it to Twilight, and stepped away, looking up towards the poster of her long-dead mother, advertising her last -- some say greatest -- show, performed at that very theatre. After a long moment, while Twilight grew convinced that she'd refuse, she carefully lifted her hat and cloak from the rack and put them on. As she turned again, Twilight saw her mouth take on a cocky, lopsided grin. Her eyes were now filled with a different fire, the same one she'd seen in her eyes during her performance in Ponyville, and again when... Twilight pushed the thought out of her mind as Trixie finally spoke.
"What the hell. Either we win, or it kills us, and at the very least I want to make sure this thing remembers how hard it was to take me down."
Twilight leapt forward and hugged her, before remembering what personal boundaries are and stepping back, blushing. The two unicorns rejoined the rest of the group in the hallway and ran for the entrance.
"Wait!" Twilight shouted as they approached the busted door. "I forgot something important." Her horn and the gem of her tiara began to glow, the other Elements following a moment later. Having recharged since their earlier use, Twilight tapped into their power to recast the dragonfear ward over the seven of them, reinforced by the power of Harmony. "Even looking at the kraken without protection can really mess you up. That should suffice, but if anything leaks through, remember, it's just a trick."
Trixie relaxed as the oppressive weight of the kraken's presence vanished from her mind. "So it's got some illusions of its own, I see. Well, let's show it what the G and P T can do." Twilight caught Applejack rolling her eyes at that, and gently swatted her with a hoof.
Rainbow Dash climbed a few yards into the air, pointing to the sky. "Uh, guys?"
Most of the stars were out by now, but their positions were off. The most familiar constellations were twisted and distorted, and Twilight could tell that hardly a single star was in its proper place. As they watched, they could see them slowly drifting through the sky, twisting and swirling around each other.
Fluttershy, nearly frozen in panic, struggled to find her voice. "W-what's doing that? Is it the kraken?"
Twilight reached out with her horn, feeling for the magical currents in the sky. "No, it's not the..." She gasped. "It's Luna!"
"Luna?" Rarity asked, surprised. "Why would she do such a thing?"
"The stars are right..." Twilight whispered, before raising her voice again. "The kraken is said to escape from its prison when the stars are right! Princess Luna's trying to make them wrong again."
Things in Ponyville were beginning to return to normal. Everypony felt safer knowing that the elder seal protected the town, and the kraken had not attempted to approach since the previous night. So to keep their spirits up, Ditzy Doo and Big Macintosh had taken Dinky and Sparkler out for a picnic in the park that afternoon. Dinky had almost been too terrified to leave her room, but just a few hours of normalcy and fun had worked wonders for her spirit.
As the sun sank low in the sky, they returned home by way of the market square so Ditzy could pick up ingredients for supper. As she looked over some bundles of alfalfa, a familiar voice called to her from a nearby alley.
"Ditzy... Doo?"
She turned to see Rocky Road, one of the local EquesTrans workers. His crew kept the roads within, to and from Ponyville in good repair, and had helped build the rail line the previous year. He seemed to be hiding in the shadows of the streetlights, and his voice sounded halting and awkward. "Ditzy... Got minute?"
Thinking he might be hurt, Ditzy trotted his way to offer aid, but he withdrew deeper into the alley as she approached. "Rocky? What's wrong?"
"Need your help. Need find... Zecora."
Ditzy started to respond, ready to give directions, but her thoughts stumbled and fell flat. Zecora... Who the hay is Zecora? "I'm sorry, who are you looking for?"
Rocky's eyes turned hard and cruel. "No game. Zecora, where find. Now."
Ditzy's heart raced. Something was terribly wrong with Rocky. As her anxiety grew, her eyes diverged; only one pointed at Rocky, the other at a faint shadow he cast in the light of the half-moon overhead. A shadow that looked nothing like a pony.
She wanted to run. She wanted to scream. She wanted to fight back as the thing that wasn't Rocky Road crept towards her like a predator that had cornered its prey. As her hooves and her wings refused to respond to her panic, a rational corner of mind remembered how she'd always feared that her life would end like this: A situation she could easily escape if not for the way she locked up under stress.
The creature snarled in anger, revealing a mouth filled with countless, jagged teeth.
"Momma? Who're you talking to?"
Somewhere in Ditzy's brain, a switch flipped, and the hindmost part of it took over, leaving the rational part to simply watch and marvel. Rearing up on her hind legs, wings and nostrils spread wide, she snorted and whinnied in a mad fury. Any creature of Equestria would recognize the display, and the message it conveyed: I am a pegasus mother, I am protecting my foal, and any attempt to pass will end with your life.
The abrupt change from frozen victim to icon of wrath startled the creature, giving Ditzy the opening she needed. Her forehooves slammed down upon its head, stunning it and driving it back. She heard her daughter scream, a sound that turned her blood to fire, and with a single stroke of her wings, she launched into the air and lunged.
The creature rolled to the side, dodging her assault, and quickly grappled her. Grasping her forelegs at the ankle -- a part of her managed to wonder how it could do so with hooves -- it twisted her off her feet and onto the ground. As claws she could feel but not see dug into her skin, she bunched up her hind legs and kicked her attacker in the abdomen. She felt something crunch, and nearly escaped the grapple while it gasped in pain, but it was quick to recover. It was larger than her, it was stronger, and it knew how to fight. In a blur of motion, it twisted her onto her back, pinning her down, and that horrible, shark-like mouth opened wide over her throat...
… before two huge red legs slammed into it like the pistons of a steam engine. Big Mac's powerful rear hooves, shod in iron shoes far heavier than Ditzy's own, crushed the monster's head against the nearby wall. With a sickening pop, it went limp and fell to the ground like a rag doll.
A handful of nearby ponies shrieked in horror. Ditzy stood and saw that Sparkler was already comforting Dinky, escorting her away from the scene. Her old friend Carrot Top stood nearby, eyes wide. "Celestia's name, Mac... You-- You killed him!"
"Not him. It." He stepped aside to let the growing crowd see the creature that had attacked Ditzy, its disguise now vanished: A mottled green reptile, as large as Mac himself but scrawnier and more wiry, with stocky hind legs build for bipedal walking and slender arms ending in wicked, grasping claws.
Peeling her eyes from the dead creature, Carrot Top turned her attention to Ditzy. She was muttering something, repeating it over and over. "What's that, sweetie?" Her volume started to rise, but she was speaking to quickly to be clear.
A callous voice muttered, "Ignore her, she's just going derpy again."
"Thank you fer your opinion, Sticks," Mac drawled, "now kindly shut the hell up." He turned back to Ditzy. "Deep breaths, bright-eyes. That's right." As she caught her breath, both her eyes met his. "Now, what is it yer tryin' to tell us, darlin'?"
"Rocky Road's address. 27 Stirrup Street. Apartment B. Somepony... check on him."
Lyra and Bonbon, only a few yards away, looked at each other fearfully. Rocky was their upstairs neighbor. They bolted down the street together, the building only a couple blocks away.
No more than a minute later, the entire market heard Lyra's scream.
After a moment's argument with the guards in another tower, the bearers of the Elements of Harmony and the Great and Powerful Trixie charged back onto the field of battle. As they'd approached the outer wall, the sounds of cannon-fire had tapered off and eventually ceased; looking out over the grassy plains, they could see ranks of guns left behind by their crews, some of them bent or crushed. Luna still fought the kraken, ceaselessly harassing it and diverting it away from the city.
The seven ponies came to a halt. Trixie looked ill for a moment as she took in the sight, but shook it off.
"How long do you need?" Twilight asked her.
"Two, maybe three minutes? I could rush it, but if I understood that letter correctly, quality is more important than speed."
"Alright. You get to work; if it notices and tries to approach before you're ready, we'll run interference." If I can figure out how, Twilight thought to herself.
Trixie nodded and sat down on her haunches as Twilight laid out the scroll on the ground in front of her. Closing her eyes, she focused on her breathing and the flow of magic through her body that accompanied it. Opening them, her horn glowed and a transparent, pale blue square, about a foot across, appeared in the air before her. Glancing at the diagram, she held out her forehooves and willed a diagonal line to appear on the square.
"Beggin' yer pardon, Trixie," interrupted Applejack, "but shouldn't it be a bit, um, bigger?"
Trixie tensed. "I can work, or I can explain. Not both."
Applejack suddenly felt sheepish. "Fair 'nuff."
Over the next few minutes, Trixie carefully constructed an image of the elder seal in miniature, adjusting each element more minutely that any of them could see. As the final pieces were laid out, Twilight noticed the sounds of the battle between Luna and the kraken were drawing closer. Looking up, she saw that it was making its way towards them, and Luna's efforts to force it back were failing.
"How much longer?" asked Twilight.
"Just thirty seconds or so."
"I'm not sure we have thirty seconds," said Rainbow Dash.
As the kraken took a few more purposeful steps towards them, panic edged into Twilight's voice. "Trixie..."
"Ten seconds!" The glow of her horn grew brighter.
The ground shook as the kraken drew dangerously close, and Twilight decided to take a gamble. The Rainbow of Harmony couldn't hurt it, but it sure seemed to not like lightning. Her horn and the Element of Magic glowed as one, the others flaring to life a moment later.
"Uh, Twi," Rainbow said nervously, "this didn't work so well the last--"
Her words were cut off as a tremendous bolt of electricity shot forth from the gem of Twilight's tiara, blasting the kraken's outstretched claw into goo. The chunks fell to the ground some fifty yards in front of them like sacks of pudding, liquefying in seconds, and a stench like low tide assaulted their noses. The kraken pulled back the stump of its wrist as viny growths sprung forth, quickly hardening into gnarled, woody bones. The murky gel of its flesh crawled along them to reform the appendage it had lost.
"There!" As Trixie's horn flared, so did the seal in front of her, and like a slide projected onto a screen, another one, as high as the kraken and precise to the width of a razor's edge, burst into being in front of them. The kraken roared, attempting to shield its eyes, but seemed almost physically repelled by the glowing symbol. It staggered backwards, but then caught itself, trying to edge around the symbol to its right.
"Oh like hell you do," muttered Trixie. With a wave of her hoof, she duplicated the miniature seal and swung the copy around to her left, and with another flash from her horn, a second full-scale seal appeared in the air to block the kraken's maneuver. As it tried to go the other way, she created a third copy, leaving it nowhere to go but backwards. As it tried to retreat from the trap, Trixie placed another behind it, and as it tensed to leap upwards, a fifth appeared above it, boxing it in completely. The kraken covered its head with its arms and wings, seemingly incapable of any action other than cowering, until it turned towards the seal behind and thrust out a claw towards its center.
In the miniature model of its cage, the furthest seal began to waver. "Oh no, nonononono," Trixie said in a panic, trying to rotate the box around it, but before she could the seal flickered and vanished. The kraken dropped to all fours and loped desperately from its makeshift prison. It flabby bulk seemed to shrivel while the oddly small wings unfolded and grew to immense size. With a single powerful leap and a downstroke that nearly knocked the ponies off their feet from the wind, it launched itself into the air and flew back towards the Everfree Forest.
Trixie looked dejectedly at the broken cage she had crafted from nothing more that light and geometry. With a wave of her hoof, she dismissed the image before her and the larger version vanished with it. She turned to see the other six mares gawking at her, eyes wide and jaws slack. Trixie couldn't imagine why they could possibly be surprised. It's not like they've never seen me fail at anything important before.
Twilight took a tentative step forward. "Trixie... you..." She struggled to find words, but Trixie knew that once she did, they'd sting worst of all.
Rainbow Dash spoke next. "That... was..."
Feeble. Pathetic. Whatever the opposite of great and powerful is. Just say it already, stop trying to savor the moment.
"AWESOME!"
… Wait, what?
"Trixie," said Rarity, her eyes downcast. "I believe I owe you an apology. I never should have questioned Twilight when she suggested we seek your aid, and my behavior earlier was just... inexcusable."
"What she said," added Applejack. "Ah may not've cared for yer attitude before, but ya can't argue with results. You were the right pony for the job, and we shouldn'a doubted you." Fluttershy and Rainbow all nodded in agreement, and Pinkie was practically hopping as she grinned at Trixie.
The response was leaving the performer distinctly confused. "But... it got away."
"Yeah, after you kicked it to the curb!" Rainbow shouted, taking to the air and doing a victory loop.
"Wait, Trixie..." Twilight said, stepping closer. "Did you really expect to imprison it on your first try?"
"I nearly did! But I didn't have a clear line of sight to the seal behind it, so I couldn't keep it as precise as the others. It was the weak link, and it broke it."
"Trixie, you didn't fail to capture it, you succeeded at driving it away! That's honestly all I'd expected. We don't know how to really hurt it yet, we just needed time to regroup and learn more. And you bought us that time." Twilight smiled gently at her. "You're still setting the bar too high for yourself."
Trixie thought she saw Rarity and Applejack sharing a suspicious look, but it passed before she could really see for sure. "I suppose..." Allowing herself a shy smile, she added, "I guess that was pretty awesome."
"OOH, speaking of awesome," said Pinkie, "Twilight's super-mega-lightning bolt of doom! I didn't know the Elements could do that!"
"Well, the rainbow is just a blast of pure Harmony," said Trixie, "but the Elements are also powerful reservoirs of magical energy. In the possession of their bearers, that power can be used for just about anything that doesn't contradict the nature of a given Element or Harmony itself."
Applejack looked back and forth between Trixie and Twilight. "You been workin' on yer ventriloquism, Twi?"
"What?" asked Trixie. "I read her paper in the ERM." Seeing the blank looks at her answer, she added, "The Equestrian Review of Magic. She was the first grad student they'd published in years, of course I checked it out."
Applejack's face and voice were deadpan. "Mm-hm."
Glancing towards Twilight, Trixie expected to see her either blushing or grinning in pride, possibly both, but instead saw her staring into the distance, her face full of worry. She suddenly realized who had been absent from the scene. "Um... Where's Celestia?"
Twilight's worry blossomed into full panic, as she bolted across the grass at a dead sprint. The others struggled to catch up with her; when they did, they found her standing in what looked like a shallow crater in the shape of one of the kraken's claws. In the middle, laying in the grass and mud, were a few iridescent strands of hair, long and sparkling, and a large, white primary feather stained with blood.
Twilight stared at them for what felt like a lifetime. They resisted all her efforts to will them away. I need to be strong, she told herself, trying to blink through her tears. My friends need me to be strong. Equestria needs... She screwed her eyes shut, trying desperately to contain her grief. I'm no help to anypony if I lose it.
She felt like a house of cards, and the wind was rising.
"She's alive."
Relief struck Twilight like a bucket of ice water. Her knees buckled, and the tears she'd held back spilled forth in a torrent. Wearily, she lifted her head and saw Luna standing before her, streaks of blood still staining the fur around her mouth. Her voice had been low and raspy, and sounded like it hurt to speak.
With comically forced casualness, Pinkie Pie stepped to the princess' side. "Begging your pardon, Princess, but..." Pinkie nearly vibrated with the effort of keeping a straight face. "... you're a little hoarse."
Luna blinked at Pinkie for several seconds, then snickered before losing all control and laughing madly. The others quickly joined, and Pinkie nearly burst with glee at pulling one of the worst puns in the Equestrian language on a princess.
"Thank you, Pinkie," said Luna. "I think we all needed that."
"That's what I'm here for."
Twilight finally found her footing again. "Princess Luna... How is she?"
Luna's demeanor turned serious again, but her voice was improving. "She was badly hurt, and still unconscious when last I saw her. But it is no easy thing to kill an alicorn; we do not succumb to our wounds hours or days after receiving them. What does not kill us swiftly had best be far away when we recover, for we surely will."
Twilight mind was drowning in questions, but this wasn't the time or place for all of them, so she prioritized. "Do you have any idea why the Elements didn't work?"
Luna nodded. "Indeed, once we engaged the kraken in battle we realized quickly that they would not, but had no chance to communicate this to you in time. The kraken... is utterly immune to magic."
Rainbow Dash raised a hoof. "Uh, I have a question. That makes no sense."
Twilight corrected her automatically. "That's not a question."
"The princesses were constantly blasting the thing with lightning. You threw the biggest lightning bolt I've ever seen at it, and that was dwarfed by the freaking sunlight laser they bounced of the moon, which was completely epic, by the way. How does that add up to an immunity to magic?"
"Those were physical effects created by magic," Luna explained. "Lightning from a spell is still lightning, as is fire, frost or anything else. But spells cast directly upon it simply failed. Including the Rainbow of Harmony."
"How is that even possible?" asked Twilight.
Luna hesitated before answering. "It is... completely isolated from the Stream."
Twilight's eyes went wide, and her jaw flapped for a moment before she managed to speak. "Th-that's... That can't be true! It's alive! It has magic! I felt its signature, it used it against you!"
"What you felt was the disruption of the Stream's natural flow caused by its presence."
"I... But then..." The pieces of the puzzle finally snapped together, and the picture they made was worse than any Twilight had imagined. "Oh no. No no no." She felt like her body couldn't decide if it wanted to faint or vomit, and was working out a compromise to somehow combine the two. Trixie fell back on her rump, and Rarity just shut her eyes and grimaced.
Rainbow briefly contemplated getting a sign that said "dumb it down please" and carrying it any time she hung out with unicorns. "Um... What?"
Twilight struggled to order her thoughts. "The Stream is, in simplest terms, the flow of magic. But it's more than just what unicorns use to cast spells. It lets pegasi fly and control weather, it gives earth ponies their strength and nourishes the land they work, it even makes our cutie marks appear. The Stream isn't just magic... it's life. And that's no metaphor. It's literally the animating force behind all life. For the kraken to be cut off from it, and still live, is disturbing enough. But for it to be able to consciously harness the disruption it causes in the stream to cast its own quote-unquote 'spells'... That would only be possible if it was animated by some kind of energy that's antithetical to magic and life as we know it."
Applejack's voice sounded queasy as she spoke. "So this thing, it's some kinda spirit of death?"
Twilight shook her head. "No... Death is part of the cycle of life. The matter and magic of a living being are reabsorbed by the environment and put to new use. The kraken is more like... Extinction. Sterility. The negation of life as a concept. Remember when we got our first clear, up-close look? You said your knees felt weak. Rainbow Dash said the same about her wings. My horn felt the same way. Even through the protective spell I cast, we felt a manifestation of the Stream inherent to ourselves being diminished by its influence -- earth pony strength, pegasus flight, and unicorn magic -- as if the presence of the kraken was nullifying them. When we look at the kraken, our eyes see a monster, but our souls see a lifeless void."
Rainbow Dash started to look as sick as the unicorns. "I don't like where this is going."
Twilight couldn't bear to meet her friend's eyes. "I was wrong. The kraken doesn't have an aura of magical despair. Last night, when you looked at the kraken without protection, what you felt was an entirely natural reaction to seeing it for what it truly is."
Twilight's friends stood and sat in silence for a full minute, absorbing what she'd explained, until Luna spoke again. "There is still hope. Despair, even when natural, is not always rational or warranted. And if the energy that drives the kraken negates the magic of the Stream, then it can be negated by it as well."
"You're right. That kind of cancellation can't be a one-way street. The modified dragonfear ward still protected us partially, perhaps simply by being made of magic. It was even more effective when powered by Harmony."
"But if it's allergic or whatever to the magic of our entire world," Rainbow asked, "why didn't it just choke and die as soon as it landed here?"
"Maybe it has something like a diving suit, a barrier to isolate itself from the Stream. I don't know why it would choose to live on a world where it needed one, but maybe having such a barrier is as natural to it as having an armored shell is to a tortoise."
"Um, I have a question," Fluttershy said nervously. "Where'd Pinkie go?"
A scan of the horizon revealed a pink speck near a row of abandoned cannons. Twilight gave a questioning look towards Luna, but the moon princess only winced and shut her eyes. She ran towards Pinkie, and as she drew closer she could see her shoulders shaking and a faint glint of gold in the moonlight by her feet.
Pinkie didn't react as Twilight approached, or as the others followed behind. She just sat there, crying softly, over a few bent and battered pieces of gilded armor and the blackened skeleton they contained. Twilight gingerly lifted the dog tags towards her eyes, the chain still around the bones of the neck.
STEEL-EYE
DANFORTH
SGT 1ST ARTY
318631
MANENITE
"His platoon provided cover fire while the medics retrieved Celestia," said Luna. "His squad covered the retreat of his platoon. He covered the retreat of his squad. My sister, and many others, still live... because of him." She stepped gingerly between Pinkie and Twilight. "That should provide some comfort, should it not?"
Twilight simply sat and stared.
"One would think it should," Luna whispered. "So why doesn't it?"