Chapter 8: Ember
By N00813
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The sun beat down mercilessly on the city of Dromedor. In the port district, inside a little booth just a hair’s width away from the harbour’s wooden planking, a young pony stood. His eyes squinted as they tried to adjust to both the darkness under the shade of an overhanging awning, and the glaring white-yellow sand just a few centimetres beyond.
He yawned. Despite – or perhaps because of – the blindingly bright sunlight reflecting off the whitewashed walls of nearby buildings and the vibrant colours of hawkers’ stalls, his eyes threatened to slam shut even as he shook himself awake yet again. Sweat flung off his body in little droplets. He sent a quick prayer, thanking the gods for granting him short fur, and followed it up with a plea to speed up time.
As his ears flopped back into their rightful places, the sounds of the busy port reached him. Seagulls chirped and screeched as their silhouettes danced in the sky. Waves sloshed against the harbour’s wood-and-stone supports. The words, laughter and shouts of hundreds of people in the nearby market degenerated into an undecipherable murmur in his head. A cough sounded in front of him.
He looked upwards, eyes blinking as they focused on the figure of a pony who was almost completely covered in a thick brown cloak. The oddest thing was that he or she didn’t seem to be in any sort of discomfort at all. A cold drop of sweat rolled down his back, and every nerve down the length of his spine tingled as it travelled.
Something was off. “How may I help?” he asked hesitantly.
“Ticket,” she said – her voice was high-pitched enough to be female – and he felt her eyes boring into his chest like a drill.
He stared stupidly for a few moments, before his brain caught up to his muscles and he found his hooves shaking as he reached for the stamp with a hoof, and a ticket strip with another. The other pony still hadn’t moved her lavender hooves. She hadn’t shifted at all. He could see silver-grey metal winding around her legs like thin, lethal snakes, as much a part of her as her skin. The power in there was almost palpable, even when she wasn’t using it.
His heartbeat raced as he caught himself staring, and he diverted his gaze away onto his own hooves, before stammering out, “Destination?”
“Equestria.” Her voice wasn’t too loud or too quiet. Nor was it dripping with malice or the unthinking joy that was often bundled along with insanity. He couldn’t figure out why it hung at his ears like lead, unnerving him as he stamped the first box on the ticket.
“Which ship?” His voice stumbled a bit as it came out of his throat. It was like staring down a hungry lion that would tear him to screaming pieces if he showed any hint of weakness. He gulped a glob of saliva, feeling the sloop run down his suddenly-dry throat.
“Soonest to depart.”
There it was again – the utterly, unbelievably normal voice attached to this otherworldly figure. Still lacking any obvious emotion, but managing, somehow, to chill his spine. He quickly shoved the finished ticket out, before remembering that he was supposed to be asking for money. “Er, payment. It’s two thousand bits or” – he paused to smack his dry lips together – “one thousand riyal.”
She turned to her side, and suddenly his mind was full of images of his own broken, bloody corpse, with strips of flesh missing as she sat in the cavity where his heart was, raw red meat dangling from her mouth –
The heavy thunk of a bag of coins hitting the wooden counter brought him out of those increasingly morbid thoughts, and he fumbled with the bag for a little while before pouring its contents into a counter. There was exactly two thousand bits worth of gold sitting inside the machine by the time the bag hung, limp and empty, from his hooves.
He nodded, and forced himself to raise his eyes to look at her as he reached out with the finished ticket grasped in hoof. He wished he hadn’t, and at the same time realised exactly why.
He recognised that look. It was the same distant, glassy stare that some of the old mercs in the bar would fall back on as they watched their alcohol warm up in the blazing sun. It wasn’t cold hate or burning anger or anything simple like that. In her eyes, a cold abyss sat where warm life had once been. There was only a tiny glimmer of light left, deep in the blackness, like a single burning ember in an extinguished firepit.
He shivered, instantly retracting his hoof once she had taken the ticket in a field of magenta magic. The tickle of energy dancing across his skin barely registered in his mind.
“Who are you,” he breathed, but she had already melted into the crowd.
--
Equestria Border Guard
Present your documents for entry
We reserve the right to deny access
Illegal immigration is a CRIME
Punishable by prison and deportation
Please keep order
We will punish troublemakers
Twintel had finished reading all of the three posters hanging on the walls. The colours had faded with time, but they were still legible. With a snort, she closed her eyes, before glaring straight ahead. This must have been the fiftieth time she’d found her eyes drifting around the hall.
Nothing had changed since her last scan, of course. No assassins lay in wait. There was no crackle of electricity that heralded a stray ley stream whipping towards her. No sudden splatters of blood against the stone walls.
Her ears only heard the shuffling of hooves against the tiled floor. Her eyes only saw the long lines in front, and behind her. Her nose only smelled the blend of stale, briny seaside air mixing with the sweat of hundreds.
It was all quite normal. She felt her face twist, the corners of her lips turning upwards.
“Next!”
She ignored the frustration and boredom drilled into the immigration officer’s voice as she stepped into the square on the ground in front of her. It was nothing special – simply a different shade of colour than the tiles surrounding it. Faded red inset into sickly green.
Her eyes roved around. The two guards in front glared, boredly, at her. The pony waiting in line behind her simply stared on, vacant eyes half-lidded, as his mouth stretched into a yawn.
She shifted her weight, hooves staying in place. The loose tile she was standing on scraped against the stone below it.
“Name.”
“Twin – Sorry.” She coughed, her greying fringe swaying in front of her face. “Twilight Sparkle.”
Twintel grimaced. She hadn’t used that name in years – no, decades. It felt wrong in her mouth now, bitter and ashen. Foreign. The syllables tied her mouth shut with her tongue.
Both guards in front of her raised their eyebrows, and their eyes lost the glassiness almost instantly. One of them aimed his horn at her, whilst the other walked over to her side. She turned slightly, keeping him in view. The immigration officer was silent, his face unreadable beneath the oversized cap of his uniform – but at least he didn’t seem so bored any more.
“Imitating an individual is a serious offense,” the moving guard said, from his position at her side.
Twintel snorted, her face splitting into a sardonic smile. “So I’ve heard.”
The guard narrowed his eyes, but as he opened his mouth, the voice of the immigration officer cut in. “Scan her.”
The scanning procedure was technically painless, even though the feeling of foreign magic running along her tattoos and nerves made her shiver and sweat. It was like the mithril-based ink had suddenly transformed into ice-cold liquid, flowing in wiry streams that wound around her body. The warm Baltimare sun suddenly burned viciously hot.
The guard’s eyes widened. Twintel raised both eyebrows, tilting her head towards him.
“It’s her,” he finally said, in a near whisper.
There was an ugly, pregnant pause. In the corner of her vision, a shape grew steadily in size.
“Come with us,” someone said, and she turned her head to fully face the golden figure approaching. He was covered in the armour of the Sentinels – the face of the Royal Guard. The golden metal glinted in the shafts of sunlight that punched through the windows at the rear of the hall, where a small crowd was gathering in front of the exits to the port concourse.
The two border guards made way for him. Twintel could see the squad of Sentinels further behind, spreading out with the obvious intent on surrounding her.
In her mind, she knew that if it came down to it, formation wouldn’t save them. There was enough magic in her reserves to kill them all, and after that, to obliterate the platoons that would inevitably follow. And she knew that killing got a lot easier after the first hundred.
“Very well,” she said, and he turned around as the squad assumed a loose arrowhead formation around her. The speaking guard was the tip, and she was at the centre.
Even as they trudged over to an unassuming door set into the side of the hall, she could hear the immigration officer shout out for the next one in line.
The room was a glorified cell. The door swung open, hinges creaking in protest. As Twintel passed it, she could see the many deadbolts set into its frame, silhouetted by the pale blue glow of a merrily humming power gem. A cushion, lumpy and yellowed, sat forlornly against two glaring white walls in a corner. A magical light, sealed with both wards and toughened glass, hung like a small, rounded stalactite from the ceiling. It cast a warm yellow light on the walls and floor.
Twintel stalked over to the cushion, before kicking it towards the centre of the room with a hoof. In the short time that it was near her, she was sure that the smell of urine had diffused into her nose. Perhaps she could clean it magically. She looked up to meet the glare of the last guard in the room, who was in the process of slipping out through the door.
It closed with a solid clunk and the tiniest screech of scraping metal, and flickered blue for a split second as the magical wards’ circuits closed.
A purple glow wrapped around the pillow, lifting it into the air. In a second, the magic dispersed – and the pillow fell, as soft, fluffy and clean as the day it had been made. If only all problems were that easy to solve, she mused.
Shaking her head, Twintel pushed herself to her hooves, and then ambled over to plop herself down on top of the pillow. She watched as displaced air from the collapsing cushion whipped years-old grey lint and hair into little eddies.
The currents changed.
A cough from above drew her eyes, although her ears had already tracked the intruder’s almost silent approach. Twintel closed her eyes and exhaled softly, before blinking them open at the pony before her.
Huh. She was shorter than Twintel remembered.
“What happened to you, my –” the smallest hint of hesitation “– student?”
The newcomer’s voice hadn’t changed over the years at all. It was still soft and light, almost as if she was singing the words out, and exuded care and kindness. Twintel found that she wasn’t surprised at all. It made sense, in fact. The Princess had more than a thousand years’ worth of practice and experience in speaking like this.
Twintel smiled, almost involuntarily, but Celestia’s face remained blank, her eyes wide and full of worry. The memory of an accident in a bright courtyard, back in the day, back when she was Twilight Sparkle –
The unicorn blinked. Twintel shook her head slowly, her eyes drifting towards the door. It was slightly ajar, but she still couldn’t hear anything outside. The wards, she supposed.
She took a deep breath, carefully measuring out her words and balancing her tone. Even then, it sounded empty to her, like she was reading out of a script. “I’m not your student, not anymore. I’ve read the papers, Princess Celestia.”
“Why?” Celestia breathed, almost whispering, the phrase sounding more like a plaintive cry than a question.
Twintel kept silent, turning her head towards the door and showing the side of her head to her Princess. The tattoos shone painfully bright under the room’s harsh lighting, silver-grey stripes that cut through her skin like frozen quicksilver. “I’ve spent twenty years searching for a dragon that, in the end, didn’t exist anymore.
“I’ve spent half my life researching friendship, and the other half going against those very principles.” With a twist of her lips, she inhaled shakily.
“You were right, Princess,” Twintel murmured, her gaze still fixed on the crack between the door and the frame. “Then again…”
Salty, sticky coastal air wormed into her nostrils. The smell wasn’t that different from all the other port cities she’d visited. All of them were pretty much the same.
“You usually are,” Twintel finished.
Celestia sighed, her shoulders slumping slightly against her frame. “I’m sorry, Twilight.”
“Twilight Sparkle is dead.” Twintel glanced at the Princess out of one eye, her voice quiet but even. Soft, yet utterly unshakable. “She was on her deathbed seventeen years ago. But she passed away only a year or two ago.”
Celestia’s eyes widened and her mouth began to draw open into a snarl – but then, she slumped, shifting back into her previous position, wings folding back against her side. “So… who are you?”
“I go by ‘Twintel’, now,” the unicorn replied, strands of grey mane falling over her eyes as she cricked her neck.
“Dimming Ember,” Celestia muttered, shaking her head. Whispers, rumours, and murmurs seemed to rush past her ears. They flicked, and the ghostly sounds disappeared.
Twintel turned her head back to look her former mentor in the eye, her ears flicking. “And don’t be sorry. It wasn’t your fault.”
The Princess held her gaze for a moment, before they both looked away in unison.
“You see, some souls die in battle. Some die in their sleep. And some die for no reason at all,” Twintel murmured, staring into and past a wall. Her tone was conversational, but the look in her eyes wasn’t.
Celestia recognised the stare. It was glassy and distant, looking out to some point no one else could see. The unicorn across from her might as well have been half a world away. In that moment, the Princess knew for sure that her old student wasn’t a metre away, speaking with her, but long lost in the darkness of the Known World.
And there was nothing Celestia could do about it except to try and heal the bits that had remained and returned.
Memories, of a wooden caravan, a desert encampment, a savannah clearing, and a frigid mountain peak, rushed through Twintel’s head. She closed her eyes, feeling the droplets of warmth collect in the corners.
“I’m sure you tried to do the right thing.” Celestia’s voice was as quiet as her own.
Twintel nodded slowly, and drew a wavering breath. She blinked, and suddenly the glistening in her eyes was gone. “Define ‘right’.”
The Sun Princess paused. She’d heard her fair share of such questions, but never once from Twilight. There was already an answer prepared in one of the corners of her vast mind, but she ignored it. Twilight Sparkle never asked a question without a reason deep inside her purple head. Celestia wasn’t sure about Twintel, though.
She settled on, what was in hindsight, the vaguest answer possible. “I’ll know when I see it.”
Twintel made a barking noise that sounded like a cross between a laugh and a sob, and her voice was suddenly bitter and full of venom. “Huh. Then maybe I did do the right thing.”
“I’m sure you did what you had to do.” Suddenly, Celestia found it very difficult to smile. She wasn’t sure she even believed what she was saying.
Twintel was silent for almost ten seconds, before she grunted and turned to face the wall. “No. That’s what everyone says. I didn’t have a duty or an obligation to kill him. I did it because I chose to do it, to save him.”
Celestia licked her dry lips for a moment. Her next few words were edged with horror. “It was Spike, wasn’t it? He was the one. And you killed him.”
Twintel tensed at the name, and turned to fix Celestia with a hard, cold, empty stare. The Sun Princess suddenly remembered how it had felt when she’d done something similar, a little bit more than a thousand years ago. Her heart turned into a ball of ice that sank slowly downwards towards her stomach. She was staring into the abyss, and the abyss stared back at her.
“Yes, it was,” Twintel said, her eyes still boring into the Princess’s own. She licked her lips, tasting non-existent ash on the dry skin. “But that’s OK. I did the right thing.”
Celestia couldn’t stop herself collapsing onto the ground. Her hind knees buckled as memories of Spike flashed through her head in spasms of colour and emotion. Playdates with her and the guards, his first birthday in the castle, the celebration they’d had the first time a little jet of flame had burst out of his mouth. In a split-second, all that and more crashed into the structures holding her mind together. She let herself fall against the wall, like a broken doll tossed aside.
Something inside Twintel cracked, fractured, and then disintegrated into a billion pieces. It was a feeling she’d gotten used to. She didn’t move. Her eyes remained focused on her former mentor as blood pumped languidly around her body, thumping loudly in her ears amidst the silence.
Celestia screamed internally as she tied her rampant, raging emotion into a tight bundle with two thousand years’ worth of discipline and experience, and locked it deep inside a cell in her heart. She could examine it later. The tears lining her face, she brushed off with a quick hoof. The crown on her head, she nudged until it sat where it felt right again.
Right on top of her head.
“I should have known,” the Princess muttered, her breathing hitching for just a moment before she regained control. Her face was frozen with shock that was melting into sorrow. Her eyes were unfocused, vacant. “The Guard search party simply disappeared. I should have seen it coming. I should have…”
Now that Twintel thought about it, there had been a small mention of a missing Equestrian military expedition in one of the newspapers about a decade and a half ago. The only reason she’d remembered it was because she’d sworn she’d seen some of the ponies in the picture before. You and me both, Princess, she thought bitterly.
Her ethereal, glowing mane fluttered weakly as she sighed, the sound mixing with the imaginary, far-away hiss of breaking waves. “They were my best. And so were you,” she said, looking forlornly at Twintel. “Why? How did it come to this?”
“I saved him,” Twintel murmured. “It was the right thing to do. It has to be.”
“You saved him from himself,” Celestia replied, equally softly, shaking her head insistently. Neither pony could meet the eyes of the other. “Had you turned around, many more would have died, and the world would have been –” she swallowed, face creased “– a worse place.”
Twintel’s laugh was mirthless, flavoured like ash and sounding almost like choked sobs. “Maybe. But I’d learned to become selfish when I was searching for him. Altruism doesn’t happen out there, Princess, as I’m sure you know. I’m sure it wasn’t my morals that led me to choose this.
“I’d lost track of who I was on my journey. I adopted measures that were once unpalatable. Intimidation turned into violence, violence into bloodshed, bloodshed into murder. In the end, I wasn’t me anymore. And S-Spike… he’d taken a parallel path.
“Maybe I’d lost sight of my goal, too. Maybe my definition of ‘mercy’ and ‘salvation’ had changed over the years. Maybe I wanted to play the hero again. I don’t know for sure.
“But I knew this for sure – if it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else. You and I both have seen the bounty. I’d seen his scales covered in blood, and that was the result of just twenty years. And I didn’t want him to suffer any more.
“If I’d left the mountaintop, he wouldn’t have left with me. He’d gone too far – for everyone. Even existing was a death sentence. You know, it’s ironic… the greed-growth both saved his life, and condemned him to death.
“Still, in hindsight, if I’d left, maybe I wouldn’t be feeling so empty now. Maybe I wouldn’t be suffering now. Maybe I could just forget about him. Well, that didn’t work in the year I’d waited before setting out on this whole misadventure. Now? Now, I don’t know…
“I knew, eventually, he was going to fall. The only difference would be who dealt the killing blow. Death by a thousand sword-slashes or a single blast? I made the choice for him. You might not think that’s ‘right’, but in the end, it was down to me, and I made the choice.”
Celestia listened to all of this, her mouth hanging open slightly and her eyes wrinkled. Emotions she’d thought long buried were whirling around her head, taunting her, telling her that she’d failed yet again. She couldn’t do much but nod mutely, processing all that she’d heard and discarding the answer. This couldn’t be happening.
Twintel’s voice had cracked at the end, and she growled, suppressing a scream of frustration and despair that clawed at her throat. Several haggard breaths later, she coughed, and settled into a practiced, neutral stance. Her voice was still in a murmur. “Any more questions, Princess?”
For the shortest span of time, a whisper of a smile spread across Celestia’s lips, but it never quite reached her eyes. “Why did you choose to come back?”
Twintel looked at the Princess, her face haunted. “I wanted to go home.”
The Princess’s own breath shook slightly. “What you want isn’t always what you get.”
“No. But you can always hope.” And sometimes, that’s all you have. A little ember of hope.
Celestia took a moment to simply exhale and inhale, blinking her eyes open before smiling just the smallest smile. Twintel could see how forced it was. The corners of her lips were the knots in a tug of war, with sorrow seeking to drag it down and willpower trying to resist the inevitable. “Very well. By the way, you have some old friends that want to see you.”
Old friends? Twintel racked her brain. Fuzzy shapes took form from the blackness that was her mind, but they didn’t sharpen into anything resembling comprehensible faces. The shapes weighed down on her brain like lead on paper, and she found herself pushing the images away before she sank into the darkness.
“Follow me,” Celestia said, her horn glowing as the door swung open under a sheen of gold.
For a second, Twintel’s mind flashed back to a memory. A field of golden flakes hung above her head, like burning, brilliant amber leaves spinning off into the black heavens.
She blinked, shaking her head, and recovered to see Celestia’s two magenta eyes stare down at her in concern.
“I’m following,” Twintel replied. The words bounced around her head for a fraction of a second before her ear twitched. “Ah. Apologies, Princess.”
Celestia’s frown deepened, and her eyes hardened into amethysts for just the briefest of flickers. “Twil –”
Twintel’s chest tightened, as if someone had clamped it in between a vice and was slowly applying pressure. Her face felt frozen in its blankness, as if the muscles were twitching beneath but the skin remained frustratingly rigid.
The princess closed her eyes, breathed in, and her face fell back into blank neutrality. “Twintel, there’s no need to call me that.” That forced smile slid off her face, to reveal the tiredness beneath. “Despite everything, I still –” she paused momentarily “– care for you.”
The same way you care for all your subjects. “Of course, Princess,” Twintel replied, after a moment’s hesitation. No bitterness at that, just a mutual understanding.
If Celestia picked up on that short pause, she didn’t show any sign of it as she walked through the doorway. Twintel pushed herself up to her hooves, hardened herself, and trotted behind her former mentor.
Another memory, of a bright and sunny Canterlot summer’s day –
She deepened her frown, eyes flicking between each guard as her hooves propelled her forwards at a sedate pace.
“Please walk alongside me, Twintel,” Celestia murmured, from up ahead.
Twintel did so. Experience had taught her that it was unwise to disregard a royal’s request. Especially so when she was surrounded by loyal guards. For some reason, that made one of her remaining heartstrings twinge with just the slightest hint of discomfort.
They walked out through a wide doorway into the public concourse. One path in the middle was bordered by guards and official tape, and on both sides, photographers stood with massive cameras poking out over their heads. The devices flashed like twinkling stars – or sparkling scales.
She kept walking forwards, ignoring the yelps as the Sentinels shoved the crowd back, the heat of hundreds of bodies and the gazes from a thousand eyes.
One of the guards opened the main door for them, and they walked on through. Celestia paused to thank the guard, who chuckled nervously – Twintel merely stood stock still, keeping her eyes forwards.
Light poured through the open doorway, almost burning in its intensity. She looked down, at the shadow cast by the doorframe. Light and dark, side-by-side, and all she had to do to go from one side to another would be few steps.
Hope sparked, deep inside her, the ember that refused to die. But like all fires, it’s a double edged sword. It can keep you going through the darkest times – and it can grow and morph to destroy you, and everyone around you.
She could almost feel Celestia’s soft, sad glance at the top of her head. At least it wasn’t an axe, she thought grimly, her lips twisting upwards. And then she stepped forwards, out of the dark and into the light.
White filled her vision for a moment.