Azeroth's Skies

by TerrabreakerX


Bereft (Act I Prologue)

“It is getting too close! All of Ponyville is at risk!”

“This is not a natural storm you guys! My weather teams can’t handle it at all!”

“Oh, what about all of the animals?”

“My magic isn’t enough to deal with this alone, and I can’t get through to Canterlot… What if this is happening all over Equestria?”

“Twilight, what’re we going to do?”

“Gather the elements. We’ll face this head on.”

She stood outside the school, waiting nervously for the others. A third of the town was huddled inside; another third had made it out to the Apple family farm, and the remainder was sheltered inside the town hall.

“P-Princess T-T-Twilight?” A small voice spoke up, and she found a wide-eyed young colt, trembling by her feet.

“Hmm? Oh - yes, Pipsqueak?”

“I-Is everything going to be all right?” he asked.

Hopeful.

Desperate.

“…Everything’s going to be fine. I promise! Go back inside the school to your mother,” Twilight replied, with a smile that she hoped was strong and sure enough to banish the darkness.

She let it droop as he turned around and scurried away.

She didn't know that everything would be fine. But what else could she say?

“It’s not enough! This darn storm just ain’t goin’ away!” Applejack exclaimed.

“It’s like when you get a whirlpool at the bottom of a bathtub where the water drains away but you keep adding water so it never stops and you never want it to stop because you’re having too much fun watching the swirly water and—” Pinkie babbled.

“All together, girls!" Twilight rallied them. "One last try! For Ponyville!”

They raised the elements to the sky.

“For Ponyville!”


Drip. Drip.

Princess Celestia blinked to clear her eyes, and frowned down at the parchment now stained by the salty moisture. Concentrating, she focused her magic and carefully drew the liquid out of the material, returning it to how it had been before.

The tears had sprung unbidden once more. It had made writing the other letters even more difficult than they already had been, but this was the last.

“That is Twilight’s, is it not?” She turned to regard the owner of the voice, who had entered behind her without announcement. Her sister’s voice and patterns of speech were unmistakable.

“It is. I left hers til last,” she answered, realising that her sister had trotted up next to her and was waiting patiently for a response while her own thoughts had drifted. Seeing the other pony nod sympathetically, she sighed. “I apologise, dear sister. I have been finding it… hard. To concentrate.” She finished lamely, having not intended to break up the sentence.

Princess Luna nodded again in return and reached over to comfort her. “We all have, sister.”

It had been a week since… the incident, and Celestia had only truly come to accept it as fact at all in the hours before beginning the letters. Even now she still half-expected to hear the unmistakable pop of a message delivered by dragonflame, as Equestria’s youngest Princess sought her advice on what was usually a matter of trivia. But no letters had come for seven days, and, regardless, the usual messenger was only downstairs.

Spike was sleeping now, as far as she was aware. She hoped so. She’d never seen anypony, let alone a dragon, shed tears for so long.

It was so very sad indeed.

“Even though we are sending these letters, it does not mean that we have given up hope.” Luna reminded her, and she nodded slowly. They had found no evidence of anything hinting at their worst fears, after all, and to a certain extent that was a good thing. And yet, neither could shake the feeling that if they were to find something they would have found it by now. The trail already felt cold.

But they couldn’t let despair win. And the kingdom still had to be run as it ever had.

“You are right. Perhaps some miracle…” she trailed off, and returned to writing in silence for a time. With a final flick of the quill, she finished the letter, taking extra care not to spill the ink as she returned it to the drawer. Her telekinesis could at best be described as ‘shaky’ at the moment, to say the least. “Now only one task remains.” And it was the one she had been dreading the most. “Will you help me, sister?”

Luna knew what she had to do, and why she needed help. “Of course,” she replied.

Together, they sat and read back the final letter, and neither could hold in the waterworks this time.

It is my sad and solemn duty to inform you of the disappearance of your daughter, Princess Twilight Sparkle; missing, and currently presumed deceased.


A week later, and the whole kingdom was in mourning.

The news had been slow to spread at first; no-pony had actually seen the Elements’ sacrifice. But gossip, once it begins to take root, is impossible to quash completely.

After two days, ponies had started to become suspicious. The Ponyville library had remained closed since the storm, its curtains drawn. Rarity’s shop had been much the same. The Cakes had refused to talk about Pinkie Pie, and simply carried on with strained smiles and the slightest of dark shadows around their eyes. Big Mac didn’t make his daily rounds but was seen shouldering the chores his sister customarily performed. Something was definitely up.

Three days was all it took for somepony to snap, and that somepony ended up being Apple Bloom. For most of the week, the Cutie Mark Crusaders had sat silently in class to the concern of Cheerilee, but the floodgates had opened when Diamond Tiara had taken a fairly standard argument one step too far with a disparaging remark about the Apple Family.

Before anypony else could react, before anypony could stop her, and in front of the entire class, Apple Bloom had bellowed back, “You wouldn’t say that if ya knew that my sister might be dead!” Stunned silence had followed as Apple Bloom had clapped her hooves over her mouth... but too late. The damage had been done.

The news had spread from the classroom across Ponyville like wildfire, eventually forcing the princesses to come clean.

Yes, the bearers of the Elements of Harmony had disappeared.

No, they had not been ripped apart by a pack of wild manticores. And, Princess Luna said with the barest hint of grief-fuelled steel in her voice, the rulers of Equestria did not appreciate such horrible scaremongering.

Yes, the bearers had disappeared while using their powers to disperse a magical cyclone approaching Ponyville, and that was all that was known.

The princesses had asked for calm and, after a short period of panic, they had finally received it. They begged their subjects not to give into despair and that there was always hope to be found even in the darkest of circumstances.

The weeks turned into months, and nothing changed.


The funeral finally took place six months later.

It was a state affair but was held outside Ponyville, not far from Kindness’s cottage. Anywhere else would have felt almost inappropriate.

It was nationally attended, but not so internationally; Equestria’s newest Princess hadn’t made too much of a splash on the world stage. Even so, representatives arrived from the griffon, minotaur and dragon communities and – of course – the Crystal Empire, all to pay their respects to those who had saved the day on many occasions.

The guests of honour filed into a clearing that had been carefully prepared for the day; not that it had needed to be opened up. The cyclone, in its dying throes, had done that for them.

Indeed, as far as they could tell, the site of the funeral was the last known location of the bearers themselves, before they had so mysteriously disappeared.

Beyond the clearing, ponyfolk gathered for miles around, quietly trotting into place as the hours ticked down to the appointed time.

It was a good day for such an open-air, outdoors event. Clear skies had been scheduled and duly arranged by the local weather teams, and it fell at the time of year when Princess Celestia would only allow the sun to climb to a certain height, to maintain the balance of nature that was their charge.

Outside the visiting dignitaries, the gathering was limited to the close friends and family of those lost – those who had truly lost the most. Twilight’s parents, Applejack’s immediate family, as much of the Pie clan that could be contacted, the Cakes… Fluttershy's parents were even joined by a gathering of the animals she had loved and given so much to… and Discord, whose genuine sobs were causing random bursts of chaos around the area that he constantly had to fix.

When the time came, all were silent, and all were still for what Princess Celestia had to say.

“Friends, one and all,” she began. “We are gathered here to mourn the loss that this nation, this world, has sustained and that we who knew them best have borne most of all. As you all know, half a year ago, a number of magical storms of collected, out-of-control nature magic formed across Equestria. Most dissipated harmlessly. A few had to be contained by experts, or by weather teams, where they could.

"One, not far from Canterlot, required the personal intervention of Princess Luna and myself. The personification of Chaos, Discord, vanquished another in the area of Manehattan.” Where Discord might have once gloated, now he merely looked despondent. “And another… threatened Ponyville directly.” She paused, and swallowed; this was the hardest part.

“Had it been left unchecked, the storm would have ripped its way across the town and most likely left nothing in its wake. Princess Twilight Sparkle realised this danger, and she and her friends went to confront it directly. Together, using the power of their elements, they succeeded in breaking the storm’s power… at the apparent cost of their own lives.

“I say ‘apparent’ because we have still found no evidence that those on the scene perished in the storm. We have always held out hope that they might be found, or might return.” And now for the worst news she had to offer.

“But a new development has come to light that cannot be ignored. The Elements have returned to the Tree of Harmony, and have turned, which, we can imagine, would mean…” she trailed off at the sound of a quiet sob.

Looking down to her right, the Princess spotted Spike, having done so well up to this point, break back into tears again. The dragon would be living either in Canterlot Castle or the Crystal Empire from now on. Or he might stay, with some supervision, in Ponyville Library. It was all up to him.

Steeling herself, determined to avoid doing the same as he was now, she continued her well-rehearsed speech. “The elements will return to activity once suitable replacements can be found; until then, Princess Luna, Princess Cadance and I will do our best to wield them through any crises which require them. But their return is the reason that we decided to finally hold this funeral… an attempt to find the slightest measure of closure, if any of us can.”

The introduction out of the way, the Princess of the Sun beckoned to her sister, who stood at the podium and cleared a clogged throat.

“We now begin the ceremony with a memorial display by the Wonderbolts, followed by tributes to the seven ponies that died in this tragedy.”

The crowd looked to the sky as the three ponies in blue and yellow darted and danced in the morning, sorrowfully weaving their well-planned routine.

The tribute to Rainbow Dash followed immediately after, read out by a shaking Scootaloo to her “best big sister ever” with Cheerilee standing close by.

Fluttershy’s came next, given by Discord. In contrast to the young pegasus before him, the draconequus performed his by heart (or on the fly, it was hard to tell), took nearly five times as long and stopped midway through for a mournful song-and-dance number.

“S-she was the b-best, k-kindest f-friend you could ask for!” he finished at last, blowing his nose and showering one of the ambassadors from Griffonia in actual snow.

The other tributes went on afterwards, though none were quite as long or… flashy. At last, it was time for Twilight’s. Cadance had offered to do it for her, but Celestia had demurred, and then eventually begged. United as they were in grief, the Princess of Love had backed down at last.

She moved to the front of the stage again, trotting up to the podium with as much decorum as she could muster – which had become increasingly difficult to maintain as each family or group had burst into tears in front of her.

She cleared her throat and allowed the magic to slip through her veins into her horn as it glowed her signature white. In response, the sun crept a few more inches into the sky over the treeline; not enough to blind the audience, but enough to bathe the platform in glorious light.

“Many of you knew Princess Twilight Sparkle personally, or had some sort of close connection to her,” she started at last. “Apart from her immediate family, and her dragon-ward, Spike, I hope it would not be immodest to claim that I knew her best; her insecurities, her fears, her flaws… and her hopes and dreams, her conscientiousness, her charm and above all her light as well. I was most hopeful for her future.

“To have such promise shattered, then, is a terrible, heart-wrenching blow,” Celestia went on as she noticed Twilight Velvet and Night Light, Twilight’s parents, hugging tightly in the crowd, their faces hidden from view, with Shining Armor trying his best to comfort them. “But we must not in our grief forget that she died doing what she and her friends have done multiple times over the past few years – they saved a little corner of the world from harm. Their sacrifice saved this corner of the world from harm.

“All we can do is do our best to acknowledge and emulate their example through our grief; as hard as I know it may seem. Their kindness. Their generosity. Their loyalty. Their honesty. Their good humour. And the magic of friendship which they embodied best. We can be thankful for the second chance they have granted us. And most of all, we will not forget them.”

As one, the crowd solemnly intoned the names of the fallen, and then repeated Celestia’s final remark.

“We will not forget them.”

And that was that. The nearby, waiting Ponyville Orchestral Group struck up a funeral march and the gathering slowly dispersed.

It hadn’t been a standard funeral, but Celestia imagined that the families and friends would make their own arrangements. This had been about one last display of gratitude to heroines cut far too soon from the cloth.

Now, at last, as she stood at the edge of the platform and closed her eyes, did the bringer of the morning sun allow the tears to fall down her face, to feel the emotion that she had been holding back for six months at the loss of her little ponies.

The grief might never go away, but at least she could try to deal with it. And accepting that Twilight was gone would be a start.

Gone, perhaps. But not forgotten. Never forgotten.


Far elsewhere…

The first thing that Twilight knew as she woke up was pain. Pain in her head, to be specific. It felt like somepony had taken a blunt object to her skull and it had somehow bounced off, but not without causing some kind of damage.

She raised a hand to her forehead, keeping her hair out of the way and her eyes firmly shut. Don’t want to over-stimulate the nerves when they’re already in pain.

Her memories came back slowly at first, and then rushed through in bits and pieces. The cyclone… her friends all running out to stop it with the elements of harmony… a terrible, soul-wrenching ache as they had been swept up in it… and then everything had faded to black.

But where am I now?

The ground below her felt earthy, and she could smell it clearly; she was lying on her back in the dirt. The fresh air, the chirping birds; they all said to her that she was in a forest of some kind. Maybe we were only flung into the Everfree forest?

It was at this point that Twilight began to realise that something was wrong. Still wary of opening her eyes, she raised her hand back to her head and rubbed her temple, trying to dull the pain for a second and break into blissful clarity.

Wait. Hold up.

Hair?

Hands?!

She opened her eyes, took one look at herself, and screamed out loud.