//------------------------------//
// Epilogue 
// Story: Silver Gaze: the Pony Who Would be King 
// by FireOfTheNorth 
//------------------------------//


Epilogue


Celestia stared through the blizzard, searching for any sign of the once great city.  Eventually she sighed, giving up.  The Crystal Empire was gone, and it was unlikely it would ever return.  She and Luna may have defeated King Sombra, but in the end he’d still had his revenge, causing the Empire to vanish.  But he hadn’t taken everything.  Before everything had disappeared around them, Celestia had managed to recover two items: a single crystal from the throne room and a thick tome filled with recipes for every potion Silver Gaze had ever created.  

“Nopony must ever know the truth about King Sombra,” she said to her younger sister, levitating the book, “If so, then all of Silver Gaze’s work will be tainted.  Alchemy would be set back centuries.”  

“Agreed,” Luna replied, “Silver Gaze must be remembered as a visionary, not a tyrant.”  

“My only regret is that we weren’t able to save the Empire’s inhabitants,” Celestia said, “That, and we never figured out what dark magic Sombra used to become more powerful.  I guess any hints were destroyed with him, and the world’s safe from that darkness ever rising again.”  

“Yes, I suppose so,” Luna replied, but she didn’t tell her sister that she too had recovered a book from the Empire before it disappeared, a book bound in pony hide and written in blood.  


*     *     *


Dear Twilight Sparkle,

I’m sorry that I cannot help you in this matter.  Silver Gaze was not widely known or renowned until after his death, so there is no record of the later years of his life.  Even I have no idea what happened to him, being otherwise occupied at the time.  I regret to tell you that nopony may ever know what happened to Silver Gaze, but the most important thing is that his life’s work survived to this day.  How he died or what he did in his later years is of no importance when compared to what he accomplished before then for the good of all ponykind.  

Your faithful mentor,
Princess Celestia