“Something... something happened, Twilight. Discord put a spell on me... just like the spell that Spike told me Discord put on the rest of you girls. Only, with me, it was stupid... a different kind of stupid. The moment he messed with my head, I was absolutely certain that Cloudsdale was going to collapse, and... and that the only thing that would stop everypony in the city from dying would be me. So, I dropped everything that I was doing—the maze game, the bet with Discord, the hunt for the Elements—and I just... flew. I flew as fast as I could to Cloudsdale, and all the while I was there, I was convinced that the city was on the verge of collapse and needed my help. Ponies looked at me like I was crazy. I don't blame them, because I pretty much was... at least until Discord's spell ended. And that's when I got another vision altogether. And I saw... I saw...”
“What, Rainbow?” Twilight asked, leaning forward from where she stood at Rainbow's bedside. “What did you see?”
Rainbow Dash bit her lip. Her ears folded back as she finally mewled: “I saw the death of harmony.”
Twilight blinked. Her eyes thinned as she pointed. “But... but you're wearing—”
“It's not the same.” Rainbow shook her head and rested a hoof on her neck. “It's just a relic now. The Elements are gone. The rest of them. All gone.”
“… … …gone?
“And... like... I sensed it too.” Rainbow gulped. “I saw it. The last time the Elements graced this earth, they all connected to me—to the pony I had become ever since you, me, and the rest of the girls took down Nightmare Moon. And... and I saw...”
Silence.
“I... I had tried to use the Elements,” Twilight Sparkle said. “The girls and I. So much of us were affected by Discord, but... b-but I figured that our possessing most of the Elements of Harmony would be enough to undo the damage we had done.” She gulped. “Even though you weren't with us, I figured your loyalty would be there in spirit.”
“Do you remember anything else?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Why... w-wouldn't I remember anything, Rainbow?”
She simply stared at Twilight.
Twilight leaned back, blinking. “Well, I remember confronting Discord... and him looking at us funny—wait...” She blinked, staring out the window, gazing upon the waves glittering with blood red malaise. “I... I was floating? But... how? Did we cast the Harmony spell yet? Spike was there. He...”
Her words trailed off, and it was eerily silent again.
Rainbow hung her head, staring into the duvet atop the bed.
Twilight glanced at her hoof. Casually, she pressed it up against a wall of the suite, only for it to phase through. She turned towards Rainbow. “You said the Elements are gone.” Twilight's brow furrowed. “Is that all that disappeared?”
Rainbow's face tensed. Her wings coiled tightly at her side.
Twilight took a deep breath. “Rainbow, I need you to be—”
“There was nothing left, Twilight,” the mare finally blurted. “No flesh. No blood. Not even a shred of mane hair.” She looked up, eyes glossy. “Ash, Twilight. All that was left was ash.” She gnashed her teeth. “Discord blew you all to smithereens! He... he d-did something to reflect the Harmony Spell or he booby-trapped the Elements before you found them or he made all of your blood boil. Whatever. The point is, I wasn't there when you guys needed me the most!”
“Rainbow...”
“And you all friggin' blew up because of it!” Rainbow stammered. “Because I failed at being loyal! Because I—”
“Rainbow, just slow down!” Twilight raised her voice, waving a hoof between them. “Just... please. This doesn't make sense! Why would the Elements of Harmony... blow up from feedback?”
“I don't know, Twilight—”
“And Discord—for all his power—is nothing but a chaos lord! The Elements of Harmony had been used to successfully imprison him in stone before! Princess Celestia herself told us so!” Twilight began pacing in a tiny circle, passing through the edges of furniture with small lavender bursts of light. “If anything, chaos and harmony would cancel each other out! One couldn't possibly obliterate the other!” She spun about, gawking. “Tell me how that's even remotely possible?”
“I don't know, okay?!” Rainbow barked. The windows rattled. “But it happened! One moment, you were there—with the Elements—trying to stop Discord, and then the next—POW! Gone!” She shuddered, teeth clenched. “I flew to Ponyville as quickly as I could the very moment Discord's spell faded from my head, but... but it was too late. You and the girls, were...” He voice dwindled into a pitiable squeak. “You were gone, Twilight.” She sighed, her hooves resting over the pendant. “This is all that's left... this and me.”
Twilight gazed at Rainbow in silence... and past her.
Rainbow sniffled. With a disgruntled sigh, she stripped Luna's saddlebag off, tossed it into the corner, and buried her face into the bedcovers. “… … … I always feared that someday I'd lose you guys... but all at the same time?” She shuddered. “I couldn't stay in Ponyville, Twilight.”
“Mmm... Rainbow...” The unicorn blinked dazedly, waving her hoof yet again. “Wait. Just wait.”
“There... there was nothing for me there. You've no idea. I... n-never really told you girls—”
“Why am I here, then?” Twilight cocked her head aside, her face awash with confusion. “I mean... think about it. If something Discord did destroyed the Elements, then how come you've still got your pendant in one piece?”
“I dunno,” Rainbow muttered. “Luck, I guess?”
“Oh, I'm sure it's much more than that!” Twilight's voice picked up, taking on an exciting pitch for once. She paced around once more as she said, “The Element of Loyalty is in one piece, and so are you! So am I! Well...” Twilight paused to fidget, phasing her hoof through the bed's headboard. “Somewhat. Still, it has to mean something.”
“Yeah,” Rainbow grumbled. “That life is a cruel joke.”
“Will you stop being so negative for one second?!” Twilight's voice crackled. “Seriously, this is not like you!”
“Mrmmmfff...” Rainbow rubbed her eyes with a tired hoof. “Twilight...”
“You've obviously been on your own for a very long time. I've... I've got no clue what all that 'killed by a dragon' nonsense is about, but maybe... j-just maybe... and hear me out.” Twilight slid up to the edge of the bed, eyes wide as she said: “Maybe the Elements didn't vanish!”
“What.” Rainbow looked up, glaring.
“Well, I'm here, aren't I?!” Twilight grinned wide, stretching her forelimbs out as she leaned back. “Or at least I'm coming back, for lack of a better term! That's gotta mean something!”
“Twilight...”
“Perhaps it means that the Elements didn't disappear so much as they just... went elsewhere.” Twilight spun about, tapping her lavender chin as she stared out the sun-lit window. “Perhaps they went into the magical leylines that bind Equestria! Perhaps they went back into the special place where Princess Celestia held them in storage!” She spun around, grinning as she pointed at Rainbow's pendant. “Perhaps they even went into you!”
“I... I don't know—”
“Rainbow, don't you know what this means?!” Twilight chirped. “So long as you're wearing that pendant, there's still a link to the Elements of Harmony! A living, flying link! And-and... if we just figure out Discord's connection, then we can—yes—we can maybe find a way to extract the other Elements from your pendant! The other girls, Rainbow! Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Applejack—”
“That's all very... uh...”
“Tell me, Rainbow, where's Discord?”
Rainbow Dash winced viciously.
“The world seems to be in one piece! So you obviously defeated him! Tell me—did Celestia and Luna find a way to intervene?” Twilight grinned. “Or did you and Spike figure out a solution all on your lonesome?”
“There's... I mean, Discord's...” Rainbow pawed the bed with her hooves, avoiding Rainbow's gaze. “...he... won't be helping us out anytime soon.”
“Well, maybe not if we were silly enough to ask the guy! But I'm sure some persuasion would work! Some Harmonic persuasion!” Twilight smiled and winked. “After all, if you found a way to defeat him—”
“No, Twilight, I mean... there... th-there isn't any of him left to talk to,” Rainbow muttered. “He... he's gone too.”
Twilight blinked, muzzle agape. “But... but how?” She gulped. “I thought you said the Elements had been obliterated along with us when—”
“He... was obliterated too.” Rainbow tightly bit her lip.
Twilight stared at her.
Rainbow gazed back. “… … …I did it.”
Twilight's eyes twitched. “Did... d-did what?”
Rainbow's mouth opened. After a lingering breath, she spoke in a dull tone: “I destroyed Discord.”
Twilight leaned back, raising a dainty hoof as she squinted nervously at the pegasus. “...define 'destroyed.'”
Rainbow's nostrils flared. Fuming, she said, “I showed up in time to see him laughing over your ashes. Spike was in tears. Ponyville was all... everywhere. So I... p-picked up my element from Spike, flew circles through whatever traces of Harmonic energy was at the scene and... and I turned him back to stone.”
“… … …”
“And then I shattered that stone.” Rainbow spat, “To bits.”
Twilight's jaw dropped.
“He's gone, Twilight,” Rainbow muttered, glaring out the window. “Discord's gone and he's never coming back.”
The hairs on the back of Twilight's neck raised. Nevertheless, it was in a quiet, meek tone that she spoke, leaning forward. “Rainbow... Discord... h-he may have been evil, reckless, and diabolical... but he was still a thinking, breathing creature. You... you can't just destroy that!”
“I did, okay?” Rainbow grumbled. “So let it rest—”
“How can I let it rest, Rainbow?!” Twilight spoke through chattering teeth. “What you did... it... it w-was murder!”
“And just what do you call what he did to you and the rest of the girls, Twilight?! 'Dodge ball?!'”
“Doesn't matter, Rainbow!” Twilight frowned, spitting. “It wasn't the right thing to do! It wasn't the Harmonic thing!”
“Twilight, the Elements were gone!” Rainbow hollered back, causing the unicorn to flinch. “They still are! Discord took them away just like he took you the girls and everything away from me and I...” She paused, shuddering. “...I killed him... yes. I did.” She leaned back, swallowing a lump down her throat. Her frown was a calm but unwavering. “And... because of it... because of what I did... a chaos rift opened up in Ponvyille, a rift that's still there in the heart of Equestria to this day. Celestia's having to look after it full time, giving the throne over to Princess Luna. And as for me... well...” She clutched the golden pendant once more. “I don't wear this just to look pretty, y'know. A piece of Discord infected me... making me about as worse off as the chaos rift itself. I couldn't stay in Ponyville for long without risking the rift growing bigger... not like I wanted to stay there anyways... with you and everypony else gone and I...”
Twilight watched... watched and listened... her muzzle quivering.
Rainbow took a deep breath. “I looked for the first friggin' excuse I could find and I went for it. Somewhere, somehow, I got Princess Luna to tell me about this special place on the dark side of the world called the 'Midnight Armory.' Apparently no mortal has ever gone there and come back to tell the tale. So... I said to myself 'Hey, cool, there's something awesome and dangerous that I'll probably never live through before I reached it.' And I picked a horizon and I flew. And... and I've seen a lot of ugly things, Twilight. I've been through a lot of bad places. Like... really bad. There have been some great, wonderful ponies along the way...” She paused slightly, her voice cracking, “...and some really, really awesome friends. But...” An even deeper breath. “So much ugliness... and most of it in myself, because the one truly best thing in this world—you gals—were gone, and... and I just couldn't afford to be the pegasus you once knew. There was nothing left to be loyal to in Ponyville... and all I could do was dirty up that place even more with what I had done to Discord... and what he had done to me... to all of us... so... so I flew and I flew and I flew and... here we are...”
Dead silence.
The sun continued setting beyond the waves, disappearing in the distance, until the sky was a purple blanket—fading much like the sheen in Twilight's lavender coat right then.
“You... you just kept flying?” Twilight shook her head in disbelief. “...towards the ends of the earth? But... how... I mean...” She blinked. Hard. “For how long? How far?”
Rainbow shrugged, sighing. “I've... lost count of the continents.”
“C-continents?”
“And, for real, it's been over a year. I know that much for certain. Pilate was always way better at guestimating the time, anyways.”
“Who?”
“Ever since the funeral, I just kept flying for the east horizon and didn't look back.”
“Funeral?! Rainbow, could you slow down again?! This is a lot to—” Twilight froze in place. Her lips parted. “Funeral...” She slowly turned around to gape at the pegasus.
Rainbow awkwardly shrugged. “Well, what did you expect, Twilight?” She gulped. “You were... dead. As far as we could tell, dead as a doornail. I'm... I-I'm still hung up on just exactly what you are right now...”
Twilight stared at her. She gulped. “Was... was my family...?”
Rainbow slowly nodded. “Your Mom. Your dad. Some pretty boy stallion with a minty mane...”
“Shining...” Twilight Sparkle exhaled. “He... they all thought... think...?”
“It's... not all bad, though!” Rainbow struggled to smile. “I mean, Shining... Armor, was it? Yeah... according to Luna, he got hitched with some chick named Cadance—”
“Wait—huh? He's married?”
“And Spike—you don't have to worry about him! He's the official librarian of Ponyville! At least, assuming the chaos rift hasn't swallowed up the tree house by now and—”
“Stop!” Twilight darted towards the window, covering a hoof over her eyes, seething. “Just... j-just stop, Rainbow! It's too much. It's... it's...” She suddenly blanched, staring at the glass separating them from the verdant grounds outside. She raised her hoof, but there was no reflection. A tear rolled down her face as she stammered, “It's... it's all my fault.”
Rainbow's throat instantly went sore.
“I... I'm the reason for this,” Twilight murmured. “For all of this.” She sniffled, her eyes tearing more and more. “If... if I hadn't been so impatient with wanting to defeat Discord. If I hadn't had such a low tolerance for the way my friends acted under his spell...”
“Twilight...” Rainbow crawled down from the bed, wincing. “Just... just listen—”
“No, Rainbow, I've listened enough! The evidence all points to one damning conclusion!” Twilight hiccuped and quivered, the dam breaking. “I... I should have waited for you, Rainbow. I shouldn't have used the Elements so soon. And... and just look...” She flung her hooves forward, watching as they whiffed through the solid glass window. “I'm nothing. I can't even cast a shadow. And my family... Shining... Spike...” She whimpered, covering her muzzle as she collapsed to the floor in tears. “Mrmmmff... I killed them, Rainbow. I killed our friends... and I-I killed myself!” She sobbed into her forelimbs. “You didn't murder anypony, I did!”
“Dang it, Twilight, don't—” She reached forward, only for her hoof to reach through Twilight's body. She clenched her eyes shut, cussing beneath a seething breath. Then, reopening her moist eyes, she simply leaned forward and spread her wings until they felt like they were wrapped around the mourning phantom. “I know you're feeling like crap right now. And even if you don't believe me when I tell you that you've got absolutely, positively no reason to—Twilight—then at least listen to me when I tell you this. A lot of time has gone by, during which I have seen more things and learned more things than written about in all of your letters to Celestia combined and—”
Twilight continued sobbing.
“Listen to me!” Rainbow growled into Twilight's ear, causing the ghostly unicorn to flinch, wet eyes lifting. “Life is a crazy, bucked-up journey, but so long as you do nothing but blame yourself, then you make no ground whatsoever! I don't care how far you fly! So cry over our friends if you like. Cry over me, if it makes you feel better, but if you think for a second about blaming yourself—I swear—I'm gonna rip this—” She grasped the edges of the pendant. “—ssstupid thing off my neck and grind it to dust with my hooves. I don't care the consequences! Cuz that's not the way to go about this, Twilight, and if you continue calling yourself those things, then there's no point in figuring anything else out, cuz then we'll know that we've officially given up! And is that what we want?!”
“Rainbow, I—”
“Is that what Celestia would want?!”
Twilight blinked. She sniffled, then murmured, “I... I don't know anymore. But... but you...?”
“I know what Celestia wants,” Rainbow said. “I know what Luna wants! I know so much that you couldn't possibly write it down even if you had all the pens and paper on this freakin' world! But if I'm going to fill you in on it, then we're going to have to do this one step at a time! And it starts with you dropping the guilty card! Do you hear me?!”
“I...” Twilight sucked her breath in, nodding shakily. “I hear... I hear...”
“Nnngh...” Rainbow sighed, leaning in with her wings again. “Just shut up, egghead. Let it out. Whatever.” Rainbow gazed lethargically out the darkening window. “We'll start in the morning if we have to.”
Twilight nodded, trembling less less. “'Kay...” She laid down, relaxing in Rainbow's protective shadow. “Okay. In the morning.”
“Yeah. Just... just try and rest,” Rainbow muttered. “Can... can you even do that? I mean... erm...”
“Thanks to you, I can...” In the midst of her tears, Twilight maintained a single smirk. “You... you're still you... y'know?”
“Hmmm?”
“For a moment there, on the island, on the beach... across the campus...” Twilight shuddered. “I was scared. I thought I had lost you the very moment that I found you. But now... now I see... I feel...”
“Shhh...” Rainbow murmured, closing her wings in tighter, the feathers phasing slightly through the unicorn, lighting up the room with a dim lavender glow. The pegasus tilted her head about, staring at the distant white beacon of Yaerfaerda. “Just try and sleep. Dream about encyclopedias or something.”
Twilight giggled.
Rainbow arched an eyebrow. “What?”
“You can't read in your dreams, silly,” Twilight squeaked. “The left brain is responsible for logic, and while you're experiencing rapid eye movement it can't create—”
“Saw logs, Twilight.”
“Right. Sawing...” Twilight shut her eyes, exhaling calmly.
Rainbow sat beside her in silence. Eventually, she lowered her gaze.
Twilight Sparkle lay still, looking very calm, very peaceful, very real.
Twilight stared... and she smiled... and at some point or another—a few tears later—she closed her eyes...
...and relaxed as well.