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// XXVI. Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas t' Heav'n 
// Story: The Night is Passing 
// by Cynewulf 
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XXVI. Raise Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Hev’n





OPAL, Legata of the Ninth Legion of the Crystal Empire



The barricade was constructed of whatever was available. Chairs. Tables. Lots of tables—they were good and wide. Doors. A few ancient tower shields that were dug out of an old armory. Steel cords. Nails. Scaffolding. Sweat. Hope.


She sniffed. She shivered in the cold.


The temperature had dropped quickly. Opal knew what this meant—though, she would not say it. They all knew, and none of them would say. The Crystal Heart could bring spring to the capitol as well as solace and defense. As it left, the warmth left. Perhaps there would be snow soon. Just a bit, and then a light flurry. And then a deluge, a blizzard, and endless sea of white, covering the world in forgetful snow.


The best thing to do on the eve of battle, Opal knew, was to do anything but think. Only so much planning could be done. Only so much talking could be done—and she knew it all had been done. Opal had sat through every strategy meeting stretching a month back. Every contingency had been considered. The armories had been searched for the ancient canons the Empire had brandished in what seemed like more civilized, advanced days. She herself had combed the great Armory of Malachite III looking for ancient artilleries months ago.


So, in the end, she was confident that due diligence had been done. That would simply have to be enough.


Coughing, the Legata straightened herself, adjusted her heavy ornamental officer’s barding, and once again strode the length of the makeshift fortification.


Pikes rested against the wall, waiting to be pulled up and thrust upwards to the sky like daggers to pierce the clouds. Rifles lay sleeping against the ragged battlement. Opal stepped over a loose box of ammo. She snorted, grinding her teeth. Honestly. These new legionnaires were not up to snuff. At all. In Lord Sombra’s day, we would have had them strung up on the stocks for less, she thought, her body and mind thrumming with delight at the thought of it. But then she caught herself. Those days were gone. Long gone.


She shuddered. It was amazing, the things that magic could do to a pony. Lasting things.


She shifted the box out of the walkway with her magic and continued on.


The day had been short, and night was upon them. The skies were overcast; they were as brass. Legionnaires leaned against the walls, staring back towards the lights of the city. She scowled at them.


“You,” she barked, and the whole line jumped. “All of you. Do you think they’ll be digging holes, hm? Coming out of the ground over there?”


One of them tried to answer, but one of his companions silenced him with a frantic slap. Opal approved.


“About face!” They did so, scrambling. It was comic. Or would have been, had she not been standing on the first line of the Imperial Center’s defense. She would not berate them here or now. Another lesson she had learned on a dozen campaigns in the snow and in the mountains: a pony’s motivation was vital. It was also very easily broken.


So instead, she walked behind them, down the lines. Her sharp veteran’s eyes caught everything. Every weapon unloaded, as she had ordered. Every helmet fastened, every bit of barding accounted for, and every single body shaking.


“It is a beautiful night, no?” she said to no one at all. The soldiers said nothing. Wise of them. “Beautiful. It stirs a bit of femininity in me,” she added, eyeing them. Not a word! Excellent. She actually smiled. There was a part of her that had loved to toy with something helpless even before Lord Sombra’s… personal talk. “A wonderful night, through and through. I wonder, I do, how old you were when I was last in these maiden’s wedding clothes on the slopes of the shattered hills. During Lord Sombra’s time—” Her body ached; she wished to attach some sort of worshipful honorific to that name, to that eternal name. She choked on them all. “We fought separatists on those blasted landscapes. Oh, gentleman, what a good night. I remember it. The thrill of the hunt as they scurried like rodents before a great boot! The ecstasy of victory. I laughed so freely on that night of broken crystal,” she finished in a hiss. She felt the old feelings warm her against all winters.


She shook herself.


“I expect you to do your duty,” she began again, lamely, breathing hard. She would not be a puppet of a long-dead king. She would not be His puppet from beyond the grave. “I expect you to serve your city, your family, your empire. I expect this and more. I expect you to be exemplary.”


Silence. Her steps seemed to echo. No, they seemed to be like a droning, pounding hammer upon hot steel. It was like the pipes that the old legions blew that droned into the inky black—eerie and distinct.


“They are not Gods, gentlemen,” she almost whispered. “They are not as gods. They are mortal. They bleed. They die. Perhaps there are thoughts we might recognize in those things that we call minds only by analogy.


“Your pikes will pierce their flesh. Your bullets will break their bones,” she said and felt her old self. It waited—it watched like a dog on a leash. Baying, baying, baying. “Your hoofblades will cut their tendons. Your iron boots will break their will, and you will look on a new sunrise, and you will be alive,” she said. Let me out. Let me out. Opal closed her eyes. The breeze blew again, and she faced it.


There was silence. Again. She trotted to the battlement proper and sat between two nervous-looking young ponies. They moved their rifles, but she ignored them.


“When they come, you will face them,” she said quietly. “As I did, long ago. But I faced ponies when first I felt the hot lifeblood on my face. You will be facing different things.”


“But you said they would die just like us or anything else,” one of them said.


“Oh, they will,” she said, half-smiling. “They will. But it will not be easy. Soldier, what is your name?”


“Malachite.”


Fitting, or not fitting. Regardless, she found herself distantly amused. A King's name. “How old are you?”


“I’ll be nineteen soon, Legata.” How nervous. How afraid. As right he should be. Was she not a beast? Was she not the Emperor’s most rabid dog, who moaned like a bitch in heat at the sight of blood? Was she not the right hoof of the Lord of Shadow?


“Young. Well, Malachite, I shall tell to you a secret.”


“Secret?”


“Yes, yes. A secret. You see, my first battle was an absolute route.”


“What?” He seemed genuinely startled. Something about that pleased her.


“I was not always the ‘iron bitch,’” she said, laughing. “I was once frightened and young, a maiden in the emperor’s legions right off of the farm, caught up in his grand crusade against the Triballi chieftains of the south. My cohort met them in a wood down in Equestria, when it was a but a backwater.”


“Everfree? I was born near there.”


“The Legions take any and all,” she responded, by rote. A King's name for a barbarian born pony. Wonders never ceased. “There were many of the foederati of the southern tribes in the legion, then. They were good soldiers. You carry their pride on your shoulders, young Malachite. Do not dishonor their memory. But yes, we were routed. My legatus, a zebraharan halfbreed—Varrus, his name was—and I were the only survivors. I killed many ponies that night; some I do not remember. We all did.”


“How did you survive, ma’am?”


She was very lucky. “I was focused,” she lied. “I had a mission, and that was to return. I did not think of death.” She had thought of death. She had sobbed like a child. She had sobbed and killed and cried and screamed and ran, and her commander had cursed her for mad all the way back to the legion’s camp—even as she carried him on her back. “I was afraid, but I knew that if I simply felt fear, if I lived in my fear, I would die. I would die horribly. Fear, Malachite! Fear is the mind killer. A little death, and not the kind they tell you about in perfumed rooms. It leads only to annihilation. To dying like a dog,” she added and then stood. She left, wordlessly, briskly.


Down the line again. And again. And again.


Repetition was good for the soul, the body, the mind, the heart. If you believed in those things which could not be seen. Opal waffled back and forth. If you believed, of course, in repetition itself. That it was possible to repeat a thing at all. She doubted this as well.


She had not seen fighting since the long sleep had been ended. The magic had lain heavy on her, in the nothing between the past and that moment when they all found themselves transported. The corrupting presence of her Lord had been on them all, but in her, it was a cancer. She did not wish to think of it that way. It was that way. He was toxic, cancerous, evil, beautiful. She loved him. She would not live—


Something caught her eye.


She stared out towards the wall, past the last homely houses. It flickered. She knew that it was mostly illusory—all of the legates of the legion knew. But it was hard to believe a thing unseen. And now she saw it.


Ice gripped her chest. She let out a ragged, shaky breath.


“Light,” she whispered. “Oh, stars. Polaris, she who watches the evening. Lyrae who loves the mortal ponies of earth, Arcturus who guides the sailor back from sea…” she continued. She prayed as she had not since the days of her fillyhood.


But then she stopped. She straightened. This was not a time to whimper. She was the Right Hoof of the Emperor, the legata whom he had asked to personally attend him. She was the Scourge of the Rebel and the Nightmare of the Schismatic. She was the Fist of God, the Praetorian of the Ninth Legion.


She bared her teeth to the wall. She wished it to fall. She did not care what a sight she seemed—she would see the illusion burned away. It was unbecoming of Imperial glory to hide behind the shadows of a pathetic lie!


And then, there was something like a shout, like a great world-shaking groan, like the breaking of a seal, like perhaps the blowing of a horn. But it was none of these things. The walls did not flicker again. Like the illusions they were, they vanished.


In the outer darkness beyond, she saw them. She saw great hulking shapes, unnatural, on two legs, some on four, all of them standing still. Deathly still. Like ghosts, like mummified, wasted corpses, like herself, living long past their allotted times. She looked at them. She wished for fangs to bare at the gods who would dare come off of their filthy mountain to test the Emperor’s own Iron Bitch. The old Opal was alive and well. It took over now. It was no longer the old Opal but the only Opal once again. The harsh winter was let in like a tidal wave, but she did not care at all. She was ecstatic. She was like a virgin in a lover’s embrace. Flushed, radiant, gleeful.


“Rifles! Load! Oh, they’ll feel shot of lead yet! Centurion Yulus!”


“Milady?” answered the stallion in question, ponderously as he had even before the time of Lord Sombra.


“Have your pikes ready! I want them braced to the wall and pushing before these whoresons draw an inch closer, do you understand?”


“As you say.”


She called for her magic, and it came readily, bringing to her eyes the sending paper given her by Shining Armor, the new Prince Consort. It was hard to remember there was an Empress now. She scrawled a quick report, rolled the missive up, and watched as magic sent it back to the citadel.


A city being broken without walls—a mare who had no restraint of spirit. This was perfect.


The enemy did not advance, but they would. Around her, the legion panicked in varying degrees. Some had believed the rumors about the walls. Some had not. They all knew the truth now. For her part, she cared not.


“Legata!”


She turned, to see legionaries forming up into a thick block in the street below, nervous, definitely. Ready, perhaps. Before them stood another of her officers, the decurion of the air contingent. She raised a hoof in acknowledgement. “Hail, Flora. Are you arrayed?”


“The Ninth legion is prepared, Legata,” the lithe pegasus replied hoarsely. “The flyers of the Celeres are yours.” Opal watched as Flora adjusted her helmet and then saluted. Opal saluted back.


“Deploy to the roofs, then,” she answered. “Do not go beyond the boundary of the wall, as I ordered. Reinforce the wall only if the situation is dire.”


Opal jumped down from the wall, softening her fall with a cushion of air and magic. Briskly, she walked to the ponies in the street, not bothering to even look at the infantry square as she approached Flora.


“Legata, we have the Immunes fortifying the barriers with magic, just as you ordered,” Flora said. She was like a leaf, Opal thought. So small, with such a young appearance. Yet Flora, too, had served the Ninth when Lord Sombra commanded it.


“Where are ours? For this barrier?” Opal asked, scowling.


Flora pointed, and Opal looked to see that several unicorns were already there, laying on thick barriers of protection that made the air hum. She smiled. “Good,” she said. “I am glad that they are still quick to take up the task, in any age. Will your raw youngsters be of much use to us, you think?”


“They are of the Ninth, my Lady,” Flora responded. “They will fight and die as the Ninth has always done.”


“I could ask no more. I will see you on the other side.”


“Among the stars, my Lady,” Flora replied and bowed deeply before taking to the sky.


Opal had given no answer. She would not parrot the faith of her mother, but she would not scourge it from the heart of her companions. Instead, she returned to the barricade to find nervous soldiers waiting.


They needed not wait long. A great roaring, straight from the thousand mouths of Tartarus, sprang up from the void, and before her, the far horde began to move. They were too far out to make out individual forms so much as a great unbroken shadow.


She waited. She watched. They came closer, slowly at first and then faster, much faster, as if they were at a dead run.


“Rifles! Load your weapons,” she called, and the sound of metal on metal filled her ears. Some of them fumbled, but it filled her heart with a proud warmth to see that most of them were calm and careful. Yes, they would last more than a moment. They would drive these demons back into their miserable mudholes. She would stomp their faces into their own blood.


“Lower weapons!” she cried. “Hold your fire until you are told! You will wait for the flares, and then you will make every shot count! They come in en masse, in a horde, in a great wall of flesh made ready for your cleansing fire!” She raved. She walked the battlements with wild eyes. Sombra’s Opal panted. Opal herself was steely readiness.


They came closer.


“The Ninth is deployed across the northern districts! Your brothers and sisters all see this same force! They, too, will fight it as you do! Take heart in their bravery that you might repay it!”


Closer. She imagined she could hear them beating upon the earth like scattered manic drumming. They were like locusts, which poured out from an open sky. They were beautiful, Sombra’s Opal hissed, beautiful in their ultimate capacity for death.


Closer. She called up her magic and felt its familiar comfort, its familiar sensation. She formed it into a bright, hot point and sent it screaming into the sky as a flare. It soared and then began slowly to fall like a star, a dying fall.


It bathed the snow below in blood-light, and beneath it the horde was visible, the oncoming flood of gnarled flesh and claw and teeth. They were closer now. They moved with such tremendous speed, faster than anypony could hope to match.


“Rifles, ready! Aim! Hold!”


They would be in range any moment. The ninth had been given the rifles left behind in Lord Sombra’s temporal exile. They were of a more civilized time, a more advanced time. These were not the primitive carbines of the southern tribes. These were the rifles of the legions.


She had marked out the ranges herself, but it was hard to see in the light. She cursed. She counted.


“Fire!”


The first volley was like the judgement of a god. Sombra’s Iron Bitch crowed about mingled blood and fire as if simple gunfire would burn a third of the earth. Opal herself simply summoned up her magic, crafted bolts of arcane lightning, and let them loose out across the snow.


If the Mitou fell, she could not see it. There were too many. They came too fast.


“Again!” she screamed. “Continuous volley!”


The rifles of the Ninth thundered into the night. When the flare died, she revived it. While it burned, she scorched the frozen earth with lightning. Her horn burned. Her skin crawled. Her vision blurred and burned, and her eyes were filled with tears from exertion. Sombra’s Opal groaned in ecstasy; she all but purred with delight. And it was a delight! Blood and Iron, all the things she could hope for! Death and victory.


But the horde had not truly slowed. She saw more fall now, grasping at the air, trying to get just a little closer, but still more replaced them. At times, she felt that two replaced every one that fell. They were endless as night and furious as hell.


Her rifles began to cry out in alarm, stunned that the charge had not died. She stood behind them, and none would dare try to pass her. She knew this.


And yet one did. He broke. He let fall his rifle and turned, and before he could jump, she was there, pushing him down. She bared her teeth like a wolf. “If you want to leave, you may do so in pieces,” she hissed. “Cowards die in this legion, you worm, you profligate!”


The riflepony was beyond reason. He squirmed like a wounded animal, crying wordlessly. His eyes were wide, his movements erratic. She roared, and in fury, she threw him behind her. He fell, sobbing, and perhaps he escaped past the infantry in the street and the pegasi on the rooftops. The Legata did not care.


The Mitou were close enough to see each one individually.


She summoned up a last flare and let it loose. This one, she colored blue. Her Lord would know they had met the enemy up close—if nothing else.


Another riflepony tried to flee, but she slammed him into the battlements and screamed at him, animal fury coming out of her. He gripped his rifle again and tried to fire. She took the rifle that the deserter had let fall and held it in her magic, firing it until the clip went dry.


They were so close now.


Opal had never seen them up close before, not alive. Only the bodies they brought back to Imperial Center after a raid or patrol. But now she saw that they towered above her. They were as tall as the barricade was. Maybe taller. They were like gods.


“Pikes! Brace!” she screamed, throwing the spent gun over the battlement in the direction of the foe. “Catch their eyes! Blind them! Break them! Break them!”


The Mitou had passed where the wall had been. They were in the street.


She called up arcane fire and bathed the street in it—even as it burned her blood. But they leaped over the flames.


The first one to reach the barricade balled his hand into a fist and punched straight through the flimsy battlements. Two of her rifleponies went flying. Before Opal could attack the thing with her magic, it had slammed into another pony. She heard the sound of crushed bone. He was pulp, red undifferentiated mass against the crackling wood.


Opal burned the attacker’s great hand, and it reared back, and as it did, a rifle shot caught it in the neck, and it fell into the flames Opal had cast. Another replaced it, emerging from the flames. But on either side of her, pikes braced against Mitou coming over the top began to stab upwards. One caught the attacker right through the eye, and it screamed, thrashing. It broke the pike, and Opal pushed it into the fire with her magic.


The rest was undifferentiated chaos. Rifleponies fired and dodged and screamed. They died like dogs, like worms in the mud. They were crushed. Their blood was red haze. One was grabbed as he tried to clear his jammed weapon and broken in a Mitou’s fist as the creature in full madness of battle bit off his upper half. Opal fought with magic, crafting lances from the barricade itself, felling monsters on her right, casting down monsters on her left. They grabbed at her, but she evaded them. They tried to crush her, but they could not crush the mare who made Sombra smile. She crowed with delight of battle. It was all heat and the taste of blood on her lips and her tongue and her teeth, the smell of it coating her barding, her own petty wounds mixing with the blood of her soldiers and the life of the foe, an amalgamation. She was mad. She let herself over to madness, to wild abandon. Her raw recruits died, crushed and torn to pieces and crippled and spent, and she laughed and forced wood spikes through the eyes of the great gods that came down from the mountains.


One Mitou came out of the flames, larger than the rest. In his hand, he held a massive club, a boulder suspended on a rod of wrought iron he held it above his head, roaring. Below him, Opal roared back, and she called her magic up. But it sputtered and died on her horn. She could feel her blood boiling now, and feel the ache of overwork in her flesh. Her horn was all sharp pain. Powerless. Drained. Empty. She looked for a rifle but could find nothing. She was all but alone. The barricade was baptized in blood. It leaked blood from every gap. There was nothing.


Down came the club. She jumped out of its arcing path.


But it caught her. She was carried down in a hail of shattered wood. Everything went dark.


When she could see again, she saw fire. Wood covered her body, but she shook it off and stood, ready to fight again. Or tried. Her front legs stood proud, but when she took a step, she crumbled.


Her legs. Her back legs hung limp—as if all that kept it attached was stubborn skin. She saw herself now in the firelight and could see how broken her body was. She tried to use her magic again, knowing she would be caught, but it did not come.


The streets had been given over to death. Absurdly, she saw her parents trodding out the grapes in fall, tiny red bodies joining their brothers in a great sea of red wine that would be fit for a king. The Mitou advanced. She could see the Celares harrying them, attacking their heads, pushing them over or trying to. She saw her cohorts in little handfuls, lances high, trying to pierce a Mitou and bring it down. She saw scattered rifles held high, with panicking young ponies trying to reload ancient weapons only to be caught up in great fists. A Mitou mindlessly feasted on the fallen. Her immunes, her unicorns, tried to pool their magicks, but she saw one burn out as she had, and a huge clawed foot kicked him into a wall, and he did not rise.


She was in hell. She had died and now she would be here until the end of days, dying and dying and dying and dying. She wished to scream but had no mouth to do so; she was dead. She was dead. She was—


A fist caught her.


Opal screamed. She bawled like a child, like she had in the Everfree. The Iron Bitch was gone. Sombra’s Opal was broken like a mirror thrown into the street, snuffed out like a candle. She was going to die crying like a child.


She looked up into the beast’s face, and as she felt her mind falling apart, it shuddered. There was the crack of a rifle. Another. Another. Its forehead burst into a fountain of blood, and it fell to the ground, sending Opal flying across the cobblestone.


One of her legionaries was above her, throwing a spent rifle to his side as he knelt to put Opal on his shoulders. “Legata! We must get you out of here!”


She tried to speak but could not.


“Can you walk?” the young stallion tried to hurry, but she knew she was heavy. She removed her helmet with effort. Something exploded to their right, and the young legionnaire kept his footing only barely.


She could feel the pounding feet of a Mitou at their back, but she saw over her rescuer’s head a flying shadow and heard the thing’s cry of death. The soldiers of the Ninth began to fall back all around her. Some ran for their lives, but many did so calmly. They spent their ammunition and kept their pikes up, keeping the horde from overwhelming them. She tried to call out to them, but pain lanced up her side, and she sobbed. Her hearing went first, and then her vision, until she slumped into white noise.













CADANCE SONGBOURNE



Her cheek rested upon the cold stone. It was wonderful. After her burden had been laid down at last, after all of her suffering, this was a just reward. Cadance closed her eyes.


Shining Armor had been there when she had at last surrendered.


Cadance had let out a scream that echoed throughout the palace, and then she had collapsed. Shining had tried to raise her, but she had refused to move. The floor was fine. The floor was more than fine. It was cool to the touch, and she had no need for standing.


Now, he stroked her mane softly. Any moment now, he would be gone. She knew that he had to go. The shield was down; the illusion was down. The Mitou would be inside at any moment. They were probably already inside. Shining Armor remaining with her this long was beyond irresponsible. It was shameful. But here he had stayed, until her breathing had evened out, until her body had stopped seizing.


“The outer barricades are gone,” Shining said, his tone even, controlled.


“Yes.” She had seen it before she had fallen.


“And they’ll be looking for me.”


So the dance began. He would begin his slow retreat, and she would fight it at every turn, clinging, physically or metaphorically, yet binding him as tightly to the floor as she could. She knew this routine. Had she not seen it a dozen times over already in others? She had been a Princess once, a Princess of the Sphere of Love. She had looked into the hearts of mares and seen their anguishes and their hopes. The conversation before her was stock, standard, not in the slightest bit unique. Yet it compelled her attention and her fear all the same.


She cut through to the marrow, disregarding the steps in between. “Don’t go.”


“Cadance, we have to do our duty. You have done yours. I will do mine and then return to you. This is the life we signed on for, remember? You told me that.”


“Yes. I did. But don’t go.”


“I have to.”


Cadance turned her head to look at him. “If you didn’t have to, if there were some way to escape this place, would you go then?”


His brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”


She was too tired to think. “I don’t know. But we could run. I don’t care anymore.”


“About?”


“About this stupid place and these ponies and their cities and their roads and empires.” She shook. “Shining, all I ever do is care and care, and then they take and take and they never have any idea.” She leaned in towards him, and her mane fell into her face. She growled at it weakly.


And Shining brushed it away. “Cadance, that isn’t true.”


“I hate them. I hate all of them. Like… like parasites,” she hissed. “Just feeding and feeding and whining when I just want to avoid pain! Just once! Nothing is ever enough.”


“Nothing is ever enough,” Shining echoed, softly. Mildly.


“But we could just leave them to this fate of theirs. The world is going that way, anyhow. It’s all going that way. They’re like the fireflies we used to chase in the park—”


“Clover’s Field,” he answered.


“Yes. Remember them? They were very pretty, but ultimately, they were short-lived. Here today and gone tomorrow. So are these. It is the same thing, Shining. The Mountain Gods will devour, and then they will go back to sleep, and the world will keep sliding down into the dark.” She edged closer to him. “But if we leave, we don’t have to suffer anymore. We don’t have to suffer with them and watch them die. We can leave, use our magic, fly far away. And we can be together and happy until the seams finally show and the whole stupid thing breaks.”


“Cadance…” Shining began to stir, but she clung to him. As she knew she would. The whole conversation was already in her head, both sides of it. She felt free now. She felt able to say anything, so she would say anything.


“I could make you immortal,” she said, and then she felt the first tear wet her cheek, and she was furious. She was so angry. She wanted to punch a hole straight through the floor. “I could do it. I could do it. You would never die. You would never grow old. Or at least you would do so slowly, as I do. You would live with me forever.”


“Until the world succumbs and the fox faces the hounds?” Shining asked and chuckled.


“Don’t you dare laugh at me, you ass. You complete, utter…” Cadance sniffed. “Ass.”


“Cadance, you don’t hate the ponies here.”


“I hate them,” she returned and buried her face in his coat. His barding was not here. She was so thankful she did not have to see it or touch it. This way, she could imagine he would never put it on. “I despise their miserable, short little lives.”


“You have only lived about as long as I. A bit more. Half a decade. You only settled into the slow aging recently, and even then…”


“I hate their smallness,” she insisted. “How they run around like helpless children for sixty years and then die like idiots in their beds, drowning on their spit. I hate how they… smile at you and then you know they’re going to die before you do and you can’t make it not happen but you have to see them day after day after day. I hate them. I hate everything.”


“No you don’t,” Shining said. She also hated his calmness. But she said nothing. She fumed until she could not support her own anger and then wilted.


“They’re going to kill my little ponies,” she said at last. “They’re going to hurt them. I know it. Shining, I can’t bear it. I love them. I love them so much. I feel them through the Crystal Heart, every little heartbeat and smile and thought are like a warm glow. They’re so afraid.”


“That’s why I have to go.”


“But I’ll lose you. I’ll lose both of you. I have lost so many already to those… those awful things. Those hellspawn. I can’t lose you as well. I’ll die.”


“You won’t,” Shining said.


“I know I won’t and it makes me angry. It makes me want to die knowing I won’t,” Cadance replied, nuzzling into his side. She knew she was quite a sight. Emaciated, sobbing, her voice ragged and cracking. How loathesome she was. How low. “This is not how an Empress is supposed to look,” she complained into his shaggy coat. “Like, at all.”


“It’s how you look, at least right now,” he said, and she knew he smiled.


“Thanks.”


“Just saying. I don’t know much about royalty, but I know you’re beautiful. I’m a simple sort.”


The sound she made through the intermittent crying was more like a bark or a cough then a laugh, but she smiled regardless. “What if you make it through this only to discover I’m ugly forever?” she asked. Her crying had stopped at last. She snuggled now, just happy to be warm. “I’m just this emaciated alicorn zombie forever?”


She felt Shining Armor shrug. “There are worse fates.”


“You’re a liar and flatterer.” Cadence sniffed. “I don’t want you to go.”


“I don’t want to go.”


“I may never forgive you if you do not return to me,” she added softly. Her body, which had been stiff from stress and exertion for so long, began to loosen. She felt relaxed for the first time in months. She sighed.


“I don’t intend to leave you behind, my love. You’ll see me again.” In this life or the next, she added for him. “I’m going,” he finished. “The defense of the second layers of barricades will require my direction.”


“I know.” She carefully dislodged herself and lay on the cold floor. “Go then, prince of the sword.” Die in what way seems most fitting to you, she did not add, for she loved him. “I will sleep, I think. Whether I want to or not, sleep is going to take me. So if you are to go, then now is perhaps the best time.”


“Cadance, I…”


“I know. I love you too, my shining fool. I love you. Go. Please, go quickly.” And she did. She loved him. Love burned her, it consumed her. It was the only thing that kept her alive. For a pony could not live by bread alone but on every breath of the Song of love. She wished to go with him, out among the little ponies she could not hate, even if she wished to, out in the fire and smoke, to walk tall and proud like standards against the all-consuming darkness, like Gods out of the tales come to Earth to unmake the chains of shadow. But her consciousness began to fade. She had been so deprived for so long.


He retreated and she laid on the floor. She could not cry. She could not mourn him. She felt only the sort of emptiness one feels after a year of separation and the oncoming rush of sleep. She did not see him leaving her. He did not see his face cast in the shadow of despair, the sickness unto death.
















RAINBOW DASH



Even in the chaos of battle, Rainbow Dash could still find enough left of her mind to despise barding. It chafed. It collected her sweat and pressed it into her fur, matting it. Everything itched. Her wings ached.



But that was not because of the barding. No, that was the storm. It was here.


Legionaries ran past them, heading out over the barricades into the city. Rainbow had seen the flares of the Ninth legion from the rooftops, and when they’d stopped she knew that the outer defenses had cracked.


It was strange to see these stuffy military types be so sharp, so focused. She was used to their bluster and their posturing, but there was none of that in the command tent of the Fourth. Legatus Flourite was grizzled, ancient, with an eyepatch that not even Rainbow could find comical and a face that had not smiled in an age. Before him he had arrayed the legions of the Empire across the city and the oncoming horde. His staff kept the map up to date as best they could, receiving reports from breathless pegasi constantly.


Shining Armor stood at the other end of the table from Rainbow and Rarity. The single candleabra that kept the map visible shone about his head like a halo. 


The newest scout gave his report to an impatient staffer. “Yes, they’re scattered.”


“Where? I need locations, numbers, times.”


The scout nodded, and then shook himself. “I need a map. I can show you.”


“Do it,” Shining answered for the staffer, and gestured.


Rainbow read his intimidation in every shaking move as he pushed the tokens that represented Mitou further into the city. “I only saw two holdouts where formation was being maintained,” he explained. “The one here, near the center, seems to be holding strong. They’re moving back slowly, and they carry the Legion’s command standard.”


“Opal,” growled the Legatus.


“Yes sir, I think so. I tried to get closer to confirm but they’ve moved in their gunners and it was too much. There is another formation to the west but they were much smaller. I’m not sure they’ll make it much farther before scattering. They may have already.”


“Rest,” Shining said evenly. “Tell the medicus that I said you could have a cot. Report back to your commander soon.”


“I will sir. Yes, your majesty.” The scout bowed and then slumped out, his wings drooping, his face gaunt.


Rarity shifted beside her. It was strange, Rainbow thought, how hyperaware she was of Rarity’s every move now. How much she watched. How much she felt. Had she always been so aware?


“We knew the Ninth would crack, your highness,” Flourite said. “It was why we gave Opal the outermost posting.”


“I had hoped we would be wrong. Damn.” He rubbed his temples. For a moment, he seemed ancient, wizened, carrying a load that would break a pony’s back. “All we had to give her to replenish the Ninth’s losses from Sombra’s fall were recruits. Children.”


“If anyone could make them proper legionaries, it would be Opal,” Flourite said quietly. “But we must look to the present, sire.”


“Running interference.”


“On the contrary, I suggest we cut our losses. If we pull back all but our pegasi, we can consolidate infantry on the main highway.”


“It’s exposed, but you’re right. But what of the Ninth? And the Third, for that matter? The south has held longer than the northern frontier did, but it will break any minute now.”


“They’ll return to us if they can. If we commit to much to supporting them we endanger both forces. We can’t be bogged down in a running battle. Not with these monsters.” The Legatus let out a growl. “Filthy abominations. This is not the kind of battle the legions are used to.”


“Would you abandon them?” Rarity asked. Both stallions looked at her. “Forgive me, but are we not short on ponies as it is?”


Flourite narrowed his good eye at her. “You are a guest and friend of the Prince Consort, but I will not—”


“Lay off,” Shining said, waving his hoof. “You’re right, Rarity, but there’s not much we can do. The city is huge, and frankly it’s because we have so little at our disposal. Four legions may sound like a lot, but all of them are a bit below strength and spread thin as it is. Our only chance to beat the Mitou back is to concentrate our forces so they can’t just break through and pick us apart. We have to consolidate.”


“I understand, sire,” Rarity said, putting a bit too much empahsis on that word. Rainbow frowned, but said nothing. “But it seems that the main contingent of the Ninth may be alive, and they will do wonders to help shore that defense. If they are as coherent as the scout reported, we may need only commit a few soldiers to bolster them long enough so that they may make their escape.”


Shining pursed his lips. “Yes, but I can’t spare any of my officers.”


“With your permission, Rainbow and I have some experience in urban warfare. Specifically, the kind of run-and-gun that your scout reported they are engaged in.”


“Sire, I... “ The legatus paused. He shrugged. “Give her a few of my pegasi, or whatever she wants. It will get her out of what little remains of my mane and perhaps, if she is right, we will have Lord Sombra’s finest general back among the living. Even if they can do little to relieve the Ninth, they could bring it’s mistress to us. Either way, we have lost little.”


Shining eyed him for a long moment, and then turned to Rarity. “I’m not going to call bullshit on your experience. I would like to. I’m not. What do you need?”


Rainbow answered. “We could do it with three pegasi and two or three of your soldiers. If we have too, Rarity could help them carry this Legata mare back and your scouts and I could harass any creeps that try to get close. It can work, Shining. It’s me,” she added, managing a grin.


The Legatus looked as if he was about to blow a fuse over such a casual address, but Shining smirked at her. She even thought he was genuine about it. “I know you can definitely do something. Twilight raved about you. Right, then.” He brought out his seal, found a spare bit of paper, and after a moment had affixed his signature in wax. “Take this. You don’t need a letter. Just show it to the first officer you find and you’ll have your escort. Please,” he said, sighing, “come back alive. My wife will kill me if I lose my sister’s friends.”


“Will do,” Rainbow said.


“Thank you, your grace,” Rarity answered, and then pulled Rainbow out of the tent, sealed parchment in tow.


They had gotten all of eight steps out of the tent before Rarity said what they both knew she was going to say. “That was a bit much, Rainbow. You knew that would bother the Legatus.”


“Yeah, well fuck that guy,” she said, halfheartedly.


“Indeed,” Rarity answered. She chuckled. “Well, shall we? Ride into death together, and all that.”


“Thought we weren’t going to joke about that.”


“Oh, I’m not joking. We shall see our share,” Rarity groused. Rainbow followed her, looking about as she did.


The tents of the forward command camp were dense and packed with ponies. The wounded were toted back behind the frontlines in great columns of groaning. Nervous looking unicorns downed potions as they ran towards the barricades. Weary pegasi stumbled out of the skies, off to report their findings or receive a new heading. She saw in their wings and their bodies the same electricity she felt in her own.


“I can feel the storm still,” Rainbow said.


“Pardon?”


“We feel the weather,” she said. They came to a cluster of tents where a pony with a distinctive crested helmet inspected a line of legionaries. 


Rarity coughed to announce her presence. “Excuse me, but I have need of a few able bodies.”


“And you would be? Ma’am, civilians need to be heading towards the citadel,” the officer replied, frowning.


“I am quite aware.” She showed him the seal and he snapped to attention. Rainbow counted the little band, and hummed. As she did so, Rarity continued speaking. “I don’t need all of you. A few. I shall also need you tell me where I might acquire the services of fliers… ah, but I see you have two of your own.”


“Ma’am, I am the Decanus of these tents. Take all of us. We’re only ten, but we can do the job.” He bowed slightly. Rainbow was once again amazed at how much stock ponies put into things like seals and crowns. But she guessed loyalty was loyalty. She still respected it.


“Decanus, I will take you up on that.” Rarity turned to Rainbow. “Think this will work?”


“We’ll see.”









No battle is clean. But battle within the confines of a city is far, far worse. On a wide field, the semblance of order, the veneer of control and command could be maintained to some degree in battle lines, in charge and countercharge, in the lumbering dance that is a clash of armies. But in a city the lines break down. Battle within any sort of settlement sees the same thing, played out predictably, endlessly. There is no space for formations to outmaneuver each other in the streets of a town. They cannot turn and flank the enemy, or rush from high ground to lower. They are blocks, awkward and unwieldy, being jammed into holes that are just barely large enough.


In the suburbs of Manehattan Rainbow and Rarity had learned what it was to fight in between houses, row on row. They had been on the fringes, kept out of the worst of it, but in any battle worth its name, even the dregs are hell. 


The ideal was to move in pockets, small handfuls of swift running outriders. You hit hard. You hit fast. You used the houses to hide in and and you used them as shields to keep the enemy from mowing you down. You used them knowing that a well-placed spell could obliterate them and leave you naked as the day you’d been born.


Imperial Center was worse than Manhattan, Rainbow thought without a single shade of doubt. Even with its eventual madness, with the guerillas mowed down in the streets by blunderbuss and sword, desperate to reach friendly lines and their princess. They believed. But here, she felt as if the isolated firepits where Griffons who had lost their minds gnawed on pony flesh and cackled about the coming suffocating ashy darkness were erased from the earth—she felt as if the whole city were that on repeat. Like when she had broken Twilight’s gramophone, in days that felt like another age of ponykind.


Fire. Blood. Mangled bodies. A half-eaten or torn or only the pitying stars knew what pony, his eyes wide, his mouth wide, his broken pike all around him in splinters.



They ran. They did not stop except to maneuver around the roadblocks Shining had ordered erected on the side streets. They avoided the major byways, keeping one step ahead of the horde’s path. But they could not avoid the monsters forever. The Gods catch up to the quick, and they leave the dead.


Rounding a corner, they all but ran into a lone Mitou. It carried one of their massive handcannons, and as soon as Rarity’s party was in view it brought the monstrous weapon to bear. Rainbow and the two pegasi serpentined immediately, twisting their paths in the air. Rarity jumped to the side, and the others scattered.


One did not. The gun fired, emitting a loud boom that all but shattered Rainbow’s hearing. The creature was shadowed in smoke. His scattershot coated the street, ricocheting wildly. But the bulk of it tore one of the legionaries to shreds, reducing him to ribbons.


The others charged, screaming their defiance. The two in front had long lances, the kind that Rainbow had seen Shining’s patrol wield, that elongated from a small baton. They were light, but not flimsy, and she saw their worth again as the two charging soldiers parted and hit the beast below the ribs on either side and passed him like a wave breaking on a firm boulder. It roared and swiped at them, but caught nothing. In the wake of its attack, the others leapt at it, tearing at its legs with their hoofblades.


It staggered, and Rainbow dove, her hooves outstretched. She hit it solidly in the head, at a perfect angle. The neck cracked and it crumpled like a wet bag.


They did not pause. They ran on. The Mitou would not be alone. Others would come.


Rainbow kept them oriented. The scouts had seen the map, and knew the city, but Rainbow kept the lines of communication open. Rarity would look up, and Rainbow would be her great sign, steering her away from fighting in the streets and towards the retreating Ninth.


They steered clear of a large confrontation. Rainbow knew it was probably the other surviving formation that the beleaguered scout had mentioned, but they could do nothing for them. Even from a block away she knew they would not hold out long. She saw ponies beginning to scatter. Many would be hunted down. Most, in fact. Some would make it back safety behind the lines, but there would be no true safety there, no true rest. They would be put back into the defense.


The wind had picked up. Snow fell thickly now, almost too thickly to see, but a pegasus was not daunted by storms. No, she lived for the sound and fury of them. The blood of a thousand fliers pulsed in her veins. She saw clearly, felt clearly. She felt the lightning like a kiss on the neck. It shivered down her spine. Thundersnow. A ridiculous name for a holy thing, holy in that it was separated from the godlessness of the ground and its suffering.


They came upon a market, and Rainbow cursed. It was wide open, practically. Plenty of small, breakable cover, but no structures to put between them and an attack.


And all at once she knew they would need such a thing. Up ahead, a battered cohort’s survivors beat a wild retreat, flooding into the marketplace. She soared ahead with only a gesture to the other pegasi, and signalled to Rarity to stop.


Rarity did. Her escort formed up in a tight circle around her.


Rainbow flew ahead into the wind. She cut it like a knife, she broke it like a bullet, and above her the scouts followed like birds of prey.


Seizing up the situation took only the briefest of looks. Of the cohort’s one hundred strong there were perhaps thirty left. Eight to ten Mitou followed a short distance behind. The legionaries pushed abandoned carts into a wall, a few of them calling on their magic to help. Rifleponies reloaded their weapons. She saw two pikes left. They would need more. She flew by them so fast that she could hear her wake, circling and returning to Rarity with a great thud on the cobblestones. 


“Rainbow, what is going on up there?” Rarity demanded.


“Sorry, Rares. Survivors moved in. Brought a fuckton of Mitou with them.”


Rarity groaned. “Perfect. Fantastic. Can we go around?”


Rainbow was about to say that yes, they could probably skirt the edges of the market square and avoid the fighting if they were quick. She did not say that.


“Rares, they can win. If they win here they could make it back.”


Rarity didn’t say anything.


Rainbow continued. “Rares, if we just help them a bit, they can win. The ration could be worst, with us they have a fighting chance and we can bail if it gets too hairy. Please.”


Rarity looked to the Decanus. His face was a grim mask. A death mask, like the ones they laid the old strategoi of Cloudsdale in, she thought.


“Ma’am, if I may… these are my brothers. If there is a chance we could aid them, I ask that you let us. But if it will endanger our mission, then we should press on. That is the wise choice”


“Gotta choose quick,” Rainbow said. She danced from hoof to hoof. It was time to fly.


“It is not wise to engage. We are already down a stallion, and we are still several blocks from the Ninth, if we are right about their path. But—”


“Rarity, please. They’re gonna die. They’re on our side. We can’t just leave them! I can dive in there, you can hit them with spells. Their magic is probably to the breaking point, but you’re fresh. Rares. We have to do this. We have to.”


“And we will. Decanus, advance in front of me. I will snipe from behind your wall. Rainbow, harry the foe as you can, but be cautious. If we lose anyone we are pulling out. We can’t afford casualties this early. Be careful,” she added, forcefully. Rainbow shivered.


She took to the skies.


The cohort had assembled a small barricade in record time. Desperation is a marvelous thing, Rainbow had always known this. But even so she was impressed. They saw her, and the pegasus that the cohort had left dipped her wings in greeting. Rainbow returned her warrior’s greeting.


Rarity was quick behind her, and she needed to be. The Mitou poured into the open square. They too now lacked the cluster of urban cover. The rifles had reloaded. They were braced against the overturned carts and they fired, a volley that laid two of the leading giants low.


And so Rainbow and her three wingponies dived in. Their shod hooves were like hammers on the monsters’ heads. They beat upon their backs and their shoulders. The scouts had hoofblades which tore at their skin. They would dive, strike, and then climb up to circle back. They came as a wave, and when they departed the rifles shot in the gaps. 


Not all of the attackers were deterred or distracted. One broke through the harassment and smashed one of the carts, crushing ponies and sending splinters flying. 


Rarity’s magic came at last to the aid of the embattled survivors. A bolt of arcane lightning hit the Mitou in the chest and it howled as it felt. A second silenced it, and it did not rise. A third arced over its body, catching another beast.


A minute passed. Another. Rainbow lost track of what happened, what she did. Her body moved as if it had done nothing but fight since it was born. Everything was haze and gunsmoke.


But then they were all gone. The Mitou lay dead in the street, a natural wall. 


The survivors cheered, but Rarity’s mission had no time for celebration. Rainbow dipped her wing to the bleeding scout of the cohort and with barely a salute, they continued on.


It was not long after that one of the scouts finally located the Ninth’s command cohort. Its standard was still in tact. Its pikes were still held high against the enemy. Its rifles still volleyed. But it was badly bloodied. Rainbow waved the scouts ahead and flew over Rarity’s head, guiding her like a mariner’s star through twisting alleys.


They came out behind the pikes, and Rarity made a beeline for the dense center of the formation. Rainbow had done what she could. The Ninth lived still. Whether they evacuated the Legata or not, the Ninth was alive now. Harried, pursued, but breathing.


















SHINING ARMOR




He had received news from Rarity in the form of another panting scout. He was glad to hear it.


When Legata Opal’s contingent made it to the second line of defense, the frontier had collapsed. They had beat a general retreat. More had made it back to the new frontline than he had ever dared hoped. He was proud. He was also despondent.


He looked for not the first time to the Citadel at the heart of the city, the great spire of the Crystal Emperors. His wife was in there. Was she enjoying the cool of her face on the stone? Had she retaken her throne? Was she asleep, or awake? Did she watch him from the balconies or did she already mourn?


He wanted to go back. He needed to go back. The cares and the fears of those around him were unreal, secondary, tertiary, shadowy. His wife was real. She was solid. He understood battle but he did not live for it. He could live for her.


Flourite was an ass. When Rarity had returned, he had felt something resembling amusement at the veteran’s frustration that a civilian had proven him mistaken. But that had been washed away as the first waves of Mitou hit the reinforced barricades.


From the command tent, he surveyed the state of the battle. Things were going poorly, as expected. However, they were not going quite as poorly as he had feared. The outer defenses had fallen very quickly, but he had expected them too. They had felt the full weight of the enemy. But the city was like quicksand. The horde could not push its weight around in the tight, constricting streets. Its numbers were useful but hampered. Yes, it could afford to replace every fallen individual, but they could not flank. Simply put, they were too massive for their own good.


The first two sorties against the wall had been unsuccessful. The Mitou had fallen back, or been wiped out. But he knew they were testing him, probing these new, fresher meat, waiting for a hole. He would not give them one. He would give monsters no toehold in his city.


But even as he thought this, a horn blew. Shining’s head shot up and his eyes narrowed. He left the tent.


And stepped into chaos. Already, he saw his personal guards forming up to shield his tent from the barricade, and to his horror he saw the Mitou had scaled it. Two were among the tents, flailing, destroying as they went.


He strode forward. The sound of his hoofblades against the stone cleared his mind of doubt. He would drive them back himself.


“Your orders, my lord?” asked the closest of his Companions.


“Follow,” he barked, and set into a dead run. They flanked him on either side, a dozen of them. 


They crashed into the enemy. Shining killed one of the interlopers outright with a concentrated ball of balefire, blowing the thing away. The second his guard disposed of with lances.


But beyond the makeshift camp, the Mitou had turned the well-tuned machinery of Shining’s defense into a bedlam. Isolated, cut off from support, individual ponies were swept into a dozen two on one or one on one confrontations, and they died quickly.


Shining’s magic came to his command with ease, with practiced eagerness. He struck again and again. His guard drove the Mitou to the ground with lances, and then he would finish them off, roaring as his fire drove their impurity from the earth. They did not run from him, but he did not run from them. He walked at a steady measure pace. They rushed, and he seared them, he batted them away like a foal shooed an insect. 


At last, they were no more. Shining stood among their ashes. He wept, but turned from the eyes of his guards. No pony was near him. 


When he had calmed himself, he set new soldiers on the walls, and spoke to them evenly, calmly. This would not happen again. They would not allow the enemy past them without having expended all ammunition, all strength. 


Yet, as he strode off he had little confidance. Even when a runner came bearing news that the city garrison’s cannons had been recovered, he felt only mild elation. Yes, it would help. He had them split between the second and final layers of his defense. Yes, they would be a good thing. But he was still out here, and she was in there, and the city was on fire.















CADANCE SONGBOURNE




When she awoke she was alone. 


Her body was no longer numb. She could feel the lightest of thrums along her horn, the tell-tale spark of magic. But she still ached, and she still felt frozen. Groaning, she tried to rise, but she was on unsteady legs. She fell.


Perhaps she would try again, but for now she waited.


Why did she wish to get up on her hooves again, anyhow? Where was there to go? There was no place to run, really. For all of her pleading, there really was no escape she could manage to pull off like this, in this horrid state.


Yet, she felt that it was necessary that she do so. It felt as if walking were the most important thing she could be doing right at the moment, walking out of the throne room, walking back to her private chambers, walking to the stairs beyond her study, the ones she had been up only a few times. 


“Why?” she croaked. “Why?”


There was, of course, no one to answer her, pony or otherwise. 


Not for the first time, she wished fervently to have heard the Song. The desire came to her at the worst times, when she had no time to wish or dream, when she had not the energy to regret the accident of her birth. The curse of the bastard of immortality and dust. Her mother deathless except by her own choice in Henosia, in the north that slept in snow, her father dead and gone. She had not been there at the beginning, she could only hear what others could hear, stuck with the sounds of the earth and the sound of the sky.


Again, she felt the need to walk. She got up, shaking, but she did not fall. Her legs resisted gravity as much as they could, and somehow, miraculously, Every step back towards the throne was awful. Every step was a nightmare. One, two. Pain, pain, pain, pain. When she came to the throne she could not touch it. She could not lean on it for support, though she needed to, she wanted to. She dragged herself onward, past the hated throne, past the dais, raised slightly with the steps that snared her hooves. But she did not fall. Not yet.


She found the wall. She found the gilded door, and passed beyond it, into her own antechamber. The air smelled stale. Nopony had stirred the dust on the furniture nor breathed to disrupt the silence. Shining had slept at her hooves or in the barracks. She had slept but little, always in her throne, trapped.



She stumbled on the carpet, hitting chin first. Her vision swam, and for a moment she feared it would knock her back into sleep, but she stayed conscious.


It was then that she heard it. It was not a song. It was not, strictly speaking, even a sound. It was something indescribable. She started, her eyes wide.


When she rose again, when she continued on, she did so with less suffering and less effort. Yes, she was meant to come this way. She was meant to climb and climb. Yes, there would be something there.


She had meant to tell him all along that there was something she had not told him about. There was something beyond the entropy of her own body, something like an inarticulate sunlight. Glimpsed through an unseen window, perhaps. Sidelong, like...


She had no energy to continue to think.










FLUTTERSHY




When they brought the patient to her, they found Fluttershy at wits’ end in the seventh circle of hell. She had lain among the fires and seen the many ways a pony’s body could break, and seen all the different angles that skin could tear and weep.


So her eyes were wide, but empty. Unseeing. Blind like a seed in the earth and moved to purposes beyond her.


She could, however, listen. She was excellent at listening. Even in trauma, in deep shock, this did not leave her. It helped that it was Rarity who led the train of incoming wounded, with Rainbow at her heels. The image was of a dog but Fluttershy thought distantly that she was more like a shield in a Griffon’s fist.


“Fluttershy, dear, are you…” Rarity tried to say something. Fluttershy stared at her.


“Flutters, you look like you’ve seen some stuff,” Rainbow said quietly.


“I have,” Fluttershy answered.


“Shy,” Rarity tried again, “we need your help. We’ve brought you an officer. She’s hurt, but stable. I’m not asking you to make her battle-worthy, because that is impossible. All that I require is you help us keep her conscious and alert.”


“Of course,” Fluttershy responded automatically. She turned and rooted through the crates of supplies that had formed her wall. “Bring her here, and I’ll do what I can.”


These crates were home. Home was a wall one pony high and four ponies wide. There was nothing beyond the Wall. Sometimes ponies came from the nothing and she bound their wounds and gave them what medicine she could. The Opium weed she had brought from Canterlot, weak but useful, was gone. All of her original bandages were gone. The packs of anti-bacterials she had brought were gone. The Imperial supplies were gone.


When they brought her patient, Fluttershy was considering how long she could ration morphine between several hundred ponies.


Her first impression was that there was going to be no way to ration morphine, and so she immediately stopped caring about it. Impossible. It was easy to forget that the injuries that afflicted this growling, grimacing unicorn on her cot were normal. Leg obviously broken. She saw a chip on the horn. Multiple bandages she would need to change and wounds she would need to clean. 


“Rarity, I need you to do something.”


“I… yes, of course. Yes. What?”


“I need you to levitate her. Slightly. Just enough to keep her from putting too much pressure on that leg. The cots suck,” she said, and her voice cracked. She coughed. “Sorry. They are falling apart, as well. Rainbow, could you run and find me anypony who looks like a medic who isn’t immediately busy?”


“Yeah, you got it, Shy,” Rainbow said. Fluttershy was busy pulling bandages off of the leg to see her go, but she felt the rush of air from her departure. 


Fluttershy was a machine. She redid the bandages—they were sloppy, and the attempts to clean the wounds on the field had been poor. She was not surprised, considering. But they were clean now. 


When Rainbow returned with a harried-looking medic Fluttershy put him to work. She did not know much about surgery or medicine beyond how to administer it, but broken legs? She knew how to set a bone. She had set quite a few. The animals under her provision lived in a hostile environment, not in that it was always out to get them but that it was free, wild, unrestrained by the small rules of a civilized village like her own. 


She was quick. She was thorough. 


Her patient was surly. When she was awake, she bared her teeth like a lion at them. Her medic tried to back off, but Fluttershy kept him from going very far. She had faced down a manticore more than once, and plucked a thorn from its paw. She had been adored by bears and played among the wolves. She feared no beast, even one in barding.Instead, Fluttershy spoke to her.


“It’s fine. You’re behind the lines.”


“I am not wounded. Release me from your hold. I will walk back.”


“You would be crawling back,” Fluttershy corrected.


“This is intolerable. I feel perfectly fine!” Opal roared. Fluttershy had learned her name in between bouts of painkillers.


“You feel that way because you’re intoxicated from medication,” Fluttershy said evenly, quietly, like a mist that encroached and was not halted. “In thirty minutes to an hour you will start to feel worse.”


“I do not understand what you are doing.”


“I am going to set your leg. You will probably feel it even with the aneasthesic. It will hurt,” she added, by rote. “So you should probably—”


“I need nothing. Do it, then.”


Fluttershy leaned in, put her hooves on either side, and with a violence and a suddenness that no doubt shocked her companions, set the bone. The Legata shook, but did not cry out. Fluttershy blinked, backed away, and nodded. “Are you alright?”


“I feel like I’m going to be sick,” Opal said.


Fluttershy sighed. “I can give you some—”


“No! Lyrae, who loves the mortal ponies of earth, no! I would rather die than be subjected to your primitive witchery,” Opal managed. Her face was pale, her breathing harsh. Fluttershy knew that she would need something to keep pressure off the leg, but before she could say a word Opal had started to rise. Fluttershy noticed at last: her legs seemed limp. Too limp. This was not mere weakness, she knew at once. She knew it not as doctors knew the bones of the body but as a painter knew the proportions of the face. she felt her chest clench.


“Please, sit down,” Fluttershy began. “I’m not done.”


“I am. I will not be held here while the Empire’s heart burns! The right hoof of Lord Sombra will not be held by a primitive!”


Fluttershy, much to her own surprise, had something alive left inside of her. It was not alive in the way that a tree is alive, or a bird, or a beast of the field was alive. It was alive in the fashion that a fire was alive, like the great fires of a master smith, which raged so hot that to see them was to feel them.


“You are going to be still,” she said, every word like a hammerblow. Every syllable saw her louder, little by little until she was all but screaming. “You are going to lie down. I am going to finish working on you, and you are going to shut your mouth and then I am going to pump you full of anti-bacterials and then you are going to leave my cot and you are going to do it and be very, very quiet,” she finished. Her chest heaved.The wings on her back, the ones which still kept trembling with the feeling of a raging storm, were flared out, making her seem twice as large.


Everyone was silent.


Opal laid back down. Her legs—her limp legs Fluttershy knew, just knew, were useless, were tended to. But wasn’t it useless? Futile? Why fix that which cannot be made whole? Why bandage the wound that will never close? Why?


 Fluttershy worked without further interruption, and when they left she curled into a ball in the middle of her crates and cried.



















CADANCE SONGOURNE




The Great Staircase seemed boundless, endless, defying all expectation of height and form. It was a perfect spiral, congruent as the snail’s shell, never ceasing as the golden ratio. In short, it was hypnotic and Cadance was struggling to stay awake.


It was funny how similarity could lull one to sleep. Drowsiness crept up on the mind like a cautious, desperate animal, never quite in sight but never willing to abandon its quarry. At the corner of her eyes, it would stalk and steal her peripheral vision away, and then her focus, and then when it had taken these things it would lay her down on the stair to rest.


She had rested, but it was not enough. Months of toil had left her with an abiding ache that no mere nap could ease. True, she was an alicorn. Though she was fond of saying that there were alicorns and alicorns, Cadance knew that her kind was beyond simple resilience and with time and rest she would be fine. But both of these things were in short supply. She had no time. She had to reach the top.


Why? Why was she climbing the spire?


She had no idea.


Because the air wanted her to. Because it thrummed and sang and cooed to her as she climbed.Yes, this was the right way. At the top everything would make sense and all would be revealed. The final resort for the emperors of the city of crystal. She would see the final solution to the darkness. Come, come.


How long had she been climbing? Realistically she knew it could not have been that long, but it felt like weeks. Weeks since she had seen Shining. How long had it been since they had shared a normal afternoon together?


Her mind drifted back into the past as her steps carried higher and higher into the neverending sky.


Shining and Cadance, sitting on a park bench, watching Aunt Celestia gracefully guide the sun in the last moments of its descent. She did not need to do this intentionally, much as Cadance did not need to breathe manually, but she did so regardless. Cadance had asked her why once, and Celestia had said that it was good also to hear oneself breathe, to feel ones’ own breath, and so she manually lowered the sun on occasion in order to feel what it was to be herself. Cadance found this strange, but it was always a nice evening when Celestia decided to indulge this philosophy. 


Cadance sipped tea. Shining wrapped a foreleg around her. A sleepy looking Luna laid on her back in the grass, and all four of them enjoyed the privacy of Celestia’s innermost sanctum, the Garden of Dawn.


How marvelous to lie in the dying light of the sun, in the embrace of a lover, his lips upon your brow and his warmth dwelling with your warmth! How lovely it was to feel the breeze roll past as it swept over the mountain face, over the terraced garden and through the trees! How lovely, to enjoy the shade of the birch tree and feel the kiss of grass and smell the soft scent of flowers and the musk of her husband’s thick mane and the peculiar scent of night time’s nascent moments!


She felt more alive now, more focused. With every step she thought again of Shining, and of her Aunt’s garden, and of Luna’s little observatory, and of Twilight’s childish antics in the long distant past, and of her mother’s castle in snowy Henosia. She thought of the warmth of the summer sun and the cool of the autumn evening. She thought of the ancient, happy streets of Canterlot and the smiling walks of Ponyville. She thought of all things bright and beautiful that spun out of the good world’s turning, all of them born out of a Song, and in these things she thought of all that was not death. Death was a door that opened.


No, that was not it.


She remembered hazily. One night she had wandered in the gardens of the palace. Equestria had been new and strange. It had been a land of ponies who spoke oddly and seemed not to understand who she was. Nopony knew her but her aunt. But in the dark of the garden, her aunt was absent. And so her hanger-ons, her so-called companions, all the ponies she had seen or talked to—they had vanished. They slept. She was alone in the garden, even when she was not alone. Aunt Celestia had given her an attendant, a young mare with pretty mane and bright eyes. That mare was the first mare Cadance looked on and found beautiful in a way that was more than aesthetic. But that night, she fell asleep and Cadance cried for her lost home and her exile from it. Alone.


How she had wept! How she had fervently hoped that her mother would appear and bring her home, to where the sun shone through on the wintery crags and brought them little warmth. It was so hot here. The air was so thick. She suffered, she wandered. When she had found Shining, he had been an outreached foreleg pulling her out of the waves.


What if death would be like that? What if it would be going down into those waves again? Lost in another land where the language is unfamiliar? Some other country beyond the walls of morning, perhaps. Would they all be there? All of the little souls in the streets and the tents? The little ones who cowered in the houses? Would they all be strangers?


Cadance stumbled on one of the steps. She fell, going only a few steps back before she caught herself.









RARITY





There is a point at which no pony can bear to see or hear or do anything, and Rarity was fast approaching that point. Hours had passed. The night was passing, and yet it seemed not to wish to. The darkness clung to everything that the fire did not burn. The Giants rushed out of the dark only to be blown to smithereens by cannons and gunfire and magic, and then more came. And then more came. And then more came.


She had eaten. She had even slept. Rarity found that in the most dire of circumstances, of all times on this journey, she was quite well provisioned. They had even brought her a measure of wine to ease her heart’s sorrow. It was pitiful stuff, but the alcohol was in it still, and she took it gladly. She shared it with Rainbow, and together they sat against a house that had been only half-burned.


The Mitou had, of course, brought their own guns. These were almost cannons themselves. Only constant application of magic kept the walls in one piece. Rarity did her part same as the immunes of the legions, fortifying over and over. It was not a hard spell, just a tiring one. While one unicorn or two kept all of the disparate pieces held together, the rest bound each item to its neighbor by thaumaturgic means, making them inseparable. It reminded her of the classes she had taken at the community college before the boutique had gotten successful. When she’d had time.


It was in these circumstances that Rarity found herself thinking of three things.


The first was of death. Oh death, that rode like a pale horse through the tattered streets of mortals with no remorse, who took the ones who must be taken and spared without sentiment. 


The second was Rainbow. Rarity had been using her magic this whole time, but the number of mages present had meant she had had plenty of time to recuperate. But Rainbow had pressed herself to the limit, without rest or hesitation, for hours. Was she alright? Rarity wanted to ask. She would ask. But she needed a moment to catch herself. Words came easier when one was composed.



The third was Twilight. Where was she? Where was their favorite bookworm, their teacher’s pet, their beloved apostate? She had led them from the first. They had always revolved around her, not as sycophants or sidekicks but as spokes around a great wheel, all of them keeping the shape and the form and the function of their turning. It was inaccurate to say that without Twilight she was lost. She could live without Twilight or Applejack. She got along alright without Pinkie Pie or Spike. But she needed them as she needed anything of the spirit: desperaely.


“Are you awake, Rainbow?”


“Yeah.”


Rarity hummed. “Are you alright?”


“I don’t know.”


That was fair. Rarity stirred and nuzzled her. “The attacks come less frequently now.”


“Probably because they’ve been probing us and they’ve decided where they wanna go,” Rainbow said dully.


“Oh,” she said. She more breathed than spoke. There was not much energy left over for expression, for dramatics. “Do you want to get out of here?” she said, without thought. “Just leave. Retreat. Fly, if you will.”


“What?”


“I don’t know. I just thought maybe if it was simply two of us—sorry, Fluttershy, three—we might could evade capture and get far enough away to escape all of this.”


Rainbow stirred and looked up at her. “Are you a changeling?”


Rarity blinked. “No?”


“I thought so. So why the hell are you talking like that?” She frowned and then went back to staring ahead, her amen right underneath Rarity’s chin. “Rares, you don’t run away. I mean, if you can get everybody out you do, but you don’t abandon ponies. Sometimes I do, on accident. Remember that time in Appaloosa?”


“I try not to. It was hours before you lot came back for Pinkie and I. Pinkie. And I. Alone. On that silly cart.”


Rainbow laughed weakly. “But you and me, Rares? We wouldn’t leave these guys. We can’t. Even if we wanted to, and I know you don’t wanna.”


She didn’t.


“I guess so.”


“Rares?”


“Yes?” She answered. In the distance, she heard a commotion. They were back, perhaps, with their guns and their pounding feet. 


“I love you.”


“I love you too, Rainbow, if you’ll believe it,” Rarity said softly. “I think we’ll be needed soon.”


“I know. I heard them before you. Felt them through the ground.”


“You would. Warrior.”


“You are too now, you know,” Rainbow shot back.


Rarity shrugged. She supposed it was true. 


The first shots hit the wall and she knew that the magic was buckling. They got to their hooves and almost lazily Rarity called up her arcane power and put it into the fortification. “I think I saw the scoutmaster running back that way,” she said, pointing. “If you’re going to link up with them again.”


Rainbow said nothing. She nodded and was into the sky in a heartbeat.












ZEPHYR


The Ninth legion had broken. The others? He had no idea. They burned or held, he did not know—he cared, but in a distant way. It was the immediate that mattered.


What was immediate was that the Cohort X Rapax of the Ninth Legion was reduced to four pegasi. This was, as could be imagined, far below its proper strength.


They were basically helpless.


He had cursed more in the last two hours than he had in his entire short life. Albeit, not that much of an accomplishment, but a stallion took what he could in the chaos of war. One of those things was the entire line of thought that had just passed through his mind because it was completely bullshit and he was going to die who cared if he said “fuck” a few times before some Mitou blew his head off with a handcannon?


Nopony, that’s who.


Flying over the great vague shape of the city was disorienting. At times, he had wished for more fires, if only to help him navigate. 


He was no Celestialist, no Supernalist. He prayed no prayers to the Stars, nor did he worship the Sun and Moon. Yet, even he looked down below and thought to himself that he could almost believe what they whispered about the Outer Dark. Regions of sorrow, where peace could never dwell, and hope never never came, but only torture. Darkness, visible.


The survivors had tried to link up with the front line several times. It seemed as if it would be simple, at first: just fly towards the Spire, and you’ll all but be there. And in a purely directional sense, flying made it much simpler. But flying took energy, effort, focus. The third he could spare, his mind made like a blade from fear. The other two were beyond them in anything more than short bursts. Yes, they could ride the harsh wind for a few blocks, but then fatigue weighed them down and they stopped, panting, on the roofs.


At this rate, they were never going to make it.


And they were very close. Zephyr had seen fire from the frontline up ahead of them, maybe four blocks, maybe five blocks away. One long jump. Realistically, two shorter ones. Either way, they might could make it to safety. But they probably wouldn’t. And why? Because the Mitou clogged the streets now. The four survivors had gone unnoticed for now. They were appetizers, sideshows, and the main event of the night was up ahead. For once, Zephyr was glad to have the spotlight on someone else. 


Hurricane, his wingmate, shivered. “I can’t look at them,” she whispered. “We’re going to die up here or down there or somewhere.”


“We’re almost there,” Zephyr answered hollowly. “Just one more jump.”


“Two, at least. Unless we rest longer,” said another.


“If we wait longer they’ll notice us,” Hurricane said and laid her head on the roof. They were all exhausted. The temptation to simply lie down, to sink into the oblivion of restful sleep, was far too great. Few dangers could hold off the body’s need for rest. Even those that should forestall weariness sometimes did not.


The more they jumped, the higher the chance of being seen as well. “If we could count on our own fliers seeing us and clearing us a hole, this would be a lot easier.”


They were silent a few more minutes.


Hurricane rose. “Come on.”


They all stood, and stretched their aching wings. One more flight, Zephyr told his wings, once more and then we can go lie down. I promise. No more flying after this for awhile. 


They moved as one. Zephyr took a running jump and was in the air. The wind caught at his wings. Pain shot up his back and he cried out, but did not falter.


He was close enough to make it. They all were. He could almost feel the ground on his hooves, could almost hear the voices of other ponies. His heart lept within him, and he turned his head to call to his companions.


The Mitou noticed them. They must have, for as he turned, there was a deafening sound, and before his eyes he saw Hurricane disappear in a cloud of feather and blood. The mist coated his face. He tried to say something or to scream but could not. 


The barricade was so close, but his wings seized up. His back froze. It refused to move. It was finished. This would have to be enough. But it was not enough, it was not nearly enough. He crashed to the ground perhaps thirty yards from the barricade. He crawled, and every foot hurt him. Every little hoof’s length was torture.


The Mitou advanced behind him. He did not know if his companions had survived. For a single moment, he did not care. He cared only about getting farther, about breathing one more time, about not being crushed. He wanted to live.


It was in this state that he saw her.


She was beautiful. He saw this even in his feverish state. A Unicorn as white as snow, her mane flowing royal purple, her eyes flashing blue like the hottest fires, Magic glowed about her like an aura. Like a star—no, like a meteor she hurtled down from the battlements and bathed the ground around Zephyr in magical fire. At her side flew others. A pegasus with the colors of the rainbow, in a scout’s barding. She moved with lightning speed. A blink was too long for her. She would steal the breath from a dying man and return in enough time to pay him back tenfold. She came like one of the warlords out of the stories that every pegasus dreamed of when the wise blood took over. Soldiers followed at their heels. Lances went over his head. Rifles went off near him, shaking his hearing. He could not hear anything at all, until She came to him.


She stood before him. Zephyr thought this unicorn was the most beautiful pony he had ever seen. Perhaps the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He was not a praying pony, but he worshipped her, for she was divine. She had pulled him out of the fire.


When the rainbow-maned pegasus who was her retainer helped Zephyr onto the back of a sturdy legionnaire he lost his battle to overwhelming weariness.





















CADANCE SONGBOURNE



Night and day do not matter apart from the light of the sun and the silver reflection of the moon. Hours have little meaning in the vacuum of contextless isolation. Time is fluid.


So it was for Cadance.


She had lost track of how many steps she had climbed. Twice, actually. She was sure that it had not been more than a day, if that long. Mostly sure. She knew that the army outside was no doubt losing. She knew her name. These were the things she knew, and that she repeated.


For, as Cadance was apt to say at times to her husband, there were alicorns and alicorns. She was of a race with wills of iron, or at least the appearance of such. She was tough. Her body endured more punishment than any normal pony could bear. It weathered time, resisted age, laughed at disease, fought poison like a veteran beats back a child’s charge. But there were some things not even this fantastic body of hers could do. One of them was endure past the point of absolute exhaustion.


Twice she had fallen and lain on the smooth steps, struggling to stay awake. If she slept… she did not know what would happen. Something would happen. Or rather, something would not happen. What would or would not happen was, of course, a mystery to her. This whole road of sorrows was a mystery to her. The call had not weakened, at least. She knew now that it was some sort of call. In rare moments of perfect lucidity she recognized it as magical. She suspected that it might be some final weapon. She thought for a moment that there might be some last bit of life in the Crystal Heart, but had she not drained it dry? And the hope of her dear little ponies was in short supply. It was the long night. She could not expect them to hope.


Up. Always up. Further up and further in. 


She returned over and over to death and what it was. Did her ponies shiver and then go still, silent as into a long sleep? Did they scream and in death scream forever, spiralling down and down, drawn back below into the rind of the world? Was death a door that opened?


It plagued her. She knew, though she could not put it into words, that the truth would be revealed to her in short order. Even if she made it to the top of the spire without collapsing or falling and breaking her neck, eventually the monsters would find her and rip her to pieces. Shining would die. Everypony would die. How sad, that Rarity and her friends had come all this way only to be trapped in the last moments of an empire that should have fallen long ago.


And suddenly, she was there. The door was before her. At first, she did not comprehend it. Surely, she had not climbed so far already. But time is soft and does not run evenly to those who are exhausted. 


Cadance pushed open the door to the Sanctum of the Emperors.


Inside, she found a few trappings. A chair. A bed. A table. A few beautiful paintings older than she by thousands of years. A small bookcase.


The Crystal Heart sat on its pedestal. It glowed faintly.


Cadance wondered at it. Even after the great burden it had borne, still it had enough magic left in it to glow. What a work of art! What a task of love it was. She would bar the door, she decided at once. Seal this room so that nothing would ever enter and tarnish this last testament.


THAT WILL NOT BE NECCESSARY.


Cadance shook. The force of the voice sent her sprawling and she lay on the floor, prostrate before the heart.


“What… who?”


YOU HAVE COME. YOU HAVE CLIMBED THE HILL.


“What are you? Are you the heart?” she asked. She ground her teeth. She felt as if a building had fallen on her back.


I AM THE HEART, AS YOU WOULD SAY IT. SO IT IS. DO YOU KNOW WHY YOU HAVE COME?


“Because it’s the end,” she replied, and coughed.


YES. THE END OF ALL THINGS. OR, THE END OF THESE THINGS AROUND YOU. IT NEED NOT BE SO. BUT IT MAY BE SO.


“What do I need to do?” 


YOU ARE AN ALICORN.


“Yes… I’m… there are alicorns and—”


I AM AWARE. NO ALICORN HAS SAT THE THRONE OF THE EMPIRE BEFORE, YET I KNOW YOUR KIND. I ALSO KNOW YOU. CADANCE SONGBOURNE, THE ONLY CHILD OF THE QUEEN OF HENOSIA, WHO LOVES HER LITTLE PONIES AND THINKS ABOUT DEATH. I KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS. YOUR KIND THINKS OF DEATH OFTEN, CADANCE SONGBOURNE. I HEAR SO IN THE STRAINS OF THE GREAT SONG THAT THEY HAVE PONDERED DEATH FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS. DO YOU FEAR DEATH?


Yes. Yes. “I think I do,” she managed.


I WILL SHOW YOU SOMETHING. COME, DAUGHTER OF ALICORNS, AND SEE THE OUTER DARKNESS.


And she was given a vision of the hell that was Imperial Center. She saw her husband commanding the garrison. She saw him supervise the loading and aiming of cannons. He raged and shook and fought and bled. She loved him. She loved him more than life in that moment, in the most literal way. She would die painfully, with agony if he could breathe tomorrow morning. She did not think this. She knew it. She felt it. She had always known such things as fact, even in others.


She saw Rarity and Rainbow, resolute before the great wall. She saw them slumped against a house. She saw them making love in the lobby of the abandoned tenement. How far they had come! They had braved the winter to find her. She loved them also. She knew that what they felt was true, at least in this moment. For the future was not hers to know. But she loved them.


She saw Fluttershy, tending broken ponies. Her broken ponies. She saw the frantic veterinarian trying to ease the suffering that cannot be eased and how she shattered and rebuilt herself over and over. And she loved.


She saw the frightened soldiers, shaking in their barding. She saw them die and live and cry. She saw the huddling civilians in their masses. Wives and Husbands, fathers and mothers, children, brothers and sisters, the old and the young, unicorn and pegasus, earth pony and crystal pony. She saw the quietly humming changelings in their families, preparing as best they knew how for the last silencing of their songs. She saw the last rites. She saw the reminders of love. She saw the bitter regrets. And she loved them. She loved all of them. She loved them. How many, how shining, how beautiful they were. How myriad! How lost! How she longed in that moment to gather them up.


And death was swallowed up. Death, she knew in an instant, was not a door or a silence. It was not drowning. It would be a hook behind the door where she would hang her coat. The moment before homecoming. 


WILL YOU DO ONE LAST TASK?


“Yes.”


YOU WILL PROBABLY DIE. IT IS UNSURE.


“Let me die.” It was night. Yes, it was still night as she had thought. But the night was passing. She knew that it was. The sun was rising.


THEN GRASP THE HEART TIGHTLY. DO NOT LET IT SLIP FROM YOUR GRIP. TAKE ITS WARMTH INTO YOU AND THE FOE WILL FEEL IT. BECOME VICTORY, YOU WHO HAVE FELT FAMINE.


And she did as the heart instructed her.



With its powers, she saw everything. She saw as far away as Jannah and as close as the particles that made up her very body. From the spire poured out a great light, like a libation given to the gods of war. Raw, wild magic swept over the streets. She saw ponies jostled by it, but uninjured. But out past the barricade, she saw the magic descend like an angel of death. The Mitou were thrown like a child’s playthings. They were burned. They were annihilated. She saw the light like a great tidal wave cleanse the city, putting out the fires, washing the blood away. She saw some of her own soldiers caught up in the deluge past the walls, and they were swept away, and even she could not see if they lived or died. She saw Rarity and Rainbow out before the wall, fighting back to back. Rarity’s wounded leg hindered her. There was no retreat. But the wave came and they and all of their foes were borne away on it. She felt every single moment. She felt Rainbow’s blind panic as she tried to swim into magic itself, her wings beating furiously to rescue Rarity. Cadance felt Rarity’s agony as her own magic reacted savagely to a foreign invasion. There was something else, some magic that Cadance felt like heat on the back of her neck, even through the white noise of the Heart, but she could not recognize it.


And then she was still. She was silent.


The city was still. The city was silent.


And then a great sleep overtook her, and she did not know if it was the final sleep, but she welcomed it regardless. All was shattered white light and a memory of Shining’s kiss on her brow.