The sound of beeping and mechanical whirring slowly pulled her to consciousness, and with awareness came the sensation of warmth and of floating. She would later learn that it was the morphine drip, but for now, she didn't care.
What she did care about was the tingly sensation throughout her body, especially below her neck. After pondering it for a few minutes, so long because of how hazy her head felt, Sparkle realized that her magic was leaking from her core, and tried to pull it back.
She regretted it instantly.
Pain of the soul and of the magic was not something that could be treated with chemical pain relievers. Sparkle hissed, the motion of her face causing her to feel the bandages for the first time. And, while she still ached from her attempt to recompress her magic, it did bring something else: awareness.
A trace of adrenaline entered her blood, bringing her to full alertness in a second. Sparkle's eyes snapped open, but only one saw the distinctive tiles of the hospital ceiling. The other eye saw light, sure, but filtered through a layer of gauze.
"Mmmm..." she moaned. There were suddenly hoof steps, and a figure that she hadn't heard before then, but must have been in the room, appeared over her bed.
"Good morning, Ms. Twilight. How are you feeling?" the mare in nurse's garb said.
"..."
"I'm sorry. I didn't quite catch that," the nurse said.
Her voice rough, she croaked, "...'M name's Sparkle."
"Oh! My mistake. I saw your charts and thought you went by your first name," she said, her tone quite chipper. "Can I get you anything?"
"Water."
Something cold and moist touched Sparkle's lips. "Just suck on the sponge for me. Don't try and sit up just yet. I'll refill it when it's dry, so don't worry about that. Now, I need to ask you some questions first. Most of these are yes/no questions, so nod or blink once for yes, shake or blink twice for no, whichever is more comfortable. Are you ready?"
Sparkle nodded.
"Good. Do you feel any pain in your right foreleg or its shoulder?" Negative. "Any physical pain in general?" Negative. "Does your magic cause you any pain?" Positive. "On a scale of one to ten, with one being no pain, and ten being excruciating, does your pain rate more than a five?" Negative. The nurse looked relieved to hear that. Changing out Sparkle's water sponge, the nurse continued to ask a few more questions about Sparkle's health.
Finally satisfied, the smiling nurse said, "Now, you just rest here for a minute while I go get the doctor. He'll explain everything and answer your questions, and then we'll see about letting your friends and family visit you. How does that sound, sweetie?"
Sparkle nodded and took one last suck of water from the sponge. The blue-eyed nurse stepped out the door and a minute later, almost to the second, she trotted back in with a very serious-looking stallion. The doctor looked to the side, glancing at something Sparkle couldn't see from her angle, and then affixed his vibrant pink eyes on the injured unicorn.
"Sparkle, color me impressed. That stallion that carried you in told us that you'd lost the limb hours before he got you here, and that you'd been using your magic to keep yourself alive. That takes skill," the doctor said. "Doctor Scalpel, primary trauma surgeon of Canterlot Royal Medical Hospital, at your service."
"Thank you," Sparkle said. "So?"
"Right. We had to remove an additional quarter hoof length of bone and tissue from your right foreleg in order to seal it and prevent infection. You are likely going to be on antibiotics for at least a month to be safe, and you won't be leaving the hospital for two weeks, minimum. You suffered minor first-degree magical burns along the front and left sides of your body, although nothing a burn potion can't fix. As long as you don't get infected, you will likely make as complete of a physical recovery as one could expect from your situation."
Sparkle looked at him, her face neutral. "There's more, isn't there?"
"Yes. In all my time as a surgeon, I have fixed dozens of magical pathways and will likely have to fix dozens more, but I have never seen a unicorn's core damaged before. What did Discord do to you?" Dr. Scalpel asked.
"Discord didn't do that. The Elements of Harmony did it."
"I'm afraid that I don't know what those are," the doctor said.
"Light magic artifacts. Purified Luna and turned Discord to stone. Attacked me because bearers saw me and my magic as a threat. It nearly imploded my soul, my core," Sparkle answered.
"That's what Cobalt, the stallion that brought her in, said when I asked him," the nurse added.
The doctor frowned. "That does answer some of my questions. Now, while I would suggest sleep, I wouldn't want to keep you from your visitors outside, that is, if you want to-"
"Yes!" Sparkle said, cutting him off.
"Excited, are we? Very well." Dr. Scalpel turned around and said, "You can come in now."
As the doctor and nurse exited the hospital room, three figures entered the room, two ponies and one young drake. "Mom!" The smallest of the trio exclaimed. Thorn, in his smallest and most immature form, climbed up onto Sparkle's bed and lay down next to her head without any prompting. Similarly unprompted, Sparkle turned her head away from him and let him embrace her head. The two immediately sighed in relief, as the soul they shared, contained in the back of Sparkle's head and in Thorn's heart, came close enough together to nearly feel like one soul again, and close enough together to begin to heal one another.
It was more than that, though. The moment his claws brushed through her mane, a tingle went down her spine as he poured raw life-force into her. Under bandages, flesh began to squirm and heal shut, but only heal. Life-force alone could only heal, not regrow flesh that had been removed, and so Sparkle's limb, instead of regrowing, simply healed into a stump.
Now, while Thorn's actions might have taken a while to say, in reality, he was on her bed and beginning to heal her before most could stop him. "Thorn, get down from there," Shining Armor said, lighting his horn and surrounding Thorn with his pink aura.
"No! Don't touch him!" Sparkle protested, her voice quickly gaining strength even as she spoke.
The aura around Thorn died away. "Sorry, Sparks. I just didn't want him to hurt you."
"He's fine," Sparkle said. "I'm fine." Thorn tightened his grip unconsciously. "Shiny, Cobalt, are you two alright?"
"I'm fine, Sparks, just a little bruised." He frowned. "Cobalt, though..."
"Cobalt?"
"I... Whatever you did to protect us, didn't completely work. My memories are... all jumbled up, I think," the earth pony said. He smiled though, and rubbed the back of his head with his hoof, cleaned of paint and restored to its normal shade of red. "I sort of remember you, though. Were you important?"
"Maybe to you," she said. Sparkle narrowed her eyes in contemplation as she hummed to herself. "What do you mean 'jumbled'?"
"It's like... everything is there, but not connected together," Cobalt explained. "Names without faces, faces without names, words without images, sounds without meaning, skills without knowing how I learned them... Did you know that I can do unicorn magic? I have no idea where I could have learned that!"
"Hehehe, I taught you that," Sparkle answered.
"Oh, really? That makes sense, I think." His eyes lit up with sudden realization. "Hey, if you were my teacher, do you think you could help me put myself back together? I'm sure you know a lot of things about me."
Sparkle smiled. "It would be my pleasure."
There was a knock on the door. "Who? Come in!"
Cadance, being the only other pony who would likely have a reason to visit her, was who Sparkle expected to come through the door. And while it wasn't Cadance, it was a princess that walked through the doorway.
"Princess Celestia, Ma'am," Shining Armor states, snapping to attention and saluting the alicorn.
"At ease, First Lieutenant Shining Armor. And, while I expect to be calling you Captain Armor soon enough for your bravery the other night," – Shining Armor's eyes went wide – "that is not why I'm here." When Celestia’s eyes fell upon Sparkle, the young mare felt as if she were being bathed in sunlight, and not the gentle warmth of spring, but the blistering, merciless heat of a desert sun. Thorn further tightened his grip around Sparkle’s head on reflex, shying away from the radiant heat and light.
Sparkle made herself look away from the alicorn, her eyes choosing to gaze out the window instead. "To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit, Princess? Surely it's not just a social call."
"No, it is not," Celestia answered firmly. "Discord rampaged for hours, and for a being of his power, that is more than enough time to cause severe calamity and strife. The Elements of Harmony stopped him and restored the planet, and yet you nearly handed the world to him on a silver platter. I have heard my student's side of the story, and I want to know your side of the story before I decide what happens next."
Sparkle weighed her options before deciding that it would just be easier to play along. Looking back at the tall princess, Sparkle asked, "What do you want to know?"
Princess Celestia requested, "I want to know everything, starting from the Gala and ending when you woke up here."
Nodding, Sparkle started recounting the events of that night, from her deal with Fancy Pants to her conversation with Luna. When she got to the part about Vinyl Scratch, Sparkle added, "Vinyl gave me a warning. Some of the Covens are allying themselves with each other, despite being enemies, and are allying with some werewolves and changelings. Something big is stirring."
"That is quite troubling," Celestia replied. “How accurate is this information, do you think? How well can you trust this Vinyl Scratch?”
“I don’t know her that well, and this is the first time I’ve heard of this situation, but I do know that she would never lie to me. Even a vampire coven as tame as LSC would have her head if she did anything to alienate a necromancer.”
“And why is that?”
“Blood wine, Princess. If you were to tell Luna’s Red Platoon that you might be able to get them blood wine from me, their reactions will tell you everything you need to know,” Sparkle answered.
“I will. Now, continue with what happened after Vinyl Scratch approached you,” the Sun Princess said.
Still looking out the window towards the hospital courtyard, Sparkle recounted, “That was when those four ponies were killed.”
Celestia frowned. “What do you know about those ponies?”
“I know one of them was Prince Blueblood,” Sparkle said. “I’d never seen the other three before that night.” Which was true, technically; her specters had seen them, but she had not seen them with her own eyes. However, her interest in seeing justice against four dead ponies, when compared to her desire to not be associated with their deaths, was rather low.
“And the assailant? Do you know anything about that unicorn?”
“No.” Then Sparkle winced. “Thorn, your claws.”
The Drake loosened his grip. “Sorry, Mom.”
“I know you’re trying to make me feel better, but don’t hug so tightly,” Sparkle said. Addressing the source of the still-present burning heat, she explained Discord’s first appearance before her, and her subsequent teleportation, where she met up with Cobalt.
“Oh, that’s something I actually remember!” he suddenly exclaimed. “And then the streets turned into a maze, right?”
“Yes,” agreed Sparkle, before quickly finishing her tale. “Look,” she said as she concluded, “I solve problems. It wasn’t like I had a choice.” The lavender mare lifted the stump she had for a foreleg, which ended just below the elbow. “Discord literally took my leg away and prevented me from healing it. I was going to die otherwise. I tricked Discord so that he could be defeated and nopony except the shop keeper was hurt in the process. What more could you ask of me?”
“I wouldn’t have killed them, had I been in your shoes,” Princess Celestia said. “I would have handed the Elements back then and there and have been done with it.”
“And four people would have died if I had done that!” Sparkle shouted, turning to meet Celestia’s gaze for the first time and causing Shining and Cobalt to jump at the sudden loudness. “Me, Cobalt, Thorn and Savior, we all would have been killed by the Elements had I not negotiated Discord into giving my book back!”
Celestia knew that the Elements were powerful light magic artifacts; to fear death from them, when innocents were unaffected, Celestia equated to practically admitting guilt. “You never mentioned this “Savior” individual, and how would have Cobalt and Thorn been in any danger?” Celestia inquired.
“Thorn has half my soul, Cobalt’s brain is magically tied to me by a voluntary geas, and Savior is my innocent, unborn foal!” Sparkle hissed.
Shining Armor’s eyes went wide. This was the first he was hearing about the unborn Savior, and all of his brotherly instincts were telling him to demand to know who the father was so he could beat the pathetic stallion to a bloody pulp and lock him away. However, he refrained, seeing as his necromancer sister was in a heated discussion with the resident sun goddess.
“And you gambled with my faithful student and her friend’s lives, and the lives of countless people across the globe, for three ponies, without even the chance of escaping Discord’s rule should you have failed?” the enraged, albeit seemingly calm, Celestia said.
“You mean you would have sacrificed your family?” Sparkle growled. The next lash of her tongue came before she could stop it. Perhaps it was the morphine, or maybe it was schadenfreude, but either way, Sparkle quipped, “Oh wait, you have already. Luna.”
Out in deep space, the sun above let out six of the biggest solar flares ever recorded, detonated by Celestia’s rage. In the hospital room, however, all that the mortals saw was a twitch of her eyebrow.
Sparkle’s hoof shot to her mouth, though she moved her shoulder as if the other hoof was still there. “No. I’m sorry! I didn’t mean that. Please forgive me, your highness.”
“For your services to Equestria, you won’t be serving jail time for the crimes of using black magic against my subjects, of which you have been found guilty.” Celestia declared. “Instead, Twilight Velvet Sparkle, you will be conscripted as a noncombatant member of the Red Platoon to investigate these claims of Vinyl Scratch, and, regardless of their validity, defend the living citizens of Equestria. You will receive standard pay, but continued service is compulsory until at such time I deem you have repaid your debt. Any infraction will be punished to the full extent, and abandoning your duty will be considered high treason, and punished accordingly. Furthermore, your only break will be for the delivery of your child, at which point he will be placed in the orphanage system or with a guardian of your choice until such time you are relieved of duty.
“Do you understand?” Celestia asked. Sparkle swore she could see the inferno bubbling in the princess’s eyes.
“But-” Sparkle was about to protest that her presence among the Red Platoon could actually spark a vampire war, but she held her tongue. “Yes, I understand.”
“Good. A guard will retrieve you when you are released from the hospital,” Celestia decreed. “Good day.” With that, she turned and left.
A moment of silence filled the room. And then, “Sparks, what in Tartarus is going on?”
“I get the feeling that was bad,” Cobalt commented from where he stood shaking.
“No shit,” Thorn replied.
"Sparks, you're pregnant? When did that happen?" Shining Armor pleaded.
Thorn snorted. "Of course that's what Uncle Shining gets out of that conversation."
Ignoring the other half of her soul, Sparkle said, "Savior is the son of Card Gambit, the stallion who had you kidnapped, and not in the way you think." Shining opened his mouth. "No, he didn't touch me." The stallion closed his mouth. "It's the reincarnation spell. I'm growing the stallion I had to kill a new body in my womb. Savior has been asleep inside of me for over three months."
Shining glared at her. "I'm pissed that you didn't tell me sooner, but this isn't the time for that. Now, what's the connection between you and the Red Platoon?"
"You really don't know?" Shining shook his head. "They're vampires, I'm me. That's a powerful combination."
"Yeah, and if mom can't get out of this, the other vampires are going to slaughter the platoon for having her side with the platoon instead of them," Thorn said.
"Then we need to tell the Princess," Shining Armor said.
"She'll find out soon enough," Sparkle said. “For now, I just want to rest. I’ll deal with this shit in the morning.”
“Language, mom,” Thorn habitually quipped.
Chuckling lightly, Sparkle replied, “Thorn, I don’t think you’re ever going to break me of that habit.”
Shrugging, he said, “A drake can try.”
Stepping closer, Shining Armor put his hoof on Sparkle’s good shoulder. “Sparks, we need to talk. I’m really disappointed in you - don’t give me that look. I’m not disappointed in anything you’ve done, but that you haven’t told me. I’m your BBBFF; if you can’t confide in me, then who could you.”
Thorn used deadpan glare; it was not very effective.
“I promise, on my honor as a royal guard and, more importantly, as your big brother, that anything you say will not leave this room,” the eldest stallion in the room said. “Sparks, what have you been keeping from me, and who is this stallion,” - he pointed at Cobalt - “that you brought into our lives?”
She sighed, “I guess this has been a long time coming, right?”
“You have no idea.”
She thought it would be hard, but when Sparkle opened her mouth, the words practically leapt off her tongue. For hours they talked, and while Shining’s face never looked anything other than stern, he never interrupted aside from the occasional question. For hours they talked, only stopping temporarily when the nurse came to check on her. And all the while, Thorn’s close presence accelerated the repairing of their shared soul.
Two knocks punctuated the conversation that had been going on for hours. The nurse stepped into the room. “Visiting hours are over,” she announced. “Unless you’re planning to spend the night in here with her, you’d best be on your way.”
“Thorn,” Sparkle said, “stay with me.”
He nodded. “Sure thing.”
“I’ll see you two tomorrow, right?” Sparkle asked the departing stallions.
“Of course.”
“Absolutely.”
Sparkle briefly glanced away. “Great. See you then.”
Cobalt and Shining Armor shuffled out of the room, passing a maneless earth pony in the hall as they left.
“Can you get the lights, please?” Sparkle asked the nurse.
“Of course! Good night, and rest well!”
The glow crystal lights clicked off audibly, throwing the mother and son in the hospital bed into near darkness. It fell to complete darkness as the door shut tight.
A second passed.
Then a minute.
Then an hour.
Then two hours.
“Thorn, Thorn, wake up!” Sparkle hissed quietly.
“Hmm... wha?”
“Thorn, I need you to quietly jump us into my lab in the apartment, but don’t solidify us until we see the room is all clear. Got it?”
“Got it.”
With little more than a thought, Thorn activated the spell that had been placed upon him by his mother to allow him to teleport through the shadows. Wrapping his arms around his mother’s neck, he fell backwards through the bed and landed softly not a second later in the empty lab.
Sitting up, Sparkle and Thorn immediately jumped into action. "Thorn, gather all my notes and books and put them in my space-expanded trunk, we're leaving."
Sparkle then hobbled over to a shelf, where she pulled down an iron box and a specific book. Opening the box, she quickly drank the tar-like substance of a research specter. 'Help repair the damage to my magic,' she instructed the artificial demon.
Then, opening the book, one of the Dread Necroptica, she commanded, "Dread-summoning array." The book's pages rapidly flipped past her before stopping on a page with the required shapes. New symbols adorned the page, indicating that she had been in possession of the sixth book and showed her how to summon it to her. Two minutes later, the equivalent runes were drawn on the ground and, with the help of the specter, the latest book in the dark series was in her possession once more. Sparkle silently counted her blessings that wherever it had been, there hadn't been magic interfering with the summoning.
Satisfied with the requisition of her book, Sparkle drew a new, though simpler array on the ground. As her summoning ability was exceptionally poor from having only minimal practice with it and being terrified of what could enter her reality should she mess up, the array before her was about the limit of what she could do. It was limited to summoning small, inanimate objects from within the same city that were already stained with her magical signature. Objects like her missing bones, for instance.
So when her bones, including the removed fragments of her radius and ulna, materialized in the circle, she sighed in relief. Bones could be used in sympathetic magic, where spells cast on them would affect the one that grew them, and there was no way she was going to let anypony have her bones.
“So what’s the plan? Where are we going?” Thorn asked as he carefully added more and more books to the trunk, which remarkably seemed to grow no heavier regardless of how much he added.
“I was thinking Fillydelphia, first, to hire a machinist to craft me a new leg, since my bones won’t do well by themselves,” explained Sparkle. “While we’re there, you could visit Dragon Town, to see if there is anything of use to you there. Then, depending on time, we’ll go further north to Manehattan, or even further, to Haylem, because I want to check out some rumors of hidden caches of dark texts.”
“Sounds like fun,” Thorn said. Pausing, he straightened up and looked towards his mother. “I’ve always wanted to see Dragon Town. Actually, I wanted to see some other dragons, period.”
“You’ve seen Spike,” Sparkle commented.
“Bah, he doesn’t count.” Thorn waved a claw dismissively. “Even I know that we’re not even real dragons."
“Thorn...”
“What? It’s not like it actually bothers me. It’s just... whatever. Doesn’t matter.” He grabbed yet another book of the shelf, this one a notebook containing Sparkle’s observations on the anatomy of a soul. Then he paused again. “What about Cobalt?”
“What about- oh... OH! I can’t just leave him,” Sparkle realized. “Think, think, think... Given his symptoms, it doesn’t look like the memories were suppressed, just misplaced. But if he tries to sort them out and messes up, his memories will be flawed... and if he doesn’t, he’ll start forgetting anything unorganized soon enough. What to do...”
She looked down at her bad hoof. “That will work.” Reacting to her will, the specter oozed out of her body, releasing the bones of her severed leg as it did so. “Go to Cobalt. Help preserve his memories, and reconstruct anything you can using our memories. If you get the chance to do so discreetly, draw upon my magic and replicate yourself. Have the clone research his personal history to aid in the reconstruction. And try to get him to see a psychiatrist, if you can.”
Giggling slightly, the specter nooded and shot out the window. “Good, that should help him for now.” She turned slightly and notice that Thorn was giving her a funny look. “What?”
“I kind of thought you would have brought him with us,” Thorn admitted.
“Bring a mentally unsound individual with us on a cross-country trip as we flee from the Royal Guard? No thank you,” Sparkle proclaimed. “Besides, he needs professional help; there’s only so much I can do to fix the mind.”
Hobbling over on three legs, Sparkle ignored the ache in her magic and levitated the last of her important possessions into the box, closed and locked the trunk, and dropped it, a good amount of bits, and her bones into a space-expanded set of saddlebags, which she quickly put on her back. Looking around, the lab seemed pretty barren, now that everything she couldn’t risk the Guard confiscating was now packed away and stowed on her person.
“Thorn, go grab anything you want to take, but be quiet. Don’t let Shining Armor know you’re here.”
“No, I’m good,” Thorn countered. “We don’t need to take the chance.”
Sparkle blinked. “Right. Thorn, here’s the plan. We’re going to teleport to the far side of Mount Canterlot, and then we’re going to fly to Crystal River Junction. We’ll catch the morning train to Fillydelphia there so we’re not just waiting around for a guard to catch us here.”
“Got it.” He held out his claw. Sparkle offered her stump in return. “Ready?” Sparkle nodded, Thorn grasped her, and then they vanished into the night.
When the nurse ahead of him had screamed, he knew something was wrong. Dashing ahead the last few feet, the soldier burst through the door to find neither assailant nor dead body, but an alarmingly empty bed.
"Princess Celestia!"
The royal mare looked up from the stack of papers she was reviewing before morning court. There, galloping towards her, was Lieutenant Shining Armor. "Lieutenant? I thought you would be with your sister."
"Sparkle vanished from the room several minutes after you left, your Highness," Shining explained with slight exaggeration .
Head snapping towards her guard, the solar princess commanded, "Go, find her."
"Yes, Princess." The guard galloped off.
Turning back towards Shining Armor, she asked, "Did she say anything to suggest that she would do something like this?"
“No, not that I can think of,” he replied. “But I know my sister, and I know that she isn’t going to do anything too reckless.”
“And she did this while still recovering from a leg injury,” the princess said.
“She’s not recovering. She’s recovered, I’m sure of it,” the escapee’s brother corrected.
Celestia asked, “What do you mean, Lieutenant?”
“My sister told me... some things in confidence that lead me to believe that while Thorn was with her last night, he was accelerating her healing.”
Celestia took a louder-than-normal breath, not quite a sigh, but getting there. With a hoof pressed against her temple, the princess stated, "That mare makes me feel my age. Have you noticed how bold she's growing?"
"I have," Shining Armor replied.
"Your sister is a dangerous mare, Shining Armor. I cannot afford to look weak in front of her, lest I lose all authority I have over her. At the same time, I cannot be overbearing, or she will rebel, not that certain factions among the Canterlot Elite are helping on that matter."
"Princess?"
"Those four ponies that died at the Gala, do you know what they have in common?" the alicorn asked.
The white unicorn replied, "I'm not sure."
"Those four are among the most intolerant individuals I have ever had the misfortune of meeting. They were political allies supporting controversial bills and general nuisances in my court. My instincts are screaming at me that Sparkle knows far more than she was letting on, both about them and their deaths," said the Princess.
"So you think she might have had a connection?" Shining Armor asked.
"That's what I want to find out when she is retrieved. Lieutenant, you are dismissed."
He saluted. "Yes, your highness."
"This is exciting!" Sparkle said enthusiastically, though her voice held a hint of hidden sadness. She stepped off the first train to Fillydelphia and into the midday sun. The first of many stops on their whirlwind tour of eastern Equestria, Fillydelphia was their first and last stop on the loop they’d make before returning to Canterlot. "This is the furthest I've ever been from home."
A night of good sleep, using Thorn as a pillow, had helped her damaged soul heal itself enough that she could start helping it along. Now, hidden behind several illusions and a notice-me-not spell, the duo could walk without fear of being recognized.
Around them, the tall buildings towered over them, on average several stories higher than almost anything in either part of Canterlot. Even the air felt different, denser than in Canterlot.
"Where to?" Thorn, slightly taller than normal, asked from where he stood alongside Sparkle.
"A prosthetist first, and then Dragon Town for you."
"Sounds good."