The wave of magic slammed into Sparkle with incredible force. Her skin cracked, blue-white light pouring out from the wounds. She had just enough time to make eye contact with Shining Armor before the secondary concussive blast slammed into her.
Sparkle shattered like glass, and with it, so did her brother’s world.
A hush fell over the gathered crowd. Dozens of ponies had just witnessed Sparkle’s very sudden death.
“No...” Shining took a step forwards. “Sparks! No...” He took another step and then broke out into a full gallop. “No no no! Oh Celestia, buck no!”
He skidded to a halt over the mangled form of the prosthetic, which looked like it had ruptured from the inside out. In fact, it had; Sparkle had placed her old bone inside it for safe keeping, and when the blast hit, the bone exploded.
That fake leg was the only identifiable trace of his sister left. Everything else had been blasted beyond the borders of the empire, and had been pulverized to dust.
Shining Armor’s hind legs gave out from under him. He didn’t even try to stop his fall.
“Shiny! Oh Celestia, no...” Cadance shouted as she galloped up to where her fiancé had fallen. “Sparkle... why?”
“What in tarnation just happened?” Applejack asked as she and the rest of the Element Bearers also arrived.
Shining Armor stiffened as his muscles tensed to the point of shaking. The smell of smoke filled the air. His jaw clenched hard enough to crack his teeth. “YOU.”
Shining Armor whipped around, mane exploding into flames, and slugged the first pony in his hoof’s path, which happened to be Pinkie Pie. “YOU! YOU KILLED HER! RRRAAAAGGGHHH!”
His hoof swung wildly, this time crashing into Rainbow Dash with enough force to send her flying, and not in a good way.
“Shining Armor! Stop, please,” Cadance begged.
Shining Armor’s flaming head whipped to the side as he latched his gaze on her. Crimson eyes bore down into her violet pair, with nothing but pure, unadulterated rage in the former aimed at the latter. “YOU YOU WERE THE ONE WHO PUT THE HEART THERE! YOU KILLED SPARKLE!”
“I didn’t know it would do that!” Cadance pleaded. “The crystal heart is an artifact of protection powered by the crystal ponies, it shouldn’t have-”
“THEN IT WAS THIS BUCKING EMPIRE THAT KILLED HER! I’LL KILL THEM! I’LL KILL THEM ALL!” he roared, his rage changing targets again, this time aimed at the entire empire.
“Shiny, no! They’re innocent.” Cadance only succeeded in redirecting his rage yet again - this time at her.
Shining lunged for her throat, intent on skewering it with his horn. At the last second, a magical pulse slammed the irrational stallion into the ground. “Trixie will not let you hurt Princess Cadance,” the alicorn’s defender said.
Shining Armor bucked and thrashed within the magical grip. His own violently fluctuating magic kept throwing her magic off, which meant that it took Trixie, Rarity, and Cadance to keep him pinned.
“RAAAAGGHH! AHHH! AAAHHH! Ahhh...” As Shining Armor’s rage cooled, his fiery mane and tail returned to their normal shade of blue, and his eyes restored their cerulean hue. His bellows of rage slowly warped into sobbing wails of anguish.
“Shiny...” Cadance said once it was apparent that he no longer needed to be held down. “I...”
But no words would come. She was the princess of love, not of grief. Anything she could say right now felt like it would be rubbing salt into both of their wounds.
The weeping stallion muttered something that Cadance couldn’t quite hear. When his fiancée asked him to speak up, he repeated, “You should have known... you should have known...”
“How could I?” Cadance asked. “Shining, it was an accident... Sparkle... oh Celestia...”
“You could have known...” Shining Armor repeated.
Fluttershy, ever the caring soul, came up and wrapped her wing around Shining Armor’s back. That proved to be a mistake, as it only rekindled his rage. With a shove, Shining Armor sent the small pegasus tumbling. “You should have known! You six nearly killed Sparkle with the last magical shit you used. What, are you trying to finish the job? ‘Cause guess bucking what? You won! Sparkle’s dead. MY SISTER! IS! DEAD!”
That earned him a slap from Applejack. “Now listen here,” the orange mare commanded. “I know what it’s like to lose loved ones, and ya don’t go around hittin’ ponies for because of it. Am. Ah. Clear?”
Shining Armor rubbed his cheek and nodded dumbly.
“Good. Now, this was a tragic accident. You are gonna sit there until you can get it in you to walk, and then we’re gonna go inside. Understand?”
“Mmmhmm,” Shining Armor agreed.
“Good.”
It was supposed to be a happy week. He should have been preparing for his wedding this coming weekend. Instead, he was at his own sister’s funeral.
He sat silently in the chair. There was only a pile of wood with no body to burn with it. Shards of her had been found, turned to crystal by the blast, but nothing whole enough to display.
When he’d been out in the snow, looking for anything that belonged to his sister, he’d only managed to find her eye, crystallized until it literally was a jewel. He couldn’t bear to look at it, though. Despite being just as round and inexpressive as any other severed eye, it had still managed to capture the pure anguish it had felt when its life was ripped away from it.
The stone eye was in his suit pocket, though. It was morbid, sure, but he didn’t think he could completely part with her yet. And so he sat, eye tucked away, at its owner’s funeral.
There weren’t many ponies here. Cadance was here, and had brought Princess Celestia and Princess Luna with her. With Luna had come Lieutenant Ironwood, Squad Six of the Red Platoon, and Vinyl Scratch. The Element Bearers were there as well. Rarity had insisted that they had come, and had brought Sweetie Belle along as well.
That was it. With Thorn and Cobalt having vanished off the face of the world, that was the sum total of the ponies that had shown up. None of the guards she had taught, none of the nobles, none of the common ponies, nopony else.
Shining stood up and walked until he was next to the pyre wood, on top of which sat one of the very few photos of Sparkle. He looked into her eyes. Whereas he had been so enraged before, now he felt numb. No tears flowed, and his heart felt nothing.
Cadance walked up next to him. “It hurts so much... But she’s with your parents now, so that’s what matters.”
“She isn’t,” Shining Armor replied. “I never told you, but Death... I saw her back during the Battle of Canterlot. She told me that I would lose somepony close to me. She knew, Cadance. She knew that Sparks was going to die, and I know she knows what Sparks has done.”
“Shiny? What has she done? You never tell me much about her... what... what did she do?”
“She’s killed, Cadance. She’s killed a lot of ponies, and not just during the battle. She’s done horrible thing, I know. And if she’s in Death’s hooves now... you know what they say happens to ponies who’ve killed once. Sh-she’s... she’s...”
He couldn’t bring himself to say more. But he didn’t need to. In that moment, Cadance understood. Dread and regret piled up in her stomach and sat like a led brick. A tear rolled down her eye, and then another. Within second, it was a constant stream of tears from her eyes as she gently sobbed into her fiancé’s shoulder.