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// Story: Once, She Was a Princess 
// by Astrarian 
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The centaur stirs marginally as she approaches. “What do you want?” he croaks.
“The same thing that you always wanted.”
“You don’t have the strength to take my magic,” Tirek rasps. He’s lying.
“I’d like you to give it to me.”
“Why in Equestria would I do that?”
“You’re not strong enough to face the Nightmare.”
Tirek turns a nasty smile on her. She looks away. “The Nightmare? You mean Princess Luna?”
“No. Princess Luna is dead.” Call it what it is.
Tirek scoffs. “I know what it’s like when your sibling betrays you. You’re just using her as an excuse. But I could teach you how to take her magic as your own. We could rule Equestria together!”
She cringes. “Equestria is gone.”
Tirek begins to suggest, “Then we’ll rule its ruins—”
“No,” she says forcefully. She thinks not about ruling alongside him, of course, but instead about how swiftly the world diminished look at him once diarchy was reintroduced.
“I am sorry,” she says. But that isn’t looking at him.
She looks at Tirek. He snarls and thrashes vainly in her grip. The light in his black pupils dwindles and vanishes. Her heart is thumping hard and fast, shaking her barrel.
She chooses to see him. He is dead. Silent and dead.
“Dead,” she says out loud. Equestria isn’t diminished. It is dead.


The sickly taste of sweet tea and sugary doughnuts sticks between her teeth. She tries to lick it away until she craves a drink of water. Laughs of delight ring loudly in her ears. She twitches, or cringes.
She rests a hoof on the stone statue of a draconequus long imprisoned. Does Discord yet live? Has he decayed? She hopes he contains something resembling life for she needs his magic. Combined with Cadance’s and Tirek’s, his magic could reduce the deficit between herself and the Nightmare. She might be able to defend herself.
Six colourful characters rediscover the invaluable magic of friendship. She always loved the colour that each of her ponies brought to the world.
Discord’s fixed gaze mocks her. ‘Oh, Princess, the look on your face,’ he might laugh. ‘Why waste time wanting things that will never happen?’
She can see his defeat though. She blinks and the scene is gone. Where did that fateful magic go? She wants it back. How can she let it go when it haunts her? Can visions die?
It’s quite lonely being encased in stone, but you wouldn’t know that, would you. . .
Does he tease her from within his stony womb or from a coloured window all ablaze with her sunlight? Or does he lambast her for leaving before her Nightmare catches up? She can’t tell.


Magic smashes into her. It is Luna’s contempt, it is Fate’s absence. It is the inverse. It is neither, there is only pain. She has nothing to swear by anymore but it hurts.
The Elements of Harmony. You must get to them and use their power to defeat the queen.
The queen doesn’t exist. She must remember that. Changelings are dead just like her ponies. There’s no love left in Equestria. She wonders if Chrysalis cried as well when her subjects died. She tries to remember what that monster looked like. Her green eyes. Her tiny fangs. Her shimmering, fragile wings.
She squints at herself. Her left cutie mark has been replaced by a bloody crater. 
“You look haggard, my royal sister,” the Nightmare teases. “Did you think you could escape me? Do you really want to?”
Far past the lidless moon, comets wave glowing tails at her. She canters in pursuit. Her hoof prints are made of stars and so are Luna’s and they will gallop through the glades of heaven forever, Princesses of sun and moon and star. It’s not real. She’s nearly certain of that.
She begs without thinking. “Luna, please.”
“I can help you forget her,” Nightmare Moon grins.
A long moment passes. But it’s her duty to remember Equestria and its ponies and achievements. She flees and a magical blast vaporises her empty silhouette.


She looks into the glazed orbs of a husk. They are hiding together inside a deep ravine in the land, out of sight, in the dark.
Duty. She leans closer and sees its lifeless eyes as opposed to merely looking. Dead. Yes, a dead pony she never knew. Might as well never have existed for all the good their meeting does.
She blinks, noting the callousness. She thinks of Canterlot and the smashed Elements. Her heart gives little more than a twinge.
Young and resplendent ponies approach the dais in sunlight; among them, Cadance and Twilight Sparkle and—
There’s the kick in the chest. She retches and remembers until her voice dies in a red-raw throat.


Trust me, little sister.
She’s woken by a stinging sensation in her horn. It could be because of the icy spindrift, which gnaws on her ears and lips too. She looks north and sees it is not so.
Two lightning-crowned shadows squall in mid-air. Magic heaves and swells in her blood; her ruined cutie mark throbs; their rhythm is in her body. She gnashes her teeth but her breath is determined to hold itself regardless.
Behold, the Crystal Princess!
The Nightmare wins. The northerly blizzards die. Sombra’s sibilant screaming resounds, amplified through every slow thump of her heart. It’s pleasantly elegiac. She feels a little warm. At least the Nightmare has no tolerance for other evils.
Brilliant sparks and sleeting crystal herald the descending hush.
She dozes again. She can barely feel Cadance anymore.


“Do you remember losing your crown, Princess?”
“Don’t call me that!”
The Nightmare cackles. “But that’s who you are. A Princess of a realm where the sun doesn’t even rise. You’re a failure!”
Everything reminds her of plans she once made. The sky calls her name. She looks away from Equestria into endless indigo space.
She takes to the air. The Nightmare is still laughing at her but she looks away and doesn’t listen. The atmosphere is thinning, she does not see the world she leaves behind; she concentrates instead on the vast panorama of stars. A particularly beautiful one twinkles in the distance, reminding her of the spark snuffed out in Twilight Sparkle’s eyes that night. So many eyes glimmer in constellations she’s never seen before, but they all die away as the great incandescence of the oncoming sun fills her vision.
She glances back at her straining wings. Her hair begins to ionise, streaming for miles and miles behind her, becoming the most beautiful coma she’s ever seen. She inhales the emptiness of the cosmos, and its purity burns her lungs and vaporises her crown and the sun is rising and she no longer sees the shadows of ponies she can’t save. She doesn’t hear their voices anymore, save one.
My most faithful student, Twilight Sparkle, has done many extraordinary things since she's lived in Ponyville. She even helped reunite me with my sister, Princess Luna. May I present for the very first time, Princess Twilight Sparkle!
Finally – blessedly – that voice dies too.