She wasn’t sure what woke her up. Nothing had changed from when she’d fallen unconscious; she was still in her cell, hanging by her forelegs from the ceiling, the rusted chains holding her against the wall digging lightly into the roadmap of lesions crisscrossing her body. She left her eye closed and kept her breath controlled; Gaia and Lash had been working on her when she’d fallen into blessed insentience, and they refused to do anything when she wasn’t conscious to experience it. Her ear twitched involuntarily, searching for the breath of her torturers, the scrape of their tools along the floor or walls, the creak of their leather ‘clothing’ as they moved to assault her from another angle. After a minute of silence, she released her breath in a tensely relieved sigh; apparently they’d decided to leave her rather than waking her up and punishing her for falling asleep during playtime. A rare mercy, that.
It just meant they’d be worse the next day.
She twitched the leg they’d been sinking their teeth into, hissing as the chains wrapping it bit into the wounds it bore. Cotton Candy had made a few new ones prior to Gaia and Lash’s arrival, leaving them open and bleeding for the pair to run tongues up and hot irons down. Grimacing, she cracked her eye open and glanced down along her figure, dully noting the spots where her coat was newly stained by blood and shit and grime. They sprayed her down whenever the stench got too much for her torturers to ignore, though the blasts of saltwater they termed ‘showers’ did little to actually clean her. Not that she particularly cared about cleanliness; her fur hadn’t been actually white in years, not since clean water had become a rarely-obtainable luxury.
What had she been thinking about? Oh, right, the missing chunks of her leg.
Her eye flicked further down her body, finding a fully formed (if lacerated) limb. There were indents and small marks around the edge of an abnormally smooth and undamaged portion of the appendage, right around the spot where they’d made her watch as they peeled off her skin with their teeth.
A healing spell, then. That surprised her; doctors hadn’t been allowed to attend her for the last few weeks, not after Cotton Candy had found Shelter giving her painkillers. She allowed herself a small shudder as she noted that the bloodstain still hadn’t been completely cleaned up.
It was a rare thing for her to be conscious and alone in her cell; she’d spent very little time awake in the last few months without Cotton Candy, Gaia and Lash, or a doctor being within spitting distance (though she was somewhat wary of actually testing that distance nowadays; Cotton Candy had sewn her lips together for a week after she’d managed to get some phlegm down the pink mare’s throat). She’d been trying to figure out her circadian-defying bouts of unconsciousness for some time, debating whether a) her body was simply shutting down whenever there wasn’t an active threat in a futile attempt to attempt to heal the damage done to her, or b) Dawn was pumping drugs in through the drain in the floor. She leaned towards the latter at the moment, given that she had (usually) been awake for the doctors and (always) been awake for Pet, neither of whom were really threats but both of whom would be affected by airborne drugs. Of course that called into question how quickly the drugs neutralized-
The faint echo of hoofsteps startled her out of her thoughts. Her eye and one ear twitched towards the door, watching and listening intently for any indication of who was coming next. The steps gained definition as they approached, forming the light taps of an unarmoured mare. That eliminated two of the four possibilities: It wasn’t a shift change for one of the guards, given the lack of armour, nor was it Gaia, given that a heavy stallion’s hooves weren’t accompanying the mare’s. She would have eliminated Cotton Candy as well, but the mare had stopped doing that hopping-prancing-thing after Cowton, so she was left uncertain as to whether it was the pink or purple bitch that was approaching.
The hoofsteps continued to the door and then stopped. The lack of an immediate entrance set her on edge; when she heard two sets of armoured hooves take several steps away from the door, her heart tried to leap up her throat. She caught her breath before it could run away from her, holding it in her lungs and using the growing oxygen deprivation to force herself to calm down and think things through in the precious little time she had.
The guards only moved away from the door for Dawn. Neither Cotton Candy nor Gaia had said anything about Dawn visiting. They wouldn’t have forgotten had they known, given how much they enjoyed the look of fear that she was never able to fully suppress, which meant that they hadn’t been informed. That meant that the visit wasn’t planned. She came to this conclusion at around the point that the blocks of her cell walls had started growing polka dots. Forcing as much air out of her lungs as she could before pulling in the same amount, she allowed herself to revel mildly in the high that her brain rewarded her with for allowing it to continue keeping her alive before moving forward with her thoughts.
An unplanned visit could either be very good or very bad. Good, because it might mean that Applejack and the Loyalists had done something spectacular enough to force Dawn to inform her of it. Bad, because it might mean that Applejack and the Loyalists had screwed up spectacularly enough to inspire Dawn to come down and gloat. Of course, neither possibility was particularly great, given that both forced her into the company of Dawn for some unpredictable amount of time, but she’d always prefer the cherry wrapped in shit over the shit wrapped in shit.
She shifted her mind from her futile musings, placing her attention on the still-closed steel slab separating her cell from the outside world. Dawn had never paused in front of the door for this long, not even when Applejack had sent in a package containing the severed cutie marks of every spy in the Loyalists. She felt herself try to grin as she remembered the vomit stains on the corner of the winged unicorn’s mouth, but she kept her face carefully fixed into a neutral grimace. She couldn’t let Dawn think that she was happy about a visit.
Then the door slowly shrieked open, and a tan-coated white-maned unicorn with wings stepped into her cell. She felt her visage slip into genuine, blank shock, both at the lack of Dawn and the presence of another pony with wings and a horn. The mare’s identity slammed into her at almost the exact same time that the mare did.
“Sir Shining!” Pet said, squeezing her tighter than the chains around her hooves. She sucked in a pained hiss at the contact and pressure, inciting Pet to step back and give her a concerned onceover. “Oh, g-goodness, Sir Shining, Pet is sorry! Hold on, hold on…” The winged unicorn’s horn glowed, and very suddenly her entire body below her neck went numb. She glanced down and sent a signal to her hind legs, letting out a relieved sigh as they twitched in response.
“Pet.” She croaked, a smile finding its way to her face. “Didn’t think I’d see you here again.”
“Ah, Mistress D-Dawn sent Pet down, Sir Shining. She’s done something i-incredible that she’s v-very e-e-excited about, and she wanted Pet to t-tell you so that you didn’t just d-dismiss her out of spite.” Pet nodded in the matter-of-fact way that foals do when they say things they don’t quite understand.
She hummed as feeling returned to parts of her (pain very noticeable in its absence) and idly noted that Pet’s flank covers had gotten larger than the last time they’d met. “Well, that’s probably the first smart thing she’s done in quite a while. Go ahead and tell me, Pet.”
The winged unicorn tilted her head. “P-Pet just d-did, Sir Shining.”
She blinked. “…you did?”
“Mistress D-Dawn sent Pet down to tell you that she’s d-done something i-incredible. And that she’s v-very ¬excited about it. And that she wanted Pet to t-tell you because if she t-tried to, you’d i-ignore her and wouldn’t want to see.”
“So she sent you to tell me that she ‘did something’, but not what that something was?”
“Y-yes, Sir Shining. Mistress D-Dawn said that i-it was a ‘f-family matter’.”
She couldn’t stop the growl that crawled up her throat at the term, but managed to strangle herself when Pet flinched. “Gah. Sorry, Pet. That wasn’t…” She exhaled, trying to carry off the heat in her voice. “Do you know what she wants to show me? Have you seen it?”
Pet stayed still for a few moments before nodding long enough to be an answer for both questions. “P-Pet can’t tell you, though.”
“I got that, Pet. Thanks.” Sensation fully returned to her body as Pet’s horn stopped glowing, and she could feel her brain shift as neural paths long dedicated to screaming about the damage to her body suddenly found such warnings unneeded. “You may as well go get her. Not like she really cares about whether I ‘want’ to see.”
“Oh, Shiny, you wound me.” She felt spikes of ice shoot from her hooves to her spine, her eye snapping to the door as the voice (that voice) wormed its way into her ears. Rising Dawn leaned on the doorway almost casually, eyes holding a deranged eagerness in them that completely defied the mare’s pout. “That hurt, big brother.”
“Glad to hear it. Loosen these chains a little, maybe I can put you out of your misery.” Dawn gained a small smile at the threat, shifting herself and walking fully into the cell. Pet quickly moved to her Mistress, tail curved ever so slightly between her legs; a kiss and a whispered order sent the smaller mare hurrying out of the cell. Then Dawn’s horn glowed, and the door slammed shut too quickly to audibly grate along the stone beneath it.
Leaving the former siblings alone.
“I’m sorry for the unannounced visit, Shining.” Dawn said, bowing in a mock apology. “I simply felt that this is too personal a matter to have allowed Gaia or Thalia to inform you.”
“So you have Pet do so instead.” She growled. Dawn shrugged. “You might want to tell her that buttering somepony up only works when you don’t tell them that you’ve been sent to do so.”
“I didn’t send her down to ‘butter you up’. I just figured you’d be more willing to listen to her.”
“If that was the case then maybe you sho-“ Her rebuttal to Dawn’s statement was cut off as she felt magic crawling across her body; Dawn’s horn was glowing again, the winged unicorn’s magic inundating every strand of fur in her coat. Her eye shot down to her barrel, trying to figure out just what in Faust’s name Dawn was doing to her.
“It’s nothing harmful, I promise.” Dawn said. Before she could bite off a response the magic disappeared, and her coat very suddenly looked very different. She was still covered in scars, both the faded grey of old wounds and the angry pink of the ones that Pet had freshly healed, but the fur between them was a startling white; gone were not only the fresh stains of blood and grime, but also the pale brown tinge that her coat had taken on over her eight years of living literally underground. She stared at her apparently pristine coat for nearly a minute, waiting for her fur to fall out or spontaneously combust or whatever Dawn had actually done to it, before whipping her gaze up and locking her eye on the patiently waiting purple mare. “I just figured that you’d want to look your best, given how long it’s been…”
“…what.”
“You know, I really should be thanking you for this.” She felt her chains loosen as Dawn’s horn glowed for a third time, slowly uncoiling from around her body and letting her slip gently to the floor. “Without Applejack’s… demonstration… in Appleloosa, alongside your constant complaints in regards to Spike and Sweetie Belle, I would never have realized that the necromantic spell design could be improved upon.”
“…what.”
“It was actually surprisingly simple, once I bothered to look at it.” Dawn continued with the nonsequitur. “The spell’s creators hadn’t known how to keep the body going after reanimation; a constant stream of unicorn magic was the best they could come up with. Not that that’s their fault, given the severe lack of medical knowledge back then, but it results in the problem that the subject ‘dies’, for lack of a better term, whenever the magic stream is obstructed. Like, say, if a barrier was erected between the subject and the caster.” Dawn’s eyes went hard at that particular example, but quickly returned to their manic glee after a moment of silence.
“Knowing what is known now, I found that with just a few tweaks, more precise magical targeting, the addition of a healing spell to more properly restore cellular function… I’ve eliminated the need for a constant magic flow. Restored the heartbeat, oxygen exchange, metabolism, proper nervous system function. Where the old necromancy restored the subject’s mind and mobility but left the body function stagnant, this new necromancy brings both the mind and body back to proper form, without the need for a constant energy transfer! Do you understand, Shining?! I no longer have to limit myself to just keeping Spike alive! Nopony has to fear death anymore! I can bring everypony back!”
She kept her eye locked on Dawn in the palpable silence that followed the ‘explanation’, re-evaluating her comprehension of the degree of dementia that the purple mare was suffering from. Her ears twitched as she heard two sets of hoofsteps echo up the hall to outside the door; she quickly recognized one as Pet, given how recently she’d heard the gait, while the other was lighter, softer, and decidedly stiffer. Dawn seemed to notice the sound as well, eyes somehow going even brighter.
“Are you ready for your surprise, Shining?” Dawn asked with a light voice. Before she could answer, the door shrieked open, and her eye shifted instinctively towards the pony standing in the doorway. A filly, with a dusted pink coat, powder blue mane, a pair of wings and a horn peeking between bangs above slowly widening eyes-
“Daddy?” Said a voice more beautiful than a thousand bells of glass.
Everything in the world came to a very sudden stop.
She wasn’t sure who moved first. It might have been her, taking slow, halting steps out of the chains at her hooves towards the filly in the doorway. It might have been that filly, stepping fully into the cell with a quick (but oddly stiff) gait.
All she knew was that she was sitting on the floor, her forelegs wrapped around the filly’s back and the filly’s forelegs hooked around the back of her neck, both squeezing tightly as her shoulder grew wet and tears fell from her eye into the filly’s mane, and everything was okay again.
“Dazzle.” She heard herself say. The name made her heart soar, and she resolved to repeat it as much as her lungs would allow. “Dazzle, Dazzle, Dazzle, Dazzle…” Her daughter reciprocated in kind, murmuring ‘Daddy’ over and over into her shoulder, the filly’s voice repeatedly proving itself the most wondrous sound in the world.
“I missed you, Daddy…” She heard Dazzle say after some unknown time, a fretful edge appearing beneath the voice of pealing bells.
“I know, Dazzle, I missed you too, I missed you so much…” Her voice cracked as another joyful sob ripped through her, and the two tightened their grips on one another. Another piece of time passed where she and her daughter simply held each other close, its length irrelevant beyond the fact that it lasted nowhere near as long as it should have.
Then she heard a hoof lightly scrape along the floor beside her, and she regained awareness of the world beyond her daughter. Her eye opened and flicked towards the noise, finding a blurry shape of purple and white and tan; she leaned herself forward as her eye tried to focus, her hooves gently pulling Dazzle even closer to her.
“My apologies, Shining.” Her vision immediately sharpened at the voice, the blur resolving into Rising Dawn and Pet, both of whom wore wide smiles as her eye found their faces. A dozen screaming warnings hit the forefront of her mind as the former spoke to her again, voice softer and warmer than she’d ever heard. “I didn’t mean to disturb you, but I realized that my presence might be causing you some unease. I’ll leave you two to catch up in your own time.” She felt Dazzle shift at Dawn’s words, the filly’s head dipping under hers to glance at the purple mare. Dawn’s smile widened further at the young alicorn’s attention. “Pet and I will be back as soon as you and your father are done talking, okay, Dazzle?”
She felt her stomach lurch and muscles tense as that voice spoke her daughter’s name. Dazzle didn’t seem to notice, instead simply giving a small nod.
“Okay. G’bye, Auntie.” The filly mumbled, eyes shifting from the purple mare to the tan. “G’bye, Pet.”
“G-goodbye, Princess Dazzle.” Pet replied, bowing slightly before turning and following Dawn out of the cell. She watched the doorway sharply until the door slid fully back into position, finally leaving her and her daughter in privacy. Then she quickly ignited her horn and slammed a metre-thick barrier around the doorway, leaving her and her daughter in proper privacy.
Locks on the root of a horn, as it turned out, were surprisingly easy to pick.
She waited in silence for a minute, her eye and ears locked on the door, keeping Dazzle tight to her. She let out a shaky sigh when the sixty seconds had passed, loosing her grip on the filly in front of her and slowly (painfully) easing away.
Dazzle was sitting in front of her. Not some random foal, abducted and altered in the same way that Pet had been, but Dazzle, her daughter. She knew her daughter, in the infinite ways that Dawn could never hope to replicate, and thus she was without any doubt that it was her daughter in front of her. This was something that she knew.
Dazzle had died six months before, a loss that had brought her to the edge and very nearly destroyed her, one that she had just barely crawled back from despite every effort to send her over. This was also something that she knew.
She knew what the filly in front of her had to be, and she was absolutely unable to believe it.
“Dazzle… Daddy needs to ask you something.” Her voice was hollow, emotionless. The logical part of her mind, falling back on the same test that Applejack had done in Appleloosa. She’d ask a question, and when she didn’t get an answer she’d have proof that-
“What is it, Daddy?”
Her mind went blank as Dazzle spoke.
As Dazzle responded to her statement.
As Dazzle did something that a resurrected pony was incapable of.
One second passed. Then two. Then three.
Then she felt a smile split her face as she pulled her daughter back to her and began to cry again.
She asked about everything. Cutie mark, friends, hobbies, funny stories, favourite books and foods and songs. Anything and everything, just to hear her daughter’s voice.
Dazzle asked about things as well. What it was like in the Everfree. How nice the Loyalists were, and how certain former royal guards were doing. Whether the other rebels were really as bad as Auntie said they were. How she got that scar, and that one, and that one.
Dazzle asked about her scars a lot.
She told the truth of some, and invented stories for the others: Tales of secret missions and high adventures, honourable affrays and daring escapes, always far removed from the cell and the weapons and the ponies that had truthfully inflicted them. Most of the time it was clear that Dazzle knew she was lying, but the filly never called her on it, choosing instead to listen intently, nod along, ooh and aah at the proper points. She could see it in Dazzle’s eye, the acknowledgement that there were reasons for her mendacity, and the unwavering trust that those reasons were good.
The two talked for hours, always one speaking and one listening as they tried to catch up on seven years of separation. They’d stopped hugging after the first hour, their hooves dropping as they chose to simply lean on one another and take comfort from the contact; from there they slowly moved apart, easing away from one another as their rationalities gradually convinced them that they didn’t have to be touching for the other to still be there. Eventually, they’d worked their way down to simply holding hooves over the distance between them.
And then Dazzle asked her a question that made her wish she’d never let them get so far apart.
“What happened to Mom?”
She felt herself tense, what seemed like every muscle in her body straining in a different direction in an attempt to escape the question. It took her a minute to wrestle herself back under control, in which time Dazzle’s face had grown even more solemn and severe.
“I just… Auntie said that there was an accident, and…” The filly took a breath. “I know that, that Auntie killed her. Auntie told me that herself, that she didn’t want to kill Mom, but s-something happened and there was nothing else she could do.” Another breath, quicker and sharper than the last. “But nopony’s been willing to tell me anything, not Auntie or Pip or Spike or anypony, a-and I just, I just want to know what happened to my Mommy-“
She pulled Dazzle back to her before the tears could escape the filly’s eyes. On instinct, she started to slowly rock herself back and forth, pulling her daughter with her as one hoof rose to brush along the back of the filly’s mane. She heard herself make gentle soothing noises, whispering into her daughter’s ear as the young alicorn shook with silent cries.
“Your mother…” She began, once her daughter’s tears had been spent. “Your mother loved you very much, Dazzle. Enough to give anything for you, to do whatever it took to keep you safe. No matter what might happen to her.
“After Da- a-after your Auntie Twilight killed Princess Celestia, she had me brought to our rooms, the ones that you and your mother and I lived in before... all of this happened. I was still unconscious, after Pip had-“ Ripped off my horn, thrown me against the wall, held me down as he slowly forced it through- “-after he’d broken my horn and I’d lost my eye. I only woke up after your mother had been brought there, when I heard her voice and felt her shaking me.” Begging through her tears, pleading with me to not be dead. “We had a few minutes alone, enough time to calm ourselves down, before the door opened and Twilight and Pip walked in.
“We… we talked for a while. Your mother and I were scared and angry and, and a whole bunch of other things, and Twilight wouldn’t answer any of our questions, a-about where you were or whether you were okay or anything.” “She’s alive.” Twilight said. Not safe. Not unharmed. Alive. “She just kept demanding that we surrender, that we go out and tell anypony still fighting against her to give up. She said that the only way she’d let us see you again was if we did. Your mother and I told her that we weren’t going to do anything until you were with us.
“Twilight didn’t like that. She pulled your mother and I apart, told Pip to make me listen.” He moved at her word, his hoof crushing my leg to the floor, Cadance’s screams mixing with mine as it snapped. “He… he hurt me, really badly, worse than I’d ever been hurt before. Your mother tried to help me, screamed at Twilight to make Pip stop, but Twilight held her down and just kept demanding that we surrender. But we never did, we were never going to, not until she gave you back.
“Eventually, she told Pip to stop and let your mother come back to me. I could barely tell what was going on, I could hardly see or hear or think because of how hurt I was, but I remember, very clearly, what happened next.”
Twilight stood there, watching me try to breathe through shattered ribs and mouthfuls of blood, watching Cadance do whatever she could to try to lessen my pain. Then she opened her mouth, and her words made my heart stop.
“Twilight told us that, that if we weren’t willing to give up, that she’d have to go visit you instead. That she’d see if she couldn’t convince you to convince us to give up. A-and the way she said it… she was telling us that that if we didn’t do as she said, she was going to hurt you. Very, very badly. So your mother… she attacked Twilight, to make sure that Twilight couldn’t hurt you.”
The iron ring on Cadance’s horn went white as it fought to hold her magic. It didn’t stop her from launching herself at Twilight, slamming the startled younger mare to the floor before even Pip could react. She brought her hooves down on the purple mare’s face, again and again and again, the cracking of Twilight’s jaw and snout and skull audible despite Cadance’s enraged scream. Pip moved behind her, grabbed her by her wings and tried to throw her off, but he had never truly fought an alicorn before, nor had he fought a mother protecting her child. Cadance barely seemed to notice him, one of her hind hooves kicking out and snapping his leg before her wings flared out and sent him flying into the wall. Her eyes stayed on Twilight as she rose up, leaning back and lifting her forehooves high to finish bashing open the skull of the one who would threaten her baby-
And then she stopped, every part of her body seeming to freeze, as a lance of light pink magic suddenly burst forth between her wings.
“…I don’t think that Twilight was trying to kill her, even now. She was trying to protect herself, just like your mother was trying to protect you. But she was panicking, and her magic lashed out, and…” She couldn’t finish, her throat swelling closed as tears burned their way out of her eye. “Your mother loved you very much, Dazzle. I promise you that.”
Her daughter sniffled and nodded against her. They stayed holding each other for a few minutes until Dazzle slowly stepped back, giving her a soft smile.
“Thanks, Daddy.”
“You’re welcome, dearheart.” She replied, leaning forward to kiss her daughter’s brow. Dazzle seemed to squirm, giving a small grunt at the kiss, and she felt a small grin pull at her lips as she leaned back upright. “Oh, come now, there’s no reason to be embar-“
Her daughter was bleeding.
A small dot of blood was slowly trickling down from one of Dazzle’s nostrils. As she cast her eye over her daughter’s face, trying to determine a possible injury, her eye noticed a faint line appear along the filly’s brow, maybe a few millimetres thick and a shade darker than the fur around it. Then another one appeared, fading into existence across Dazzle’s snout. Then another one, starting at the bottom lip and leading down Dazzle’s neck.
Then they were everywhere, coursing along Dazzle’s neck and barrel and stomach and legs without any visible origin or cause. She could see her daughter tense as the lines progressed, the filly’s mouth thinning and eyes screwing shut; the hoof holding hers began to shake terribly before Dazzle pulled it away and braced it on the floor.
“Dazzle?” Her voice was tight as she stood, moving to her daughter. The filly gave a short whine of pain, more than enough to set her heart hammering. “Dazzle, baby, what’s wrong? Do you know what’s going on, can I help somehow?”
“Everything.” The filly squeaked.
“Everything, everything what? Everything hurts?” Her heart fell through her stomach as the filly gave a tight nod.
“Everything’s hurt since I woke up.” The filly’s breath was hard. “Auntie said she didn’t know why. She couldn’t fix it. She said I had to be strong and-” Dazzle cut off, suddenly jolting as if struck in the stomach, before continuing weakly. “…it hurts a lot more now...”
The lines started turning darker.
She dropped the barrier she hadn’t realized she still held, turning her head to the door and shouting as loudly as she could. “HEY! HEY, WE NEED HELP IN HERE! HELP!” She waited for several seconds, eye and ears locked on the doorway, but no calls came from outside and the door stayed motionless. She put her eye back on her daughter, taking the quivering filly in a gentle embrace. “Okay, Dazzle, okay, just hold on, baby. I’m gonna go outside, just to get you help, I’ll only be gone for a little while and then I’ll be right back here and you’ll be okay-”
She held her daughter for a few moments more, then she was standing, stepping towards the door on legs stiff with panic and adrenaline. Her horn glowed violently, rose-coloured magic coating the foot-thick steel slab in a tight barrier. Then her horn’s glow brightened, and the barrier shrank, bulging slightly out in the middle as the door strained and crumpled within her magic. She pulled the twisted hunk of metal out of her way, dropping it to the side as she stepped forth through the doorway-
Only to find a light-pink wall of magic blocking her way. She stared at the barrier for several moments, completely unable to understand its presence there, before throwing herself at it and doing everything she could to break it down.
Her hooves were useless, and magical strikes made the barrier shake but showed no sign of actually damaging it. An attempt to backwash its caster did nothing; the magic was tied off, with nowhere to return to. She stepped back into the cell, her magic shifting to dig at the doorway itself, but the stone stayed as solid as the magic. She felt her magic falter and die as she threw herself at the barrier again, bashing her hooves against the magic in terror and fury and desperation.
“DAWN!” She screamed, hoping against hope that she would be heard. “DAZZLE NEEDS HELP, DAWN! PLEASE! I SWEAR I’LL DO ANYTHING YOU WANT, JUST HELP HER! DAWN! PET! SOMEPONY, PLEASE, HELP US!” She slammed her hooves against the barrier again as her hind legs fell out from under her, her screams giving way to sobs as she slid down to the floor.
Behind her, she heard Dazzle cry out in pain.
She was standing instantly, moving without thought. The young alicorn was curled up on the floor, shaking violently, bleeding from the nose and mouth and eyes and ears. Carefully, she lifted Dazzle into a gentle embrace, slowly rocking back and forth and bringing her hoof up to run down the filly’s mane.
“Shh, shh, I’m here, Dazzle, Daddy’s here, shh, everything’s going to be okay…”
“Daddy…”
“That’s right, baby, I’m here, I’m here, shh…”
“It hurts, Daddy... make it stop…”
“Shh, shh, baby, shh, it’s gonna be okay…”
“Please, Daddy, make it stop hurting, make it stop-” Dazzle’s voice cut off with another cry of pain.
She felt a spell ready in her mind. She’d used it before, on ponies in too much pain to go on. It was quick, painless. Merciful. It would make her daughter stop hurting.
“Okay, Dazzle, okay, shh, shh…” The spell moved through her horn.
“Make it stop…”
“Okay, Dazzle, shh, I’m gonna make the hurting stop…” Her magic began to flow, her horn glowing lightly.
“Please, Daddy…”
“Daddy’s here, Dazzle, Daddy’s gonna make you stop hurting…” She felt the spell settle on Dazzle, the magic moving into position.
“…love you, Daddy…”
She felt herself smile, in spite of everything, in spite of all that had happened, in spite of what she was about to do-
“Daddy loves you too, Dazzle, Daddy loves you more than anything-“
The spell sparked. Dazzle went still.
She sat there, unmoving, eye staring at nothing, ears hearing nothing. All that mattered was held in her hooves. She could still feel a heartbeat, thumping ever so gently against her chest. She could still feel warmth, keeping her from going numb.
Then the heartbeat fell still. The warmth faded away.
Everything went black.