“No! No!” she coughed into her hands, blood pooling under her tongue. The coppery taste cut through her like a knife. Her hands were cupped around the bloody remains of her gemstone, the shards opening new slits in her pale skin with every breath. Her knees hurt from falling to the stage, but not nearly as bad as the overwhelming blaze burning at the base of her throat. One hand slid to the spot the stone had once sat, touching the thin stream of red running down the front of her dress, tracing the line to the source, “Please...I can't...” She vaguely heard the whimpers of her 'sisters' off to either side, but paid them almost no attention at all. Millenia, she had lived. Only once had she ever hurt so much, back when she was just a pony. Back when that old Unicorn had found her, in his words, 'Worthy' of the privilege of hosting what was at the time the greatest Evil in all of Equestria. When he had tied her to a table and forced a razor sharp crimson stone into her throat.
Now, the stone was out, and had it been that thousand years ago, she would have been happy, ecstatic to be free of the curse. Now, she remembered every detail, every nightmare. She remembered that the stone converted darkness in the heart, into nutrients, the only kind she could consume. Her body had been irreparably altered by the Unicorn's magic, and even if it hadn't, she had eaten no real, physical food in so long that her body would be unable to handle it. Before her sisters had been created, she had been alone, starving and unable to eat. The Unicorn had explained exactly what would happen if she didn't protect the stone. Exactly how she would slowly die of starvation if she failed to sow anger.
Organ failure, unpreventable, and necessary, as her insides changed to accept the dark energy more readily. But without a source of that energy, whatever was left of her original guts would struggle to process Jello. The crystal shards slicing her skin and muscle like warm butter was just the icing on the cake. Her next cry splattered blood across the stage, a choked, macabre pattern that reminded her, reinforced the image of that Unicorn. She tried to swallow, to clear her mouth so she could curse him, but her stomach wasn't there. She couldn't swallow. Instead, she glared at the splattered blood.
Another flare of pain lanced through her throat and she dropped the remaining shards of crystal to the surface between her knees as both hands climbed to block the bleeding cavity. Something deep inside her made her push one finger carefully into the hole, causing her to curl onto the puddle of blood and saliva on the stage, a new level of pain making itself known. Still, the flow of blood from her mouth seemed to have lessened. She couldn't sing, she couldn't even cry out anymore.
From her new angle on the ground, she could see that those seven...those creatures, the Rainbooms she remembered, were coming towards her. Coming to help. With every step closer, she saw the glint of power from the shards flash out under the blood. She couldn't find a reason for them to help. She knew what they were of course. They were the reason she had been made a monster. The reason that Unicorn had enslaved her, cursed her with immortality. The yellow one with the pink hair, she was the one that was formerly the Unicorn. So, too, were Bacon-hair and Glasses. She attempted to flee.
Four stumbled attempts at standing, and she only managed to gain a few meager feet. The pain radiated down into her belly, ripping through what used to be her stomach, tearing her apart inside. She knew she was bleeding from there too. She could feel it welling up around her skirt as her body ate itself from the inside. Glasses reached for her, trying to pull her hands away from her throat. One hand, barely under her control, lashed out and left a bloody handprint on the other girl's lovely purple skin, “Get back. You...” 'Can't save me.' That was what she wanted to say. That was how she wanted to put it. She wanted to ask for help, but she couldn't.
Still, Glasses moved in closer. The Jock darted behind her and grabbed her arms. The Furry dipped in and pressed a white cloth to her bleeding throat, whispering something she couldn't quite make out. She tried to shake her head, to tell them to leave, but her throat was filling with blood again. Tears started to leak down her face, crimson as the blood leaking from her mouth and nose. Glasses was saying something again, but she didn't hear it. The pain was gone. Or at least, she couldn't hurt anymore. She was frozen in time, the warm blood leaking down the sides of her neck from her ears freezing just above her shoulders.
Her mouth managed to form the shape, but she didn't know if any sound came out, “Why?”
This time it was Bacon-hair who spoke noiselessly to her. Or at least moved her mouth. Bacon-hair's hands were bloody, and she knew it was her own, and there was a lot of it. How much blood did the average human have in them? Five gallons, she remembered. But an Equestrian had more. Now without pain, she was free to ponder that. Did she have human blood, Equestrian blood, or something else? She tried to free herself from the Jock, succeeding in getting a foot to lash out. The sharp heel of her boot struck the Furry in the side, sending her tumbling away, splashing in the blood.
All at once, the pain came back, and she curled into a ball, sobbing through a mouthful of blood as everything started to fade out. Or fade in. Brilliantly painful light burned at her red eyes, lancing through her brain. Erasing, repairing, tearing. She screamed into her own knee, only absently aware that the Jock had backed away, and pulled the others with her. Good. They had accepted her fate, as she had over a thousand years ago.
She closed her eyes, failing to block out the light, and let it take her, “Goodbye, Sisters.”
–
“Adagio, are you alright?” Her eyes opened, blinking off a red crust. Her mouth tasted like blood, coppery and disgusting. And Glasses was standing there, crisp, clean, and devoid of the blood she had just been kneeling in.
“I...” she coughed, launching a ball of red and black onto the clean stage, “I don't know...”