agape
One year ago, the Summer Sun Celebration set the wheels of the Plan in motion.
That fateful evening the human ran out through the backstage door, and the moon lich appeared above the stage, and Rarity and Fluttershy and just three others managed to escape from the town hall in time. They didn’t dare look back; only forward, and only toward the cursed forest that had swallowed the visiting human whole.
(“We go after her,” Rainbow had decided immediately. No one had dared try to disagree.
“Because she’s alone,” Fluttershy had reminded them, again and again. She’d held Rarity’s hand so tightly in her own the entire trek. “She doesn’t have a pair.”
“And she’s a human,” Applejack had added. The full moon had pulled the beast from under her skin, and—in what seemed a stroke of luck—she’d soon taken charge at the front of their group with her nose locked sharp to the human’s scent.
“Which,” Pinkie had finished for her, “means she’s in danger.” A pause. “Or already dead.”
“Or,” Rarity had said slowly, “she’s working with that terrible lich.” She hadn’t wanted to say it, but she’d known it weighed on all their minds regardless.
The moon lich had also once been human, after all.)
The trail ended where the castle began—a castle Rarity knew existed from legend, but hadn’t ever expected to see with her own two eyes. The forest’s influence still clung to it, but as they carefully climbed its crumbling steps the atmosphere around them turned muted; distant. Like the tightly-wound ends of a string about to—
SNAP
Light erupted from the castle’s foyer the second Rarity’s foot hit the final step. It flashed through the empty entrance and the ghosts of its long-rotted doors in an instant, blinding and brilliantly bright.
Then it faded.
And then Rarity saw the human turn around.
(Even back then there was no word more fitting for Twilight Sparkle than calm.)
“Oh,” she said, and lowered her still-sparking hands. “You followed me.”
Her face was pale from the moonlight and overcast from the shadow of the circular pedestal towering over the centre of the foyer. The remnants of magic danced between her palms—no, not just her palms, Rarity realized, but also across the surface of the massive stone sphere atop the pedestal and the five smaller orbs splayed outward from its base.
“Yeah,” Applejack bit back, “we did.”
“Hm.” The still-unnamed human’s gaze raked over them, piercing yet entirely uninterested at the same time. Her eyes never met Rarity’s; they looked through them. As if she weren’t even there. Then, she turned back to the pedestal and raised her hands without another word.
Another flash. Another snap.
That time, Rarity saw lightning arc from the human’s fingertips to the orbs.
“What are you doing?” she called out. Cautiously; accusatory.
Flash. Snap. No response.
Fluttershy squeezed her hand just a little bit tighter. “Rarity,” she whimpered, “maybe we shouldn’t—“
“You know something about what happened back there, don’t you?”
Flash. Snap. Still no response.
“Are you trying to help us?”
Flash. Snap.
“Or are you working with that lich?”
Fla—
The human squeezed her hands to fists before the next burst of light could escape. It smothered to darkness in her grip at the same time her shoulders tensed and the heels of her boots pressed harder into overgrown tiling. “I’m not,” she said, her voice ice.
“Right,” Rainbow snorted. She cocked her wings. “Like it’s just a coincidence you show up the same day as—“
“I’m not.”
She whipped around to face them again, and this time her collected demeanor cracked crooked down its porcelain centre—lips pulled taut and narrowed eyes beneath a furrowed, shadowed brow. “I,” she answered coldly, “was sent here to stop her.”
Pinkie tilted her head quizzically. “Sent? By who?”
“I don’t have time for your questions.” She pointed one finger toward them—no, past them—and warned, “She’ll have followed me too. So if you’d like to avoid becoming collateral damage, I’d suggest that you leave.” Flash. “Now.”
CRACK
(Rarity remembered a good many things about that night. The following moment in particular stood out as strong as a photograph. Though, memories weren’t limited to only visuals; she’d felt and watched and heard and smelt so many different sensations combined as one:
Felt the air turn hot against her skin.
Watched the orbs flash white behind the human, then remain charged; electric and magical.
Heard the air split. Heard an unnatural crack.
Smelt metal. Iron. Blood.)
Blue lightning tore through the air and across the foyer in an instant. It burst from the entrance behind their backs—grazing Pinkie’s shoulder and catching Applejack’s foreleg with shock strong enough to make her yelp—before slamming into the human and knocking her past the pedestal into the opposite wall with a bang.
Ah, Rarity managed. The human slowly crumpled to the floor. Collateral damage.
Metal surged again against her nostrils, chemical and burnt—
“MOVE!” Rainbow screamed.
And then the lich fired another bolt at their backs, and then the world shattered to pieces in Rarity’s grip.
Her eyes snapped open seconds—minutes?—later staring into stone. Something like firecrackers exploded in her peripherals. Her skin felt like fire. The right side of her body screamed with a sensation Rarity knew only then as agony. Get up, she tried to tell herself. The numbness in her legs was almost painful. Get up, get up, get up!
Somehow, despite the ringing in her ears and the pounding inside her skull, she managed to lift her head enough to catch a glimpse of the rest of the room.
Applejack lay dead-centre in the entranceway, her fur smoldering and charcoal black. Rainbow mirrored her motionless pose not even a metre away; Rarity could smell feathers burning; could see the smoke rising from limp and broken wings. She let her head roll to the side a little, and soon Pinkie entered her vision slumped against a half-smashed pillar. There was no sign of Fluttershy, but visuals alone didn’t matter—her hand clung to Rarity’s even through complete decimation, unmoving yet inseparable in the blind spot at Rarity’s side.
Get up, she reminded herself. Her temples throbbed with every word she thought. She raised her head a little more, enough to catch her chin on the corner of a bit of shattered tile and prop her vision up—
“You’re nowhere near strong enough to kill me, child.”
The lich spoke like a lunar desert. Her voice rang cold and dry and empty of any sort of life; a hollow tone dragged unwilling out of a bored, unfeeling void. She towered over the central pedestal in tattered robes that extended far past where bare feet walked on air, silvery fabric dangling black against ancient flooring like a softer sibling.
Her words landed at the foot of the pedestal. There, the human stood—but barely; Rarity thought her shaking legs might give way beneath the added weight of her gaze—with one hand flat against the only orb in reach. A magenta-tinted bubble of magic separated her and the pedestal from reach of the lich. Her other arm dangled limp at her side. Red oozed dark against her hair and scalp. Blood caked her clothes from collar to boot.
“I can’t kill you,” the human deadpanned. “You’re a lich.”
“Ha!” If liches could smile, perhaps the corners of the moon lich’s mouth would have twisted into a glee-filled grin. “I’d forgotten you’d believe that of me. A well-read and well-informed human; it’s quite nearly cute. Or...” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Am I perhaps mistaken?”
“Am I?”
Light flashed from beneath the human’s trembling hand. Electric magic surged up from the orbs again, and this time the current didn’t stop—it hissed and popped and burned upward through the human’s arm to her shoulder in a crackling current of pure white energy—
—only to sputter out to nothingness before even a second passed. The human exhaled sharply as it did. Her barrier wavered. Smoke snaked out between her lips. “I’m not trying to kill you,” she gasped between heaving breaths. “I don’t want to kill you, and without knowing where you’ve sealed your soul I can’t.”
The moon lich nearly raised her eyebrows. She lazily flicked one finger toward the human, and instantly an electric blue bolt collided against the barrier with a hollow crack.
“I just need to— I just need enough magic—”
“Potential is limited,” the lich cut in. “And I think it’s clear to the both of us you’ve reached yours.”
“No,” the human protested. Her voice cracked from strain; not emotion. “I found the Elements— I’m the one Celestia chose to stop y—”
Lightning struck. That was the only way to describe the blinding light that seared Rarity’s vision to white, then black, and the only way to describe the sound of a magical barrier shattered to splinters. The smell hit her before she could blink her eyesight back—chemical, burnt, and tangibly static on her skin.
Ozone.
Her temples squeezed her skull. Despite the pain, another thought forced its way forward:
Get up, Rarity.
(She wasn’t quite sure how she did it. Even memories had gaps in their reels. But one moment she was facedown at death’s doorstep, and the next she was on her hands and knees, and then before she knew it she was standing—wounded and shaky, but still standing nonetheless.)
“Come on,” she hissed through gritted teeth. Her eyes were half-blinded, but it was easy enough to reach back down for Fluttershy’s hand and pull. “Come on, get up, get up.”
For all the blood she tasted in the air, Rarity knew that no source’s pulse had stopped. Not hers. Not any of her friends’.
And, surprisingly, not even the human’s.
The silhouette of the moon lich cut through her vision with strong, sharp lines. She’d lowered herself to stand on mortal ground, ankle-deep in the ocean of her silver-black robes and with one extended arm pinning the human to the pedestal by the throat. The bare skin of her back and her arms seemed brilliant blue for a moment, until Rarity blinked the fuzz from her vision and the blue retreated to a pattern of haphazard, spiderwebbed lines of light across her skin.
To Rarity, those lines looked the same as shattered stone.
“My sister sent you?” The lich’s voice remained even, despite her sudden shift in poise. Her fingers tensed. Skin yielded beneath their tips. “How aggravating.”
The human opened her mouth to reply, but no sound—or air—came out.
“Well. I doubt those all-seeing eyes of hers have blinded,” the lich continued. “By now she will have seen I have not changed. That I will not, and cannot change.” Her grip slackened slightly, enough to let red rush back to whitened skin, and enough to allow the human to draw a slow, shallow breath. “If I am to be a monster because of her, then it is only fair I behave a monster in return.”
Rarity tensed at that. Behind the lich, most of her friends’ bodies did the same.
“She knows not of the compulsion a lich has to fill their void, child. She knows nothing of emptiness, or of want.”
“You’re dangerous,” the human rasped.
“I cannot change that.” The lich raised her other arm. Suddenly, the patterns along her skin pulsed so blue they seemed brighter than white. “My sister was a fool to send you.” Her free hand clenched to a fist, and immediately the orbs atop the pedestal lit up with crackling blue. “No human of your potential could withstand the Elements, and no human of your potential could ever use them to take my life.”
One by one the orbs—well, the Elements, as Rarity decided they probably were—quivered in their cradles. Just like before, the magical lightning spread until the entire pedestal was coated in a thin electric veil; unlike the human’s attempts, the lich’s magic then easily sank beneath their stone surfaces until not a single spark remained.
And immediately, the air thickened in a way that made the hair on the back of Rarity’s neck stand up on end.
“They won’t... kill you...” the human echoed. Her hand frantically repeated the same flash and snap pattern she’d done before, but to no avail. “Just... destroy... body.”
“Celestia told you that, did she?” Her grip tightened again before the human could speak. “And you fell for it?”
The human’s hand stilled. She drew a weak breath through gritted teeth; enough to gasp out, “Fell?”
“Though...” The lich squeezed harder. Somehow, despite the pressure surely strangling her, the human remained upright and conscious and calm enough to return the lich’s curious gaze with a cold, determined glare. “...perhaps her lie served another purpose, too.”
The human’s eyes narrowed further. Magenta light blazed to life beneath the nearly-sheer white of her blouse in response—
—just as the Elements detonated in an explosion of light.
Rarity’s instincts kicked in before her mind, and before she knew it she’d pulled Fluttershy up and back from the centre of the foyer just mere seconds before a chunk of what was once an Element slammed into the ground they’d occupied a heartbeat before. “Hells below,” she swore. “Darling, are you—”
“My leg,” Fluttershy whimpered. The ruins trembled beneath their feet. The light refused to fade. “I think— I think it’s still broken—”
Damn it. “Alright; don’t move.” Rarity eased Fluttershy back down to the floor, this time behind a broken pillar just tall enough to shield them both from the glare. She’d forgotten, then, as she often did, that half-bloodborne healed only half as fast, if that. “Stay here, okay?”
“The others,” Fluttershy tried, and grabbed one of Rarity’s hands with both of her own. “Are they—”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you—”
“I’ll try,” Rarity finished, before the question was even asked. The light wasn’t like the sun’s, but her fear reared its head all the same at the prospect of venturing into its range. And toward the lich. But she had no other choice. From what she’d already seen, no one else was in any state to save themselves.
Vampiric healing was such a shame in that regard.
Slowly, and only after she managed to extract her hand from Fluttershy’s grip, Rarity peered out from behind the pillar to survey the room. The explosion seemed a one-time event—thankfully—and though the ground still shook, it seemed stable enough to hold. The rest of her friends lay scattered near the entrance, appearing no more injured than before but still injured all the same.
Then something at the foot of the pedestal moved.
Rarity’s gaze darted over in time to see the lich toss the human’s body back against the floor. She landed hard; hard enough to smack her head against the pedestal with a crack, and yet no sign or sound of pain escaped her in response. Instead she merely lay there, motionless and with a glare so cold the lich seemed at risk of frostbite.
“It won’t be enough,” she told the lich. “You know that.”
The lich did not respond. Above them, the light from the Elements churned as a writhing sphere.
“Celestia told me how to help you. I can save you.”
“You’ll kill me,” the lich said flatly. “You’ve not been told the entire truth. Such a plan as purification will never work on me.” Finally, her gaze dropped to meet the human’s with an icy-cold stare of her own. “And even if it could, you certainly couldn’t be the one to perform it.”
That was good enough of an opportunity for Rarity; with the lich now looking directly away from her, she would hopefully be too focused on her conversation to pay anyone else any mind. Quickly, she pushed herself to her feet and tiptoed along the edge of the room toward the others as fast as she could. Pinkie was the closest—she groaned weakly when Rarity knelt down at her side, but her breathing remained shallow and her eyes stayed closed. Head injury, she guessed. Not good.
“It’s alright,” she whispered, even if her words weren’t completely truthful. “You’re fine.”
A few metres away, Applejack’s ears twitched at the sound of her voice, and she began to stir. “Rarity?” she grunted. “That... you?”
“Hush, dear. But yes,” she added, “it’s me.”
“Everyone... alive?”
“As far as I can tell.”
“Wish I weren’t,” Rainbow croaked from Applejack’s other side. “I want to die. Let me die. Everything hurts.”
“Hush!” Rarity hissed. “The lich will hear—”
“Good; maybe she’ll put me out of my misery—”
“What’s the plan?” Applejack cut in. She’d lowered her voice as much as possible, but it still came out halfway like a growl. “Run? Fight?”
Rarity shook her head at that. “No, we can’t fight. Escaping is the only thing I can think might save us.” She hesitated. “But...”
“The human.” It wasn’t a question; Applejack knew. That, despite their noble intentions, the only thing they’d accomplished by following the human was putting their own lives at risk. Sunk-cost at its finest, and at its worst.
“...I don’t think we can help her.”
“Mm.” Slowly, Applejack raised her head. Her haunches shuddered from strain, but eventually she managed to push herself to stand on all four legs. “Alright,” she agreed, and fixed Rarity with a pained yet pointed look. “We run.”
The plan was for Applejack to carry Pinkie, and for Rarity to support Rainbow, and for Fluttershy to follow them as soon as her leg had healed. It was risky, and perhaps a bit cruel to abandon the most timid of them all even temporarily, but it was the only plan Rarity put any stock in that had a chance to save all of their lives.
Unfortunately, plans—and especially ones with a capital P—never seemed to work the way she’d hoped.
The Summer Sun Celebration had happened exactly a year ago.
(And, it also was happening that very day, Rarity pointed out to herself, because that was how annual holidays happened to work.)
“You seem distracted.”
“Not distracted,” Rarity replied, slipping from memories back to reality in an instant. “Just thinking.”
She stood behind Twilight in the centre of the same crumbling castle ruins she’d seen seconds ago in her mind’s eye. The empty pedestal cast a thin shadow over them just barely visible under the bright moon. This time it was just the two of them—no friends, and no moon lich. And if not for the circumstances, Rarity might have found their current arrangement preferable.
(A year hadn’t changed the castle much, she found. Not in the same way it had changed her.)
“It’s hard to not think about what happened, you know.” She kicked a bit of stone to emphasize her point; it skittered across the ground until it bounced to a stop in a bit of dirt. Perhaps it had once been an Element. Perhaps it hadn’t. “Coming back here tonight of all times... Well, I can’t say I’m exactly thrilled.”
“It’s just a mission,” Twilight said slowly. She looked over her shoulder at Rarity and tipped her head. “Orders are orders, right?”
“...Right.”
Twilight turned back to her scroll, and Rarity resumed trying to stare a hole into one of the sleeves of her shirt. She recognized the cut of it; recognized the white fabric she’d so painstakingly bleached all those weeks before. It almost made her hesitate—but no. Glares were glares, and Rarity wasn’t going to let something as silly as a shirt stop her from being as bitter as possible.
Because Twilight Sparkle was a liar, not a human.
And Rarity was pretty confident her next guess would be her last.
What sound did human bodies make when overloaded past the limits of their potential?
Rarity hadn’t intended to find the answer to that question the night the moon lich died, but she found it before she’d even thought of asking it, and at the exact same time she slung Rainbow’s arm around her shoulders and pulled her battered body to its feet:
Firecrackers?
An electric pop-pop-pop rang out from the centre of the foyer, followed by a terrible crackling noise and the heavy stench of ozone mixed with burning flesh. Rarity flinched at the the sound of it and whipped around to see if they’d been spotted—
She made eye contact with the moon lich.
Hells below and heavens.
They were doomed.
The lich hovered above the pedestal, completely enveloped in the Elements’ light and with her own electric-blue magic pouring from the cracked lines across her skin. Even if she was no longer human, it didn’t take much thought to know that no being in all of Equestria was meant to look or be or sound like that.
And as Rarity remained frozen beneath the moon lich’s terrifying gaze, and as Rainbow muffled her pained cries into her shoulder, and as Applejack struggled to lift Pinkie onto her back, and as Fluttershy scrambled to drag herself away from the lich and toward the rest of their group—
—the lich calmly raised one burning, smoking arm toward them, and snapped.
And then the world shattered to pieces again.
If only for a moment.
Because then the light faded, and the world returned, and somehow, Rarity found she was still alive.
The remains of a magenta-coloured bubble winked out of existence around her and the others before she could even process it had appeared. Startled, she glanced up at the moon lich, but only found the ghost of her own shock reflected in her expressionless and magic-scorched face.
In fact, no one seemed more surprised at what had just happened than the human slumped against the pedestal with one shaking arm outstretched.
“Oh,” said the human. Her face twisted to an expression Rarity nearly mistook as confusion before settling back to calm. “That’s... odd.”
Odd?
The lich raised her arm to strike again, and this time Rarity clearly saw the human move even faster than that—an electric snap, a magenta wall, and the terrible crash of blue lightning colliding just inches away from her face. Yet, throughout the entire motion the human’s expression didn’t change.
“Odd indeed,” the lich echoed. Her once-dry voice had taken on the qualities of magic: sharp and charged enough to hurt. “Perhaps your potential is higher than I’d thought.” She lowered her arm. “Perhaps even half as high as mine.”
The moon lich was fully aflame, now. The ends of her hair dissolved to ashes and light; the patterns across her skin no longer just mimicked cracks, but truly were. Rarity knew her own expression must have been one of horror, and yet despite it all both the lich and the human remained collected, composed, and calm.
How could they?
“You shouldn’t die,” the human said slowly, though now her words didn’t seem as certain as before. “You’re a lich. Your body doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t be so certain.”
The light was fading, now. Whatever power the Elements had released seemed to be running out. As they dimmed, so too did the lich and her presence—she faded and floated downward to walk among mortals as a dying star. When she landed beside the human, calm as ever, Rarity swore she saw something akin to pity reflected in her gaze.
“You tried your best, child,” the lich said, and reached down toward the human with one electric, sparking hand. “Now, rest.”
Rarity felt Applejack tense up behind her; felt Rainbow try raise her still-broken wings in fury. But instead of fear or anger, Rarity only felt guilt bleed from the pits of her heart. Was that it? For all their efforts, could they not save a single being other than themselves?
Why had they tried at all?
And then—
“Don’t!”
Rarity blinked. Whose voice was that?
Then the lich turned to her, and then she realized: it was mine.
“Wait your turn,” the lich intoned, and thrust her hand downward toward the human’s skull—
CRACK
Her palm collided with a tangible light that sparked to life between the human and her hand. It was the same bright white as the Elements, and just as electrically charged—the lich’s arm rebounded in a trail of smoke and scattered sparks. Then, as the lich stumbled back a step, Rarity felt something light a fire beneath her ribs, and then that same something was under her skin and in her lungs and around her tongue and between her thoughts.
Give and help and save and try and
Monsters didn’t have magic.
hold and never take your share and
But if they did,
give and give and give and give
somehow Rarity knew that terrible incompatibility would have felt
until you’ve nothing left to bear
a lot like being possessed.
Magic was a monster itself, see. Suddenly she wasn’t just Rarity, but something more. The Element that had claimed her whispered nothings of fate and destiny and Plans into their shared ears in passing, as if the fact she and the others had gotten mixed up in its mess was everything else but chance—but Rarity knew better. Rarity knew the truth.
Because, magic was meant for humans. But it seemed the Elements preferred finding humanity in monsters over giving themselves up to the lich.
We’re a blessing, hers had told her, and she’d believed only as long as it had stayed. Time moved in eternities and all at once in its presence. The seconds between the Elements breaking free of the moon lich and splitting to new hosts passed as slowly as a hundred years. But they were hosts in plural only physically, if that—in that centurial moment five other minds moved in tandem against her thoughts so quickly she almost mistook them as her own.
Then the human raised her arm again. Light sparked against her palm.
Rarity felt a hand wrap around her borrowed magic the same time the human’s fingers curled around air, and in that moment she was everyone and no one; a vampire and a seamstress and an Element and a monster and a curse disguised as a blessing so very desperate to be freed—
—and one-sixth of the overcharged magical circuit the human unleashed on the lich.
Lightning. Ozone.
Flash.
SNAP
Rarity blinked.
Suddenly, her thoughts were her own again.
Suddenly, the Elements were gone.
Twilight’s shirt remained white and unburned.
Rarity remained sullen and scowling and hurt.
Everything she wanted to ask, she couldn’t, and everything she could have asked she didn’t want to.
Can you feel anything? Can you care?
Does what happened a year ago weigh on you at all?
The moon lich lay motionless in the centre of a smoking crater cut clean through the ground. Her skin had charred. Her eyes were still.
She did not move.
A great burden lifted from Rarity’s shoulders at the sight of her body—only to immediately be replaced by a different, heavier weight. If, truly, they’d somehow killed the lich, what then? What of the lives lost back in Ponyville? What of the Elements; the magic? What of us?
So many thoughts, but so little energy to think. Rarity couldn’t bring herself to voice a single one.
“...Liches can’t die like this.”
The human’s voice calmly cut the heavy silence in half. Rarity nodded along to her words, even if she didn’t fully understand them. Right. Of course they couldn’t.
“We’ve... It’s just her physical form. That’s all.”
Couldn’t they?
Because, the body in the crater looked remarkably dead to Rarity’s experienced eyes. Dying at the minimum. Sure, she hardly tasted any blood that wasn’t cinders, but that wasn’t exactly a good sign considering the rest of the lich—burnt and blackened and broken, with dying embers in place of the once-blue patterns along her skin. If they’d been shattered glass before, now they were full fissures empty of whatever life they’d once carried as spiderwebbed veins.
Then, she noticed the moon lich’s eyes.
Oh.
That wasn’t supposed to be possible.
She’s... crying.
Two impossible possibilities ran together that moment in the tears of a dying lich. Her body lay still and her expression remained stone, but those tears bubbled over beneath blank eyes all the same. And while Rarity didn’t completely understand their conditional immortality, she did know one thing for certain: liches, without their souls, didn’t and couldn’t cry.
“Hm.” The human spoke again, this time as she used the side of the pedestal to push herself to her feet. “That’s odd, too.”
“Isn’t she a lich?” Rarity whispered, having finally found her voice.
“Yes. She is.”
“But—”
“She is,” the human repeated, and oh how sure she sounded then. Rarity had no grounds to doubt her with that tone. “It... it must be an involuntary response. Some sort of leftover signal from her physical body, carried through whatever life it has left.” Her expression chilled at that. She took a stilted step toward the crater’s edge and raised her arm. “Here. I’ll put her out of her mis—”
The lich moved.
She jerked upright before Rarity and the others could protest the human’s words, her tear-drowned eyes wide and unblinking and aligned inches from the human’s outstretched palm. Rarity flinched at the sudden motion. The human did not.
Then, with her crumbling body and the rivers running down her cheeks, the lich reached one charcoal arm up and pressed the human’s hand down against her forehead.
“Do not,” she rasped, “end up... like me.”
She and the human held their gazes for a moment longer than a heartbeat.
Somehow, Rarity thought it looked like they’d both recognized a stranger.
But then the moment ended, and then the human’s palm crackled to life with light, and then the lich fell away from the human and back to the ground with eyes no longer dying but dead.
(That hadn’t been her plan, Twilight had confided in Rarity months later, when she was no longer just a nameless human but the human and friend Rarity so hesitantly loved. She’d blindly followed orders as a cog in some grand, divine machine only one person in all of Equestria knew how to operate, and as a result had impossibly managed to kill the unkillable.
The moon lich had been right.
“But you still work for her,” Rarity had pointed out then, side by side on her little couch.
“I do,” Twilight had answered.
“Well, I know I would be more than a little upset if I were in your shoes, darling.” Nevermind that she wore her own shoes already, and had unwillingly become part of the Plan’s machine herself.
“I... I can’t blame her for hiding the truth.”
“Why not?”
“Because I understand why, now,” she’d said softly, “and I wish that I did not.”)
It was the Summer Sun Celebration.
The moon lich died.
Celestia lied.
Twilight Sparkle moved to Ponyville.
Do not end up like me.
Back at the castle, the end of Rarity's mental film reel ran to a halt, and the dam pushing back against the pressure of her emotions finally broke.
“I’m only here because you wanted to follow the rules,” she finally blurted out. “You just needed a pair. I know the letter you got tonight didn’t include my name.”
She was fully present, now, back from all her memories of the not-so-distant past. The ruins hadn’t crumbled any more while she’d been gone, and Twilight hadn’t moved an inch from where she stood. At the sound of Rarity’s voice she looked up from her scroll again and nearly frowned. “Maybe I wanted company, too,” she said.
“Ha. Very funny.”
“I’m not joking.” Twilight carefully closed the scroll with a soft snap and turned to Rarity before continuing, “Pairs were an excuse. I’d rather you were here than do this alone.”
Her eyes, Rarity noticed, then. They’re almost scared.
At that, her anger crumpled away to a dull sort of worry at the pit of her anxious stomach. She may have felt slighted; she may have been hurt; but none of that mattered in the face of the impossible—or, in the face of her dearest friend feeling an impossible pain.
“What’s wrong?” she asked immediately. “What kind of feral does she want this time?”
“Not a feral,” Twilight corrected. “A spell.”
“A spell?” That was new. And considering how annual holidays worked, and what day—night—it was, Rarity didn’t exactly know how to feel about that.
“It’s not that I don’t know how to do it. I’ve been preparing for a ye— for a while, but—”
Rarity felt the blood drain from her face at that. It was only a minor trip of the tongue; a single slipped syllable, but in the context of who they worked for it was as damning as a stake.
“A year,” she whispered. “You said a year.”
A pause. Then: “Rarity, I—”
“This is part of her Plan, isn’t it?”
(A Plan that Rarity barely knew existed, much less what it was meant to do. She’d only pieced parts of it together from a few glances at dragonfire letters, and a few passing conversations she wasn’t sure weren’t planned for her to overhear. Sisters. Ferals. Celestia. The moon lich.
“A year should be enough time, Twilight.”
And, in the heading of the letter she’d caught a glimpse of that evening before Twilight had tucked it away:
Tonight.)
Twilight hesitated. That was an answer in and of itself. “It won’t affect you,” she tried, “I promise, just listen—”
“Show me the letter.”
“Rarity—”
“Show me the letter, Twilight!”
She didn’t have any right to victory, then. She was just Rarity. She wasn’t any sort of threat. Twilight could have ignored her or subdued her or torn her right to shreds—but she didn’t. Instead, she stood in silence for what felt like a full eternity before she relented and slowly raised her hand.
“Fine,” she said quietly, and raised her arm with the scroll—the letter—clutched tight within her fist. “Just... promise you’ll let me explain afterward. Okay?”
The air turned to ozone. Her tattoos crackled to life with light. She tossed the scroll across the room to Rarity, then turned away.
The Plan had started.
Rarity caught it with trembling hands, and read.
My faithful student,
Tonight your role in my sister’s rebirth comes to an end. I am sure that receiving this letter is enough to confirm your suspicions, but for the sake of formality—and perhaps a bit of self-indulgence—allow me to pen your instructions a final time. You have done so well; it would not do for my negligence to cause failure at your final hurdle.
However, before I do so, permit me a word of caution not as your ruler, but as your mentor: do not exceed your limits tonight. I recognize the steps you have taken to increase your potential under my guidance, and while I appreciate your dedication to my cause, your actions after last year’s events have given me cause for concern. Failing to withstand the Elements did not mean you failed me. There was no need to take another step down such a risky path; I already had full faith in your potential and in your abilities. Was the moon lich not warning enough? It is senseless to make your only weakness the source of your strength. I can only pray I do not need to choose a second student come tomorrow, for both our sakes.
Now, with this in mind, your instructions this evening are as we have previously discussed. Return to my ancestral home. Channel the Elements. Make a connection to the Place I Cannot Tread. You have released enough of the forest’s beasts to facilitate a single deal; I trust that one attempt will be sufficient.
When she returns, give name to her vessel. She will be human again. Make sure of this—she cannot and must not ever defy me again as a lich.
Call her Luna.
That is all.
Necromancy.
That was the Plan, Rarity realized. Of course it was—how had she been so blind? What other purpose would dead ferals serve? Why else would the Divine need a mortal for their dirty work?
What kind of sister would want hers summoned as a thrall?
But it was too late for questions then. By the time she’d finished the letter and snapped her gaze up from its text, Rarity saw that the surface of the empty pillar in front of Twilight had already begun to ripple with electric light. No, not just the pillar. She was magic too, with both palms raised parallel to her shoulders and with the horrible sound of firecrackers sparking beneath her skin.
Hells below and heavens, and all else in between.
Then Twilight pressed her hands against the pedestal. Light flashed blinding.
Rarity’s heart dropped to her stomach.
SNAP
Unlike the last time, the Elements didn’t fizzle out within Twilight’s grip. Instead, they answered her call from the fragments of their former selves, heralded with a chorus of thunderclaps and ushered by ozone into a body whose potential had somehow become enough—but barely, and only just. The stench of ash joined ozone all too soon. Tattoos burned deeper. Hair caught flame.
Oh, how badly Rarity hoped her guess was right.
Twilight’s hands twisted outward, and suddenly there was ice around Rarity’s neck in an imagined noose. Wind whipped up from nothingness; her vision chilled to a greenish-blue hue; her heartbeat drowned in the deafening roar of an endless ocean invisible beneath her feet. Hell came with high waters, after all, as well as with the wails of the doomed—a grim reminder that the sea of souls lay merely a realm away.
Hands clawed at Rarity’s ankles. What felt like them, at least. Her overcast eyes saw nothing amidst the storm but Twilight, burning to ashes from the inside out, and herself, frozen at the edge of their reality. She couldn’t find the strength to kick the hands away. She couldn’t move at all.
Then Twilight said something beneath the wind, and the ocean screamed.
(Rarity hadn’t ever thought that forests could bleed, but that was the only way she could describe what happened next.)
Ghostly pale light ran liquid from the Everfree itself: from stone, from trees, and from the very air. It poured downward into the forest floor, seeped between their realms, and vanished into the unseen sea. And, as the forest bled itself dry, a similar light began to pool atop the central pedestal in an equivalent amount.
A single deal, Rarity remembered. One attempt.
The ocean drank and the light pooled and the doomed howled louder than the wind. Another set of fingers wrapped around Rarity’s calves. The light above the pedestal grew larger and larger, surpassing even the largest of humans with its formless and liquid shape.
Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, Hell pulled its oceans away from their realm with a static snap. Instantly the wind and sea and screams vanished to deafening silence. The hands slipped back beneath invisible waves. The chill vanished, and the world regained colours other than greens and blues: the purples of moonlit shadows, the oranges of embers burning away to black.
Twilight removed her hands from the pedestal in the stillness, and the Elements released her even faster than the sea. They left in a cloud of smoke and starlight exhaled thick between her lips, and immediately the rest of her magic followed suit. The scent of ozone faded, and her skin dimmed, and a rainbow of reds again blossomed through the fabric a once-white shirt.
“Right,” she said calmly, as if they’d merely weathered a summer shower, and turned back to Rarity. “Looks like it worked.”
And Rarity could only stare at her, dumbfounded, with a thousand curses rattling round the inside of her skull. It was so hard to think coherent thoughts sometimes, especially when all of them were true.
“That’s the hard part out of the way, really. So if you give me another minute finish up, we might be able to make it back to town in time fo—”
“To Ponyville?” Rarity blurted out before she could stop herself. “Like that?”
Twilight blinked almost innocently. “Like what?”
“Twilight Sparkle, if you make me repeat myself again, so help me—”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence. A thunderous screech tore through her words before she could, and just as the thing on the pedestal convulsed in her peripherals, a magenta bubble popped into existence around her and Twilight a split second before something electric collided against it with a crack.
“Oh,” Twilight said calmly, and spun back around on her heel and raised her hands. “That’s not right.”
And indeed it wasn’t. The remnants of the liquid light had finally solidified to something human shaped, but the similarities ended there—its electrically-charged hair spilled in a too-long twisted waterfall over its pale and naked body; its limbs ended in pointed claws instead of nails and fingers; its skin stretched taut over a bestial skeleton it wasn’t meant to fit; and its once-expressionless face was filled with gaunt black voids for eyes and a gaping maw of drool and fangs. It stood atop the pedestal hunched on two legs, but barely, and in a body meant to walk on four.
Somehow, its throat rasped an agonized wail. Impossible tears spilled endlessly out from pools of black.
“The moon lich,” Rarity breathed, horrified. “That’s her.”
“But that’s not right,” Twilight repeated, her face calm despite the unusual strain rising in her voice. “The deal worked; our survival makes us living proof of that. She should have”—another bolt tore from the beast and hit their shield—“come back as a human. Her original physical form.”
“But something is clearly wrong if she’s not right!”
“I know that. If you could just give me a second to think—”
The next strike shattered their shield to splinters. Immediately, Twilight reached back and pulled Rarity in by the shoulder, then wrapped them in a much smaller bubble in time to block the bolt after that.
“Well,” Rarity hissed between her teeth, “I can’t imagine your omniscient mentor didn’t account for this in her Plan.” She could see the glow from Twilight’s tattoos beneath her bloodied shirt; could hear the hum of magic through the arm looped around her neck. “Surely she’s watching. Why don’t you try asking her?”
“If this was part of the Plan she would have told me,” Twilight argued.
“Oh, sure, darling. The same way she told you about murdering the moon lich, right?”
“That’s— That was different—”
“Enlighten me.”
“I—”
Golden fire burst from nothingness between their too-close glares. Twilight, oddly enough, started at the sight of it, which gave Rarity just enough time to snatch the scroll that fell from it and clutch it tight against her chest. “See?” she said—gloated, really.
“Rarity,” Twilight said flatly.
“I’ll read it out loud, don’t worry.”
“It’s meant for me.”
“And I’m sure Celestia knew I’d want to open it,” she snarked. She popped the seal with her thumb at the same time another bolt shook their shield, which gave the action an impressive sort of impact. “Don’t worry.”
Twilight opened her mouth to protest again, so Rarity quickly shook the paper out of its roll and began to read:
“My faithful student,
You have done so well tonight. Words alone cannot express how proud I am of you.
Do not worry about my sister’s temporary appearance; it is merely a consequence of her exchange. After all, no amount of feral souls will ever create sentience—how could they, when sentience is what sets apart monsters and humans from simple beasts?
Thankfully, this wretched form of hers has a simple solution. Ponyville is just outside the forest, in case your little monster friend isn’t quite enough, but one sentient soul should be more than enough to...”
Rarity’s voice faded out against her will. The scroll slipped from her hands before she could finish it. Suddenly, the arm around her shoulders felt more threatening than the thing outside.
She didn’t want to believe that Twilight would even consider it, but—
What if she did? She couldn’t care about her, so—
But what if she did?
Can you feel anything? Can you care?
“Let me go,” Rarity blurted out. “Get me out of here.”
“It’s alright,” Twilight tried. She squeezed her shoulder in an awkward attempt at comfort that felt more like silver on bare skin. “That... I’m sure that was Celestia’s way of making a joke. I obviously wouldn’t ever hurt you. Don’t worry.”
“But you still would do it?” Rarity whispered. Terror seeped out between her words and the beats of her pounding heart. Her panic surged. She shrugged Twilight’s arm from her shoulders and stepped back far enough that her spine bumped against their shield. “You’d still follow Celestia’s orders? You’d kill a monster; someone from Ponyville; someone we both know?”
“No, I...” She hesitated once again, but this time her hesitation felt more of a question than an answer. “Do you really think that of me?”
There—right there, beneath the controlled and even rhythm of her words: a tremor.
Rarity had never before heard Twilight voice such a vulnerable sound. How wrong it felt! Perhaps most humans were meant to sound like that, but from her it just felt wrong, wrong, wrong. Guilt immediately squeezed her heart, and she opened her mouth to reply; to recant—
Another blue bolt cracked against their shield. Twilight visibly flinched forward at the impact, and her magic shattered to pieces a second time. Rarity stumbled off-balance when the bubble vanished from her back, and before she could catch herself her feet tangled and her knees buckled and she hit the ground hard enough to knock all the air from her lungs.
The creature howled. Lightning sparked.
Rarity cursed beneath her breath and tried to stand—
“Run,” Twilight ordered, her voice the least composed it had ever been. “Now!”
Blue met magenta with a thunderous crack, and before her mind could catch up to her body Rarity found she was already scrambling and standing and panickedly scanning the foyer for the best exit before bolting as fast as she could—and without a single question or protest ever joining her scattered thoughts.
Twilight turned to light and firecrackers in her peripherals. Pink-white magic fired at the pedestal—but the beast leaped over the bolt before it struck and hit the ground bounding toward them with a furious howl.
Rarity forced herself faster. Light flashed to fill the foyer. Something heavy crashed into the ground behind her, and something horrific screamed with a feral’s mouth.
She didn’t dare look away from the exit. She didn’t dare look back.
Not when shattered magic fried the air with a chorus of pops; not when something lighter hit the ground with a human grunt; not even when the earth shook beneath her pounding feet as a faster and bestial chorus of footfalls closed in on her from behind. The castle’s steps soon rose into view through a ruined archway just a dozen paces away—
Flesh and claws collided. A colossal weight knocked Rarity flat against the floor.
No!
Terror forced pure adrenaline through her shaking limbs, and somehow she managed to flip herself free from her attacker and onto her back—but then the whole of the beast crashed down upon her and pinned her to the ground.
“No!” she shrieked aloud. “No, no, no!” She kicked up at the creature’s stomach; thrashed against its claws; fought to no avail. It screeched hot breath and spittle down between fangs inches from her face, and before she could draw breath for another scream its mouth unhinged and surged downward faster than a guillotine toward her neck—
—and only then
How human you have been
did the blessing she’d never asked for
to love the loveless selflessly enough
decide it was time
to reap reward in barren soul
to settle its debts.
That time, the endless eternity of the Elements felt slightly different.
She’d been used before, Rarity knew, against her will and without consent to become a murderer by proxy, if not outright. Her Element had forced its magic through every fibre of her being like some sick puppeteer picking out a new toy for its show. And while she’d had power and she’d been magic, she also had no longer been Rarity. She’d been her Element. She’d been all the other Elements, and all her friends.
A second stretched to a century.
Rarity remained entirely herself.
There were no foreign thoughts; no whispered promises in her ears or at the back of her mind. It was quiet. Calm. They didn’t use her at all like before—because they didn’t need her, some part of Rarity helpfully supplied. She could rest. This time someone else had taken the burden of everything all at once.
Then—
No no no no no no no
—a single train of thought collided against her with the force of all six Elements, and even more:
I can’t lose you.
Oh, Rarity realized. Time began to turn again. Light flashed blinding, and the world shattered.
That’s her.
And then the moon lich was gone.
Rarity jerked upright to sitting the same time her body heaved a gasping breath, her eyes snapping open as wide as they would go and her heartbeat pounding staccato in her throat. The weight pinning her down had vanished to nothingness—there was no feral corpse or impossibly dead lich with ash in her veins. No trace that she—or it—had ever existed. Just... nothingness.
A silent flash of light was all it took.
“Oh,” said a voice, and when Rarity glanced up across the foyer her eyes met Twilight’s calmly panicked stare. “You’re... safe.”
She was covered in blood again, like she often was, but this time it was so obviously her own. The Elements had opened wounds when she’d first used them that evening, and the second time seemed to have done her in for worse—split skin along scorched forearms; smoking, open wounds beneath her clothes. A nosebleed, some bruising, and a shirt more red than white. But despite it all she was still standing—so then surely she was fine, wasn’t she?
(Because Rarity knew for certain that Twilight was not a human.
She knew why she couldn’t feel, she knew why her magic had so much potential, she knew why the moon lich had warned her with dying breath, she knew, she knew, she knew.)
But.
Rarity’s thanks died on her lips the second her eyes dropped to the neckline of Twilight’s shirt. They’d fallen there perhaps on purpose, and perhaps intentionally to the same spot she’d so carefully tended days earlier, where she now saw charcoal black instead of white. Empty fissures. Burnt-out vein-like patterns exactly like the moon lich’s shattered marks.
Do not exceed your limits tonight.
Her heart stopped—but only metaphorically.
Maybe things would have been easier if it actually had.
Once again her body moved before her thoughts could think, and before she knew it Rarity was up on her feet and stumbling and sprinting and then catching, her arms outstretched and her heart in her throat as her wonderfully infuriating, endearingly awful human crumpled forward into her panicked embrace.
“No,” she choked out. “No. Not like this.”
Twilight made a noise against her shoulder that could have been mistaken for a laugh. “Like... what?”
And Rarity did trip on a gasping laugh, then—a single syllable that petered out into a sob. “Like this,” she breathed, and clutched her tighter. “Just tell me you’ll be fine; tell me she wasn’t right—”
“Rarity,” Twilight interrupted gently. Her shoulders shook with strain.
“—and that we can head back to Ponyville and fix you up—”
“Rarity.”
“—and that you won’t end up like her—”
“It’s too late,” she breathed, her voice a ghost. “I... I was going to tell you. Was going to explain... tonight.” Her weight sank heavier into Rarity as her legs weakened, but somehow Rarity still managed to keep the both of them upright. “I’m... the same as her. Not human. Just like—”
“Yes, you’re a lich,” Rarity snapped. Oh, how badly her voice trembled with every word. “I managed to figure that out all by myself, thank you. And—” A sob cracked through her words, but she kept going: “You’re the stupidest, most idiotic one in existence for re-sealing your soul in your veins!”
“...Oh.” Twilight made the same not-laugh noise into her shoulder again. “Was it that obv—”
“The one damn thing the moon lich told you not to do!”
“Because I needed potential,” she explained calmly—somehow. It was a different calm than usual; instead of ice or indifference it felt far more resigned. “It was... risky. But... the only way to use the Elements. All six,” she added. “And it worked. Tonight.” Her breath shuddered. “Twice.”
The storm around Rarity’s emotions surged, and a wave of anger spiked above everything else. “Oh?” she hissed between her teeth. Her tears spilled over with her next blink, and her vision blurred wet. “It worked, did it? You’re not going to die from over-channeling magic through your soul?”
She wanted to slap her; she wanted to scream; she wanted to hold her dying, bloodied body tight enough to stop the ashes of her sealed soul from scattering to an invisible sea. It was so hard to think any other thought than why, over and over: why is this happening, why can’t I stop it, why did you do this for me?
And then—
Twilight lifted her head just enough for Rarity to see her face. “It’s alright,” she whispered, and Rarity immediately froze at the sight she saw so clearly through her tears.
Because Twilight was smiling.
“...Even though I lost my soul,” she said, her eyes locked warm to Rarity’s, “I think... I learned to love again without it.” One of her arms lifted trembling from her side up to Rarity’s cheek, and limply brushed against it. “I felt something... a year ago. I think it started then. When you... and the girls...”
“When you saved us,” Rarity finished for her with a whisper, still hardly able to believe her eyes.
“I couldn’t lose anyone then,” Twilight continued. “I couldn’t lose you tonight. It... felt the same as then. But a hundred times,” she said, and her voice wavered soft. “A hundred times stronger. At least.”
“You can’t just say that—”
“And I made a choice... based on emotion. Instinct.” Her hand fell limp against Rarity’s collarbone; her eyes blinked slower; her breath grew faint. “A sacrifice no unfeeling lich would ever make.”
Rarity felt her veins slow; heard her heartbeats thump farther and farther apart until they stopped.
Tears fell.
Words failed.
She matched her gentle smile with a silent, agonized sob. And—
“For you,” Twilight finished with her final breath, “I am glad I made that choice.”
lich
1. a former human who exchanged their soul for conditional immortality
2. a soulless being incapable of experiencing emotion
3. not Twilight Sparkle
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11735077
Human
11735077
well, your timing is perfect--the last chapter just went up :)
This can't be over. If Celestia is ruthless enough to sacrifice an innocent to get her sister back she's ruthless enough to obliterate Ponyville to cover up what she just tried. Twilight's sacrifice has only bought a little time. Everymonster is still in grave danger.
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that's all the story i've set out to tell with this fic, though im very glad that the world can feel large enough for you to be interested in more of it ^^ thanks for reading!
well, the story of rarity and twilight is over, even if the story of the world isn't
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Well I do feel the ending loses some punch when logical extrapolation is that Celestia is going to incinerate everyone we just learned to care about in the next ten minutes.
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no, not necessarily, since that would destroy her image. remember, her letter to twilight warns about not wanting to take another student--she would repeat the same discrete process, perhaps with a more ruthless student willing to actually kill.
How dare you make me feel things.
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glad to hear it's working as intended :) thanks for reading!
UUGHHHAHHDAJHAJHAHJSDHAHHGWUUHHHHH AHFAJJABAJBNCJAHDAJ
THIZS IS SO GOOOOOODDDD
THANK YOUUUUUU CRYIIIIIGNNNN
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thank you so much for reading!!
I don't think words can express my emotions at that ending... It's not fair that your art and writing is so good when I'm terrible at both... Like seriously, I was totally unsure of what made Twilight the way she was in this fic until right at the end when Rarity just went and said it! And then you just had to go and hit me in the feels like that!
There's so much potential story left for this universe as well. Like, I really want to know the reaction the rest of the Mane 6 have to finding out Twilight had been lying to them all that time.
What would Celestia's reaction be to realizing Twilight failed. Would Celestia realize that Twilight had sabotaged the "Plan"? Cause she may have known when to send the letter based on detecting the Elements being activated, but it also could have been her somehow knowing Luna's soul was back in the land of the living.
So many unanswered questions about this Celestia as well, clearly she doesn't care for the lives of the monsters in Ponyville, but did she care about Twilight? If she did, would she change her plans to bring Twilight back first somehow? All questions I'll likely never know the answer to because this amazing story had a still amazing (and slightly traumatizing) ending right here...
Gosh Evelili, your stories this past year have been hitting me good, like I still go back and watch the trailer thingy for The Twilight Effect every now and again. Probably gonna hit that story with a reread soon too. But Heartstrings and Something about Midnights were also just amazing pieces of content about things I wouldn't normally read fanfics about.
TL;DR Story good, keep up the good work
Beautiful ending. That was a great read. Thank you very much for this. I'll be sure to check out your other works. 🙏
Oh wow. That was intense. Absolutely loved every moment of this, and love the choice of agape for the final chapter name. I'd been expecting it to be eros at the start, was surprised when it got used before the ending, but agape really does work so much better with how the story ends,
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wahh, thank you so much for your kind words! im so happy that you could enjoy both the art and writing of this story, and that it could keep you engaged until the end ^^
honestly, one of the saddest parts of writing to me is, when i create these worlds to place my stories in, i dont get to explore all of it. probably 5% comes through in the fic—to me, the main story comes first and foremost, and so we only get a window into whatever parts of the world support it. celestia in particular i dont explore much, because i feel the distance and mystery around her might break a bit if i brought her any closer to the story. perhaps i might visit this world again if i could find a story to tell in it, but i think the ending as-is can tell a complete story on its own.
im so happy you could enjoy my other stories too, you have my biggest thanks for your support. thank you so much for reading!
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thank you so much for reading! im glad you enjoyed, and i hope you can enjoy some of my other stories too ^^
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honestly, it was a tossup in which direction this fic would go in planning, whether to go this direction, or do something more lighthearted. in that direction, probably eros would have been last lol
thanks for reading!
damn i was wrong. turns out twilight was human all this time after all............................. ;_;
god what a ride. i really didn't expect you to hurt us like this!! it caught me off guard!! what's the POINT of discovering the power of friendship if you DIE!!!!! also i was listening to the FMAB soundtrack as i read and it really suited... REALLY suited.
new monster guess: celestia is the most terrifying monster of all, capital G God
idk if it counts as foreshadowing if it pays off in the same chapter but this is a good 'whatever that is'
i love the motif you use for magic use - glowing tattoos and lightning aren't too out of the ordinary but the overloading being more akin to a circuit breaker on the fritz than just a burst of light is very vivid!
god the bit where they get possessed by the elements goes so HARD! i LOVE the depiction of the elements as a domineering force for which the vessel is just a puppet. and of course i love the stanzas woven with the prose and how that works metaphorically as 'between her thoughts'! it so perfectly captures that feeling of being invaded
repeating myself at this point but the parallels to canon's depiction of Harmony as a collaborative force with twilight at the head instead being her getting to Use the other bearers is so good.
"well that's odd" - twilight sparkle, poking a dead body with a stick
i love that a universal trait of twilights regardless of interpretation is: i love it when they fuck up. i love it
but it's sooooo fucking badass celestia. haven't you watched ANY anime.
i love that this Proper Noun Location is in the first person. like either nobody can tread there but thinks everyone else can or celestia is so full of herself she's like. okay i know YOU can tread there but i can't so you have to call it this, okay?? it is a cool name for hell tho. i'll give you this one
the whole Plan of NECROMANTIC SACRIFICE BABEYYYYY also hit me out of nowhere!! extremely cool.
don't listen to the haters. celestia killing her sister and resurrecting her as a thrall to 'save' her is SO girlboss. typically i can take or leave unfeeling chessmaster celestiatypes (i don't mind a couple feeling chessmaster types, as a treat) but it really suits the world here. you said not to expect anything more in this world but rarity and crew all teaming up to make celestia do the same ritual to bring back twilight and sacrifice her own soul for the trade would be chefs kiss as hell. especially when twilight comes back and is like hey you did WHAT to my mo-mentor. my mentor
LOVE your depiction of hell as something deep and salty and green. it's really unique and vivid
necromancy is easy. and it never goes wrong either
GREAT callback lol.
god i love the glimpses we get of celestia here. i'm sooooo proud of you girly you're my #1. take a life. yeah your friend over there's probably as good as the next one. the phrase 'little monster friend' makes me wonder what type of human-adjacent creature celestia is - probably just far, far better at being a lich than twilight or luna
i somehow forgot you can just Draw Art For The Killer Moments and it hit me as hard as it did back in the twilight effect lol. excellent
this trope ALWAYS hits. ALWAYS!!!
i really love the Gimmick of sealing your soul in your own body. VERY stupid for a regular lich but the in-universe justification of increased magic potential is a great risk-reward tradeoff, and makes for very fun drama of twilight denying that she's been asked to murder someone and realizing with
horrorcalmness that she, in fact, Did Do That*musing* does the emotionlessness of a lich stem from being cut off from your soul? is the emotional release both of them got before dying a result of the soul returning to the body as it dies?? honestly i was really hoping rarity would be like. hey. if your soul is back and you're dying anyway........ you're basically human, so..... *pointing at fangs* eh? ehhhh??? (but romantically)
speaking of things i wanna see but won't get to: i wonder when twilight became a lich. was that her entrance exam, seeing if she survived the process? it doesn't seem like celestia would pick a girl with next to no magic potential and help her through the process, so either twilight did it to herself (how? it'd have to be way more common) or........ celestia was running supersoldier trials over in canterlot and twilight just happened to survive. who know...
ahhhh *tearing up* you bastard........................ how could you...
thank you for feeding all of us with this :pray: it really was a fun and emotional ride. someday i wanna try to write a twilight like yours and explore the more taciturn side of her!
Not a golem, then. Oh well, maybe she can become one now. There's suitably spell-wrought "clay" right there, filled with instructions and orders in its head. Wouldn't put it past this Celestia to create a perfect Faithful Student if a suitable one isn't available.
Great fic! Less romantic than I was expecting, but I'm not complaining. The Elements (and Celestia!) are terrifying, Rarity's inner monologue is a treat, and Twilight is the perfect mix of idiot and genius, even when they're distributed very differently from canon Twi.
I love how at first Twilight can't think about not doing what Celestia says. Even when she insists she wouldn't kill someone after being asked, Rarity had to ask first. I'm sure if Rarity had gone along with it, Twilight would've absolutely killed someone for Celestia.
This whole part is awesome in fact. It's like a microcosmos of the fic, of Twilight deluding herself that a being with capital P Plans not only can be understood, but also that it cares about her. How she loves Rarity, but her devotion is so immense that her first impulse when recieving an order to kill her it's not horror. It's to defend Celestia. Surely, it's a joke. She must know I would never kill you.
Or maybe I'm reading words that aren't there lol. But the given fact that Twilight becomes a vein lich in direct opposition to Celestia's orders, just so she can be more powerful, just so she can better follow Celesita's wishes (why else would she need more power? It's not like she was looking to use the Elements for herself), I think it supports my theory of Twilight being a little bit of a zealot.
Her being a Lich too was pretty obvious to me from the start O.o
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not to get too biblical, but something about the concept of a fully human AND fully divine being… they would be pretty OP, right? :3c
im glad you liked the depiction of magic in this fic! one of my “exercises” (because is it really a lili fic if im not Learning) was to improve on physical descriptions, and i really liked the idea of humans having this sort of parallel magical circuit of veins within them as the reason why they can do magic, but monsters cant. of course, the elements can override that difference a bit on their own, since theyre Magic and OP Blasty Plot Devices and all lol
and oh absolutely celestia calls it that because of Ego and Self Importance lmao, i can imagine if rarity heard her say that in person she’d b like. “you mean hell.” “yes. the Place I Cannot Tread.” “so you mean to say hell, right.” and then twi would have to intervene before she’d get incinerated flfjfkdms. idk what it is, but the dynamic of rarity resenting celestia for using twi / herself is ~spicy~ and i am suddenly now here for it!
and oh, you can absolutely credit my prereader for the necromancy stuff, and honestly the entire flashback sequence in this chapter—i probably will do a writeup on this, bc i was about to go in a completely different and garbage direction before they stepped in lmao. as for your sequel idea, that was actually one of the points we had a lot of discussion about, since i really needed to find a method where celestia could bring back luna, but rarity + friends couldnt bring back twi. the idea of somehow trading celestia for twi is rlly interesting, tho im not sure how possible it would be to, yknow. kill god lmao. maybe they could make it work. again probs will go more into this in the writeup, so please look forward to that whenever it’s up!
for the soul stuff, you’re pretty much correct! without a soul a lich cant feel any emotion (including pain!). however, when the soul is destroyed, in twi and luna’s case the soul’s “corpse” ended up back in their bodies, so suddenly they were just humans with dead souls, rather than liches with magically isolated ones. it’s a strange concept for sure, but like. *handwaves* liches probably watch anime or something lmao
in terms of ur questions abt twi, in chapter 2 i think it’s mentioned she got her tattoos as a kid, and she felt pain. at that point, she raises her potential to much higher than the average with just the tattoos, which was enough to get accepted as celestia’s student, and then later on when she’s part of the Plan, she becomes a normal lich of her own volition in order to mitigate the risk of dying to the elements, + increase her potential a little more. the twi in this fic is very much fueled by personal ambition around magic, as well as devotion to celestia and her cause
and yes, the other lili specialty other than Triple Length Final Chapter Jumpscares is apparently now “wow i dont know how to write this part let’s use art as a crutch instead”. im building my brand.
wowza long reply! thank you so so much for reading, and for all your lovely comments along the way, i really appreciate the time you took to write them!
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perhaps! though, it’d be a real challenge for celestia to access her soul, given she cant interact with hell….
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oh, youre reading into things absolutely correctly and im here for it. this contrast of a “benevolent dictator” celestia and her unwaveringly devoted protege was something i really wanted to explore, and even if we dont see much of it in the fic, im glad that it was still able to come across. definitely zealot behaviour haha
and yes, definitely less romance than what the tag usually implies, but when weighing the consequences of leaving it out vs keeping it on, i figured it was better to tag than risk getting readers outside my intended audience haha. im glad you could enjoy the fic regardless; thank you so much for the comment and for reading this story!
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yep, that’s the idea! rarity’s mystery is different than the reader’s mystery: she’s figuring out what twi is, while you as a reader are figuring out the “how” of how she became what she is. if you can figure out what she is early on, that just means im doing my job foreshadowing correctly ^^
thanks for reading!
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It is a good story, well written too.
And an interesting premise as well.
Spike's gonna be mad, huh?
Also, ah ha! I was kinda close, turning into a lich dulled her emotions to the point she may well be a robot, but robots can still dream, sometimes.
And also as your local lich enthusiast, technically souls are a renewable resource-- (a line in some future fic of mine)
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perhaps theyre a renewable resource in common interpretations, but in this universe all beings have one finite soul ^^ but regardless, thank you very much for reading!
"The love of God for man and of man for God" Uhuh.
There is a beast in my mind, fire in my vains and murder in my eyes.
So. Under the first chapter of the story I posted a part of a song from a polish poem. Here is the entire song (with a slightly better translation):
My song was already in the grave, already cold;
The blood felt: it looks from under the ground
And like a specter it rises hungry for blood
And it demands blood, demands blood, demands blood.
Yes! revenge, revenge, revenge on the enemy
With God - and even in spite of God!
And the song says I'll go tonight
I must bite my fellow countrymen first;
Whom do I put my fangs into the soul One like me must become a specter.
Yes! revenge, revenge, revenge on the enemy
With God - and even in spite of God!
Then we'll go, we'll drink the blood of the enemy!
We'll cut its body apart with an axe,
Hands and feet we'll nail,
So it'll not arise and won't be a specter.
Yes! revenge, revenge, revenge on the enemy
With God - and even in spite of God!
We must go to hell with its soul,
We'll sit on its soul together,
Until we suck out its immortality,
As long as it feels, We'll bite.
Yes! revenge, revenge, revenge on the enemy
With God - and even in spite of God!
And it still sounds better in polish.
But yea, replace the undefined "enemy" with Celestia and that's how I feel after reading this.
Tho credits due where credits due that's, some titanium ovaries she has to pull off something like that.
The whole thing at the end had me feeling things (other than rage)... Untill the confession at witch point the dam broke, self preservation instincts kicked-in and I had to resort to funny plane miusic to calm myself down. And then some marches and Sabaton to channel those emotions into... other ones.
Ehhh.... This comment makes no sense. Sorry, it's just emotional outpour.
My assumption that falling for a vampire will be Twilight's undoing wasn't that far away afterall.
You could say that events of this fic are "Fueled By the Sun's Ambition Infernal"
kek
If I'm capable of more coherent thought tomorrow and will feel like I have something of value to add that wasn't already said I'll come back here.
For now tho have a haphazardly thrown together rallying cry against celestia, courtesy of your's truthly:
Hey! Who's human, monster! With me! Come on!
To Canterlot!
Celestia cares not for you or me,
she'd throw away our lives just to have her sister back!
The same sister she pushed to the brink and to darkness!
She didn't even bother to do any of this by herself!
She turned a girl into a abomination like herself,
made her a unfeeling, loyal servant to carry out her will!
I say mount your horses, straighten your scythes,
Sharpen your iron!
We'll go and gallop,
We'll cut and burn our way to Canterlot!
And we'll spread the Sun witch on our sabers!
So, come on!
Hey! Who's human, monster! With me! Come on!
To Canterlot!
Yea, that's a very 17th century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
And yes it also sounded better in my head in polish.
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oh, thank you very much for sharing the rest of the song, it’s really cool! im glad that you could enjoy the story, and that it could resonate in a way with you that you could feel something strongly in response—that’s the ultimate goal of a writer at the end of it all, at least for me ^^ and, even if you feel it’s incoherent, i think i can understand your feelings. the rallying call you wrote is lovely; thank you for taking the time to do that, and for reading this fic!
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Yeah sorry it's an extremely weird take I have that takes into consideration a combination of somewhat disturbing assumptions and rules lawyering for a pseudo immortal character to technically operate without a soul.
(But technically Celestia says you just gotta turn enough people into philosopher's stones--)
Incredible work from start to finish. I can only imagine what Celestia will make of her student’s final moment of defiance… and what this insignificant bloodsucking seamstress may do in the aftermath. As any Shin Megami Tensei game can attest, God is but a powerful monster with nasty control freak tendencies, and is often one the world would be better off without.
Again, outstanding emotional buildup and payoff. The story’s definitely reached a satisfactory climax, but I am intrigued to see if you go any further with it. Odds don’t get much more uneven than a vampire versus the Sun…
I said I'll mabey be back after I calm down. So after getting my heart rate down from: I don't think that's healthy, to: I think that's how it always was. I'm here again writing another comment. (I just like to rant ok?)
A bit to add to the previous one.
There probably should be a And then they all died horribly, after the rallying cry, becouse well. Fighting god.
It was also in some way inspired by song Pan Kmicic by Jacek Kaczmarski.
Which in turn was based on the story of Andrzej Kmicic form a three part polish historical fiction novel Potop (The Deluge) written by Henryk Sienkiewicz and is the second entry in a trilogy known as The Trilogy or Sienkiewicz's Trilogy. Actually a good read would recommend, I believe there is an english version somewhere on the internet. (then again it's well over 900 pages sooo...).
With that out of the way mabey I should talk about the fic heh?
Why do Liches always have to have tattered clothes? Did I just miss a memo and it's part of the dress code? If they want to take over the world can't they just loot a clothes shop?
Ok, yesterday I was too... emotionally charged to think about this but now... Let's say I have some questions about the ending.
I'm gonna do the same thing as Celestia did and assume she assumed that Twilight would be a good little unfeeling lich and would just go along with sacrificing, well anybody it wasn't necessarily supposed to be Rarity, she just happend to foolishly bring her of all people(?) over. Still tho that's some greek gods level arrogance not to have at least one level of redundancy. For a Lich(?) herself, she puts a lot of trust in her underlings. If she suspected that Twi might put her soul back in her body why even allow the risk of allowing her to form attachment? Why not just send some of the guard with her just to be sure. There is a level of arrogant confidence that I can respect but this borders on incompetence. And now she has to spend another two or so decades training a replacement. Point and laugh everybody.
I guess that she also would have to deal with Rarity and co. but she could propably just look at them angrily and they would kiel over and die.
You said that Twilight's soul is dead. But is it like gone, destroyed, dead, dead. Or just in the underworld dead? (like Luna's) (Honestly the wey souls work here is diffrent than in most interpretation and I think I'm lost). And if her soul was gone when she overcharged the why did it take so long for her body (and mind?) to die? (Well of course so that the last conversation could happen)
Speaking of souls of the dead. Would you look what day it is today, 31st of october,
Hallo...Forefathers' Eve. Am I really about to go on a tangent about an old, pagan, slavic holiday(?)? Of course I am! (stay with me this is a interesting one)So back in ye olden days, on the 31st of october as souls of the dead came to tread the earth people would light bonfires on graves to to keep souls warm, on the crossroads so that they won't get lost and in thier homes to keep uninvited guests from causing trubble [also all of the fire stuff applies to warding off deamons too (souls of people who died suddenly, drowned or killed themselves)]. And then bring out Bread, groats, honey, eggs and votka to party with ghosts of their ancestors, sometimes in their family homes, sometimes on the graves. All to provide the souls with all they could need in their unlife and in some cases help them to move on to the afterlife. Better yet part of the food would end up on the grave or the floor if they were doing it at home so the dead coyld eat too, sometimes they even prepared baths for them! Wandering beggars were highly respected as peolpe who wad the strongest connection with "the other world". Also some things like beeing too loud, standing up too fast, cleaning after the feast was over, burning in the furnace or sewing were prohibited as not to scare/disturb/disrespect/trap the souls.
What did it have to do with the fic? Don't know. Did I just knew about this cool dead tradition and wanted to share? Yes.
Come back for more random trivia... well whenever you write a new fic or I decide that I'm reading starved enough to read Heartstrings.
Anyway... Good fic had fun reading it. Will await future stuff from you.
Take care.
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thank u so much for reading! and yes, it’s the most unfair matchup possible, yet, even god has her limits it seems… especially around matters of the dead :P
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wowza, thank u for such a detailed comment, and for coming back! im glad the story could stick with you that long haha
in terms of your musings and the questions u have regarding souls, i hope to do a writeup at some point to clarify the world for anyone interested ^^ but, in a simple answer, twi died the same way as luna, so her soul went to the sea of souls in hell. i think i explained in another comment, but the idea was when the soul dies, you are no longer a lich, which is why you can feel emotions for that brief moment before your physical body dies too. again, i probably will expand in a blog post at some point, so please look forward to it ^^
and, thank u again for the extra info youve added to your comments, theyre fun reads!
Ugh I lost track of this story for a few days and then forgot to comment again when I finally did catch up but hot damn this story. So rich and layered with detail and such use of language... I feel like I could read it several times and still be discovering things in each instance. Excellent work!
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thank u so much for reading! im glad you enjoyed the story :D
I have no words other than: wow
Your writing always leaves me hanging at the end of each chapter and wanting for more. And the world building! Aaaaa The world building is always so expanded! that even if you're not able to show it all, it gives enough foundation for a strong narrative.
And the art! You're so good at both art and writing!!!
I love your works!
Keep up the good work!
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waah thank u so much for reading! im so glad you could enjoy the world of this story, even if i couldnt show every detail of it (and that u liked the art too!)
Great story! It was really interesting getting this slice of the world, and I could connect with Rarity's fascination and frustration with Twilight. Their time together was sweet, and part of the tragedy is that we don't get more of it. The brief looks we had with the other characters were neat too.
I did figure that Twilight had modified herself somehow, but I mentally connect zombies and liches, so her not being a zombie removed lich as a possibility for me. The idea of placing her soul still within her body is pretty neat; Twilight basically regrowing her emotions through interacting with Rarity and the others is some Kingdom Hearts shit (in a good way). Nice use of art to show her sacrificing herself.
The things with Celestia and the Elements and such were pretty intriguing. In a way, they're actually a bit too intriguing, because I felt like that distracted a bit from Rarity and Twilight's relationship that formed the core of the story, as shown by a lot of the comments for this last chapter focusing on them. But not a bad problem to have, I suppose.
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thanks for reading sigma! i have never played kingdom hearts but that concept sounds cool af lol, im glad you could like this twi and her unwavering dedication to do whatever it takes for the sake of her magic ^^
and yes, i definitely feel the “plot” or the “world” has more intruigue than the romance, but thats a pretty obvious thing for me lol <— person who has to fight tooth and nail against her brain to write romance (it doesnt come naturally help). so im glad that the worldbuilding ended up a draw in and of itself ^^
thanks again for reading, and for the comment!
Pretty good story.
I generally don't like endings that don't have a happy ever after all that much, but this one was still really good.
I greatly enjoyed reading this, so thank you for deciding to write it.
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thank you for reading! im glad you could enjoy it, even without a “happily ever after” ^^
Gods I love your writing but fucking hell you're an evil one aren't you? I prefer a happy ending ofc but that doesn't change the fact this story is great and I'm going to go binge the rest of your stuff now.
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haha yes, a happy ending is nice, but a painful one is more interesting to write, isn’t it?
thanks for reading this fic too! i hope you enjoy whatever else of mine you check out (though id perhaps stay away from anything earlier than 2022; quality is not guaranteed :P)
Loved the story. Great ending. Love the banter. Descriptions of events felt really impactful. I was a bit confused at the end of chapter 4 (eros). Had to reread it to gather what I missed. Would've liked more descriptions of what the characters looked like.(not a big deal since I can just picture humanized versions of the cast) Masterful use of dialogue. I could really hear their voices in my head from reading.
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thanks for reading! im glad you enjoyed the dialogue, i had a lot of fun writing it in this fic :D
your writing never ceases to enthrall me…think i’m going to be ill though this is so 😭😭