I remember ice.

Ice all around, clinging like static to my skin. I remember feeling my blood burn away, the ice in her eyes shining through all of the darkness, and then I remember feeling nothing.

I couldn’t see her, the Mare of Darkest Night. I could see myself, though. Two of me.

One was standing with me, and was me. It was wavering and faded, like an old photograph left to sit in a puddle. I tried to lift my hoof, and this one’s hoof moved. Me.

The other was crumpled on the ground, mane strewn and nodded, body speckled with frost and dirt. This one did not respond to me. The Nightmare stepped past me – through me! – and knelt beside my crumpled body.

With a fascinated horror I watched as her icy blue magic, woven through with streaks of deepest night, slipped into the not-me’s nose and ears and throat, hissing like fire possessed. When the Nightmare stepped back, one wingtip flicking through my right hoof, the not-me rose.

It’s eyes were not mine, though they tried to recreate it. I imagined my first eyes had been withered away to nothing from the chill of death itself, but the not-me’s irises were a deep magenta where mine had been a pale purple.

“You are Twilight.” The Nightmare purred, her mane billowing wildly.

“I am Twilight.” It repeated, in the voice that was so much mine.

“Your friends are coming, and you will defeat me.”

“M...my friends are coming, and I will defeat you!” The not-me had gained confidence from her, I could tell. Already the Nightmare was looking a little less dark, a little less big.

“You know now that the Elements of Harmony are in your friends. You knew because you heard them coming and felt the spark.”

The not-me blinked, balked, stumbled forwards. A small scratch dripped white ichor down its face where I must have fallen on something. “I know now that the Elements of Harmony are in my friends.”

The five ponies I had met earlier charged into the room, seething with indignant fury at the demon before them. I ran towards them, seeing Rainbow Dash looking towards me.

I phased through her with a paralyzing chill, my essence billowing out around her in some phantasmal version of a crash. I could see what she was looking at now; the smug grin of the moon demon.

“I know because I heard them coming and felt the spark!” The not-me shouted, horn sparking wildly with magic it didn’t know how to control.

“Rainbow Dash was loyal to us when she could have lived her dream! Rarity soothed a raging serpent with her generosity!”

“Can you hear me?” I shouted, feeling the Elements of Harmony vibrate through the arcane waves. “Please, somebody!”

“Pinkie Pie chased away the ghosts with her laughter! Applejack was honest when I was scared!”

The Nightmare’s eyes locked on me, and she smiled; a white band of a devil’s scar.

“Fluttershy overcame her fear to show kindness to an injured beast! With all of us together, the Element of Magic can come through!”

The Elements broke into their forms, as I had read they would. The Nightmare’s smile grew, and her gaze never moved from me. The not-me erupted with magical power, levitating into the air, and still she watched me. The magical aura of the Elements, sacred in its’ purity and tainted with death, wrapped around her, and still all I heard was the Nightmare’s last, faint cry to her minion’s ears and mine.

Goodnight.

My name is Twilight Sparkle.

I am dead.

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