We reappear within a dark, enclosed space. There’s almost no light wherever we are, beyond the faint, flickering glow of a hooful of torch crystals that look as though they’ve neglected for a long time, or damaged somehow. But one benefit of my condition is that lack of light is little barrier to my vision, and I take a good look at our surroundings.

I realize almost immediately that Cadence and I are in a cavern of some kind. The cave has a high, rocky ceiling, and a wide expanse of open space between the walls – larger than most houses I’ve ever seen. But what really catches the eye is the scattering of debris throughout the place. I’ll be honest: it looks as though a hurricane has been through here, and recently too, judging by the lack of evident dust or decay. There are bits and pieces of furniture scattered hither and yon without apparent order or purpose. A table leg here, part of a bookshelf there, a liberal sprinkling of broken glass, odd-looking stains, crystal fragments, torn pieces of paper… this place is a wreck.

My wife has, by this point, released me from her grip, and is looking at me with an enormous grin of giddy anticipation. I do my best to ask the question without saying anything. Namely, “what the hell is this and why are we here?”

Cadence seems to read me well enough. “This place is a laboratory. My laboratory.”

I look around again. This ruin is where Cadence has been? “It looks…” How does one tell one’s mare that’s she looking crazier by the second?

“Oh, the mess,” she waves a hoof dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. I did that. Sorry that I didn’t clean up, but I was just so eager to get on with it.”

My sweet, gentle-hearted wife rampaged through this place like a force of nature? What got her so angry? Has her stress taken more of a toll than I thought? Does this place have anything to do with it?

“Get on with what?” I ask again, focusing my attentions back on the rosy alicorn princess behind me. “Cadence, will you please just tell me what is going on here?”

She smiles and giggles. “Like I said, why tell you when I can show you? Just follow me and get ready for a big surprise!” She walks past me, teasingly stroking my back with one of her grime-covered wings as she does. “This way!” she beckons cheerfully.

I admit I’m a little wary, but my spell confirmed that this is indeed Cady, and I trust my wife. Even if she has been acting a bit strangely. For her to be so pepped up, something good must have happened down here, and I’m guessing that it involves me somehow. Maybe she’s found a way to let me feel again…

No, bad Shining Armor! Quite reminiscing about things you won’t have again and setting yourself up for disappointment.

Cadence steps cheerfully through the debris, humming a little tune and seemingly not at all worried about getting hurt by the broken glass or the like. Now that I look, I observe that her shoes and most of her other regalia are missing. But, as I’ve learned to expect, ordinary sharp objects stand no more chance of piercing her alicorn hide than they do of cutting my crystalline hooves. She crushes debris under her hooves without comment or seeming care in world, leading towards the rear of the cavern. We pass by numerous wrecked pieces of furniture and what look to be alchemy equipment, though I note a curiously intact, but empty, glass display case.

At last, she points to a piece of furniture near the corner. A long table of what looks like redwood, it is one of the only things left reasonably intact in this place. Atop it is a long grey blanket, covering something lumpy… and irregular…

I feel as though I’ve seen similar things before, in the guard. Is that… please, gods, tell me that my wife hasn’t gone insane and killed somepony. Tell me that I’m not looking at a body. I don’t know what I would do, who I would side with, and that lack of knowledge scares me.

“Well, go on,” Cadence says, looking positively jittery on her hooves with barely-constrained excitement. “Take a look.”

Slowly, reluctantly, I inch towards the table. As I come closer, I notice not far to the side a cauldron of classical design, showing some signs of recent use, and covered in odd stains of many colors. When I’m a few feet from the long furniture, my eyes pick up the telltale rhythmic rise and fall of the blanket. My long training identifies it immediately, but my mind doesn’t want to believe it. But logic and experience tell me that no other source of motion would be that regular, that specific.

The conclusion is inevitable: somepony’s breathing under that cover.

I swallow a mouthful of air and lick my dry lips with my equally dry tongue. I don’t have a heart, but I could swear I can feel it beating faster anyway. Adrenaline also is but a memory, but the fire coursing through my limbs and chest begs to differ. Hell, I could even swear that I’m sweating.

Behind me, Cadence is looking on with a filly’s anticipation on Hearth’s Warming Eve. Her wings are twitching with agitation, and her legs are doing a little dance on the spot. I swallow again, and repress my fears. I trust my wife. If she thinks that this is a good thing, I’ll believe her, no matter what my instincts are telling me.

No point in putting it off any longer. I seize the blanket in magic, and with one sharp tug rip it off the table altogether, flinging it to the side and looking at what’s underneath.

My jaw drops. My ears fold back. My eyes become dinner plates.

Underneath that blanket is… me.

Or, I suppose I should say: me as I was as a unicorn in my prime, plus a few feet of height and appropriate adjustments to maintain my proportions. And on my side… wings. Long wings covered in pure white feathers to match the fur on my coat. I check my… I mean, the body’s head. A snow-colored horn, long and straight and sharp, protrudes from the forehead. This thing is me. As an alicorn.

“Surprise!” comes the sound of Cadence’s voice, and dirty, rosy forelegs wrap around my neck from behind. I stagger under the sudden addition of weight, but my instincts easily guide me compensate for it and right myself within seconds. She laughs and bends down to nuzzle my cheek and nibble my ear. I don’t feel it.

Well, even less than usual, I mean.

“So,” she whispers to me. “Do you like it?”

“Cadence,” I manage after a long interval. “Are you… are you…” I don’t think. I just say the first thing that comes to mind. “Are you replacing me?” My voice is hoarse with a choked-back sob.

Who am I kidding? Of course she’s replacing me. I don’t know how, but it looks like she’s finally found a worthier mate than a dead ruin of a guard captain, no matter how I… how I… feel about it. Oh gods, what is this feelin-

“WHAT?!” my wife’s terrified scream echoes throughout the cave around us, shaking loose a shower of dust from the ceiling, coating the three of us in it. Faster than blinking, Cadence is in front of my face. “Shining, look at me. Look at me!” Her hoof grasps my chin and forces it upwards, bringing my eyes up to meet her violet orbs. They’re filled with tears, flowing liberally down her cheeks. “Listen to me: no matter what happens, no matter what the future holds, come hell and high water alike, I will never replace you!” She hugs me close and rubs my back, while I hang limp, too confused and surprised to do much of anything.

After a very long time of tearful embrace, Cadence loosens her grip and looks me in the eye again. Her eyes are bloodshot and watery. “You have to believe me. Please say you believe.”

“I… believe you,” I manage, feeling rather pathetic. “But… what’s… what’s…” I flop a hoof limply towards the body on the table.

“That?” she sniffs, and smiles sadly. “Oh, Shiny… That’s not your replacement. That’s your gift! From me to you.”

“A gift?” I reply, unable to quite grasp the concept. Damn, I feel stupid.

“A new body,” she whispers, nuzzling me again. “A living, breathing body, crafted in your image, which will never expire, never sicken, never grow weak with age.” She strokes my chest with a hoof. “You’ll be able to breathe and eat and feel and… live again!” The excitement in her voice is building once more. “Think of it: we can be together again! Like it used to be! No, better! Because you won’t age, you won’t tire, and you’ll never have to endure another day of…” she grins flirtatiously. “Deprivation.”

“Cadence…” I trail off, still unsure of exactly what to say. “You made this thing?”

She nods and turns her gaze to it. “I did. For you. It was a lot of work… and it cost a lot… but…” she looks back to me. “It was worth every bit. Because now I can give it to you.”

The acquired cynicism of centuries is a powerful force, and it rears its ugly head again. What if this is a dream? What if I’ve just fallen asleep at my desk? Or what if this is some kind of cruel illusion? How could this truly be possible? It couldn’t…

Could it?

I swallow. “How could you possibly have made-”

Cadence puts a gentle hoof over my mouth. “Shhh… it’s not important right now. What’s important at this moment is that I can make you live again, Shining, if you'll let me. Don’t you want that? Don’t you want us to be like we were, all those years ago?”

“I… more than anything…”

She smiles sweetly. “Then take my gift. Take this body, my prince, and be whole again.”

I lick my lips yet again. None of this seems real to me. It all seems… too good to be true. My military instincts are telling that it must be; that there must be some kind of angle to this whole affair. There has to be a trick... or a trap... Things like this don’t just happen out of nowhere. The solution to your life’s biggest problem doesn’t suddenly fall from the sky in the hooves of a caring angel.

But this is my wife… and this doesn’t feel like a dream…

The voice speaks into my head once again. For once, it’s something more than simple discouragement.

You could be alive again.

Life. Air in my lungs. A heart in my chest. Food in my stomach. The wind on my face. My wife’s soft body beside me at night.

You could be respected.

Not looked at as a freak by ordinary ponies. Not pitied by my sister or coddled like a foal by my wife. Seen as a noble prince rather than necromantic abomination by others.

You could equal your sister.

I could finally be what Twily is. Royalty in every sense of the word. Accomplished, powerful, and respected. I could be her big brother again, rather than the hollow shell of a stallion that I’ve become.

You could be what she deserves.

I look at Cadence. She’s looking at me with pleading eyes, hoping and praying I take her offer. I imagine myself as an alicorn prince… I could finally be her equal. I could finally do my duty as a protector. I wouldn’t have to rely on her to save me. And I could finally show her as much love as she’s earned.

Now that I think about it, there really is only one answer I can give.

“I’ll do it.”

“Now, sit back and relax,” says Cadence, as I lie on the table beside the alicorn form, our heads and horns locked together with runic chains. “This should only take a few seconds of real time. But in the other plane, time is… flexible.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know how long it will seem to you.”

“Probably not long,” I say with a slight smirk. “I have a good reason to hurry back.”

My wife giggles and brushes her tail over me. I can just imagine the wonderful, silky-smooth sensation from back before it was so ethereal. What must it feel like now? I want to know. And soon, with any luck, I will.

Her face becomes serious. “Now, I’ll do all the work of providing the path, but you have to follow it. Shining,” she looks me dead in the eye. “When you’re severed from this body, you’ll feel a very strong upwards pull. You must not follow that, whatever you do. That’s your soul being called to the hereafter, and if you wander off I don’t think you’ll ever find your way back.”

I swallow nervously and nod. “Can’t you just-”

“Do what I did before?” she shakes her head. “The mechanics of soul transfer are a bit… complicated, but suffice to say that binding a soul to golem and fitting it into a living body are very different from a magical perspective. I’m not so much tying it down as gently guiding it home. Just follow the path I make for you, and you’ll be alright. Ok?”

“Ok,” I answer. Cadence shudders, and I put a hoof on her shoulder. “I’ll be fine, understand?”

She nods and wipes away a tear. “I k-know… it’s just that… the risks… even a tiny risk I’ll lose you is too much… I don’t know if I should…”

“Cadence,” I say, cupping her chin under my hoof. “You’re the bravest, most talented mare I know. I trust you completely. You do your part, and I’ll do mine.”

Cadence sniffs, and, after a pause of some length, nods. “Alright.”

I smile, close my eyes, and lay back as my wife begins her incantation.

The realm of souls… words to describe it properly do not exist in our language. I can see everything, and yet nothing. Colors foreign to the material realm dance in front of my eyes, and I know that they are flavors of magic. Then I forget it. Then learn it again. Then forget. Then learn. And so on it goes, for how long I’m not sure.

I’m floating, in a dreamlike state. Then I’m surrounded by black fog. Cadence promised me a path, but I don’t see anything. I feel a tug, where my heart used to be. It bids me to rise, to ascend beyond our insignificant planet orbiting a tiny star in an ordinary galaxy, and behold all the secrets of the universe. I look upwards, and feel myself start to drift. Up. Up. Up, I go. Stars and planets and galaxies and darkness and light and…

NO!

I grab my mind and wrench it back. I need to focus. Need to follow the path. Buck the afterlife with a fifteen foot pole.

I’m Shining Armor, and I will not abandon my princess.

I’m back in the darkness. Black fog surrounds me, drifting this way and that. I look, but there’s no road I can see. Nothing but blackness in every direction, watching… waiting…

Then the darkness coalesces. There’s a road now, green and grey and black and colors we don’t have words for. I follow it, hearing the slightest sounds of my wife’s voice resound. It gets stronger as I gallop down the trail, which twists and turns and forms itself into a maze. For what feels like centuries, I gallop this way and that, praying that I’m not lost. Then, suddenly, the maze is gone. There’s a bright green light in front of me. On instinct, I leap in.

And the realm of souls is gone. Now there is only darkness.

I gasp, panting for breath by the instincts buried deep within all living things. Air rushes in, warm and dusty and smelling quite funny and…

Wait.

Air rushes in. I just breathed in.

I have lungs.

I have a body.

I let the breath out quickly, just to make sure. Just to be sure I’m not imagining this. I feel my chest deflate, feel the air rush up my trachea, feel it exit my mouth. My mouth, which is warm and wet and full of nerves.

I can’t explain how this good the simple act of breathing in and out feels after such a long time. I might compare it to a fresh spring of water after days in the Saddle Arabian desert, but such falls woefully short of the sheer excitement I’m feeling right now. My heartbeat – I have a heart, huzzah – picks up as adrenaline floods my body in response to the emotions overwhelming me right now.

“Shining?” a soft, sweet voice whispers, almost hesitantly.

The voice in my head is gone, but this… this is hearing.

“Are you there?” it asks me, and something soft rubs itself along my neck. It’s been far too long since I’ve felt it, but I’d recognize the feel of Cadence’s muzzle anywhere.

I’ve put this off too long already. Slowly, as if arising from a deep slumber, I force my body’s eyelids open. The scene before me is not much brighter than the interior of my eyelids, but these eyes adjust more quickly than my originals ever did. One eye sees nothing but the redwood below and the end of my muzzle. But the other… I see my wife, covered in dirt and grime and stains, but beautiful nonetheless.

This is seeing.

Cadence looks directly into my eye as it opens, twin expressions of hope and fear plain to behold on her face. “Shiny?” she asks again. “Is that you? Are you in there?”

I take another breath of air. Stale and full of dust and funny smells as it is, the sensation is marvelous. From long memory and instinct, I force this body’s voice box into action. “You’d better…” I wheeze slightly, not yet used to breathing again. “Believe it,” I finish, and curl the lips back into what I hope looks like a smile.

“Oooooh,” tears roll down her rosy cheeks while her mouth forms that gorgeous smile. “Come here, you!” Cadence wastes no time in pulling me into a kiss.

If breathing again was a joy, this is… heavenly. There’s no other word sufficient to describe the feeling of my wife soft lips, even stained with dirt and something blue, on my own again. So soft. So smooth. So perfect. I kiss her back with everything I have, which I’ll admit isn’t much, but she seems to enjoy it all the same. Her flowing mane wraps itself around my face and neck once again and… gods, it feels smoother and softer than any silk I can ever recall touching when I was last alive.

It’s during this moment that another thing I’ve been missing out on for four hundred years or so comes back to me in a rush: hormones. This body has all the primal instincts of a stallion, combined with centuries of repressed longings. I’m not going to lie: the mare in front of me is gorgeous, and I want her. I want her so badly right now.

As an aside: I’d always wondered if the straightening of wings on pegasi and alicorns during moments of intense emotional activity was voluntary or an inbuilt reflex. I can now confirm from personal experience that it is the latter.

Cadence at last breaks our kiss, violet eyes still shedding tears freely. “It is you,” she says in a tone that suggests that she can’t quite believe it either. Then she notices my… ahem, expanded wings. I can feel my cheeks warming as extra blood rushes to them. Cadence chuckles with embarrassment, like the blushing bride she was during our first time. Her own rosy cheeks become even rosier, and her wings very quickly snap to attention.

Cadence takes a few steps back from the table as I roll this body off of it. I stagger a bit, not quite used to how the different build needed for flight affects my center of gravity. Blue magic catches me before I fall, and I manage to get myself onto all four hooves, though not without a little bit of stumbling. My wife chuckles, and I blush some more, but truthfully her melodious voice only makes me want her all the more.

I glance upwards by chance during my first, hesitant steps in these new hooves. There’s something near the cavern’s roof. I can’t quite make it out. Is it… grey smoke? Is something on fire? I blink, and it’s gone. Huh. It must have been my imagination, or maybe just a product of my new eyeballs. Seeing through wet, soft orbs instead of crystalline lenses is another skill I’ll have to relearn, it seems.

Then my gorgeous princess nuzzles me on the neck again, and all thoughts of anything else are washed away in a tide of hormonal desire. Cadence smiles and her wings are stretched about as far as it is physically possible for them to go. I return the smile.

I can tell that this night is going to be the best I’ve had in a long, long time.