Shining Armor awoke screaming. Immediately, he tried to gasp for air- -only to find that he could not breathe. He had no lungs. Desperately, he reached for his phylactery, tearing at it, trying to rip it out of his chest, to go back to the void where there was no pain, no realization of what he had done.

“Stop,” said Blackest Night, calmly taking hold of his hoof. In the dark room, her eyes seemed almost luminescent, and she was stronger than Shining Armor would have expected. Slowly, he nodded, and stopped trying to resist her. He sat up slowly and put his hooves on his face. He now understood what Satin Veil had meant. She had known, just as Thebe had. Now Shining Armor understood, and knew what had become of his soul.

“I saw…oh Celestia. Cadence…”

“You do not need to explain it,” said Blackest Night, “I was there, with you, the whole time.”

“It hurts,” said Shining Amor. He wanted to cry, but his undead body had no tears to shed. “It hurts so much. I…I don’t want to take it. It hurts, Blackest. Please. Make it stop.”

“Calm down,” she said, putting one of her front legs around Shining Armor. “Slow down. Stay with me. I know you can withstand this.”

“Blackest…”

“Answer me one question, Shining, and answer truthfully. What are you really feeling right now?”

“I’m feeling- -” Shining Armor’s jaw dropped. He could not finish the sentence, because he realized the singular, horrible truth: he felt absolutely nothing. The pain itself was nothing more than an illusion, something he felt he was supposed to believe but now could not remember how. Within him, there was no true desperation, and no love. Even when he replayed that moment over and over again in his mind- -the flash of violet crystal, the sound of his beloved wife’s head landing on the tiled floor- -he could only distantly remember what he was supposed to feel. Otherwise, there was nothing.

“What…what have you done to me?” he asked, turning toward Blackest Night, almost pleading. “I…I can’t feel anything.”

Blackest Night smiled. “I have done nothing.”

“But I can’t…I can’t feel anything.”

Blackest Night shook her head. “Of course not.”

“But why? I…I can’t remember love! I can’t remember it!”

“This is the nature of a lich. Our emotions, as we know them, they are simply artifacts of brains and our bodies. We have neither. Though we can sometimes believe we retain them, in truth, we do not feel as the living do.”

“But…but my wife, my son, my kingdom…” He looked up at Blackest Night. “You mean to tell me…you don’t feel anything? Anything at all?”

Once again, Blackest Night smiled, but this time far more softly. “Not at all, Shining Armor. I love each and every pony I inhabit. They are my daughters, every one of them, and my mothers. They are all dear to me. I did not say that we do not feel, only that our emotions are different. They are more somber, and more subtle, exquisitely wrought and gossamer. You will learn in time.”

“I…I did love her,” he said, leaning forward. “I know I did. But what I did to her…Blackest, how could I have done that?”

“That is not my question to answer.”

“I…I’m a monster. I killed her. My wife, my Cadence. It was me. It was me who betrayed the Crystal Empire. It was all me.”

“In all honesty,” said Blackest Night, leaning back against the couch beside Shining Armor. “Though violent, I believe your treatment of Cadence was correct.”

“Correct. Correct?!” spat Shining Armor. “She was a kind, loving, innocent, and I murdered her. How could you possibly believe that doing that was righteous?!”

“Because her alternative fate was far worse.”

“What could be worse than that?”

Blackest Night turned her gaze toward him, and looked directly into his mechanical eyes. “For five thousand years I was Luna. I watched what immortality can do to a pony. To watch everything that one loves grow, age, die, and rot. If it had not been for me, it would have destroyed Luna- -and it nearly did.

“But Cadence…she was the Princess of Love. How long do you think White Knight would have lasted? Forty, fifty, perhaps sixty more years? He would age and die before her, and she would weep over his grave…and do so again and again, for all eternity.” She took Shining Armor’s hoof in her own. “Our emotions, the way they are, they protect us. We can live forever. They cannot. They were not meant to.”
“You mean by killing her…I saved her all that pain?”
“Yes.”

“That still doesn’t make it right,” said Shining Armor. He wanted to push her away just for suggesting it did, but found that he could not release her. The idea of being alone frightened him, and if anything, he wanted to hold her closer. “For all the pain she might have had, there would have been joy. I took that from her. And I will have to live with that.”

“So you accept that burden?”

“I do. Because I must.”

Blackest Night smiled. “You continue to amaze me, Shining Armor. Just when I believe you have reached your limit, you continue on. It took me centuries to come to grips with what I had become. You truly are a prodigy.”

She leaned against Shining Armor. Her body- -Five’s body- -was smaller than his, but he allowed her to push him over until she was lying on top of him. “I admire you greatly, Shining Armor. I know that right now, even if you have accepted your fate, and even if your emotions are those of the dead, that you are still in pain. And there is something I would like to give you.”

Blackest Night drew her hoof across Shining Armor’s metal body, and finally laid it to rest on his phylactery. He looked up at her as he felt her soul penetrate his, and once again he felt himself falling.

He awoke lying on his back, staring up at a pale yellow sky. This memory felt different from the last ones, and as Shining Armor watched the clouds high above him drifting through the sunless and moonless but still well-lit sky, he realized that it was because this was not a memory at all. He was still conscious of his actions and able to make choices. It was as though he had been transported to some strange, distant location.

As he sat up slowly, he realized that he was not lying as grass as he had initially suspected. Rather, it was a variety of tall, soft moss that he did not recognize. He ran his hoof through the soft bristles, and suddenly realized that his hoof was not metal at all.

In shock, Shining Armor looked down at his body. He was no longer made of metal, and there was no crystal glowing in his chest. His body was instead made of soft flesh and covered in pure white hair, just as it had been so many years ago.

“I’m…I’m alive,” he said, prodding at his body. It felt exactly as he had remembered it, and he forgot how sensitive it was and how strange it felt.

He looked out at his surroundings. All around him was a vast plain, filled with the tall moss that grew beneath the yellow sky, waving in the light breeze, its surface only interrupted by occasional boulders. In the distance, he saw tall mountains and the silhouette of a strange, unfamiliar city.

Nearest to him, there was a partial structure, a kind of decorative palisade of tall light-brown columns. They were square, and inscribed with bizarre linear designs that made them look simultaneously ancient and futuristic.

Beneath them, ten feet away from where Shining Armor had awoken, stood a pony. Her form was equally as strange as the yellow sky, the columns, and the landscape. Although her basic shape was that of a pony, she was substantially larger. Her rear half was covered in a black fur, as a pony’s would be, but her front limbs and torso were covered in reptilian scales. They too were black, but seemed to shimmer like silver in the shifting light.

As she approached Shining Armor, he saw that she had a mane, but not one of hair. Instead, she possessed midnight feathers that led up her long neck. Her face was distinctly reptilian and crowned with three long horns, but the instant Shining Armor saw her eyes, he knew who she was.

“Blackest Night?” he said in awe as he looked up at her.

“Yes,” she said. Her voice was neither that of Five nor of Luna; for the First time, Shining Armor believed that he was hearing her true voice. It was deep and melodious, appropriate for a reptile- -but somehow still so beautiful. “This is how I appeared in life, what I used to be.”

“You…you are beautiful.”

Blackest Night looked out at the land surrounding her wistfully. “I was the last queen of the Trihorn Empire. They are all gone now. I am the last. This is my memory of that time, so long ago.” She took a deep breath, and her feathers were ruffled in the light but warm wind. She looked down at Shining Armor. “I can never love you, Shining Armor. I am not capable. But I admire you. What you are, what you have accomplished, and what you have done. I would like you to become my student.”

“Is that why you brought me here?”

Blackest Night smiled. “No. I would like to share my body with you. And, if you are willing, for you to share yours with me.”

She knelt reached down, and Shining Armor felt her hoof brush his skin, her scales rubbing against his coat so lightly, rising up his neck and into his hair. Even though he knew he was in a memory, a projection of some kind, she felt real.

“In life, we are both incomplete,” she said. “But in here, we are inside our minds. We can do anything…”

“You can be anything?”

Blackest Night smiled. “You are wondering if I could become Cadence.”

“No, I wasn’t. It’s just that- -”

“I could. Easily. But I shall not.”

“Why?”

“Because I am not her. It would be unfair to you, and to me, and to her memory. I am Blackest Night. Nothing more, and nothing less.”

She leaned in closer.

“Blackest, I can’t,” said Shining Armor. “I don’t love you.”

She pressed her frontmost horn against his, and Shining Armor felt paroxysms of tingling pleasure move through his body as she rubbed her horn slowly against his.

“You don’t have to,” she said, and Shining Armor allowed himself to be pushed onto his back. He felt the moss around him, and the weight and warmth of her body pressing against him. He felt the tears flowing from his eyes as he remembered his wife, and realized how much he missed her.

Then he reached up and wrapped his forelegs around Blackest Night’s neck, and with tears still running down his face, pressed his lips against hers. He put his tongue into her mouth, and felt hers enter his. It was forked, but she tasted so sweet. He knew that she would not hurt him, and allowed her to lower her hips around his.