The room was completely dark. It had been completely insulated from any source of light, and the blackness was absolute. That was until a small flicker of blue light ignited in the center. In the darkness, Fleur raised her horn. The blue light only illuminated her, and a small circle around her. The rest remained dark- -save for the pair of reflective yellow eyes that stared back at her from the void. The eyes of the White Queen.

“Fleur De’Lis,” said the White Queen, her tone oddly neutral despite the strange strength of her voice. “Daughter of Couleur De’Lis, who was herself daughter of Aleur De’Lis, whose bloodline began with Joan De’Lis in ancient times.”

“My Queen,” said Fleur, wincing as she felt her voice waver. She bowed, causing the shadows of her light to change. The eyes remained illuminated and unblinking, though, as they watched her.

“Did you think I would not find out?”

“My Queen?”

“Am I a fool, Fleur of House De’Lis? Or do you think I have become unobservant? That I have grown…old?”

Fleur’s eyes widened, and her breath accelerated. She tried to maintain her composure. The White Queen’s voice was perfectly measured, and that was the most frightening part of all. Fleur had no idea what she was feeling, or what she would do.

“I’m sure you understand the gravity of what you have done,” continued the Queen. “You attacked an Element of Harmony, as well as her sister, a student of Princess Twilight Sparkle.”

“I had no intention of harming Rarity!”

The White Queen’s pupils narrowed, and Fleur squeaked. “Please- -please forgive my tone!” stuttered Fleur. “I only speak so vehemently because I care so deeply for her, as a dear friend.”

“And yet, given the chance, you would have blatantly murdered her.”

“I have slain many,” said Fleur.

“But not like those two. The friends of the Immortal of House Twilight are protected.” She paused, and Fleur thought she heard a rattling sigh. “And had they been any other race of ponies…”

Fleur’s eyes widened. The White Queen really did know. “My Queen, your majesty!” she protested. “Please! I can explain!”

“Silence,” said the Queen, calmly, her eyes flickering. Fleur immediately choked from fear alone, but still bowed as a gesture of apology. “Thank you. I know what you were trying to do. You were attempting to break the Order’s most sacred rule.”

“Please, My Queen, please…”

“You have no idea what you nearly accomplished. You are just a child, how could you know? But the rule exists for a REASON. You could not even imagine the cost of that blood. The pure blood of the purest race of ponies is not meant to be consumed by any living mortal being. Do you understand this?”

“My Queen!” Fleur cried and dropped to her knees. She had now completely lost her composure and was openly weeping. “I’m sorry! I’M SORRY! I was just- -I fell to temptation! My vanity, I could not control myself! The thought what that blood could bring me, it- -it was too much! I’m sorry! My Queen, please! Please forgive me, if you can!”

The White Queen stared through the dark for a long while, and Fleur began to sob quietly. Then, as Fleur watched, she saw the reflection of teeth as the White Queen smiled.

“Fleur,” she said in a voice that was almost motherly, stepping forward toward Fleur’s magical light. “I understand. I understand more than any pony can, perhaps. By our standards, you still are very young, and you made a mistake.”

“But my castle, my land, my birthright…it was all destroyed. I have nothing.”

“You have us. You have ME. And most importantly, you did not succeed. Rarity and Sweetie Belle of Ponyville remain unharmed.”

The White Queen was now partially visible. Her white coat seemed to glow blue in Fleur’s light, and she stretched out two long legs. Fleur looked up into her eyes, astounded that she could be offered forgiveness after having committed such a sin.

“Oh, My Queen!” she wept, falling into her master’s arms. She continued to sob on the Queen’s shoulder, now with joy and relief. She felt the Queen’s strong legs close around her in a firm hug that made her feel for just a moment as though she were in the arms of Couleur De’Lis once more.

Then the White Queen’s mouth snapped open, and her jaw clamped closed over Fleur’s neck. There was a loud snap as Fleur’s spine snapped from the force. She opened her mouth wide, trying to scream, but she could not. The nerves to her diaphragm had been severed. All that came out was a low wheeze.

The loss of sensation had been instantaneous as Fleur’s neck had snapped, but she still felt her blood pouring out of her where the White Queen’s many sharp teeth had cut into her skin. It had a sickening sound as it rushed out of her carotid artery. Much of it spilled onto the floor, spraying out form her neck, but a great deal of it rushed into the White Queen’s throat. Fleur could hear her slurping madly as she swallowed mouthful after mouthful of the precious silver fluid.

Fleur’s mind faded before her heart stopped. She felt no pain, but only fear as the light from her horn faded and she was left in darkness that was somehow even deeper and blacker than what she thought had been the blackest possible.

When her heart finally slowed, her blood continued to flow for a few moments. Her hemophilia prevented it from clotting, allowing the White Queen a few more long moments to feed. When the last of her vital blood had left her, though, the rest became useless, and the White Queen discarded her, allowing Fleur’s corpse to fall to the floor. Blood still sept out of the wound in her broken neck, forming a pool of beautiful silver below her perfect unicorn body.

The White Queen paused for a long moment, savoring her meal, and then stood, allowing Fleur’s blood to drip down her chin. She then slowly walked across the floor to where a heavy curtain sealed the light out of a large window. The White Queen’s horn ignited with golden light flecked with silver, and the curtain parted. Bright sunlight poured through onto her tall body, her long white wings, and her prismatic mane and tail.

As Celestia admired her sun, she could hear the sound of the other ponies in the room retreating from her divine light. Her and Fleur had not been alone. Behind her, in the now partially lit darkness, were the remnants of the noble houses that had long ago ruled Equestria. The occuppations of the current heirs and descendants were varied now, though: there was the young scion of House Sabethes, now a DJ in Ponyville, who stood beside a Canterlot dandy and self-styled ‘prince’ who was fanning himself rapidly and looked as though he was about to faint at the sight of Fleur’s crumpled corpse. Not far from them stood a pink-maned student who leaned close to the male member of a pair of twins. The twins were generals in the Royal Guard, and belonged to the only house that both remained prolific in the production of children and lacked the hemophilia trait that the Celestia had been so careful to breed into the nobility. It was the cousins to those two elites who populated most of the Royal Guard.

There were others as well, and almost all of them looked distraught at the sight of one of their sisters. The only one that did not was the oldest among them, a unicorn mare whose coat had been rendered gray by age and outbreeding. She was in attendance with her son, the Prince-King of the Crystal Empire, who looked on at the familiar scene before him with the same knowing pain that he had the first time he had witnessed a feeding.

One of the ponies stepped forward. He paused for a moment, adjusting his glasses. Celestia saw the look of disbelief on his face as he rushed to Fleur’s side.

“Fleur,” said Fancy Pants, cradling Fleur’s head in his lap. Fleur’s broken neck tilted at an unnatural angle, and she did not respond to her fiancé’s touch. She was quite limp, and her dead eyes stared blankly without seeing him.

Fancy pants immediately bent over her body to hide his face and began to weep quietly, with all the elegance that was expected of him and all the sincerity of one who had just lost his true love.

“You…you killed her,” he said. It was not an accusation, just a declarative fact spoken with such weight that it nearly sent several of the other unicorns into tears as well.

“No,” replied Celestia, smiling. “Her beauty and youth live on in me. She left her form so that I may live on. This was always to be her fate.” She looked out at the others. “As it is all of your fates. It was I who gave you the gift of eternal youth, wasn’t it? And allowed you to take my lesser subjects to sustain yourselves…and every one of you who stands here now used what I taught you to prologue your own lives and your own beauty. All of you understood what that meant when you began.”

“But we were going to be married…”

Celestia sighed, and put her hoof on Fancy Pants’s shoulder. “She challenged me directly, Fancy. I had no choice. She was already the last of her line. Take Twinkleshine instead. Produce many foals for the Order, and continue your lines.”

“So that you can feed on them,” he said, darkly, staring at his fiancé’s corpse. “So that you can live forever.”

“Yes,” said Celestia smiling. “You harvest white ponies to extend your lives. Then I harvest you. That is your only purpose as nobility, isn’t it? To keep your god forever young? Because your love for me is undying and pure?”

Fancy Pants looked up at her, his eyes red and his face saturated in tears. Then he smiled through the pain. “Yes, My Queen,” he said, softly. “Yes…it is...”

Things were not the same. Things never could be the same. This was the conclusion Rarity reached, and the one she meditated on as she sat mostly submerged in a warm bath on the upper floor of Carousel Boutique. It was her home, and her store, the center of her life. It was where she felt the calmest, and where she had come to think.

Rarity reclined in the tub, letting the warmth and moisture creep up to her neck. She closed her eyes in the steamy bathroom and tried to think. She had survived- -yet, somehow, the version of herself that came back from that castle was different. That had been over a week ago, and she had hoped that returning home would at least start her back on the path of becoming her former self. It had not.

She had witnessed ponies die. Not only that, but they had been murdered by her close friend. No matter how hard she tried, Rarity could not get the image of the two bodies of ponies she had known and spoken to hanging there, lifeless, as Fleur smiled beneith. That image was forever burned into her mind.

That was not something ponies were meant to see. Their lives were supposed to be peaceful and simple, with the hardest things they had to deal with an occasional monster attack as they navigated friendship problems and community challenges by working together and having compassion for one another. That version of the world, though, had been shattered. There had been no compassion in that castle, only madness, pain, and death.

Yes, she had survived. Where the others had fallen- -Silver, Muguet, Feathery Snipper, even Fleur- -Rarity had survived. Unfortunately, though, she had suddenly found herself profoundly alone. There was no pony who could understand what she had seen, or what it meant. She could not talk to anyone, or find anyone who would understand. In the past week after returning from Prance, she had withdrawn from her beloved friends. She knew that they were becoming concerned, but there was nothing else to do. Their lives were still peaceful and happy. There was no way Rarity could ruin that joy for them, even if she had to bear the pain of what she had seen all alone.

This left her with an unpleasant paradox. She was so happy to be alive- -so relieved, so exhilarated- -and felt like she could view the entire world in a new light, to appreciate what it contained. At the same time, though, a different part of her wished she should have died there. The guilt was overwhelming, that she had made it out while they had not, and that she had not done more to try to save them. It was the antitheses of generosity, and it felt horrible.

This was what she thought about for what may well have been hours as she sat in the bath, letting the warmth calm her pained joints. Outside, Celestia’s sun set, and night fell. The room was left with nothing more than the light of the candles that Rarity had set in advance, knowing that she was in need of a long soak.

Then, finally, she thought she had come to a conclusion. She ducked her head beneith the surface of her bath, holding her breath for just a moment, and then she stood, allowing the red fluid to flow down off her body. She stood for a moment, activating a spell that cleaned the deep stains out of her perfect white coat. Then she left the bath, being careful to avoid stepping on the pair of corpses that sat at its base: Blossomforth, a Pegasus, and Nurse Redheart, an earth-pony. Both of their throats had been slit, and Blossomforth was staring upward with a curious blank expression that still held the confusion of her last moments.

Rarity ignored them, letting them lie where she had left them. She would deal with them later. Instead, she crossed the room to an area where a large ornate mirror stood against the wall. Rarity paused in front of it, and smiled, but only for a moment.

Fleur, Rarity had determined, had not been insane. She had been a visionary of sorts. Her procedure had worked. Rarity looked young again. The wrinkles from the corners of her eyes were gone, and regardless of how much she looked for them, she could not find a single gray hair in her silky, perfect mane. In fact, she had not even realized how old she had gotten. The mare that stared back at her from the mirror was in her prime, barely past fillyhood, a perfect shining example of what a unicorn should be.

Except that Fleur had also been correct about the internal consequences of the treatment. Rarity’s mind felt alert and agile, as it had when she had been young, but all the old pains of her body remained. Her spine burned, and the arthritis of her knees was still as intense as ever. In fact, every internal pain seemed to be greatly amplified. Just existing was only barely tolerable, and Rarity wondered how Fleur had been able to withstand it for so long with such grace and poise. That pain led Rarity only to admire Fleur more intensely.

“But it’s only temporary,” she said to her reflection, staring into her own yellow eyes. “How long will it last? One Pegasus, one earth-pony. Years? Months? Weeks?”

She did not even need to ask the question. She had already come to her decision. Her only regret was not making it sooner. She could have stayed with Fleur- -but of course, she did not really want to. She could not imagine spending so much time with a pony who was capable of murder like that.

Rarity sighed, and then walked to the far side of her expansive upper floor. She moved slowly, surprised at how silent her motions had become. The confidence that came with her augmented beauty was intoxicating beyond what any pony wine could achieve. She was young again, and she knew how to turn back the clock, to keep that part of herself for as long as she wanted.

On the far side of the room, a rope had been strung around one of the main roof joists. It had been tied tightly, and the far end had been tied even more tightly around Sweetie Belle’s legs, holding her suspended and inverted over the center of the room. She had been bound and gagged, and her horn had been negated by a small enchanted device, but she was still alert. Her eyes followed Rarity, and it was clear that she was terrified.

“Shhh, shhh,” said Rarity, trying to calm her sister as Sweetie Belle began to struggle. As she did, she levitated a beautifully painted enamel bucket- -only the best would do for her dear sister, of course- -and placed it below Sweetie Belle’s head. As she did, she brushed her hoof over Sweetie Belle’s cheek. Sweetie Belle recoiled, causing Rarity great offense, but she supposed she could forgive her in this case.

“It’s okay, Sweetie, it’s okay,” said Rarity, smiling. She produced a straight razor from a small stand nearby. Sweetie Belle clearly saw it as Rarity flicked it open with her magic, and she began to struggle against her bindings and to scream into the gag that prevented anything more than a whimper from escaping her. “You’re going to make me beautiful,” said Rarity, “forever. Sweetie Belle, this is the greatest gift you can ever give me. You want to help your sister, don’t you? It’s the generous thing to do, after all.”

Sweetie Belle looked up at Rarity, her eyes quivering. She was crying, and Rarity had to look away.

“You’re helping me,” she repeated. “You are going to help me stay young forever, Sweetie Belle. Thank you. Thank you so much. I love you more than anything in this world. You have no idea what this means to me.”

She then pressed the razor against Sweetie Belle’s neck, and started cutting.