Machina Cor Armageddon
Chapter 11: The Shooting Star She Saw
Previous Chapter Next Chapter
“What’s her condition?” Doctor Sparkle asked, her voice muffled by the surgical mask.
“Her heart rhythm is irregular, and we’re detecting spikes in her thaumatic field,” Sunburst said.
“Hm.” Sparkle touched Lightning Dust’s chest with her hoof. The pegasus was covered in burns. Parts of her armor were still attached, the sensors integrated into it plugged into the crystal displays around the operating theatre. A shield spell cut them off from outside interference, and the air was heavy with ozone - a side-effect of the decontamination spells.
“That scar never quite went away,” Sunburst noted. “It’s where the Linnorm that invaded the lab stabbed her.”
“She didn’t have the Engine Heart in her body yet,” Sparkle noted. “She was just running the armor with external magical tanks. Merely a mortal, and the wound was nearly mortal as well.”
“Do you think it’s related?”
“The Linnorm damaged her heart. Not enough to kill her outright, at least right away, but…” Doctor Sparkle sighed. “You have a degree in thaumobiology. I don’t need to explain it to you. With the higher intrinsic magical field from the Engine Heart, her body was simply ignoring her biology. It’s the same reason alicorns are immortal.”
“It makes sense. The thaumatic field spikes and heart rhythm are definitely linked,” Sunburst said. “Look.” He pointed to a shimmering display. “Every time her magic field drops, her heart spasms.”
“We’ll need to open her up and repair whatever damage was done,” Sparkle said. “I can’t afford to lose her. I think we can make some improvements to the prototype while we have her open. We might as well use the opportunity.” The Doctor reached for a scalpel with her hoof.
“Hold on,” Sunburst said, watching the crystal display. “Something’s-- she’s flatlining!”
Alarms sounded as Lightning Dust’s vitals started to drop, damaged parts of the armor sparking, magical energy starting to surge.
“It’s a flare,” Sparkle said, She swore under her breath. “Hit her with a stun bolt!”
“But if we actively cast spells in here--”
“If she dies on the table it won’t matter if we maintained a cleanroom environment or not! We need to shock her heart into beating! Do it!”
Lightning Dust groaned, her head pounding. The wind rushed around her, a trace of wispy cloud buffeting her to the side, like falling through a sheet of gauze.
Falling?
Her eyes snapped open, wings flaring on instinct, the ground a blur from speed and shock, approaching quickly - too quickly. Mud and water rushed up towards her, even as she fought to slow herself. It wasn’t enough, and she hit the ground, tumbling head over hooves and smashing into and through a wall before she came to a splashing halt.
“What in Tartarus happened?” Dust groaned, getting up and shaking herself off.
A familiar weight was settled around her body, and she looked at her hooves. She was still wearing her armor, and it seemed intact, if filthy.
“Last thing I remember, I was scouting out some monster. Then…” She hesitated, looking around. “Well, I sure wasn’t here.”
Something was familiar, but it wasn’t until she stepped into the street, muddy, lukewarm river water splashing around her hooves, that she realized why it was tickling her memories.
“This is the Prench Quarter!” Dust looked up and down the streets. “How the feathering buck did I get to Neigh Orleans?”
The ground rumbled under her. Dust could feel it, faintly, the water and mud making it difficult for her rudimentary earth pony senses to focus on the cause, like trying to peer through smoke and heat haze to see something on the other side of a bonfire. But she had something bigger to worry about.
“And everypony’s gone,” she muttered. She stopped and tapped the radio in her helmet. “Can anypony hear me?” She asked. The line was silent, aside from a faint static, getting worse when she tried to transmit.
Dust growled, turning it off.
“Figures. Nothing ever works when you really need it. Doc Sparkle might be smart but some things never change.”
The street ahead was blocked by a fallen building, the bricks crumbling in the damp heat. Dust could feel the magic here, so thick it was like walking at the bottom of a lake. She’d felt it before, but not as extreme. It happened when the weather was overworked, saturated with pegasus magic until it was completely untameable.
“There’s no way it could get this bad. I was here just a couple weeks ago and it was fine.” She paused. “Okay, it was half-flooded, but that's not really that weird when you build a city below sea level. It definitely didn't look this bad.”
Dust turned around, looking through the streets. It wasn’t quiet - the whole city rumbled like it was on the edge of a thunderstorm. Thick layers of clouds obscured the sky, and an odd half-light filtered through.
She spread her wings, then stopped, hesitating. Something bad had happened here. Maybe being in the sky and visible wasn’t a great plan for right now. Dust turned and started walking, ducking into a back alley. She couldn’t help but feel like she was being watched.
“Not everypony would leave the city,” she mumbled to herself. “Even when the rainy season hit and whole blocks went underwater, some ponies just started making trips to the marketplace in boats and putting an extra floor on their houses like a discount Veneighs.”
The alleyway led her towards higher ground, the ankle-deep river water turning to puddles and finally actually dry land.
“That’s a little better,” she mumbled.
Something crunched under her hooves. Lightning Dust looked down and immediately took a step back. It was a bone, long and dry and filthy, and what worried her the most was the rotting hoof lying next to it. In the protected alleyway she could just make out a faded blotch where, once, there had been a dark stain splashed across the wall and cobblestones.
“And that’s somepony’s leg,” she said. “Okay.” Something fluttering caught her eye, and Lightning Dust stepped over the bones to pick up the faded, dirty newspaper, most of it rotten from exposure to weather.
She wasn’t usually one for reading, but the headline caught her attention.
'Manehattan Lost'
Under it was a picture of… it took her a few moments to really figure it out. Between the condition of the paper and the subject matter, it didn’t click until she spotted the familiar shape of the Brookside Bridge.
The bridge ended abruptly, one side shorn off and hanging over the water. It was too small to tell for sure but the metal looked like it was sagging and distorted by some great heat. Where the island of Manehattan had been was just open water.
“What in Tartarus…” Dust whispered. “What the buck did I miss?”
And then she saw the date. October 23rd, 1017. Over a decade since the last thing she remembered and the paper was likely far older than that. It must have sat out for years or decades to get as brittle and faded from the sun as it was.
She was so distracted by the implications that she completely missed the surge of movement from above her until it was too late.
Something hit her with the force of a catapult. If Lightning Dust had been a normal pegasus, she’d have been killed instantly on impact. If she’d just been a tough military mare, she’d have bled out from internal injuries after being flung through the brick wall next to her and into the room beyond. Even if she’d been a particularly tough earth pony with a decent suit of combat armor, the roof collapsing on top of her would have crushed and suffocated her.
Before the dust even settled, she smashed upwards through the rubble like she was just breaking through a light cloud cover, angry and looking for something to take it out on.
“I told you it would take more than one shot,” said a voice with as much inflection as a brick, the speaker obscured by the dust rising from the rapidly crumbling building.
“Yeah, yeah,” muttered a second, raspy voice. “I didn’t think that old gear would hold up. You can have dibs on her wings.”
“Get out here so I can kick your ass!” Dust yelled, hovering and trying to pinpoint her attackers. Something about the voices seemed familiar.
“No way,” the raspy voice said. The wind spiraled out in a short-lived windstorm from the center of the dust cloud, the edges sparking with green embers. Dust shielded her eyes and felt her stomach twist as she saw the two ponies that were revealed.
“I’m also surprised,” Maud noted. At least Dust assumed it was Maud. The gray pony had changed. She was wrapped in bulky armor, layered in red and yellow plates that were tarnished and chipped, looking half-finished. Wires and bolts were left exposed along it, a flickering glow coming faintly from within. A withered wing twitched on one side of her body, too small for her frame, like a foal’s.
“How’d you survive the Eclipse, Dust? I heard from a pretty reliable source you were gone for good,” Rainbow Dash said. The pegasus looked unhinged, wearing purple and black armor with yellow lightning bolts crudely painted on like the old Wonderbolts uniforms they’d worn before the war. A spike of metal erupted from her forehead like a horrific shrapnel wound, too far off to one side to look like a unicorn’s horn, though a green aura of magic surrounded it, pulsing like the beating of a heart.
“I’m pretty sure at this point that the universe just hates me,” Lightning Dust muttered.
“She’s probably one of the fakes,” Maud said. “You know they like to impersonate ponies.”
Dash snorted, flapping her wings. The metal one was… different than Dust remembered. It looked like the prosthetic had grown, as impossible as that should have been, like the steel had warped and twisted along with the pony wearing it.
“They eat love, Maud,” Dash said. “The only thing I love about finding her is that I finally get to settle an old score.”
“I guess you’re right,” Maud agreed. “I still want her wings though.” She looked at the small one at her side. “These didn’t work out.”
Dust almost dropped out of the sky when Maud grabbed the tiny, malformed limb in her teeth and tore it free, tossing it aside.
“What the buck?!” Dust gasped. It was the only reason Dash got a drop on her. The rainbow-maned mare had always been just a little slower, a little more careful. But with Dust distracted, that edge disintegrated. Dash slammed into her, wrapping her hooves around Dust and grinning as she pulled her out of the air, flying her down into the street to slam her into the pavement hard enough to break bone.
Dash’s metal wing twisted, the feathers wrapping around each other, forming into a thin, deadly spike. It came down like a scorpion tail, Dust kicking and twisting, throwing her aim off enough that it went into the ground instead of her head.
“Hold still and I’ll kill you quickly,” Dash said, trying to pin her down. Her horn flared with light, and Dust felt something clamp down around her neck like a firey claw. “I’m getting pretty good with this magic stuff.”
“You know, we’ve done this dance before,” Dust said, spitting her words out as she struggled against the crude spell. “I remember that the last time we ran into each other in this town I kicked both of your flanks.”
“Shut up,” Dash said, her eyes narrowing. Dust glared into them. There was something wrong with her eyes. The pupils. They were slit like a cat’s.
“And in the end, you didn’t just lose,” Dust continued. “You were crying.”
“Shut up!” Dash yelled, the spell fading as she lost concentration.
“Like a mule!” Dust screamed. Dash roared and drove her wing-spike down. Dust was faster. She grabbed Dash’s right forehoof and twisted, something under the skin snapping like piano wire. The pegasus howled and tried to flap her wings instinctively, but with one wing twisted into a weapon, she ended up flinging herself to the side from the unbalanced thrust.
“Hah!” Dust said, hopping to her feet. “You never could take critic--”
Dust was cut off as a torrent of gravel and wind slammed into her, paint peeling from her armor as she was buffeted.
“Guess I have to take care of things like always,” Maud said. She reared up and her forehooves shot out, armor stretching at the joints into steel tentacles.
“The feathering--” Dust gasped as she was wrapped up in an embrace like twin pythons, her ribs creaking. “Your legs--”
“I had them replaced,” Maud said. “If you want to go to that place, you need to be strong.” She squeezed harder, and Dust screamed, half in pain and half in frustration. “You need the best parts, and more magic. Always more and more.”
With a twist, Maud sent Dust flying, her extended arms snapping back into place. The pegasus hit a flagpole, the tatters of the Equestrian flag still flying at half-mast, and fell to the ground stunned, the metal pole having nearly shattered her spine.
“I’ll make it quick,” Maud said. “If you don’t struggle I’ll make sure you can walk away.”
“Thanks for the offer,” Dust groaned, rolling onto her hooves and standing. “But I’ve got a better deal for you.”
“What’s that?” Maud asked, hesitating.
Dust shot across the space between them faster than the eye could follow, her earth pony strength launching her into the air and pegasus magic accelerating her further, like a two-stage rocket. Flying into Maud was like running into a mountain.
Maud’s hooves peeled from the street reluctantly, and Dust could feel it - she was channeling pegasus magic in reverse, trying to anchor herself instead of taking to the air.
With no wings, the second she was airborne Maud started to panic, the airflow around her turning into confused turbulence.
“Let her go!” Dash yelled, closing from behind. Dust smirked and looked back at her, then up to the clouds.
“Sure! You take her!” She spun and flung Maud down, kicking off her to get to the stormy layer of gray. When she hit it, she could feel the potential, the tingle around her as she passed through the vapor.
And then she turned and reached for the sound barrier. It used to be hard. It had once been impossible. But with the magic flowing through her, it was foal’s play. She flashed past the tumbling Maud and Rainbow Dash, her wake buffeting them, a trail of vapor and sparks behind her.
“Try this one on for size, Dash!” Dust yelled, not that the rainbow-maned pegasus could hear her over the sonic boom.
Lightning Dust reached her magic back along the trail she’d blazed down from the clouds, and the storm answered. A bolt slammed down along the ionized path she’d created, hitting Dash and Maud on its way to the ground.
Dust watched them fall in a smoking heap, smirking.
“Still got it,” she said, posing. Not that anypony was there to see her. She hoped nopony was there to see her if they were all going to be as friendly as Dash and Maud. Dust looked up at the sky, a patch of clouds slowly clearing where she’d slammed through the cloud cover at supersonic speeds.
Her eyes went wide.
The sun and moon were both in the sky. Or at least most of them. They were broken, shattered and cracked and hanging in the sky like corpses.
“This might be above my paygrade,” Dust whispered.
“Wake up,” Dust growled, kicking Dash under the chin to wake her up. She realized a moment later that inflicting head trauma was possibly counterproductive to getting coherent answers, but luckily the cyan pegasus stirred, slowly coming around.
“Guess it wasn’t a nightmare after all,” Dash muttered. “I really did lose again.”
“Yeah, that’s the sad face of reality,” Dust snorted. “Now tell me what the buck happened! Why is the feathering sun broken? Why the buck are you two…” she huffed. “Enhanced. Whatever it is that Doctor Sparkle calls it.”
“What? Are you just playing stupid?” Dash asked, weakly, surprised. "Because I already thought you were stupid, so it's working really well."
“Did Sombra do all this?” Dust asked. “Did we lose the war?”
“Sombra?” Dash started laughing. “You really-- you don’t know?”
“I want answers,” Dust said, kicking her again. Dash quieted, but couldn’t stop giggling, even after taking a blow hard enough to make her spit out a broken tooth.
“If you really want answers, go to Canterlot,” Dash said. “You’re probably strong enough to get there.” Dash looked around and spotted Maud, either unconscious or dead, not far from her. “Hey, before you go, could you just push her a little closer?”
“Huh?” Dust glanced over at the earth pony.
“I think my back legs are broken, and if I can get hers before she wakes up--” Dash started. Dust kicked her again, hard enough to knock her out.
Dust took to the air, flying just below the layer of clouds. It would have been safer to stay above it, but she couldn’t bear to look at that broken sky. It shouldn’t have been possible.
“Did something happen to Celestia?” Dust wondered. It was the only explanation. It was hard to imagine anything could actually kill the immortal princess, but it was hard to imagine anything that could turn the entire world into a nightmare, either.
The buildings ahead of her were wrong, in a way Dust couldn’t figure out for a moment, the wood and brick abruptly turning gray in a wide area like some huge can of paint had been spilled from above, enough to coat entire city blocks in a layer of flat color.
It wasn’t until she spotted the ponies in the street, the same color as everything else, that Dust understood. It was all stone. An entire neighborhood, ponies and pets and plants and even the road and buildings, all of it had been turned into smooth marble.
“A cockatrice couldn’t do that,” Dust whispered. She couldn’t imagine anything that could. All the ponies, frozen like (very much like) statues, were staring in one direction. What had they seen, just before the end? What doom had caught them, too quickly for them to panic, but not so slow that they didn’t see it coming?
Dust flew on faster, towards a distant glow. There had to be something. Living ponies. Sane ones. Neigh Orleans might have been a disaster zone, but no matter how bad the war had gotten, something would have survived.
The sky cleared above her as she neared the glow, revealing a twisted night sky, swirls of black and misshapen stars. There were too many stars, too bright and too close, some shining enough to show as disks instead of points of light.
She passed over a lake, and the source of the glow. A huge chunk of stone, a mountain torn free and glimmering with silvery light, the edge slightly curved like a fraction of a broken sphere.
It was part of the moon.
“This is the end of the world, isn’t it?” Dust whispered.
Canterlot wasn’t any better. Half of the city wasn’t even there anymore, the foundations torn away from the mountain, the Canterhorn surrounded by a wide field of rubble. A few streets and neighborhoods stubbornly clung on, all centered around a single, huge building.
The Castle. Despite the destruction all around it, it still stood. The white walls looked untouched. Dust had half-expected the castle to be a ruin, but when she landed in the courtyard it was pristine. There wasn’t even dirt, like everything had been cleaned only moments ago by unseen maids. Maybe it meant somepony was expecting her.
Sets of armor were lying in front of the doors, polished and glittering in the half-light. Spears lay next to them. Dust walked past them, expecting to find bones among the metal plates, but they were empty. She pushed open the front doors.
A shirt and jacket were crumpled up on the floor like somepony had gotten undressed right there. Dust glanced down at it, then carefully around the hall. More empty suits of armor. A dress lying on a chair.
It was like all the ponies had vanished where they stood. Somehow it was worse than the entire neighborhood of petrified ponies she’d found.
She gingerly stepped over the clothing, careful not to disturb it. It was too much like somepony’s corpse. Dust wasn’t sure she wanted to know what had happened here.
Something drifted across her vision, a mote of green light, falling like snow. Dust looked up at the sky, where black clouds were starting to swirl in a slow, threatening pattern, less like a tornado and more like a hurricane, a calm center around almost impossible power. Lightning crackled between the clouds, the bolts hanging just a little too long, shattering into those motes instead of vanishing.
“What happened?” Dust demanded, of the empty palace. “I’m here! They told me I’d find answers here!”
She only half expected an answer and was almost caught off-guard when the ground shook slightly, like the castle was about to succumb to whatever plunged the rest of the city down the mountain. Instead, the heavy front doors opened, sparks flying as broken hinges were forced into motion.
“You’ve come such a long, long way,” said a voice from within, echoing too much in the huge empty halls for Dust to place the speaker. “Longer than you know.”
“Are you going to explain things or just say cryptic bull and waste my time?” Dust demanded, stomping towards the doors, ready to take to the air if it was a trap.
“I’ve been accused of being quite indirect. Come to the throne room and we’ll talk. I don’t intend to attack you. You no longer have anything I want.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dust asked, but the voice was silent on the matter. Thankfully, the pegasus did know the way to the throne room. After all, she’d faced a court-martial there.
Dust could still remember it. Being half-dragged along these halls in chains. The way the Royal Guards had glared at her. It had all seemed like a giant nightmare. She remembered the step up before the doors, this time. When she’d been going to her trial, she’d been so disoriented by the iron chains and the wing bindings they’d slapped on her that she hadn’t seen it before going face-first into the white marble floor.
She hesitated with one hoof on the innermost doors. Last time these had been opened for her, and Celestia had glared down at her. It had been a short trial. There were no arguments, no appeals. The Princess had just dispensed justice, too busy with winning a war to care about the truth.
Dust wondered if she could face that again.
Something in her chest flared with warmth, filling her with confidence and waking her out of her daydream. She touched the scar on her sternum, or at least her armored chest over it.
“Never again,” Dust muttered, like a distant voice was telling her what to say. “I have the power to make her listen this time. I’m not just one of her little ponies.”
She punched the door, slamming it open.
“Right!” Dust yelled. “I want some answers, Princess Celes…” Her anger drained as she saw the mare on the throne.
“Not quite,” said the purple mare. She was easily as tall as Celestia, but the similarities ended there. Her mane flowed around her in the same colors as the broken sky above, trailing motes of green magic as it moved. Instead of simple regalia, she wore dark armor, not so different from Dust’s, but even sleeker, pulsing veins of light covering it, conveying waves of magic from somewhere within. Her wings flared out as she stood, looming over Lightning Dust with an aura of power that nearly had the pegasus kneel on the spot.
“Doctor Sparkle?” Dust whispered.
“Twilight is fine,” Sparkle said. Dust couldn’t help but glance at her cutie mark, half-expecting it to be a broken sun and moon. Instead, it was a six-pointed star. "We're friends, after all."
“How-- what--?!” Dust swallowed, trying to figure out where to even start.
“Three questions,” Twilight said, raising a hoof. “But I’ll give you that first one for free.”
“Only three questions? I mean-- buck!”
Twilight laughed. “That always happens. I won’t count that either.”
“Fine,” Dust took a deep breath, thinking. She could just beat more answers out of the mare later. Probably.
“I wouldn’t advise it,” Sparkle said, casually reading her mind.
Dust swallowed. “What happened to Equestria?”
“That question is a little too broad. In a general sense, though, it’s gone.”
“Did we lose the war?”
Sparkle’s gaze became calculating. “Oh no. We won. And it was glorious. A little close at the end, but I knew everything would work out.”
“Then… Darnit, I wish Sunset was here. The mule is annoying but she’d know the right questions to ask.” Dust took a deep breath. “Who caused all this? Who destroyed the world? Was it you?”
Twilight smiled.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” Dust asked, her coat bristling.
“You already know it wasn’t. You can feel it, can’t you?” Sparkle looked up towards the gathering storm. “It’s all so beautiful.”
The windows, still unbroken, glared with white light as lightning crashed down around the palace. Dust could feel her feathers tingle. The metal heart in her chest vibrated, like a tuning fork. Resonating.
“Harmony,” Twilight said. “Three hearts beating as one.”
“I--I don’t--” Dust gasped, clutching her chest as the feeling redoubled.
“It’s time for you to go back,” Twilight said, stepping down towards Dust. The pegasus cringed as she realized just how much bigger the alicorn was. “You don’t belong here.”
Twilight’s horn flared with pink light.
Dust gasped, her chest feeling like it was on fire. Something was beeping. She started to struggle, her wings and legs feeling like the strength had drained out of them. A bright light was in her face, blinding her.
“She’s awake.”
“At least the sedatives kept her out until we were done,” a grumpy voice mumbled. The light was eclipsed by a head. Doctor Sparkle, wearing glasses and scrubs and looking annoyed. She pulled the mask down with her hoof.
“Where…” Dust started, her mouth dry.
“Your heart stopped,” Sparkle said. “You’re fine now. You can thank me later.”
“My heart?” Dust mumbled. “Then I wasn’t in Canterlot?”
Sparkle snorted. “The only place you’ve been is my operating theatre. Rest. That’s an order.”
Dust nodded and closed her eyes, drifting back into a drug-induced sleep.
“A hallucination?” Dust asked, a few hours later. Most ponies would need longer to recover after open-heart surgery but she was stubborn enough that Sparkle was trying to accommodate her and have a chat now in the hopes that it’d keep the pegasus from doing anything stupid and hurt herself without adult supervision.
“A lot of ponies have near-death experiences,” Sparkle shrugged. “You certainly weren’t in some dark future. You flatlined for almost a full minute on the table. It probably happened then. The sensation of falling, dreaming of familiar places, the dream-logic of a broken world. I'm glad to know you look up to me enough to imagine I could take over for Celestia, though. Very flattering.”
“And I still came back?”
“You’re halfway immortal,” Sparkle scoffed. “If you couldn’t come back from a little thing like cardiac arrest it would be embarrassing.”
“The things I saw, though--”
“It was all in your head,” Sparkle repeated. “At least in your fantasies I get to be a princess. Complete with cutie mark.” She looked at her own blank flank. “Hmph.”
“It was just so real…”
“It would never happen,” Sparkle reassured her. “I promise.” She paused, then held out a hoof. “Do you know what the original purpose of this project was?”
Dust shook her head.
“Originally, we were developing technology to help disabled ponies. Pegasi with missing wings like your friend Rainbow Dash, unicorns with broken horns. That’s what this is all about. Helping ponies. And if we can help them regain what they’ve lost, we can make them better than before. Look at how strong you are! Sunset can fly! Marble can cast spells! The world is on the cusp of changing. You know it, deep down. You’re worried about what it’s going to look like. Ponies are afraid of change. I don’t blame you. But it won’t be Armageddon. It’s going to be... beautiful.”
Dust was silent for a few moments. “You rehearsed that,” she said, with a wry grin.
Sparkle returned it. “I’ve had a lot of grant meetings over the years.”
“She’s calmed down,” Doctor Sparkle said, as she walked alongside Moondancer, her assistant helpfully carrying several folders and a cup of tea, pressing it to Sparkle’s lips for her with her magical aura so they could drink and walk. Sparkle motioned with her hoof to take it away after a few sips.
“Is it possible there’s any merit to what she said?” Moondancer flipped open one of the folders. “There were some very unusual field spikes.”
“Normally I’d dismiss it out of hand,” Sparkle said. “But there was one thing she mentioned… you have the classified report from Cloudsdale that I pulled, yes?”
“Yes, but it’s two decades old,” Moondancer said, shuffling manilla folders around to find the lightly-yellowed dossier. “She said she went to the future.”
“Mm. Time is a funny thing.” Sparkle nodded to it, and Moondancer opened it. “This report was almost impossible to get. Even the Court had trouble getting it out of the archives undetected. Take a look at Photograph H.”
Moondancer found the labeled picture. “It’s a blurry photo of…” She hesitated. “It’s hard to make out, but--”
“An alicorn,” Sparkle said. “In Cloudsdale, twenty years ago. One nopony had ever seen before or since. Unfortunately, none of the photos are terribly clear - most are incidental. But in that one, you can clearly see the mare’s cutie mark.”
“A six-pointed star,” Moondancer said, quietly.
“Just like what Lightning Dust described,” Sparkle smiled. She looked over at the folder. The picture had been taken from a distance, the photographer’s hooves had been shaky. But even so, the alicorn in the photo looked like nothing quite so much as Twilight Sparkle.