Shining Armor collected some snow from the cave floor and pressed it against his throbbing nose. The snow gradually changed from white to red, and he assumed that his fur was doing something similar.

“That [i]hurt[/i]!” he scolded the darkness. But there was no reply.

Suddenly, the sound of hooves tapping against rock reached his ears. He jumped upright, reigniting his light spell and spinning around to locate the sound. It filtered in from around a rocky corner.

“Mr. Armor?” came a voice over the hooves. It was bright, young, and feminine. “Have you found him yet?”

“No, Nurse Crystalline,” Shining Armor sighed, relaxing. “He found me, though.”

Crystalline rounded the bend, her body glinting like a prism in Shining’s spell. “Goodness me!” she blurted.

“I’ll be fi—”

But the nurse ran past him, to a recently disturbed snowbank nearby. She picked up a tangled structure of skinny metal tubes—shaped in a tapered rectangular frame. A quartet of tennis balls were impaled on each of its legs.

“This is his walker!” the nurse fretted. “He can’t get anywhere without it!”

“Yeah?” Shining Armor tilted his head back, squinting. “Well, he throws it pretty hard.”

Crystalline placed her hooves on her temples. “I’m so sorry for all the trouble,” she said. “The reenactment was my idea…”

“Uh-huh,” Shining intoned entirely through his mouth. “Try bingo next time. It’s less emotional.”

“You’ve never seen him play bingo…”

From the darkness came the sound of pebbles falling down a rocky wall. “You ready to surrender yet?!” a gravelly voice boomed. “Or would ya like another [i]walloping[/i]!?”

Shining's head dropped forward, lower than his shoulders. One at a time, he snorted dried blood out of each of his nostrils. “Alright, that’s enough of this… Onyx!” he boomed right back. “Come out here, [i]now[/i]! The war is over! You—I mean, [i]we[/i] won!”

Nurse Crystalline whispered, “He prefers Second Lieutenant O’Nova.”

Shining hissed, “We need him to [i]stop[/i] preferring that.”

Onyx shouted again, his voice echoing so fiercely it sounded like he was everywhere. “Hah! You Sombra scum and your tricks! You won’t fool me!”

“Your family misses you!” Shining called. But then, that was only a guess. He’d never met the stallion’s family. And in the next moment, Onyx shrieked out the reason for this.

“Sombra [i]killed[/i] my family!”

His voice reverberated all around like a lion's roar. Shining and Crystalline's light spells grew fainter. 

Crystalline swallowed. “Onyx… come out, please. You’re just confused.”

“Sombra killed EVERYONE!”

When Onyx’s voice ceased echoing, silence enveloped the ghost from the past, as well his two worried pursuers. Shining half expected to hear sobbing coming from the old stallion’s location. 

But instead there came more shouting: “I’ll fight ‘til my last [i]breath[/i]! For the Empire! For Equestria! For the Princesses!”

Shining Armor frowned. Spinning on his hooves, he began retracing his steps back out of the cave.

“Where are you going?” Crystalline murmured. “We can’t just leave him here…”

Shining stopped momentarily. He closed his eyes and exhaled. “You stay and make sure he doesn’t go anywhere. I’m… going to see a friend of a friend of mine.”

[hr]

Sombra's soldiers had been quiet for hours now. [i]Too quiet[/i]. Second Lieutenant Onyx O'Nova thought he’d heard one of them leave, but Sombra’s soldiers were [i]all[/i] tricks.

Onyx pressed himself against the cave wall, ignoring his shortening breath and his aching knees, hocks, and fetlocks. He tapped his hindlegs a couple times and found they were going numb. Hiding wasn’t going to work anymore. He didn’t have a weapon, and his magic wasn’t what it used to be, but he still had his dentures.

Shakily, he rose to his hooves. He groaned. [i]Loud[/i]. Holding his breath, he froze in place.

It was too late. The light came closer. But more than that, it grew brighter. Larger. [i]Hotter[/i]. The feeling returned to his body, and his heart quickened. From around the corner came three smiling ponies. A mare he recognized, a stallion he didn’t, and a princess he’d only seen in pictures.

“Second Lieutenant O’Nova,” Princess Celestia greeted, brightening the cave without a spell. “I understand you’ve been fighting bravely.”

“P—…Princess!” Onyx elated. He saluted as best he could, even if his unsteady hoof didn’t get quite as high anymore.

Celestia smiled. “Thanks to your efforts, the war is over. The Empire is safe. As is Equestria. As am I.” 

She bent down and pulled the old stallion into the warmest embrace he’d ever felt. His eyes shimmered like lakes.