A familiar pain shot up Shining Armor’s side. He winced, clutching at his bed sheets and rattling the I.V. machine feeding into his arm. It was the only brief reprieve he could muster, the only thing he could do to fight back in this losing battle. The hospital room, usually an immaculately bright alabaster grew murky and gray as dark splotches obscured his vision. The sounds of the heartbeat monitor, the frenzied doctors shuffling, and his own ragged gasps for breath became muted. Shining was a soldier by trade, but the searing pain that boiled his insides was a far greater opponent than he had ever encountered, on the battlefield or otherwise.

Not here, not now, he thought. Twilight had to be only a few minutes away. He snapped back with a soldier’s precision, the clouds tainting his mind clearing. For a moment, the room brightened, the crisp colors and sounds of reality returning to him. The doctors working on him phased back into vision for a brief second before being lost in the sea of disorientation.

He fixed his gaze on the wall. The darkness would consume him at a moment’s lapse of concentration—he couldn’t afford to let his mind wander away from him. Not now, when Twilight was so close. There was a poster on the wall he couldn’t read, but he knew what it said. He had seen it when his mind was still lucid, his body still healthy, and his heart still strong. It read, “Only the best for our patients at Canterlot Hospital!” Had Shining still possessed the energy, he would have given a soft, knowing chuckle.

“He’ll receive the best treatment that Canterlot can give, ma’am!” the doctor had said with pride and confidence to Shining’s mother.

“We’re doing the best we can,” he later said to Cadance, his voice wavering ever-so-slightly.

“We’ve tried our best.” These were the words he ended the day with, whispered with soft resignation to his fellow doctors.

Shining strained himself just to keep focus, the world around him quickly growing blacker and blacker. The weight of his eyelids became unbearable. He fought to keep them open, but his eyelids slowly sagged until the world became pitch black.

“Shining!” a muffled voice called out, so distant that it was barely audible. It seemed so familiar, but Shining couldn’t quite place it.

I’m sorry, Twily, he thought, as his mind drifted away on a dream cloud into darkness.