Sombra:
The searing freeze of Everything is almost welcoming to be as the arcane whirl of multi-hued fire that moves Twinkleflanks and I into my world with a deafening rip dies down, fading to sparks that capture only faint outlines of my cloaked form. When their light finally dies, I would blend into the shadows - but I was not here alone. To bring Noctus here, I had to shroud him in my own magic. It was the perfect explanation to why he was currently on fire in a black void and not suffering any of the consequences that would be expected.
I stared at him critically. "Do you have a good reason to why you aren't burning up and screaming? After all, you're only on fire."
Looking down at me and peering at me through the veil of flame, Twinkleflanks takes a deep breath, marveling at my magic.
"Really, there should be more charred flesh. I know that Alicorns aren't usually flame resistant, but this is still slightly weird for me, considering that I have set ponies on fire before."
"You have, Worldbreaker...?" he murmurs absently.
"Don't ask. It was a long time ago, when I was much younger and it wasn't always my choice to... Never mind. It's nothing you need to do. Just explain why you aren't... well..." I wave one armored forehoof in his direction and let my magic glow fiercer.
Bright crimson clouded my vision for a moment and runes poured across my eyes in rows; I focused on them as best I could before they disappeared. My world was stable and concealed; I wouldn't dare let Everything's other side be shown to somepony like Twinkleflanks. The particular subdivision of Niflhel that he had been trapped in and I sunk into was being rapidly consumed by fire - I felt that much through the resources that Everything had. If I wasn't able to extend my senses beyond this place, we'd have no idea what was outside when I decided to root this place elsewhere.
None of this had been easy. I hadn't done magic that actually drained me since the complexity of the Replicating Spell's casting, which had left me in a state of constant vertigo for a week. I'd barely been able to control my magic for a while after, only mustering sparks and having to make do with sloppy explosions as the result of most attempts toward proper spells. Onyx only seemed to mind that whenever he couldn't be as precise with torturing ponies and turned to tormenting me instead.
The Replicating Spell and other major defenses, including the network that made the Empire vanish that had me in worse condition for far longer, were known to him. My intelligence was something to exploit, even if he denied it. He used it in ways that he could while I threw myself deeper into research.
Here, my intelligence was something for Twinkleflanks to stare at, peering into the void, legs shaking slightly - he had traded one for another. It's more than a light show to him or some unknown to fear like it would be for a pony. They'd want to exploit every bit of knowledge I'd have. I wouldn't be a weapon then, but I'd be an object all over again - and just like an object, they'd attempt to get rid of me or control me once I've been used up in minds that are only fair on the surface level. Fair is foul, more often than not.
Far away, I sense Niflhel's subdivision tear itself apart as it is fully immersed in rage-stoked flames used so expertly by yours truly before sinking away... and then nothing. Static precedes it, but the oblivion that follows is inevitable. As the distant sensation dies away, I, Sombra the newly dubbed 'Worldbreaker' feel my usual scowl take shape and my exterior grow colder in demeanor than Everything's icy tears.
Worldbreaker. It has an Old World flair to it, and one that I haven't seen uttered by any modern culture except the unchanging buffalo. During my time in the desert, they dubbed be 'Ruinwalker', since my name was a true curse to them and they had to call me something. I may hate nicknames, but that was one I could begrudgingly tolerate. Buffalo are one of the few creatures to have anything like respect for me. It was distant and quiet affair, that respect. I killed the bandits that troubled them, they told me secrets and kept my presence a secret. They offered me a name and something worth more than money: treasure, or more accurately, keys, in the form of legends.
"You still haven't told me how you're not burning up." Curtness and apathy make up the majority of my tone, but there's dryness waiting for bait, anything that can be spun into wit. My breath is currently spun to soft vapor because of the cold. It dissipates faster than the frosty exhales I would make on Midgard.
"I would not be much of a god if I knew of no tricks, now would I?"
The only reply I gave him was a small noise of affirmation in the back of my throat. I couldn't feel any magic being cast and anything latent - an old enchantment that had survived, but just barely, the prison I had broken - and that was only because of the intensity of my protective veil of fire, keeping him from the rest of my world. Maybe all Alicorns are flame retardant, and maybe they aren't. I don't intend to find out.
Twinkle and I look away from one another. He makes it quite clear that my company is awkward to him. I don't give any sign that I've picked up on this and just stubbornly scowl into the distance, judging the abyss.
Through the sensory matrices woven about in places unseen, I was able to feel the destruction of one of the many prisons that Umber had made. It wouldn't be long before I had to manage the next part of the plan. Unlike Twinkle, I wouldn't be needing any kind of aura about me. Since I wasn't using dark magic either, my mane kept its usual appearance free of alterations as a side effect from any magical discharge. I was glad that I couldn't mix that particular one with the scarlet shroud, filled with the same shifting script that now flashed between blinks Umber witnessed in our first fight.
As soon as I was certain that it had fallen, I let my horn grow brighter. Deep crimson washes over the two of us and I watch as my vision darkens to the same hue, only visible to anypony else with the glow of my irises. I caught my reflection in the dense, glittering glow of the aura and the glint of script in each iris can be glimpsed. I have to focus carefully to see past the haze of red, but it's there. In fact, I can even see the faint impression of the glyphs staining my cloak. Each one looks like it is just a dark patch of fabric, moving with every curve and swish along the various hems and folds in their subtle, shadowy patterns that could pass as mere tricks of light if nopony looked at them carefully.
Keeping Everything intact and Twinkle and I bathed in the shadows of the abyss, I continue to pull and work my magic, switching and rearranging pre-existing parts of this place, like solving a puzzle. Sure, it may only be seconds that I'm at work but these shifts feel like they're taking longer to me - and they would if anypony else tried a similar feat.
I read the red blurs and make sense of anything and everything I can. Eventually, I open my eyes and double check on Twinkle, who shifts nervously next to me, while my frown deepens. I finally had a competent companion, one who I could do more with other than 'tolerate' and 'glare at'. To have a partner who thought for themselves and did things for themselves? That was something I craved.
Twinkle did not pass with flying colors. I only counted about six on him, anyway.
With a roll of my eyes that only I could see, I wrenched my magic one way.
And nothing happened. At first.
Whatever ground-like plain we stood on shattered. Twinkle screamed out in shock - one sudden yelp before he tried to flare his large wings and attempt to fly. Enough of his panic subsided just so he could remember that his wings were in no state to fly and he had nowhere to go.
I groaned. We were only plummeting downward into the depth of a possibly infinite void, what's his problem? He's an everlasting being who spent over three thousand years trapped in a blank plain with his physical form intact and I was a mortal being who spent eleven centuries in a place that wasn't too different from his after my body had been ripped away and reduced to a considerably more primal incarnation while my life was forcibly dragged out and my soul faced obliteration near-constantly.
So what's his problem? "Buck up," I grumble, and if he hears me, he says nothing.
I wait until the world flips - literally - and abruptly. Twinkle screams, and my growl towards him is lost in the breakneck whoosh. I don't care if he's over three millennia out of practice. He's annoying. All I did was rearrange this realm around myself so that we were technically falling upward - where I wanted us to go - by manipulating the fact that this world revolves around me.
Yes, Twinkle does eventually realize what's happening - like it was my 'duty' to ever inform one as grossly incompetent as him in the first place - but by then he's already screamed enough for me to just glare into the darkness, a deadpan and annoyed scowl gracing my beautiful features.
My day job was honestly better than having to put up with him.
...
Niflhel was under my hooves before I could even sink into the entirety of my physical form. I shook and lurched forward in an almost drunken stumble as the world spun around me and the pressure difference that hadn't effected me for some time was tossed relentlessly upon me, an invisible but noticeable, undeniable weight.
It took Sir Twinkles a few absolutely fantastic attempts before he could stand, his long, once-powerful legs wobbling while I looked on, making no attempt to hide how I judged him.
I pushed my gathering focus through vertigo and the storm of sensations. The feel of magic that I had yet to differentiate in my condition as everything around me swirled, temporarily lost in a sea of no distinction. My red-tinted world was gone for now, when I needed it next I'd call it up again.
Unlike, his esteemed highness, Twinkle Star, I had managed to avoid throwing up. This wasn't an entirely unfamiliar experience, but the specifics have always differed for me.
Vigilance sharpened almost instantly. I expected no less from myself. Immediately, I began shifting slightly from my unyielding stand and letting my eyes travel about, scrutinizing every bit of the twisted äerint hallways that yawned before us. Even Twinkle was dwarfed by them. With the ability to sense magic as I could, Umber would be ready to pursue us if he wasn't already. There wasn't any time for constant delays that had happened anymore - time was like a weight that had settled over Twinkle Star. I watched his expression sink to the worry of somepony trying to recall something and failing to grasp all that they had experienced. The feeling of time as it was here wasn't resonating with him properly, and likely wouldn't for some time.
I feel myself frown. Not even a single second escaped me in that icy prison. I can't say I relate, nor did I expect myself to. The cold distance of my impersonal stance bothers him, but a sideways glare from me that is embers to the ice he perceives me as quiets him before he can speak. Does he really need to be so obvious about how he wants to talk? It's only easier to silence him that way. My senses clear quickly while he still looks foggy and his movements remain slow - I didn't expect anything else, knowing what he's been through. Magic settles and the patterns of everything become easier to pick out.
The distant and resounding clang of far-away corridors strikes and I feel my heartbeat skip. The air has a distant, unnatural warmth to it.
The feel of magic.
I bite back a smirk, a gasp, anything other than wide eyes and a soft exhale, but my ears prick in the direction of the power I've felt in another form before. Even from here, where I'm bathed in jagged shadows that hide the script that dances excitedly on my cloak while my irises flash with a momentary red glow-
I look down one hall, seeing past it.
And then I take one step toward her.
...
She's not here - not yet. I gallop down every hall, knowing that eventually she'll be in one of them. Twinkle trots after me, trying to catch up, but is only able to chase my the tail of my shadow in his attempts to stay near.
My heartbeat is louder than the sound of my boots striking crystal. Fate's sheath taps at my side and the fabric of my cloak whooshes. I can feel the air reach my coat under Umber's dried blood, and as my hooves strike the ground again and again sparks will go off, briefly illuminating myself and my surroundings. Compared to the shades of gray and black that make up these yawning, magic-made halls, I'm a blur of gray, brown, and crimson.
And again, she's the one I'm chasing. Was there ever any path I walked where she wasn't at the end of it? Maybe. Maybe, but I don't care.
It may be a distant pulse, but it still sweeps over this place. For a moment, my legs feel weak at the sense of power that washes over the halls, but I keep running.
Every step I take only leads me to a stronger center of magic - and one that is moving, too. It's Luna - it's my Luna, alright. I'd know the feel of her anywhere. Now everywhere starts to feel more and more like Luna - or how she was on the beach, with power to spare. Then, her magic had warped so that the illusion of that intangible magic that only tempted me to get closer to her. I wanted to be by her side, to tell her everything I possibly could, and let Luna - whose self was clear with her magic - be loved. I couldn't let her hurt herself again, or be hurt. I wouldn't let her waste herself or waste away.
She was strong, and her magic only confirmed this. She has a great heart, a greater mind, a laugh that I can't wait to hear again and again.
I don't care how it sounds - absurd or something else - as I chase her yet again, but if she wanted me to, I'd chase her forever. My life would still unfold, but it would in however much distance is between us and more.
A white glow became visible. It shone like something more than the moon's light on fresh snow from when I was young and would stare up at the stars, entranced, convinced that maybe the flakes and those lights in the sky weren't the most different things.
The glow moved across the crystalline surface of the äerint, casting strange shadows that I found pleasing as I raced on. Soon, I had to put effort into not slipping, to make each stride strong enough to overcome the feeling of weak knees while adrenaline burned in me and my breath came in rough gasps of anticipation. Twinkle was behind me, somewhere, still following, but I didn't give him any thought other than that. This was about Luna and I.
Anytime he called out to me, asking questions about his daughter, I didn't listen and pressed on, down the maze of cave-like halls.
She was rushing toward us, with her whirlwind of magic like an endless knot of complex emotions that I might have actually paused to just wait and unravel them. Luna was somepony I wanted to spend time around and wanted to know. If she was upset, I wanted to at least be there for her and offer her something. We had plans to further and goals to accomplish, and we're going to do them together - something I'd never grant anypony short of such a close companion.
When I'm sure that we're so near that I can just make out an unmistakable shape in the darkness, I keep fighting not to trip over myself. This was the most powerful, entrancing, and addicting power that I had ever been exposed to and feeling something this strong meant that it would effect me, and that I had to brace those effects. The äerint behind her advancing figure was illuminated by the white, sparking flight trail streaming behind her. I couldn't see her mane in the light. Usually, it'd be too distinct for me not to notice, but from the light that came from Luna, her magic, and her flight showed that the surface of the äerint had been melted and ran down the irregular surface of the walls like paint.
She's come such a long way from when we first met...
And even then, nothing between us, or about us, was simple. Could I really ask for any more than that? Taking advantage of everything chance had and every obstacle that dares to come between us so I could see her again... it doesn't matter if it was then or now, it was worth it.
While the hall behind her is bright, the small stretch between us has yet to be illuminated. That'll change soon enough; Luna is swift and while I'm not nearly as fast as her, I can outrun most ponies.
I'm just close enough to see her eyes, wide with excitement and filled with a mix of emotions, and her white mane that makes the light around her seem dim and gray in comparison before the wind is knocked out of me and I'm ploughed into the ground by an Alicorn flying at high speed, colliding with me while wearing a near-complete suit of armor.
Stifling a full shout is surprising easy, considering how much worse I've been through. I yelp. Loudly. It still isn't loud enough to show that this still hurts. My lungs burn and my sides ache. I feel my head spinning again.
Wrapping my hooves around her and anchoring her into a hug was cathartic. She was here again. I'd always know scars, monsters, and all things dark like this - after all, those things and more were what so much of the world was made of. I would fight them, run from them, scorn them. I would do anything, really, I was used to dealing with them. All those were an experience. They began and ended in their own ways, yet were nothing more.
Then there was Luna. She defied everything too. She fought, thought, and did everything that was rare in ponies. She didn't have to be a pony or an Alicorn or even a princess anymore than I 'had' to be a demon. She was Luna, and she was currently crushing me in a hug of her own, making a sound that might have been sobs of joy; it was hard to tell with her face buried in my cloak.
I squeezed my eyes shut and saw red again. Script flashes behind my eyes, and everything but that fades to black. For a moment, I think I see the blueprints of some long memorized but presently unhelpful magitech resurface, only to fade just as quickly. It was almost like the days when I'd squeeze my eyes shut to increase the clarity of forsaken knowledge. I'd lie with my back to the ground and my muzzle to a sky that could not be seen and study them privately. I'd dare myself to understand everything and more, not because the task was one I could accomplish for the sake of others, but because those others would tell me that it was impossible if they knew what I was doing. Above all else, it had been for myself.
My scarred hindquarter stings. One of the cuts might have reopened.
If only I cared. I hug Luna tighter and try to shift out of her grip so that I wouldn't be nearly as crushed. When it was clear that she had me pinned in a way I couldn't turn to my advantage in any non-combative setting, I shifted into shadow, wriggling and slipped out of her grasp, but slipped back into my equinoid form again in order to keep her from falling onto the ground.
I still felt dizzy, and while she wasn't holding me so tightly anymore, the feel of Luna's magic gripped my mind like a fever that I couldn't shake entirely. It was hard to stand on my own, but Luna, as perceptive as ever, let me lean against her. I felt her cold armor through my cloak and fuzzy coat and watched with casual interest and restrained curiosity as her determined gaze searched my face. Her expression wasn't hard, but she was unsmiling and I knew that her graceful, fierce solemnity could change to fury as soon as any combat began.
She smiled suddenly. I was still covered in dried blood and she just smiled, placed a kiss on my muzzle and held me closer. Her horn glowed white as she held me closer in the glowing light shining from her. I purred softly and nuzzled her while she scratched my cheek, jaw, and behind my ear with telekinesis.
"Do you have any idea just how much I missed you?"
I nuzzled her again and let her see a small half smile. "I might have some idea. But..."
Luna's eyes grow wider, brimming with curiosity and a couple tears of joy. She looks at me and my growing smirk with only admiration, intrigue, and adoration.
"What is it?" she whispers, reaching up with a forehoof to stroke my bangs.
"I'd love to hear about how wonderful I am now that you've got me in your company. Isn't that far better than dwelling on what anything would be like without me?"
Luna's expression dissolves into a level stare and mock boredom. "You arrogant son of a book-"
I grinned a little, letting her get a quick glimpse of my fangs glinting in her light. "I can safely say that is certainly a new one. Now, what is it that you want to say? I do hope you realize that my Princess Charming still lives up to her name when she's mad."
Luna swatted my ear lightly. "You have no idea how much I have waited to hear you say something self-absorbed, or how I wanted to hear your voice-"
I stop her from continuing with a kiss while still holding onto her for support. If I thought that everything was dizzying before, I feel almost delirious now. Relief and her magic wash over me so that I can barely pick out the feel of my own among the invisible energy.
I don't want to pull away, and it's clear to me that she doesn't want to either. We'll have plenty of time for words later, but this is far more than enough.
Twinkle's voice calls from around the corner; he's finally caught up to me. His voice is still slightly nervous when he calls out.
"Sombra? Where did you-"
I can feel his magic; he's behind me - but I have no way to see him. He can see me very clearly.
Luna pulls away at the sound of his voice. Before she looks to him, her eyes, filled with disbelief and nearly everything else imaginable, land on me. Did I upset you?
I shake my head slightly. I don't blame her.
A couple tears roll down her cheek and she swallows, giving me one last kiss for now. I turn and watch her trot cautiously away from me, nervous energy that she refuses to betray making her gait skittish. I say nothing, but they way her posture adjusts under my gaze is an obvious confirmation of my silent encouragement to any who could see it. She stands right across from him. Luna's armored legs shake and her glowing aura flickers around the edges as she looks toward him. Recognition, hope, and dozens of other raw feelings that I imagine she only half processed show on her face.
I look at Twinkle Star, who is rooted in place. It's plain that he doesn't recognize the daughter he left ages ago, even if he's unsure how to acknowledge it.
What can I say? I was right. He's not a stranger to her, but she's nearly unrecognizable to him.
The last thing he does before being tackled to the ground by a flurry of indigo and light is attempt to say her name. I watch him only manage to mouth it, a whispering, awestruck, and redundant confirmation in the form of her name before Luna collides with him.
I shrug slightly, at nothing in particular and try to clear my mind of the lingering haziness and stay standing while Luna radiates energy. I want her to be happy, even if I don't understand fully why she's overjoyed.
I can't say the sight moves me, but her smile always will.
...
"Just how bad is it?" Luna asks. Her forelegs wrap around me to half-ease and half-pull me into a proper standing position.
I let out a ragged cough and lean against her again. As soon as I do, Luna shifts to accompany my weight better, but not because of strain. She knows I need to lean against her, at least until we get going.
"Luna, the surge..." I can't finish. Sometimes words come easily in all this, as they always have - I've never been one to be left speechless. Now, I find the feverish grip of a surge Luna can't regulate distorting my focus. Adjusting to it and to having her fight with so much... so much...
I lean closer and feel her wipe a bit of sweat from under my bangs and her voice, suddenly distant, murmur that I feel a bit warm.
"I can pull through," I manage. My voice doesn't sound incredibly strained. Were I not so articulate, somepony wouldn't believe anything was wrong. "Just lend a hoof if you can?" I'm dizzy enough that all certainty falls from my statement and pulls it into a hazy question.
Her melodic giggle fills my ears and I can't help but find a bit of clarity hearing her low, rich voice that never runs out of warmth for me. Some of the haze subsides, but it isn't enough. The pressure of her form and her lithe, lean muscles supporting me was an anchor.
"Always."
It was her reply, and one of the few simple things that I could always appreciate. Her voice still had traces of all the sobs that she had been waiting so long for. Even if the halls of Niflhel didn't echo with the sound of them any longer, I still heard them and how relieved she had been, and I watched how she quite literally glowed as she gave her father a crushing hug.
All I had done was watch. I didn't even watch him. She was the only one worth watching, and she had blinked back all the tears she still might shed later to put the present first. The catch of sobs was still in her voice, but I thought that it made her sound lovely, and nuzzled her softly to let her know this.
"Will you be able to fight?" she whispered in my ear, pressing closer to me to return her own nuzzle of agreement. The spot on my neck - a small, fluffy area that only just survived the gory treatment of the rest of my coat - was still warm after she pulled away. I tugged my cloak over the spot to preserve the feeling before nodding into her wither.
"I've fought in far worse conditions-"
"-but even that took time," she finished softy, kissing me behind my left ear and laughing softly when she sees me start, pulling my head up from her wither slightly and accidentally knocking the top of my head on her jaw.
After she's been crying, her laugh has a slight hiccuping sound to it and I can't help but give a bemused snort when I hear it.
It had taken time. The both of us have been dealt horrible hooves before and made them work. One day, there might be worse circumstances that we'll have to adjust to. Times like these aren't unconquerable, just difficult, and that is something familiar to the both of us.
She keeps nuzzling me, and I lean into every one.
"Was the portal too much for you?" She mutters in my ear that I'm too tense, and whether or not I was meant to hear that, I don't know but she starts to rub my wither deeply. I try to pull away - it feels strange - but she starts humming and...
...maybe this is okay.
My purr follows not long afterward. Even the feel of her magic is so soothing right now. I may not be the easiest pony to understand or the most emotional in any conventional sense, but Luna always knows how to read me and have me smiling no matter where I am. Despite everything, I feel a small smirk playing across my muzzle and bury it where he wither and neck meet, purring louder when she wraps a wing around me.
"No, Luna," I mumble into her coat and making every sensation of this moment last, "Difficult, yes, but too much... ? I-"
She catches me before my legs can buckle. I growl in frustration and Luna helps me stand. I sway on my legs and grab onto her with a forehoof, clutching the glowing limb tightly until the vertigo subsides.
"Are you going to be alright?" she asks with all the concern that only she's shown me, once again helping to steady me.
I shut my eyes and imagine nothing. "Y-Yeah. I can fight. Even if I couldn't, we'd still have to."
"Do you think that you should have gone with-"
"No," I say. Mustering a firm tone is automatic and takes no energy. "Ripping a portal from in here... in the air instead of using a gateway... I can work through this, Luna, and I know we can too." Controlling my panting breaths comes quickly enough. "Your father would have only hindered us."
Luna nods quietly, but her concern for me never vanishes. "I do not think he would even be mentally ready to face Umbra again or linger here much longer."
"You and me both. He would have ruined our strategy entirely. I'm sure Mac and Glitter Sprinkle will be able to keep him company on Pink Sunset and only set half the thing on fire before we return."
"Only half?" She arches an eyebrow. "That is far more trust than I would have expected you to put in those two."
"I prefer to think of it as wishful thinking."
Luna makes a sound between a laugh and a sigh before pulling me into a hug. "We have a battle to fight then, do we not? I know not how long my magic will last in this state, so it would be best that we head off-"
"To eradicate the remaining member of my species," I half-grumble, unable to manage anything more than a mildly enthusiastic expression, pricking my ears forward and the barest, momentary twitch of a smile.
"How oddly eager you are about this, Sombra," she says cocking head to the side and looking at me curiously. "Do you not see it as a somber task?"
"I've been looking forward to it almost as much as I had been waiting to see you again."
She nuzzles my neck. "Will there ever be another... ?"
"No." I pull her close, knowing that we'll be fighting soon and I won't get to enjoy a moment like this with her again for some time. "There were more before me, but demons... well, we're preventable. I know we are. If we succeed here, I'll be the endling."
For a moment, Luna is silent except for her calm breathing. "Do you really not think that shall be a burden?"
"I don't. Will there be consequences? Yes. There's consequences for nearly anything, it's just a matter of dealing with them, avoiding them, or taking some other option. Either way, major or minor, they're inevitable, wouldn't you agree?"
"I would," she says softly, remembering something. For that, I purr briefly until she shifts again.
"Not going through with this would be far worse. There wouldn't be a world, or enough left of one to linger on for much longer if we fail." The last part was such an obvious statement, and it had been on our minds from the start of this adventure, in one way or another. She clutches me again, in another hug that's tight and desperate to escape the feeling of this place before releasing me and holding me at length so our gazes can meet.
She pulls off a hopeful, yet somber look well, but her frown is genuine and worried. Luna isn't going to ask me if anything's going to be alright, or if we'll come out of this victorious. The grim reality of battle is something she knows, and I've never seen any like her, who still manage to go into the probable end of the world or any crisis with hope. She has so much life left in her when others would break, be left as husks, or worse.
I love her.
Nuzzling Luna again, I let my still-clearing mind wander to my own magic. Compared to her glow of power that is currently quite steady, my magic is...
I give her a kiss, and she reciprocates instantly.
...My magic is failing.
There's only so much more I can do before I just...
Burn out.
I'm not a source of infinite power. The feats I've been pulling off as of late are draining, new, and actually challenging. My magic will falter. It won't be now, but it'll be soon. Physically, I may not be exhausted, but I will be with time. She can't have me as a liability. I won't let her be harmed because of me. While I've fought battles that have exhausted me before and even if I push my limits to improve, what I'm doing is dangerous.
Luna gives me a cautious smile, suspecting nothing behind my current level stoic-ness. Her gaze tells me everything: it's time to go. I nod, and she takes flight, waiting for me to run alongside her, in her shadow, in order to navigate these warped halls in search of Umber.
This is just like regeneration, where I pulled and pieced every part back after the Heart blew my body up and sealed Onyx, before my first journey with Mac began. Sure, it may have been hours before I was in proper shape, hiding myself in the mines of Mt. Topazora for a while, but I knew then.
I knew that after three months I would be dying. The amount of extremely complex magical feats and straining tasks - like cross country teleporting - I did would need to be controlled and avoided when possible. I had to prolong what was seemingly inevitable and manage the magic that kept me from progressing into a worse state regulated constantly.
This feels like that all over again. I know I'm immortal. I know I'm a god.
But now, I'm an outcast to both of those factions. I used to be mortal, and I know exactly how to die and what dying feels like.
This entire scenario feels like that, only now I don't have something as minor as death as a potential end, but much worse possible fates if anything goes wrong.
I'm only just learning of what I can do as a god and getting used to the power and ability as my disposal. No matter how powerful I am, and have always been, force isn't my chosen path to victory. As much as I may enjoy burning things, showing off, or whatever else a common imbecile with the observation skills of a purple pest would think suggest otherwise, I chose form over power. Every large scale plan that I follow is filled with space to accommodate consequences, desires, and my own egotistical whims.
I'm not a chess master. Chess is honestly foalish to me, especially when you consider what it symbolizes. Celestia's game is her own. I'm not incapable of decisions and schemes crafted on impulse, nor am I unable to work a miniature grand design of my own and manipulate others into it.
I can spot disadvantages like nopony else, and right now there's one major one.
I think it might even be me...
Weapon, weapon, weapon... echos a simple and unexpected taunt.
...
Luna flies above, and I gallop after the trail of light she leaves behind, not bothering to keep track of passing time. There is no subtlety to this - she leaves a trail and my hoofsteps are far from quiet.
I may be behind, but with my magic, I'm able to sift through the crystallized magic around us, probing around as we move. It's far easier now that I've been through it and understand this material and place far more. I like to think of this new skill like it's some kind of cartography. All I do is use my sixth sense to detect myself; the world spreads out before me. Next, I track Luna, which is simple. Then, I reach out and probe below the surface...
...I have to keep my focus both above and below, pulling at patterns and traces in order to locate Umber. The whole experience was me literally having to look in two places at once, as well as sense his proximity to us while following-
My irises flashed red again, and below the surface of the äerint, tinted scarlet, was a red thread, flickering brighter than the world around it.
It would lead us straight to the Heart of Niflhel, where it seems Umber was waiting.
At the thought of seeing him again, anger began to spark once more. I couldn't help but savor the feeling. My horn shot off a couple scarlet sparks, breaking away from my sparkling aura with a sudden hissing sound. A quick guffaw from Luna followed.
After all, where there's a spark, fire follows.
...
Magic, multicolored fire licks at my horn again when Luna and I spill into the Heart of Niflhel. Umber's hollow gaze, now sharpened with cruelty and looks at Luna - my Luna - with a sudden hunger from where he stands waiting. Luna's glow makes his coat look even more luminescent.
A growl begins to grow in my throat, and not a usual growl. This one is truly vicious. He won't be breaking Luna. She's not some toy. She's a goddess and dearer to me than anypony else in this world.
Lightning crackles in her speed trail, and Niflhel shakes with a sound louder than thunder. I brace as it shakes with her power like the Sky Scraper in the hurricane. The feverish feeling that such an outburst brings takes effort to combat, but I'm focused and angry enough to force my mind to clear.
Who is-
Umber - as dull as the color I've named him after - never gets a chance to finish. Luna's eyes are glowing and her lips are pulled into a snarl as she screams a raw, savage battle cry with the Voice of the Alicorns - something that was meant to be used for events like this instead of stilling mortal crowds. She flings herself at him with her horn glowing a blinding light. I have to duck my head and skid to a stop as she flies forward with full force. A pair of wingblades unlike any I've ever seen or heard of before has materialized on each limb, bright and as clear as glass but with none of the fragility. They sparkle in her light, gleaming and iridescent . Hoofblades are soon upon her forelegs before she finds her target and unleashes merciless vengeance.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't watch her maul him with the utmost satisfaction before I lit my own horn and prepared for battle, script trailing across my cloak with excitement. Now that I know their nature, reading them isn't as difficult as before. They each detail some spell or strategy that was on my mind.
I may be nearly drained, but I still have more than enough to work with. And even if I didn't, I wouldn't exactly have a choice. It would have to be enough.
Battle has never been something that I've had much of a disadvantage in. From the beginning, it's always been one of the easiest things to make sense of in many ways, including quite a few morbid ones. The best fighter is a thinker, and I've always been a thinker first. The best thinkers are confident and the best of the confident are insane.
I'm all of the above.
...
This was going to be messy from the start. Umber wasn't just going to die on us if we cut the right places. I didn't doubt that he might've even 'died' once before since he did siege the world ages ago. Scars other than a broken horn were likely, and unlike me he couldn't possess others in an attempt to regenerate what had been lost.
He had sacrificed everything for this power. Nothing was left in this monster. He wasn't even concealing the blatant torture he was enduring, everything about his very existence with whatever other demons where within him ans his summoner was painful. He'd broken gods before, he knew this.
It wouldn't even bee an exaggeration to say that I think he was enjoying this, if there was any face left for him to convey that with. Or a head.
Thanks for that one, Luna.
He was gone. He was power. So much of him was just nothing at all.
A wave of fresh blood hits me, and I take it, unflinching. I doubt that I'll be coming out of this with any bit of my coat or mane showing through.
He was largely distracted by Luna. Only his ability to sense magic was guiding him. Luna was angry. I can't blame any for focusing on her. She's the reason that the world itself is trembling, and it is her Voice that splits that constant clamor and nearly unbearable static of everything else with cries for slaughter and screams that weren't so different from songs.
She was one of the most brutal, violent, and terrifying things that I've ever witnessed.
She was awe-inspiring. Her fighting is exactly what it needs to be and more. She has a brilliant mind, especially when it comes to battle. She can be savage and even honorable - something I'd usually roll my eyes at more than I would with her. Luna knows I'm mostly just teasing when she gets into matters of honor. I prefer pride.
She was beautiful. Being covered in the blood of my enemies isn't a bad look for her. Luna had done more than enough to earn her own messy suit of crimson matting her fur and running down her dark armor.
Umber's wings were all that he needed to keep up his onslaught of magic. Their äerint-coated feather tips were the only thing that let him do any magic in his broken state.
To help Luna and allow myself greater time to plan, I use my magic to do something that's quite easy: warping and tilting the äerint that Umber stands on in order to ensure that Luna is able to strike where she needs to. He fights back when he can, and knows each move I make when it comes to dark magic, but my maneuvers still help Luna. He knows that he has his own advantages. The worst enemy is one that thinks.
Luna was lucky. Her magic was capable of shattering his skull and taking most of his head messily. The only thing that's keeping him intact are these bizarre matrices I can partially feel between their strikes. Their for situations like this and more, I imagine. He has been killed at least once hasn't he?
I dismiss that particular piece of information for now and focus on trying to subtlety bring him towards or away from Luna as needed.
And just like that, Luna's glow is gone. White bleeds out of her mane and tail. If it weren't for her agility, she would have fallen from the air. Both the sight of a narrowly avoided cut with a sudden spike of äerint from the walls - one that would have likely taken off a wing otherwise - and the returning wave of vertigo that comes from feeling such a drastic change in magical levels. This wave is more than I've ever felt before, and it reignites the sensation of all the anger I have known, increased tenfold because he hurt Luna.
I don't growl. My mind buzzes with static and realization as my horn glows brighter and a wave of familiar dark emotions crashes into me, where I stand immovable, before settling like a familiar mantle.
My glare finds Umber easily, though he doesn't know it. I've never glared at any this intensely before and all the malice I've ever had pours into the gesture effortlessly. I can't feel myself breathing, and it doesn't bother me. I'm completely still, which is the exact opposite of what happens during my panic attack, as though I needed some other sign to assure myself that I was okay.
I tilt my head to side a little, scowling and fix my unwavering, eerie stare on Umber at all times. My eyes follow him when my body does not. The sound and feel of everything else is entirely significant.
He hurt Luna.
Red swims over my vision again, but no script glows. I feel my eyes glow.
I do not laugh. I do not smile. I do not move.
Luna still flies but he hurt her.
Everything sinks in on a repeat.
Dark magic tries to bubble up with my welling fury and fails, bleeding into red. My mane tries to shift bit by bit, but fails and it falls again, in gore-slicked strands. Crimson aura, like fire in how it blazes creeps up my legs and spreads from the glow of my horn. The ever shifting script that goes with it carves itself out aggressively and shakes angrily, the lines that make up each character ragged like slices in a wound.
In flesh.
Inhibitions have long since faded, and all the magic I'll be able to use for a long while is mustered both willingly and automatically.
He hurt Luna.
I slowly withdraw Fate while Umber is distracted, and as soon as it was free from its sheath, fire from the aura enveloping me spreads to the blade that now glows with heat and the infectious energy of my magic. I worked a small bit of dark magic onto my horn, and maneuvered it around the raging red, pulling at parts of my core, switching, and altering inner workings until a predicted sense of dizziness washed over me.
And then it vanished quicker than it came. I was left feeling lighter than before. The work wasn't as practiced as it could be, but that wouldn't stop it from working as I intended. Sword gripped tightly, I purged all dark magic as soon as I heard the booming cracks and claps of Luna's lightning, where she flew and dived across the gaping chamber. Her convenient distraction makes it easy to conceal my work.
Unfiltered rage sharpens my mind to include the world once more and the effect has the suddenness of whipping back a curtain to expose light to a light sleeper and the endless noise of this place, now in the sounds of battle, returns instantly.
The single thread of red light is still beneath the äerint floor like a plant beneath ice, waving and glowing as it continues to sway about, pinned beneath a solid prison where it never tangles. I'm reminded of the lights of the Crystal Heart. The tri-colored aurora waved as freely across the sky as this thread does.
Pausing, I take the time to look at it again, and feel it. Then, after it passes under my critical glare, I let my horn glow even brighter and wrench the transparent string free, bringing it to my side. The aura around me reacts strongly to it, script popping excitedly before the rest merges with the fire that has engulfed every bit of Fate. Only then do I realize that it was subtle unconscious movements and willpower that I had simply been distracted from that enabled this.
With that in mind, and a new weapon to have some fun with, I wait no longer in creating a jagged protrusion of äerint in front of me.
Galloping forward and up it gives the adrenaline gnawing at me something to do before I kick off, using my newfound lightness to jump even higher, Fate aflame and raised above as I sail through the air in one large leap, screaming in rage.
My pride won't go unavenged.
...
He lost a wing. That's it. Just one wing, tangled in threads of my magic and cut, pulled, and breaking bone before my blade and rough slices of my magic did. That was all I managed before the walking remains of this monster managed to fling me away.
My back hit the crystalline ground with a thud that knocked most of the wind out of me; I gasped roughly - the choked sound was all I could manage. However, I wouldn't let myself stay down long and focus seeped through pain as I pushed myself up, horn lit once more and Fate held up defensively, the flat sides of the blade guarding me and ready to push all others away.
Combat was basic instinct for me. Yes, it took practice to grasp the entirety of that instinct and master it as I learned what could aid me - weapon mastery was not entirely natural to me, but to recognize the capability of another always came easily, and was only bettered with practice.
It was an instinct I was glad to have - the natural inclination to all this, yet it's also what has branded my entire species as weapons and those who submitted to power. But not me. No, never me. I wasn't going to let that be what happened to me, whether I knew the specifics of other demons or not. All my life, I've been drawn towards learning and exploring the world instead of harming everyone in it. The mechanics of a fight and how good it makes me look mean more to me than whose wing I've cut. Severing a limb - something I'm all too used to - is something that still has such an everyday feel for me. I always could see what's happening, but I wanted to know why. It's how I figured out that something in the Crystal Empire, all that was happening, was wrong. I've just never seen enough.
That's just one reason of many why I'm superior. I knew myself, and I stayed myself. I bettered myself, and learned everything for my own selfish purposes. I analyzed every facet of myself and checked every desire. I schemed and bided, refusing to succumb to some whim that I couldn't justify until I was bound by obsession.
Until I was obsession. I wasn't like Onyx, Hasad, or Umbra. I wasn't like whatever ponies made Penumbra or Antumbra either.
I stand, shaking, not with fear or anything like it, but with slowly growing fatigue. The threads are gone, but the useless and butchered limb lays on the ground. The frayed feathers are already trampled, but the coating on them remains. Luna dives down again; I don't focus on her once she's in motion.
'He', Hasad the summoner, sacrificed himself and all that might have been there in the first place to create Umber the Obnoxious. He wrote the Book, and I don't doubt that it promised him something...
I flare my horn and bathe the world in red, flooding my vision with as much script as possible, streaming from me outward and wrapping around each and every uneven surface. I felt lightheaded as I began to sift past them all, focusing past and below Umber, trying to glimpse just a bit of-
The paradox and curse of a meaningless name was the wish of Hasad.
I swallow sharply, only to find that my throat is completely dry. Script swarms my vision, and I blink clumsily only to find that won't work. I felt lightheaded.
He wished to destroy himself, with magic that would do so anyway? That...
I managed to cut the light of my horn and suck in a breath for my aching lungs. I had to will myself to blink, and in the aftermath of that, it felt like the world was spinning.
Luna was doing such a good job with her blades. I saw each expert maneuver and swift, strong blow. She was greater than any whirlwind, and focusing on her eased some of the ache that came with my discovery. I could spend hours, in a calmer place where the heat of battle was of no importance at all and I didn't need to play every move in the same wonderfully twisted game, just watching her and listening to the sound of her voice... or seeing the way her eyes light up...
My throat feels tighter. I don't even need one guess to know why.
...the way her eyes light up when she sees me. Or how the terrifying aspect of her war cry is why I love it so much, and of course, how could I forget the voice that drips like water into a crack, soaking where no sound can reach me, to pull me out of a frenzy...
I love the chill of snow on my coat, desert nights, and an icy wind running through my mane, but she's irresistibly warm whenever I cuddle with her...
I gather myself, letting thoughts drift in the back of my mind. My magic feels flighty of all things, and it makes me ill. As always, I push back the pain and draw myself together.
Her laugh is its own kind of song, I think. She's always willing to ask me questions and approach me even when I'm angry... She still loves me even when she's seen me angry. I've never seen somepony as sensitive as her be so intelligent and intuitive, knowing not to put faith in ponies. Every time she looks at me with an expression many would dismiss as aloof, all I've ever seen are two eyes and that gods-damned pout that tell me everything...
The red thread underhoof returns when I realize that I've let my horn glow for so long, and it has multiplied as well. Ideas start to form and I force myself to only dwell on about the dozen most promising ones instead of all of them, which really is a shame... but then again, my focus is slipping just a little bit.
It's because of her, that I find myself smiling and even laughing. Sometimes, I've realized that I'm thinking of things to say - not because I have to tell somepony how incompetent they are, or berate them, or any of that... but because I genuinely want to talk to her, and I have longed to for ten centuries...
I pull each one from the barrier that divides me from them and give Umber and his movements my full attentions, observing all that plays out before me with a scowling, effortless, grim and hyperfocused stare as I yank each thread free from crystal. Through each one, magic stirs and flows in a way that my distracted mind only bothers to compare to water in a pipe - 'water' that is reaching me. One of the ideas that I had running about in my mind bursts to the forefront of my mind. I add yet another feat to the number of tasks I'm currently doing: I begin to drain magic through the threads.
My heart pounded. Some of it was from strain. My magic was depleting and being restored at the same time.
The sensation of thread large enough to be considered a thin rope wrapping around any exposed bit of my legs and being merged with the magical part of my nature is a slightly uncomfortable one, but I'll manage. I feel the cool shock of magic spreading through me, writhing just under my skin and crawling about before settling.
Umber is just power. I don't mean he's like me, born of magic and living power altered and able to take an undeniably real form that's no less alive than a pony. He's just power. There's no thoughts or anything that make him an individual.
He tried to change. He tried to blend the two, and now there's this gaping nothingness in him - in all of the other demons that eventually bled into this painless monster that isn't unable to feel his own skull being blown apart. I know that what's left of him registers it... but just doesn't acknowledge or comprehend any fear, thought, or anything.
What's really frightening isn't how an ignorant pony would look at Umber and say he isn't there - he is, it's why I would never attempt to control whatever horrors are in his head, even if I was certain I was able to - it's that he is. He's impulse, just to a different degree that Onyx was.
He's not a tyrant, a sociopath, a slaughterer, a cold-hearted psychopath... whatever you want to toss out there, he's really not that. I can feel what he is. I can feel it all through the magical high I'll be giving myself - one with an even greater burnout - by draining various parts of the energy from the äerint of Niflhel. The usually dull crystallized magic now had a faint crimson glow pulsing ominously behind it in places. My own restoration quickly followed, and I almost frowned at the thought, but instead chose to maintain grim stoicism so I wouldn't be read easily. But could I really blame myself? Once this feeling is gone...
Alicorns are a deathless species and demons are a mortal one. Umber has an Alicorn's immortality, since he's stuck somewhere between the two. I don't think that the Book was ever meant to corrupt Alicorns... and he, Hasad, must've known this. He wanted this wretched limbo. If Luna and I end his body and expel his soul that clings so tightly to the hideous vessel, wound with the other souls of the other demons behind his purple eyes, then he'll only be gone, drifting, for a short time. A few centuries, most likely. Not even half a millennium. He'd only scatter about the world, and there would be no way to exploit his ignorance any more. The world, as it stands, is only a fledgling. I am, quite literally, the greatest advancement and magical feat to appear since the Collapse.
Worse, he could regenerate a horn, and there's no telling what would be the result of the rest of the demons that are left in him thrown out into the world... or maybe just overflowing Tartarus. I'm not going to take this particular gamble, that's certain.
We have to destroy them all. I'm to be the endling. He has to be pushed to the point of performing, as Luna puts it, The Spell.
And he's just pure power, he's living, thinking corruption... so to end him, one who knows next to know feeling... Luna and I would need pure power. We would need to be something more than Luna, the world's youngest goddess, who may be able to forgo sleep and siege non-stop for weeks, but is unable to muster enough of her magic in here after a surge like that. I may not have witnessed any of it for myself, but she told me the Tribesponies would have never gotten their hooves on young Luna and her sister if they hadn't been exhausted from the immense surge that marked their awakening godhood and...
There's so much more, of course. I'd have to ask her-
And then there's me. The world's newest god, drained and exhausted as I near limits I'll have to work tirelessly to surpassed...
Every plan that's flooding my mind is more desperate than the last, and the details that I've thought up in this state... I shiver slightly and carefully begin to pry the rest of the fading threads from me. Luna can only hold him off for so long, and I'll use whatever stamina I have left to fight alongside her.
And I can only fight for so long. She and I - we compliment one another. I based this plan on our strengths...
Fate remains sheathed. I'm done with such simple toys, at least for now. I'm not going to be doing anything drastic, I don't have enough for it... not after my foray into Everything and-
I'm not just going to rely on the abilities of a demon either. So much rage is still be stoked within me and as of right now-
I pull a small bit of my cloak away and give my gore-matted, fluffy gray chest a glance. The few bits of smokey fur - the fluff on my chest that Luna described as 'snuggly' and with an assortment of soft shrieking noises and excited squeals that were usually muffled by said fur - that poked through grime had growing strands of something darker weaving its way in.
However grim I looked right now, I was furious enough that my coat was already starting to shift into shadow. Retracting my left boot into a legband with magic, I ran my forehoof through my messy mane and found that, as I had expected, locks of my mane were shifting as well.
The nearby sound of a war scream that rocked Niflhel and the gleam of my metal boots in the dark brought one particular idea to my attention, and the ghost of a dastardly smile managed to find its way through anger, and only looked colder when a strike of Luna's lightning illuminated it perfectly to reveal a glint of fangs.
...
I had jumped into the air again, already smug, triumphant, and positively enraged before my body melted into shadow that was more than big enough to wrap around Umber and make him vanish within my smokier form. My willpower might as well have been tangible to him, since he could feel my magic and how I steeled myself. Accidental possession wasn't something that was going to happen now, not with my focus and want. This was not a causal form change. Everything was too fast for him with my advance and Luna darting about in the air. Her godly speed was rendering her as nothing more than a dark-hued blur dodging strikes that would have been all but lost in the dark if it weren't for the occasional spark of lightning that outlined her and then vanished.
He certainly didn't see my boots. I wasn't wearing them when I jumped and certainly wasn't now. I had temporarily repurposed them. They were a set of metal strips that I could fashion into perfectly uniform blades with my magic and manipulate just as easily. So I did the only reasonable thing: I threw them into my shadow form's body.
I am now a whirling mass of shadow with dozens of knives tumbling in my body - the uniform shapes make this less dangerous - surging forward toward Umbra, tumbling each knife about individually and keeping them from falling or any other disaster from occurring. As I grow angrier, some of this requires less concentration. Manipulating weapons isn't much of a second thought for me, so I only need to devote concentration to so many of the array of blades.
I'm utterly horrifying and I love it.
Just because I can pass through things, doesn't mean that I have to possess them. With living creatures, there is more risk in accidental possession, but with what I'm experiencing now? There'll hardly be a consequence from that. All I need to worry about is knife manipulation.
I sink into Umber viciously, forcing my way into his being from his side and making every moment as painful and brutal as I possibly can. He resists and attempts to attack me in any way he can and shove me out. I counterattack with brutal efficiency and then begin to tear him apart. From within him, I scream the sound only my shadow form can make, and the world quakes with my fury.
...
I was thrown gasping from the living remains of Umber. His soul - and all the others, in whatever places unseen they were - was tied to that disfigured, one-winged form that now had little left in terms of a rib cage after I was done with it. He was persistent, sure, but so I was I. In fact, I was above him in every way, as was to be expected, and stubbornness was one of those. If there's anything he should've picked up about me, any enemy of mine can at least agree with my allies on the fact that I am both immovable object and unrelenting force.
I formed my legs once again first, so I could properly implement my boots again. As messy and grisly as they were now - though Umber was a far grislier sight - they still functioned. I reconstructed them quickly, meddling with the magic that managed how I light I was so I could skid across the äerint ground as I slipped into equinoid form once more.
My cloak flared out behind me, the only vibrant color among blacks and grays. The gore on my coat, and on everything else had mostly fallen away, revealing fluffy gray cloaked in crimson. When I faced the misshapen living corpse of Umber, it was I stance I assumed automatically: ready to do just about anything in an instant, and imposing and immovable without being rigid. I was nothing short of dangerous.
Umber made a motion that was like scooping his one remaining wing into the same ground I had skidded upon, and 'pulled' a wave of äerint up before pushing it in my direction.
I effortlessly countered it with my own barrier that obscured his view of me and Luna's. As I intended, it also hid that the aura on my horn was so thin that its crimson color was barely visible and that my breathing was rough. I caught the glimpse of my eyes in the dull luster of the crystals after they converged and knotted into a mess of gray and magical sensations tangled below it all, petrified and unmovable as they forever cancelled one another out.
Looking at the visible fragments of my distorted reflection, I saw the slight unfocused look in my eyes. It wasn't a sane look - how could I, the Right-Honourable Lord Sombra ever manage anything like that outside of deceptive purposes? I knew every mad look I was capable of, but this one... it was scared too, and not without reason. I gritted my teeth - that habit won't be dying anytime soon - and inwardly praised myself for the restraint I was still able to manage. It may not matter if whoever is in my way knows I'm afraid, or can guess. It's knowledge and what can be done with it, no matter how 'insignificant'.
Leaping up, I pose myself - proud, observant, and ready to fight until Luna and I emerge victorious - atop the newest feature of the gaping hollow that he calls 'Heart'. Fate makes plenty of noise as I jump - I'm not aiming for stealth - and is the only thing that hasn't been altered by my form switching. Demon blood, dried, drying, and fresh covers the surface of the blade so that even the veins of red crystal aren't as easy to see with a quick glance.
Desperate measures are the only things on my mind. I'm now without much more than the barest minimum magic and the abilities of a demon. My dark magic isn't going to be of much use either, and whatever feat I attempt next with it will be my last...
Physical combat is out of the question. With Luna's control over the moon and Celestia's likely growing instability time wasn't something we had to spare... or at least, she didn't.
Inside the flesh of Umber, but not possessing him, the damage I had inflicted was something to be proud of. There was still the matter of rending his soul from his body. He was doing more than just inconveniencing me, and my anger would not be diminished, even if my power could be. I was fighting constantly with everything I had left, attempting to manage powers I had only a rough grasp on so far. There was always time to think, but for Luna and I there had always been more to fighting than Umber's sloppy, if overwhelming and dull onslaught.
And in there, drifting about his marred form I hadn't been able to see what he did to Luna, where my magic overwhelmed all and his was shoved in my face, blurred with everything else while my cruelty was unmasked and paramount. I fought for control. I was above control, and I controlled him, clinging to each jagged edge of what remained of his body to work as much damage as possible.
There was no way I could have seen what had happened or felt it clearly when vertigo was becoming a constant I had to manage.
Luna was within the distance of another flying leap and another skidding stop from me, and her horn...
I can no longer keeping my breathing steady or ignore the echos of my pounding heart in my ears because-
I know it's an illusion and all a matter of how I perceive things, but nothing else can match the speed at which my horror shows as everything around me slows down. I only have time to see the äerint growing on her horn - äerint I won't be able to remove...
...Everything feels worse than when I was vomiting blood at Celestia's hooves as she tried to force the end on me and...
Luna's eyes meet mine, the look in them as wild as can be. Tears are in the corner in her eyes when she sees me. While Luna may not be able to sense magic, the look in my eyes tells her everything, but without the blunt sensitivity that she presents. It is a quick, quiet look.
And then I focus on her right wing. One of the wingblades that she had been fighting so freely with was caught in a similar attack to the one that disabled her magic.
With my heart feeling like it's caught in my stomach and the weight of everything that could've gone right... and the knowledge that she's as trapped as I once was, without magic, no less...
Instantly, I let anger and cunning exist alongside whatever gamble I might have to make less of a tragedy with whatever desperate machinations I have left because...
I don't need to finish, everything's already they're. She's caught; we're surrounded.
I force myself to look at her wing, forced to be caught and dug into the ground with äerint-
Taking a sharp breath, I feel something poke my ribs as misery settles in, advancing once again. Absentmindedly, I give a sideways glance to the source: Fate bumping my ribs, the sheathed blade still bloodied... and so am I.
In the direction of Umber, I feel him start to work dark magic with that one remaining wing, but not against me - I was immune to it. To Luna, trapped unless she could suddenly 'pop' off a wing without consequences, from a foal's perspective. Or survive the blood loss and shock of her attempt to pull free - and to pull free is to lose her wing and rip it from the rest of her.
'Agonizing' would be the briefest way to put what that ordeal would be; I've severed the limbs off others myself. There are words for these things, and an individual with a mind as strong as my clever Luna has would be able to process everything in rich detail. She'd be damaged, and then what? There's no escape and no salvation.
I feel him ready to deal a deathly blow to her, the result of his magic would leave her in a state where she'd be better off dead... and he wouldn't stop there. He'd damage her in every way. I can see her writhing, knowing that something dark is in store - her instincts have always been good - but she can't read magic like I can. Every bit of Luna says that she doesn't think she'll make it.
I don't have any complex, expertly planned phenomena to get me out of this one. Without any scheme or other feat traditional for my esteemed self and the current circumstances all added together, there's very little I can do.
Yet... One last time I light my horn with all the crimson aura I can muster from my drained body, heavy with exhaustion and filled with endless stubbornness that outweighs the former.
Always, I have my pride.
I will always be selfish. I cannot stop being selfish, and will express it in any spiteful, cryptic, dangerous, and bizarre way I choose.
What's going to stop me?
In fact, I'm so selfish that in the brief window of time that Luna has to even acknowledge the wave of magic coming for her, where she has no escape or room to even attempt to maneuver around what would engulf her, I do the most selfish thing.
I jump between the two, closing the distance and letting everything collide.
The last thing I hear is her screaming my name.