//------------------------------// // Chapter Three, part Two: She Slays the Most Dangerous Demon In The World // Story: She Slays // by Bandy //------------------------------// Cozy Glow always thought that, after she gained the power to destroy the world and took her place as the world’s unquestioned monarch, she would be immortalized in stone. This was not what she had in mind. With the great battle between herself and Twilight Sparkle complete, Cozy Glow had time to reflect from her new prison of stone. The immobility of her body combined with her conscious mind quickly made her spiral into consecutive panic attacks. She felt her heart not beat, her lungs not move. She felt like ancient wine in a jar, all the heartening alcohol turned to poison, all the meaningful moving parts reduced to solids, never to be drunk. And of course she had to be trapped next to her idiot co-conspirators. Damn Grogar and his bell. That night, she stared down the alicorn in the stars. It appeared without warning, The sun set, and the stars came out, and there it was. No fanfare. No great cataclysm. It simply hung there in the sky, its three-eyed face staring down at her in inscrutable silence. A tense staredown ensued. The demon, with its eyes made of stars, couldn’t blink. Cozy Glow, frozen in stone, couldn’t blink either. Their staredown could have lasted forever. The star demon finally broke the silence. It flapped its wings and floated down to earth. It was smaller than the other two demons—perhaps twice as tall as Celestia. Still religiously impressive. Its body shimmered with rippling stars and miniature galaxies like an ursa. The space in between glowed like twilight. Its voice was a void, a release of energy in a vacuum. Black holes colliding in deep space. “I hope you’re satisfied.” Cozy Glow really wished her mouth wasn’t frozen. “After everything you’ve done, I see no reason to trust you with forgiveness. You had so many opportunities to see the error of your ways. You failed so many times.” It marched around her in a slow circle. “Many mortals spend their whole lives wallowing in failure. They only see the light at the last moment. I celebrate those mortals. Even at the brink of death, their hearts remain open to change. To love.” It stopped somewhere behind her where Cozy Glow couldn’t see. It put its lips to her stone ear and whispered, “I don’t think you’re one of them.” A scream rose up from the depth of Cozy Glow’s chest—except it didn’t. She was stone all the way through. Nothing vibrated. Nothing moved. Only her mind was free to rage. “I pity you,” the demon said. “You are a rat in a sticky trap. You twist and turn and all you succeed in doing is burrowing deeper into the glue. You lack perspective. If you had that, you might begin to understand.” Cozy Glow wanted to say, “Tell that to your friends I ate, weirdo.” But she couldn’t. “Before I carry out my judgment, I would like to show you what mercy feels like. You don’t deserve it, but that’s not the point.” The demon’s ethereal horn flared to life. Glimmering white magic enrobed Cozy Glow. Warmth spread through her body. Cozy Glow’s mind recoiled, overcome with shock and adrenaline. She was so cold. She hadn’t even realized it until now. She was desperately, hopelessly cold, and the alicorn demon’s magic was the sole source of warmth in this entire frozen wasteland of a world. For once, she was glad she was encased in stone. She would have wrapped herself around the star demon’s leg and wept if she could move. The magic worked its way through her body, restarting her heart and inflating her lungs. The stone of her face turned back into skin. Her dry eyes blinked. The scream trapped in her lungs since she’d been turned to stone came out in a choked rasp. The magic releasing her from her prison stopped at her neck. She could move her head a little. That was it. Cozy Glow sucked in a breath of fresh air. The feeling sent a jolt of alarm through her brain. Part of her was moving, but part of her couldn’t. The next breath hitched in her throat. Adrenaline flooded her brain. I’m paralyzed, she thought, and she knew it wasn’t true, but the part of her brain that operated on instinct could feel her face and nothing else. The body assumed injury. The panic worsened. Panic bloomed like a poisonous flower. Cozy Glow snarled at the alicorn demon. “I’ll eat you.” Her words slurred into sobs. “I’m a god. I’m a god. I’m—” “So you say.” The star demon cut off its magic. The cold again swept over Cozy Glow, a desperate, lonely chill. She tried to scream, but she was already stone. From the depths of shadow beneath her wings, the star demon pulled a knife. No. Cozy Glow raged against the magic binding her in place. But the spell held true. All she could do was watch as the star demon stepped in front of her and gripped the blade in one hoof. Its grip glowed with stardust. The tip shimmered with primordial radiation. “You are no god, Cozy Glow.” The demon stepped forward. “You are a demon. Your lust for power has plagued this world for too long. If you are not stopped, more will die. For this, I will kill you myself.” Cozy Glow would have tensed if she could have. Her frozen muscles screamed to move. Fight. Anything. But she was trapped, a target nailed to a board. She didn’t stand a chance. The star demon drove the stardust dagger into Cozy Glow’s heart. The power of the blade shattered the imprisonment spell. Stone snapped back to skin. Flesh reformed around the dagger. The stone bodies of her idiot co-conspirators shattered into dust. She inhaled a lungful of it and choked. Cozy Glow collapsed. She lifted her head up to look at the knife protruding from her chest. The blood came a second later, beading around the blade. “You... can’t...” Cozy Glow couldn’t speak. Some unseen force was constricting her chest. Bubbles formed where the tip of the dagger met skin. She forced herself to breathe, but all she could manage was a wheeze. The dagger burned inside her. Her insides were on fire. “No,” she struggled to say. “I’m a god.” The star demon took a step towards her. Cozy Glow scrambled away. She tried to stand, but her legs couldn’t hold weight. The impact jostled the blade and sent a fresh wave of pain ripping through her. She cried out. “I didn’t want this,” the star demon said in an unwavering voice. “I’m sorry.” A surge of rage filled Cozy Glow’s belly with fire. She dragged herself to her hooves and threw a haymaker at the star demon. Her hoof passed right through its snout like it wasn’t even there. Stars shimmered, dispersed, and reformed. The momentum of the punch sent Cozy Glow toppling over. She landed hard. Tears leapt from her eyes. Her vision closed to a pinpoint. She tried to grab the knife, but her hoof passed through that too. Must be made of magic, she thought to herself. Tough luck. Her breathing started to slow. Her limbs trembled. The light faded. Her magic slipped away like vapor. So close. She— Wait. Magic. Of course. “Mom.” Cozy Glow summoned the loudest voice she could muster. “Mom,” she said again. She hacked out a clot of blood and swooned. “Help me. Mom. Help.” The star demon flinched. Yes. Her face twisted in a mad grimace. “Mommy,” she cried out, writhing on the ground, kicking up dirt. She felt more blood in her mouth and spat it out. It rolled down her chin and painted her chest, mingling with the blood from the knife wound. Two tones of red mingled on her pale fur. “Moooom.” The alicorn turned away. Cozy Glow struck. She snapped her wings upward with enough force to cavitate the air. Magic formed on her wingtips. She drew the protection rune in the air above her, then pumped her wings down and launched herself through it. A jolt of electricity coursed through her. Her outline glowed pale blue. She touched the blade. her hoof didn’t go through it—but that was where the good news ended. The stardust was alive with radioactive energy and hotter than the surface of the sun. Clumps of fur sloughed off where she touched it. No time for hesitation. The star demon was turning around, alerted by the crack of Cozy Glow’s wings. Cozy Glow bared her teeth and gripped the stardust blade. Skin sizzled. She yanked hard, trying to keep the blade straight so as not to further damage her heart. The blade started to slide out, bit by agonizing bit. A growl morphed into a scream. Electricity leapt from the blade and scarred her arms and face. She gripped the blade with her other front hoof. The smell of burning fur invaded her nose. Blood spurted across her face in time with her frantic heartbeats. She tasted it and gagged. So close. One more pull and it would be free. So close— The blade came free. She would have dropped it, had her skin not become partially-welded to the hilt. A fountain of blood erupted from the gaping hole in her chest. Patches of her fur were on fire, but a terrible creeping coldness crept up her legs. Her vision closed in. She had seconds left to live. With a furious roar like an alicorn’s royal voice, Cozy Glow pumped her wings and lunged with the knife outstretched in front of her, aiming straight for the star demon’s third eye. Her aim was true. The eye—a marble-sized star—exploded in a blinding supernova. Dozens of orbiting planets flew off in every direction, destined for a slow dark death in the void. The star demon let out a piercing metal-on-metal shriek. Its remaining two star eyes exploded, sloughing off their outer layers in brilliant waves of color before fading to dim cores. It didn’t fall so much as it fell apart. Stars cascaded across the ground, sending up little plumes of smoke where their heat lit the grass on fire. Cozy Glow had no time to waste. She pounced on the body. Already her vision was fading. Blood still poured from her chest. Her victory would mean nothing if she didn’t get the demon’s heart. She located the brightest star in the puddle of galaxies that used to be its chest, a pulsar spinning at the rate of a pony heartbeat. More blood leaked from Cozy Glow’s mouth. She coughed and couldn’t get her breath back. Her thoughts grew sluggish. The light was going out. Now or never. She sank her teeth into its still-pulsing heart. The star let out a scream like molten glass being quenched in water. An explosion of energy sent shockwaves through Cozy Glow’s body. One molar exploded with a dry pop. Then another. The top layer of skin sloughed off her upper palate. Her tongue was cauterized instantly. A new sound filled the air: magic, and a lot of it. Cozy Glow looked down and saw her wounds knitting themselves shut. Muscles reached out like so many vines snaking up a fence, searching for purchase, finding bones, reknotting, intertwining. She sucked in a gasp of air and felt her lung recompressing. A glorious roar escaped her. Lightning arced from her wingtips. Her mane burned. Her heart beat furiously in her chest, harder and faster than it ever had before. The feeling of life filled her. She flung herself into the air. “I’m a god!” she cried in a voice that was both hers and the star demon’s. “I’m a god!” She pointed a hoof at a nearby outcropping of rock. Lightning leapt from her hooftip. The rock vanished into a cloud of dust. She flapped her wings and broke the sound barrier. It was practically teleporting. One second, she was in the Canterlot sculpture garden. The next, she was half a mile above the city. She steadied her breathing. Lightning was good. Powerful wings were sexy. But neither of those things were what she craved. The power to control the world. She fought for it. She killed for it. She nearly died for it. Now it was hers. Except, it wasn’t. Her heart was beating out of her chest. Her wingtips bristled with energy. Every cell felt alive, immortal, free. But she was still the came Cozy Glow as before. More powerful, yes. But she’d felt the power of an alicorn when she was being sealed in stone. That power was the weight of a galaxy. This was a pinprick of light in comparison. Cozy Glow grew angry. She lashed out at nothing. Miles below her, the top of mount Canter crumbled. A howl of rage welled up inside her. It traveled all the way around the world and echoed from behind her. This wasn’t enough power. Where was the power? She wasn’t a god. Not yet. She needed to go further. Yes. Her lips parted, revealing pointed predator’s teeth. More. She needed more. She thought back to the Secretkeeper’s proverb: Only then will your heart be transubstantiated into that which ends the world. She laughed. Forests bent and swayed in the wind. Of course. The proverb was literal. Her heart was the key. Her heart. She put her hoof to her chest. Doubt flashed through her mind. But she couldn’t give in. Not now. She had already come so far. What was one more step? She flapped her wings once and shot down to where the star demon’s body lay. Her landing nearly dislodged Canterlot from its foundations. Canterlot Castle crumbled around her. A scream went up throughout the city. The sound made Cozy Glow smile. Those were her future vassals. Her pawns. Her playthings. She picked up the star knife from the dirt. Its hilt no longer burned her. She flipped it around, set the blade just beneath the left side of her rib cage, and pushed. The blade slipped without resistance. She drew it partway across her sternum. Again there was no resistance—but this time there was blood. Torrents of it. It gushed from her like a fountain in the great garden. A tide of it swept over the stones. It pooled, rising past her hocks. Her blood was infinite, she realized. She was infinite. She was a god. She stuck her arm into her chest cavity and gripped her own heart. The heart of a living god. “Power!” she cried. “Give me power!” She wrenched out her own heart and devoured it.