The only thing burning brighter than Rainbow Dash was her eyes. She tilted her face towards the heavens, lighting up the whole Machine World with her body as the source of the pedestal's intense flame. After several deep breaths, her ruby lightning pendant pulsed in sequence with her gaze, and out from the conflagration—a smile emerged.
"Yeah..." Something deeper than thunder, brighter than gold "That's more like it."
Her wings spread.
Tongues of fire fountained outward, plunging into opposite ends of the chasm beyond the bridge. The machines stirred once again, slowly and liquidly this time, and not at the maddening pace as the enflamed book had forced them to earlier.
Rainbow's spine straightened out—as did the rest of her body—and she gave the pedestal beneath her a light push with her hooves, as if diving off the edge of a pool. Instead, she drifted up, slowly at first, then accelerated with each pulsing second, carrying the intense brightness of the Machine World's heart along with her.
Soon, she was zooming skyward, clearing the edges of the canyon, piercing her way towards the overcast heavens beyond as everything beneath her came alive with harmonic animation.
As Zaid and Kera glided their way towards the southern mountain range, a majestic clap of thunder boomed behind them. Zaid had to re-grip the controls as Kera shrieked and clutched the stallion hard. Both spun to gaze at the brightening sky.
A soaring equine shape shot its way up out of the earth, trailing with prismatic beams of light.
"Peaches 'n cream..." Zaid stammered.
Kera watched, jaw drop. And soon that dropped jaw formed a smile.
Several ponies gasped.
"Look!" Zetta exlaimed, pointing. Basso and the others watched in astonished silence.
On board the Jury, several ponies' faces turned to look. Floydien spat something unintelligible, but nopony had the strength or wit to respond.
Props leaned against the railing, her blue eyes sparkling as she tilted her head up, up, and up to follow the trail.
"What... what is it?" Pilate leaned against Belle, gritting his teeth. "What's happening now, for Spark's sake?!"
"It's..." Belle stammered, nuzzling him tightly as she watched "It's Rainbow..."
"Rainbow?!" Pilate gasped. "What's she doing?"
Belle gulped, smiling tearfully. "Being beautiful..."
"Aaaaack!" Props suddenly shrieked.
Everypony turned their heads once more, following the mechanic's outstretched hoof.
A giant, gangly beast had just reached the mouth of the ravine...
...and she leaned forward in her diseased foreclaws, squinting painfully at the streaming energy shooting over her snout.
"No!" Nevlamas hissed. She spread her decrepit leather wings, the fleshy web dissolving even as it stretched before the harmonic resonance. "This is not how it ends!"
Defying all odds, the Dark Divine flapped its massive wings and ascended, skimming the vertical trail of the rainbow streams, chasing after the luminescent pegasus.
"Harmony is dead!" Nevlamas shrieked, its twin jaws lashing closer and closer after Rainbow's fiery tale. "All must be reborn! In chaossssskkkt!" Her eyes flickered as she summoned a huge breath of aquamarine wrath from her burning lungs. "Only in darknesssssskkt—will there be a sssparkkk!"
Rainbow suddenly accelerated. Milliseconds later, the sky exploded with spreading bands of prismatic glory. Nevlamas howled in pain, a good half of her scales dissolving away from the impact of the sonic rainboom. All of her remaining shards of chaos crystals exploded like tumorous postules across her flesh, and she flew back from the blast in a limp plunge.
Rainbow Dash kept ascending, kept accelerating. The sky resounded with thunderous crash after thunderous crash as a second... a third... and a fourth sonic rainboom erupted across the heavens. With each harmonic band shot towards every horizon within view, the clouds cleared up, dissolving to reveal an ocean-blue sky of early-morning tranquility above the ravaged hellscape.
The first to see it was Khao.
The leader of the Herald stirred in her cockpit, groaning with the last vestiges of her anguish. Her teary eyes squeezed open, and she saw Rainbow's figure like a distant torch, dissipating at the end of her brilliant, rainbow arch. As the pegasus disappeared, her body was replaced by a beam of light from the east, as the morning sunrise—now unimpeded—gently kissed the tops of the battlements, chasing the smog and smoldering traces of war away.
Khao gasped, her burnt cheeks taking a last rosy hue beneath filmy eyes.
"So... so majestic... angelic..."
She sobbed. She smiled. She exhaled.
"I-I never knew..." Her grin faded. "...Austraeoh."
A breath, a quiver, and she drifted off in peace.
Ten seconds later, the shockwave of Rainbow's prismatic explosion soared over her, blowing at the dead mare's limp mane.
This same shockwave rippled over the bloodied fields, over the smashed tents and storehouses of Seclorum's encampment, past the huddled bodies of Josho and Eagle Eye, and finally made its way towards the trenches where so many dead and living had frozen in mid-combat.
Every Ledomaritan and Xonan soldier had frozen dead in their tracks, their shocked expressions locked on the light-show erupting in the atmosphere overhead. With the overcast sky cleared, uninterrupted daylight shimmered down on every pony—tattooed and otherwise. Every grisly detail of the bloody melee lingered before open sight, with blood and sinew laid bare before quivering eyesight.
At last, the shockwave washed over the flinching soldiers, covering them with an otherworldly fabric of spectral energy, harmonic and cleansing. They shuddered, shivering in place before looking at one another.
Only... it was then that they realized that several sets of eyes were different. Voices murmured in shock—both Ledomaritan and Xonan—as, in every few hundred paces, there stood a stranger in their midst.
Equines with black carapaces stood, hunched over, sporting manarfiles and tasers on the Ledomaritans side... or scimitars and serpentine armor on the Xonan side. These creatures wheezed and whimpered, gazing at the unchanged ponies with uncontrollable shivers. Then, one after another, they flitted skyward on gossamer wings, dropping their various sets of weapon and armor.
The soldiers left standing gasped in shock. It wasn't until several seconds had passed before a random Ledomaritan decided to do something about it, and started taking pot-shots at the creatures as they flew away. Soon, several Xonans joined the volley, firing skyward with their crossbolts.
Two creatures were hit, their shells rupturing and spilling green slime across the trenches. They fell to the mud, writhing in agony, before turning stiff with porous hooves curled towards their chests. The rest of the monsters flew off, forming a flock of at least two dozen—soaring due east without stopping.
As they disappeared into the sunlight, the Ledomaritans and Xonans stood in stunned silence, catching their breaths. Gradually, they looked blankly at one another, not talking, not moving.
And not fighting...