From high above, the Everfree Forest was far less imposing and threatening in appearance than normal. Under the bright, late morning sun, the untamable expanse of wilderness seemed little different than any other woodland. It was rather beautiful in fact, the vivid green of the trees spreading out for miles below; it reminded Celestia of why it had once been the center of the fledgling state Equestria had grown from, and why her sister and herself had built their first true home here.
“I am afraid there is nothing of substance I can freely share,” Rashid’s voice cut into her musings, and the princess glanced sideways at the wizard floating along beside her in the golden light of her magic.
“Paradox?” Celestia asked simply.
“Some, yes,” the Gatekeeper answered, his eyes opening even as the sense of temporal energy swirling about him faded. “But mostly, the events to come are too uncertain. A major divergence of possibilities lies ahead of us, and it is mucking up any clarity of the events surrounding it.”
“Mucking up?” Celestia asked, a small smile curling the corners of her lips. “Is that the technical term for it where you come from?”
Rashid snorted. “Where I come from, time magic of any sort is forbidden under pain of death,” he stated casually. “Even when one’s position comes with a built in loop hole to circumvent the Law, it doesn’t come with an official manual.”
“Ah, so that would be your terminology for it then?” the Princess chuckled. Rashid was silent for a moment, his expression pensive.
“Sometimes, I feel that we with power take ourselves far too seriously,” he finally replied. “I think it is good to occasionally stop worrying so greatly about seeming dignified all the time.”
“Hence, ‘mucking up’?”
“Hence, leaping bodily upon one’s subjects while in disguise.”
“That was a necessity of the disguise in question,” Celestia replied with mock seriousness. "I was merely staying true to the role."
"And the necessity of said role?" Rashid inquired, earning a small sigh from the princess.
"I was uncertain about you," she admitted. "I wished to get a sense of who you were, and without my position or power influencing your behavior."
"So you wished to see how I might conduct myself around the common pony?" Rashid asked with suppressed amusement. "And you chose Pinkie Pie as your disguise?"
"Perhaps not so much the common pony," Celestia allowed. "But more how you would behave towards those with less power than yourself, especially towards one that could potentially come across as bothersome."
"So you were trying to provoke me?"
"A little," Celestia admitted shamelessly.
"Shall I then assume that, seeing as you didn't banish me from your realm, that I passed your little test?"
"By all mean, assume away."
Rashid chuckled deeply as she let some air spill from her wings. Her tracking spell indicated they were getting close, and she angled her flight path down into a lazy series of wide turns to help kill her speed and altitude, as well as help her get a sense of just where the spell was leading them. Beside her, Rashid watched the forest rising towards them with a casual ease. “I must say, you handle this far better than most earth bound individuals would.”
“Experience,” Rashid replied with a shrug. He waved a hand vaguely at the soft, golden glow encasing him. “Admittedly, this is new, but overall, it is not that far removed from a mode of transport I use with some regularity.” He glanced down at his feet, and then passed them at the ground below. “It is a little unnerving to have nothing beneath me, but what practical difference is there between being supported by magic directly, and being supported by a carpet that is itself being held up by magic?”
Celestia blinked, glancing at the Gatekeeper as if uncertain if he was being serious or not. “You enchanted a carpet to fly?”
Rashid took a deep, thoughtful breath. “Tradition I’m afraid,” he said ruefully. “Could be worse though.”
“Oh?” Celestia prompted.
“Indeed, in some parts of my world, broomsticks somehow became the item of choice. At least a carpet is comfortable.”
The Princess let out a somewhat disbelieving little laugh, earning a wry smile from Rashid. "Do I even dare to ask how you plan to reach the ground safely?"
"Perhaps it is best not to chance it," Rashid answered with overt seriousness. "Knowledge can be dangerous after all." He considered the approaching terrain below, and his tone became actually serious. "We are close then?"
"Less than a minute out, I would estimate," Celestia informed him. "Are you certain you'd rather not just accompany me?"
"I am," the Gatekeeper assured her. "Perhaps I have been spending too much time among the Sidhe, but I feel a bit of subterfuge, as well as holding a few options in reserve, is rarely detrimental when dealing with one's enemies."
"What about when dealing with one's allies?" the princess asked innocently.
"Even more so there," Rashid replied solemnly, and Celestia gave her head a small, amused shake.
"Are you ready?"
"As I will ever be," Rashid sighed. "Even experience only goes so far."
"Well then it is lucky you do not see the need to remain dignified at all times," Celestia said brightly. "Though I promise not to tell anypony if you scream like a little filly."
Rashid had just enough time to give the princess a flat, 'officially unamused' look before the glow of her magic winked out from around him. He dropped like a rock, his arms pulling in tight to his body even as his feet pointed down into the fall, turning his whole body into a living dart that shot down towards the forest. Despite his earlier assurances, and his obvious magical prowess, the princess still felt a niggling sense of worry as she watched him plummet, his fall not slowing in the slightest before he vanished below the trees.
Doing her best to put her concern aside, she refocused her attention on her tracking spell. Glancing down along the slope to where the spell seemed to be leading her, Celestia considered her approach. The destination was an extra thick clump of trees, growing so close that their branches were practically woven together. It would be dark beneath those limbs, even compared to the rest of the forest. A suitable if cliched location for a creature of the night to take refuge she supposed. It would be easiest, and safest, to find a suitable opening in the surrounding landscape to make her transition beneath the canopy, and then proceed cautiously on hoof the rest of the way.
Celestia however found that, at the moment, she was a bit lacking in her usual store of patience and practicality. While she didn't place any blame exactly on the wizard, she also couldn't deny that events in Equestria had taken something of a darker turn ever since Dresden had stumbled into her little corner of the universe. The return of the Nightmare, the reemergence of the Order Triune, the summoning of a greater outsider not just once, but twice, the calling up of demons and pony sacrifice. She and her sister had worked hard to spare this world from the horror of such things, to push that kind of darkness out and away, and she was very loath indeed to see it try to come creeping back in. Equestria may never be a perfect paradise, but whatever issues it might have, Celestia was determined to limit those issues to those caused by the natural population. Other worldly and inter-dimensional trouble makers were not welcome.
So instead of being perfectly sensible and cautious in her approach, Celestia chose to engage in an unusual bit of haste, topped with a helping of shock and awe. As she swooped down across the tree tops her horn blazed, and she flared her wings to kill her speed before she vanished in a flash of brilliant, pure light. She arrived from her teleport a bare inch from the forest floor, and she arrived in a wash of flame and a detonation of displaced air. Smoking and smoldering detritus was kicked into the air by the blast, and the sudden release of heat caused the branches above her to raise up and away, briefly letting in a few bare strands of sunlight that stabbed down into the shadowy darkness like blazing spears. The thunderous echo of her appearance raced through the trees, leaving behind it a deathly silence, though one that was quickly mirrored by her own as she beheld the terrain around her, and the creature lurking within the center of it.
The vampire sat within a field of destruction and ruin. It had ripped apart a circular section of the forest yards wide, and it had brought death upon anything and everything unlucky enough to be caught within. Plants had been uprooted and shredded. Small woodland creatures had been savagely crushed and ground underhoof into bright red stains. The trees within the space had been savaged, the bark flayed loose and great gouges of wood clawed out. Larger animals had been caught as they tried to flee, the earth churned up where they had tried to resist being hauled back to their deaths. Bone and flesh and gore-smeared fur were all that remained, nothing large enough to readily identify the beast it may have come from.
And that was just the first layer of the atrocity laid out before her. The destruction was not random, not merely the savage indulgence of violence for its own sake. It had been put to foul purpose. Twisted symbols had been carved into the ruined trees. The scattering of bones and entrails had been laid out in a system of deliberate asymmetrical patterns. Lines of blood flowed to join the various elements together, and the deaths of the animals that had been sacrificed marked out the circumference of a circle, the lingering echo of the moment the life was brutally ripped from them drifting upon the air. Two larger circles had been gouged into the earth around the ring of death, the dirt moist and reeking of blood and other life fluids.
It was a powerful summoning circle, one built upon death and destruction, one meant to be fueled by the darkest kinds of magic known.
The vampire had not risen at her appearance. Instead it merely turned its hooded head towards her from where it sat, its legs folded beneath it, its arms held out to either side. The long, slender fingers of its hands were bent and twisted into complex forms, the many joints holding impossibly precise angles. Shadows seemed to cloak the creature, unnaturally deep and dark even beneath the thick canopy of the forest.
It was not so dark as to spare Celestia the image of the vampire’s features. It’s face was exposed beneath the hood it wore, ragged strips of cloth hanging down around its neck. It was a corpse’s face that stared up at her, the thin flesh cracked like old, old parchment. Its lips were drawn so tightly that its filthy teeth shown even with its mouth shut. Its nose looked to have just rotten away, leaving a crusted, gaping hole behind. It had no eyes, merely dark, empty pits with grey bone showing around the edges of the sockets.
Celestia hesitated at the sight of the thing. There was just such an overwhelming sense of wrongness about the vampire. It had been a long time since she had last encountered something as foul and unspeakably blasphemous towards everything good and natural as the Dark One Always Behind had been, and she had not expected to encounter anything close to as unsettling so soon again. The encounters stirred up old memories, events and deeds that she had buried deep in her mind long ago. She had fought to push the necessity of such actions away from Equestria, and had put in the work of lifetimes to keep them away. She was not about to let this or any other horror get any purchase back into her world.
The vampire regarded her in silence for a long moment, and then its thin lips curved up in a leering mockery of a smile. It rose with a disturbing grace, the flowing motion of its body something alien to witness. It was not really that tall for a creature standing upright on just two legs, certainly nowhere near the towering height of the Gatekeeper. And yet the presence of the thing loomed behind and above it, a sense of something vast and terrible just out of sight, as if what stood before her was not the entirety of the creature.
“Well now…” the vampire spoke in a voice of sand and buzzing insects. “Not whom I was expecting. And yet I cannot say I find this a disappointment. Indeed, I was even now dwelling upon the question of what sort of power could have so poisoned this world to my kind. And surprise, the answer does simply pop into existence before me.”
“And what, I do wonder, shall you do now that you have your answer, vampire?” Celestia asked, her voice calm and level.
“Please, call me Dnias,” the dark creature said, the unpleasant leer twisting its mouth further to revel even more teeth. It paused expectantly, and only grinned wider as the princess remained silent. “Oh come now, if you can’t even pretend to be civil with me, how can you expect me to play along with answering your question?”
“…Celestia,” she replied after a long beat.
“See there, we can still play, for a bit longer,” Dnias rasped. “Perhaps we might even learn something before one of us lays dead upon the ground.”
“This need not end in violence,” she told it, despite a somewhat contrary desire to call down fire upon the creature and its blasphemous working, to burn everything until there was nothing left but smoke and ash and lingering memory. She held back, for the moment.
Dnias laughed, a sound of cracking glass and grinding rock. “That seems rather optimistic, Celestia. Rather childishly so in fact. If you came not to end me, then what is it you hope to accomplish?”
“I will see you gone from these lands, before you harm anypony else.”
“I have not harmed any…pony. At least, nothing more than a little scratch.”
“Yes, and that alone has kept my wrath from you thus far,” Celestia informed Dnias coldly as she started forward.
"Ohhhh, how very lucky for me," it crooned sarcastically, its weight shifting. Celestia's horn erupted into searing light, her wings snapping open, and the great canvas of her wingspan caught and reflected the glow of her magic, and of the weak, ambient sunlight she gathered around her, directing both light and magic towards the vampire.
Dnias hissed like a furious serpent, an arm coming up to shield its face. The cloak of shadows around it suddenly bubbled and sizzled like grease spilled into a fire, and then the darkness was violently ripped away from the vampire as Celestia poured forth more of her power and light. The creature staggered back, smoke beginning to seep from under its hood. She pressed forward, and the vampire gave ground, turning its face from her, hunching its shoulders protectively.
Celestia came upon the outermost ring of the circle as she pushed the vampire away, a flare of magic tossing aside several of the grisly spell components. A wing tip brushed against one of the flayed trees, and the wood smoked and smoldered, obscuring the symbols gouged within. There was a disharmonious shriek against her arcane senses as the outer circle came apart. That done, she let her power relax, her wings folding back against her body. The unnatural darkness rushed back in around Dnias, the creature’s body shuddering in a hundred tiny spasms. It turned its gaze upon her, and the sockets of its eyes were no longer empty. Twin fires of a deep, harsh violet hue burned within the skull-like face of the vampire, crackling lines of black shadow writhing within the flames.
“What do you want?” Dnias snapped, its voice rattling with a rapid, clicking sound.
“To know why you have come here,” Celestia demanded with as much authority as she knew how to use. Her voice rang through the air, power in the words making the trees sway and leaves fall. “To know if any others came with you, and if any allies of yours could follow you here.”
“And why should I answer any of that?” the vampire spat, shifting further from her. “What guarantee do I have that you will not destroy me afterwards?”
“You have none,” Celestia responded sternly, taking another stride forward. “But know that if you will not speak, I will not just destroy you. I will unmake you. I will crush your power, and bind you here in the Everfree with the very circle you have crafted. You will be trapped, unable to leave this little demesne of ruin you have made for yourself. How long do you suppose you will be able to hold your mind together as the thirst takes you? How long till you slip into madness at the torment? And how long will you continue on after that insanity is all you know?”
The spectral fire of Dnias’s gaze burned brighter, the flames contracting to searing pinpricks that were painful to look upon. It regarded her in absolute silence, in complete stillness for several long moments. The shadows around it writhed in furious motion, and then they too went still. And then, Dnias smiled.
“I see,” it crooned like a swarm of insects. The flames faded, leaving its sockets empty voids again. “You surprise me, to level such a threat of doom. It sits ill upon you, and yet I think you do mean the words. It would be a torment upon you as well, to engage in such tactics, even against one you revile as much as me. But you are willing to sacrifice much for this world, aren’t you?”
“Everything I am,” Celestia confirmed. “To protect those who are dear to me, everything.”
“How noble of you,” Dnias laughed. “How self-sacrificing. How sad, to have power such as yours, and shackle yourself to the pathetic, fleeting lives of the insignificant.”
Celestia’s hoof struck the ground with a detonation of sound, and the vampire flinched away. “I care not to listen to your judgments. Keep your twisted values to yourself, monster.” She pressed forward, nearing the next ring of the circle. “Answer me, before my patience runs out.”
“Very well then,” Dnias sighed, the dusted quality of its voice suddenly sounding bored and resigned. “You are entirely no fun Celestia. The answers you seek: For the sake of the game, no, and very much yes.”
The princess paused, somewhat taken aback by the shift of the vampire's tone. “What game?”
“The game Celestia,” Dnias replied, suppressed glee dancing just behind the words. “The only game that actually matters. The one that has been played since the beginning, the one played for…all.”
“That is not an answer,” Celestia said.
“Isn’t it?” the vampire asked. “Do you truly not know? I speak of the struggle for everything that is, that was, that will be. All.”
The princess paused as a chill settled over her. “You’re a pawn of the Outsiders,” she said softly, the words falling from her lips as the dreadful certainty of the statement took hold of her. There was too much coincidence in a creature of such darkness just happening upon Equestria, right on the heels of the Watcher of the Wall as he came to investigate the recent breaching of the universal barrier.
“An ally,” Dnias corrected.
“A fool,” Celestia shot back. “If you believe you will benefit in any way from that alliance.”
“Ah, but that is all part of the game Celestia,” Dnias smirked. “I know they will betray me, and they know I will betray them. But who shall make that move first?”
“What could you possibly gain that is worth it?”
“What else? Power.”
“Power such as that which you now seek will unmake you,” Celestia said. “It will cost you dearly to even try to learn, and if you can claim it, it will change you, and not for the better. Even one such as yourself can still fall lower. You would truly damn yourself even further than what you already have?”
“There is nothing I would not consider,” the creature confirmed. “I’ll take power however I can, so long as I think I can truly make it mine.” It took a careful step back, and it's foot settled upon the inner curve of the middle circle. Power surged, and the circle sprang to life just before Celestia reached it. It stuttered and sparked a bit, the damage she'd done to the outermost layer of the working obviously disrupting what remained. Dnias however showed itself to be no second rate spell caster as the circle stabilized under it's guiding will, the creature adapting rather impressively to such a disruptive alteration to its work.
"This will not protect you from me," Celestia informed the vampire impassively as she studied the magical barrier. It was not merely a wall against energy, but against flesh and thought as well. It was strongly made, even without an outer circle to bolster it. It was not however that much of an obstacle to her, not if she were to draw upon her full power. She hesitated though. Her strength was not what it had been, not since her injury from, and resulting battle with, the Dark One Always Behind. Recovering the degree of power she had spent in those two incidents was going to take the span of years still, and she wasn't exactly ready to throw another decade or two onto that time period without true necessity. So instead of just hammering her way through, she took a moment to truly feel out the circle, testing its design for weaknesses. Spending minutes now to avoid spending years later by finessing the problem instead of overpowering it was a far wiser tradeoff as far as she was concerned.
"Not for very long, no," Dnias agreed as it returned to the center of the circle, empowering the inner ring as it returning to its original sitting position. "But long enough."
"Long enough for what?" Celestia demanded, but the vampire's only response for a leering grin. Then its head dropped, and she could all but feel it dismiss her from its attentions as it focused on whatever spell it was crafting.
The princess paused again, her mind racing as she considered her options. Throwing her full power, such as it was at the moment, at the barrier could bring the thing down in seconds. It would also set her recovery back, and given the nature of the threats that had recently been invading Equestria, that could very well prove disastrous in the long term. Even with Luna returned and the Elements of Harmony awakened again, Celestia found it difficult to consider further draining her own power, even if only temporarily. She had gotten used to having that power, to holding it ready and knowing how few things out there in the universe and beyond could really stand up to her full might. That power had long been a comforting fallback, one she never really wanted to use, but just to have held at the ready. Not having her full strength available was disconcerting, especially during what was proving to be a time of unusual turmoil.
Her reluctance however was forced aside as Dnias uttered a sudden string of harsh, consonant heavy words, and an patch of air above the creature simply vanished into an inky void. The space wasn't merely dark. It was utterly empty, the complete blackness that indicated the absence of any substance or energy. Around the edge of the void, the air began to churn and boil with a dark, miasmic mist. Celestia didn't need to feel the vile, alien power that the circles were shielding her from to know what was happening. Dnias was calling to the Outsiders, was opening a portal by which to allow them access to Equestria, and by extension, the rest of reality. They were trying to use her world as a means to circumvent the Outer Gates, and if successful, they would bring suffering and death on a scale the likes of which ponykind had no words to adequately convey. No matter what it cost her, she could not allow it.
So ignoring her reservations, Celestia drew forth her true might, reaching down into the blazing wellspring of energy within her. Like the sun she commanded, in proper moderation, her power was that of life and vitality. It could promote growth and health, banish the cold and darkness, inspire hope and happiness. In excess though, it turned into a force of death and destruction on a terrible scale.
The grass beneath her hooves began to smolder as Celestia's horn glowed, brighter and brighter as she focused her efforts. She reached out slowly with her mind as the power continued to build, brushing across the barrier before her to seek out a weakness. She didn't have time to scour the entirety of the circle and locate the weakest link, but she took a few seconds to find a spot where the integrity was a bit lessened. The barrier flared into visibility as her power peaked, the pressure of so much energy pressing against the circle with considerable force. Her head lowered, and the tip of her horn touched the barrier.
The resulting explosion could be felt back in Ponyville.
Celestia's wings beat, blowing aside the worst of the dust and ash. The circle was gone...as was all vegetation for several yards...as was the ground for several feet. A blackened, smoking crater marred the earth beneath her, and the princess hovered forward until she could place her hooves back upon level ground. All around her the forest smoldered in burning patches, the rising smoke slowly eclipsing the sun that had been let in when the surroundings trees had been stripped of their leaves.
Before her, the final barrier of the circle remained, brilliant arcs of violet energy crackling across its surface as it stuttered. Within, Dnias was hunched over, the vampire's form quivering with effort, eyes once again blazing with unnatural light, the spectral fires burning so bright and hot that the dry flesh of its face blackened and peeled, revealing another half inch of greyed skull beneath.
Celestia found herself begrudgingly impressed. Holding together the remains of a circle that had been so badly damaged was no minor feat. If the vampire's decayed appearance wasn't proof enough of its age and experience, such a display of willpower and skill was. Its efforts, however impressive though, were futile. Already she could see the portal shrinking, the crippled circle no longer sufficient to the task of bridging the dimensions between Equestria and the Outside.
Still, no reason to take chances. Selecting a fallen stick from the ground, Celestia gave the broken branch a little flick with her magic, sending it tumbling across the plane of the final circle. There was a crackling snap against her senses, and then a sudden vile wash of foul energy as the barrier collapsed, letting loose the gathered power within. Despite the complete failure of the circle though, the portal did not immediately vanish. It quivered, a sharp, shrieking sensation against her awareness, it's presence a blight upon the very fabric of reality.
"Long enough," Dnias repeated darkly, the vampire's dry, rasping tone overlaid with another voice. A deep, smooth, frighteningly familiar voice, a voice that was unsettlingly ill suited to a creature as dark and vile as the one who spoke it. "Thrice now does my presence grace this insignificant world. Mark this occasion well, Pretender to Grace, for it shall be the beginning of your greatest failure."
"Normally I might be tempted to command thou to get thee behind me," Celestia all but growled as she gathered her power again. "Though it seems a bit redundant in your case."
Her eyes slid over to the portal. It was collapsing in on itself, but slowly, hesitantly. Somehow the Dark One Always Behind was holding it open from the other side, if only barely. Despite the impressive display of raw, mystic strength though, the effort was a failing one. Already the passage was too weak to permit a being with the power of a Walker to slip into the mortal realm. But, again, there was no point in taking chances, not with Outsiders. Her horn flared as she reached for the gateway.
Dnias exploded into motion, a streaking blur that crossed the scant distance between them faster than the blinking of an eye, faster than the beat of a hummingbird's wing. It was with only a bit of hyperbole to compare the vampire's strike to that of a lighting bolt.
It still wasn't fast enough. The raking fingers that had lunged for her throat instead found her horn as Celestia parried the strike. Horn and hand didn't quite meet as the respective power behind each flared in protest, the vampire's own dark power and the bolstering strength of the Walker too much of an antithesis to Celestia's own magic for the two to come into direct contact. The repulsion of the opposing energies caused them both to stagger for the briefest of instants.
During that instant, Celestia felt the portal pulse, felt the surge of power that came pouring out like the breakers before a ship. The Dark One Always Behind perhaps could not make use of the tentative passageway, but something was coming through. Before she could recover enough to refocus however the vampire was once again on the offensive, supernaturally swift and powerful blows streaking for her even as the princess deftly blocked and parried with horn, hoof, and magic. Dnias had no grace or elegance, the creature's assault one of pure brutal strength and animalistic savagery. The attack was unlikely to cause her any real harm before she managed to find and exploit an opening in the ruthless yet sloppy advance, but it was costing her precious seconds. It was stalling her, forcing her to waste time and focus on defending herself while whatever abomination from beyond tried to force its way through the portal. If she couldn't turn the exchange around very soon...
A pillar of concentrated force and entropy slammed into the vampire, blasting through its cloak of shadows, catching it in one shoulder and sending it hurtling bodily away. The magical strike tore at the creature's body, unmaking both flesh and power alike in a burst of heat and a spray of black, glittering dust. An arm went sailing in a high arc, the stump where it had connected to the vampire's shoulder leaving a trail of sparkling motes as the terrible, destructive magic continued to chew away at it. Dnias struck the ground a bare second later, the angle of the blow not imparting much upward momentum. The creature bounced in an eruption of dirt, leaves, and the glittering dust of its disintegrating flesh. It slammed up against a tree with a terrible cracking report of shattering bone. And yet it still managed to react, the claw like fingers on its remaining limb digging into the wood of the trunk and hauling itself aside just in time to avoid the second lance of spirit and water magic. The strike bored through the tree in a burst of splinters and dust, the trunk exploding like a melon beneath a sledgehammer.
Celestia's gaze flickered over towards the Gatekeeper as he strode forward from concealment, the veil around him dropping away as he focused his will and magic upon his offensive. He didn't glance at her, or the portal, his attention wholly upon the vampire. He walked with a deliberate, unhurried pace, his expression distant and remote, his staff held loose in one, long fingered hand, his other held up before him as if reaching out to part a curtain. His false eye blazed, moving independently of his living eye, and Celestia realized with some amazement that he was watching both what was, and what might be, his mind focused both on the now and upon the most immediate probabilities. While it wasn't exactly the first time she'd seen such use of temporal magic, seeing it employed by a mortal was something new and unheard of.
Fascinating though the spectacle was, it was just one more thing she did not have time for. She tore her gaze away even as Rashid swung his staff, fingers twirling the slender shaft of wood to catch the cloud of poisonous vapor that Dnias had sent racing towards the Gatekeeper in streams of twisting wind. The wizard's parry caught up the gas as if the cloud was a bolt of cloth, casting it aside. Putting the fight out of mind and trusting Rashid to keep Dnias busy for the time being, Celestia brought her attention back upon the portal, just as the opening swelled almost like a living thing, and with a sickening, heaving motion, disgorged a nightmarish affront to nature upon the earth.
She swore, under her breath, but still the princess briefly indulged in a few choice words that would have shocked any who knew her that she even was aware of such language. As she verbally vented her frustration Celestia slashed her horn at the portal, her magic lashing out to disrupt the construct. There was the briefest sense of resistance from the other side as the Dark One Always Behind strained to hold the gateway open, but it was a token gesture at that point. The energy requirements for such a working fell largely, rather laughably so, on the mortal side of reality. It would have taken power several orders of magnitude greater than her own to have resisted her efforts to close the portal from the Outside. With another discordant shriek of protesting energy, the abominable passage ceased to be.
Unfortunately the same could not be said for the...thing...that had crossed over. It's body was a long, tapering cylinder possessing five pointed, radial symmetry. It had a mass of short, thick tentacles instead of feet at the narrow base of its body. Ten impossible long and slender arms curved up from the wide apex of its torso, before bending back down without any discernible joint. It's wide, spidery hands reached all the way to the ground, and seemed to provide as much support and potential locomotion as the writhing mass of tendrils. It was covered in a dull, greyish brown carapace, with patches of bristling, quill like protrusions. Feathery antenna stretched up from between the mass of limbs where a head ought to go.
The outsider was also enormous. It was a good four times taller than Celestia, the slenderness of its build belying a bulk that likely outweighed the princess at least six times over. The span of its limbs would have been sufficient to wrap around a small cottage, and the jagged claws tipping its fingers were more than long enough to reach even the deepest of vital organs. And yet for all that size, it moved with a grace and swiftness no natural creature could have possessed, an unsettling and dangerously captivating beauty held within the impossibly fluid motion of its limbs, as if each arm moved with its own perfect awareness.
There was an explosion somewhere off to one side as the Gatekeeper and Dnias continued to battle, but Celestia gave the clash only the tiniest fraction of her attention as she regarded the alien being before her. She could feel its own attention upon her, seething with malicious intent and an unquenchable hatred for everything she was. Dark power and purpose flowed through the creature, sustaining it as blood might any animal of the natural world.
"You have no place here," Celestia informed the abomination coldly, her power gathering. "Your time in this realm shall be brief."
Before she could carry out the promise though, the abomination moved, arms and tentacles pulling it in five separate directions, and with a sickening ripping sound, the thing tore itself apart. It took Celestia a stunned moment to realize that the act of doing so had not killed the creature, as it continued to move, all five parts now containing a pair of arms and an equal portion of tendrils. The individual sections of the abomination spread out in a shallow arc before her, and then as one, they turned to bring the torn, inner halves of their bodies towards her.
Faces. Countless faces stared out at her from those inner layers, flesh the pale greys and reds and blues of internal organs. The faces contorted and writhed in agony, pressing out against the dripping wet flesh as if trying to struggle free, only to be pulled back and vanish into the masses. The faces belonged to all manner of creatures, representatives of ponykind and humanity mixed in with things she could only guess at. They all screamed with soundless voices as they struggled and thrashed in desperate and hopeless effort.
Then, as one, the segments of the outsider pounced...