//------------------------------// // This Threat is Real // Story: And Hell Will Follow Me // by Vedavyasa //------------------------------// By the time Twilight was half way to the trees, the group of husks had met her, splitting the silence of the night with hideous, otherworldly shrieks and the sounds of battle. A small part of her desperately hoped that her friends would heed her words and run, but the rest of her mind was consumed entirely by keeping track of three separate targets, all of them showcasing speed and strength that nearly matched her own. By the time she realised this, she'd already taken a hoof across the face that loosened her teeth in their sockets and nearly lost a leg to one of the creature's vicious bites. Rushing backwards with a slurred blasphemy, she desperately worked to keep herself between the husks and her friends, and with a quick burst of telekinesis snatched up a large stick and broke it in half. Now armed, her retreat turned in to an attack as she stood implacably against the three husks, the two halves of her stick beating back a husk each even as she fought the third with tooth and hoof. The husk to her left seemed to be the slowest and smallest, so she focused as much as she could on it, keeping track of its movements and raining relentless blows in to its face with the half of a staff she had delegated and occasionally lashing out with a burst of fire or force if she found herself pointed the correct direction. The husk in front of her was a behemoth of a thing, easily twice her size and possessed of a raw, brutal strength that rendered her own prodigious physical power moot. This one she barely even bothered attacking, only being aggressive enough to maintain its attention. The last husk was a pegasus, and this presented a problem. No matter how hard she tried, she could not keep it on the ground without occasionally directing all of her focus toward it, and every time she was forced to ignore the other two, the small one gained ground on her friends, forcing her to move further back from the cover of the trees, and the giant she was facing hammered her with blows that sent shocks of throbbing agony all through her body, each one threatening an injury serious enough to end the fight. A thought jumped unbidden to her mind, and seeing nothing to lose, Twilight acted on it. With a shout, she reared and slammed her front hooves down against the ground, channelling her magic through the blow and releasing a massive wave of force that distorted the air and sent all three husks tumbling several yards backwards. Capitalising on this brief opportunity, she launched herself towards the pegasus, and before it could right itself in the air she latched her teeth around the back of its neck and with a wrench of her head severed its spine. The thing crumpled as it hit the ground, and though its eyes continued to track her, it was too crippled to so much as whimper. That threat dealt with, Twilight bounced back to stand between the behemoth and the weakling, drawing the two halves of her improvised staff together in front of her before whirling it to her side. “Come on,” she growled at them as she spat out a small chunk of the pegasus' neck, “you're not scared of one little filly are you?” The reaction was immediate, both husks darting in with murder in their lifeless eyes. The small one was closer, so she cracked the staff savagely against its head to stun it for a moment, but before she could turn back towards the gargantuan beast she'd meant to provoke, it slammed against her side with terrible force and bowled her off her hooves with ease. Throwing herself through space with a thought before she even hit the ground, she apparated with a flash of light directly behind the behemoth and with a yell brought her staff down across its head like a bat. With a small snapping sound, the staff broke, and Twilight glared at the splintered wood for a split instant. Before she could recover from that moment of shock, the smaller of the husks was on her, its teeth sinking deeply in to the flesh of her unprotected back. With a shocked howl, Twilight jerked away, and she left a piece of herself behind. Facing that husk now, she called a torrent of white-hot fire fuelled by her anger and drowned the beast in it, a visceral satisfaction pouring through her as she watched it burn to ash. She neglected, however, to notice the behemoth until its hoof drove in to her ribs like a maul, easily shattering the fragile bones. Hissing and noticing the coppery tang of her own blood in her throat, Twilight tried to bounce away, but her injuries slowed her and she couldn't escape the hail of monstrous blows that drove her to the ground, where the blows continued as Twilight absently attempted to tally her injuries to distract herself from the pain even as she formulated a plan. Teleporting again, this time Twilight didn't bother to move, she simply rotated herself and materialised on her back, accepted a sledgehammer blow to her face as the price she had to pay to end the fight, and grimly latched on to the hoof and allowed herself to be pulled upwards before wrapping all four of her legs around the husk's body and teleporting again. She materialised some two hundred feet above the ground, and now the husk was beneath her. With a defiant, feral smile, she levered a leg against the thrashing husks throat as they began to fall, and an interminable moment later she hit the unforgiving ground and gladly accepted the mercy of unconsciousness, her last sight the shattered remnants of the behemoths head. When Twilight Sparkle next opened her eyes, she was faced not with grass and dirt but the strange, misty emptiness that made up the ground of The Void. “Bravely done,” she heard an echoing bass voice say as she stood, only mildly surprised at the lack of pain she felt. “Did I survive it?” she asked. “You will wake again,” The Keeper assured her. “Your battles have hardly begun, you will not yet be permitted to die.” “Permitted,” Twilight muttered. “I feel like a guard dog.” “Self pity is beneath you,” The Keeper admonished. “Do you know what it is you fought tonight?” Twilight blinked at the rapid change in the conversation. “Yes,” she answered, “they were husks.” “You know their name, do you know what they are?” “Very annoying,” Twilight answered, deadpan. “A husk can only be created by a necromancer,” The Keeper informed her, “where you find one, the other is lurking.” “There's a necromancer in the Everfree?” Twilight asked, her voice sharpening. “There was a necromancer following your friends,” The Keeper told her, sending a bolt of icy fear through the unicorn's stomach. “You need to wake me up,” she said urgently. “I've got to help them!” “In your current state, you would be unable,” The Keeper calmly told her. “Calm your mind, they will not be harmed.” Twilight narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “That doesn't fit with everything I know about necromancers. Why wouldn't he attack them?” “He did,” The Keeper said, his voice hard and cold. “I killed him. You will be needed whole and sane for the war to come, not weeping in a ditch over lost loved ones.” Twilight let out a relieved breath. “You could have told me that first!” “I did. I told you he was following them.” “Has anypony ever told you that you can be a real pain in the flank?” Twilight asked, but The Keeper didn't react. “So what am I here for this time?” “I wished to ask you why you fought as you did,” The Keeper replied. “You are powerful and intelligent, yet you fight like a beast. Three mindless corpses were nearly your end. Why?” “I haven't exactly had a few spare millennia to train, you know,” Twilight answered, vaguely offended. “I think I did pretty good, all things considered. I'm going to wake up, they won't, what else do you want?” “I want a great many things, Twilight Sparkle, but for tonight let us just say I desire you to train harder. I will not always be able to help you. Would you be able to survive and function with the knowledge that your friends had died because you failed to properly analyse a situation before acting? That is what would have been, if I had not intervened.” That sobered Twilight. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I should be a little more grateful.” “Your gratitude is not required,” The Keeper said, his voice stern. “I did not act for your joy, I acted for the preservation of your realm. What is required is your understanding, you must become the warrior you have the potential to be.” Twilight tilted her head at the passion in The Keeper's voice, clashing against his stoic posture. “What's your stake in this?” she asked. “You're not telling me something here.” The Keeper's eye's flashed in anger, and the mist of The Void recoiled from him, but it faded quickly. “It is not your place to question my motivations,” he said, his voice once again dead. “The time may come when I reveal them to you, but it will be a time of my choosing, and mine alone.” “Okay,” Twilight said quietly. “Touchy subject, got it. Change of subject; how badly am I hurt?” “Broken bones, damaged organs, a concussion, internal bleeding,” The Keeper listed in a monotone. Twilight cringed. “I'm not going to like waking up, am I?” “No,” The Keeper said as he faded from her vision, “But you will endure. Farewell, Twilight Sparkle. We will speak again soon.” Pain. All of Twilight's world was pain. Lying in her bed, she screamed for help. ”Celestia! Luna!” “Hush, little one,” a familiar, motherly voice told her. “We're here.” Twilight stayed perfectly still and gasped for breath, trying desperately to ignore the symphony of agony from her body. Her eyes darted around, spying the morning sun through her window and both the Princesses beside her bed, horns alight with magic and frowns of concentration on their faces. “Can you do anything for the pain?” she managed to gasp, and Luna nodded fractionally. Slowly, the pain faded away, and she felt her mind cloud with a euphoric warmth. Her breath steadying, she almost giggled at the weightless feeling in her limbs before sighing in relief. “You can stop now,” she said after a few minutes of luxuriating in the feeling, her voice distracted and mellow. “I'll live. The Keeper said so.” “Pardon my scepticism,” Celestia muttered, but both Princesses relaxed and allowed the spells they had been working to fade. “You worried us, my faithful student,” Celestia began again. “When we found you, you were barely alive. What hurt you so badly? Husks aren't that strong.” “I may have possibly teleported one of them a few hundred feet in the air and ridden him down,” Twilight said in her dreamy voice. Luna winced. “Whatever possessed you to do that?” the Diarch asked, and Twilight giggled sheepishly. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” “It was insanity,” Luna said, speaking like she would to a small foal. “And it worked,” Twilight insisted, gesturing with a hoof and not noticing how her leg dangled loose and limp past the knee. Luna shook her head and walked out of the room, quietly muttering angry curses and gesticulating wildly at nothing as she went, and Celestia favoured the unicorn with a small, tight smile. “She's terrified of losing you, you know,” she said, quiet. “I've rarely seen her as distraught as she is when you're hurt. Perhaps you should consider that, next time?” “She worries too much,” Twilight giggled, and Celestia sighed. “So, I guess the necromancer's really are back?” Twilight asked. “It appears so,” Celestia answered. “I've certainly never seen a husk without a necromancer, so one must be skulking about the Everfree.” “Paste tense, was skulking,” Twilight said absently. “You killed it?” Celestia asked, surprised. “Keeper,” Twilight answered. Celestia paled, then nodded. “You're scared of him,” Twilight said, tilting her head as much as she was able. “I am,” Celestia admitted. “He is a horrifying figure, if he allows himself to indulge his wrath.” “So are you,” Twilight pointed out. “I mean, you're The Unconquered Sun in the gryphon lands. The zebra's call you The Blinding Light. Even the dragon's are afraid of you, they call you The Deceiver.” Celestia fidgeted uncomfortably. “I didn't choose those titles,” she began, and Twilight interrupted. “No, you earned them,” she said as forcefully as she could manage. “You did something that frightened them so badly they made legends from the history. What was it?” Celestia frowned. “I prefer not to think of it,” she said. “It's best forgotten. Now, you should rest until you're recovered.” “No,” Twilight said weakly, but Celestia's horn ignited and she felt sleep creeping in on the edges of her mind. “Sleep, my faithful student,” she heard her mentor say as she faded, “and let the past remain the past.” When Twilight woke up, night had fallen again, and Luna had returned to her room. She carefully tested her joints, and while they were stiff and ached terribly, there was none of the grinding agony she associated with a broken bone. She crawled out of bed, assisted by Luna, and slowly popped and cracked her joints until they moved smoothly, then she groaned and rubbed her head. “I feel like I mined my way through a mountain with my horn,” she muttered. “I have no doubt,” Luna told her with a smile. “You should still be in bed, it will be at least two days before you're fully recovered.” “I can walk,” Twilight said stubbornly, “and I spend way too much time asleep these days.” Luna barked out a laugh. “If that is your choice, I will respect it.” “Where's Celestia?” Twilight asked. “I had a question for her before I passed out, but it slipped my mind.” “Canterlot,” Luna replied. “She maintains the bureaucracy that runs the country almost entirely by herself, it leaves her perpetually busy. I have no idea how she does it.” “Oh well,” Twilight said. "I'm sure it'll come back to me eventually, I'll write her a letter or something. Come on, we've got some things to talk about.” Twilight walked unsteadily down the stairs, Luna forcing herself not to help her, and the two settled in to the libraries common area and began a discussion that lasted long in to the night.