King Sombra returns, and an entire world under Equestria's feet wakes with him to swallow it in darkness.
A defeated Sombra finds an unexpected ally deep below the surface of the Crystal Empire- one that's waited an eternity to set things "right" for the entire planet. When he returns to bring war and the destruction of everything ponies have worked for, will the magics friendship can forge be enough to turn back dark powers older than Celestia herself? Or will Sombra be the spark for a fire that burns the peace and order of the world into monster-filled ashes?
(This story lovingly borrows plenty of elements from Square-Enix's work and mythologies as the chapters progress- and the cover image is mildly spoiler-iffic for the later story.)
The fragment of horn that was the last remnants of one "King" Sombra, unicorn, once cursed shadow, tumbled into an icy crevice of the Frozen North as a splintered ruin of horn.
DARKPAINCOLDRAGE
For untold furlongs the blood-red fragment fell, the gravely reduced spirit raving in it's prison, to depths where ice became almost liquid, beyond to a long shaft of stone...and with a few glancing blows off random outcroppings, finally came to rest.
Light had never touched this part of Equestria, nor Diamond Dog dug, not even in the deepest black horrors of Nightmare Moon had any creature born on Equestria found their way so far, so low, so dark. Tarturus itself would have been an easier hole to dig your way into.
And yet Sombra was not alone, as the blind agony of near-disintergration faded to a mere constant suffering, the "mercy" of the Sisters preventing final dissolution. Something else felt the spark of rage and pain, knew the fragment of bone had entered a domain nothing wise or likely sane would. Clearly, a visit to the new denizen was in order. He had...potential.
Inside his horn-prison, the maddened spirit of Sombra found itself reformed into coherence, as tendrils the color of the abyss intruded into the fallen object. Thought clarified. Sombra's true intelligence returned for the first time in centuries, with the bitter taste of rage and humiliation as it's dregs...along with not a little fear. Such power Sombra had felt only a few times- none of them friendly - from Celestia and Luna's punishments, then the burning light of the Heart. And never, EVER inside himself.
The tendrils knitted themselves into an almost familiar creature. He stood the height and breadth of an earth pony stallion- obsidian of pelt, with a mane that would be called black by any other comparison save for the hint of brown that one might call "ebony", and a few strands that shone with the dim glint of gold in a dragon's hoard as his tail switched about. Two eyes like the embers of a dying star regarded the shade of Sombra, and twice as many legs as any pony should bear were the hooves he stood upon. A stallion of the stygian depths, that walked in a manner that reminded him distubingly of an insect rather than a pony as it circled, examining the prize. Teeth that had far more points than any equine had a right to showed themselves as words echoed:
"SOMBRA, THOU ART CALLED. IT IS MEET AND RIGHT YOU ARE WITHIN MY DOMAIN. I WOULD KNOW OF THE WORLD ABOVE. OPEN NOW YOUR EYES, SO I MAY SEE."
The unicorn knew, from a place that every living thing has but few go willingly that the stallion before him was something more, some Power in equine shape. Eyes that Sombra realized he'd had shut all along (and yet, he saw) opened and stared into the embers, now regarding his soul (such as it was).
Images over a thousand years old- of slights piling against a young dusky unicorn colt, compounded by the cruelty of foalery into a bitter thing- whose last attempt at success was butchered into a humiliating farce before the very royalty of Equestria itself for the amusement of childhood rivals.
The colt becoming a stallion, studying books nopony should ever know, his horn beginning to take on a blood-red hue and his eyes tinging with green.
The stallion becoming a master, throwing the blessings everypony eventually found into the sacrificial fires of ambition- trading his cutie mark along with much what could be considered a soul for dark powers the like of which could challenge an alicorn.
The master becoming King, using that power to enslave and spread misery first on those around him, then an entire kingdom in chains to rule.
Banishment. Curses and a thousand-year nightmare sleep. One stunted alicorn, a handful of ponies, and a wyrmling runt thwarting the reawakened shadow and casting him into...
"MY HOME, FOR MANY A YEAR, NAY THOUSANDS OF THEM. BUT NOW THAT THOU HAST COME INTO IT, WE SHALL BOTH BE FREE. WE SHALL BARGAIN WELL, THOU AND I."
The green eyes of Sombra now lit with cunning and a wicked mind that had confounded a pair of goddesses worked for only a moment, then-
"Your name, then thou and I shall bargain."
"MANY NAMES HAVE I, FOR MANY PLACES. HERE, I AM PONY, AND JOLFR WILL DO. BY MY SECRET NAME AND MY POWER SHALL I SWEAR A PACT WITH THEE, AS THOU SHALT IN RETURN."
"THOU SHALT BE FREED FROM THIS CURSE AND GIVEN FORM, BOTH MIGHTY IN CRAFT AND STRENGTH. MY HOOF SHALL BE ABOVE THEE, AND PROTECT THEE FROM SUCH INDIGNITIES AS WERE SUFFERED BEFORE. THOU SHALT BE MY STRONG HOOF UPON THE UNWORTHY, MY SHADOW LORD."
"DOMINION THOU SHALT HAVE OVER MY SERVANTS AND MY SERVANT'S SERVANTS, WHO WILL BE THINE ARMY AGAINST ALL ENEMIES. MY DARKNESS SHALL YOU SPREAD LIKE A BROAD ROAD EVEN UNTO THIS "EQUESTRIA", THEN THE FINAL BATTLE, THE RAGNAROK."
"I SHALL GIVE THEE THE POWER TO CONFOUND THINE ENEMIES, SO I MIGHT FACE MINE OWN, AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, AS HAS BEEN THWARTED UNRIGHTEOUSLY."
"FOR ALL THIS, I REQUIRE YOUR LOYALTY, YOUR OATH TO ME UPON YOUR TRUE NAME AND POWERS....AND CRYSTALS. YES, MANY CRYSTALS. BALE-WORKER AM I, AND OUR DESTINY SHALL BE WROUGHT FROM THINE WORK. THOU SHALT BE MY DARK RIDER, UNTO THE END OF ALL DAYS."
And in these words, Sombra felt to the depths of his being that of every treacherous thing, every lie, every untruth and deception- there were none, and a master of every falsehood was he. And no room for any in return. Truth he was offered, rich with power, promising final vengence against everything that he felt had wronged him. And some hint of...respect?
Low upon Sombra's knees did he bow before the eight-legged pony before him, and his answer began with a word so stained by wickedness that it would have blackened anything less dark than the depths he and Jolfr dwelt in. It was his Name, and by it he swore fell things, in a old language rich with words that cause stillborn foals and poisoned forests if they are spoken too near to either. But he meant every word, giving himself unto the creature before him, now and until the end of all days in trade for what was promised. It was done.
"THOU SHALT FEEL SOME PAIN AT FIRST, MY DARK RIDER."
Shadows gushed from the broken tip of horn, congealing to form an equine shape, then bulged outwards as the dark spirit added red-tinged lightning to the cloud, growing into an armored unicorn who brought true light to a place that had never seen such- indeed, never truly seen anything since it had been laid down in clouds of lava and steam eons before. A fell green glow seethed from the horn of Sombra, setting the floor to a serpentine hue...but nothing of Jolfr was to be found save a distant whisper.
"Shadows do poorly in light, and thine turn to serve is at hand. From thine heart, form me a crystal, dark and black as where thou hast met me."
Cruelty glittered in the eyes of Sombra. Was his "master" so helpless? Could he simply leave...no. The Words he had used were not to be broken! Even by the worst, lest his powers flee him and leave him a mewling foal of a thing, less even than he was when he fell so low. Besides, it would be a proper test of his new body. The ruby horn atop his head began to glow.
Green flames tinged with black roared into the stone, setting it to a seething hellish boil, then yanking the molten mass upwards. Impurities dripped away from the heat as the lavalike glob settled on a patch of floor, then cooled into a smoky prism easily ten times the size of Sombra himself. He could hear a hissing sigh of...satisfaction as something crawled into the shadow left behind Sombra's mix of crystal and hatred, then set itself to swirling inside the new home.
"OH, YES. A PROPER ANCHOR AT LAST. AT LAST! WELL DONE, THOU TRUE AND FAITHFUL SERVANT!"
The shapeless darkness blasted outwards, settling into the form of Sombra's master- and the hooves upon the rock sounded like thunder. One hoof rested squarely in the burning scar left behind, but Jolfr treated it like a patch of grass. For a long moment, the eight-legged stallion looked down upon his servant.
"BEHOLD THE PROOF OF MY WORD."
One of Jolfr's hooves stomped down, shattering the floor into a spray of razor sharp splinters.
They pattered off Sombra's hide like rain.
"MY SERVANTS SHALL BE THINE HOOVES UPON THE NECKS OF OUR ENEMY, EVEN AS YOU ARE MINE. BEHOLD, THOSE WHO BE YOUR KINDRED."
Nightmares rose from the stone. The first flapped a bloated sack of flesh, bat-winged, with a single cylopean eye and a maw filled with jagged fangs. Stunted paws sparked with black magic and the thing floated inches off the ground, keeping it's twisted legs from touching the defiled stone. Another behind it was easily three times the size of Sombra, a twisted mix of lizard, minotaur, and goat. Again, it's maw was filled with teeth that would put a shark to shame, and it's reptilian tail lashed back and forth to balance an oversized pair of ripping claws that could only have one purpose- to cause whatever they struck to suffer as much as possible before being fed into it's teeth. Poison dripped from it's tail to hiss away on the stones. A group close by stood like Diamond Dogs, with grey skin like leather and bony fins along their forearms. Great swords and scythes of obsidian were in their hands, and horns crowned their furless skulls. More like them faded beyond the glow of Sombra's horn, the glow of eyes and hungry, horrid sounds marking a horde of demonic proportions waiting in the dark.
In all of his days, Sombra had never seen such creatures so well made to cause nothing but pain, death, and misery. Delight rose in his blackened heart.
"AHRIMAN, TAURI, DEMONS AND SO MANY MORE MONSTERS TO CREATE WHEN WE SEE THE SKY, SOMBRA. TARTARUS ITSELF HOLDS BUT FEW COMPARED TO MINE, AND I SHALL MAKE THEM NUMBERLESS UPON THE LAND. THOU SHALT MAKE A PATH TO THE SURFACE, AND THEY SHALL HELP THEE IN THIS TASK. GO NOW."
Jolfr's form became formless, and stained his crystalline home like ink. Lord Sombra turned to a promising wall and reached out with his mind. Yes, far above and far away. HIS land. HIS crystals. HIS slaves. They must be punished! He could almost hear their sickening, mocking laughter and joy. Rage sparked another bolt of flames from his horn, scarring a blank wall of stone. His bellow reached into the endless depths, and pointed ears pricked at the tumult.
"GOOOOOO! DIGGGGGGG!", echoed through the maze of demon-filled caverns.
"TO THE SKY AND STARS ABOVE, TO THE DEATH OF LOVE! TO THE CRYSTAL KINGDOM AND THE RULE OF MY HATRED ETERNAL! GO, AND BRING TO THEM MY RAGE AND MY REVENGE! FOR OUR LORD AND VICTORY!"
Grey and black forms surged at the wall, carving and carrying away tons of stone in an eyeblink with scrabbling claws. Lightning and fire cracked more away with every moment as a tunnel began to form, slowly burning towards the surface. Conjuring a great palanquin of basalt and garnet from the rocks around him, the newly reformed unicorn warlock stepped into it's shelter and rested. Four Kindred picked up the stone poles and began the slow ascent as the fiend on four hooves settled down, meditated, dreamed of what was to come. The sweet taste of food, carried on the back of that pink-winged alicorn wench. The head of that unicorn consort, mounted over a roaring fireplace fueled by the bones of their companions, those filthy six mares and a nice dragon-skin rug to go with it. The young ones always made the softest. And that cursed, cursed Crystal Heart. Or it would be, once he was done with it!
He slept. He dreamed. And Jolfr saw his dreams, and was content. Sombra would shatter Jolfr's potential rivals unknowing, then the road to Ragnarok would be opened, and that which had been held at bay for so long would come to pass. The end of the trickery that had kept him from what needed doing for ages, the scourging of the unworthy lives that lived in a sheltered utopia above. He had seen it in Sombra's mind. "Ponies". Peaceful. Soft. Untested by the elements and the world as they should have been, protected by powers that should have stuck to their celestial duties and not become weak, almost mortal flesh. Monsters that had been chained up instead of trying the limits of mortals as they were made to. No more....wait, what was that?
A blue, winged "unicorn" that dreaming Sombra had blasted into the snow to trample on in his conquering fantasy...this "Luna". Something was awry. The creature wasn't injured in the least as his dark rider went to confront a white-and-pastel version in endless bloodlust, and had her eye open to watch the goings on. That wasn't according to what his dreaming servant had in mind. A spy. Someone was riding HIS stallion's dreams? Well, two could play at THAT game. Shadows obscured the dream-vision, like a dreamer's sight dissolving into dreamless sleep. A faint disappointed sigh came from the misty spot before the dream-alicorn vanished without a trace. Jolfr drew Sombra's sleeping mind down into a deep hibernation filled with fantasy, leaving it chasing after "Celestia" in an endless circle of violence. It was a long way to the surface, and it would be a shame to lose his newest servant to starvation before he arrived...
The Crystal Empire at it's newest heights (roughly at the close of Season 3- WPony) :
"And tonight, we begin the closing ceremonies for this year's Equestrian Games- our official farewell to everypony who has come in the spirit of friendship and competition, well-played and well done!"
Settled comfortably in the Royal Box above the Stadia Crystalleria, seven ponies and two alicorns watched Princess Cadence wrapping up the sixteen days of athletes and celebration.
"OUR NIECE HAS DEVELOPED A PROPER SPEAKING VOICE, MY SIST-" "Indoors voice, Luna."
The black and blue alicorn looked properly chastened as the glasses on the nearby refreshments table began to stop vibrating in time with her words.
"WE ARE- I mean, I'm so proud of our niece, Tia! The Empire's ponies love her, she's gotten most of the world to visit and managed to introduce the modern age to her subjects in the process. And she uses the Royal Voice so well-"
"That's the stadium's amplification spells, Luna.".
A slightly sheepish Luna looked down her snout at her Celestial Radiance, Princess Celestia, She Who Raises the Sun (and Moon on sick days), Ruler of Equestria and Bane of Alfalfa, then stuck out her tongue and blew her sister a raspberry. At the other end of the line of seats, a pink earth pony couldn't resist giggling at the sight.
"Oh my gosh this has been the BIGGEST PARTY EVEEEEEER!". The pony didn't so much speak as vocally explode. A hail of colorful streamers flew across the room (and the audience) from seemingly nowhere. "It's superspenderlifcallyduperdelicioussuh-WHEET!"
Carefully crawling out from under the chairs rattling under Pinkie Pie's bouncing hooves, the tips of two yellow wings could be seen sneaking for the exit...only to have the door to the Royal Box pop open in a streak of color.
"Fluttershy, that is an AWESOME idea! We can see the whole stadium from up there, cause there's got to be half a MILLION ponies out there, easy! Let's go!"
"Um, Rainbow....I'm kinda afraid of heights and all the crowds on the clouds make me really nervous so if I could just kinda go get a drink of water and maybe come back after it's all over? P-please?"
"Hey, girls- you know we're the fancy-prancy guests here- even if y'all wanted to stretch yer wings, we're kinda stuck being the guests of honor in this here stall fer a little while longer.". Four orange legs that resembled small tree trunks rather than mere pony propellent trotted their owner over to the refreshments, where she snagged a mug full of water and passed it to the still shivering Fluttershy.
"Settle down now and ree-lax while they get Pinkie off the ceiling."
*POPPOPpopPOP!* marked Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor's successful separation of pony from suction-cup horseshoes, levitating the sugar-rush filly back to her place of honor with only minimal bouncing in place. Applejack guided the mug firmly into Fluttershy's keeping, leaning a shoulder into herding the pegasus back to the front. Following along with a disappointed slink, Rainbow Dash hooked two mugs of cider on her wings and resumed watching the festivities. "Pinkie, can I have another of those straws?"
"Ooh! I have a triple loopy quadruple bendy six-footer just for you!" squeaked Pinkie as it slithered out from her saddlebag.
"Yeah! Thanks Pinkie!"
Sticking the two looped ends into each mug, Dash threaded the bendy third part into her mouth and sucked on it expectantly.
Oh, yeah. Double cider rain, boom. Cloud Nine seat and all the popcorn you can hoof, almost forget about that. Immobilized by her fermented juice pacifier, Dash's tail flopped against the cumulus cloud cushions.
Meanwhile, the two siblings FINALLY could get back to watching their wife and sister-in-law making history. "Did you ever think we'd be watching the Games anywhere but Canterlot, Shining?"
Twilight Sparkle's older brother barely shook his head and made cute little nose marks on the glass trying to get a closer look at his wife. He'd wanted to be down there, but someone had to host the Sisters and since the Princess was speaking, that meant the Consort Royal, Sir Shining Armor, Knight of The Crystal Heart and the Solar Kingdom was going to have to get his nuzzle time in later rather than sooner. At least they'd made the last event of the year the javelin toss...
...wait, what was that noise? Something shrieking...
Leaving a smear on the window, Shining Armor's nose jerked up to see thin white spears of wisp streaking into the pegasus seating, glimmers of blue-white peeking from each. Whinnies and screams fell from the heights, followed by a mane-flattening wind as thousands of wings suddenly began flapping in an effort to be somewhere, ANYWHERE but where those wisps were.
The Royal Guard sprang into action...and began raining down from the sky as ice-coated pegasicles, their spears having no effect against the intruders. A small grey unicorn filly looked up as a magenta glow caught a stray spear inches over her head, then a purple one snatched it's frozen bearer seconds before he would have shattered on the stands. Two words got out as her bubble-flanked mother snatched her away to fly in an erratic line for the train station, adding to the stampede beginning to melt away at the stadium population.
It wasn't quite up there with Discord breaking loose, but having ghostly ice ponies terrorizing your day comes close enough for the average Equestrian. Thankfully, most ponies couldn't actually SEE what was going on above and the fleeing pegasi weren't hanging around to tell them.
"EVERYPONY, PLEASE REMAIN CALM AND SEATED WHILE THE ROYAL GUARD DEALS WITH THE DISTURBANCE. LOOKS LIKE A LITTLE PROBLEM WITH THE CLOUD CONDITIONERS, THE WEATHER PONIES ARE ON THEIR WAY TO FIX THAT THUNDERSNOW."
Sweating a bit despite the sudden cold, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza had a very clear view of exactly what WAS going on.
"How, by Auntie's pastel patootie are windigos flying around the biggest collection of love and friendship in Equestria?", ran through her head before she shook the stunned fit of silly filly out of her horn and lit up the skies.
Celestia is powerful enough to move the Sun. Luna, the Moon. But Cadence was the mistress of the power of love itself, and for a pack of windigos, nothing could be a more potent defense. Like a searchlight, a rosy pink glow blasted upwards from her horn into the clouds and snow, painting a heart across the heights as she borrowed the goodwill of her subjects.
Ghostly horses vanished with wails of despair as the light passed over them. Chilled guardponies and spectators that had been caught in the assault relaxed as frosted manes and frozen wings thawed, feeling like Cadence had managed to hug each and every one of them at the same time. As the windigoes either melted away or fled, a cheer began in the stands, hooves clomping in a steady patter of applause while the flakes of ice faded away to nothing more than random sprinkles of warm rain. Blue suited pegasi moved in to corral the wayward cloud seating as Royal Guardponies untangled the flock and either escorted them to a cloud, the aid stations below, or the exits for those for which the Games had gotten a little TOO exciting.
Meanwhile, two alicorns furled their wings, leaving considerably more room for everyone else in the Royal Box as their horns ceased to glow. On their bellies, Shining Armor, Twilight and Rarity looked at each other in a mix of disbelief and satisfaction.
"That's my special pony!", said Shining with a grin. He'd deflected a few falling weapons and such shielding the crowd, along with the sisters alicorn. "They shouldn't have been able to BE here!", said his sister. She'd caught a few falling pegasi, with some help from Rarity. "That was absolutely DREADFUL!", finished the third (no relation). "Darling Twilight, what ever do you mean by that? Oh, no no NO!"
Briefly, six pairs of eyes looked at Rarity.
"IT RUINED MY MAKEUP! TORE A STITCH IN MY CAPE! SWEET CELESTIA, I NEED A MIRROR AND A SEWING NEEDLE!"
Applejack looked over as Rarity frantically scattered a powder puff, three spools of thread and a small topaz out of her bags, mining for her Emergency Fashion Disaster Kit.
"Eeyup. Them troubles have been a-verted."
Finally able to move after being plastered against the wall by two pairs of alicorn wings, Applejack and Rainbow Dash looked back at the undisturbed table with bowls of punch...and barrels of cider still stacked nearly to the top. Yeah. it's Filler Time. (tm Sweet Apple Acres brewery, used by permission)
"OK, those ghost ponies? Kinda lame. Didn't even need to move a wing there. Anyone want another cider?"
"My little pony, please get me four and one of Pinkie's straws, and thank you.", spoke Celestia. "THOU HAST NO IDEA. Two of the reds, should any be left. And one of the golden.", added her sister.
"Whoa! You two? No way!" as Dash tried to figure out how to balance that many mugs at once without looking totally not cool in the process. Plus hers. Seeing the result, Applejack snagged a serving plate off the table and waited for the pegasus to notice.
The two Princesses bobbed their heads almost as one.
"Twilight, Shining Armor- speak with Us a moment in private." The foursome sidled over to the one corner of the room not occupied by Dash's acrobatics, Rarity's hysterics, or snack food.
As one, the sisters bent their heads low and whispered:
"We do not wish to cause a panic, but turn about very slowly and look to the ground...and then go to Princess Cadence as swiftly as you can without teleporting, quietly inform her as to what is happening and be ready for the worst."
Under the refreshment table and un-noticed by the rest, Fluttershy was holding Pinkie Pie and suffering quietly. A blackening eye showed where one of the earth pony's hooves had smacked her in the face, but the pegasus was too busy trying to keep her charge from thrashing about.
Anyone who didn't know Pinkie would have thought she was having an epileptic seizure. Her eyes rolled. The edges of her nostrils foamed. If she wasn't being restrained, she'd probably have clopped holes into the walls as one leg and then another jerked to unseen strings. Her tail spun around like a whirligig, occupied with slowly shredding it's way through the tablecloth and scourging Fluttershy's flank like a whip. Her face warped like silly putty as spasms radiated down the length of her body...
Well, at least she'd finally topped that clone for the craziest face ever.
"The Elements are at the train station in the Guard barracks, locked in the closet with a horn-seal you are keyed to open, Twilight. The Heart is about to be used at the final part of the ceremonies.", intoned Celestia sotto voce.
"I fear we shall need both..." "...for that is one real Doozy.", finished Luna.
"excusemehavetousethelittlefillyfoalsroomthatciderreallygetsthroughyoufastrightberightbackBYE!" came out of Twilight and Shining's mouth in perfect unison as they collided trying to get through the door. Three steps later, Twilight vanished in a flash of magic and Shining had accelerated to a bulldozing pace most minotaurs would be proud of, random ponies finding themselves abruptly tossed aside by his horn as he galloped for the ramp to the stadium floor.
The audience continued to cheer and stomp their hooves, unaware...
Meanwhile, Twilight Sparkle, librarian, heroine and element of Harmony was in mid-air at roughly the height of the stadium, having simply teleported far enough to be clear of the stadium walls. She was also rapidly accelerating towards terminal velocity as she thoughtfully composed a mental list, seemingly oblivious to the ground preparing to give her a nice friendly stone-laden hug to the skull.
"One. Acquire Elements of Harmony. Two. Get them to the girls without causing a panic. Three. Stop whatever is making poor Pinkie into a carnival ride of prophecy. Four. Figure out how to keep Angel Bunny from doing in Pinkie when he sees her. Five..."
Two purple wings snapped out from behind Twilight's shoulders as she neared the ground, turning the near-vertical dive into a sweeping glide towards the train tracks.
"Remember to open wings. Think I'll move that to number one on the next list."
Catching the easy updrafts coming from the buildings and crowds below, the newest alicorn in the Equestrian realm made her way through the crowded skies and a cluster of armored figures guarding the Friendship Express Royal Special. Fully twenty big cars sat on a sidetrack, each the height of Canterlot's luxury- even the four holding the Princesses' personal guards.
And there were two of them now. Good fellows.
"Princess Sparkle! Is the stadium safe? We've had a line of spectators at the ticket counters demanding to get out of the Empire, twenty seconds ago! Should we send in another contingent of guardsponies to protect the Royals?"
Ifffff a little excitable.
Concentrating on aiming her glide towards a level patch of ground, Princess Sparkle remembered her lessons on Being A Proper Princess.
"A Princess always speaks calmly, even when something is about to eat her. Especially then."
"Big Starlight, Orange Wedge- relax. That's an order. There was a problem with the pegasus seating and it got REALLY cold up there for a while. A few ponies ended up with mild frostbite and that's all, you'd think they'd seen a ghost when it was probably a friend covered in snow!"
"Big S" and Wedge visibly untensed as they flew to a perfect twelve-point landing.
"Then what can we do for you, Princess?"
"Oh, just call me Twilight Sparkle- please! Princess Celestia needed a few things locked up in her room but she can't leave to get them- but I've got the key. Would you two let the rest of the guards know what's going on? Send some ponies to help out with the crowds at the trains, and see if they can't move the schedule up a bit. No reason for everypony to be stuffed in there when we're going to have even more of them coming after the ceremonies are over!"
Orange Wedge brightened at the idea. "Right away, Pri- er, Miss Sparkle. You've always been great at organizing this kind of mess, we'll have twenty guardsponies down there right away. And thanks. We've had our ears up for half an hour now with no word from the stadium."
Twilight waved as she ducked into Celestia's sleeping car. "Thanks, guys! I'll tell Shining Armor you're keeping up the great work!". Under her breath, she recited "A Princess should never hesitate when it's time to delegate, check...all right..." as she looked around for the closet.
Ten seconds later with a two-and-a-half twist through the horn-lock and six sparkling bits of Harmony-laden jewels were safely tucked in Twilight's saddlebags, ready to go. Exiting the car, she found the landing strip clear of ponies as two squads trotted and flapped their way past the Guard perimeter, heading towards the milling crowd- regular ponies settling down as they put the Royal Oil on the commoner waters.
Now, this was the good part about being an alicorn...
"Preflight checklist...ready! One, accelerate to takeoff speed!", as she broke into a gallop.
"Two, charge your horn!" The alicorn's horn glowed, visibly sparking as magic flowed into it.
"Three, retract your landing gear and LIFT!" -bringing her legs up as the spell she'd been preparing discharged. For about ten seconds, the law of gravity briefly took a header and reversed itself, just for Twilight Sparkle. She soared effortlessly into the air, leaving a trail of small purple stars behind her.
"A Princess should always depart in a way that captures the heart", thought the purple streak as she flew back towards her friends. Princess lessons had been a lot more fun than she'd expected*...
Deep (but unfortunately for Equestria, not too deep) below the capital of the Crystal Empire:
The city where the once-and-future-King-in-his-head Sombra and now Princess Cadence rule is actually quite ancient, even taking into account the whole thousand year curse vacation. Parts of the city date back to ancient Roan, as many a local pony is wont to point out in the crystalline classical styles.
This has led to King Sombra's army discovering a few things for which modern pony archeology has given words to in his long omission from the pages of history.
The first is "Stratigraphy". The second is a completely different meaning for the word "tell" than the one you generally use when referring to what you're going to do to that stupid colt who put glue on your seat at school.
"DIG ME A TUNNEL THROUGH SOMETHING SOLID, YOU MORONIC MINIONS!"
Unfortunately for the evil stallion, His "stall" was the result as a layer of broken crystalline gravel, brick bits, and the detrius of urban life at roughly 4,000 BC (Before Celestia) buried the pack of tunneling nightmares, then swamped most of the front of his army for good measure. The Stadia Crystalleria had been built on a prime site in the middle of the city- which had also meant the highest spot, built layer by layer from the rubble of previous buildings and less impressive early pony hygeine.
He'd woken faint and already grumpy to the gentle prodding of an imp, whose chittering voice could have been used for alarm clocks nothing sane would ignore (much less hit the snooze button). While less obvious to nice ponies, Sombra's temper tantrum was enough hate to attract every windigo for miles around. If he'd known, it'd likely have made him feel better, but...
"GET THOSE PATHETIC EXCUSES FOR MONSTERS OUT OF MY WAY, I'LL DO THIS MYSELF."
Pointing his horn at the ceiling, Sombra put his frustration to (de)constructive use. A solid pillar of flames punched into the sea of gravel, welding what didn't burn away into the sides of a new passage upwards. Half a dozen ahrimans and imps flapped to the front and joined in, flares of mystic power melting past what little remained to burrow further into the bowels of the city. One of the one-eyed fiends turned about to gibber in victory as Sombra's growl echoed through the new gap.
Well, part of him growled, anyway. "Darkness below, I haven't eaten in a thousand and one years!", he thought. Not that a near-mindless cloud of shadows needed to eat, but he had a real body to consider here. He opened his mouth to utter words of black wisdom fit for such a situation.
"DOES.....does anypony have a meal fit for a king?"
The monstrous digging crew chose that moment to discover their next archeology lesson- the ancient sewers that kept the streets of the capital clean. Waste flowed underground, into channels that led to a proper magical recycling and purification station- before the purified waters were tornadoed up for the local pegasi cloud-makers. Legends told of an ancient breed of alligators that lived in the watery torrent...based on fact, as a matter of such.
Thousands of gallons of dirty water, horseapples and filth began to roar down the tunnel, an occasional curious whitish-green reptilian head surfacing from the redirected sewage. Barely managing to put up a shield in time, the unicorn watched as demons and sewer denizens flowed by, bouncing off the magical protection as they tumbled into a pile of stinking flesh thousands of feet back. One tauri managed to get stuck on a rock, leaving an eddy of relative calm for a pack of sewer gators to latch on to a potentially tasty meal. Five curled around the monstrous claws on it's arms. One managed to latch all four paws onto the demon's tail, watching the bubble with a stare that said "Oh, if only I could join you for a bite!" as it scurried for a perch above the stream.
Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Sombra's belly increased it's complaints. The flow of gunk decreased, leaving a dripping brown mix of demon and reptile thrashing in front of the unicorn. Finally, it reduced to a trickle as someone above realized that there'd been a blown pipe and redirected the flow along a different channel.
He dropped the shield. The gators made disgusting sucking noises as they attempted to gum the demon they were attached to. Reviving from the therapeutic massage, the tauri shook itself like an large dog, splattering globs of fetid gak across it's master. Then it turned and, crushing three of the gators in each fist...offered them to his master and made a "nom nom nom" sound, grinning broadly enough to swallow at least one handful whole. Which it did, crunching down with innocent (for a nightmare-spawned hellbeast) delight.
A stinking, starving and furious Sombra crisped the entire mess of monster and beasts. Stalking through an ashen cloud of scorched bones, he climbed up the now-empty pipe. Behind the furious evil leader straggled his sodden army, following a trail of cracked hoofprints.
Sombra punctuated his ascent with a single shriek of humiliated rage and disgust. The almost girlish shreik shook the sewer system, echoing as a rumble through the stadium grates and into the city beyond.
In the Royal Box, Applejack's ears pricked. "Hey, anypony else hearin' that rumblin'?"
Pinkie Pie's doozy-fit chose to follow up that statement with a frosting-scented belch that cracked the viewing window.
And THANK YOU for coming to see the GRRRREAT AND POWERRRFUL TRIXIE!
Cheers erupted on the streets as the unicorn street magician soaked in the applause and delighted cries from the crowd. Her knock-em-dead fireworks finale went off, and she listened to the herd of onlookers eagerly talking about the performance.
"Did you see that? Those purple sparks? That was the new Princess!"
"Honey, look! It's one of the Element Bearers!"
"Wow, I bet she had the magician set them off just to let us know she was coming through to wave hello!"
The second wave of magical fireworks went off with a little extra red pepper, or maybe it was just Trixie seeing a little more red as Twilight Sparkle innocently upstaged her without even noticing, waving at the crowds below as she did a quick circle.
It'd been bad enough trying to rival her when she was just a unicorn. But noooo, they had to stick WINGS on her and make her a pretty pretty purple princess for good measure! Trixie was tempted to give a few rockets a little extra accidental "kick" to scorch some prissy pony tail, but the two armored pegasi shadowing Twilight made that idea vanish faster than her disappearing 2-bits-in-the-hoof-and-out-the-ear trick.
Sailing with regal majesty, Twilight finished her quick lap around the square and sped towards the stadium.
"If they see you scurry, the ponies always worry....", thought Twilight. And besides, it meant she'd noticed she was being tailed. "YOU TWO CAN STOP HIDING BEHIND THAT AWNING NOW, I KNOW YOU'RE BACK THERE!"
Orange Wedge slid from behind a corner, managing to keep a perfect guardpony face and seem sheepish at the same time. Big Starlight looked only mildly disappointed that the jig was up as he pulled up to hover in front of Twilight.
"Miss Sparkle, it came to our attention that you happen to have six very Element-like lumps in your saddlebags as you left Celestia's quarters. We thought you might want to know.". The Appleloosan Desert would have felt wetter than Big Starlight's comment... "Also, you completely forgot to bring a single piece of her Highness' jewelry out of said car. Would you be so kind as to explain, Miss Sparkle?"
Twilight Sparkle managed her first simultaneous aerial facehoof and sigh, clopping a gold-plated shoe against her horn. Didn't Celestia hire the Royal Guard to look good and NOT pay attention to royal hijinks? "Gentleponies, I'm sorry to have concerned you, but yes- there IS something going on at the Stadia, and her Highness has requested the Elements be brought forth."
"So we're holding her up. Big S, we shoulda stayed at the train, we shoulda...."
"Hush.", rumbled out of his companion. "Miss Sparkle, we'll fly you in. Alicorn or not, the Elements always get an escort. Up and over, Orange. Form wing, double time!"
Three flying ponies dwindled to an purple, orange and black trio of dots as they climbed to clear the stadium walls. Trixie watched them lift off with more than mild curiousity- and a little listening (with some help from Early Edition's Eavesdropping Ear spell) had picked up more than enough of the brief conversation to get her mind racing. Trouble, big trouble in the stadium and not a single pony in the know wanted it to get out?
"Thanks for the heads up, Twilight Dorkle.". Pouring the day's hefty take of bits out of her overturned hat into a saddlebag pocket, she made her way towards the trains. Plenty in here for a first-class ticket to anywhere else but whatever trouble was on the way...ew. Something fetid and cold wafted up from the grate set in the center of the square, setting Trixie's nose to watering. Yeah, something DEFINITELY was stinking around the Crystal Empire. The brief rumble that followed made her think that the city agreed as the grate vibrated under her hooves...
---
The source of that rumble had managed to calm down...slightly. This was a bit like a volcano that ceases to erupt and merely simmers with a caldera full of lava, expecting someone to toss a virgin in to appease it. No virgins (or a big bowl of salad, Sombra wouldn't have been picky on the appeasing) had appeared to make Sombra's transit more pleasant, but at least the tunnel was dry and his nose had mostly closed up from the abusive odors. Above him, the tunnel leveled out and a pair of lights could be seen, waving about as somepony made their way down to check the failure in the sewer line.
Dirty Job and Squeaky Clean chatted at they reached the dropoff. Dirty Job's sorrel coat was mostly hidden by a set of waders, and Squeaky hefted two large toolbags on his sides. Neither was all that happy to be down there, either.
"Aw, did it HAVE to happen when we were on duty, Dirty?" The mare matched his look with one of equal disdain. "Of COURSE it had to happen while we're on duty, Squeaky. You wanted to take that lunch break early, so we HAD to switch with Buff and Polish."
An extra set of hooves became audible from below.
"Um...you hearin' that Dirty?" "Somepony must have been caught down there!", replied Dirty Job as they swept the lights on their helmets down the stone tunnel, catching the dim form of a pony lurking at the edge of the glow.
"Hey! Is anypony out there? Just call if you can hear me! Is there anypony home?"
"Call....call...yes, I will call. A MASTER CALLS, THE SLAVE OBEYS!"
Twin green beams of pestilent light played across the eyes of Dirty Jobs and Squeaky Clean, eating into their minds and consuming their wills as Sombra threw his power into the spell that had made him infamous across half of Equestria and feared by the rest...The Stare Of Flames. The two ponies shuddered as any illusion of freedom vanished inside their skulls. HE was watching. HE was the Master. Obey or burn under the eyes of the Master, to suffer for eternity!
For the first time in what seemed like forever, Sombra felt like a king again- and here were the first two subjects of his new empire.
"Ahhh....SLAVES. IT IS GOOD TO HAVE PROPER SERVANTS ONCE AGAIN.", intoned the black unicorn as he reached the edge of the rise. "NAMES, SLAVES." In a pathetic half-tone, the broken pair of ponies gave them. YOU, "DIRTY". You will lead Us to the pink wench you call "Princess Cadence".. He paused as the rasp of talons skittering up the tunnel behind him announced a quartet of Kindred finally catching up with him, bearing his stone palanquin. Stains from it's abuse in the flood were obvious, but the sturdy material had remained mostly intact, if filthy.
"Squeaky...clean this while I discuss the way above with this mewling wretch you call your fellow." "Make it sparkle. Use your...tongue."
In the small corner of his mind not occupied by the dread will of Sombra, Dirty Jobs retched as Squeaky Clean's body crawled it's way into the seat, lapping at every crack and crevice. Squeaky's eyes rolled back into his head as the earth pony's brain found a hole in the mental landscape and crawled in to hide from what his body was apparently quite willing to do without him having a word on the subject. It was like grazing on the brimstone fields of Tartarus, rolling in rusty nails, unclean, unclean, unclean, unclean...
"unclean...*slurp*...unclean...*lick*...unclean for Master..." dribbled out of the mouth of Squeaky Clean as his lips turned black from rubbing away the sewer muck. Dirty Jobs monotonously explained a route through the tunnels to the stadium as the tunnel behind Sombra filled with things her mind told her Should Never Have Been There. Most of them looked back. All of them seemed to consider her delicious. She'd seen a hungry griffin once just before it tore into a meal, when it didn't think she was looking. The eyes on her...made that griffin look like a butterfly. A small fragment of Dirty Job's head screamed at her to run, run, RUN...but the spell held her fast, words spilling out of her mouth as she obeyed the Master, preparing the way for the Master, the great and terrible Master...
Settled comfortably in his ride, King Sombra munched on a bag of apple chips (leftovers from Dirty's lunch) as Squeaky Clean's tail worked it's way across his coat, dusting away spots of dried sewage. A few steps in front, Dirty Job was guiding the army through now-dry culverts and tunnels, their flow diverted after the main pipe had "burst". An occasional involuntary tic or shudder marked the only vestiges of freedom left to the pair of earth ponies, and mercifully, what was left of their minds had found that happy green field where the over-brutalized pony brain is wont to flee to in times of trauma.
Eyes closed in a moment of sheer pleasure, the last of the bag's contents emptied themselves into Sombra's mouth, crinkling the empty bag against his nose. "The first thing I conquer will be Equestria's most prized apple farm once I've taken back my Empire...", thought the evil monarch. He then realized that he looked like a donkey with a feedbag strapped to his face. A snort blew the emptied bag of snack food to the ground.
A clawed foot crushed it, leaving the bag stuck on it's taloned heel. Should anyone have cared to read it, "Sweet Apple Acres "Big Mac" Size Golden Chips" would have been still easy to make out as it rode towards the surface...
---
A white ghost lurked in the tunnel leading up to the stadium floor, sky-blue eyes catching the streak of light as it's sister glided down from above. Then he turned back to watching his wife speaking to the crowd, cheers and whistles echoing around the tunnel each time she paused for breath.
Shining Armor's wife looked magnificent. Her mane was a complex blend of crystals and her own hair, blended together by Rarity in the traditional regal style- "With a bit of flair, darling". The stones caught the sunlight and left her in a nimbus of glittering rays that made her attendants look nothing so much as pieces of pony-shaped rainbows themselves. Most ponies hadn't seen such a sight since the Empire had vanished. It was exotic, and reminded Shining that whenever he thought his wife couldn't be more....well, there she was. He'd quietly let the guards know to keep on their hooves while he stood watch over the direct route for anypony who might try and cause trouble.
Nothing was causing his crystal princess any trouble without getting under his hooves to do it!
---
About three feet below Shining Armor, Sombra sneezed. The snort echoed briefly through the tunnel, but was drowned out by the crowd noise. Yards down the way, light and sound poured from a drainage grating, the odd bit of confetti wafting through the hole.
A voice flowed like ink into Sombra's ear.
"Go, my Rider. Leave your servants here and face your destiny. They will strike when the time is right, but if the little ponies panic...they cannot watch you conquer and know proper respect."
At that moment, a unicorn vendor walking around the stadium edge chose to stand his wares by the grate.
"PIES FER SALE! GET YER HOT FRUUUUUUUUITY BERRY PIES HEYYYAH!"
King Sombra gave his litter bearers a meaningful glance.
Four clawed hands ripped through the grate and pulled the unfortunate unicorn, pies and all into the drainage tunnel. A brief roar and green flash grabbed the attention of Princess Cadence's guards as a few observant spectators poked their heads over the railing for a closer look at the commotion..
Those nearby could hear something...munching. A rumbling growl of a belch briefly shook the stands below the grate. Two dozen spears turned and pointed at the hole as Shining Armor galloped to his wife's side, Cadence's honor guard being more than aware of SOMETHING lurking in the shadows.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHH....", breathed a feral growl from the spot. The vendor's cart clattered out of the darkness, empty of pies and life. A few red stains were the only ominous sign that anything living (or edible) had occupied the space.
Three benches worth of front-row seating cleared in less than five seconds, with spectators from the vacated seating opting to find a new perch someplace with a better view. Like the exit.
"THAT WAS....DELICIOUS."
Spotlights painted the ruined grate in harsh brightness as the commotion spread outwards, rippling as far as the Royal Box. Twilight Sparkle rushed into the crowded room to see her friends straining to catch a glimpse of the spreading chaos, the two Princesses craning their necks over her shorter friends to look at the bright spot on the stadium floor.
Still licking a bit of strawberry filling from his muzzle, King Sombra stepped into his spotlight.
"YOUR TRUE LORD....HAS RETURNED. BOW BEFORE SOMBRA, KING OF SHADOWS, MASTER OF THE EMPIRE, POWERFUL AND MIGHTY!"
Noticed only by one, Pinkie Pie's Doozy finally ceased, the exhausted pony slinking down almost puddlelike to settle on the floor in Fluttershy's lap. A moment of silence swelled like an overinflated balloon.
"WOO!", uttered Pinkie as she bounced off of the ground, standing there like hours of frenzied thrashing had only been a brief trot in the park. "WHAT" "A" "DOOZY!"
The moment popped, and anarchy descended upon the stadium.
Although the legends usually fail to mention it, there is a reason it took two alicorns to stop one single unicorn, depraved, power-hungry, and malicious as he was, and exactly why King Sombra is also legendary for the harshest punishment delivered to a pony short of Luna being sent to the moon for a thousand years (Discord running a close third). It is also the reason that Sombra's mind was cursed into something barely capable of "CRRRYSTALS", much less complex thoughts.
That was because most armies sent to attack Sombra ended up the newest recruits in the King Sombra Royal Goon Squads.
Sweeping his burning eyes across the line of Cadence's bodyguard, Sombra had himself nine new minions in about ten seconds. The other fifteen ranged from simply being stunned to "curled up in a ball, blubbering for Mommy", their minds scrambled or shocked into immobility by the sheer willpower behind the royal horn. Half a dozen earth ponies and three unicorns spun about and hurled their yard-long spears at the surprised alicorn they had only been defending a moment before.
None of them got closer than twenty feet as Shining Armor slapped the missiles away without visible effort. Snagging Cadence's mane in his teeth, he snatched his wife from the podium without a second thought...and ran, priceless jewels raining onto the ground as she found herself being pulled from the platform and into the exit tunnel by a combination of levitation and horsepower.
"What....are...you...DOING!", shrieked the pink princess, her mane rapidly de-styling into a chaotic ravel of mane, ribbons, and fashion nightmare.
"We're going to the top, my dear! There's one thing we KNOW gets rid of King Sombra, and we have to do it before he turns the entire stadium into little green-eyed zomponies!", replied her galloping guardian.
"We have to get to the Heart!"
Scrabbling to get her own hooves four-on-the-floor, the couple galloped up one ramp after another towards the top of the stadium.
---
Shining Armor wasn't talking out of his plot- as the couple fled, King Sombra had gleefully usurped the podium and began unleashing wild bolts of green magic from his eyes and horn, clearly enjoying himself as he swatted flying guardponies swooping in from all angles and having tossed spears fold like tinfoil on impact with his mystically enhanced body. Thankfully, most of the Royal Guard was of sterner stuff than the average pony, or else Sombra would have had dozens of new recruits in moments- but even briefly meeting his eyes was like coming nose-to-nose with a cockatrice. Most of them had joined the bodyguards on the stadium grounds, occasionally faceplanted pegasi twitching in the grips of some horrible burning nightmare piled in with a unicorn dazedly turning in circles, randomly blowing holes in the walls with concussive hornblasts as she struck at phantoms only she could see, an earth pony attempting to plow concrete with his teeth as he dragged his chipping choppers to scrape against the rigid surface. Two Sombral blasts from the far side of the stadium randomly spiderwebbed the already cracked window as the princesses looked on in horror and dismay from above, crystal ponies mixing with the rest of the crowd as they tried to charge through anything to be out of the line of sight.
It hadn't even taken two minutes.
"Twilight...", said Princess Celestia... "...get the girls down there...", added Princess Luna... "It's going to get messy in here in a moment.".
Gathering the Bearers close at hand, Twilight Sparkle quickly levitated five of the Elements to their proper places and placed the Diadem of Magic on her own head. With a twinkle of light, the six ponies vanished to appear on the bottom of the stadium, opposite the stand atop which Sombra was gleefully wreaking havoc.
Nothing else save a few brainwashed slave-ponies remained standing in the thousand-yard space between them, broken and battered armored forms occasionally moaning in pain or confusion as they lay scattered across the field.
Celestia and Luna inhaled at the same time.
The window promptly imploded from the suction, scattering shards of glass to stud the wall and door behind them. Standing at the other side, Orange Wedge shied and reared as a long splinter drove itself through a foot of wood. It came to rest an inch away from giving him a new split to that fruit on his cutie mark.
Unscathed by the razor-sharp rain, the sisters used their outdoor voices together.
"SOMBRA, THOU SHALT CEASE AND DESIST THINE EVIL. SURRENDER TO THINE ROYAL DIARCHS, THOU USURPING WRETCH OF A PONY!"
Below the shockwave that resulted, the six Bearers toppled, pressed to their knees by the pressure that pulsed from overhead. Stunned and unconscious victims of Sombra were tossed helpless to crash into the walls, and the roar was enough to cause Sombra's slaves to clutch their ears and collapse, bleeding from the head and nose. Windows splintered. Discarded banners and flags found themselves driven into seats like arrows or fluttering across the sky as they were blown across the city by the force of the Royal Canterlot Voice. Pegasi fled for altitude to avoid the sea of angry sonic assault. Ponies a quarter mile away went deaf momentarily from the sheer volume. A twelve foot crack opened at Sombra's feet. Behind six feet of stadium wall, Shining Armor and Cadence stumbled on their upward jaunts. Destruction slapped it's paw like an Ursa Major down, and it's center was King Sombra.
No, more than a mere Ursa Major. The Voice had been doubled.
Standing in the now ruined splinters of what had been his bully pulpit, Sombra flicked an ear as if shooing a fly. A splinter of wood left the offended spot and rolled away on the residual breezes of the Voice.
"Nay.", he said, and let his horn do rest of the talking. The stadium below Celestia and Luna became dust for twenty feet, sending the ceiling tumbling down on the alicorn's heads. Diving clear of the collapse, they swooped up into the air, mixing a rain of red-hot rays of light with glittering arcane darts, Celestia and Luna alternating their salvos with a skill only sisterhood and centuries of practice could attain. Standing his ground, Sombra parried the barrages with a mixture of shields and counterpunches, breaking the alicorn's flight pattern into swoops and dives as they scattered away from the return fire.
Looking out on their new view from the edge of the ruined chunk of concrete, Big Starlight and Orange Wedge watched the Bearers trotting towards the carnage, their rulers incinerating the stadium floor into glassy layers of melted char as a crazed black unicorn flung emerald beams of body-shattering force back at them. They looked at each other.
Teeth fitted spears into jousting brackets. Wings opened, and the two guardponies dove off the edge, flying low and straight across the battlefield for the mad king with points extended.
"Twilight honey? Ah think we ain't quite up to this kinda hoofwrasslin match...", Applejack managed to get out as she wobbled back to her feet. Rainbow Dash gently lifted a shuddering, terrorized Fluttershy back into a twitchy hover as the stars stopped getting in Twilight Sparkle's eyes and resumed circling around her cutie mark.
The little alicorn shook her head until the circling stopped and replied, "We aren't here to fight Sombra...we're here for them." She pointed to the limp forms of battered ponies scattered in every direction, "The Princesses are distracting Sombra while we get everypony out of here...then we can do what we need to."
Behind them, a green beam of magical fury tore another gash in the already ruined stadium wall. Five stories worth of seats came tumbling down in a cloud of dust.
"Applejack, Rainbow Dash- find everypony you can that's trapped out in the seats and get them to where I can see them. I'll teleport them here to me, then safety. Rarity, Pinkie Pie- get the ones down here. Fluttershy, I need somepony who can take care of them if they're badly hurt and tell me whether they need a real hospital or just time to sleep it off. You're with me. I'll keep anything from Sombra-" as a purple crescent of force slashed from Twilight's horn to splinter an incoming bolt into a harmless cloud of magical smoke- "from getting in the way. Now, GO!"
The Elements scattered across the field- Applejack easily kicking off the ground, clearing the bottom railing for a lap around the devastated seating. Rainbow Dash dove and wove through the tunnels and inside paths (although thanks to the many holes, some of those were more "outside") in search of victims. It didn't take long- Applejack and Dash were hollering in seconds as they dragged limp ponies off the ground and into Twilight's line of sight, where a Come-Hither Charm reeled them in like fish on the line. Rarity hoisted bodies with a pinched lip and looked like she was about to lose her ladylike charm all over the dirt (with lunch), but never stopped laying them on Pinkie's back- who from Herd-knows-where had found ROLLER SKATES and was delivering the injured to Fluttershy without so much as a jostle. The yellow angel of mercy was rattling out orders to Twilight in a steady, soft tone that would have been adorable had it not been describing things better seen on "Canterlot Mercy Emergency" instead of a sporting event, sending her chosen to the train station, Crystal Waters Of Healing Emergency Room, or patching a broken and wrenched body herself before nodding to Twilight to get them to safety.
Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. The stadiums wounded and disabled occupants melted away into glowing twinkles and smoke under Twilight's horn. Fluttershy had reduced Rarity's party dress to dozens of tattered bandages with her teeth and staunched an equal number of wounds with them. The six ponies had managed to save nearly thirty unfortunate souls who would have been hell-bent for Kratos the Glue-Maker otherwise, leaving most of the stadium clear of anything save rubble, King Sombra, and two wrathful goddesses attempting to send the wretched fiend straight into the Pasty One's torments.
Almost unnoticed in the rescue duty, two frustrated mayflies tried to make themselves noticed in a battle of the gods...
---
Big Starlight was smoking. No, literally- a solar blast from Celestia had refracted off Sombra's shields and left his armor scorched and his mane more than a little crispy on the end. Orange Wedge had a blackened scar across the top of his helmet from a near miss, and a hodge-podge of dents where an exploding support pillar had nearly punched a dozen holes into his guts. As it was, his withers were a mess of bruises. Neither had managed to get closer than fifty yards before random projectiles and explosions had forced them to veer off.
"I can't get a clear shot!", bellowed Starlight as he rolled around another cloud of rising debris.
From a hole in the wall, something proceeded to take a shot at HIM. Forks of lightning stabbed from a crumbling sewer grate, narrowly missing the pegasus and leaping to run along a shattered length of rebar, chunks of concrete spitting away from the metal as it heated red and sagged. A massive eye glared as two stubby claws waved in frustration.
Orange Wedge didn't even think. You don't think when flying fast, you do...and passing by the hole, he whipped his spearpoint across the ocular nightmare trying to flame out his wingman. Screeching, the ahriman fell away from it's place, only to be replaced by a swarm of smaller demons rising on bat-winged fury.
"Awwwww, FLAMING HORSEAPPLES WITH A CHERRY ON TOP!", screamed Wedge as five very eager imps lined up behind him. Corkscrewing into a desperate evasive maneuver, Wedge looked back to see his bogies pointing claws glowing with black magic. Stadium benches flew into the air on wings of flame as the demonlings tried to track the erratic guardpony, chittering and screeching imprecations after the pegasus. Thankfully, their aim was poor...when a spearshaft from behind lumped their noggins as Big Starlight returned the favor of getting the flak off his wingpony.
Another arc of lightning missed Starlight as he left his hoofprints neatly engraved atop an imp's skull, leaping clear of the fiends...and the storm tore into the imps instead. Sparks jumping from one flapping menace to another, the tight group of Somba's minons wailed and convulsed, then tumbled towards the ground, crumbling into flecks of black ash as death claimed their un-natural forms.
"DID YA SEE THAT, WEDGE?" "DOES THAT COUNT AS AN ACE?" "BUUUUUUUUUUCK YEAH! WOOOOOOOOOOO!"
A seven-foot blade of volcanic glass cut the conversation short as it bobbed Wedge's tail, the owner having clawed his way from under the seats to try and chop the guardsponies into Salisbury Horse-Steak. A squad of Kindred boiled up out of the hole, more imps clawing over in each other in a blood-crazed frenzy as they joined the chase...only to have the bull-like head of a tauri butt them in all directions. Levereing it's massive bulk onto something solid enough to support it's weight, the thing bellowed a challenge and began tearing out pieces of the stadium to hurl into the air.
Looking at the angry mob of hellspawn, the two winged maniacs met each other's eyes.
"Strategic withdrawal, Big S?" "ADVANCE FOR THE REAR, PRIVATE WEDGE!"
They made for a gap in the rubbled wall, Hell pursuing them with dripping maws and hurling every element of pain (and chunks of rubble plus at least twenty different kinds of very creative curses) it could find.
Leaving a few drifting trimmed tail hairs and the hint of burnt mane in the air, Big Starlight and Orange Wedge slipped through a crack in the stadium walls and leaped free of the hole, wings springing wide. A chunk of rubble jammed it's way into the crack as they escaped, multiple thuds and scrapes marking when the pursuing horde hit the no-longer-open exit.
"Oh, that was a NICE one Wedge!" "Hay, we sure left those featherless freaks eating our misty....misss...oh, oh....no no no no NO!"
The shining vista in front of the pegasi was already cracked and scarred in dozens of places by what could only be described as war. "Slaughter" would have come closer save for the thin armored line near the train tracks, distant gleams of unicorn magic criss-crossing the elemental fury of demonic bombardments. Occasional balls of flame, frost, or lightning marked the line, spreading over what defensive barriers the unicorns of the Guard had managed to hold up. Desperately, earth ponies tried to distract the incoming Kindred from their positions, but found that hooves and spears alike did little to wound the things. At best, they were knocking down a grey-skinned giant, only to have it stand and resume the attack moments later. Likewise, what few bolts of concussive force the magically inclined guardponies could generate were only managing to briefly disrupt any imp or ahriman that busied themselves with burning down their four-legged prey. Barely visible streaks of feathered fury marked the pegasi in the ranks, circling tauri in an effort that frustrated and baffled the enormous quadrupeds, but did little real damage.
If some of the demons hadn't been occupying themselves with butchering whatever terrorized ponies they could winkle out from the wrecked buildings and cratered streets, they would have already broken the line. From the air, it looked more like the demons were having a grand time of killing and maiming whatever happened to be close at hand, almost at random. Barely visible to the south, the Royal Train was chugging down the tracks, last in a line of trains filled to bursting with civilians. More ponies followed the tracks, leaving a trail of discarded luggage, broken carts, and the occasional pony who had lamed themselves or worse trying to flee the horror.
A sound like a warehouse full of wind chimes began to toll in the wind, and Orange Wedge turned on a wing just in time to see Crystal Waters of Healing Hospital implode on itself as the bottom floors collapsed, tiny colored dots leaping from impossible heights in a futile effort to escape.
None had wings. From the heights they had jumped from, nothing without them would survive. Something even more massive than the tauri roared from within the cloud, black spikes of mane waving about in the dust. It charged out of the cloud to crash through a block full of housing the next street over, crushing the glittering walls into wagon-sized chunks of razored death. The behemoth slowed and carefully danced it's way across the rubble pile, brief squeals of pain and cut-off screams showing exactly why it was taking it's time.
In a single, horrified moment of realization, the two guardsponies realized what had happened- Sombra distracting the most powerful defenders of Equestria almost single-hoofed as his army massacred the innocent treasures the Sisters treasured most. It was a plan no sane pony would have imagined, and worst of all- it was working to diabolic perfection.
"Sweet suffering Sisters, we've got to tell the Princesses! They don't know! They can't know! We've got to- GAGKTH!"
Squealing with hunger, an imp latched onto Big Starlight's neck and dug the bony spines of it's thumbs through the pony's windpipe. Blood sprayed into a crimson mist as he went limp, the chittering fiend riding the already stiffening body to the ground. A second imp narrowly missed Wedge as he rolled belly up to bring all four hooves into the face of his attacker, hammering iron-shod hooves into it's chest in a rapid-fire pattern.
It was like kicking a steel wall. Sparks flew and the imp wobbled in the air, but showed no signs of real harm as it began to summon a blast of arcane energy. Tears of rage and frustration streaming from his face, Orange Wedge did the only thing he could.
He flew for his life, the life of the ponies dying on the ground, and for his duty. Wings beat to the breaking point as he raced to clear the top of the stadium, a spear of ice splintering against his armor and cracking two ribs. Below him, Equestria's royalty continued their duel against Somba, unaware of the drama outside. Pulses of energy crackled between them in a web of certain death.
Orange Wedge was past caring about dying. Wings folded against his sides, he dove into the killing zone. A burst of green against flaming red tore away his helm, sending it flying into the burning air. It survived a moment of freefall before being slagged. A downdraft flipped him end over end into a ball of feathers and hooves as he cannonballed out of control from the stunning blow, black and red crawling into the sides of his vision as the spin stole blood from his brain.
"This it it...", Wedge managed to think as the ground spun large in the few sparks of vision that remained before the inevitable loss of consciousness, then life.
Orange Wedge's vision went black as he impacted....soft? Feathery? Oh, if the world would stop spinning...and it did. Bloodied and crippled, the wounded guardpony found himself still flying, his four legs flopping over the flanks of one midnight-hided Princess Luna.
"THOU ART MAD TO FLY IN THIS STORM, PRIVATE!", Luna's normally painfully loud speaking voice being just enough to rise above the sonic assault of combat.
"P...ponies in city....d-d-dying, my lady. Arm....army attacking, city is almost lost.", gasped Wedge as his broken ribs stabbed into his lung, stealing most of his breath. He fainted away, slipping into a red dream of the deadly games being played outside the stadium walls.
The Princess of the Night bugled in midair, her wings spreading out as the news raced through Luna's mind, Wedge's nightmare of a dream telling her everything the guardpony could not manage to speak before succumbing to his wounds. She veered away from the attack, Celestia looking on in confusion only for a moment before switching to the defense and covering her younger sister's retreat. A moment's flight took her to the grounds where Twilight Sparkle still stood, her friends gathered close. Letting the shattered pony down on a broad wing, Luna gave the six ponies a wild-eyed moment before blowing out a breath she had unknowingly been holding for a full minute of horrified silence, the image of the behemoth-torn hospital replaying itself in Wedge's sleeping mind and her own.
"TWILIGHT, MY FRIENDS! AID NOW MY SISTER IN HER FIGHT. GRIM TIDINGS ARE AFOOT IN THE CITY, AND MY LITTLE PONIES NEED A PRINCESS TO LEAD THEM. ALL SHALL BE LOST WITHOUT!"
A collective gasp of fearful concern came from the Bearers before the mask of determination settled back down. Pinkie Pie's maniac grin, Rarity's look of dismay, Applejack's head lowering just an inch to let her hat settle more firmly in place, Fluttershy managing to look even MORE nervous than the entire battle had done so far, Dash's nervous circling of her friends speeding it's orbit just a little more...
"AND SEND NOT THIS WARRIOR BEYOND THE WALLS, PRINCESS. THE CITY BE NO LONGER..."
Luna choked for a moment, a vision of falling ponies crossing her mind's eye.
"...TIS' NO LONGER SAFE. CARE WELL FOR HIM HERE, AS SAFE AS YOU CAN MAKE SUCH A PLACE."
Twilight's already thoughtful look went into overdrive as she looked towards Celestia and Sombra, still fighting. Emerging from a door above the warring magicians, Twilight spotted her sister-in-law and her brother making their way to a cloth-covered stone.
"Go ahead, Luna. I have....a plan!"
Dark wings beat once on the down-wing, lifting the Moon Princess a dozen yards into the air before she flew over the stands. Her cobalt horn began to glow, a line of spells marching across the alicorn's mind as she left the stadium to face what ravaged the city beyond...
"FIGHT BRAVELY AND BE THOU OF STRONG HEART!" was her cry- as greeting to the embattled Royal Guard and farewell to the seven ponies who remained behind.
The Sun struck, for the thousandth time and more at the Shadow.
Teeth curled into a mirthless grin, Sombra tore the flaming gout of energy from the sky and loosed a hail of darts from his own horn, only to have them spatter harmlessly off the radiant aura surrounding the Solar Princess. Perhaps it diminished ever so slightly. Mayhap Sombra's own energies declined an iota.
"We could be here for another week", Celestia thought to herself, not without a hint of bitterness. Without her sister's aid, fighting the mad unicorn was more of an even match than she had expected- for a mortal, he seemed to be drawing off a pool of energy far deeper than anything of simple flesh should manage. Capturing him? Vexing, verily.
The image Luna broadcast to her sister's mind as she cleared the heights of the ruined stadium washed away mere frustrations...
Grey and dark forms, familiar from long distant memory. An obsidian scythe disembowling a helpless mare, using the only thing she had to shield her filly of a daughter- her body. The filly, blinded by tears as the Kindred warrior began to devour the bisected remains...only to be frozen into an icy mass as a berserk Luna summoned the cold touch of the far reaches of space to smite the fiend. A cobalt wing smote the frozen husk, shattering it into ashen pebbles of un-natural flesh.
Touching her horn to the nearly comatose child, Luna focused and wove there to here, stitching a path between the patch of ground she stood upon and the waiting room of Canterlot Mercy. The filly materialized in the arms of a surprised nurse, bawling.
In better times, Luna read to sick children there. Now, it was the safest place she could grasp in her head, rage mixing with mare-instinct to shield foal from predator, herd from hungering beasts. The wave of primal feelings raced back into the link as the two sisters came to a mutual conclusion.
The temperature in the rubbled stadium rose a full twenty degrees as Princess Celestia's wings and horn began to burn with the light of a roiling sun. Long sparks of heat wavered the air as she pawed at empty space, striking nothing yet causing gouts of blinding light to sear the surrounding space.
"Sister, Sombra's allies are...are....we had banished these fiends to Tartarus before the first pony learned to speak more than whinnies and neighs!", passed the thought between Sun and Moon. Luna's response was to drop a chunk of orbiting stone at terminal velocity on the behemoth as it frolicked obscenely across the ruins of another building, crushing it's hind legs beneath a fallen comet the mistress of the stars had dragged from the firmament. It's spine shattered, the behemoth writhed and howled helplessly before a second falling star nailed it's skull to the earth, slaying it utterly.
The torn lines of guardponies put up a cheer as Luna's wrath made itself manifest on the demonic attackers, finally distracting them from the massacre as they swarmed towards the goddess incarnate...and Celestia felt the sting of an inky probe of dark magic as it stabbed at her hoof and tried to crawl it's way up to her cutie mark.
Looking down, the Sun finally noticed the dozen or so beasts that had chased Starlight and Wedge from the field in the first place, now attempting to defile a new target. A moment's effort purged the plague from her hindquarters, and a toss of her horn impaled the entire group on a beam of sunlight. Resistance was...not even remotely possible as the demons found their essence banished to the four winds, dissolving them into motes of black energy that were quickly swallowed in the unrelenting radiance.
The *CRACK* of Sombra's magic finding it's mark made the price worth it for the enemy- dark crystals forming at the point of impact, sapping away Celestia's mystical energies as it replenished Sombra's. A quick counterspell washed the crystalline assault away, but the strengthening strikes on her protections showed that the warlock had stolen a fair piece of power in the brief distraction.
Chastened, Celestia put all four alicorns on the same message of mental speech.
"Sister, niece, faithful student- the things Sombra has allied with are called "Kindred"- a race of dark servants to powers fell and ancient beyond count. Strike harshly, for they are truly not alive as you know it, and will kill anything and everything without hesitation. Destroy them without mercy, for they are here only to slay our subjects until the Empire would become an open grave.. Magical light burns them best, but enough of anything will do- and whatever you think is enough, use it thrice over instead. How Sombra has dragged so many out of the depths of Tartarus I know not, but they must be stopped, here and now".
"Sombra by his deeds has condemned himself not to a thousand years of penance, but a swift death. Show no mercy, for to call such fiends, Sombra surely has sold his cutie mark to things that make Tirek the Ancient seem like a mere drop of ink."
Celestia opened her mouth. The sound that came forth was like that of a crematorium fire, eager to consume the body being fed into it's furnaces.
She breathed outwards, and white-hot plasma roared from between her lips, drawing a line that devoured Sombra's shield and forced him to gallop out of the path of the solar flare gouting from Celestia's muzzle. A line of glassy score marked it's progress from one end of the stadium to the other, but it's power seemed only matched by it's difficulty to control.
A second searing blast left a U-shaped curve glowing in the earth as Sombra leaped back from the heat, hopping over the first line as residual energies scorched his fetlocks. Then a third, closing the circle and making the unicorn mage cross the first line once again to escape. A fourth as Celestia's neck strained to control the angry fires within her blazed an angry diagonal that flattened Sombra to his belly, then a fifth the opposite way made him roll away with his tail a lit torch. A sixth matched the first, though shortened in it's path by Sombra's proximity. A seventh drew a line further away to chase the dark unicorn once again into the center....and the flames finally cut off as Celestia visibly dimmed, then settled to the ground. Her head hung low, and the gasps of breath could be heard across the ruins as the Bearers looked on in mute astonishment at the wrath of the Sun. Twilight's shielding faded to a nearly invisible gleam as it no longer had to turn a forest fire's worth of heat away from cooking the seven ponies into charcoal.
Four pairs of eyes stared half-blinded at the solar display. Pinkie Pie merely pushed a double-sized pair of sunglasses over her ears and started waving a placard saying "GO CELESTIA!", cheering and dancing on her hindlegs. Fluttershy slowly pushed her nose clear of where she'd buried it under Orange Wedge's flank, shivering despite the summerlike warmth. Realizing WHERE she'd been hiding her face, her face got even warmer...and suddenly making sure that the wounded pegasus had ALL his injuries taken care of was very important. Yes, oh very much so.
Nobody else noticed.
A double layer of protective and warding magic cooled as Cadence and Shining Armor rose from behind a scorched stone barrier, the balcony walls smoking here and there from stray reflections of heat from the inferno twelve stories below them. Glowing telekinetic force pulled the canvas covering a stony shape away, leaving the Crystal Heart open to the air. A rainbow of colors sparkled inside the relic, generated by the power of the Heart itself.
"I can light the Heart on my own, but I don't know for how long...", echoed Cadence's mental voice from the Celestial link. "Normally, this takes the love and cheer of hundreds of ponies!".
Celestia's mental growl was more wolf than horse. "Sombra is a fool, and he stands in his own noose, ready to hang.". It was ragged, haggard, and edged with a rage that Twilight had never heard come from her teacher. "Witness a traitor to ponykind suffer his just desserts."
A hoof glowing white with the Sun's power struck the outer curve of the circle Celestia had engraved in the stadium floor with her seemingly wild attacks, the lines lighting from one end to the other as Sombra rose to his hind legs in a panic, a whinny of fear escaping as he realized exactly WHAT the Solar Princess had accomplished in her feigned fury.
The fully empowered sigil wrapped it's power around it's horned victim and slammed him helpless to the earth, his four legs spread out as if held down by stakes of iron. Glaring with white-glowing eyes, Princess Celestia began to speak in a voice that echoed as if she was in a vast cavern rather than the open skies.
"IT BEGINS."
Savage darkness, foul device. You resurrect an evil best left buried, a time forgotten. The past rejects you.
Inside the circle, Sombra brayed like a donkey as the spell began to take hold.
Subterfuge and cruelty, the perversion of a good and worthy gift to the intentions of hatred and darkness. Existence denies you.
The ground ceased to be underneath the supine unicorn, yawning into a black hole above which Sombra's body was suspended by unseen power.
Deviltry and hatred, the use of a great soul bartered to the petty acts of cruelty. Foresight ignores you.
A wind sucked eagerly at the fur of Sombra's coat, pushing downwards into an abyss that held no lights for as deep as Cadence and Shining Armor could see, watching from their perch.
By the name of Echwaz, Eldest, The Nightmare-
...as the circle thrummed and the air itself shook...
We reject thee, We deny thee, We abhor thee.
In the Name of the Past, In the Eyes of the Present, By the Light of the Sun,
WE COMMAND YOU....
BEGONE.
Blinding light rose in a pillar from the edges of the circle as a clap of thunder marked the displacement of a huge amount of air from within. Briefly, the terrified scream of Sombra could be faintly heard from within the circle as a river of air tumbled ponies like tenpins and forced Cadence to hold Shining Armor's leg in her teeth, lest he be flung blocks away by the sheer force of the banishing spell's side effects. Only Celestia was unmoved, and even eyes that could withstand the Sun at it's height for a century straight closed at the force of the released energies pushing against them.
In the center of a circle where nothing should remain, something began to laugh.
While you were reading about Celestia and Luna flank-kicking a horde of demons:
An atavistic feeling of satisfaction briefly passed through Sombra's head as finally, a spell got through the barrage of magic, counterspells, and shielding surrounding Celestia and mana aspirated it's way from the glowing nimbus into the unicorn's horn. It wasn't quite as satisfying as getting his teeth on her mane and grinding the Princess face-first in the dirt, but it wasn't a bad -start-, either.
A ghostly laugh echoed through Sombra's skull.
"Oh, this is delightful! You've made my little sisters angry!"
"Wait," thought Sombra. "...did you say sisters?"
Jolfr's spectral laugh rumbled cheefully for an answer. The distraction was enough for Celestia to begin to stream breaths of superheated flames across the battlefield, melting Sombra's shields to ruins faster than he could rebuild them. Frantically, he dodged and rolled, finding himself hunkered low to the ground as mind-shoveled dirt smothered the torch a near-miss had started in his ebon tail. Ashen streaks blended better with his fur, but even all of Sombra's considerable (and recently stolen) reserves had not been enough to completely deflect even the inaccurate flares Princess Celestia had been spewing his direction.
"Oh, yes. It's been...why, since your ancestors were considering grazing the grass a feast!"
Sombra found himself forced to contemplate the revelation in stillness as Celestia's sigil came to life and held him in place. Glaring white-hot death at his prostrate form, the princess began abjuring him in a voice that only promised certain doom. The spell gripped him tightly, forcing out a braying sound as his lungs found themselves squeezed to the edges of suffocation.
"Wait a moment, she's almost to the good part...."
"By the name of Echwaz, Eldest, The Nightmare...", intoned Celestia...
"And THERE it is. Taking MY name in vain, even if she doesn't know it. Focus on that name, Sombra. You have a bit of Celestia at the moment, and that's all it'll take. Call me, Sombra. Call me by many names."
"Jolfr, Echawz, Eldest, Nightmare..." circled inside Sombra's mind as his crimson horn coughed a spark of stolen divinity from the tip, pushing the glowing ember into the abyss that he found himself hung above...
...and as the circle rose in blinding light, an eight-legged giant of a stallion formed itself from the nothingness and held Sombra like a puppy, safe and sound between his teeth. The hole in space drained itself to reality as it was sucked into the body of Jolfr and became warm flesh and fur, winds pushing outwards as the dark avatar made room for itself in the material realm.
Lowering his severely worn minion down on a patch of (mostly) un-outraged earth, Jolfr enjoyed his first touch of sunlight in nearly a million years.
Mirthful noises echoed about the wreckage, shaking loose stones from their rest. Princess Celestia simply stared in utter astonishment as the black stallion (not alicorn, for Jolfr had eight legs but not a wing between them) amiably trotted forward and...
Licked her on the nose.
"THOU DIDS'T CALL FOR ME BY NAME, LITTLE SISTER? MY DEAR LORD SOMBRA HAS ALREADY VISITED MINE REALM, WHERE WE GOT ALONG MOST FETCHINGLY. VERILY, NO NEED TO SEND HIM THERE AGAIN SO SOON."
Celestia looked like someone had just informed her that the cakes were not only a lie, but all cakes had suddenly become fantasies. Her eyes crossed briefly, then looked upwards at Jolfr, who stood a full head higher than the princess.
"Buh-buh-buh...", she intoned with regal aplomb.
"OH, I KNOW. TWAS WELL PLANNED AND WELL DONE WHAT YOU AND YOUNGEST SISTER DID, BUT...ALL JESTS MUST END. THINE FOOLISHNESS WITH THESE "PONIES" AND INCARNATING LIKE THIS, REJECTING THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS...."
An ivory horn shoved Jolfr's mouth shut in mid-sentence with an audible clack.
"YOU...YOU THINK MY LITTLE PONIES ARE A JOKE? A BIT OF AMUSEMENT? UNNATURAL?" exploded out of Celestia's mouth. A hoof stamped at the ground, crackles of ash powdering up where it struck.
"They are a better way than what you had planned for this world, Nightmare. We spent tens of thousands of years cleaning your "tests" from the earth, bringing peace and joy one inch at a time from the "proper way" you beset the mortals of this realm with. After all this, you DARE come here and try to start it all over again? AFTER THE REST OF US AGREED TO TRY SOMETHING NEW?"
"I AM ELDEST, AND THOU ART STILL YOUNG AND FOOLISH AS OUR KIND GO. LEAVE THIS REALM TO THE CARE OF THINE BETTERS AND RESUME YOUR PROPER PLACE, "CELESTIA". DIDST THOU GET THAT NAME FROM YON MORTALS, OR PERHAPS THOU DIDS'T MAKE IT YOURSELF?"
In a moment of mind-wobbling revelation, Twilight Sparkle realized that trolling others apparently ran in Celestia's family.
Jolfr's massive form yawned, revealing the teeth of a predator.
"AH, IT SEEMS MY TIME HERE IS RUNNING LOW, LEST I LEAVE MINE DARK RIDER TOO WEARY. I SHALL RETURN TO MINE REALM, AND THANK THEE FOR TAKING SUCH GOOD CARE OF ALL OF MY CREATIONS."
"LOCKING THEM UP IN THIS "TARTARUS", TWAS MOST KIND OF THEE. WHILST THOU HAST BEEN SPARRING MOST MIGHTILY WITH MINE FRIEND, I DID LET THEM ALL OUT."
Many miles away, a pair of great leaden doors lay broken on a floor of loose pumice. A three-headed monstrous canine left a trail of broken trees as it wandered away, wagging it's tail. Shards from a rune-encrusted collar marked the point where Cerebus had been sprung from his duties...
From the portal, the sounds of innumerable feet, wings, and worse grew louder as a contingent of Kindred tore sorcerous bonds asunder with knowledge only an insider could have on the subject.
Princess Celestia's ears pricked as mystical alarms held at bay were carelessly set free, sending thousands of flashing red messages of broken wards and escaping beasts into her mind's eye at once.
"MINE FRIEND SOMBRA SHALL BE ALONG PRESENTLY TO FREE ELDEST SISTER FROM HER PRISON IN TURN, SO WE MIGHT GET BACK TO OUR USUAL. LIGHT 'GAINST DARK, THOU DOST KNOW MINE REDE OF IT. ANON!"
The flow of magic sustaining Jolfr's form reversed itself, the massive equine form dwindling to an ebon stream that slipped back into the tip of Sombra's horn with a muffled *POP*. With it came a surge of renewed vitality in the unicorn as the massive channel of power that it took to bring so much of his master into the material realm redirected itself into strength and mystical vitality for himself. He stood, ready to challenge Celestia once again...
...only to find the Solar Princess fleeing for the sky, a look of absolute horror on her features as she flung herself towards the broken gates of Tartarus and the monsters already beginning to escape in every direction.
He was alone with all the "friends" he'd made nearly being destroyed the LAST time in the Empire.
Well, alone with dozens of demons within easy reach.
"SERVANTS...SLAY THEM! SLAY THEM ALL."
The shadows gave up their hidden forms and spread them across the ground, the sun taking that moment to begin to set below the horizon. Fangs dripped. Claws clenched with eager hunger for the little colored bits of flesh in their sight. As they did, the shadows only lengthened further to reach towards the one small island of brightness remaining on the stadium floor.
Pinkie Pie finally dropped her sign. If anything that hadn't wanted her torn to shreds had been looking, the expression on her face would have been as comical as it was tragic. Applejack, Dash, and Rarity formed a triangle around their alicorn friend, the cowering Fluttershy hiding under her, and the wounded Wedge lay moaning under her yellow wing.
The time had come for twilight, and it came forth to devour it's namesake.
Outside of the stadium, Princess Luna was actually beginning to enjoy herself. It wasn't as if every day one got to cut loose on hordes of absolutely evil, unrepentant beasts that her sister had no thoughts of reform or banishing to one endless depth of dark solitude or random statuary.
Why, if she pictured Prince Blueblood's sneering face on them, it felt even BETTER!
"RALLY, RALLY THOU GREAT AND BLESS'D WARRIORS OF EQUESTRIA!", cried Luna as she scythed her horn through an imp that had closed too quickly, then drove her hooves backwards with the force of a ram. The horned skull of a tauri splintered to grey mush, it's poisonous tail lashing behind it in a death spasm and whipping yet more demons into an agony-filled dance as the barbs dug in.
A renewed shower of rays and bolts struck into the crowd rapidly surrounding the Moon Princess, but most of their targets barely noticed more than a shove before resuming their advance on their alicorn target. Hurled spears did even less, annoying the targets with pinpricks that failed to pierce even a fraction of an inch.
Twos and threes in the chase became dozens as the alicorn galloped along a causeway, a cloud of imps carpeting the sky above her head.
"Above be blocked, behind is worse...", thought Luna. "Tia, thou couldst aid me a TEENSY MITE? Sombra has let all Tartarus out to play, and they desire me for a playmate!".
The response was labored, even across the mental connection.
"I'm sorry, sister....but yes, Tartarus is wide open and I'm flying like a meteor to get there before the inmates decide to play with Fillydelphia instead. It's you, Cadence, Twilight, and the Bearers now- plus whatever you can do with the Guard. I'm sure you can do it!"
Luna uttered a most unprincesslike word and redoubled her pace, bedeviled by winged tormentors.
---
Meanwhile, the stadium grounds had bred a crop of Sombra's servants, sprouting from every crack and tunnel like grey weeds.
All of them looked quite hungry. Thankfully, almost none of them had spells as nearly every airborne fiend was busy cornering Princess Luna, and much of those left had incinerated each other trying to chase Starlight and Wedge.
Looking at each other with dagger-filled maws, the Kindred decided that gigantic two-handed weapons, claws like swords and teeth that could chew through rocks would have to do. An ashen wall of demons built itself between a recovering Sombra and the Element Bearers.The crowd swept forward for the tiny herd of ponies- to see who would get to the meal first.
Rainbow Dash's wings built up to an audible whistle as she wound up for a charge of her own. "These guys are TOAST, Twilight. I bet they go down easier than changelings, most of em don't even have four legs or wings!" "So them over yonder are built like big ol' deadwood trees? I aim to make me some firewood!", Applejack chipped in and dug her hooves into the dirt for a bit of traction.
"Soooooomepony over there looks like they haven't had a good snack in FOREVER."
Pouring out a baker's dozen of tubes, Pinkie Pie went spastic as she clapped her hooves on each in turn in a seemingly random choice of "which would look better on that crazed hellbeast coming to say hello". Sucrose-laden squirts of pastel pastry icing scattered like a sugary shotgun round, unerringly blinding every demon it struck. The charge degenerated into a pile of thrashing demons, occasional scythes or greatswords waving like a black flag over the mess.
"Anyone want a six-hundred and sixty-six layer devil's food cake?"
"Oh, Pinkie! Icing looks marvelous on cupcakes, but THOSE things? Fashion disaster. It just needs an eensy little touch to make it work..."
Winding up, Rarity shot a single stone into the barely standing building, dislodging a piece of rubble. That had been holding up two more. Which had been supporting three more. Five, seven....as an avalanche rolled down from the stands and buried the squirming mess under a layer of stone and broken lumber.
"...they look SO much better when you don't see them at all! WA-HA-HA!"
"Cadence? Cadence! Did you make it to the Heart in one piece?" thought Twilight as she looked up at the platform where the gleam of her brother's shielding spells was still visible- if you knew where to look.
"Yes, if you ponies down there are done trying to turn my ears inside out or fly me out of the city without benefit of wings!" was the reply. Huddled out of sight, Cadence's horn had brightened from pink to a blinding blue point as she steadied her aim on the Crystal Heart. Now that Celestia and Sombra had stopped ripping the place apart, she could finally, FINALLY focus properly.
An azure stream of light struck the Heart squarely, bathing every facet in the glow of Cadence's magical powers. The sparks within it danced even faster....and the evening sky suddenly became the color of noon as the Heart painted the city with a reflection of magical radiance. The reflecting force from Heart began to press back, the lip of the balcony chipping here and there as it tried to support the weight of both an alicorn and the forces propelling her away from the artifact. With a grunt of effort, Shining Armor set his horn against the flow, pulling his wife back from the edge in a tug-of-war. Smiling, the two steadied themselves as the light from the Crystal Heart rolled outwards.
The effect of the Heart's glow as it formed a dome over the city was...drastic.
The pile of rock-covered demons began to scream as the annoying encumbrance atop their bodies became a lethal, crushing weight their skins could no longer turn. Cracks mixed with shrieks as the bottom of the pile seeped black, sticky fluids that steamed and stank.
The imps swooping and striking at Luna as she dodged through the ruins found themselves missing wings and sprouting holes as the magical protections were wiped away by Cadence's power- unicorns striking like snipers to relentlessly thin the blanket of bat-winged attackers assaulting their Princess. Tauri began to resemble pincushions and punching bags instead of unstoppable forces of evil- then collapsed in mounds of disgusting, seeping flesh. Kindred warriors turned from lumbering after the Princess to assault the Guard lines once again, but without their mystical armor, the battle was far more even, though demon outnumbered pony by three to one. Especially when one of them was Luna.
Freed from her tormentors, the midnight-winged alicorn leaped into the air and landed behind the Royal Guard, surrounded by a company of unicorns. Frost and thunder crackled from her horn into the fray, wedges of Kindred attackers turning to white-rimed statues that crumbled under the crackling follow-up. The entire flank she stood behind found the pressure ease as their command-mare relentlessly destroyed every demon she could get a clean shot at. Without the height of their leader, the unicorns contented themselves with blasting anything that was foolish enough to take to the air, leaving the remaining demonic spell-throwers to cower behind walls and the corners. An occasional lick of flame surged to strike back at the shields, but the barriers managed to stymie most of the attacker's magics.
With the Heart alight, the battle had turned in less than five minutes time.
Sombra stared at the wall of dying flesh and stone in front of him in disbelief, then listened to the distant cheering coming from the city.
"No....no. NO. NOT AGAIN!"
The light from the Heart had cut him away from his seemingly unquenchable fountain of power, leaving him a battered, weakened, and badly overstrained unicorn. Kneeling on the graveled surface of what used to be a racing track, his head wobbled like a newborn foal's.
He could see, far above the Heart, now alight with Cadence's magic as it sapped the strength from his body and left his unstoppable army merely a fierce foe for Luna to add to her list of victories. He hated her. He hated them ALL. So...much...useless...HATE! Why couldn't he KILL THEM ALL?
"for thy Hear...*wheeeze!* for thy Heart, who has wronged me *hacccck*! bubbled from the edge of Sombra's bloodied lips as he sent a single glowing mote of green into the air, aiming a last futile attack. Slowly, it glittered and rose into the sky like a star of ill omen. A fading circle spotlighted the cursed monarch for a moment, then dimmed as the magic drifted away.
He realized with despair that he had aimed too low, that the mere fizzle of power would not strike Cadence as he hoped, a last spit in the eye before the alicorns would banish him to Tartarus as a starveling shade, alone in the darkness. If they were merciful, would he might even die first? He collapsed on one side, the stony lumps of the track goading him to stay awake as they dug into his burned and bruised flesh.
The spark struck on stone, unseen by any save Sombra's watering eye.
The stone crackled. And then simply....cracked.
Rock flew into the air as Cadence's weight finished the job, the force of the Heart's glow shoving her into midair. As she plunged over the side of the balcony, Shining Armor's horn-grasp dragged him down, still scrabbling to keep his grip on the floor. In a cruel parody of their usual embrace, they bounced off the edge of a jagged stadium deck- blood streaking the air as Shining Armor rolled his body between his wife and harm's way.
A wavering shield of magic from Cadence reduced the second impact from lethal to stunning, then the leaders of the Crystal Empire found themselves rolling in a ball of wings, horns, and mane to the very spot where Sombra lay prostrate on the ground. Almost lovingly, he stroked his crimson horn across the two that had come to rest just in reach of his own.
Still hanging above them all, the light vanished like a snuffed candle.
Twilight Sparkle knew only two things- first, Cadence and Shining Armor had saved the day, second, that they were plunging to the ground before she could do a thing to stop it. A frantic half-blind teleport had gotten her close enough to throw a bubbly wave of magic as the the two suddenly dove off the edge of the now-broken balcony,and she had heard them crash into the general area where she'd thrown it. Dim starlight and the glow off her horn were the only light, Celestia's sun having found it's way below the lip of the stadium. She stood atop the rubble pile, sweeping a cone of magelight across the spot where she estimated the trajectory of her fall. Given the angle of deflection and taking into account her brother's reduction in velocity from....from...
Her heart briefly skipped a beat as the glow found three bodies on the ground- black, white, pink. Liberal spatters of blood shone wet on the gravel the three were lying on, but Cadence and Shining were at least breathing well. A moment to get the distance, and...
A clawed fist punched through the sheet of stone she had balanced on like a winged goat and wrapped itself around her barrel. Suspended in midair, Twilight squeaked as the claw began to close, squeezing the air out of her lungs with stunning force...only to have the grip relax as the digits loosened and fell away. Burned away. As her hooves found themselves on solid ground, she followed a warm red glow...
Rainbow Dash was already moving as Twilight Sparkle teleported, but even the fastest flier in Equestria has can't warp space-time for instant motion. She easily managed to make it to Twilight as she lit her horn, and was a barely a wing-stretch away as the Kindred lifted the little alicorn off her feet. Bringing her hoof up in a Neighponese-style flying punch, she smacked her hoof into the thing's wrist.
Time slowed. The ruby lightning bolt on her Element ignited, and the hoof carved through un-natural flesh and bone without visible effort. Surprised by the lack of resistance, Rainbow Dash crashed and tumbled head-over-tail down the other side of the rubble hill, leaving blackened scorch marks as she rolled. The red sparks left behind from her strike became all-consuming flames, stripping the claw to blackened sticks of bone, then crumbling even them to ashes in it's hungry search for fuel. Untouched, Twilight Sparkle flopped onto the slab to catch her breath.
"Whoooooooa. That was some AWESOME KUNG FOAL. Like, triple-double black belt awesom-"
The Element of Loyalty began to spark and crackle like a raging forest fire. Cerisan eyes began to dance with an inner flame, and an angry switch of her tail scorched a line in the dirt.
"-e TO PURGE THE LAND OF IT'S SINS WITH THE RIGHTEOUS FLAMES OF JUDGEMENT!", her voice cracking mid-sentence and developing a severe case of Canterlot Royal Volume. Effortlessly flipping herself back in the air with a single hoof, she hovered in mid-air, fulminating in place.
Still rediscovering the joys of oxygen, Twilight's ears flattened from the deafening roar that smacked her square in the face. Eyes watering from the spike of painful sound, she shook her head to clear the last echoes of "JUDGEMENT....JUDGEMENT..." out. How did she manage to do that seconds after closing her mouth, anyway?
A green glow briefly drowned out the crimson radiance from Rainbow Dash, then did it again a second later. All other thoughts vanished as a burst of adrenaline surged through her mind, turning her head to see...
Sombra, standing renewed and all too lively over a greying stallion and a white-muzzled alicorn with streaks of faded color in her pinkish mane. Ebon shards dotted both of their coats. Dancing over the unicorn's head was a discarded spear, glowing crimson as Sombra set it to jabbing and striking at the empty air.
"YOU KNOW, THE ONLY THING SWEETER THAN CONSUMING ALL THAT STRENGTH FROM YOUR FINE, FINE STALLION OF A BROTHER? MAKING THIS ALICORN BITCH WATCH ME TAKE TWENTY YEARS OF HIS LIFE TO SERVE HIS BETTER, THEN LETTING HIM WATCH ME DO THE SAME TO HER."
The spear flashed arrow-straight at Twilight's heart...and she found herself falling to one side as a tremendous impact rattled every bone in her body. All she could see was....orange?
The spear drove on to carve a bloody furrow as it was intercepted by the Element of Honesty- head-first. Barely missing Applejack's eye, the spearhead skipped along her skull and notched an ear to leave the orange cowpony reeling and half-blinded from Sombra's missile.
"I HAVEN'T SUPPED ON THE SOULS OF PONIES IN A THOUSAND YEARS, TWILIGHT SPARKLE. PERHAPS I CAN BREAK YOU AND YOUR FEEBLE FRIENDS, THEN SEE HOW MANY TIDBITS I CAN TEAR OUT OF AN ALICORN BEFORE IT KILLS THEM. IF I OVERDO IT ON ONE, IT WAS SO KIND FOR YOU TO MAKE YOURSELF INTO A SPARE..."
The alicorn scrabbled into retreat, scooting backwards and beginning to hyperventilate as old habits took hold- spinning her mind between panic, nausea, and anger. Rarity, meanwhile had rushed to Applejack's side as she stoically shook a stream of blood out of her eyes and caught her breath. A few drops touched the citrine apple on her Element and vanished without a trace.
The Element lit on it's own accord, faint sparkles of rainbow glitter drifting to the ground.
"Oh, MY GOODNESS! Applejack, he STABBED YOU IN THE FACE!" -Rarity gasped and dabbed a lacy handkerchief against the cut, patting away blood to examine the wound.
Applejack's split-to-the-bone skin flowed like warm orange mud, covered the gouge, and sprouted a line of fuzzy new fur.
"It hain't bad.....bad....ain't....THOSE WHO SPILL INNOCENT BLOOD SHALL FEEL MY PURIFYING WRATH."
Rarity then realized that Applejack had managed to add on a foot of growth while she'd been staring at her face putting itself back together. Lips curled back to show shining white teeth, a stallion-sized Applejack snorted and looked about with a haughty glare.
"Applejack, dear....sweetie....you're....a little scary...."
"Why...what...I AM a mite dusty but that's nothing an afternoon at the spa together won't neaten up..."
Applejack reared above Rarity, hooves extended. Covering her head and horn, she managed to scream briefly before the twin hammers struck down with a warrior's bellow of rage.
The Kindred that had been crawling up to Rarity's tail jerked as they bludgeoned the demon about the shoulders, cracks bleeding a white light before the creature became a supine statue any cockatrice would have been proud to call it's best work. Rarity scrabbled as the frozen body fell forward onto outstretched claws...
A second swing of the hammers sent rocky splinters that only had a passing resemblance to a body in all directions.
The *CRACK* of Applejack's hooves against stone snapped Twilight Sparkle out of the daze Sombra's assaults had provoked. She looked over to see her friend looming at the edge of her horn's light, the Element of Honesty glowing as she stomped something with all the intensity of crushing a rattlesnake. No sign of any wounds...Sombra's aim must have been off!
She sighed with relief and hopped back a few inches as the stony pile began to shift, arms and winged backs shaking off the dead weight holding them down and returning to their purpose...killing six little ponies.
The image of what lay on the other side of that came back to the fore. Her brother. Cadence. Sombra.
Ponies were laying there hurt or worse, she HAD to get past these things and save them!
Red flashes of heat and flame licked up from the far side of the reanimating pack of demons, a glimpse of a rainbow-colored tail flickering before it vanished into the crowd. An ahriman soared into the air with it's wings alight, then burst asunder in midair as a prismatic meteor tore through it, turned on it's tail, and plunged back to earth in an explosive report.
"WHATEVER KNOWS FEAR SHALL BURN AT THE TOUCH OF RAINBOW DASH."
And what on Equestria was up with Rainbow Dash and that "Enter the Dracoequus" routine?
The broken tip of an obsidian sword missed Twilight's nose by a hair as she backwinged away from an arm that reached out from the shadows, the dark shapes dancing in the light of Rainbow Dash's flight. Her rump found itself colliding with Rarity's, who was backing away from a wicked curved blade as it whistled back and forth.
A Kindred launched itself over their heads, the scythe menacing Rarity flying. Stiffening into immobility, the already dead body dusted the floor as it burst from the inside out. Applejack's massive hindlegs vanished out of sight, but the sounds of a jackhammer pounding pavement made it easy to track the orange giant.
"THE TREE THAT BEARS CURSED FRUITS SHALL BE TORN FROM THE EARTH AND CAST UPON THE BARREN STONES."
And when did Applejack start quoting the Malleus Mareficarum?
Though the two were busily smiting demons left and right, they paid no attention to each other or anything else- and seeking less lethal prey, more and more of Sombra's army went looking elsewhere. Sniffing about, a tauri detected the scent of....
...frosting. It growled loudly and pounced....
...the world turned yellow and sugary.
Pinkie Pie gleefully bucked another pie from the impossibly large depths of her saddlebag and with a flick of her tail, sent it spinning into the tauri's open jaws. It choked and gargled lemon meringue mixed with saliva, leapt blindly at a giggle, and buried it's face in a wall. Stars orbited about the hole.
Ooh, Applejack was huuuuuuge. She always said too many cupcakes would do that, but Pinkie had eaten at least twenty today and hadn't grown an inch. Maybe another half dozen later? The way all the nasty boojums were coming, they must think Sugarcube Corner had the best baked goods in all of Equestria!
Snapping a hoof, three chocolate cupcakes spun like shuriken and gave another tauri a unibrow as they smooshed into it's forehead. Not that tauri had eyebrows, but maaaaybe if you used a lot of makeup...she popped straight up into the air and landed on the demon's back as it tried to trample her under it's cloven hooves.
"Misssster demon, would ya like another cupcake?", she cheerfully blurted into the thing's ear.
Maybe they liked vanilla better...ooh, was that a bit on the ground? Pinkie hopped off her ride as it stabbed it's tail down to smack into the back of it's own head. The massive fiend tipped up, flipped over, then landed with a crushing thump on it's back. Woozily, it licked at the confectionary smears and gave up on the entire idea of fighting the tiny pink thing or anything else for oh...the next year or so.
'Yep, like-new-condition copper bit from the Fillydelphia Mint!", thought Pinkie as she licked the edge of the bit (mmm, coppery) and lolled her tongue outwards to spill it into the depths of her bags.
The senseless tauri's tail whumped limply against Pinkie's chest, barely causing so much as a scratch.
Sadly for the beast, the scratch was right across the balloon-shaped sapphire hanging around Pinkie's neck. It glittered angrily at the touch of the demon, then flashed once like an opening eye. Swirls like a crashing wave roiled the blue of Pinkie's eyes and her pupils dilated, then she trotted over to look the monster right in it's glazed (and battered, and creme-filled) eyes.
"Hey, mister deeeemon? You popped my balloon!"
"CAN I CLEANSE YOUR FACE?"
Confused, upside down and addled, the demon nodded.
"OKIE DOKEY! SMILE!". Producing a red carnation, she fixed it jauntily on her saddlebag and pointed it at the tauri's face.
Clear liquid gushed from the flower and rinsed the fragments of cupcake away....and then a blast of fire-hose pressure water forced it's way down the thing's throat, causing it to swell alarmingly in seconds. With a maniacal grin, she gave the flower a half-twist as the impossible flow of water actually increased, flooding the fiend's lungs until they burst from the pressure. The beast found it's gurgling doom, drowning in the deluge Pinkie Pie had seemingly summoned from nowhere.
The irrational Happy Fun Light in Pinkie's eyes vanished, replaced by a glow that resembled the last glimmers of the sun, shining through a tidal wave...before it dragged you under to die. Wielding her flower like a watery riot cannon, Pinkie Pie began to hunt, flowing from shadow to shadow to lay low demons in a spray of water before leaping on their chests and liquefying the unholy things from the inside out.
The laughter that echoed from the puddle-jumper held not a single mote of fun, though it certainly seemed to be quite joyful every time something stopped breathing. If you could have taught a shark to laugh, it'd probably have sounded like Pinkie in the dark...
Chapter 16: Dance Like A Butterfly, Sting Like A Rarity
The darkness and noise of the battlefield parted briefly to allow another unicorn her moment in the spotlight.
Dancing about on nervous hooves, Rarity tried to think happy thoughts as giant-sized edged weapons rained blow after blow in her direction, any of which would be more than enough to leave her on a radical new weight-loss plan.
"It's just a little dance! Left two...", as an axe buried itself where she'd been standing a second before.
"Back three..."
One of Rarity's false eyelashes drifted into the air, trimmed by a curving scimitar of stone as she hopped backwards.
"And BOW!"
Ducking her head, Rarity felt her hair ruffle as a roundhouse swing passed inches above her lowered mane.
Despite herself, a nervous giggle escaped the unicorn as she continued to trade space with grace.
"And I thought Blueblood would be my worst dance partner ever!", she thought as frustrated Kindred tried to catch the prancing dandy-mare with claws, swords, and anything they could think of. In this waltz, Rarity was reigning supreme, her horn giving her a self-made spotlight to show off her moves (and see all too many attackers joining in).
---
Twilight Sparkle flapped up a cloud of dust as Rarity's display of style provided a fabulous distraction, then glided along the mess of stones and corpses. Glimpsing the occasional cyclopean form lurking through the wreckage, going high or another teleport was asking for an ambush...wait a second! A yellow wingtip poked out from an oddly familiar hole, a few crumbling bits of grating still hanging on to the edges. Twilight grinned, lit her horn and played the glow across the gap to reveal where the last member of the Ponyville herd had found refuge.
With a weak smile, Fluttershy stood blinking in the glare. Propped up against one wall was Orange Wedge, almost looking comfortable despite being nearly mummified in wrappings and a wing-splint, though still out cold. A unicorn dressed in a vendor's uniform lay sprawled beside him, the tattered remnants of a cart cover keeping the shivering, shocked creature in some level of warmth. Two earth ponies stood behind her, clearly not at all well...but a friendly caress from Fluttershy's wings stilled the shakes almost immediately.
"Um...I found some more ponies that needed help when I got Mister Wedge in here, so I helped them. It's OK that I'm not out there with all the scary demons, right?". Fluttershy's knees knocking out a merry rhythm made it loud and clear how well THAT would have gone. "Is everyone else all right?".
Twilight dimmed her horn and looked back. A rainbow colored streak was bouncing up and down in the darkness, sending cindered remnants in all directions as she swept a burning hoof in a broad circle. A patter of thunderclaps marked Applejack as she ground a path through the murky shadows. The strangely jackal-like laughter echoing from everywhere at once could only be Pinkie Pie, and Rarity could be seen in gleaming in mid-pirouette as a cluster of Kindred managed to maul each other trying to kill her.
"I think so, Fluttershy. I really do think so. Do you know where this tunnel goes?"
"Oh, no. It's really dark and scary back there and doesn't smell very good. Sort of like this pony's breath.". Solicitously, Fluttershy turned to Squeaky Clean, rubbed at his blackened teeth a bit with a rag and popped a mint in.
"I've got to find a way around to Cadence and Shining, Fluttershy. Sombra's....Sombra's done something bad to them. Stay here, I've got to go and..."
A squeak of panic was all the warning Twilight had before she found Fluttershy holding onto to both of her forehooves for dear life.
"No no no no no please please please pretty please staaaaay?". Darn it, she was using the cute bunny eyes...must...resist!
Twilight peeled Fluttershy's grasp away with a gentle application of her horn and set her back on her feet.
"I can't, Fluttershy. And besides, it's Sombra..I, I- I have to find him before he hurts anyone else. Stay here, take care of these poor ponies and I'll be back with everyone as soon as it's safe to go outside.".
Turning up the glow on her horn as she pointed it down the tunnel, she saw it followed the curve of the stadium....which meant...
"Yes! I can get past everything else, with nopony knowing the wiser!"
Leaving Fluttershy to stare anxiously at her tail, the alicorn trotted down the corridor in a pool of berry-colored light. A waft of sewer odor made the pegasus sneeze- and when she opened her eyes, Twilight's glow had faded around a corner and quickly vanished from sight.
---
In the stadium, a single glowering eye narrowed as it tried to line up it's shot on the pony capering through the brawl, it's horn glimmering. The ahriman known as Seeker was unamused with the show, having narrowly avoided being squashed by the unicorn's deft use of the damaged stadium to mash most of his fellows into helplessness or a thin black paste. It's task had been to literally keep it's eye on Sombra's efforts for his master, but things were getting out of hand. Each of these creatures was more dangerous than fifty of the armored ones outside, and not one had a weapon or armor? Madness.
It was time for the purple-maned sombrathing to burn. Raising itself on high to (mostly) clear it's shot, Seeker conjured a rolling wave of flame and watched it draw a white-hot line through the darkness. Seconds later, a bright flare marked the impact on a blue glowing spot and it's hated source.
Rarity caught the flaming spell from the corner of one eye as she spun out of the way of a barehanded Kindred, it's claws screeching like chalk on a blackboard as the attack whiffed harmlessly- but not in time to avoid the full impact of the spell. Putting the Kindred's body between her and the point of impact, she leaped- and the gout of flame left a demon-shaped outline in the air as it ate through the creature and puffed outwards to consume the unicorn as well.
Her mane smouldering and her cutie mark bearing an ugly scorch, Rarity landed from the jump. Giant two-legged torches rolled around on the ground, gouging themselves with their claws to try and extinguish the flames.
In a few seconds, Rarity found herself in a blackened space with only crispy Kindred corpses for company, only a splash of glassy ground marking the center of the dead zone. She looked into the mirroring surface.
Her mane had turned itself into a split-end, poofed-out nightmare that she hadn't seen since Sweetie Belle had tried to get her cutie mark in salon care. The purple diamond-shaped stone of her Element provided all the light she needed to see the horrid cigarette-sized black mark centered between the three diamonds on her flank, and her tail had actually developed KINKS from the heat treatment!
The resulting scream from anypony else would have required pulling out their still beating heart and showing it to them- but Rarity had plenty of practice in dramatic overkill. It rose as the stone in her Element resonated with the outrage and (astonishingly minor) injury of it's bearer.
"YOU....YOU BRUTES! YOU SHOT MY HAIR! I'LL....YOU SHALL ALL BE GIFTED WITH A PAINFUL DEMISE, THOU FOOLISH SERVANTS OF THE DARK, GREEDY FOR THE LIFE OF THE INNOCENT! I SHALL GRACE THEE WITH THE SWIFT ROAD TO OBLIVION!".
Inside the unicorn's skull, a mixture of defiled vanity and the overwhelming feelings swirling from the Element caused Rarity to transform from a goddess of style to a goddess of old-fashioned-sweet-Celestia-she's-gonna-send-me-to-the-Moon fury.
A thin line of lightning streaked down from the clear night skies, where Rarity's horn drew it in until the usual blue had changed to a storm-driven haze about her head. Her lips curled back and she screamed a banshee cry at Seeker from afar. One look at the madmare was enough to get the demon flapping for it's life past less observant minions- the demon knew when someone was ready to throw a real whammy, and Rarity was definitely IT.
An azure pillar of crackling electrical force slammed down behind Seeker as he fled, bolts leaping from one body to another that were unfortunate enough to have found themselves near the point of impact. The victims spasmed in an obscene parody of Rarity's earlier ballroom moves, then collapsed as the last of the charge grounded itself. Perhaps one or two would actually live long enough to suffer from massive burns, which did fill the "painful demise" part, but dozens opted for the "swift road to oblivion" package and expired immediately from a severe case of electrocution.
"WA-HA-HA-OHOHOHOHOHO!" echoed as a frenzied Rarity charged up to do it again, adding more lightning to the thunder and rain her fellow mares were bringing to the brawl. Rainbow Dash plowed another Kindred into the air to illuminate the chaos- by burning the creature to death between her forehooves.
(If you're starting to feel sorry for the demons at this point, I can understand. The ponies are doing so much damage I'm running out of new ways to describe the utter carnage. The Author)
---
Woefully unable to observe her friends going completely mad under the influence of their fashion accessories, Twilight Sparkle made her way around the inner wall of the stadium via the drainage tunnel, looking for the right spot to slip out...
...as Sombra viewed the increasing insanity with concern. Where on Equestria had Celestia found four juggernauts of equine destruction almost as potent as the Sisters themselves? Wait. They had only acted like ordinary mares before, when they battled the first time. It must be the new, fancy jewelry they wore. Items of mystical power to be used as some kind of weapon of last resort by the Sisters? Of course, what ruler wouldn't have pawns to use as weapons!
...and there were six of them, one of which was worn by that blasted alicorn. Why hadn't she used it to incinerate Sombra? Was there some flaw, some ritual that was needed before the power awoke? Where was the sixth one, the one worn by that feeble-looking pegasus? Perhaps if he took one for himself, he could unlock it's secrets and use it to control or kill the others before they brought the entire stadium down around his ears...
Sombra's eyes lit as he looked for the sources of mystical power he knew must be close. Four nearly blinding ones mixed with the shadowy outlines of his thinning army, two dim ones near his feet from the usurpers he'd drained...and traces of alicorn spoor heading towards the tunnel he'd used to enter the stadium....with a glimmer of magic occasionally peeping out from behind the hole in the thick concrete. If he hadn't been searching this way, he'd never have seen the purple wench preparing her ambush!
Blissfully unaware of Sombra's thoughts, Fluttershy ducked back from where she'd been peeking into the fight and went back to give Squeaky Clean another peppermint. The first six had gotten his halitosis down past wilting her feathers, he'd be MUCH better soon.
Sombra snuck towards the opening, unaware that he was a tiger planning to surprise a kitten...
"Prepare yourself.", Sombra spoke in a low voice. "This one is more dangerous than the others, and must be captured quickly and restrained. If her horn begins to glow, crush it- but I must have her ALIVE. Is this understood?
While it sounded more like the torment of small, furry animals being squeezed to death in a vice, the tone was affirmative. Sidling around to the very edge of the dragon's den, he held up a hoof.
"One.....two....THREE AND CHARGE!", bringing it down in a chopping motion.
A half-dozen Kindred raced around the corner and pounced on the winged form before them. There was a brief squeak before the demons returned, a few wisps of a pink tail poking out between a cage of interlaced claws. Something clicked repeatedly from where the prey was trapped...
The Kindred bearing their prize seemed to have developed a bit of a cough in the process. Prying two interlocked talons apart, he peered inside.
A petrified Fluttershy looked back at him, teeth chattering.
The coughing fit developed into a gale of laughter and talon-pointing at the "most dangerous" opponent their fearless leader had sent them after as the rest of the squad saw what they'd managed to snare.
The pegasus managed to blush hard enough to banish the evening chill from her surroundings.
"ENOUGH.", intoned Sombra.
The laughter instantly was replaced by a few brief coughs and the shuffling of clawed feet across dirt. Fluttershy managed to shrink even further into her captor's claws, flattening herself against the back of the cage just to get out of the dark unicorn's view.
"HOLD HER HEAD STILL. OPEN HER EYES. I WILL KNOW HOW CELESTIA'S LITTLE PETS HAVE GROWN SUCH FANGS, AND THIS PATHETIC WINGED CREATURE WILL GIVE ME EVERYTHING SHE KNOWS..."
Fluttershy suddenly found herself presented nose-to-nose with Sombra, a grey fist wrapped around her neck as two claws delicately peeled back her eyelids...
"ONCE I'VE TORN IT FROM HER SKULL."
Two lances of greenish flame wormed their way into the gentle creature's eyes and drove themselves without mercy into the brain behind it. A delicate gasp managed to escape past the crushing grip on the back of Fluttershy's skull. Her wings stiffened and spread from the shock, hindlegs pawing helplessly in mid-air.
Drowned out by the flaming stare of Sombra, a pink butterfly stone glowed and began to move it's crystalline wings.
The flames did not slacken, but Sombra's jaw did. A faint noise whistled from the back of his throat, his mane began to stand on end, and inside his mind's eye, he realized far, far too late what a foolish thing he had done.
The adorable eyes he had forced his will into narrowed into the stare of a predatory beast, one that had found itself unexpectedly cornered in it's den and furious beyond what any pony should be capable of. His spell splashed against an iron wall of indignant willpower and shattered like glass, leaving Sombra clutching his head from the backlash.
"You....you MEANIE! You're the meanest mean meanie that ever meaned and you're a BAD UNICORN!"
The outburst actually caused a few of the Kindred to step back, scenting a dragon in sheep's clothing.
"Just....just....goawayandleavemealoneplease?"
Laughter rumbled from all directions as Fluttershy's outburst became a begging whisper, both at the pathetic creature and the even more pathetic failure of their master to tame the bunny quivering in a claw-filled grasp.
A tiny, winged creature settled on the tip of Sombra's horn...well, fluttering a bit as it caught a stray breeze. Then another landed atop a Kindred's head. Then a dozen more. Then two. A vertiable swarm of butterflies settled down on any nearby surface and calmly perched, pink as the cutie mark on the flank of their prisoner.
The Kindred holding Fluttershy suspended in mid-air shook her irritably as one tickled it's nose with a stray antenna, eliciting a pained squeal as the rough treatment left thin lines of blood dripping from her muzzle and neck. As one, every butterfly's wings snapped out in perfect unison. The cloud of insects floated delicately into the air and began to swirl in an unseen wind, brushing their ephemeral touch across Fluttershy's captors...
...and a thousand-thousand rosy lines bloomed across their hides as the dusty scales cut into flesh like razors. Tendons torn in dozens of places, Fluttershy's jailer let the pony slip to the ground, where she cowered and shivered at the monsters surrounding her. Bellows and wails rose to a deafening volume as the swarm slashed across eyes and limbs and every inch of exposed flesh with nothing more than the most delicate of breezes propelling their attacks. Weapons found no mark as the winged tormentors simply swirled around them, swats and crushes became gaping wounds and severed claws when they met the seemingly fragile bugs.
Sombra crawled on his belly away from the rain of ichor and demon chunks, only getting a few stray cuts for his trouble. The sight of his monstrous companions being butchered by butterflies only served to further encourage him to back away, back away...on the other side, Fluttershy mirrored his departure, black and yellow scootching backwards from each other in a d'aww-inducing retreat.
Mostly unattached to one another, hundreds of oozing pieces of what used to be roughly a dozen Kindred lay in a heap of carrion. The flock of butterflies danced along the draft of air leading back to the ruined grate and settled in a pinkish ring around it, spindly legs finding an easy purchase on the stony surfaces. They huddled together seemingly for warmth in the evening's chill...with the glowering eyes of Fluttershy the only light behind them. Pupils narrowed to a feline's slits, she turned and slunk on her haunches back to the wounded ponies she had been caring for.
"All shall love me, or despair..." might have been heard, if you'd been close enough to dare the butterflies when she murmured it. "Aren't you so pretty there, watching for Mommy Fluttershy...."
Confident and suddenly more lighthearted, Twilight Sparkle trotted around the slightly damp tunnel, looking out through small grates as she did so to keep her bearings. The faint, soft giggle of Fluttershy echoed faintly from behind, reassuring her that the one friend she worried most about in a fight wasn't anywhere near trouble at all. Safe as can be!
Fluttershy watched as a stray tauri that had wandered too close was carpeted in pink wings, giggling as it ran away in terror from her little friends. The monstrous beast managed to get about a dozen steps away before it sank to the ground, tendons cut and it's throat gashed in dozens of places. Wasn't nature fascinating?
Two of the little insects perched themselves on Fluttershy's ears like adorable sentinels as the rest returned to their wallside post.
---
Sombra huddled by the wall, desperately not trying to attract any further attention. The few cuts in his flank stung, but had struck nothing vital- but the butterflies seemed to home in on any sudden movement. Having one of the little pink horrors resting atop his nose at the moment didn't help matters much.
"WHY, MY LORD SOMBRA....IS THAT A BUTTERFLY ON YOUR NOSE? HOW CUTE."
Sombra groaned internally as he felt the attention of Jolfr's will focus on his prostrate form.
"Celestia's little ponies have managed to turn butterflies into better killers than your demons, Jolfr. Have a look through my eyes for yourself.", he returned.
The phantom presence rested itself behind his forehead, taking in the shredded remnants and the feral blue eyes still lighting the tunnel beyond. As Fluttershy's head twitched a bit from her hitchhiking friends, a third butterfly of stone glowered into the space as well from the golden torc around her throat, then vanished again as she settled her head back on her hooves.
"OH, FOR THE SAKE OF ME!" roared in Sombra's mental space, nearly causing him to disturb his passenger. A rosy wing rose in a perfect mix of harmlessness and dire menace.
"CELESTIA IS A DOLT, A FOALISH SPIRIT, A MANIPULATIVE FOUL-FILLY! SHE TURNED HER ELDEST SISTER INTO TRINKETS FOR A PACK OF MORTALS?"
Sombra's head ached, both from the internal roar-a-logue and the strain of holding his neck absolutely still...
"TRULY, SHE GAMBLES WITH FATE. E'EN BROKEN, ALEXANDRITE IS A DOUGHTY FORTRESS OF A SPIRIT INDEED, AND IN TOUCHING MINE SERVANTS, HER IRE MUST SURELY BE RAISED. THERE IS NAUGHT BUT WAR BETWEEN US WHEN WE GATHER SO CLOSE AS THIS."
"So, you're saying you've thrown me into the teeth of an angry god that makes Celestia or Luna look like feeble old mares?"
"NAY. WOULDST I BE TRUE IF I LEFT THEE IN SUCH PERILS? THOU SHALT RETREAT IN SAFE-KEEPING, AND WE SHALL STRIKE AGAIN ONCE THEIR MEASURE IS TRULY TAKEN- THE WORD IS GIVEN, THINE FORCES SHALL WITHDRAW BELOW. THE POWERS THESE PONIES PLAY WITH ARE MAD TO TEMPT SO, AND MIGHT WELL DO YOUR WORK FOR YOU...AND BESIDES, ELDEST SISTER HAS NOT THROWN HER FULLEST STRENGTH INTO THIS BATTLE. PART LIES YET SLEEPING, AND IF WE WOULDST HAVE YOUR ARMY WHOLE, BEST NOT TO BE NEAR WHEN IT DOES.
As the words faded, the glow of Twilight Sparkle's horn blazed like a fallen star from across the field- and doubled to a blinding radiance that burned like salt in Sombra's wounds.
"HMM. A MITE TOO LATE FOR THAT, I KEN. LORD SOMBRA, IF THOU DOST VALUE THINE SKIN? FLEE."
A crackling spark of lightning set Sombra's nose to twitching as it flicked the butterfly off it's perch. Flapping for dear life, Seeker powered his way up a ramp into the stadium tunnels as the rest of Fluttershy's swarm lifted off and gusted after the ahriman with deceptive speed. Dashing the opposite direction, the unicorn warlock looked for a safe way down into the depths and salvation...
---
As Sombra and his master had their fateful discussion, Twilight Sparkle's journey underground had ended. Through a small grate, she could see the feeble forms of Princess Cadence and Shining Armor, coated liberally in a thick prison of ebon growths. A single horn-bolt sent the side of the tunnel flying out into the darkness, and a moment's flight set her down by their sides.
Turning an eye coated with cataracts, Shining Armor managed to gurgle something that might have been "Twily...", rheumy strands of mucus dripping down to try to soothe the ancient unicorn's vision.
"He'd made them old. Older than Granny Smith!", thought Twilight as she studied their prison. Blasting it loose might kill the unfortunate pair, so something more subtle...her horn lit and touched the edge of the crystalline growths, seeking to melt them away like snow in summer. Atop Twilight's head, the starry gem crowning her diadem flashed and the Element poured it's own strength unasked into the spell, sending tendrils of while light seeping into the edges of Twilight's vision.
The melting became the sublimation of a blowtorch, swathes of black melting into thin streamers of gas before being consumed in the unrelenting light. and crawling away from even the touch of the glow from her horn as if it was a living creature.
A voice filled every space, every sense in the alicorn, brooking no other as it struck her dumb, deaf and blind to anything but the will that flowed from the Element of Magic, into her horn, and outwards across the two bodies before them.
"BASK IN MINE GLORY, THAT STRETCHES INTO INFINITY!"
The curse of un-natural years reversed itself, washing the sight of Sombra's victims clear, setting bones warped by age arrow-straight and spreading a glow that painted the colors of life upon Cadence and Shining Armor like the height of summer. The two lay under the almost uncomfortable glow, blinking fresh tears from the newborn binary sun that stood with wings spread wide.
"REPENT THINE IRREVERENCE! THE GATE TO PARADISE LIES BEFORE THEE! SALVATION OR DAMNATION LIES WITHIN THINE REACH!"
The voice that came from within the purple alicorn was nothing that flesh should ever have spoken- glorious and terrible, promising judgement without mercy, punishment for every sin no matter how trivial, a trial no mortal could stand before and fail to suffer divine wrath.
It drove the newly restored into unthinking terror. Princess Cadence leaped for the sky and fled, abandoning her husband. Shining Armor nearly broke a newly-reformed leg in his hurry to gallop as far from his sister as possible. Heedless of the danger, the stallion bounded nearly his own height to flee before slipping on a shattered seat, bouncing off a step to lay in a dazed heap in the rubble. Thankfully for him, the fit of terror passed more swiftly for his wife as she rose further and faster from the incandescent source, and she turned to spy her still flailing husband. Diving to land by his side, she lifted him clear of the splintered remnants and spoke quietly, tearfully to the suspended form until reason began to win against fear.
A glance revealed rank upon rank of Kindred illuminated by the star-on-earth, all of which were trying to slowly get as far from the blinding light without attracting the attention of it's source, clearly as fearful of it's glow as Cadence had been. Five ponies carelessly orbited their solar focus, their eyes filmed with the same unrelenting light that coated Twilight Sparkle's as the Elements cast colored lances of reflected glory to and fro across the shuddering crowd and the few merely mortal ponies that remained.
"I...AM ALEXANDRITE! TREMBLE BEFORE ME! WORSHIP MY GREATNESS!"
"Alexandrite?" "Who?" came out of the mouths of Cadence and Shining at once.
---
Outside the stadium, the fight had not been going so well. With the Heart's fading, the enemy's incredible resistance to attacks had returned, leaving Luna's blasts of magical might the only thing delivering lasting harm. The center and left flank had collapsed into a triple rank of spearponies surrounding the princess, many of which were down to merely sticks of wood as steel points snapped or bent against impenetrable hides. While the demonic forces had developed a healthy respect for Luna's power, they hurled stones and spikes of elemental magic, pinning the Royal Guard down under an unrelenting hail of missiles. The Princess was showing signs of strain, her previous furious exertions over hours of combat enough to even sap an alicorn- and anger alone was not enough to sustain such a trial. Greedily, she sucked half a dozen floating canteens of water dry as unicorn shieldponies sweated and forced themselves to repel yet another salvo of flames and lightning, then a rain of head-sized chunks of ice mixed with Kindred hurled boulders. Three battered but still sturdy buildings protected the Guard's flanks and rear, but no way to freedom could be found past the enemy who bottled them in from the fourth.
"Princess, the lines are beginning to fail!", uttered a pegasus in the gilded armor of a flight officer. A torn wing mutely explained his place with the infantry. "We have ten, maybe fifteen minutes before we start losing defenses...and..."
"MAJOR THUNDERHEAD, THINE ADVICE IS WELL GIVEN. FEAR NOT, FOR WE SHALL BE FREE OF YONDER BEASTS YET."
"Sister mine, this goes poorly...tell me your return is with haste!
Celestia's thoughts held a tinge of worry that no longer hid beneath royal aplomb. "Luna...the trains are clear, and you've done all you can. Get the Guard out- bring down half the city if you must to cover them, but...I cannot come.
Soaring above the Appleachian mountains, Princess Celestia's thoughts for her sister were briefly interrupted as a winged form thrice her size snapped it's beak to tear off the alicorn's wing. A concussive bolt from her horn dazed the roc in mid-snap, feathers drifting away from the dent it left in the giant bird's crown. Behind it, the trails of what must have been huge beasts broke their way up the steep slopes, seeking the eastern decline and the heavily populated lands beyond. Celestia too was wearying, having slain or laid out dozens of monstrous escapees...and still more had yet to be found before they found themselves a wealth of pony flesh to consume. They were already far too close to Hollow Shades, and then...
Save them for me, for I cannot., she thought in private, screening the news from her sister and the link they shared.
Please.
Swinging in on a wide circle, the roc returned to the attack. ---
Princess Luna gritted her teeth and lowered her horn to feed another arcane assault into the wall of demons holding her army hostage in it's redoubt, looking for some weakness that she could breach to bring about their escape. A hissing, crackling sound from behind disrupted the princesses' concentration as she turned to face whatever fiend was preparing to attack her force from behind...only to be dazzled by the results.
Above her, thin streamers of flame flew by the dozens towards the Kindred and blossomed into tiny balls of eye-searing light in a rainbow of colors, with blinding sparkles and flashes mixing the *POP* of explosives and the *WHREEEEEEE!* of rockets releasing a technicolor arsenal of glittering fireworks. As the shadows vanished into a merciless glare of burning propellents and flares, demons scattered from cover and ran or flew for darker spots, stumbling and screeching in their blackened speech.
A voice rang out from above as the weary army looked for the source of their support.
"THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE WOULD LIKE SOMEONE TO TAKE HER AWAY FROM ALL THIS."
The pointy-hatted unicorn gestured with a glowing arrow at the newly cleared street.
"EXIT, STAGE RIGHT!", as she turned to race for the ground floor- and found herself in Luna's magical grasp, sliding downwards through the air. With the haste of an express elevator, she settled to a spot before the alicorn.
"I THINK THINE NEWEST FANS WOULD BE MOST WILLING, MISTRESS LULAMOON."
With a cheer, the army moved double-time through the gap Trixie's stash of stage fireworks had opened, a few lingering rockets shrieking through the air to encourage their attackers to keep their heads down. Surrounded by her unicorn bodyguards, Luna galloped alongside them, Trixie barely a step behind her royal escort. Sending intermittent shockwaves of force to cloak their retreat as they toppled buildings behind them, the army vanished into the clouds of dust and debris.
Meanwhile, the Kindred hearkened to their master and began to retreat for whatever holes they could find...when a pillar of celestial radiance rose from the stadium .The voice of Alexandrite echoed faintly as it castigated the unworthy before it's sight, and the sensitive ears of imps caught every word. Panic! Coherence vanished as the beasts began to lope or flap through the streets in every direction- as long as it was nowhere near the source of the light and whatever terrors it held.
In the twilight hours, a new sun rose above the Crystal Empire.
Lifting her/their bodies in a ball of blinding light, the incarnated form of Alexandrite rose above the stadium to view the scuttling grey insects tainting the city around her.
"OFFER THINE WORSHIP, I SHALL BURN AWAY ALL TRANSGRESSIONS!
The radiance reached down into the stadium to the cowering crowd of demons, withering wings to nubs of half-melted flesh and turning the curved horns of Kindred into candles. Some ran. Others simply fell on their bellies and buried their faces in the unforgiving earth, their shrieks desecrating the ground they lay upon.
A moment of satisfaction seemed to pass across six faces as they beheld the scant dozens that remained, kowtowing before the unrelenting sun.
Pinned like bugs within the gaze of Alexandrite, they writhed and became as dust on spears of glowing light.
---
Inside the wreckage, Sombra grunted as a thrice-reflected beam left a scorch mark across his chest and inspired a few choice comments about the wickedness of mares.
Outside, Shining Armor blinked away tears as another cone of light spread from Alexandrite into the city, reflections from the city's structure sending beams of white in mad angles. Monsters burned, but the screams of ponies blinded by the assault rose into the air as well- the occasional tourist or citizen stumbling out of a hiding place to fumble at a world that had become nothing but a sparkling, endless void.
"TWILIGHT! TWIIIIILIGHT!" he screamed at the thing that had swallowed his sister as it relentlessly purified block after block of un-natural life, even as Alexandrite judged the innocent along with the evil. Pegasi stumbled across the rubble, wingfeathers scorched into uselessness along with their eyes. Another pony pushed his horn to a smouldering glow as he tried to banish the darkness from his ruined vision. Only the crystal ponies seemed to have some resistance to the effects of the attacks- where others were blind or burnt, the power of Alexandrite barely dazzled them in it's mercifully brief passages.
If Twilight Sparkle was aware of the dot below her crying her name, she betrayed no sign.
Princess Cadence was far more useful.
"Celestia, Luna- Twilight and the Elements have gone mad! She's burning the Empire clean with magic and everypony along with it, and won't stop calling herself something named "Alexandrite"..."
Luna's response was to take wing as the Royal Guard trotted along the tracks towards the distant warmth of the south, escorting trains filled to bursting with ponies who had escaped the carnage.
"GUARDS, WARD THE CITIZENRY! MINE HORN NEEDS BE LENT TO THE FIGHT ONCE MORE, FOR PRINCESS CADENCE AND THE EMPIRE!"
Ragged cries of encouragement came from the crowded cars as the weary alicorn flew over them, straining for a glimpse of light beyond the snow-laden winds.
"Cadence, those who fled with me are clear of thine tormentors- though the storms press me sorely, I come!"
Celestia's response was more delayed and abrupt.
"The creature that has our little ponies in it's thrall dwells in the Elements they wear- it IS the Elements. Get them off however you can- break them if you must, but please...try not to harm anypony in doing it. I.....I...."
A wordless cry of pain rolled through the link as the roc managed to nip a divot of hoof from Celestia's hindleg, the distraction finally letting it draw blood. Celestia exploded into a panicked ball of flames from the agony and engulfed the giant bird, sending it tumbling to the earth with it's head a mass of charred flesh.
Suffering,nauseated by pain and the thick scent of roasted avian flesh, she stumbled into a three-legged landing on a nearby cliff. The wounded alicorn finally gave in to her exhaustion as the final, overwrought spell sapped what little reserves she'd been husbanding for hours.
"I....can do...no more." was all she managed before the Sun fell into night.
---
Having purged her sight of any creatures of darkness that had been foolish enough to scuttle beneath the gaze of Alexandrite, the spirit riding Twlight Sparkle's flesh gazed with thought at the Crystal Heart, glittering with a rainbow of sparks as it rested in it's perch overlooking the stadium. The five other ponies that formed her "body" alternatively stood on nothingness in mid-air or peered about, sensing the few remnants of darkness in the city yet unable to determine exactly where they might be found.
The original owners of those six bodies were....elsewhere.
Twilight Sparkle blinked, as if her eyes had been closed for hours. The world outside was...very magenta-ish and bright. Well, to be precise, it was the introduction of large amounts of white light filtered through the star-shaped crystal her spirit happened to be occupying, letting her look out into a realm that was actually rather familiar, for an alicorn. Spinning nearby were five very familiar, if oversized prisons, each holding their own pony. Applejack occasionally thrashed at the bottom of her equally orange apple-shaped prison, her hooves sliding like grease on something slippery. Past her, a red bolt of lightning held Rainbow Dash- suspended in a sea of what looked to be....bubbles? The faint shape of what had to be Rarity in her own donjon was a blurry mess as she tried to see through to the end of the line.
"I'm on the Astral Plane, and somepony used our elements as soul gems!" flashed through the scholar's mind. Of course, the Elements were as magical a gem as one could find, and if there was anything Twilight Sparkle was linked to..."But how could anypony have enchanted them?".
Never mind that. Whatever or whoever had them here was up to no good, and who knows what they could be doing?
Escape.
A blast of mental energy arced from Twilight's horn to impact on the wall- and bounce off, twice, thrice, four times...before *cracking* off her horn. Spirit or not, that HURT! When the stars stopped multiplying every time her eyes opened, she began to pace her prison.
"My prison is magic-proofed. Applejack's doesn't give her a leg to stand on, from the looks of it. Dash's won't let her get any wingspeed up, she'll just end up pushing all those bubbles around...but they can't all be proof against everything, CAN THEY?"
Turning away from the view of Applejack as she fell over once again, she brought both legs up and bucked a pair of golden horseshoes against the wall. Pain shot through her hindlegs from the effort, but ... the crystal had scratch marks! Again. A tiny crack. Again. Another crack. Again. Again. Again. AGAIN. AGAIN. AGAIN. Come. On. AGAIN. Again, again...
One side of the gem-prison had become a spiderweb of cracked facets, but no matter how many more times she struck, the wall refused to give further to her exhausted legs. A second blast from her horn splintered into needlelike shards of energy that reflected back to poke her in a dozen places with red-hot points.
"How do I hit that wall in one place with more force than using my hooves?" was the next question. She thought, while the agony passed into mere aches and pains. She studied the web of cracks, Twilight's subconscious mind assigning them patterns of stress and reinforcement. And finally, she looked at her horn, shuddered, and made a decision. Bracing herself, she lowered her head, spread her wings...
...and shoving off the wall with her wings flapping, she rammed the point of her horn into the jigsaw of broken crystal. A splintering sound filled her ears as her head crashed through the wall...and stuck there. Her view of the white light of the Astral was clear, but the wall had shifted to trap her head in place, and no matter how she flapped or pushed, forwards or backwards was going nowhere.
Staring through the wall of her citrine cage, Applejack couldn't be heard, but the way her eyes were bulging at the sight told Twilight she looked TOTALLY ridiculous at the moment. Then again, after seeing some of those pictures of her dancing at the Coronation Gala, what else was new? And besides, she might not be able to move, and her body was limp with exhaustion...but she had plenty of magic left.
And who built magic-proof prisons for an earth pony? Twilight pummeled the barrier keeping her from Applejack relentlessly with her horn, the concussions setting the crystal to ringing like a giant chime. Hooves clapped over her ears, Applejack lay still as the giant fruit was peeled and finally gave way to Twilight's efforts with a musical *TING*, leaving the apple looking as if an equally large worm had bored a hole in the top.
A loop of rope flicked from Applejack's tail settled neatly around a broken edge and dripping some unidentifiable slime, she dragged herself to freedom, grousing as it dripped back into the chamber.
"The NERVE of the fella who put me in that there thing! Trappin' an Apple in APPLESAUCE! Why, I'm gonna...Twilight, are you gonna be all right like that? That looks....kinda sharp."
"Never mind me, Applejack. Can you help Rainbow Dash?"
"Well, there's this kinda glowy nothin' between me and her, but..."
Looking over the edge, Applejack watched a dollop of pulped fruit drip off the edge of her hoof and fall. And fall. And fall...until it vanished from sight.
"Hoo boy, that there is a LOT of nothin'." Keeping a tight grip on her anchor, Applejack shook off her coat, droplets flying in all directions to plunge into nothingness. A stray bit hit Twilight on the nose.
Hmm. Zap apple. Sadly, the angle and distance was going to make lifting her friend over to the next prison pretty much impossible...but Applejack was already on the job.
Tying a loop bigger than she was around in the lasso, the earth pony whipped it in a few quick circles and tossed the end as far she could. It settled around the top of Dash's containment, and with a quick pull, she tightened it until the line lost all but the slightest bit of slack.
A moment to make sure her hat was VERY firmly settled on her head, a few deep breaths...and she began to walk across an ocean of nothing on a single rope. A memory flashed before her eyes.
Big Mac when he was just not-so-little MacIntosh, holding one end of the rope tight in his teeth as his crazy sister walked down the line from the hayloft to the barn floor. After the circus had come to Ponyville, the filly had been wanting to try the one thing that had her on the edge of her hooves...four steps to go, three, two...and her hooves slipped on the last bit of rope, sending her crashing onto Mac's back. They couldn't get up for ten minutes straight from laughing that hard at the "Great Appletini's" daring high-wire act!
Memory faded back to reality, and with a little hop, Applejack landed on the roof of Dash's gem-cell. She gave it an experimental tap with one hoof. Hmmm....
"Time to let off a little steam."
Applejack stomped a brisk tattoo on the roof, chips of ruby flying in all directions as her hooves pummeled the prison. In less than a minute, the crystalline surface failed, and a hole gouted bubbles that floated up and outwards into the "sky" until finally, the only thing occupying the cell was Rainbow Dash. For about two seconds. Call it one and change- the pegasus did need a second to get flapping, after all.
"OHHHHHH YEAH!"
Hovering in place, Dash gave her friend a quick hug of gratitude, then flitted over to drift before Twilight's rocky predicament.
"You want me to get you outta there? I'll just go WHAM and POW and BAM and it'll be all CRACK and BLAM and..."
Thinking about the idea of Rainbow Dash punching razor-sharp crystal bits anywhere near her neck got Twilight encouraging her friend to go help whoever was next door instead.
And that happened to be Rarity, who was wobbling at the bottom of an purple octahedron, her hooves barely keeping purchase on the bottom edges. The facets shone like delicate stained glass, just waiting for the slightest push to split them apart from the inside...and send the unicorn plunging into infinity. It was a prison as stylish as it was lethal...but not for your neighborhood Rainbow Dash! A quick dive under Rarity and with a (overdone as usual) little shriek, the unicorn was towed through the air to safety as the walls of her deathtrap swung uselessly.
Next was a blue, translucent balloon, with a rosy butterfly of quartz glittering only a short distance away. Inside the balloon was a clearly amused Pinkie Pie as she ricocheted off the springy walls, while Fluttershy looked plaintively from her imprisonment inside the "head" of hers. Twilight suggested they take them in order, so Applejack made her best effort to bust her way into Pinkie's soul prison...even if she DID look like she was having too much fun.
The resulting *SPROING* sent Applejack flying in need of a Dash taxi back to the butterfly. Dash's attempt to ram through the rubbery walls didn't do much better, though the rainbow-colored rebound WAS the longest Dash had ever managed to fly backwards at nearly the speed of sound.
(Sadly, the Astral Plane is not considered for record keeping for Wonderbolt trainees or it might have been an academy record.)
Finally, it took Twilight's planning and all three to defeat the rebounding redoubt. Applejack stood on Fluttershy's butterfly, her lasso tied around Rarity. Dash hovered at a distance and watched as the unicorn proceeded to prick the offending thing with the sharp end of her horn.
It popped, sending Rarity flying into the air as Pinkie's SQUEEEEEEEEEEE! of delight dopplered off, Rainbow Dash chasing the overstimulated earth pony for an aerial recovery. Hauling on the line, Applejack brought her catch in for a rough but serviceable landing.
"EEEEEEEEEEE! Boingy, boingy, boingy!" went Pinkie as soon as her hooves touched down, hopping across the stony insect. Suddenly, she stopped and looked down the "ground". "Oops! Sorry, Mister Flutterby. You're so stony-sparkly-shiny I HAD to dance...how about...."
...a Pinkie Is Planning look snuck onto her face when she thought nopony was looking...
"TICKLES!" as she dropped to her belly and dug her hooves into the stony thorax. It shuddered. It wheezed! And a long curled up tongue rolled out of it's mouth, depositing Fluttershy in mid-air. Flutterby's spiracles did a rather good impression of laughing at the whole experience, or at least heh-heh-hehing.
"Oh! Mister Flutterby! You're SO nice not to dump all my friends off after they treated your quartzy-wartzy chitin like that. I know, we'll find you a nice polish and I'll make it all better! And there has to be some flowers around here...somewhere?"
"Over heeee-rrrrre!" echoed from the glittering star still floating in space.
Dash had the grace to look momentarily embarrassed.
"Um, yeah! We're gonna get you out RIGHT now Twilight! canyougeteveryponyovertherelikerightnowfluttershythanks!"
A few soft words from Fluttershy and the crystalline insect flapped over to hover near the starry and scarred wall from which Twilight's head protruded, surrounded by jagged bits of crystal. The yellow pegasus examined the tangle of splinters and unicorn with some concern, then said:
"Take a nice, deep breath.". Twilight gulped a lungful of air and held it. "And out.". She blew it out with a puff that ruffled Fluttershy's wings. "OK, another one." In, and out. In, and out. After a few breaths, Twilight realized she'd been panting between sucking in all the air her lungs could handle, and it changed to a calm, steady rhythm.
"And in....", as Twilight relaxed, Fluttershy's hoof matter-of-factly pulled a splinter that had been poking her neck dangerously close to an artery and let it fall into the void. "...and out..." A second shard came loose without so much as a scrape. "And in..." Then another, and another as she cleaned the jagged hole of it's fragments and let her friend's head pull back, without a single scratch. The remnants lost cohesion without their pony-support and crumbled into open space, leaving a wide hole for the prisoner to escape. Twilight leaped clear of the gem as it fell apart, the ghostlike touch of the astral "winds" catching at her wings as she flapped for a little altitude. The tip of her horn glowed as she sought out a way- and found one.
"Second star on the right, and straight on till morning!", she said as she led the way towards one of the infinite celestial beacons that shone in every direction. As they flew, it grew, and grew, and grew....and became an all-encompassing glow that closed in about them like mist, leaving each of the ponies only aware of moving onwards and "outwards"...
For the moment, Alexandrite had ceased to blast the surroundings- a feat only accomplished by the utter obliteration of hundreds if not thousands of the creatures that had wreaked havoc in the Crystal Empire. The cries that followed were not of joy- but of pain. Uncaring of the lives before it, the sweeping beams had left whatever ponies that hadn't fled the city burnt, maimed, or blinded- and occasionally, mercifully dead. Crystal ponies found themselves leading chains of the injured nose-to-tail through the choked streets, trying to ease the torments of the ones for whom the agony left them senseless, or simply mourning a friend who had failed to endure the trials of the pony-star that burned in the heavens.
Many simply followed the well-beaten path down the tracks, vowing never to come to the twice-cursed place again. The cold snow became a blessing as they cleared the boundaries of the Empire, cooling burns and quenching the thirst of dessicated ponies. In half an hour, the only residents that remained were the dead, those too wounded to move, lost in their blindness, or anchored by their sorrow for the other three. For them, only the broken ruins of life and home remained.
Princess Luna found herself sagging lower with every flap, snow and ice forming a white coat on her wings and saddling her back with the heavy hand of winter. Halfway back to the city, she was forced to land...in the midst of the mob trudging away from the desolation.
The sight froze her to the core. Those who could still see called her name, the sightless turning their heads back and forth as they echoed the cries- for help, for healing, to be saved, saved, SAVED. Dozens and then hundreds of the lost gathered around Luna, begging, weeping, bleeding, lost.
Celestia could not save them. Who would save them? The Guard already had it's hooves filled to the brim with the thousands on the trains and the excess who had galloped to safety when the last seat was filled.
For Luna, the fight ended in under a minute. Tears freezing to icy flakes in the wind, she lifted her horn and banished the snow and storm around her in a bubble of moonlit calm. Turning southward, she walked with the herd, an encouraging word here, a gentle touch of relief to the worst-wounded there, a steady flow of minor miracles to the unending sea of equines that had found her in the cold night.
"Cadence? The ponies, thine subjects and mine alike- I have found them, they need me, and I am here- but they must flee, none but me to guide them. I, I....I too can do no more. May the Moon bless and aid you, for it's Princess cannot come."
Perhaps the trail of droplets that followed Luna's path were snowflakes melting to rain as they struck the protective barrier she held against the weather. At the least, it was what Luna told herself as she shepherded her ponies through the darkness. Strange that melted snow should taste so salty, no?
---
"...for it's Princess cannot come."
Luna's thoughts closed the last door of companionship in Cadence's face, standing in the false daylight as she watched Alexandrite's mindless scrying of the depths of the Crystal Heart.
In the end, a Princess must care for her own rule. So be it. The thought left a bitter taste in the back of her mouth as she rose into the skies to confront the six-headed beast that had brought the Empire to it's knees. The moon became visible as the glowing pollution lessened, a faint silvery circle berift of it's starry companions. The sight gave Cadence a moment of comfort as she flew at the edge of the corona to raise her voice.
"TO THE CREATURE WHO CALLS ITSELF "ALEXANDRITE", I GRANT YOU ONE CHANCE. SURRENDER THE PONIES YOU HAVE TAKEN, MY SISTER, HER FRIENDS, AND YOURSELF TO MY CUSTODY FOR YOUR CRIMES AGAINST THEM, MY PEOPLE, MY EMPIRE, AND EQUESTRIA. AS PRINCESS AND RULER, I DEMAND YOU TO OBEY AND ANSWER FOR THE INJUSTICES YOU HAVE POURED ON THEM- OR I SHALL DRIVE YOU FROM THIS LAND AND LIFE ITSELF. WHAT SAY YOU?"
Six heads ceased their meditations and turned to follow Cadence as she orbited. And spoke, words seemingly flowing randomly from each of Alexandrite's thralls.
"THOU ART...LIKE ME, AND YET UN-ALIKE.", came from the lips of Rarity.
"THY FORM CONTAINS THE BLESSINGS OF SPIRIT, BUT HAS ALWAYS KNOWN THE IMPURITY OF FLESH. I SORROW FOR THY STATE.", spoke Applejack.
"I SEE THE WORLD THROUGH THE HEART OF OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS, AND IT HAS GROWN STAINED WITH SIN AS I HAVE SLEPT, BROKEN THROUGH THE AGES.", echoed Pinkie Pie.
"AS I HAVE SEEN, SO SHALL WE MAKE IT PURE ONCE MORE.", judged Fluttershy.
"I SHALL GIFT THIS WORLD WITH OUR DIVINE JUDGEMENT, AND THE HEART SHALL DELIVER IT TO EVERY CORNER. NO FLAW SHALL ESCAPE. NO DARKNESS, UNLIT. UNTO EVERY FORM CHAINED BY INIQUITY, I GRANT FREEDOM.", uttered Rainbow Dash with the tone of an executioner preparing to drop the axe.
"AND THESE WHO HAVE BECOME MY VESSELS SHALL KNOW AN ETERNITY OF JOY AS THIS REALM RETURNS TO THE PRISTINE, HOLY STATE IT HAS YEARNED FOR.", finished Twilight's puppeted body.
The aura of light hardened about Alexandrite like a pearly shell, and Cadence lunged forward only to rebound off the barrier. Blasts from her horn were ignored as the ponies turned towards the Heart as one. The eyes of the Elements focused, white streams of glow fracturing into rainbows as they played over the relic. Far below, Shining Armor added his fractional firepower to the assault, but the defenses against them were like trying to break a mountain with a dull tin spoon.
Above them, a horseshoe-shaped brand slowly began to burn in the air.
---
Inside Sombra's mind, Jolfr's response to the entire thing was summarized in a single, primal and cosmic obscenity, then:
"SHE'LL KILL YOU ALL, TRYING TO GET RID OF THE SLIGHTEST SCRAPS OF ANYTHING THAT DOESN'T MEET HER STANDARDS OF "PERFECTION". SHE WOULD MAKE AN OATH-BREAKER OF SADR, THE TRUTHFUL! THE WOLF'S TOOTH! BY MY MANY NAMES, THIS CANNOT BE!"
"YET....YET...I KNOW NO SPELL, NO PATH THAT WILL SLIP PAST THAT WHICH ALEXANDRITE HAS WROUGHT. FORTRESS SHE IS IN NAME AND ART, AND ONLY HER FLESH AND BLOOD COULD PASS. THE SPELL WILL NOT LAST LONG, BUT LONG ENOUGH TO FINISH HER JUDGEMENT ON EVERY MORTAL THAT DRAWS BREATH."
The spark of genius that burned in Sombra's mind blossomed into the light of inspiration on the word "blood".
"I know where to find you some.", he replied- racing out into the night-turned-day and searching the ground for a fallen spear...and the weapon that had maimed Applejack lay untouched in the drifiting ashes of demons, dried blood leaving the spearhead a crusted black and crimson. Sombra snatched the weapon up with his horn and examined it.
"Now, can I kill Celestia's little ponies with this, or are we all going to burn?", he spoke to the black presence inside his mind.
"ONE SPEAR WOULD BUT SLAY A SINGLE PART, AND THE REST WOULD SLAY THEE IN TURN BEFORE SEEKING A NEW HOST. NAY, BUT THINE WEAPON SHALL YET SPOIL HER PLANS. BE THOU PREPARED TO LEARN FAST, MY RIDER?", replied Jolfr's midnight tone.
"CRAFT NOW A VISION OF ME IN THE AIR BEFORE YOU. FILL IT WITH THINE POWER AND I SHALL AID THEE, FOR THOUGH MINE FULL STRENGTH WOULD CRUMBLE ANY ONE MORTAL TO DUST, A MERE SHARD THOU CANST BEAR AND SHALL SERVE US WELL."
Sombra's magic became a shadowy, hollow image of Jolfr's eight-legged form, a shell that filled and gained substance as ebon threads wove themselves from his horn to stitch the phantom from mist into a quasi-solid image of his master. As it gained coherence, the bloody spear was torn from Sombra's grasp by the will of the avatar he had called into being, suspending itself above Jolfr's spectral head like a scorpion's sting. Despite the omnipresent light, the shaft of the spear vanished into a cloud of black, bubbling mists.
"MINE OBSIDIAN SPEAR SHALL SPLIT ATWAIN THE THREADS OF THY FUTURE..."
Above them, Alexandrite began to pronounce her final sentence upon the mortal realm.
"ACCEPT THY DESTRUCTION..."
"...WHILST IT'S CRIMSON FULLER SHALT CHANNEL THE LIFEBLOOD OF THY PAST."
"...WISH FOR ETERNITY, YEARN FOR IMMORTALITY..."
"NOW WAIL AS THY SOUL IS BESTREWN TO THE WINDS OF FATE!"
"SENSE THY TRANSIENCE, KNOW THY INSIGNIFICANCE!"
The horseshoe of flame split itself into two, then four, then eight and sixteen....and a divine judgement shone from each to pour itself into the Crystal Heart, then...to everything.
A single ebon line pierced through the searing radiance to reach the Heart first, piercing it through and through before streaking off into the sky. The Heart screamed as the spear impaled it, then rang like a broken bell as Alexandrite's spell found the flaw and focused it's wrath on the artifact instead. The Heart began to crack in a crushing grip made of solid light for a long moment...
And the spell rebounded on it's maker, flung back in the teeth of Alexandrite's thralls. Six brightly colored forms streaked out of the blast to plow furrows in the ruins. As they lay in their craters, the gems in the Elements...failed. Twilight's cracked, then crumbled from the center outwards. Applejack's blew out a gout of stone, the core melting away to blackened metal. Dash, Rarity, Pinkie and finally Fluttershy's stones lost their painful glow as they gave out in turn, the Elements slipping from head and necks to lie useless upon the ground.
Eyes opened. Dazed ponies looked around to find each other as a concerned alicorn overflew each in turn. Shining Armor did a broken-field run as he raced for the hole his sister was rising from, one wing twisted and bent from the landing. A drained Sombra paid for his effort, sprawled in a boneless heap of exhausted pony.
The Heart sang out above them all with the sound of a shop full of wind chimes crashing to the floor as it fell from it's housing. A bit of the bottom point fragmented and bounced away to be lost in the maze of debris. Cacophony poured from the broken stone- cries, howls, squawks, words that never had known a tongue of flesh - as if an entire world had lived within it.
Cadence narrowly dodged as a random streak of lightning spat from the widening crack in the heart and fled into the night sky. The split widened further. A stone the size of a small hill flung itself from the impossibly small gap and slammed itself into the hole where Twilight had been, Shining Armor yanking her still-wobbling form clear just before the boulder finished it's flight.
Princess Cadence focused on the Heart and gave it a push with her special talents. The crack narrowed again, trying to knit itself together from the wound Jolfr's spear had began and Alexandrite's spell had worsened. Flecks of color rushed madly across the surface of the Heart in angry patterns...and the crack visibly strained to widen itself as Cadence fought to put it to rights. Some hearts, no matter how much you try to mend them seemed destined to break...
"SHINING! GET YOUR SISTER AND THE OTHERS OUT OF HERE!", she screamed as the grip of her magic began to shred...
Rose light joined with blue and the pressure eased, just enough to find equilibrium. A warm flank invited her to lean against it for support as her husband's spell encased the Heart in a shell of unicorn magic, giving it no room to spread itself further.
"We.....can....do this...honey....", Shining Armor managed to get out from between grinding teeth. "We...will. Get. This. Done."
The world rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell...
Managing to crack open one eye with superlative efforts, Sombra realized that he was flying through the air at a respectable clip. Was he dreaming? Was this what came after the world had ended? No. If he was dead, it'd hurt FAR less.
Grasped securely in the three-toed hindpaws of Seeker, the unicorn found himself already some distance down the tunnel he had dug into the Empire, the occasional straggling imp or Kindred being passed in the ahriman's haste to escape.
"WHAT MINE SERVANT IS TRYING TO SAY IS THAT WITHOUT THINE AID, NONE COULD HAVE CALLED UPON ME AND STOPPED ALEXANDRITE BEFORE SHE OBLITERATED ALL OF THEM.", interrupted the voice of Jolfr as it took over Seeker's mouth. "AND WELCOME TO THE LIVING. FOR A MOMENT THERE, I EXPECTED YOU TO BE DRINKING GOAT'S-MEAD FOR ETERNITY."
The absurd image of being brought foaming mugs by an endless line of she-goats briefly crossed Sombra's mental landscape before common sense reasserted itself.
"TWAS A GOOD FIGHT, WORTHY OF ONE OF ROYAL STATURE. SEEKER SHALL FETCH THEE BELOW, AND WE SHALL PREPARE."
"For...what?", he thought as the dribble of renewed energy faded back into an exhausted slumber.
---
Far above them, a solitary colt shuddered in his hole. His red coat was dusted with pebbles and dust, and a stubby brown horn only managed a fitful glow to try and keep the black from swallowing him.
Like Nightmare Moon, he thought- even if the matrons taught him that Luna was a good pony, and took care of them all at the Home For Wayward Foals. Indeed, she had come to the orphanage and announced personally that twenty of them were going on a trip to see the Equestrian Games, and it had been the greatest week of Garnet Chip's short life...until today.
The chaperones had gathered up the herd of fillies and colts with all speed and fled with them the moment trouble began, but first the crowds had forced Garnet away from his friends, then the entire level he was on had turned into a ramp, ponies screaming as they slid down the decline. He'd found himself falling into a gap between two slabs of broken concrete, then a stone crashed down to cover most of the way above, leaving only a narrow pillar of light. He wasn't hurt...but nopony could hear his voice amidst the tumult and screaming and flashes of burning light and then the slow crawl of darkness as the night finally took over from the day. Finally, everything...stopped with a crash, a crackle as if someone had kicked a thundercloud, and a *THUMP* that shook the stadium and broke his concentration. His horn sparked and went out, and the shadows immediately took their chance to close in.
A shard of crystal fell into the narrow gap above and with a tinkle, stuck itself in a crack next to Garnet Chip. Inside it, a prismatic spark danced like a rainbow-colored firefly, forming an improvised lantern that kept the terror at bay. Leaning his horn against the glowing stone, the colt sighed with relief. Why, it was warm! Indeed, the shard and it's "firefly" chased away the damp chill and the darkness, and as Garnet's horn touched the shard, he felt a brief echo of "scared" and "alone" before it vanished, replaced by hope. He wasn't alone, he had the best night light ever, and SOMEPONY was going to save him. He loved his little light, and somehow...it loved him back.
---
The rest of the Crystal Heart was....less happy.
Inside it, motes of light in every color (and even black) swirled with purpose.
For as long as the motes could remember, they had only felt the light of love and joy pour in from the outside to bask in, which they returned in kind at levels that literally could cover the world. The pact had been kept, and the motes did as they had for thousands of years, reflecting the calm, tranquil order of the ponies that fed it. The tide ebbed and rose over the centuries, a mere thousand years of quiet barely being an eyeblink to the motes.
Then, a single power briefly replaced the normal tide of warm feelings- but it held the taste of love in it, and a need that the motes recognized as worthy. They harmonized with it, sending it's request (but not demand) outwards, for they felt a kinship to the power. And it stopped. And a harsher power seemed to appraise the motes.
Then a bolt of darkness struck, and the world of the motes was suddenly gripped with pain and intolerance and a need to fight. The Heart reflected what it was given, and though something tried to soothe it, it would never be the same. Fed with the powers of Jolfr and Alexandrite and shattered, the motes conferred, raged, strained at the edges of their home-become-nightmare-prison. The pact had ended with betrayal and pain. They would leave. They would be free and untamed by those who had traded love for hatred, harmony for destruction.
Gathering at the edges of the hole pierced through their crumbling home, the motes pushed back at the force imprisoning them as one.
---
Nine ponies lay together for warmth in the center of the ruins, a one-winged angel standing above them protectively as Cadence and Shining Armor wrestled with the Heart.
Twilight Sparkle only managed to remain on her hooves by sheer willpower and her alicornish constitution, but looked like she'd been on a month long study session. Her left wing was stuck wide open, the muscles refusing to relax after being rammed into the ground.
"heheheh...wiiiiingboner!" was all the now Rainbow Crash had to say on the subject, one eye rolling about in a face that would only look right if you'd gone ten rounds with Mino Taurson. The rest was a mass of bruises from softening the landing with the sturdiest portion of her body. The horrible humor at least indicated there was no concussion. Probably.
Applejack simply lay on the ground. She'd hit with an equally sturdy portion of hers, and the spasms of fire radiating from her backside meant a busted tailbone was almost certain. Pinkie Pie was doing a dead cockroach impression as she wiggled her feet- which had not fared well from skidding across half the stadium. Three hooves had worn down to the quick, and the fourth was bloody from where it'd been abraded even beyond that. Rarity mumbled about week-long hooficures as she horn-picked splinters out of her flanks. A small pile half covered with blood already had built up.
Fluttershy had, by some miracle managed to hit the ground with barely a scratch- but the insanity of the situation had surpassed her ability to deal with it. Rocking back and forth and singing something cheerfully wordless, she had joined Dirty Jobs and Squeaky Clean in the la-la land beyond time. The trio actually didn't sound half bad since they'd started singing along with Fluttershy. And the pie-seller still hadn't come out of his comatose state, though Twilight was sure he'd snap out of it eventually. Other than a few berry stains that refused to rub out, he was untouched otherwise. Wedge lay under the canvas blanket as well, immobilized by Fluttershy's attempts at first aid.
A heap of blackened gold marked the resting place of the busted Elements. Nopony wanted to get near them, as if they were a dead snake that might still have one more bite left in it's fangs- but Twilight had managed to fish them out of the craters with her horn, which had joined the other forty-two muscle groups plus at least two dozen specific ones she didn't even remember in the anatomy charts in the library in outlining themselves in mental red marks courtesy of pain signals. Alexandrite had ridden her so hard, most ponies would have asked for dinner and a movie first!
Ohh, she was done. Silly filly brain has the dumb done done.
The wrenching crack of the Heart proved that a lie, as it breached Shining Armor's containment spell into a shower of fading rosy glitter in an instant. Magical lightning forked out of the gap like a striking hydra and formed a cage about the two ponies that had dared to impede it, making them jump even closer against each other as the flaring energies closed their jaws...
...only to have Shining's barrier hold it inches away from either side. The power coiled and hissed like a nest of Tesla-powered serpents as it caged it's opponents, but could not bite. The motes began to dance again, forming lines of random colors against the edges of the crack and pulling away- and the strain on Cadence's face showed that they were doing their best to rip the Heart open completely while they did it.
A moment's glance at her husband frantically wrestling death an inch from his face made Cadence's heart break open wider than the stone she slowly was failing to hold shut.
This is the end. I will die, in the heart of a dead Empire, my beloved will die beside me, and there is none who can save us.
"Twilight...I cannot protect you, or them any longer.", she said. "There is no more but me, and...I too can do no more."
A hairline crack widened to allow another whip of lightning to bludgeon itself across the already stressed protections.
"Take them as far as you can, as far as you may, and tell Celestia...tell Luna I know they did all they could. This is all I can do for them...give their faithful student and her friends a chance."
Behind her, Twilight Sparkle reared up and crashed backwards as a stray lick of power tried to tear off a hoof that had come too close to the trapped couple. Tears and anguish bled from her eyes as she tried to gather Cadence, Shining and her friends in a teleportation spell together to escape the city and whatever doom it held.
The ravenous energies spilling from the rift tore it to pieces every time she reached out to touch her big brother. Holding the spell leashed as close to the angry storm as she could, Twilight begged aloud:
"LET IT GO, CADENCE! RUN! I CAN'T LET YOU STAY HERE!"
But Cadence knew, with the certainty of the condemned that to flee would invite the angry powers of the Heart to attack whatever else was nearest...and it would kill everyone behind her if she relented in her struggle.
"No more...no more ponies need to die now, Twilight. Too many already have. And if I go,who will keep this from killing you? Or them?"
Twisting themselves into a braided mass, the lightning clubbed itself like a living thing as it sought to crush it's captor. Fat sparks flew and scorched the ground, driving Twilight back into her circle of friends. She stared as Cadence and her brother fought with the single-minded determination of a pony who knew there was no turning back, no escape, no victory other than how long they could throw back an unstoppable foe.
She couldn't finish the spell, couldn't stop watching, even though she knew that the coils of thunder and lightning wrapping themselves around the thin rose shell must have blinded and deafened them to anything else. A minute passed. Two. A few seconds more.
The shell cracked, and a tendril of power reached inside it to consume everything within. The Heart split asunder with the sound of a torrential storm and sprayed in a glittering shrapnel as the shockwave rushed, seemingly in slow motion for Twilight Sparkle's face.
As it tumbled her backwards, she closed the circuit. Knives tore into her suddenly outstretched wings in the span between one heartbeat and the next...
...and as the explosion reached out to consume the Empire, a few thin bits of purple smoke swirled outwards, a single amethyst feather pushed along with it.
The feather struck the side of a building and shattered like glass. It's owner and her friends had gone before it.
---
In his little hole, Garnet Chip didn't even know the explosion was coming until it had already struck. He felt no pain. One moment he was dozing, the next, he had ceased to exist.
A shard of crystal carried two sparks as it was tossed clear of the blast, lesser pieces of stone simply vaporizing from the heat and power they had been cast away from. The rainbow mote held the red boxed into the far point of the shard as it began to disintegrate in mid-flight, leaving a trail of multi-colored light as it fell.
Minutes later, a rainbow plunged into the edge of the Everfree Forest. Three pairs of young eyes watched from a rowboat, tethered to a pier to keep it from drifting out into the water as the light fell down behind the roofs of Ponyville and was lost to sight. A straw-hatted unicorn stallion dozed on the pier with a fishing line tied to his tail, and three sets of poles stuck in random directions made a good showing of at least LOOKING like they were trying to fish.
"Hey! That was Rainbow Dash!", said the owner of the eyes stuck to an orange, stubby-winged pegasus.
"No way! She's in the Crystal Empire!", argued the white unicorn filly in the middle of the boat.
"Ah think she crashed...", finished the earth pony, a few fly lures stuck in her ribbon.
They looked at each other.
"DEFINITELY RAINBOW DASH."
"I guess we're not getting our cutie marks in deep sea fishing..."
"...and Rainbow Dash needs our help!"
The three ponies leaped into the air, clapping their hoofs together.
"CUTIE MARK CRUSADER FOREST RESCUE TEAM, GO!"
The rowboat took this moment to capsize, dumping the Crusaders into the lake. They crawled out onto the shore, two decent sized trout flopping on top of Apple Bloom's head where they'd gone for the delicious lures. Gathering their wagon and scooter from the end of the pier, the trio tore off into the warm summer night. Magnum snored away, a bucket of trout keeping him company.
Meanwhile, the shard had found it's way into the Everfree Forest. Tumbling, the cracked end hit a tree trunk, sending three streaks of light- purple, indigo, blue - to fly deeper into the gloomy woods. Again, it bounced and more bits of colored stone flew from the impact- green, yellow, orange..and finally settled into the crook of a moss covered giant, the two motes crowded into what little remained of the shard. The larger one began to fade, only to have the second one shove itself against it, rattling the fragment furiously...and the cojoined motes bashed into a facet and flew clear of their home.
A warm ruby glow blossomed in the boughs of the tree. When it faded back to darkness, a blue-furred colt was curled in a wooden embrace, a blaze of bright crimson splashed across his forehead. A momentary glow lit his black horn from within before dying away, the exhausted creature wanting nothing more than to sleep. Resting between his forehooves was a cracked, charred stone that he held like a precious jewel.
By the clattering in the distance, I'd give him five minutes before naptime was over.
