“Luna?” Revan barked into her comlink as she passed through an eerily deserted Ponyville at a fast trot, 'Two years of peace and quite, well, other than my pregnancy, and now this!' “Damn it, Spooky, answer me!”
*Legate Revan?* River Breeze’s voice was faint, even with the static and the tinny overtones that the crystal radios, a recent import from the Crystal Empire that was being integrated into the Guard, seemed to give everyone, *Are you still in Canterlot?*
“Ponyville,” the twi’lek told her apprentice, “I have my old commlink tied into the BloodWraith’s com-system, now what’s your situation? Where are my sisters?”
*We have failed … Tirek has taken all of Canterlot’s magic, most of Equestria’s strength … the Crystal Empire has fallen … the other Princesses are gone … Princess Twilight is our only hope now.*
“Frelling chaos,” Revan swore, “River, does Tirek know about Twi’?”
*… Yes … I’m so sorry, Legate.*
“Where is Twi’, River? You were assigned to help guard Celestia, do you know where she sent her?”
*To the Everfree … to the Castle of the Two Sisters,* Revan was losing the signal, she could barely hear River, but the apprehension in the unicorn’s voice still came through, *What are you planning, Legate?*
“The Princesses made me Knight-Protector of the Thrones, River, I’m going to do my job,” came the Jedi’s grim-voiced reply, “And the only way that bastard is getting to Twi’ is over my dead body.”
*Revan, stop! Don--* the signal cut out, interrupting River’s last words.
Revan didn’t have long to ponder what River had been trying to say, as she soon reached the town square and was confronted by the sight of the other five Bearers of Harmony, her sisters, trapped in a cage, slumped listlessly against the cage walls, they all looked half-dead and – Revan blinked in surprise – their cutie marks were gone! “Bones of the Emperors,” she breathed, “What happened?”
“Tirek,” Applejack replied in a flat, empty voice that barely sounded like her, “Discord was workin’ with him, tha no-good sidewinder, but Tirek double-crossed him, an’ now he’s gone after Twilight.”
“He hasn’t got her yet,” Revan growled, before her face paled with fear as all her bravado fell away, “What about the shelter?”
“Tirek never went near it,” replied Rarity, her voice barley louder than Fluttershy’s, “They’re all okay.”
‘Mission, she’s safe, our little baby is safe!’ the twi’lek slumped in relief for a moment, ‘But my sisters … no,’ Revan’s face hardened, ‘They’ll be in just as much danger out of that cage if Tirek isn’t stopped.’ “Twilight will be back for you soon as she can, please … look after her and Mission and Spike for me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” demanded Rainbow, a shadow of her usual fire returning, as the five mares moved to the edge of their cage to stare uneasily at Revan, “What the hay are you up to?!”
“I’m going to protect Twi’, even if it means throwing myself into the rancor’s mouth and choking it with my corpse.”
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The ponies’ angry cries and desperate pleas carried for a surprising distance, given the mares’ condition, ‘Rarity has got a mouth on her when she gets going.'
Finding Tirek proved to be rather simple, the centaur towered over the trees of the Everfree, after all, although the trail of devastation and the occasional near-comatose pony he left behind would have made him easy to track regardless.
‘He’s not heading for the Castle,’ Revan thought, ‘Wait, he knows about Twi’, but not specifically where she is, I can keep him away from her! Now, the only question is how do I stop him?’ looking around for something she could use to even her odds against the giant, the Jedi blinked as a bloodthirsty smirk stretched across her face, ‘Well, well, thank you, Murphy!’
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A bolt of lightning cracked out of the forest to smash into Tirek, causing the monster to jerk in pain, as Revan’s shout echoed through the woods, “In the name of the Thrones of Equestria and the Crystal Empire, I order you to stand down and face judgement!” ‘That bolt barely hurt him! It’s going to be the damn terentatek all over again!’
“What do we have here?” Tirek rumbled, “One of Celestia’s pets, and one without any magic, besides? Be gone pest, you’re not worth my time.”
“Stupid and arrogant, aren’t you?” Revan jeered, “And clearly compensating for something,” she added as she held up a fist with a bent pinkie slightly raised, before the twi’lek dropped down from her perch in the trees and unleashed another blast of Force-lightning, this one smashing into the monster’s face.
“How are you doing that?!” the centaur roared in exasperation.
“Come and find out, you fierfeked gelding!”
Revan led the furious giant deeper into the woods, her mocking laughter, and an occasional lightning bolt, goading him onward, until Tirek stood astride a low hillock, unheeding of the crude metal door that graced its side. Dropping into a nearby gully, the Jedi pulled a small control pad from one of her pouches, ‘This won’t have near the power of the warheads striking him directly, but it should still ruin his day.’ Entering a few quick codes into the pad, as the centaur cast about for her, Revan crouched as low as she could and hit execute.
With a blinding flash and a thunderous detonation that could be heard back in Ponyville, the hillock tore apart, raining rubble for hundreds of meters.
‘Suck on that, you bastard!’ thought Revan viciously, only to have her triumphant grin fade as she rose from the gully to see Tirek, a shattered shield bubble fading around him, clamber unsteadily to his hooves, ‘He lived through that?!’
Revan’s expression went from dumbfounded shock to cold calculation as she saw the centaur’s shaky stance and the blood coating his barrel, ‘I hurt him, maybe not mortally, but I hurt him, I have a chance.’
“Is that the best you can do, little pest?” chuckled Tirek scornfully as he wiped a trickle of blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, “You aren’t even worth using my magic on, I’ll crush you like an insect!”
The twi’lek responded with a crude gesture as her lightsaber crackled to life and her murderous aura flared, ravaging the surrounding flora to fill her with extra strength for the battle.
Striding forward, the monster brought one massive hoof down, intending to carry his threat out literally, only to yank it back with a sulfurous oath as Revan dodged away from the blow and her saber bit into his pastern. Unfortunately, whether due to his sheer size or the magic he had stolen, Tirek’s flesh had hardened like that of a terentatek or a krayt dragon, and the plasma blade failed to bite deep.
‘I’ll have to kill him with bug bites,’ Revan thought in disgust, before her lips curled in an ugly smile, ‘Too bad for Tirek that this "insect" is venomous,’ rolling away from another crushing stomp, she raised a hand and focused her dark healing directly upon the giant centaur.
A pair of shrieks echoed across the Everfree, “You dare to steal from me!” roared Tirek in outrage, pain and a growing confusion, “I’ll pull you apart, limb by limb!”
Revan had no breath to spare to answer him, she was too busy trying to control the overwhelming, nearly mind-breaking, ecstasy that was coursing through her, ‘He must have stolen a bit of life from every single pony, along with their magic! He’s gorged on the lives of millions of ponies!’
It was fortunate for the Jedi that Tirek’s wrath had left him careless, because in her besotted state she barely avoided his next attack. Summoning up the bloodlust she had tried to spurn for so long to drown her rapture and allow her to focus, Revan sprinted back into the fray.
The battle surged back and forth, as Revan hacked away at the centaur’s hooves, fetlocks and anywhere else she could reach, her aura tearing at him the whole time, while evading Tirek’s blows, anyone of which would likely reduce her to a red smear if they caught her full-on. More than once, a glancing blow sent the twi’lek staggering as her armor groaned, or even split, and her bones broke and organ’s ruptured, only to repair themselves instantly with the life force she was stealing from the giant.
And through it all, Revan’s crazed laughter and blissful moans continued unabated.
“What in tartarus is wrong with you?!” Tirek demanded, unnerved by the Jedi’s disturbed behavior and seemingly aberrant powers, “What makersforsaken corner of Equss did those prattling Princesses find you in?”
The centaur’s foreleg buckled, no longer able to bear his weight, and Tirek crashed down to one knee, although a sweep of his hand sent Revan rolling away before she could try to capitalize on his vulnerability, “Look at you,” he rumbled as his eyes narrowed slightly, “Drunk with blood and stolen life. You have so much potential, so much power, and yet you’re wasting it serving these pathetic ponies! What did they do to make you such an eager little retainer? Please tell me it wasn’t their puerile babbling about ‘friendship’ that put these chains on you.”
Tirek smiled as Revan stopped her assault for a moment, only for it to change to a frown as she began laughing again, “There are no chains on me, you frell!” she snarled as she hurled her lightsaber at Tirek’s face, and only a quick jerk of his head allowed him to keep both of his eyes. “Equestria is my home. These ‘pathetic ponies' are my people. Those ‘prattling Princesses’? My sisters!”
“Then, by all means, join them!” roared Tirek as he hurled a bolt of red and black energy at the woman.
Revan swatted the blast away with her saber, but even that brief contact left her arm covered in burns that swiftly healed away, while she deflected a second bolt back at Tirek, who smirked, opened his mouth … and swallowed it.
The centaur rained blasts of energy, and the occasional smashing blow of his fist, down on the twi’lek, but she weathered the onslaught, resulting in a strange sort of stalemate. Tirek was unable to land an outright killing blow, while he had pilfered so much life energy that it would take Revan hours of whittling away and draining him to kill the monster.
Tirek slapped out at Revan again with an irritated grunt, but the woman slipped aside, to find over a dozen trees flying at her! ‘A damn feint!’ she desperately twisted, cut with her saber and shoved with the Force to get through the suddenly airborne grove, only to be caught dead-center by one of Tirek’s magical blasts.
Smashed back into, and partially through, the jumble of trees she had just escaped, Revan lay trapped beneath one of the logs as her body began knitting itself back together. Her vision blurred by blood and sweat, the Jedi could just see the ugly smirk on Tirek’s face as he rose back to his feet, smoke rising from his wounds as they evaporated away, “Goodbye, insect,” he sneered as he quickly strode forward, and then his descending hoof filled Revan’s vision.
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Revan’s body screamed at her in agony as she blinked her eye, ‘Huh, I’m not dead.’ Looking around, she saw that she was in a hospital room, ‘Probably at Ponyville General,’ while the sight of a purple alicorn draped over a couch in sleep, a tiny azure pegasus filly snuggled in her forelegs, brought a smile to the twi’lek’s lips.
She must have made some sound, as Twilight’s ear twitched and the Princess raised her head to look blearily over at the hospital bed. Seeing that Revan was awake, she quickly disentangled herself from the slumbering filly and flew across the room to wrap her forelegs around her wife in a bone-cracking hug.
“Ow.”
“Sorry,” Twilight apologized sheepishly.
“It’s okay, Twi’,” replied Revan with a smile as she slowly sat up in her bed, “Was anypony hurt?”
“Everypony’s fine,” the alicorn assured her as she carefully snuggled closer, “The fillies and I managed to defeat Tirek and banish him back to Tartarus. Caddy, Celestia and Luna are free, and everypony has their magic back.” Twilight gave a despondent sigh, “But the library is gone.”
“I’m so sorry, Twi’, I know you loved the library tree …Wait, is Owlowiscious ….”
“He’s alright, Revan, everypony is okay,” Twilight sighed. Looking at her wife, the princess’ eyes narrowed just before she hoofed Revan in the chest, “What the hay were you thinking, attacking Tirek on your own like that?” the alicorn glared at Revan as she opened her mouth, “And if you dare try to give me some horseapples about being ‘expendable’ I’m going to be very angry with you!”
“Why, Twilight Sparkle, such language!”
“Don’t you try and distract me!” Twilight glowered at Revan for a moment, before she buried her muzzle in the woman’s chest, “Cloud and Big Mac had to dig you out from beneath the rubble, and everything for over a dozen pony-lengths around had either been shattered or reduced to dust!”
Revan frowned as she stroked her wife’s mane, “The Guard had already fallen, and of all our family, only four of us have ever been soldiers, and of those four, I’m the only one who isn’t helping shoulder an entire government. It has to be me, Twi’eswo, that’s the simple, bloody math.”
Twilight pulled back a little to glare at her, “You’re just trying to weasel word your way into saying that you’re expendable!” she accused.
Revan sighed, “I want you and Mission, all of our friends, our family, to be safe and happy, Twi’, and if the cost of that is me, then I’ll pay it.”
“I don’t accept that!”
“You wouldn’t,” Revan said fondly, “But can you honestly say that you wouldn’t have done something similar if things had been reversed and I was the one who need help?”
“I … I … alright,” replied Twilight grudgingly, “I would have done something crazy too.”
“And that’s part of why I love you.”
A surprisingly loud yawn drew their attention back to the couch where the little filly was peering around drowsily. Upon seeing her parents looking back at her, she gave a happy squeal and immediately began trying to scramble down from the couch. With an amused grin, Twilight plucked Mission up in her magic and brought her over to snuggle happily against her mothers.
Revan gave a slight groan as she wrapped her arms around her wife and daughter, while Twilight looked up at her in concern, “No more suicide missions, okay? I mean it.”
“Is that a royal edict, my Princess?”
“Worse,” the alicorn giggled, “It’s an order from your wife.”
“Ah, in that case I shall do my best to obey,” Revan smirked as she leaned down to kiss Twilight, her arms tightening around her family.