Princess Celestia whirled around to see who had spoken, and was shocked to see little Sky standing before her. Although her mane, tail, and wing feathers were being blustered about by the wind, she stood firm and unmoved. Her eyes were seemingly unaffected by the punishing dust, wide open and staring intently. They had once again lost their features and appeared only as two white beacons of light. She started walking towards Celestia and Bee, whose own eyes were struggling to remain open against the wind and the pain from his wings.
"Brightsky?" Celestia asked as quietly as she could while still being coherent over the wind. The filly walked right up to the Princess, who squinted against her eye-lights.
"Equestria is in need of our services once more," came the six-layer reply, easily audible over the wind despite the filly not appearing to shout, or put any unusual effort into her speech at all. Celestia bowed her head as she realised who it was talking with the filly's mouth.
"I wasn't expecting you here tonight, I didn't even know you could harness a pony's body like this!" she called above the gale. "In fact I wasn't aware you had this degree of sentience! Are you here to incarcerate my brother?" The filly shook her head.
"You and your sister did an admirable job the first time without our assistance, and you two can do it again now. Even though he was unprepared and hence unresistive previously, we are still not necessary."
"Then why are you here?"
"Years ago, we realised that Prince Temporal would inevitably regain his freedom, so we abandoned our bodies of stone and took on a living form of flesh and blood." At this, Sky nodded towards Bee. He saw the gesture through his half-closed eyelids and turned to face the filly directly. He shook his head, not understanding. "A pegasus colt, much like any other, was to be born the day we took this decision, however we saw something special in the pony he could one day become. We designated him as our vessel, and just before he was born we suitably modified his body to be able to accommodate us." Bee opened his eyes fully in surprise before being forced to squint again. "Not anypony's body is capable of supporting all of our combined six-fold magic. We had to adjust you suitably. You were not a unicorn, but your future sister would be. We altered her body before birth too, and withdrew our presence from you."
"My sister was meant to be a unicorn?"
"Seeing as she was destined to be magical already, our presence tipped the scales in favour of her being born an alicorn," the otherworldly voice explained as Sky walked closer to Bee. "We guided your life prior to your sister's birth, and we've guided hers too, with the intention of you both arriving here and now, safely."
All of this was a bit overwhelming in Bee's current condition. He sank to the grass, his legs folding underneath him. Sky walked right up to him and lifted his chin with a foreleg, so that they were eye-to-eye. Hers had dimmed their light to avoid blinding him, and he could see her irises; they were no longer their usual mix of brown and dark orange, but a subtly fluctuating rainbow of colours.
"Wonderwhy, we did not intend to make certain aspects and periods of your life as miserable as they were, due to the modifications we had to make to your body. Our sole desire is to preserve the harmony in Equestria, and your personal, sporadic disharmony was not sufficient to make us reconsider. Temporal's escape had to be prevented whatever the cost. Your body's redesign was only partly under our control; some of your features were unfortunate side-effects of our power." Sky glanced briefly at Bee's disintegrating wings, still effusing a fine red mist. "We hope you will forgive us in time." Bee lethargically moved his head from side to side, before he summoned the strength to give it a proper shake. He uneasily rose to his hooves, keeping what was left of his wings hugged close to his body.
"That doesn't matter now," he croaked as loudly as he could to be heard over the wind, "what matters is we actually do prevent his escape. What's the plan?" He'd finally worked out he was speaking to none other than the fabled Elements of Harmony, and he didn't care for grievances about his past while they were present and, hopefully, about to save Equestria.
"My understanding is that you never perform magic by yourselves," Celestia chimed in. The Elements nodded.
"We are tools to be used by ponies seeking to preserve harmony in Equestria, and on our own we can only subtly affect the world."
"But, after all these years, my ties to you have weakened and I cannot command you," Celestia lamented.
"You don't have to," the Elements said with a smile. Their eyes dimmed to Sky's usual brown, and she looked up at the Princess and her brother nervously.
"Th-they want me to use them, b-but I don't know how," she blurted. "I'm not strong enough to control them!" Her eyes reilluminated.
"We will show you how," the Elements chorused. "It will only take a moment."
"Pity you don't have that moment," came a gravelly voice, making everypony jump. "Even though I'm curious as to what exactly your great plan is, I'm not going to wait around any longer." A bolt of red magic crashed into the grass between the three ponies. The blast instantly burned a large patch to a crisp while throwing the ponies away from each other.
The caster landed heavily in the middle of the burnt area, panting.
"Oh, these pathetic wings of mine," he grumbled. Out of the thickest portion of the dust vortex and with the moonlight shaft behind him, Prince Temporal was now revealed for all to see. His hooves were a luminous red too while his eyes were a pale yet piercing opal blue. His mane and tail were expectedly ethereal, but instead of long and flowing, his mane was fairly contained between his pointed ears and his wavy tail didn't extend below his hocks. As well as being a striking gold, his mane and tail were significantly coloured with a vibrant indigo hue. He sported eight grey circlet bands, two on each leg, housing small black jewels which erratically shot sparks amongst each other.
He folded away his surprisingly thin and svelte wings, which were clearly too slight to easily transport his thick and powerful body through the air. He looked up and caught sight of Celestia straining to build up any useful magic in her horn.
"Looks like the prison you so strenuously put together just for me has turned against you," he laughed in his scratchy tone. He turned to Bee who was struggling to stand. "What are you even doing here? Ha, I think you look as out-of-place in this world as I do!" Bee turned towards the shattered prison and staggered away from Temporal. "You'll find nothing of any use there, my freaky pony. And as for you," he shouted, rounding on Sky who was walking back towards the scorched grass, "I take back what I said earlier. Tell me what you think you can do to stop me, exactly." He flared his wings and made his sharp-tipped horn glow red. "I wish to know exactly how futile your plan is, so that I can laugh accordingly loud."
Sky stopped walking towards the Prince, reilluminating her eyes again. With the Elements back in control, her horn started glowing with magic of its own. Instead of her usual blue though, it was a whole rainbow of colour.
Get to the prison before he loses interest in us, they telepathically said to Bee, who had been making his way there anyway. That other pony lying in the wreckage is an innocent earth mare who ventured too close for her own good. We don't know how she found this place, but by the time she had the magical shielding had weakened enough for Temporal to pull her through with his own magic. He intends to use her as a hostage; Celestia would never do anything to put one of her subjects in harm's way like that. Rescue her and stop Temporal from having that leverage.
Bee struggled onwards through the thickest of the dust vortex, inadvertently gasping every time a particularly strong gust of wind tore at his reddened wings. Blissfully he stumbled out and the wind mercifully abated. The air was clear.
He was in the eye of the dust vortex, where the moonlight shaft brightly lit up the wrecked prison. The pony in the middle of the room was as still and quiet as the air.
Bee walked up to the blue body, and was relieved to see the mare was breathing. She had some obvious bruising and other damage to her coat. Her relatively short mane was a mess, and her tail was splayed on the floor around her. Her eyes were lightly closed, and the more he listened, the less sure Bee was that her breathing was satisfactorily deep to keep her alive.
She was only injured when the prison failed, Temporal didn't do her any harm on purpose because that could have made her a less valuable hostage. He's careless by nature, and didn't bother to protect her in any way as he belligerently escaped. Try and get her to safety while we occupy him, the Elements said inside Bee's mind. He looked over his shoulder to see the Elements manoeuvring his sister's little body at a breathtaking pace as she ducked and dodged and dived through the storm. The Elements still hadn't yet managed to enable Sky to fully utilise them, so her only attack was to shoot small bolts of magic at the Prince. At least every shot hit its target, unlike the Prince's strafing bursts of red magic which couldn't ever find the agile filly. In terms of aerobatics, he was massively outclassed.
Bee whimpered when he saw the trail of red spots left in his wake by his dripping wings. He knelt down and gently nudged the blue mare's shoulder with his hoof.
"Hay," he whispered, "can you hear me?" She groaned encouragingly. "Hello?"
The earth pony twitched her head. Bee was about to consider carrying her out of the prison's carcass when her eyelids unexpectedly flicked open. Her eyes flashed around the room before she jumped to her hooves, almost collapsing again as her face screwed up in pain that seemed to be from either her shoulders or back.
"Can you walk?" Bee asked calmly but firmly, to get her attention. She opened her eyes and shivered when she saw the imposing black-and-yellow stallion standing beside her. "No wait, please don't be frightened of me, I'm with the good guys here." She seemed to relax a little, then stiffened again when she saw his reddened sides.
"Oh hay chaff, what happened to your wings?"
"Never mind that, can you walk? I'm here to get you to safety and I need to start carrying you right away if-"
"I'm fine," she said quickly, before giving him a quick smile. "I can walk myself."
"Follow me and stay quiet," Bee said as he nodded in response.
"What, so that I don't hear you?" bellowed the rough voice of Prince Temporal as he skimmed low over the prison. Bee immediately noticed his horn was glowing red.
"Move!" he shouted at the earth mare, throwing himself forwards to shove her out of the nearest hole in the shattered walls. She hit the grass just as Temporal unleashed his magic, missing her by inches. The bolt hit the wall, which collapsed inwards before Bee could pick himself up. He scooted away as fast as he could in a half-crawl but didn't quite manage to get his left back leg clear of the falling masonry. He yelled as its lower half twisted excessively under the crushing weight of stone. Temporal landed clumsily in front of him, panting again. He caught his breath just enough to mock,
"I hope you think that mare was worth your leg, freak!" Bee couldn't hold back the tears at all anymore. The pain from his wings, the pain from his leg, the dawning realisation that he, Sky and Celestia had seemingly failed and were never going home; it was all too much. "Ha, pathetic, just like that sister of mine," scoffed the Prince. "And those Elements of Harmony. What have they done to me? Apart from ruffle my coat, that is." He shook with laughter that echoed off the sides of the dust vortex which still spiralled into the sky, while the moonlight shaft continued to brightly highlight every detail of the prison.
A thunderous crash erupted from above as the moonlight suddenly dimmed. Temporal craned his neck upwards and saw a mysterious six-armed star above the top of the dust vortex, covering most of the Moon. Standing on top of the star was a tall alicorn, rearing up on its hind legs, silhouetted against the Moon.
"Celestia! What magic is this?" Temporal roared upwards at the alicorn. "What have you got there covering the Moon?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Celestia asked as she cantered into the prison and quickly stunned her brother with a bolt of gold magic. He was thrown sideways into the building's last standing section of wall, which promptly toppled and buried the Prince in rubble. Celestia turned to Bee and levitated enough masonry to free his leg. "You've done all you can Bee, I can cast spells in the eye of the storm so you can go now. Get yourself and that mare to safety!" She finished in a surprised yell as Temporal burst from his rubble pile and swept the prison with a thick beam of red magic. Celestia managed to flap her wings and jump over it, while Bee just stayed lying where he was and the beam passed over him. He then gasped in pain as he tried to stand up. His wings would not stop their relentless red dripping and his twisted back leg was unable to support any of his weight. He spotted the earth mare a short distance away and started hobbling towards her.
"Oh no you don't!" yelled the Prince as he shot a red bolt at Bee, which was deflected by a gold pulse from Celestia.
"You've done enough to him Temporal, your quarrel is with me!" Celestia yelled back as she unleashed a merciless barrage of magic on her brother. He expertly deflected her shots with retaliatory blasts of his own.
The earth mare hobbled forwards to meet Bee. He tried to smile through the pain.
"Can you walk any better? Did that wall hit you at all?"
"What?" she whispered back in shock. "Are you seriously asking me if I'm alright when your own wings are falling off and your leg is facing the wrong way?"
"Yes." She was taken aback by the bluntness of his reply. Her mouth curled into a small smile of amazement.
"C'mon. You said to follow you, so show me the way out of this crazy place."
Bee started awkwardly shambling in the direction of the mountain which sheltered the cave he and Sky had arrived in from Canterlot, but as he turned to face the mountain he was startled to see that it had moved. Out of the dust vortex, he could now see that the six mountains bordering the grassy plain had grown substantially in height and were all bent inwards. Their peaks met right above the dust vortex, forming a six-armed star over the whole plateau. The mysterious alicorn that had stood atop the star was gone.
"Did you see who was up there?" Bee asked the mare, nodding at the mountain star. Before she could answer the alicorn in question landed right in front of the pair. She was as tall as Celestia and Bee, but her wings were far bigger. They were also, bizarrely, translucent enough to see through. Then Bee noticed the blue-and-white pattern of the alicorn's coat, and the rainbow glow around her horn.
"Sky?"