//------------------------------// // Act II, final scene - Strings Cut (Or, Dust To Dust) // Story: A World Rent Asunder // by NeverEatTheLemonsAlone //------------------------------// So. I have no idea what to do at this point. How do you even react to something like that? We're alone, the four of us; me, Rarity, Rainbow Flit. I'm bewildered, Flit is terrified, Rainbow is still fuming, Rarity is unconscious. For a moment, I can't help but wonder what happened to Trixie and Pinkie, but I can't spare any time: any second now, guards will come in, and then..then we're so incredibly screwed I can't even really process it. I'm a wreck. Even what magic I still have left is offline; Luna ripped my leylines up. They'll take quite some time to repair. But I mean...I'm in a sky-forsaken fortress. Even if I had magic, I'd bet anything that there are teleport wards around the throne room, and it's not like I could beat my way part the soldiers without some sort of absurd magic surge. So, that's a thing. But that's unimportant; those are just hypotheticals. I refuse to die. Now, the question is: what do I do to avoid I said death? I begin to run through scenarios in my mind: I could bluff my way through it, just leave, but it's unlikely it would work. Luna doesn't strike me as the type to not inform her throneguards of somepony about to die in the throne room. She's too together for that. So just leaving is out. Second, I could try to teleport against all odds. What with the pain in my horn, though, I'd rather not try that. Seems a bad idea, and a painful, potentially crippling one. So we come to Plan C. But you can just call it BEST PLAN, in big letters on fire. I glance at Rainbow. Yep, still covered in scarlet light. I grin devilishly. “You ready for some fun, Rainbow?” [1] She looks up to me for a moment before realizing what I mean, and her eyes narrow, the same grin crawling across her face. She snatches up the warscythe that Luna let fall. “It’s no spear,” she comments offhoofedly, “but it’s close enough. It’ll do.” With that, she takes to the air once more, and before I can even try to formulate a plan of some sort, she shrieks like a banshee and slams the door bodily open. She barely even has to fight at first. Because, I mean...what would you do if you were just standing there, doing your job, and suddenly the door behind you burst open and a screaming pegasus glowing bloody red and carrying a massive warscythe comes barreling towards you at utterly absurd speeds? Yeah. I thought so. Unfortunately, the terror doesn’t last long, and then things kick into gear as I get a firsthand look at Rainbow Dash’s Valkyrie skills. She moves terrifyingly quickly, and though I never considered it before, almost acrobatically. I begin to see just how incredibly complex and intricate her fighting style is, how far removed from the “take sharp end, stab them until they stop” impression that I’ve had for all these years. I don’t have very much time to appreciate it, though, because I snap back into the present and realize that I'm standing there watching Rainbow fighting when I could be doing...oh, I dunno...anything else.. So I grab Rarity and sling her around my shoulders, grunting as I wish sourly that my magic was working. I swear, how many times during this damn insane time am I going to get cut off from what makes me important? "Hey! Get up!" I snap at Flit. [2] When she doesn't, I grit my teeth. Fine. If she wants to stay here, she can. I gallop towards the door that Rainbow still holds the line beyond, and am gratified as a few moments later, I hear light hoofsteps behind me. "Rainbow!" I call as Flit catches up to me, "get ready to book it!" She nods tersely, then kicks off one of the two guards left standing out of six with her hind hooves, rebounding into a backflip before landing next to us. Showoff. "Okay then," she grunts out, "let's go!" She plows ahead, bodily knocking aside anypony unfortunate enough to get in our way. I can't believe it: we're actually making it outside. The main door is just ahead of us. Almost there... "And where do y'all think you're goin'?" I hiss in a breath. I know that voice. I barely know it--battlefield experience--but I know it nonetheless, and I am really not happy to hear it now. I turn slowly, meeting the cold green eyes of an orange earth pony backed by several highly-angry looking creatures. I somehow manage to conjure forth a cocky grin. Have to keep up appearances, after all. Am I right? "Beastmaster," I say, tone modulated and even. She smirks, tossing a bone whistle up and down in a hoof. "I see my fame precedes me," she chuckles. "So," she continues, "I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ask y'all to stop where you are, put down my colleague, and surrender immediately." Through all of this, she has the most unnerving smile on her face, and I can't help but shiver. I don't actually know the Lunar Beastmaster's name. All I know is that she's absolutely terrifying, and has a reputation for being incredibly cruel. Seeing the animals raring behind her, I can definitely believe it. I've only ever seen her on the battlefield, and even then only for a few moments. What I have seen is her wolfpack. Her deadly, deadly wolfpack. Those fangs have claimed more Solar lives than almost anything else on the battlefield. Maybe I could do something if I had my magic. Maybe being the operative word there. Without it? I got nothing. [3] It's no surprise to me when Rainbow squares up against her, warscythe held out in front of her just like she used to hold her spear. Speaking of, I wonder what happened to it...Eh, not important. What is important is the bone whistle that the earth pony is lifting to her mouth. I desperately strain to snatch it with magic, but I just can't muster anything. I can only watch as the wolves creep out from behind her, first one or two, then three, four, five, six. Half a dozen enormous wolves growling and bearing down on us. I swear flagrantly. Then Flit steps forward, her cutie mark flickering with light, and begins to speak with them. Her face is twisted into what I suddenly realize is sympathy. "You poor dears," she murmurs, stopping the advance of the predators for a moment, "she treats you awfully, doesn't she?" Hmm. Now that I think about it, the wolves do seem to have a lot of scars that don't look like war wounds. They look almost like lashes. The beastmaster laughs for a moment before suddenly quieting. The wolves have stopped moving totally now, staring intently at Flit. "I know you're angry," she continues, seemingly in a daze, "but this isn't the way to go about fixing that." Her eyes laser onto the earth pony's. "The one to blame is right there. The wolves round on the beastmaster, then turn back to Flit, seemingly confused. All the while, Dash and I creep closer to the door. Something in the beastmaster snaps, and she turns it on her beasts. Some sort of strange, animalistic howl comes out of her, and the wolves immediately snap back towards Flit. Rainbow and I freeze as the beasts prowl towards her. What can I do? Well, I guess it's time to have some fun. Well...depends on your definition of fun. --- [1]: So in case you didn’t get it, Plan C was basically point Rainbow at them, watch her go, and see what happens. Like I said: fun. [2]: Okay, yes, I could've been nicer about it. But put yourself in my horseshoes for a second instead of hers, huh? Think about what I'd been through in the past few weeks. [3]: Let's recall what happened the last time I was without magic, lest you forget that I still can't see very well. --- The wolves? Scary. Flit? Scarier. I have no idea what she did, but she did something, and those wolves were just petrified. Seriously, I wish I could do that. Would've gotten me out of so many awkward scrapes. She just...looked at them, if you want to go with the most outside definition of 'look' possible. It was more like she bored straight down into their souls with eyes alone. After that, they didn't go after the beastmaster. They weren't in a position to go after anypony. They just...curled up on the ground, whimpering like they'd lost limbs. It was one of the most surreal things I've ever seen. [1] So as of now, we're booking it across the open plains outside of the Lunar Sanctum, hoping desperately that we're not about to die. I don't know how long it's going to take Luna to recover, but we absolutely need to get somewhere she can't toss a bunch of cheap imitation Effigies at us, because even if they're not the real deal, they still hurt, and I'm pretty sure I can't take more than one, even with magic running hot. On the topic of good news, which seems to be few and far between these days, my leylines are knitting themselves together. While I can't do anything crazy, I can at least do anything with my magic. Just basic commoditas magic like light and telekinesis, but I'm pretty sure that if I'm recovering this quick, it won't be too long before I'll be able to use the rest of my repertoire. Also on the topic of good news: we lived through that. Somehow. I don't even know anymore. Rainbow punched a bunch of ponies out by glowing and Flit terrified trained killing-wolves to the ground by looking at them. Sometimes, I just want to go to sleep so somepony can wake me up when things start making sense again. [2] There's one more problem: Rarity. You remember how immediately after I put her to sleep, my magic went offline? Well. Though you wouldn't think it, the magic to do that is pretty significant. So is the magic to wake somepony like that up. It's not like I can do it manually, either; if I could, tranquilizing magic would be pretty useless on all accounts. So I quite literally do not have the resources to wake her up. We've had to take turns carrying her, and it's slowing us down a lot. We're all on edge, and my teeth grind against each other at every sound. I have no idea where we're going. Right now, what's important is that it's away from the imminent death that lies angrily behind us. "Hey, Sparkle," hisses Rainbow, flapping beside me with Rarity on her back, "do you have any idea where we're going?" [3] I grin jaggedly. "No idea. At the moment, 'away' is enough for me." She rolls her eyes. "Wonderful. Well, I can't say I've ever had a problem with flying east before. So let's pick up the pace, huh?" She glances balefully at Flit. I can't help but agree. She's flying, yet she's moving slower than I am. She needs to book it just like we do. I fall back a bit until I draw level with her. "Look, Flit. I get that you're probably panicking, given what just happened. I'm up there right now too. But we need to get out of here. So buck up a little, huh? We gotta go." She nods tersely and accelerates, wings flapping several times faster as she speeds up to...well, not Rainbow speeds, but acceptable speeds. Nodding once with breath heavy, I gallop on. This sucks. [4] --- [1]: I know it doesn't seem like much, but I've seen a lot of ponies die by the fangs of these wolves. Just cowing them into submission like that was a little much, even for me. [2]: But then again, when have things ever made sense around me? [3]: Funny you should ask that. [4]: I miss my books. Curse you, physical activity! Curse you and your entire family! --- All we can do is go. So go is what we do. I can hear the baying of wolves behind us. It's a long ways off, but it's definitely there, and every time I hear it my blood chills a little more. My lungs are burning, and my legs feel like rubberized lead. I can't keep doing this much longer. We need somewhere--anywhere--to shelter. My eyes catch something and I grin in relief for a moment. It's a forest. Somewhere we can hide and regroup, and maybe come up with some semblance of a plan. Who knows, maybe I can even think straight for once. Then I get a better look at the forest, and the smile winks off of my face. Because I know this forest. I know it far better than I wish I did. And I made a promise to myself I would never go back into it. But you know what? I don't know if I have a choice anymore. Screw your wolves, I grimace, and screw you, Cullwood. [1] --- [1]: So, let's recap what's happened to me in the past couple days. I've blown up a citadel where I used to live, alienated an insane pyromaniac, my adopted sister, and my old teacher (though to be fair, she already hated me). Then I had a friend of mine assault another pseudodeity, because you can never have just one. And now we're on the run from two separate gods and their armies, and I'm pretty sure the Beastmaster of the Lunar army is gunning for us specifically. Wonderful. --- Okay, pause, time out for a second: what do you think would be the most effective weapon to bring to bear against a supernatural sentient forest that wants to murder you? If you guessed absurd amounts of fire, congrats. You win. As we finally reach the treacherous boughs of the Cullwood, I make sure nobody eats any of the plants nearby. Except this time, I don't have any stipula rations. So essentially, we're all screwed. I don't have enough connection to my leylines to make fire, let along enough to do anything considerable to the Cullwood. We're still being chased; I can hear the wolves in the distance. We're hungry. And now we have to go into a forest that actively wants to kill us. [1] So, the hypothesis: if we get fire, then we can be at least a little more comfortable. The question: how do we get fire? The answer: none yet. If I can't come up with something before the Beastmaster catches up to us, then we might as well kiss our flanks goodbye. Me especially, lest you forget that the Watcher is still looking for me. [2] The answer comes to me suddenly: Luna has Effigies. I mean, sure, they're fake Effigies, but they're still pretty hot. Certainly hot enough start burning down a menace like this forest. So, that raises another question: How suicidal am I feeling at the moment? Because while coaxing an Effigy to attack us would very effective in burning a bunch of trees to the ground, it would be equally effective in burning us to the ground. "Hey, Rainbow, Flit. I've got a plan." Rainbow groans mockingly, and I give her a withering glare. "If you have any better ideas that you'd like to bring to light, go ahead." She quiets. "You finished?" I ask dryly, and she nods sullenly. "Anyway," I continued, I don't know if either of you have ever been into the Cullwood, but it's alive in some weird, magical way. I can't go in there, or I can guarantee I'll die. You'll both probably die too. Ideally, I'd burn it down, but after Luna broke my leylines, I can't conjure fire. So we don't have a lot of options here." Flit takes a half-trot back, and Rainbow narrows her eyes. "What do you have in mind, Sparkle?" I take a deep breath before continuing. "I'm going to draw Luna out, and try to get her to send an Effigy after us." I hear Flit squeak out, "are you sure that's a good idea? Can we find some way around the forest?" I'd rather answer her than listen to Rainbow's current rant about my idiocy, so I do just that. "Believe me, Flit, I wish I could find some way out of this, but we can't keep going much longer, and the Beastmaster is going to have our throats unless we get somewhere she can't. I mean," I ramble, heedless of the possible ramifications, "I have no idea if she has any beasts that can fly, so you could probably just leave me on my own and strike out, but..." I trail off at the glance that passes between Rainbow and Flit. [3] "Oh no. Ohhhh no. Don't you even think about it," I grit out between my teeth. --- [1]: At the very least, we don't have to deal with the Circle of Bones anymore, thanks to Rarity. [2]: I know what you're thinking: Sparkle, you moron, just wake Rarity up! You have the magic now, right? Well, first of all, no. I don't. Second, I really doubt her Focus is fire. She's not Firelock. She's never used it. I find it much more likely that she's an earth Focus mage, judging by the gems on her flank. Maybe ice, if those are ice crystals, though I doubt it. [3]: That's me, Ms. Twilight-Can't-Think-Before-She-Talks. Is it any wonder basically everyone I know wants to kill me now? --- Well, Rainbow is still with me, at least. To be fair, I can't blame Flit for taking off, both literally and figuratively, when she did. It's better for her, and hey, she's alive now, which is probably more than will be said of Rainbow and I by the end of the day...night...the next twenty-four hours. Screw it, I'm calling them days from now on and you just try and stop me. So anyway. "How do we do this?" I mutter, sitting on the grass next to Rarity's slumped form. I glare sourly at her for a moment, at her deep, even breaths. My eyes widen fractionally, and I look suddenly up to make sure I can see the stars. Good. I beckon Rainbow over and whisper a few sentences into her ear, then suddenly start screaming at the sky, "Hey, Luna! Come friggin' get me! You want me to take your Throneguard marksmage into Cullwood unconscious? Cause I could totally do that! I probably will do that, especially after everything she put me through! So fight me! Fight me!" [1] You know when you do something stupid and realize only a split second after you do it that it was stupid? Well, that. At this point, I've all but given up trying to be smart, apparently. But y'know, sometimes there's only so much space for intelligence, and you just have to do a dumb. Which, as I find out when what appears is not an Effigy, but instead Luna herself, is exactly what I just did. "Oh bu—" Before I can even finish the profanity, her horn glows and I feel myself go dizzy, slumping over to the ground as my eyes start to slide shut. "Rain...boww...?" I manage to grunt out as my eyelids flicker. This wasn't the plan. This wasn't how anything was supposed to go. In the distance, a wolf howls. Rainbow streaks low over the grass, hurling herself at Luna with the warscythe bared, but bereft of the previous crimson fury, she's gripped by the lunar monarch's telekinetic field and hurled bodily to the ground, landing with a faint cry. She doesn't get up. By this point, the world around me is swimming. I can barely make out what's real and what isn't. The only exception, the one concrete image, the one object that looks at all real, is Luna, slowly trotting towards me. She shakes her head. "What happened, Twilight? You were supposed to be smart. Calling me out like that was asking for trouble." I managed to slur out "Wanted 'n Eff'gy," and she chuckles. "Ahh, I see. You wanted to try burning the Cullwood. Well, you know what they say. Desperation forces us to be less intelligent than we really are." She trots closer to me—slowly, agonizingly—and with every beat of her hooves, I can feel myself sliding deeper into a slow, magical sleep not dissimilar to a much more elegant version of what I did to Rarity. My horn is beginning to pulsate with pain, matching her hoofbeats, as a vast amount of magic pulses down into it. I dimly recall the Chasmland principle, and try to struggle to my hooves once more, only to fail miserably. She's right in front of me now, I think. I can barely see through my blurry, squinting eyes, and my mouth goes slack. I begin to uncontrollably mumble out a string of slurred nonsense and my eyes roll back in their sockets, incomprehensible images flashing through my mind. Bolts of shining light raining down upon a black, sinuous figure. Gemstones glowing with inner light revolving through the air with untold power, spinning around two indistinct equines wreathed in a corona of rainbow power. The pictures from the library in Canterlot Pass; my cutie mark, a balloon, a lightning bolt... Unbeknownst to me, in the waking world, my cutie mark begins to flicker with ethereal violet light, and Luna stops her methodical advance. The faces of ponies. Of Marks, firing a bolt of cerulean magic at the Heart of the Cullwood. Rainbow's monologue in the Solar Citadel. Long strings of numbers and ancient runes, double helices spiraling across my mind's eye. Equations of such complexity that there's no way I could even begin to solve the first contorted fragment of them. Strange machines, old unicorns with gnarled horns and trailing beards writing long, trailing sequences of numbers and words in the air. Me. My magic. Skahaben's fall. Spiraling lavender light, circling in on itself in an endless blackness. A flash of lavender. White. My eyes slide open one last time, revealing Luna's face, now contorted with fear. "You..." she chokes out, voice strangled, "what are you? What...What future is this?" Then everything fades away, and I drop into oblivion. [2] --- [1]: Okay, so I'm not the greatest actor out there. Sue me. [2]: You think you know confusion? Try passing out with all of that on the brain. --- The first thing I become aware of when I wake is that I have a brutal headache. Like...really brutal. The kind of headache you get when you're unraveling at the seams. When you've just had some sort of bizarre magically-induced hallucination-seizure while under the throes of a deity's sleep magic. The kind of headache that sends chills down your spine for an entirely separate reason from the actual pain. The kind of headache you get before you die. But hey, I'm not dead. So that's a plus. At least, I think I'm not dead. I can't be entirely sure, but I can open my eyes and move my only free hooves—the front ones—around with a relative degree of acuity, so I think I'm mostly in the clear. So, I reason past the headache—which is a LOT harder than I thought this kind of thing would be beforehand—Where on Equus am I? I'm certainly no longer at Cullwood; that much is obvious by the fact that I appear to be inside, on a relatively comfortable mattress. I would probably appreciate it more, but as I reflexively quest out with my magic in an attempt to find a candle or something that can light up the dark room, a spike of pain drives itself straight through my horn and into my forehead, turning my brain into a nexus of pain. I choke for a second, then double over, screaming my throat raw in agony and clutching my horn and eyes with my front hooves. Tears stream out from beneath them, staining the bedsheets. There's a loud thump-thump-thump from elsewhere that I dimly recognize as the sound of hooves, and the door smashes open. A beam of searing light strikes me straight in the face, seeping past my hooves, and my scream grows louder. The mere act of seeing light makes the pain so much worse, and in some corner of my mind that still functions, I dimly regret trying to find a light source. At length—great length—the pain ebbs away like receding waves of boiling water, and I slowly, wracked with trembles, remove the hooves from my face, half expecting shards of horn and skull to come away with them. I vaguely realize that I can taste blood, and wonder how long I was screaming for. Despite being better, the headache certainly isn't fixed, and I can still feeling behind my eyes, pulsing along with my heartbeat. I keep them shut. I belatedly realize that somepony had been talking to me this entire time. Something about her voice is familiar, but I can't hear it clearly; my brain is too addled still to even begin thinking about recognition. It sounds dim, like it's coming from a great distance. "Sparks!" "Sparks, are you alright?" Peachy, I think hysterically. I might be babbling it too, not altogether sure. I'm just fine. How are you, Mom? Still dead? Say 'Hi' to Shining for me! [1] "Dear Sky...Sparks, you're freaking me out! What idiot thing did you do this time?" The voice is becoming more distinct, and wow, it's sounding a lot more familiar now. A few more hallucinatory images bolt through my head, and I tense up. When my headache doesn't noticeably worsen, I open my eyes and spit out a gob of blood, squinting up through tight slits at the mare standing above me. My voice is unbelievably hoarse, but I manage to choke out a few quiet words: "Takes...one to...know one...Trix." [2] She gasps out a heavy sigh of relief. Her lips quirk into what could passably be called a smile. Ish. Depends on your definition of a smile. "Nice to see you're still well enough to snark at me. Maybe I should call you Snarks from now on." I deliver one of my patented cold glares at her. Or try to. It's significantly less effective when my eyes are red and puffy from crying and I still feel like my skull is maybe about to implode. She grins in response, a real grin this time, and I suddenly realize from the tears beaded in her wide eyes: she was INCREDIBLY worried about me. Just like a real sister. Makes for a nice change, huh? --- [1]: So yeah, this was actually my thought process at the time. Whoops. But in my defense, I still felt a bit like I was getting hammered on the skull. [2]: You could adequately say this isn't quite how I was expecting to meet her again after the debacle at the Citadel, but hey, I guess you never know.