The Realm of Echoes shook.
A portal tore through the fabric of spacetime, depositing Starlight and Sperion upon the flat plane, all mirrors fleeing from the presence of the two powers. Starlight tore herself from Sperion’s grasp with a quick backflip, summoning hundreds of mirror shards to her, all reflecting her worried expression.
A seventh limb began to grow out of Sperion’s core, inching out at an alarming pace, congealing just like all the others had - grabbing hold of the power of a Fifth in her own Realm.
“No!” Starlight yelled, pushing back against Sperion with the power of time itself - focusing intently on undoing the growth of the new limb. It retracted back into Sperion’s body in an instant, without so much as a sound.
Sperion let out a sigh. “We will have to fight then. I am sorry.” He pointed his six limbs at Starlight and unleashed the totaled power of six Realms at once. The disoriented, mutating cacophony of energy frightened Starlight’s very soul with its power. She lit her horn, reaching into the Echos, warping space around her in such a way that the blast flew around her. All this time, she had to rewind time around the generating seventh limb - she could never let it fully adapt to the Realm. She needed to remain focused - merely giving him a few seconds would give him domain over time and space itself - then she wouldn’t have any edge over him whatsoever. She didn’t know how she - or any of them - could stop him after that.
Sperion moved slowly, using his arsenal of Dreams, Power, and Life all at once. Starlight felt herself slowly petrify, becoming a statue from the hooves up, losing feeling after a momentary crumbling sensation. She was unable to order her powers to help her, her mind was so clouded by a fractal he had sent to her...
A mirror slid into existence beside Sperion, showing an instance of Starlight grinning. A spell shot from this Starlight’s horn, creating a magical hammer in real-space and launching Sperion away, tearing his hold off the original Starlight. “Hurry!” The mirror Starlight yelled to her half-petrified self. “Get ahold of yourself and do what I just did!”
Starlight nodded to her counterpart with a smirk. With her mind free of Sperion’s influence for a moment, she rewound time around herself, un-petrifying her legs, at which point she rose a mirror up that showed Sperion from a few seconds ago. She grinned, casting the magic hammer once again to close the time loop - hearing the thunk on Sperion a second time was very satisfying. “Hurry!” she yelled to her past self. “Get ahold of yourself and do what I just did!”
Starlight turned from the mirror to the past, smashing another mirror into the present Sperion, attempting to freeze him in time.
“So, you did figure out the tricks,” he said, his body annoyingly resistant to being frozen, only slowing slightly. “But they are new tricks for you. I’ve known of them for a long time - they are my natural state.” He pointed his limb of Power upwards, creating a tremendous black sphere in an instant. He placed himself right at its edge, and Starlight felt her grasp on him weaken considerably, not to mention the intense gravitational field was dragging her ever-closer to the event horizon.
She grunted, ground her teeth, and anchored herself to the flat ground with numerous mirrors that cut into her skin. She focused intensely on keeping Sperion’s seventh limb from appearing, but the gravity well was creating an accelerated-time effect on him, and it was hard to focus her own powers through the distortion. She roared, lighting her horn and tapping into the space between the sphere and Sperion, extending it to several yards, removing the annoying warping effect. She followed it up with temporarily cloning herself, the future versions of herself flying through broken mirrors and hitting Sperion with intense magical laser blasts.
The intense volley had absolutely no effect.
The many Starlights gulped while Sperion sighed. “I did say I was annoyingly immortal.” He waved his limbs and the many Starlights found themselves flung away. They quickly reverted back into a single Starlight, who created several Mirrors out of the aether, flinging them right at Sperion. He blasted one away with a beam of energy, only to be hit by that same beam of energy from another mirror. Starlight copied the burst of energy and hit Sperion dozens of times with his own attack.
He teleported behind her, swinging a blunt steel rod. She teleported away, removing the rod from his grasp and bashing his center with it. The rod snapped in two. Sperion’s form rippled and then paused for a moment. “There is nothing you can do to harm me. Please, just let me save the Realms - save what can be saved of this Level. We don’t have to fight.”
“You don’t have to do this!” Starlight yelled. “We can find a way around this! We are the Seven! Maybe we can remove the Connection that shouldn’t exist! Time itself is at my disposal - I can take us back! Save September! Stop the other Seven!”
“We already tried that once,” Sperion sighed. “Time does not work the way you think it does. Undoing events? It... Doesn’t work. It just causes extreme instability when you succeed. And... Time just doesn’t like change. Not to mention that your predecessor would probably try to fight that change.”
“We can try!”
“Changing the very fundamental nature of the past is no different than what I’m going to do anyway. You’d just be destroying one world and replacing it with another.”
Starlight bit her lip - he was right there. “Then maybe we can find another way! We’ll try anything-”
“You rejected living in loneliness,” Sperion said. “I can see it within you. She asked you politely - you said no. And even if you say yes now, there was something she didn’t consider when she made the offer. Me. I am the combination of many Realms at once, and I... Am physically incapable of turning myself off. I can’t isolate myself, so the option is moot. I may be the Spirit of Order - but I may cause more instability than the Seven of you combined.”
Starlight blinked. “...Just by existing you strain the Realms?”
“I am what was not meant to be,” Sperion said. “So you have two options. Find some way to kill me, to temporarially halt the decay of this Level - or let me do what I have set out to do.”
Starlight shook her head. “I... I don’t want to kill you. ...But I guess I have to.”
“I don’t think you can,” he sighed. “...Try it. Hit me with everything you have. I won’t resist.”
Starlight blinked, losing most of her determination in one moment. “W-what?”
“I said go for it. Hit me with everything.”
Starlight hesitated - but only took a second. “...Sorry.” She lit her horn up to its full luminosity, space and time warping in a spherical shape of distortion around Sperion, rotating at speeds so high the air around him ignited. Tears in spacetime formed around Sperion, black and white energies swirling around him at relativistic intensities. Starlight shot the strongest burst of magic she could into the swirling cloud of spacetime anomalies she had created, the result being an intense luminous star of blue fire.
Then Starlight crushed space around the star, the intense energies becoming too much for her powers to contain. It compressed too far and exploded in a nova of temporal and magical energy that tossed Starlight far away, ramming her into the ground with a loud thud.
“Ow...” she said, opening her eyes. To her mild surprise, she saw a very confused version of herself standing nearby. “Oh look.” She took a moment to process what was happening. “...Guess this is where this happens. "
“Where what happens?” her counterpart responded.
Starlight smiled to her past self - a version from a simpler time. “You can control this place. Just try it.” She stood up, lit her horn, and appeared in the time and location she had detonated the nova in just moments before. Sperion was there still - shaking. The attack had evidentially been enough to shock him, but he was otherwise unharmed.
And his seventh limb had just completed formation.
“No!” Starlight yelled, reaching out with her inflection to reverse his limb formation - only to find herself being rewound slightly, forcing a stalemate.
Sperion began to glow with an intense white light, all seven limbs extending out fully, his entire body shaking with brilliant beams of energy. Starlight tried to do anything to him - but everything was bounced away effortlessly.
“Nonononononono!” She yelled. She tried traveling to the past, to the future - only to find that Sperion was following her while he completed his transformation, preventing her from altering anything. Eventually, all she could do was stare in abject horror as the light dissipated, revealing a new being. The shape was still the same - a shifting spiky shape with seven limbs, but it was much more brilliant - Starlight would have called the substance he was now composed of liquid diamond. Light refracted from within him, instead of reflecting from all sides. However, the biggest difference was his center - it was dominated by a single, large, sorrowful eye. He looked down at her, eye shifting around uncomfortably.
“Perfection...” He said, his voice no longer a droning monotone, but a beautiful harmony of differing voices. “I... I have it. I am complete.”
“Please reconsider!” Starlight yelled.
“I can’t wait any longer,” he said, the Realm of Echoes trembling slightly as he spoke. “This form is far too prominent... The world will end soon if I do not start...”
“Can we try a time loop? Send you to another level? Can we just delay things while we figure it out?”
Sperion chuckled sadly. “That’s just borrowed time starlight. The instability will become critical even if the entire world was on pause - and my presence would be even worse for lower Levels - I have Magic. It must be done.”
The Realm of Echoes suffered another tremble that Starlight had difficulty remaining upright through.
“Save yourself,” Sperion said, “go to the Sixth Level. Protect it from instability. Don’t be foolish like your predecessors.” He opened a portal, slipped through it, and left Starlight alone among the mirrors.
She stood there for several seconds, realizing she didn’t know how to get out... But she didn’t think Sperion would just abandon her here. He might have been crazy, but he wasn’t cruel.
She narrowed her eyes, realizing the way out was simple - she created a mirror that showed the portal Sperion created a few seconds ago. She leaped into the mirror, and through the portal, returning to Central seconds behind Sperion himself. She levitated herself, and looked around - she was in the sky over Equestria. Sperion was nowhere to be seen - but she still felt like something was wrong.
To her horror, she saw a small crack form in the earth below her, sending a large dust cloud up into the atmosphere. He was right - the world really was falling apart. She lit her horn, searching for him with a long-range location spell. His unmistakable magical signature could be found at... Ponyville?
She teleported herself there in an instant, a horrible sight greeting her. The ponies of Ponyville were all gathered together in the square, screaming in terror at the sight above them. Sperion had Discord in a death grip, the two beings floating motionless in the air, eyes locked in a battle of wills. Black energy was wafting off Discord’s form, mingling with the white energy flowing around Sperion. The black energy was rapidly diminishing, and Discord’s stare was beginning to lose intensity. Starlight could only imagine what the two beings were doing to each other that she couldn’t see.
Starlight tried to cast a beam spell, but a quick flick of Sperion’s closest limb sent her flying into a nearby house, dazed.
At that point Implode came flying out of nowhere, smashing Sperion right in the eye with flaming hooves. She bounced right off him - but that didn’t stop her. She rammed him again, and again, and again, relentlessly beating at Sperion’s stubborn horn.
“Bucking die!” Implode yelled, managing to make a hoof-sized black sphere in her rage, throwing the deadly object right at his singular eye. It vanished the moment it hit him, though it did grab his attention. Without taking his eye of Discord, he rose a limb and grabbed ahold of Implode with a magical aura, using his power to ram her into Discord. Implode screamed - the shadowy energy enveloping her, suffocating her.
It was at this point Discord lost the battle - he was not as convicted as Sperion, and the pained calls of Implode made him falter. His dark, chaotic energy collapsed in on itself, enveloping both his physical form and Implode. They were condensed into a small, black icosahedron that fell to the ground with an unsatisfying clunk. Sperion tossed the sphere a certain earth pony standing in the crowd - the Doctor. “Take them to Level Six. And save yourselves.” With a flick of his wrist, the entire population of Ponyville was teleported away.
“What did you do to them!?” Starlight yelled.
“They’re outside the Mirror Portal,” he said. “You should go there as well.”
“Not going to happen!” she yelled.
The planet trembled - a chasm opening right through the center of Ponyville. The town hall collapsed in a heap, splinters flying upwards in a cloud of debris. Sugarcube Corner fell over, sending bakery goods everywhere, decorating the nearby world in icing and bread loaves.
Sperion turned to Starlight. “Are you sure that this is what you want? To die here, leaving the next world without a guardian?”
Starlight growled. “I’m a stubborn mare, Sperion. I don’t know the meaning of the words ‘give up’.”
“You changed your mind once.”
Starlight shook her head. “Not listening.” She cloned herself dozens of times and rushed Sperion. With a flick of his limb, all the Starlights collapsed into one, and Sperion punched the remaining Starlight into the ground effortlessly.
“Ow...”
Sperion sighed, floating into the rapidly-reddening sky. “Please leave.”
“N-Never.”
“Then you seal your own fate. I am truly sorry.” He extended his arms straight, his eye opening to its widest. He roared, the voices of many filling the space of Central. He plugged himself into reality, ready to overwrite it with his own being... Starlight could only watch as the air around Sperion coursed with strange, multicolored lines that moved with oddly artificial angles - as if spreading like circuitry.
Something tugged at the back of Sperion’s mind, stopping him from his action. What...
...Rarity.
He wasn’t given any time to resolve the problem in his mind, for a pink blur collided into him at impossible speeds, distorting the positions of his limbs, reversing what little progress he had already made. She essentially unplugged him from reality.
“I was hoping to get done before you could arrive...” Sperion said.
Pinkie floated inches from his eye. “You clearly don’t understand this thing called timing.” She giggled, slapping him in the eye with a titanium hammer. Sperion then found himself frozen in crystal, which was then crushed between two giant spheres of solid uranium, which was then liquefied and hardened into a radioactive diamond shape around him.
He tore the material apart, the many radioactive chunks spreading out for miles, starting numerous fires. “Let me have this!” He yelled over the trembling of the world. “If I don’t do it soon, the world will end! All of it! No more Seventh Level! You are being foolhardy!”
“Truth,” Applejack said, walking in. “Hard truth, too.”
“But there’s always another option!” Pinkie said.
“We can’t just let our home die,” Twilight affirmed.
Fluttershy picked Starlight up and healed her. “...So much would mean nothing if you get what you want...”
“Go save as many as you can! Stop wasting time!” Tears began to fall from Sperion’s eye. “You aren’t just throwing your own lives away - you are killing those you could save!”
“Sunset and the Princesses have that covered,” Twilight said. “We are here just in case there is another way out. We will try to find it until the end - it may be impossible, we may be doomed, but we can’t not try.” She looked Sperion in the eye. “In the face of no chance, we will fight until our dying breath for this world.” She raised a hoof. “We are the Seven. This world is what made us. We were chosen for this. Our purpose is to save this world from destruction, not assist it in its fall! We will not run away from our destiny - or our home!”
She took a deep breath. “Sperion! Spirit of Order! You threaten our world - stop now! Please! We beg you!”
Sperion swore under his breath. “You... You... You are so inspiring, you know that? Optimism in the face of bleakness. Hope in the hopeless. A will to fight, even if death is certain.” He looked at them all. “You... You are amazing mares. I am honored to have had the chance to know you.”
Rarity frowned. “...Please, Sperion...”
“You know my decision. I can’t stop, my mere existence threatens the world’s now. You will have to kill me... And even then... Even then... The world would still be in danger. No. I can’t stop. Central... No, Equis must end, so the Realms can live.” He shook himself side to side, eye damp. “I know I cannot change your minds. And you cannot change mine. I can only hope that, like your predecessors, you will find a way to survive.” His gaze stopped on Twilight for a long time, fearful. The world trembled once more, a mountain in the distance falling to rubble. “It. Was. An. Honor.”
“Likewise,” Twilight said, tears in her eyes as well.
“Goodbye. One way or another.”
“Goodbye.” They bowed to each other.
Sperion spread his arms all at once - and the world exploded around them all, instantly replacing Ponyville with a smoldering crater. Twilight appeared above Sperion instantly afterward, her six friends right behind her. She roared, combining all Seven of their energies into a rainbow sphere that barreled towards him. He rose his limbs and shot a rainbow burst of equal magnitude back at them, the energies exploding in a brilliant show of fireworks that sent both sides flying - the Seven into the air, and Sperion into the ground.
Neither wasted a moment. Twilight teleported the Seven of them around Sperion in a finishing position, drawing on all their powers to surround him in a brilliant shower of colors. He fought back with the exact same power, an explosion occurring all around him. Completely unharmed, Sperion blasted a singular shot at Twilight, only for the other six to move in unison with their own powers to protect her, the bullet ceasing to exist.
Sperion backed up, attempting to crush them with a surging cloud of collapsing spacetime, but they shot the ripple back at him, driving him deep into the crater wall. He grunted, pulling himself out with an explosion of blue plasma. He raised a limb, grabbing onto part of the atmosphere above them, igniting it, and condensing it into an ionized tornado with the Seven in the center. They were burnt and charred by the plasma, but they were instantly healed by the Inflections of Life and Echoes. They charged out of the tornado, flying at Sperion with their own whirlwind of technicolor energy, barreling right into his eye. They quickly followed up with explosions, lasers, mental attacks, and a buck to the face courtesy of Applejack.
But still, he was unharmed.
He pushed back, freezing them all in once place. He shot all of them in the head simultaneously, only to see the bullets rewinds instantaneously. He found himself unable to counter the time alteration because of a mental pinch from Rarity. He shuddered, temporally cloning himself in a web of distortion.
The Seven did the same, all of them copying a hundred times over, enveloping themselves in distortion as well. Each Sperion met seven ponies, and the crater grew from all the intense clashes. Cracks continued to form in the earth below - and in the distance, a volcano erupted, and a large portion of Canterlot broke off. Thunder struck all around them and red clouds swirled in unstable formations above. The sun and moon were both in the sky - and both were shaking uncontrollably. The Seven and Sperion returned to singular forms, circling each other and bouncing many different attacks back and forth. A tree grew out of the ground and wrapped around Sperion, attempting to strangle him, but it dried up quickly. A black hole swept into him, a blast of magic stronger than any other blanketed him, an impossible shape attacked him from a direction that didn’t exist, a nova exploded around them all, but, always, none were truly harmed - only shaken.
Sperion never took damage, the Seven simply undid all the burns, demolitions, and deaths with a few quick thoughts. They were all far too determined.
The giants clashed in the crater of Ponyville, the world falling apart around them: ancient magics awoke, lava bubbled up through cracks in the crust, tidal waves formed on the seas, and the cosmos themselves were shaken. Nature itself raged - plants, animals, and magics all roared as one, called by an ancient power older than any knew, screaming against the end.
The Seven smashed Sperion into the ground once more.
“We’re running out of time!” Starlight said.
“But we aren’t even damaging him!” Twilight yelled. “I don’t know what we can do!”
Rarity blinked. “...Fluttershy does.”
Everypony’s heads turned to Fluttershy - her face was one of a mare terrified of herself and what she knew.
“You don’t have to sugarcube-” Applejack began.
“No,” she said, tears in her eyes. “I do.”
She flew away from the group, looking Sperion right in the eye as she approached him. He looked back at her - unsure what she was doing.
Then she stared at him.
He stared back, the two locked in a battle of wills - Fluttershy saw his life force, and he saw hers.
She moved first, grabbing his life with all her might and squeezing, using the most powerful Inflection of Life in existence to drain all she could. She wailed openly as she did so - not because Sperion was tearing her own life away in retaliation, but because she knew exactly what she was doing. She didn’t need the pain to remind her, it was one of the furthest things from her mind.
Sperion’s eye became incredibly unsteady - shaking with agony - the sound of his own wailing bringing tears to all who heard it. Neither stopped the assault - through the pain, through the darkness, through the suffering - neither relented. They held eye contact the entire time, both wishing there was another way. They both knew the other was sorry.
Sperion tried one final attack - using his six free arms to launch an attack, an attack that the other six stopped. And then - he did nothing. Twilight was sure he could have, he could have tried something else - but instead, he just held his connection to Fluttershy, hard. Their eyes rolled back at the exact same time - both fell to the ground, limp, dead, the life literally squeezed from both their bodies.
Fluttershy was grabbed by Twilight’s magic - Sperion was allowed to fall all the way to the ground, landing in the mud of the crater. Neither of them moved - the tears coming from their were just leftovers from their living moments a few seconds ago.
It was over.
Starlight quickly rewound Fluttershy back to life, hugging the yellow pegasus tight the moment she regained awareness. “You did it!” The other five piled in on the group hug - there were no dry faces, for their victory was such a costly one.
The world shook - less intense than the last tremble, but still powerful.
“It... It hasn’t stopped,” Rainbow Dash said. “Why hasn’t it stopped!?”
Twilight grimaced. “It... It might be too far gone now...”
Applejack groaned. “Why? Why? Why is this always for nothing? Why can’t there be...” She paused, a look of contemplation on her face. She looked around quickly, scanning the sky, the sun, the moon, Sperion’s limp, shimmering form, and the Seven of them. Her Inflection of Truth did its job - she saw all the information she needed. “Twi. Ah have an idea.”
“Hurry!” Twilight implored.
“This world needs stability, right? And were, like, part of it on some level of Destiny. We are connected to it on a fundamental level - maybe, maybe we, the Seven, can give it our essences. To repair it!”
“We... We won’t survive that,” Fluttershy said. “We would become anchored to the world - unable to move, unable to live...”
Rainbow Dash took in a breath. “Well... We weren’t exactly planning on making it out of this anyway,” she laughed, sadly. “W-we’ll be heroes!”
Starlight nodded. “We... We can do this. We...” She couldn’t continue.
Pinkie smirked. “Well... One last party then?”
Rarity sighed. “Yes Pinkie...” she let a soft smirk appear on her face. “One last party.”
Twilight frowned. “...I... I guess we did come here not expecting to make it out...” She shook her head. “Perhaps we should have taken Congeal up on her offer...”
Starlight shook her head. “Sperion told me it wouldn’t have worked anyway... There really wasn’t much of an optoin for us..”
Twilight nodded. “Let’s... Stand around Sperion.”
“You will need his energies,” Applejack said. “It’s the only way to do it.”
Among a crumbling world, Seven mares stood around the corpse of a spirit of Order, a beautiful sight despite its ghastly nature. A motionless image of beauty, made of diamond that shone in the light of a dying world. The Seven stood tall and proud - Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Starlight Glimmer, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Rarity. They all closed their eyes, a heptagon of energy forming between them. The information for Applejack’s plan flooded into Twilight’s mind, and she instantly started weaving the spell through all Seven of them. She took energy from all of them - including the form of Sperion - and cast the powerful magic through what connected them all. She connected directly to the world that created them, that gave them their Inflections, that gave them their destiny. Artificial lines of color identical to what Sperion had created a short while ago shot from the seven of them, tearing into reality itself, and tugging on all their very souls, rooting their essences to the world. A sharp power filled their bodies, hitting them all with a sharp pain.
They felt essences flow out of them - they felt their cutie marks flash, vibrating. They felt the Tree of Harmony calling to them, giving them it’s support - giving them what they needed to follow through. They felt themselves start to petrify, turning into stone...
“I love you all!” Twilight shouted over the din of their power. She left her position in the heptagon, rushing them all into a hug around the fallen form of Sperion. The spell was already cast - helped along by the Tree’s ancient guidance. It worked their destinies and lives into the structure of reality itself...
They all smiled in the end, finishing as one.
In the last possible moment, Twilight had a thought.
Maybe...
Sperion’s eye opened.
And then everything was still.