Red Eclipse
Twilight was amongst the most gifted unicorns ever to exist, possessing both intelligence and power. Her magic might have surpassed even that of Starswirl the Bearded, and approached the level of the alicorn sisters themselves. Her power to create a light spell was unmatched by any five unicorns in Canterlot.
Right now it was being tested to its limits. Surrounded on all sides by nightmares and corrupted changelings, the intensity of the light spells she was using not only left spots in her vision, but an audible crack of released magic. From every direction, unexpected or not, they were being attacked. They came out of sewer grates, drain pipes, broken windows, abandoned carts. It was as if the shadows themselves spawned corrupted changelings and nightmares in frightening and uncontrollable numbers.
On top of that, she could feel the weight of the red eclipse bearing down upon her, tinting the world against her. As if the sun itself cast an angry glare down upon Twilight for daring to exist.
There was plenty Twilight could do about this, of course. Her horn was glowing red with the sheer amount of magic pouring out of it. She was proud that not a single nightmare, no matter how fierce, required more than one spell to dispatch. Most of them were small, and evaporated in groups whenever her horn went off.
Naudia was doing fine as well. Not merely keeping the corrupted changelings back, but she was having a much easier time dispatching them here in Canterlot, fully powered up. She showed no traces of fatigue yet, and already over a hundred corrupted changelings had fallen to them, along with an uncounted number of nightmares.
What Twilight worried about more was the psychological effect this might have on Naudia. Sure, it was necessary, but these were her own people that had met a tragic fate and needed to be put down. They weren't originally monsters. It wasn’t so bad yet, though, they were just blobs that leapt out to attack them. It helped massively that they looked disgusting, barely resembling changelings at all.
Things were building up to an ominous weight upon their backs, however, as they fell into a disturbingly calm section, which didn’t bode well for either them or the looting team.
Twilight was interrupted, though, by a rebuttal from the nearly empty street.
"Over there!" Twilight pointed a hoof at a cart set on its side that was coming at them at remarkable speeds.
"I got it!" Naudia replied, but Twilight was already moving.
The cart shattered from two powerful destruction spells hitting it at once, the monsters hiding behind it already attempting to slink away.
"I think we’re starting to get the attention of whatever is behind this.” Naudia said. “They’re starting to act less like they did out in the desert.”
"Good." But there wasn't conviction in Twilight's voice.
This wasn't a battle they were supposed to 'win.' Victory here meant pushing themselves to the absolute limit of their abilities, far away from help and depending entirely upon their failsafes to bring them back. If they didn't do well enough here, then things might get worse down below, but every inch they pushed towards their limit was a risk.
There could be nothing worse than being captured by the enemy, in this case. Not for Twilight and especially not for Naudia.
The next attack was the most vicious yet and hammered home what had Naudia just said.
Twilight and Naudia turned a corner after almost two minutes of empty streets, to find only a single corrupted changeling sitting alone in the middle of the street.
“Have they given up?” Naudia asked.
It was watching them with whatever passed for eyes, as if it had something up its proverbial sleeve.
“I’ll put up a shield, in case it explodes or something. You take it out.” Twilight said, as moments later, a pink shield enveloped them.
Naudia charged her horn, prepared for the worst. She wasn’t prepared for what the corrupted changeling had to offer. As soon as the beam hit it, the corrupted changeling began to scream and thrash, flailing changeling limbs like there was an actual changeling, drowning inside of a corrupted changeling. Naudia was so shocked that she stopped firing at it entirely.
Twilight almost let her shield down; it was all she could do to fight against the shock to keep it up. Both of them stared at the corrupted changeling in abject horror, it stopped a moment after Naudia stopped channeling her beam.
There were no words between them, only a look between Naudia and Twilight that could not express their horror at what they just saw. Naudia couldn’t think of anything else she could do at that moment, so she hardened her resolve and finished the corrupted changeling off.
It screamed, and as it began to lose form, the corrupted changeling let out a little wheeze before it expired.
“What was that?” Twilight asked out loud.
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Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, a heated battle was ongoing between the looters and the corrupted changelings. The ponies fighting alongside the changelings were feeling hopeful. They were winning, despite the odds, with the changeling support. The changelings, on the other hand, had their faces locked in grim concentration. They knew, regardless of how well they were doing now, that this was an endurance fight. The corrupted changelings could easily afford to simply wear them down. Time and losses were immaterial to them.
Mattar had forced himself to the front lines, along with a lot of Naudia's hive. They had the most combat experience out of anybody, and it showed. They didn't flinch, they didn't panic, no matter their profession. Naudia's hive had all fought against the corrupted changelings out in the badlands. They knew the price of failure.
Even with how well things were going, they only had so much to give, and something was clearly feeding both the corrupted changelings and the nightmares. There was only so many the enemy could cram into one place after all. That played to their advantage, as the spells against nightmares worked in an area, and every time a corrupted changeling fell it expended some of its trapped love into the area around it.
Mattar decided it was time to pull back and confer with the pony commanders.
When he got back there things were looking well, for the moment.
“I’ve told you, we can’t copy the royal wedding again, we have too many friendly changelings here.” Shining was exasperatedly telling another commander.
“Are you sure you can’t just make the barrier… go around them?” A high-ranked Earth pony asked.
Shining’s hoof met his face.
“That would mean opening thousands of tiny little holes in the shield with perfect timing, then shutting them again. Completely impossible. You’d need twenty unicorns in perfect sync, with reaction times that put them in the upper 1%.” Shining’s exasperation clearly wasn’t getting through enough. “Even if we grouped our changelings up, that doesn’t make things easier. Poking holes in the shield that big, or that early on, would make it useless. It wouldn’t work against the nightmares anyways, we already tried that.”
“We’ve got most of Canterlot and the guard here, Commander. How rare are we talking?”
“Even if we had all of Equestria, and had the time to vet them, we’d be lucky to find three.” That finally shut up the Earth pony.
“Having problems, Commander?” Mattar asked.
“You could say that.” Shining motioned for Mattar to move away so they could talk more privately. “Don’t mind him. He has no understanding of magic but he’s responsible for our, quite frankly, fantastic battle lines at the moment. Anyway, how are things going on the front?”
“With the level of organization we’ve got right now, and the enemy, we’re doing quite well. There are injuries but no casualties. The enemy just can’t get close enough.”
“I’m sensing a ‘but’ here.”
“We can’t keep this up. I give us about fifteen minutes before we have to start heading back down, and that’s stretching it a bit.”
“Well, we came up out of that maze in the market district, so we’re ready to go down already. I’m going to start pulling ponies back down below.” Shining said. “Can you handle bringing the front lines down again? Remember to send up the flare!”
Before Mattar could reply there was a commotion on the front lines.
He rushed over to find that very bad things were happening.
The corrupted changelings were organizing themselves.
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Another corrupted changeling melted away to Naudia’s beam. Twilight had given up counting them, because counting them kept her thinking about them more. Twilight could tell that Naudia was hardening to their cries, but she was unsure if this was an act or the buildup to a breakdown of some kind.
"They're getting smarter." Naudia stated grimly. "Never would have imagined saying that about corrupted changelings, ever."
"I never thought I would have to fight Nightmare Moon again, either." Twilight dropped another sunlight explosion into a group of nightmares, who seemed much less eager to attack them now. "Any ideas as to why any of this is happening?"
"Maybe one of the changelings got latched onto by Nightmare Moon. Maybe it's something different, like somebody discovering the notes as to how changelings were created in the first place."
"Do you think it could be your mother?" Twilight asked.
Naudia didn't look at all cheerful about the prospect.
"She died. I'm almost positive of it." Naudia sighed. "Even if she didn't, she was at ground zero. She wouldn't have lived very long after that, nobody could."
Twilight could tell Naudia was pushing away disturbing thoughts, and decided not to push it.
She didn’t have much time to think about it as another nightmare attacked. This time the nightmares tried carrying part of a roof. It was only luck that they managed to spot them in time to break it apart. They moved in perfect sync with one another, lashing out with their magic almost as one. Once they were done, the streets seemed very empty.
"We should move on. I think we've depleted this area's supply of nightmares and changelings." Twilight said.
"Before we move on, do you think you could top me up, Twilight?" Naudia asked hopefully.
"Of course, umm… honey?"
"Hee hee." Naudia giggled, trying to make the best of the moment.
"What is it?"
"It's just that everything has gone so fast that it's been one thing after the other. Parts of, well, our relationship, are still taking me by surprise."
Twilight bumped up beside Naudia. "We'll have all the time in the world once all this is over to work it all out."
Twilight gave Naudia a peck on the cheek, and they stood in the warm glow of each other's love. Just for a moment, forgetting about the current situation.
However, the air around them began to change, taking on an altogether more hostile air.
Looking around, they spotted the source: looking directly at them was a corrupted changeling, and it definitely was looking at them, its eyes an unflinching slit-eyed gaze.It was quite clearly shaking with anger, and its eye was clearly not its own.
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Mattar was hard pressed to bring the retreating formation back. Retreating was a problem because, for the moment at least, they had expended so much magic down from their streets that most of the tiny holes that corrupted changelings and nightmares could slither out of had melted shut. However, this level of fury couldn’t be kept up forever. Eventually, one by one, even with other changelings feeding them in more love, they would all fall over and have to be carried back down to the cavern.
Moving away from where they were not only meant exposing a new flank to attack from, but many more flanks where nightmares could attack from fresh places.
Mattar decided it was time to actually join the battle. He’d been waiting now just in case his queen needed an assist getting out. Too late for that now.
“You, and you.” Mattar said pointing at the two changelings who had been doing best during this battle. “Your job is now to come and collect me once I’ve broken their lines. This is NOT going to be a heroic sacrifice, and it’s your job to make sure it isn’t.”
The changelings looked frightened, it wasn’t often one of the queen’s guard actually went into combat.
Mattar gave the last orders to his second in command, and in very short order the space between him and the front lines was open.
Mattar cracked his neck once, and began to run.
It wasn’t a fast run, he didn’t bowl the changelings over with the sheer speed of his wake. It wasn’t even all that fast, however, what started as a barely audible gallop gradually increased in volume until it sounded like something very large was slamming its way down the street.
Mattar didn’t grow any bigger, but pavement stones cracked and his horn glowed with exertion. Teeth clenched, eyes straight ahead, Mattar drew within himself and went full berserker.
A wave of corrupted changelings and nightmares was already barreling down the path at him, snarling and yowling like the beasts they were. Mattar despised them. Pulling deep within himself, he cast the spell restricted to the queen’s guard. He aimed his horn at one side of the horde and the horn glowed even brighter, the glow extending out continuously.
Then he swiped it to the side and the entire wave fell dead.
There was another wave behind that one. They too fell dead.
The singed smell of burnt changeling and nightmare permeated the air as burning corpses piled up. There was no blood as all the wounds were burned shut. Mattar did not stop.
They started sending in fliers. Mattar burned them out of the air with a precision that no normal berserker ever could.
Now there was a pile of burning corrupted changelings and nightmares so massive that Mattar couldn’t see through the flames and smoke anymore, but he could still feel them out there. Now would have been a perfect time to retreat, but Mattar’s berserker state wouldn’t allow that. Queen’s guard weren’t supposed to retreat. That’s what other changelings did.
As if in answer, a huge nightmare swatted its way through the fires with a lamppost, swinging it with ease. The nightmare was at least twelve feet tall and very powerful, possibly from draining other nightmares. Mattar could see its red eyes glowing underneath the thick fur, and the glistening teeth as clear as day through its cloud of protective darkness.
Mattar screamed at it, stomping his hooves and cracking the pavement below. It responded with a deep bellow of its own and charged.
The nightmare swung the lamppost unnaturally fast, but it only caught cobblestones. Mattar was faster, and shoulder checked into the monster’s leg. With a sickening crunch, it buckled in an unusual direction, bringing the monster’s face down to Mattar’s level.
Mattar cast his queen’s guard spell again bringing the beam down on the monster and its cloud of darkness. It didn’t work; the monster blocked the spell and held it there, snarling with effort.
Mattar did not stop, though, and the monster’s shield of shadows began to creep its way up its body as it was burned away, leaving the beast unprotected from the roaring flames around it. This only hastened its death, until the shield broke and the nightmare rapidly caught fire, burning as bright as fresh kindling.
Silence.
Mattar looked down the street, but it was empty. No nightmares, no corrupted changelings, just fire and death. He couldn’t even feel them hiding out in nooks and crannies waiting for an ambush. That did very little to address his growing feeling of dread.
A shadow passed over Mattar, barely visible in the red light of the eclipse, but Mattar’s senses were heightened to the extreme. Looking up, he traced the shadow and stopped, and slowly slumped to the ground, exhausted and defeated all at once.
That was the cost of the queen’s guard’s gift: extreme power for a short time and then you get to take a nice long sleep. Most queen’s guard slept that way forever, easy pickings, but the queen got away.
Two changelings hastily came out of hiding to pull the limp Mattar back underground. Before he fell completely unconscious, staring at the sight before him, he muttered:
“I’m sorry, my Queen.”
He stared at the massive gathering of nightmares circling around, and the structure growing into the sky, made out of living corrupted changelings.