I turned a hard left, dodging a bolt of electricity from above, my hooves skidding along the polished stone in a fountain of sparks, and ran into an archway, trying to put something between me and the pursuers.
My lungs burned with exhaustion, making me pant and gasp for air, but the fear and the adrenaline pushed me to run faster, staining my muscles in our mad dash through the ruins.
The seaponies have caught up to us when we were almost out of the water, and I could already feel the sweet air on my coat. At first they appeared as merely sparkly dots down below, in the dark waters. But they gained on us quickly, until they resolved into seapony guard, clad in their armors and covered in protection of mother-pearl magics.
Their spears sparked with lightnings, swift in the saline seawater and the horns they had rung with a bone-rattling sound, making the stone ladder shake and tremble, the shockwave of their sound nearly throwing me off the ladder. I couldn’t fight them under water without access to wind and flame or even just good visibility. Even when I managed a few spells, slowing the seaponies down, entangling one in a net of a sleeping spell or encased a few of them in ice, protected by the shimmering auras of the mother-pearl magic they recovered and soon rejoined the pursuit again.
So we ran, even Ahuizotl switching from his leisurely gait into a low, сrouching canter. The maddeningly long marathon, at the top of our speed, all the way up the ladder, through an unfamiliar beach, where glass and soot mixed with sand making it sharp and black, into the nearby ruins, while the seaponies kept dogging us, flying in the air and appearing from underneath, floating through the tunnels that riddled the damned place, propelled and protected by the magic of their Mother-Pearl.
There was a scream somewhere above and beyond, where I didn’t dare to get distracted to look, a sound of hooves connecting with scales, and a second later Green Glow dropped by my side with the liquid grace of a panther.
“Focus, little princess. Breathe.”
She kept up with my pace with an almost insulting ease, and while I was panting, her own breathing was unlabored and deep, her mane barely tousled.
Another blast of seapony horns shook the earth, almost throwing me off my feet. I raised a shielding spell, feeling the push of the air compressed by the soundwaves ram against it.
Darkness misted in my eyes, the exhaustion taking its toll on my body.
Green disappeared again, running up some ruined ramp to find herself another victim, while I concentrated on following the blue flag of Ahuizotl's tail-paw far ahead.
We turned left, then right, weaving and bobbing under the cover of the ruins, the turns blurring together in my mind when suddenly there was nowhere to run any more.
The street ended up in the river, half-dried up, yet too deep to wade, too wide to leap. The bridge that crossed it once has long since crumbled and fell apart.
Ahuizotl lead us into the dead end.
The seaponies caught up to us again, and another group rose from their ambush in the river, surrounding us like a swarm of angry bees. The hum of the collective charge on their eel-like spears made the hairs of my mane and coat up stand on their ends.
Ahuizotl — I corrected myself, trying desperately to catch my breath — lead us into an ambush.
It was a perfect place for a trap - an old plaza of the ancient city, on one side - the once narrow and winding streets turned into impassable mountains of angular rubble and broken bricks by the ruins of houses, on the other - a half-dried river with a broken bridge, on all sides - the angry seaponies. There was nowhere to go.
I turned my shield into a dome, trying to hold off the attacks for another few seconds, but before I could, a seapony barrelled through the half-formed spell. His spear struck the Elder, ramming the golden point deep into his shoulder and drawing blood.
Ahuizotl screamed, an indignant cry of pain and surprise, and his tail-paw grabbed the offending seapony by the throat, ripping him off and slamming him into the ground with a bone-crushing force.
The Elder’s power rose, sending wobbles across my spell, and the nacreous protection around the seapony burst like a soap bubble.
“Hold the shield, pony mine.” Elder’s suddenly booming voice covered the crackling of seapony lightnings against my shield.
The seapony thrashed and writhed in the Elder’s paws, no longer able to breathe the air without the protection of his magic. Ahuizotl’s blood trickled down his arm, colouring his fur purple and smearing on the seapony muzzle.
“Hold…”
Green moved somewhere in front of us, beyond my shield, jumping from sea-pony to sea-pony, beating them out of the air, but even she was getting pushed back, blasts of eel-spears and sea-horns seeking ever closer to her.
"Hold…”
“Any time now,” I growled, struggling against a coordinated barrage of at least a dozen seaponies, my horn nearly cracking with the vibrations passed down from my shield.
The stallion pinned by Ahuizotl gave his last shudder and went limp, his eyes rolling into his skull, and it opened it’s muzzle in the final attempt at breathing before Ahuizotl covered it between with blue lips and inhaled, stealing last breath of the seaponpony’s life.
He raised his head off his victim and then he exhaled: a long, silent breath.
Death
My shield dissipated into nothingness and where the Elder’s breath touched anything living, it died. The grass turned black and fell apart into the cloud of ash, bush turned to dried-up twigs, birds fell out of the sky, and I knew with perfect clarity that were I to sift through the soil, I would not find a bacterium or a virus that had survived the Elder’s curse.
Ponies’ magic protected them, but still, they shrivelled, their skin clinging to the brittle bones as if they were starved, their eyes turning milky-white with cataracts, their pearly magic auras blown off their frames. Those who were far enough scattered, the rest fell like puppets with their strings cut off, and Green, appearing suddenly by the Elder’s side, poked the closest one with her hoof.
“Still alive,” she noted, “you’re losing your touch, Big Blue.”
"Kill them!" Ahuizotl half-screeched half-whined, ignoring Green’s comment, as he threw the ragdoll-limp body of a seapony away and clutched at his wound, thin trickle of blood spilling between his claws. “Kill them all!”
I felt the grin spread my lips, fierce, burning excitement in my chest. No more water to restrain my might, no more doubts to make me hold my spells, no truce, no mystical test or complicated rules. This was all I needed - an opponent I could fight, a simple and fair combat, a permission and command to cut loose and forget the consequences.
For the first time in days, I felt no fear. My body sang with adrenaline, as I called upon the name of a Southern Wind, letting go of every control and precaution, feeling it rise in its full strength. Not a paltry breeze I could conjure with my own magics, but a full might of anemos - the very essence of the desert summers’ storm.
A hot tornado of dust and sand circled round me, and somepony screamed, as I stood unmoving in the eye of the hurricane, pumping more and more power into the air around. Every fear, every pain, doubt and little humiliation of days past I’ve poured into the spell until the storm itself took aflame. A typhoon of skin-cutting winds and fire and me in the centre of it, crushing and breaking anypony to stand before me against the rocks, burning and scraping their scales off with but a thought. I rode the wave of magic like a high, laughing at the destruction wrought by my horn and buildings groaned where I stepped, scoured clean of the overgrowth, stones wrenched out of masonry by my the might I have summoned.
A squad of pegasi could have stopped me, perhaps, binding the storm. The earth-ponies could conceivably withstand the power that melted the stone and burned the air. The sea-ponies, with their borrowed magics and pitiful weapons, far from their Mother Pearl had no chance. The rare discharges of their spears could not penetrate the walls of air and fire, the sound of their horns was drowned in the howl of the storm, and all they could do was retreat away as I pushed on, dropping the crushing power left and right like a flaming war-hammer.
"Sloppy." A hoof lowered onto my barrel, and Green Glow's voice ripped me out of spellcasting rush. "Wasteful."
Shivers and goosebumps spread as my skin tried to crawl away from her touch while my legs refused to move.
"The First rule is сontrol, little princess. Never let yourself lose it. Do what needs doing and nothing more - there are no points for effort or style."
Panic, stark and clear, like lightning along my spine. My every instinct shouted for me to run, to escape, to hide, and spurred by my fear, my magic twisted inside out and joined together like a pattern in a kaleidoscope into something that I’ve never seen before, and through my horn I slithered into my own spell.
I looked at my body from outside, an orange little pony somewhere far below. I was now not flesh and blood but a creature of emerald flames and wind, one with the storm. Beneath my paws, tiny things screamed and scattered. I growled, the howl of the wind becoming my voice and pounced.
“Control”, I could still hear Green Glow’s whispering into my pony-ears, “Control and awareness, little princess.”
It was almost too easy. Those who stood their ground and tried to fight I threw aside with easy swats of my hoof turned to gusts of wind, those who ran I spurred with the heat of the emerald flame. I moved between the houses and ruins, invisible until I chose to strike, invulnerable to spear and horn alike, my only trace - the screams of wounded and broken creatures in my wake.
And then I poured down, underneath the stone and the streets, lighting tunnels and underground streams with emerald flames, stalking from cave to cave, hall to hall, finding tiny, fragile little things and breaking them against the walls with but a swing of my translucent paws.
And then there were none, and I rose, expanding, pouring through the soft earth and cavernous stone until I stood back up. Like a titaness, earth melting across my form, as high as the tallest buildings. I turned back to Green Glow, lighting up my form with bands of green magic and roared, flame and wind as my voice.
“Who’s little now?”
She grinned unafraid, and there was a sharp sting and a fall, and then I was just me, with my ears still ringing from a smack she gave me upside my head.
‘Watch your back, pumpkin. Always watch your back.”
It took me a few tries to stand up, before I scampered after her, stumbling over my clumsy flesh-and-blood legs.
“Did… did I do good?” I hated my stutter and the icy fear that returned to grip me again as I spoke to her almost as much as I hated my eagerness to please that psychopath. Yet her power, her hold over me I could not deny.
She smiled, turning away. “Adequate. There’s room for improvement, but I am in no mood for a lecture now,” she flicked her tail playfully, “but I can give you a very thorough tongue-lashing if you want.”
Goosebumps and shivers, like a thousand ants along my back.
***
I stayed behind on a shore and scooped the scattered the battered seaponies up, to drop them into the river, expecting any second a comment from Green Glow, or worse yet, a repetition of her practical lesson.
I could imagine it with perfect detail, the fear almost making me lose control of my magic: She'd be behind me - perhaps right at that moment, moving so fast I would have no chance of even seeing it, her hooves taking with tangible, hungry green flames. There'd be the smell - the sickly, sweet smell of my skin burning and a scream ripping my throat apart, and another gentle lesson whispered in my ears...
She did nothing. With the last indifferent look at the seaponies, coming to in the water, she turned away and left me - as always - to follow with her.
I caught up with her at a ford of a river, upstream from the broken bridge. Both Green and the Elder were drinking - the Elder taking the water in his tail-paw, the mercenary simply lapping at the shallow water. After a short deliberation, I joined her.
The water tasted salty and the sand the river lifted off the riverbed scraped on my teeth, and yet, of all the drinks I drunk, this was sweetest by far. And when my lips had touched the water, I felt it deep within — the Elder’s gift, a small measure of his power, hidden deep in my chest like a stone sleeping on the riverbed. Until Ahuizotl would take away his coin and his gift, I would never drown, lest he’d will me to.
We drank and we rested. And then we walked before the seaponies would send another chase. For the first time, I could take my time to look around, appreciating the giant labyrinthine ruins around us. Burned and shattered buildings were strewn as far as the eye could see, half consumed by the melted stone streets and crumbling dried-up channels. A corpse of a city so vast that it could’ve rivalled Manehattan.
Nopony moved between the half-molten mudbrick houses; not even dogs or stray cats appeared in the streets. To add to the uncanny scene, the air was still, empty of birdsong.
At the centre of the city was a pyramid, not unlike the one we've been to before. The same moats, though long since dried, the same twists and turns, same statues, but everything was larger, more grand, more menacing. Still alive with the lingering magics that permeated every stone and every step.
“There was a city here once, little pony,” the Elder said unbidden, suddenly lost in his thoughts. His voice sounded hollow and distant as he scooped up a pawful of ash from the streets with his tail, letting the weightless dust seep through his fingers. “A city so great and magnificent, none could equal it, a jewel in the crown of a kingdom. Creatures lived here in peace and prosperity. The earth-ponies built their towers and houses, the diamond dogs guarded them, rams kept our archives and history, while I oversaw it and knew it was good - a heaven in the tides of chaos that would drown the world.
“Every one of them - a link in a circle of life, bound together forever. Life bloomed there, in all its visceral beauty, and when they died, they knew it was not in vain and that their lives and their deaths served a higher purpose.
“And then They came. The Princesses turned the Day into fire and the Night into nightmare. The pegasi set the heavens themselves against us, and the Mage wielded powers that were never meant to be taken by mortals...
“And so our city fell, taken from me. Its towers and ziggurats cracked and broken, its streets turned to cinder and ash. If the chaos itself had yielded to their might, how could we stand?
“How could we stand…” he repeated as wind snatched the last motes of ash from his hand.
I knew of the things he spoke of, and I imagined the battle as he talked. Celestia, making light in the sky, brighter than any fire, shining the foes and enmities away, while Starswirl and the unicorn wizards took apart the defensive enchantment of the city. The pegasi raining thunders from above and the legions of the Guard moving in row by row, all clad in shining gold and black brass, pushing the defenders back.
And from my books, I knew of the things he did not speak of as well - the frantic work of the arimaspi warlocks, their knives rising and falling to rip out the fresh hearts of their sacrifices to power their spells and curses, the drains on the pyramids overflowing with blood. The diamond dogs turned to berserking monsters, mutated beyond pain and sanity on Ahuizotl’s commands, pony slaves murdered and raised as ghouls or zombies to fight for their masters… the death-magics, сenturies old, still emanated from these ruins with aura so horrid with fear and suffering it made my temples throb with pain.
I kept my knowledge to myself and left the old creature to his grief.
The doors of the temple responded to Ahuizotl’s touch, and there were no guards or traps within. We walked alone and uncontested through the heavy stone halls were the very air felt ancient, and the carvings on the walls spoke to me as I walked by. Black whispers slithered into my ears, promising, begging, offering - if only I would read the dark spells; if only I would set them free with a drop of life’s blood; if only I would animate them with my magic…
I listened, but gave them no hold over me, letting the dark knowledge settle into my brain. Too horrible a power to ever use… yet too great a temptation to simply set aside.
And in the end of the corridor - the same center, same black heart of the pyramid, though instead of altar and a fountain it had mirror of obsidian, large enough for Ahuizotl to reflect in it fully, making his reflection a darker, larger creature, his inequine frame and features twisted and made even more alien.
He touched the surface of the mirror, and I saw a tremor run across his body, a small sigh of... satisfaction? Pleasure? Excitement?
It was his place of power, the whole building, the whole city even, built around him and for him.
Once again Ahuizotl’s power called, deep and heavy, and once again the ancient tools responded, recognizing their once master. Darkness flooded the mirror, and the reflections disappeared, giving instead a place to a wide, black space, vast and obscured by the swirling mists.
And in the blackness behind the obsidian mirror, something moved. Maws, as big as a grown pony, eyes full of madness and hunger, teeth sharper than swords, all bound in chains and collars of grey steel, straining at creaking as it lurched towards the light.
It was Cerberus. The guardian of the Tartarus, the spotted dog of the Underworld -- and I was now thinking in threes, like those seaponies.
It was annoying.
"Easy there, little brother," Ahuizotl's hand reached into the mirror, petting the horror inside. “Your time will come yet -- perhaps sooner than we thought."
"Or perhaps not!"
Ice and Nightmares!
The raspy, jaunty voice rang from above, and even without turning I knew it was her. Despite all my begging, despite her wounds, despite any sense and reason, still doggedly loyal to her failed, misguided cause, Daring Do has followed us here. Anger, hot like a nova flared inside me. I would not go easy on her, not anymore. Any grace I had for my hero was out.
“Take her!” Ahuizotl barked a short and unnecessary order, before turning back to the portal. “I have to work.”
My magic lit up, preparing for the fight.
Daring Do somersaulted from her perch, dashing directly towards the mirror, and steel and wings filled the small room, clanging and blazing everywhere. No jokes, no mocking, no quarter asked for or given - all words we could have had, had been expended before, and so we fought in vicious silence only broken by the noise of combat, leaving it to our respective grit and skills to determine the result.
And hers were found lacking. They never could really be enough, me and Green acting as one, the flame of her hooves shadowed and followed by my magic. One old pegasus had no chance and was quickly dealt with and soon downed and chained.
"All is ready." There was sombre satisfaction in Ahuizotl's voice as he stepped away from the portal. Behind him, the obsidian mirror shimmered, like a painting of black on black, and within it a ship made of dead mares’ hooves and horns waiting for us to board. "None shall stop us now."
“You’ll never get away with it, Ahuizotl!” Daring Do tested her wings against the chains. The old iron held, making her efforts as futile as her threats.
“But I already have,” he grinned smugly. “This time I come out victorious, Daring Do.”
He laughed - an honest-to-Celestia evil laugh. It’d look silly in any other circumstance, but there, in the temple that reeked with death and power, where his laughter echoed and boomed as if a whole chorus of shades and shadows laughed along with him, it made every hair of my coat stand on its end.
“As to you, brave hero - whatever shall we do with you?” He circled round the bound hero, gloating again, his tail-paw swishing side-to-side. “There were many implements for dealing with such as you in my city in its day. A pit of ten thousand paper cuts? A death of splintered wooden floors? A sacrifice of snakes-and-spiders perhaps?”
I gritted my teeth. Yeah, that was a great idea - to put her into another trap, another binding. Let her escape and screw things up for all of us again. I have tried to help her, I have tried to talk to her out of it, and now I have had enough. If some get to die when they should not have, why should others get to live when they don’t deserve it?
To that question, I knew the answer already: Sometimes it is most cruel to be kind to those who are not worth it.
“Just finish her.” I spat out. The sanctimonious attitude, the corny one-liners were starting to really get to me. “You’ll never get away with it?” really? Who even talks like that?
“Heh. Straight to business, no foreplay,” Green Glow grinned. Her forehooves blazed alight with the familiar green fire, and the stone beneath her started to glow with the intense heat. “That’s something I like in a girl.”
I winced, but it was too late to take my words back.
***
Sunset took a pause of her story and mused for a second.
“I am good with lies. I love my little falsehoods and misdirections and rarely do I regret them. But in lying one cannot lose sight of reality, because a liar who believes his own lies is just a madman.
“I would want to believe that it was the death-magics of the place that pushed me to this decision. That it was my headache at their horrible pressure, inebriation or the influence of the Elder at his seat of power… but that is simply not the truth. Even if born of alcohol and anger, it was my decision and mine alone. In the final account, I have meant what I said and said what I meant.”
“But she got out, right?” Rainbow Dash asked helplessly. “Right?”
“Darling, tell me you didn’t…”
Sunset looked away.
***
Daring Do twisted harder in her bindings, while I reached for the flask and took another swig of whatever poison Glow brought with us. The second time the drink went smoother than the first, if not by much.
“At least give me a fight,” she asked, finally resigning to her fate. “A pegasus’ death.”
“And what’s to stop you from just flying away, enemy mine? I was not born yesterday, you know.”
“I give you my word,” she said simply.
Ahuizotl’s eyes widened in surprise. He nodded - everypony knew of the hero’s honesty. Daring Do never lied and never broke her word.
“You must promise too,” she demanded, “I want a chance, and I want a clean, honourable death if I fail.”
“Of course, of course,” he waved his tail-paw-thing vaguely “Cross my heart, and everything.”
“No. Swear to me, all of you. The Old way.”
Both he and the mercenary grew silent, suddenly sobered by the demand.
“I swear.” Green Glow finally said first, eager to get to the core of the issue. “By the Earth and the Forest.”
Ahuizotl was more reluctant, but he could not deny his arch-nemesis’ final request.
“I swear. By the Water’s Deep and the Heart’s Blood.”
They were looking at me now, and I panicked. I had no idea what was going on, or what to say. The words they said, the witnesses they’ve summoned were not a thing of history books and old scrolls.
“I swear…” and then I suddenly knew it like I’ve always known it, since before I was born. Words as ancient as the ponykind, forever stamped into our very nature, the thing that defines us as a tribe no less than cutie mark defines us as ourselves.
“...by the Fire and Magic.”
The world has changed around us imperceptibly, as the words were said and witnessed, and could not be now unsaid.
Glow pushed me gently with her head towards Daring Do, and it was only then that I understood that it would be my magic that would end the hero’s life. It was only fair - I have suggested it after all, but somehow I did not see it coming. I was not ready for this; I couldn’t… but the ancient ritual of the duel was already pulling onto me, and I couldn’t step out. Not with the burning emerald eyes of my companion watching me, not after the words that I’ve said, the oath that I swore.
I gulped, and we walked.
Three steps each.
Seven steps in total between us and not a hoof more. The duel-distance. Length enough for unicorn to cast a spell before pegasus would hit her, length enough for pegasus to dodge before earth pony pins her to the ground, enough for the earth pony to reach the unicorn before she wears him down with her spellwork. The distance where all three tribes are equal and only their prowess and their magic stand between them and death, measured in hundreds of duels, in thousands of battles in times of Old.
Pivot and turn. A whoosh of magic, a flare of wings. A short, barking command.
Some ponies are fast. I've seen Green move with more speed and grace than anyone I knew. But she was an earth pony, and no earth pony can be as fast as a pegasus.
Even then, some pegasi are faster than others. Daring Do was fast - she moved faster than my eyes could track her, her wings diving into her belt for her explosives and throwing knives before the sound of Ahuizotl's command had echoed back from the walls.
But no flesh and blood can be faster than the speed of thought, and magic is weaved just as quickly. I was ready - spurred by the last-second surge of adrenaline, the green energy erupted from my horn forming a shield an instant before the sharp metal has filled the space.
The little king stepped forward into the attack, and grabbed, pivoted and turned adding the strength of his opponent to his move…
My spell swept the knives and the throwing-stars out of the air, and I pushed more power into the shield and pushed it forward, adding my power to the speed of her attack. She crashed into the shield at an awkward angle, and there was a crack when her left hind hoof shattered, and she screamed. My magic fell on her like a hammer from above, crushing and pinning her to the ground.
And it screamed, and it screamed, and it screamed, claws scraping against the metal of the blade that pinned it to the floor, flesh sliced apart by its thrashing getting reknit to be sliced again and again….
I hesitated, and she twisted out of my magic, standing up. Barely.
“Even If I fail—” She spat out the teeth I cracked “Others shall rise in my trail.”
Breathe.
"His sword moved in an elaborate double-feint, twisting around the White Sword as if alive, and left a long nick along the Prince’s shoulder, drawing blood..."
I weaved the Scourge of Shahab from dust and gravel, snipping it to her side, seeking to distract and trip her in its coils.
She rolled and jumped, losing half an ear instead of half her head, moving left and right, zigging and zagging, almost weaving her body around the coils of the spell with near-perfect precision.
"He stopped to touch it, looking at his red-stained limb as if unable to believe that he was killed. He made a step towards me. Then another. And then he fell, blood finally flowing freely from his wound. "
I faltered, my spell falling apart, and her hoof nearly found my throat. Our eyes met for a second, her muzzle so close to mine I could see and count every hair on her muzzle in that instant, and there was nothing in her eyes. No fear. No anger. No regret. Nothing but tired, detached resignation…. I pushed her off me at the last panicked second, her remaining hooves skidding along the stones in an effort to remain standing.
Breathe.
The archer kept moving, shooting arrow after arrow with impossible speed and precision. Thin needles of death filled the air, searching hungrily for the flesh to pierce, and it took all my speed and skill to deflect or grab them with my magic.
Fear and anger rising within me like a suffocating cloud, I lashed out blindly, grabbing loose bricks and stones, and lobbed them at the pegasus as she took to the air.
They exploded against the walls and the ceiling with thunderous rumble, filling the air with shrapnel, and getting ever closer to Daring Do, who had to pile one trick upon another to stay just ahead, and still inexorably retreating towards the corner where she’d have nowhere to dodge anymore.
I could not even spare a glance at how he was faring. The second I would get distracted, the thin needles of death that filled the air would find their target, biting into his unprotected back...
I choked, my spell suddenly flaring up, and the last of my projectiles went wide, overshooting Daring Do by a mile, and bouncing back to my hooves. Both of us stared at it dumbly for a second, as we regained our breath.
It wasn’t working. Like a blank-flanked foal trying her spells for the first time, I was splattering my magic in every direction, bludgeoning away at the old mare with nothing but raw power and dumb luck. Sloppy. Wasteful. I should’ve known better.
Breathe. In and out.
I was stronger, I was unhurt, I was more powerful. And I had magic to spare. She was old, she was wounded, she was out of tricks and utterly outclassed.
It was all over for her. All but one heroic last stand. In her hearts of hearts she knew it, and that made her every move slower and heavier, even more than her age or her wounds.
And then something clicked, my perspective shifted, and suddenly past and present overlaid in my mind’s eye making everything focused and clear. I screamed a spell in a language I did not know, black and green magic woven together in a construct elegant and deadly with the power of Winter and Night.
She tried to dodge, but the spell was faster, breaking her wing in a cloud of splintered bone and feathers.
With my newfound cold clarity, and sudden second breath I moved and weaved my magic with perfected precision. Her counterattack tangled and lost in the thin lattice of my spellwork, and I cried another curse, fouler and blacker than the first. It caught her mid-leap from an unexpected angle, cutting into her left foreleg she tried to shield herself with so much force it ripped off her skin like rind off an overripe fruit. Pops and cracks rang out through the stone hall of the temple, and she left a long bloody trail as she rolled along the floor, scraping her skin and twisting the broken limbs.
Another, third and final curse, vilest and most potent of them all, and a green flash circled round, with a flicker and a flourish. Before she could fully stand up it smashed into Daring Do like a wave and then, just like that she was down on her knees, two of her legs broken, her left wing - an ugly frozen mess, half as long as it used to be. I held her by the throat with sharp, deadly spell, my horn echoing with the beat of her pulse. One last move, one final bit of magic and it would be done.
I froze.
I had to finish it. I had to. There was no other way. We had almost everything now, so close to the prize I could feel it within the grasp of my hooves.
I couldn’t finish it. I could not kill another. Not in cold blood, not one of the good ponies, not a real hero.
Fear and the sharp, burning need collided and battled within me, threatening to rip my mind apart.
“Do it.” Her face was one giant swollen bruise dripping with blood, but even through the broken teeth, you could make out her words. “Do it!”
Want. Take. Have.
Something snapped deep inside, all my desires and my fears collapsing into a single point, and the wave of my will surged through the spell. There was a flash of green light, a single wet, squelching crunch, and a legend of my fillyhood, the unstoppable, implacable Daring Do was no more.
All I saw now was just a body of an old pegasus, maimed and crumpled on the floor, bleeding slowly onto the stones. And I’ve learned another lesson, a lesson I would not have learned under the kind Princess of the Sun. I learned that power matters. You can be kind and honest, loyal and generous, but none of this is worth anything unless you have the means to use it. The powerful matter, whether good or bad… others do not.