Flock did not hesitate. His body burst into a plume of birds and attacked the vandrare, swarming around it, but never touching it directly. He did not know what would happen if he touched it, but did not want to find out.
Nor did he want any of this. He had been cursed for over a thousand years, and the only consolation in that fact had been that he was functionally immortal. Yet he was about to meet his end, and he was going to do so for reasons he could not understand. Daring Do had opened the way to the Hand, and the Questlords had not only taken it but tried to use it, even though they of all ponies should have known that they were blinded by rapid, false hope. Then, finally, Rainbow Dash had not struck true, electing to save a friend rather than do what needed to be done.
Rainbow Dash had been his last chance, but Flock supposed that he knew that this outcome would occur. He had known since the beginning. In the front of his mind, he had given Daring Do the Book of the Black Tower only as insurance, but he knew himself better. Just as if he thought hard enough he could hear the clinical, emotionless thoughts of his crows, he could sometimes perceive his own deeper realizations.
He had known that Rainbow Dash would fail. That something inside her would prove unflappably loyal. That tiny part of Flock that knew was the part that understood why. Though he had never considered it, that tiny part was also what separated him from Scarlet Mist: while she would never be capable of understanding, he might have once had the ability, long ago.
He was afraid. Even in his true life, in the ruined thing that was his original body, he had been known as a coward. It had not bothered him. He was content to stand behind the other twelve of his kind, remaining deep in the Crystal Citadel while he unraveled arcane secrets and created weapons in the name of the Eternal King. The only pony he had ever fought in earnest was Clover the Clever, and only because that deeper, unknown part of him understood that she would never go so far as to end him.
Yet this was necessary. For the sake of the Eternal King. This was how Flock would repay the king who had given him everything: he would gladly meet his demise to ensure that Sombra had a world to rule when he returned from wherever it was he had gone.
The crows began to accelerate. The vandrare began to recognize that something was wrong. It performed a spell by instinct alone, trying to repel the birds that it only distantly recognized from its ancient homeworld. It was too late, though, as the birds had already ceased to be birds at all. They had erupted into bright yellow light, the color of a burning soul. Without mass, they flew faster and faster until they became a vortex.
One bird remained. The crow sitting on Daring Do’s book. It stared at her, and she at it. Then she sighed. Unlike Flock, she was not afraid. She had been so close to her own end so many times, she had gotten used to it. That problem meant that it was time to quit.
Dulcimer’s last words had come to mind. That maybe this was better. She would never meet the end that Scarlet Mist had shown her, that bittersweet world of an author clinging only to memories and fantasy but forever unable to go on an adventure of her own.
“Well,” she said. “I might as well go out in a blaze of glory.”
She looked down at the book. The weakly clicking dial seemed to understand, and it turned slowly. Text appeared, rising silver from the black of the image of the Monolith. Daring Do stared at it for a moment as letters and shapes organized themselves, rising from the countless thousands of layers of ink deposited long ago by a raving but unnamed madpony.
Then she nearly laughed, as she recognized the language. It was ancient zebric, the language used by the most powerful of shamans to enchant their weapons and to derive the most powerful of their spells. It was a language only known to the most ancient shamans, those who stood at the precipice of immortality- -or those who had passed into the pale beyond it. It had been known to a beautiful zebra stallion who, on the side of a cooling and sacred mountain overlooking a land of endless beauty and danger, had taught it to Daring Do.
This spell was dark and perverse, if not in language then in the meaning that lay beneath it, that which was annotated in thousands of other languages that remained hidden in black ink. But it was the only way, and Daring Do was the only one who could do the job. She read from the Book.
“To the last great explorer, blight by godhead madness
When life is death, to birth they die
This gate. Flee our earth
Without worth;
In Blue
Lit
Sky”
The crow spread its wings and ignited with light. The spell reached out from it and in an instant joined those who had ceased to be. Their glow changed, and darkened- -and for a moment, Daring Do though she could see something moving within it.
Then the gate opened. She had somehow been expecting something physical, like a portal or a light in the sky, but that was not it. Instead, she felt the same sensation of falling as she had whenever they half-jumped into the world that Flock was now trying to take them to. Except it was much more severe.
The ground seemed to tear up from itself, and the air seemed to lose bearing on any space. Daring Do felt the light of the crow and the book link to her, drawing energy from her to perform the spell. It was her magic that summoned the gate, and Flock’s that drew them both into it.
She felt herself rising, but not flying. Her space was merging with different space, its phase slowly shifting out of place degree by degree. The vandrare seemed to understand this and began to struggle- -but it was already too late. The spell had bound the three of them, and there was no turning back.
Daring Do felt her body changing. She became as she was in the other world, the way that the pale alicorns had made her- -but she did not stop there. It kept shifting, and kept changing, until she did not even know what she was.
Then with a crack, the universe ruptured. It was an oddly quiet sound for something so severe.
They were no longer in the ancient Questlord castle, or in Equestria at all. Or anywhere that could be fully conceived by the pony mind, except for the one that had once perceived so much more. The one that had almost trivially created a spell to reach this impossible place.
Daring Do looked up at the sky- -and felt her sanity begin to splinter.
It was a sea. A sea of churning, undulating flesh and technology. A single creature, or something that had once been a creature, but now stood high above, watching mindlessly. A vast flower, building and rebuilding itself mindlessly but toward a purpose that it had long ago lost the capacity to understand. It was a storm, one made of metal and tissue- -one that watched the world around it without seeing, yet with complete and utter comprehension.
It was a horror, a thing of symmetrical, fractal beauty, lit from within by a hideous blue light. That light was far the worst part. Daring Do could have withstood looking up at its body if it had been a physical thing alone, as her mind could simply have blocked out its deeper implications. Yet the blue light reached out, strangling her mind itself: it was a horrible glow, one that no pony was ever meant to conceive.
This thing might once have had a name, when it was still mortal. Before its ascension had robbed it of sanity. Now, though, it was not. It had become Dagon.
Daring Do stood below it. She stared up at it, unable to turn away, peering past the towers of an endless frozen city. Impossible buildings constructed to dizzying heights, built on principals that could perhaps never be understood in Equestria- -but they were dull, empty monolithic things. They were ugly and uninhabited. Those who had built them and continued to build them had no need for them, but built them nonetheless.
Her breathing hastened. This place did not have air, not in the sense of Equestria. It was not oxygen she was breathing, but some other gas that served the same function but which felt profoundly incorrect. It was deathly cold, far colder than Hyperborea ever could be- -and yet she could not freeze. Whatever her body was in this world, she could feel every inch of the world- -but was trapped within the body she had been given. There was no end to life here, as Dagon would not allow it.
Then the others came. Daring Do saw them, standing around her in a circle. Alicorns, no longer ghostly but fully solid, fully present. There were so many. Those that stood in the ring, and those behind her, moving silently over the rubble-strewn ground.
There were more. More than Daring Do could ever have imagined. Hundreds, thousands, millions. From every precipice and ledge of the endless city, she could feel their eyes, watching her- -and comprehending.
Daring Do looked at those who stood around her, and her eyes fell on a trio with long, rainbow manes and pale blue coats. One of them was taller than the other two, and she was smiling.
Then Daring Do saw what was in their eyes, and she understood the horror of what they were. Their eyes were glowing, dripping with hideous blue light. These things were not alive. They never had been.
She began to rise, drawn upward into the sky. She nearly screamed. The thought of approaching it terrified her, but she managed to keep her wits- -and hoped that she would have them until the job was done.
The vandrare looked up, confused, its body trapped in a swirling vortex of dying light- -and Dagon looked down, and understood.
“No,” said the vandrare, in protest. This time, Daring Do really did scream. Absence had lied, or perhaps not fully understood the situation. The vandrare could speak, but its voice did not come from its body. Rather, it echoed in Daring Do’s head. To her, it sounded like the voice of an extremely young child. “No. Please no, I’ve only just been born. I do not want to die.”
There was no way that Daring Do could fully comprehend what was happening- -yet she did. She understood Flock’s plan, and knew that it was working. The vandrare was no god. Its power was nearly infinite, powered by magic and technology working in unison toward a single, irresistible goal, but in its own context it was only the shell of an empty bloodline, a pathogen created by accidental exposure to something that perhaps might have rivaled- -or vastly exceeded- -Dagon. Dagon, however, was a god. Not in the way Celestia or Luna were, or in a way that any mortal could perceive. It was a mindless, screaming thing, one whose will- -its eddy currents- -had inadvertently produced this world.
It perceived the vandrare, and it reacted. Still asleep- -for ultimate power was nothing but sleep, as the mind did not survive ascension- -it reached out.
Light descended. One beam burned past Daring Do. She saw half the vandrare torn apart, disintegrated in the blue light. The vandrare did not scream or react in any way, it only seemed confused. It did not understand what was happening, or why it was happening.
Another beam. More destruction, but not to the city below. Not to the things that looked like alicorns, which watched events unfold, staring silently. They, unlike Dagon, had some semblance of sentience, and for a moment Daring Do wondered why they were watching. If this was interesting, or if they were happy with this outcome. Or if they had no stake in it at all. For a moment, she thought she saw a white unicorn standing among them.
Then the sky began to descend. It was a flower. Daring Do’s mind could only survive by conceiving of it that way. An enormous, endless bloom, a blue-lit flower. And as she watched, it changed. The fractal vortex began to shift, and the petals- -great metal things the size of cities- -of the flower began to extend forward. Daring Do wondered to her own horror if that surface actually WAS a city, and if it was inhabited by some unspeakable population. Or perhaps by more of the alicorns that surrounded her.
The center of the flower opened. Pistols, stamens, the structures of a beautiful bloom- -and it should have been beautiful, had Daring Do’s mind suddenly failed- -if only for a moment- -to conceive of it as a flower. Instead she saw an enormous mouth lined with endless rows of teeth.
The light surrounding the vandrare failed and ceased. The crow on Daring Do’s book collapsed into golden dust, and Daring Do found herself alone. Without Flock, there was no way back. Even with him, there had never been.
The vandrare hovered for a moment, either defying gravity by some unseen mechanism within it or because gravity had chosen to defy it. Then it began to move upward, and the force took Daring Do- -a tiny, inconsequential, pointless thing- -along with it.
The flower descended, a storm of flesh in the shape of a great flower. Daring Do stared up, unable to look away. It might not have been so bad, if there had just been a sound. A roar, a wash of wind and thunder- -but there was no sound. Only silence. Dagon moved without sound, and the only noise came from that of the slowly falling luminescent snow.
“No,” said the vandrare, its pleading child’s voice tearing apart the silence. “No, please- -”
Daring Do finally managed to look away, and to look down. The view of the city was not so bad, and perhaps the alicorns below did not look so unfriendly. Just impassive. All in all, it was not a bad way to go. Not that she had any choice. There was no way back.
This was the path she had chosen, and this was her end. So many times she had managed by her wit and luck to escape- -but not this time. Her mind could not devise any way for her to get back to her own world, or to escape in even the barest way. She was all alone.
Then she suddenly felt something strike her from behind. She was bumped out of her slow orbit around the vandrare and nearly pitched into the city below, but a blue hoof wrapped itself around her midsection, holding her tightly. In front of her, she saw the glowing, rainbow-tipped point of a spear.
“Rainbow Dash?” Daring Do looked back, and saw the blue Pegasus holding her tightly.
“Hold on!” cried Rainbow Dash over the noise.
And there was noise. Daring Do was not sure how she had not heard it before, or how the world had managed to render silence to her before. The sounds were so alien that they could barely be described, save for the screams of the vandrare as it realized that it would be devoured.
Energy came from above. Not beams, but a blast of light that formed itself into lightning. The vandrare was struck, and the lightning seemed to grasp it, paralyzing it as it was pulled forward into the god above. Rainbow Dash cried out in surprise and raised the Spear of Extinction. Had the lightning been directed at her- -or perhaps had it not been for the will of three ponies watching- -there would have been nothing that could be done. Rainbow Dash, though, or Daring Do for that matter, were not Dagon’s targets. The energy was therefore weak enough that the Spear could deflect it, absorbing it into itself and acting like a shield.
Rainbow Dash turned her head and called back to somepony behind her. “Pull us back! PULL US BACK!”
Daring Do shook her head. The longer she looked away from the sky, the more lucid she became- -and also the more afraid. Except that thrill was the very thing she lived for.
She realized that Rainbow Dash was not flying. Flying would not have been possible in this world without magic; the two of them were caught in some kind of upward gravity. The vandrare was already being pulled into the sky by it, but Rainbow Dash was not. Instead, a thick black rope had been tied around her waist. Except that it was not a rope. It was the terminal end of Daring Do’s whip.
The whip stretched and impossible distance back to the ground, and hope flashed in Daring Do’s heart. The way she had come through was still there, still open- -and perhaps it was only that way because it was unable to close around the cursed whip.
It was still not exactly a portal. Rather, there just seemed to be an area on the ground below where, by looking down, she could see where she had been before, in the Questlord castle. The edges of it were distorted, heading back through the half-phase that bordered the worlds, and the edge held the circle of alicorns, still watching- -but now perhaps with just the slightest amazement.
The gate was shrinking, but Daring Do could still see the ponies on the far side, the ones holding the handle end of the whip. Daring Do could see that at the front, almost being pulled in herself, was White, straining mightily. Sweetie Drops stood behind her, bracing it with all the earth-pony strength she could summon. Softwings and Zel, though injured, were doing their best as well. The latter was no doubt only interested in securing his pay- -or perhaps not.
The rear of the whip was anchored to something almost out of Daring Do’s line of sight, but from what little she could see, she already know. The whip was tied to the body of an enormous weaver spider, and all eight of her legs were straining against the force on the whip.
Then the spider took a step forward. The others pulled as well, and White’s body- -which was already half into the world beyond- -was pulled back in. Daring Do and Rainbow Dash moved down almost a two feet.
“PULL HARDER!”
“What the buck do you think we’re TRYING TO DO?!” screamed Sweetie Drops before groaning loudly and yanking one more time. This time, the whip only moved a few more inches. Then it stopped.
Daring Do was compelled to look up. Although she shielded her eyes, she could still feel it. The flower had reached them, or was about to. Before her, she watched as the vandrare was swallowed, and as its body was torn apart and dissolved in the blue light. Perhaps it would provide no benefit to Dagon. Perhaps this had simply been a means to destroy a contagion, a reaction as thoughtful as an immune cell consuming the body of a minor pathogen. Or perhaps there was something more. If there was, Daring Do did not want to know it.
Suddenly she felt a presence beside her. She looked, and saw a rainbow-maned alicorn. She was not walking, or flying, but suspended in her own blue magic. Daring Do did not recognize her, except as a sickening parody of Rainbow Dash. Rainbow Dash, however, knew her as Harvestor.
“Rainbow Dash,” she said. “You ought not be here.”
“Sorry,” grunted Rainbow Dash as she tried to pull Daring Do back, even though her only leverage was against the now stationary whip. “I’ll be on my way. You can go back to…whatever it is you do.”
“She created the spell. Summoned herself here. She must not be removed. This is her fate. But it is not yours. Please, Rainbow Dash. Let go of her. It is the only way. You must survive. You have to.”
“No,” said Rainbow Dash. “Not now, not EVER. I’m sorry, Harvestor, I can’t. And you know that.”
Harvestor stared at her, and then smiled, although her kind could never smile genuinely. “I do understand. Because it is grafted into my genetics. But we cannot interfere.”
“You don’t need to.” Then, to the ponies below. “Come ON! Do I have to come down there myself and do it?!”
The whip was suddenly pulled- -but in the wrong direction. Daring Do was pulled upward. Down below, White was pulled more than halfway through.
White looked up at them, her red eyes barely reflecting the blue light. “We’re not strong enough!” she cried. “The change-spider can’t hold her form much longer!”
“Rainbow,” said Daring Do. “I hate to say it- -oh Celestia I hate it- -but you’re going to have to let go. The spell’s still got me, if you don’t pull yourself back through, you’ll be sucked in too!”
“Not- -going- -to- -HAPPEN!”
Rainbow Dash’s wings flailed, and the force of her attempt did succeed in gaining them a few inches- -but not much more.
“Dash, let go!”
“NEVER!”
Something seemed to glow within her. A form of energy, but not quite a spell. One fragment of something that had six parts. Something she would no longer possess if she had done as Flock had asked her, and ended this all before it could have started.
The glow gave her a little bit more play, and they began to descend- -but it was not enough. Once again, they stopped- -and they hung there for a moment before they suddenly jerked down almost a meter.
Daring Do’s eyes widened. “What did you do?”
Rainbow Dash’s eyes were just as wide. “That wasn’t me!”
Daring Do looked down. Through the opening back to her own world, she saw an army of white Pegasi, all converging on the whip. At the front was a single Pegasus, one who stood beside White and Softwings. Although she had barely any strength left in her one remaining front leg, she- -like her countless brothers and sisters- -grabbed onto the whip and pulled.
The whip began to move. It was steady, but desperately slow- -and it was not going to be fast enough.
Dagon had descended too far. Daring Do felt as though she could almost reach out and touch the edge of it. The blue corona of its presence was near her, and she knew that she had to protect Rainbow Dash from that light.
She pulled partially away, and then bent her head down and sunk her teeth into Rainbow Dash’s leg. Rainbow Dash screamed, and Daring Do tasted metal, but not once did Rainbow Dash faulted or even start to let go.
“No! I WON’T!” she retorted, dragging Daring Do into a tighter hold, even as Daring Do continued to bite.
Then, suddenly, she saw a flash below. On the other side, the entire length of the cable tied to Rainbow Dash was lit by orange light. Argiopé was nearly picked up as her whole body was surrounded by orange light. At the very edge of the closing gate, Daring Do could see Carillon, spreading her magic and pulling with all her might.
They moved. Almost fast enough. Daring Do looked up one last time, knowing that it would be her end. As she did, one last pony joined the group below. Cabaleron grabbed the end of the whip just past White, and he tugged hard, knowing that he would never live this down.
The force was just enough. Daring Do was pulled back suddenly, just in time. She fell through and onto her back just as Dagon reached the portal. One second longer, and she would have been consumed, just as the vandrare had- -and met whatever hellish fate that it had finally received. Instead, the gate spell shattered, and the boundaries between the two worlds sealed once again.
All was silent for a moment. A long moment. Then Daring Do stood up, allowing the book and the dial it contained to fall to the floor. She would pick them up later, but right now, she was shaking and weak. She looked out at the ponies surrounding her- -plus one zebra, and a changeling- -and they looked back.
“We did it,” she said. “It’s gone.”
She was nearly knocked over from behind. White was hugging her, and silently crying. In this world, she no longer had a voice, and no longer had her true eyes- -but that did not matter. What she was thinking did not need to be said.
The rest of them then suddenly started cheering. For the most part, just the white Pegasi.
“HA!” said Rainbow Dash, standing up. “That was AWESOME! Oh mane, Twilight’s going to be jealous!” She immediately walked quickly through the side of the crowd toward Absence was laying, and picked her up, supporting her. The weakened Pegasus smiled, even though she was barely conscious.
“I guess it went better than I expected,” said Sweetie Drops. She was standing apart from the others, looking down at a crimson mask lying on the floor. She started to reach for it.
“NO!” cried Daring Do, pushing past several ponies. “Leave that.”
Sweetie Drops looked at her, but did pause. “Are you sure about that?”
“Let it stay. I don’t want to give that back to Wun. I don’t want to give it to anypony.”
“But we can’t leave it here.”
“Yes you can,” said Carillon. The sound of her voice made the white Pegasi immediately fall silent. “Because this is the end of this place. Of the Order. Of everything he worked for. It’s all over. Nopony will come back here. Ever again.”
Sweetie Drops looked at the Masque of Red Death, and stepped away from it. “Yeah. I guess that’s probably better, isn’t it?”
Daring Do nodded. “She’s too toxic for our world. Maybe Flock was too.” She turned back to the other ponies. “This wouldn’t have been possible without them. We wouldn’t have won. But…”
“But maybe it is best if the world moved on,” said Carillon. “Moved on and left the old things in the dark.”
The sentiment was against everything that Daring Do stood for- -yet she knew it to be true. She nodded slowly, and it was understood that she agreed.
So when all had finally departed, when the castle had finally been cleared, all that remained within it was the ruins of what had once been a Necroforge, now decaying and corroding, disassembled into a way where no pony would ever glean the mechanisms of its function. Any pony that would find this place would find a castle built upon an ancient sandstone city, and wonder what grave cataclysm had caused it to be abandoned. Those future archeologists would create conjectures and theories, but they would never know- -assuming they even found this place and that it did not simply fade back into the desert, unknown and forgotten.
It was in this dark, abandoned place that the Masque of Red Death was left, lying on the floor, facing upward at nothing. No pony was around to see the sudden flicker of white magic that occurred nearby, or hear the grinding pop of a teleportation spell. No one saw as a tiny gray hoof, one carved deeply with trihorn script, reached down- -and picked up the Masque.