Soft Step had to take a moment to stand back and let the red haze clear from her vision. She’d lost her temper in the crucial moments of His return. She’d stained the shrine with blood not taken from the heart. This was a sacred, hallowed place. She needed to control herself better if she was going to welcome her Lord back in all of His resplendent glory.
Sweat beaded on her forehead, brought out through her rage more than any exertion, so she wiped it away with a hoof and glared down at the pitiful sight below her. Rainbow Dash whimpered and cried on the floor, blood smearing her feathers and the stone underneath her. Soft had stopped just short of tearing the pegasus’ wings off of her body, but she’d crumpled the bones into tiny splinters, some of which poked through the flesh. She didn’t know if it was a mercy or not for the damnable foe. On the one hoof, she got to keep her wings and die with them still attached. On the other, they had to be hundreds of times more painful than if she’d just torn them off completely.
Regardless, it would all be over soon. Her horn lit up again, and she almost had to peel Rainbow off of the floor. The pegasus cried out in a pained daze, but she didn’t struggle—merely moving her broken wings would be a horrifically painful endeavor. But Soft Step was hardly gentle to the mare, roughly turning her about and dropping her onto the dais from a foot or two in the air just so she would land harshly on her back and scream in pain again. Her torment and dying screams were pure catharsis, and they would be the music to herald the return of her Lord.
But she couldn’t resist taunting the suffering mare one last time. After materializing the sacrificial knife, she held it close to Rainbow’s face, near enough that the pegasus could feel the heat coming off of the blade. “You struggled for so long out there,” Soft whispered through her fangs. “You nearly killed me. You could have won, if you had the conviction to do what you had to do.”
She flicked the knife to the side, slicing off some hairs on the side of Rainbow’s bloodied muzzle but not injuring the flesh beneath. “And then, after all of that, what do you do? You confront me at the shrine, where the ritual will be finished, and you don’t even attack me. You merely talk.”
The alicorn leaned back and looked down her nose at the pitiful pegasus lying beneath her. “You never had a chance to beat me or to stop any of this. Not because you weren’t capable of it, but because you were too weak to do what you had to do. A part of me can respect your honor. The rest of me knows that it was what doomed you to fail.”
The knife twirled about in midair and Soft Step raised it above Rainbow’s chest. On the far side of the room, the pegasus who had woken up, the one she was originally going to sacrifice, cried Rainbow’s name and sobbed in vain. Pinned to the wall by Soft’s magic, there was nothing she could do except watch the final moments of her friend.
Yet before Soft plunged it through Rainbow’s ribcage, the pegasus coughed and raised her head. “You’re… wrong,” she croaked, each word accompanied by a pained breath and a tremendous amount of effort. When Soft Step raised an eyebrow, Rainbow gave her a bloody smile. “Wasn’t… trying to… beat you. I… knew I couldn’t… gah! Couldn’t win.” Soft didn’t know if she winked at her or if it was merely one of her eyelids swelling shut. “Only had… had to get you talking… slow you down!”
Soft growled and moved the knife from Rainbow’s chest to just underneath her chin while her magic yanked the pegasus into a sitting position. “What are you talking about?!” the alicorn hissed at her. She didn’t know if something was happening above ground; she didn’t have a connection to the moonlight down here. But if this was all part of the runt’s plan, then she needed to react accordingly. “Answer me or you’ll suffer pain unimaginable!”
Rainbow coughed and looked to the side. “You… really ought to reconsider… threatening a pony with death… when you were gonna kill her anyway…”
“Answer me!”
Soft Step shook the pegasus, but the blue mare only grinned at her. “Come on, Soft? Can’t you… can’t you hear the music?”
The alicorn dropped Rainbow back onto the dais and whirled around. If she strained her ears… yes, there was music. Singing. But she’d killed the sirens. She knew she did! Unless the white one…
“You can’t stop this!” Soft roared, raising the knife once again. She didn’t know what the siren was trying to do, but she had to finish the ritual fast. She could have just stepped into shadow and been safe, but then she would lose her chance to bring Him into the world. Damn the mortals meddling with the ritual! Damn that pony in her head, who cheered as all her plans started to unravel!
“Yet that would not be the end of the Usurper’s followers’ sins,” she said, rushing through the sacrificial words once again now that she had changed sacrifices. “It was only the beginning, for the true mockery of the natural world would arise with the pegasi. Jealous of the skies and the home within which He slept, they stole wings from the birds and defiled the clouds. Their jealousy and their hatred of His lofty domain drove them skyward, away from the filth of their compatriots, but carrying it with them all the same. By this one’s sacrifice, I undo the third of your binds—!”
The shrine shook and rumbled. Rocks fell from the ceiling, smashing into the ground. Instead of cutting Rainbow’s heart out, Soft threw up a shield over herself to protect the dais, the figurines, and her sacrifices. Cracks and seams appeared in the rocks as the siren magic tore through them like paper, and a thick cloud of dust filled the air. Soft felt her shield absorb multiple stones slamming the surface, but it held through the strength given to her by the unicorn totem.
When the rumbling finally stopped, Soft lowered her shield and looked up. The shrine hadn’t collapsed, but an enormous hole had been torn through its roof along one side. No longer closed off from the outside world, the shrine grew lighter as the glow of the early morning entered it through the new opening.
“No!” Soft screamed, stepping forward and summoning magic to her horn. The ends of her mane began to curl and blacken, and the first of many tiny lesions started to open on her skin as the pre-dawn light filled the shrine. “No, I won’t let you! You will not ruin His plans! You will not stop the ritual! The light has lost, and the darkness shall consume the world!”
Her magic began to repair the hole in the shrine, even as a song somewhere else tried to force it wider. Soft widened her stance and lowered her horn, throwing everything she had into the spell to overpower the arcane song fighting against her. Little by little, she began to patch up the damage, and the hole began to close.
But behind her, a blue pegasus began to stir…