Rainbow Dash’s hooves gently touched down on the stone floor with four soft clops that echoed in the stillness of the chamber. For the longest time, nopony moved. Champagne remained awestruck by the wall, Chirp watched from the top of a column, and Rainbow held her breath. All their attentions were turned to the very center of the room.
The blood soaked dais had been shattered, the table depicting the islands cracked in two. What had once been a beautiful sculpture had been reduced to rocky rubble littered across the floor. And, lying in the middle of it all, was the broken body of an alicorn.
Rainbow let out the breath she was holding and spotted Flag’s pistol still lying on the far side of the room. She slowly trudged to the other side of the room, her hooves once again breaking the stunned silence filling the shrine, and stopped in front of the firearm. Nostrils flaring, she reached down and picked up the weapon with a wing, her feathers reluctantly tightening around the grip.
Champagne watched her as she turned around and paced back to the dais. Picking her way through the rubble, Rainbow stood right over Soft Step and shivered at the gruesome sight. Most of the mare’s bones had been broken, but the truly disturbing part was how they moved and snapped back together. Though it wasn’t a fast process, somehow Soft’s body was repairing itself, stitching itself back together from wounds that would have killed anypony else.
Swallowing hard, Rainbow held her wing out and put the pistol to Soft’s head, right below the horn. She’d wasted an opportunity before to end it all—she wouldn’t a second time. But before she could work up the willpower to pull the trigger, Soft’s splintered jaw reformed, and pained eyes looked up at Rainbow. “It won’t work, Rainbow.”
Rainbow hesitated; the voice she heard from Soft now was quiet and meek, not angry and zealous. Was that the original Soft speaking to her instead of the twisted and corrupted one? When she looked into Soft’s eyes, all she saw was regret and misery.
It took her several seconds before she found her tongue. “Why, Soft?”
“Because of the totem,” Soft said as more of her body snapped into place. “It’s fixing me. If you shoot me, my head will just come back together. I know it will. And then I’ll kill you… and everypony else, too.”
Rainbow looked at the menacing unicorn totem somehow still standing on its pedestal where all the others had fallen. She could practically feel the dark energy and the evil radiating off of it. “Should I destroy it?”
“If you break it you’ll never lower the barrier,” Soft said. “You’ll never go home.”
“How do we go home?” Rainbow asked her, her heart beginning to race. If she could get the answer out of Soft before her corrupted self took over, then maybe it could all be worth it. “How do we get rid of the barrier?”
“The barrier was raised with pony blood,” Soft said. “To lower it, it needs blood again.”
Rainbow looked at the totems lying around her. Two glowed faintly. Two remained dark. Pegasus blood had yet to be given, but how did Soft plan on getting crystal pony blood? “There aren’t any crystal ponies here.”
“Alicorn blood works just as well,” Soft said. “After I sacrificed a pegasus, he was going to have me…”
“Oh.”
Rainbow looked to the side where Champagne still watched everything going on. “Grab the unicorn totem and get out of here,” she said. “Go to the other side of the island with it. Be quick.”
Champagne nodded and scrambled to her hooves, rushing forward and taking the totem off the pedestal. She spread her wings and began to fly, and Rainbow felt her feathers tighten around the grip. The cracked enamel on Soft’s curved horn was beginning to heal, and it wouldn’t be much longer before she regained the ability to cast spells again.
“I’m… I-I’m so sorry, Rainbow,” Soft said, her voice cracking as she watched Champagne fly out of the hole with the totem. Her wounds slowed down in their recovery, but didn’t stop altogether. Tears welled at her eyes, and she sniffled. “I didn’t… d-didn’t want to do any of this… b-but I-I couldn’t c-control myself…”
Rainbow’s throat bobbed and the pistol in her grip shook. “I know,” she breathed. “It wasn’t you. It was something else.”
Soft closed her eyes and shook. “I don’t want to hurt anypony anymore,” she said. “But I can feel it coming back. Scratching at my mind like nails on glass. It’s already trying to make me kill you.”
“Is there anything I can do to help you?” Rainbow asked. “I… I-I don’t want to kill you if I can help it, Soft.”
But the alicorn shook her head. “Do it. You have to. You need my heart if you’re going to lower the barrier.”
The ends of her mane started to wave, and the mare gasped and shuddered. “Soft?” Rainbow asked, her wing shaking and sweat beading on her head. “You can fight it, girl, I know you can!”
Soft groaned and placed her newly mended hooves on her temples. “Nnnrghh… no, no I can’t!” she wailed, and her shaking nearly bucked Rainbow away. “I can’t fight it, Rainbow! Do it! Kill me! Kill me before I kill you!”
“Grrrr… fuck!” Rainbow screamed, and she pulled the trigger in the same moment that Soft’s horn flew to life.
Dark magic caught the hammer before it struck the firing gem.
Rainbow blinked in surprise as the gun failed to fire. She tried to pull the hammer back again with her other wing, but Soft’s thrashing toppled her over and sent her tumbling across the floor. The gun flew out of her grip, and the chamber echoed with a crack of thunder as it struck the ground hard and fired, ricocheting the bullet off of a wall where it shattered on impact with the next.
Scrambling to her hooves, Rainbow immediately tensed and readied herself for another fight—only to watch Soft flail and struggle with herself. “No!” she screamed, her large hooves kicking around pieces of rubble like they were nothing. “Get out of my head! Get out of my head!”
Rainbow whipped her head back and forth as she looked for a weapon of some kind, any kind. She knew she couldn’t just rainboom Soft again; even after Chirp’s blessing, she felt too utterly exhausted to do that yet again. She gasped when she saw a minotaur spear lying on the ground, and she immediately lunged for it. Sliding across the floor, she grabbed the spear in her teeth and flipped onto her back to see Soft stumbling after her, horn glowing. For a split second, she thought her friend could win, but with a primal scream, Soft Step the masseuse sank beneath the wave of seething hatred that was Soft Step the slave. Fangs parted into a furious screech, and Rainbow braced the butt of her spear against the ground, ready for Soft’s lunge—
A second crack of thunder echoed around the shrine, and a plume of blood exploded from Soft’s ribcage. The alicorn stopped and stared at the hole in her chest, touching it with a hoof. When she pulled her hoof away, the wound did not heal, and her life began to drip onto the floor beneath her.
A few feet away, the crystal pony totem began to glow.
Soft Step tilted her head back and looked across the floor at Rainbow, whose eyes were wide open in shock. The alicorn’s body shook and trembled, but when she saw Rainbow, her lips began to curve into a happy smile. “Rainbow… I…”
Her words faded as the alicorn of the dark, the twisted champion of a god, and a poor, tortured mare, collapsed into a growing pool of her own blood.
Rainbow stared in disbelief at the alicorn’s body for the longest time. She only tore her eyes away when the pegasus stallion silhouetted against the glow of the morning outside tossed his pistol aside and staggered out of sight.
Now suddenly alone deep inside the shrine, Rainbow crawled over to the alicorn’s cooling body, laid her cheek against Soft’s, and stroked the dark hair along her neck. The poor, tortured soul had suffered so much. They all had, and it had been the worst night of Rainbow’s life, bar none. Many had died, all through the unwilling actions of a mare twisted to an evil being’s will. The islands were a lot emptier now than they were just twelve hours earlier. But it was over. Finally, the longest night Rainbow had ever lived through was over.
The tears poured down her face as she broke apart, crying.