//------------------------------//
// A New Look 
// Story: Bloodlines 
// by Zeck 
//------------------------------//

“For Vinyl…”
—Octavia


Lyra’s body felt like it was in several different places at once. Her head was throbbing, but for some reason it felt like it was in another room than she was. She could feel a burning sensation around her horn, but at the same time it felt like she had submerged it under ice-cold water. Her throat seemed to be struggling to swallow air, but if she tried too hard to force it, her hind legs seemed to crack as her lungs pressed against her chest. 
She opened her one eye—the other was completely swollen shut—and found nothing but darkness. She blinked, her mind trying to register the motion, but nothing seemed to be working. All she saw was darkness, no matter how many times she blinked.
Am I…dead?
The thought rang in her mind, which felt like it was placed somewhere in her stomach at the moment. As she pondered the thought, she found a small sense of annoyance plunging into her stomach. Death was not supposed to be like this. She was not meant to be in pain and disoriented. Everything she had been lead to believe about death implied that it was peaceful, like a long slumber.
What if that was all wrong? she wondered, and a cold terror seized her. What if death wasn’t a peaceful slumber, but an eternity of agony? What if she was doomed to feel this way forever, with her mind and body in a permanent state of torment? 
What if she never got to see Sweetie Drops again? What if she was stuck somewhere in this darkness, in just as much pain as Lyra? 
“Sweetie…” The name slipped from Lyra’s dry, bleeding lips. It seemed to give her a little strength in her foreleg, and she reached out with it, hoping to find some purchase that she could prop herself up with. Her heart sank when all she found was empty void, and with a collapsed will, she allowed her limb to fall back toward her, the last of her strength gone.
Thud! 
Lyra’s foreleg landed on something hard next to her and pained raced through her entire body. She wanted to scream, but her throat was too dry to allow it, so instead her swollen eye forced itself open as her good one went wide as well. Pain blurred her senses, but then she noticed something.
A small hint of light was creeping in through her swollen eye. 
Lyra closed her eye and opened it again, trying to make her brain focus on her vision in spite of everything else overloading it. Sure enough, every time she opened her swollen eye, no matter how little, a tiny sliver of light seemed to appear. It was like she was opening her eyes inside a dark room. She couldn’t see anything, but there was just enough difference in the level of darkness that she could register it.
Maybe…I’m not...
The Unicorn closed her eyes and did a breathing technique that her wife had shown her. She focused all her mental energy into her head, forcing her mind to register that it was still in her skull and not in her stomach like she had originally thought. Once she had that sorted, her slowly expanded her awareness to the rest of her body. Pain had made her feel like she was in pieces, but as she focused on the pain, she realized that everything seemed to be in its rightful place, even if it did all feel like it was on fire. 
A new sensation filled her body then, or at least half of her body. It started in her right cheek, and then slowly spread down her neck, shoulder, and all the way through her body, but only the right side. Coldness crept through her, but as she focused on it, it seemed to slowly grow warmer, or maybe her body was adjusting to it. For a moment, she wondered if it was death reaching out to take her after all, but then why would she only feel it on one side? 
As Lyra pondered whether only half of her body could die, another feeling began to make itself known. The side of her that was feeling cold also felt firm, as if it was pressed against something, while the left side of her body merely hurt. What in Equestria was—?
“Lyra?” a familiar voice called from somewhere far away, but it was enough to clear the last amount of fog from the Unicorn’s brain. She realized that she was lying on her side and that the cold was due to her body being sprawled on the stone floor. The reason her good eye saw nothing but blackness was because that half of her face was pressed to the ground.
Groaning, the Unicorn rolled over onto her back and immediately winced as a whole new wave of agony washed over her. It was so intense that a small scream actually escaped her mouth as she stared up at the ceiling above her.
“Lyra!”
Still reeling from pain, Lyra’s body felt like it exploded as something heavy fell on top of her. She cried out, the pain almost to the point of making her black out, and then the weight was suddenly gone. Gasping for breath and tears streaming from her eyes, she turned her head just enough to see what had happened. 
Bon Bon was sitting next to hear. To say she looked like a mess would be an understatement. Entire sections of her blue and pink mane had been burned off, while other parts were plastered to her body because of the massive wound running the length of her forehead. A rather large stream of blood was still running down her face, tracing the line of her cheek and dripping off the edge of her chin. 
Blood wasn’t the only thing dripping off the Earth pony though. Tears were flowing from her blue eyes, and Lyra was positive that they weren’t just because she had found Lyra alive. The rest of Bon Bon’s body was battered, burned, and shredded in horrific ways, and it looked like she would collapse at any moment. She was going to need a very long, very relaxing vacation after this mission to recover from this. 
“Do I—ahh!” Lyra winced in pain as she tried to talk. She was fairly certain something in her stomach was broken, and she was becoming painfully aware that breathing was not as easy as it should be.
“Don’t try to talk,” Bon Bon whispered. She reached out with a battered hoof and gently stroked Lyra’s cheek. “You’re in bad shape. I’m…I’m not sure…”
“Is she okay?” a voice called. Lyra’s brain vaguely recognized it, but she couldn’t place the name.
“She’s alive,” Bon Bon called back. “But she’s hurt.” Bon Bon turned back to look down at Lyra again, a weak smile barely coming to her lips. “Stupid mare, doing something like that.”
Lyra tried to make her brain think. 
Right. I jumped in front of her…
When Snow Drift’s shield had finally failed, Lyra had leapt in front of her wife in a last ditch effort to save her. She couldn’t remember what had happened after that, only a brief moment of searing pain before complete blackness. 
“We’re not…dead…?” she managed to cough, each syllable feeling like it was tearing itself out of her vocal chords. 
“No,” the familiar voice said, coming closer this time. A moment later, another pony came into view above Lyra. Green eyes stared down at her through singed auburn hair. “We should be, but…”
“Did…Snow Drift—argh—save us?”
“Not exactly,” Ice Air replied. She turned her head to look somewhere before returning her gaze to Lyra. Her horn glowed weakly and a small bottle floated above Lyra. “Drink that. It should help dull the pain enough for you to move.”
Bon Bon reached out and held the bottle with her hooves. She put it to her mouth and used her teeth to pull the stopper out—an act that Lyra saw caused her visible pain—and then slowly lowered its contents to Lyra’s lips. Lyra tried her best to lean forward to drink it, but all she could do was open her mouth enough for Bon Bon to pour the liquid in. 
The cool drink splashed in Lyra’s mouth and she immediately started coughing, so Bon Bon eased her pouring to allow the mare to catch her breath. Lyra coughed a few more times, then nodded and tried again. This time, she managed to swallow most of the liquid, although a fair amount spilled out of her mouth and flowed down her face. It had a bitter taste to it, and if the Unicorn had any strength to spare, she believed she would have spat the bottle’s contents out instantly, but it soothed her burning throat and seemed to give her some feeling of peace in her aching body. 
“Don’t try to move yet,” Bon Bon whispered as she pulled the empty bottle away. “Ice Air said that the medicine takes a moment to fully take hold.”
“You won’t be doing anything crazy anytime soon, but you should be able to stand in a few minutes at least,” Ice Air added. 
“Right,” Lyra groaned. The pain was slowly turning from sheer agony so intense that even existing hurt, to simple levels of never wanting to move again, so Lyra assumed it was working. “But…can we really just…wait for me to get better? What if…?”
“I…” Bon Bon started to speak, then she stopped and looked back toward the entrance of the room they had made their final stand in. “I have a feeling we won’t need to worry about them anymore.”
Lyra risked raising her head—an act that nearly caused her to pass out again—to follow her wife’s gaze. “What…?”
At the front of the room, standing amongst the shattered remains of the siege door, were the many Unicorn rebels that had been so intent on killing the four ponies. Their mouths were still open in rage and their bodies were still reared back in attempts to cast spells. 
In fact, it looked like a few had managed to do just that, as several crystal spikes had sprung from the floor and many crystal spears appeared to have shattered just in front of Lyra and the others, as if the spells had failed just a second before they had connected. 
Lyra figured out why simply by looking at the rebels. Every last one had been turned to stone, frozen in place by some strange spell.
“Did Snow Drift…do this?” the Unicorn asked, puzzled.
“No,” Bon Bon answered quietly. 
“If we had somepony on our side who could use this level of magic, Unicorns would not be slaves anymore,” Ice Air said as she looked at the statues. “This is…something else.”
Lyra looked around the room and tried to figure out what could have done something like this. She had no spells anywhere near this level, and she knew Ice Air didn’t either. Bon Bon might be able to whip up some sort of potion if she were given enough time and some frightening materials, but Lyra knew for a fact that her wife had been preciously short on both of those things during the battle. Snow Drift might have been a possibility, but—
Lyra looked around the room again and noticed something.
“Where is Snow Drift?” the Unicorn asked after a quick look around. 
“She said she was going to look around,” Ice Air said as she gazed at the frozen Unicorns. 
Lyra shot Bon Bon a look. 
“It’s okay,” the Earth pony replied. “She’s the one that found that medicine for us. And before you ask, Ice Air said it was safe.”
“Okay…” Lyra said, not convinced. She trusted Bon Bon with her life, and Ice Air had proved herself enough that Lyra didn’t worry about turning her back to her, but Snow Drift was still an unknown. She had been, after all, on the side of these rebels up until a while ago. Yes she had saved their lives, but she—
“Let it go, Lyra,” Bon Bon whispered. “Snow Drift has her own issues to deal with now.” 
Bon Bon knelt down and gently nuzzled her shoulder under Lyra’s foreleg. Lyra took the hint and adjusted her weight so that she was leaning on her wife, and then together to two of them stood. The effort was enough to make Lyra gasp and tears swim in her eyes, but with Bon Bon’s help she was able to stay upright. 
“What—ugh!” Lyra nearly collapsed again as something vile threatened to spill from her mouth, but she forced it down and tried again. “What do we do now?”
“I think we should find your friend,” Ice Air chimed in, still staring at the statues. “This is dark magic.” Carefully, she reached out and touched the closest one. It cracked immediately, the fissure running all the way down the Unicorn’s neck and into its stomach. Ice Air recoiled instantly, and all three ponies watched as the statue broke apart and fell to the floor, crumbling into dust. 
“I hope Octavia and Vinyl are okay,” Bon Bon said, her eyes glued to the pile of rubble that had once been a pony. 
“Me too,” Lyra added.
“We should probably try to find Snow Drift too,” Ice Air whispered as she carefully stepped past the statues. “I don’t think we should leave her here alone.”


	*  *  *


	 

Snow Drift’s mind was on the verge of breaking. Ever since she had woken up a prisoner of those strange ponies, her mind had been running faster than it ever had. She remembered taking part in the raid on Earth, remembered storming into the bar to find the traitor thief and the Unicorn he was with, and she remembered somepony hitting her, hard. 
But all of that had a strange fog over it, as if she had been watching her actions through the eyes of somepony else. She remembered the pain of the hit, but when she had woken up tied on the floor of Lady Octavia’s—
Why do I call her Lady?
Had Snow Drift always thought of her that way? Why? Until now, she had never even met the mare, so why did she feel like she needed to treat her with respect? Because Keket had told her to?
Keket. Where was Keket? Why had she ordered the guards, Snow Drift’s fellow Unicorns, to attack her without a second thought? Was it because she had been captured? That wasn’t fair. She had brought Lady—Stop thinking of her like that!—Octavia right to their base. And she hadn’t stumbled like that traitor Ice Air had. She was still firmly on Keket’s side.
“Right up until they tried to kill me, and La…and Octavia, saved my life,” the Unicorn said bitterly. 
She could still feel the moment of shock when she had realized that the guard’s attack at the gate was going to kill her. She could still remember the surprise when the Earth pony, the very one they had all be so fixated on capturing, had thrown her out of the way, saving her life. She remembered landing in the freezing snow and finally feeling the last strange haze lift from her mind, as if she had finally awoken from some nightmare. 
Snow Drift turned a corner in the hallway and stopped. Three statues were in the middle of the path, each on in a different pose of galloping. No doubt they had been on their way to join the others in killing Snow Drift and her strange traveling companions, but the spell seemed to have caught them too.
A lump formed in Snow Drift’s throat as she stared at them. If she had been here, if she hadn’t been knocked out and taken prisoner by that wretched Earth pony, would she be a statue now too? Did she owe her life not just to Octavia, but to that cream colored pony as well? 
The thought made Snow Drift’s blue-white coat shiver. The idea that she owed two Earth ponies her life would have made her sick beyond reason before, but her entire world seemed to be falling apart, so she pushed it aside.
She had told Ice Air that she was going to go search Princess Platinum’s castle for more supplies, but the truth of the matter was that she had just wanted to get away. Wanted to get away from a Unicorn who used to be one of Keket’s most loyal followers, but was now working with her enemies. Wanted to get away from the Earth pony that had married a Unicorn, and the Unicorn appeared to love her fully in return. She had wanted to get away from the stone figures of her former comrades who had been moments from killing. She had wanted to get away from the ponies that she had deliberately tried to protect simply because they had shown her a small kindness.
She wanted her world to make sense again, and being in that room with all its confusion and contradictions was not helping her. She needed to be alone to think.
Something had gone wrong. She was sure of that. Her comrades had openly attacked her without hesitation. They hadn’t seemed like themselves at the gate either, their voices deep and cracking. Even their magic had seemed stronger, and when Snow Drift had hit one in the head with a stone back at the siege room, she had had to use extra power to make the blow knocked the pony down.
“Is it some sort of possession?” she wondered as she carefully walked up to the statues. She gazed at their lifeless faces, trying to find some clue as to what had happened. Why had they turned on her, and why were they all stone now? It had to be some sort of magic, but what? 
And who had cast it? To the best of Snow Drift’s knowledge, Keket didn’t have any spell that could do this; and if she did, why use it on her own followers? Why not turn it on Ice Air and that married couple, or better yet, all the Earth ponies who were oppressing them? 
A loud boom echoed through the castle, causing the very walls to shake and dust to fall from the ceiling. Ice Air steadied herself against the shaking, and then stared past the stone ponies and further down the hall. She paused for a moment, and then decided to move toward the noise. She wasn’t sure why, and every part of her rational mind was telling her to go back and find Ice Air and the other two so that she wouldn’t be alone, but she pressed on, carefully slipping between the statues blocking her path. 
As the lone Unicorn made her way down the hallways, winding her way deeper into the castle, she began to hear other noises; sounds of stones cracking, or something being dragged across the floor. She had to stop a few times because the noises began to bounce off the walls around her, but she was certain she was getting closer to their source
Soon, other noises began to make their way to her ears. It sounded like somepony talking, mixed with the crackling of lightning and the hum of magic. She turned another corner and found herself standing in what had passed as the dinning hall back when the Unicorn Tribe had been at the pinnacle of its power. The air hung thick with magical energy, and Snow Drift saw why on the far side of the once great hall.
A massive hole had been blown through the wall on the far side. Dark purple magic oozed off the stones as if they were melting. Snow Drift watched as a glob of the magical energy fell from the wall and sizzled, green smoke rising from it as it popped and burned on the floor. 
Now filled with even more doubt, the Unicorn forced her hooves to move across the room and look through the gaping hole. 
“What am I doing?” she mumbled to herself. Whoever, or whatever, had blasted this hole was powerful. Insanely powerful, and if it was responsible for the magic that had turned all of her fellow rebels into stone, it was not on her side. So what was she hoping to accomplish by following it? Was she hoping that it was Keket, and the mare had just lost control of some new magic spell she had found? Yeah, that was it. Then, she could lead her leader back to the others and…
And what? Keket had ordered the guards at the gate to attack her. Ice Air she understood, but Snow Drift herself had only gotten captured. She hadn’t turned on them like Ice Air, and yet she had almost been killed. 
“And I did turn on them,” the Unicorm whispered as she swallowed the lump in her throat. She had tried to save the invaders just before everything had exploded, no matter how much she tried to deny it. 
So what was she hoping to find at the end of this path of destruction? There were no answers that would make her happy, and it was entirely possible that she would be killed outright if she kept going. Maybe her best option was to return to Ice Air and the others and just stay with them, but that didn’t sound appealing either. Where would she go? Was she really going to follow them all the way back to wherever they had come from? They were all likely to freeze to death out in the frozen wasteland.  The fact that the strange ponies had made it in the first place was still something she couldn’t quite believe, and that was before they had all been pushed to the brink of death. The odds of them making it back, with their bloodied bodies and smashed spirits, were practically zero, right? 
But what other choice did she have? There were probably other rebel cells somewhere, but Keket was basically the leader, and her force had been completely wiped out. The resistance would no doubt rebuild, but could Snow Drift find them in time, or would she have to spend the rest of her life hiding in Earth, dreading the day she was caught and killed, or worst, returned to a life of slavery?
The Unicorn felt tears drip from her eyes before she realized she was crying. It wasn’t fair. Her entire life had been nothing but a cruel fate, going from a beaten and abused slave, to a starving rebel living in miserable conditions, to being a prisoner and then ultimately having her own comrades try to kill her without a second thought. She had nowhere left to go now. 
She stomped her hoof in frustration and winced as pain shot through her body. She was in better shape than the ponies she had tried to protect because she had managed to keep a shield up around herself, but she had still suffered injuries from the resulting explosion. She let out a curse as her leg throbbed and then shook her hoof in front of her, trying to dull the pain.
At first, her ears didn’t hear the steady clop-clop because she was too focused on her hoof. Then her mind told her that it was just the sound of her own hooves echoing off the stone walls and ceiling as she hopped around a little. It wasn’t until the pain in her hoof died down that she realized the noise was getting louder. It was slow, deliberate, like the steady beat of a calm heart, and it was growing stronger with every passing second. 
The echoes filled the room Snow Drift stood in, filling her with a growing unease. A sweat broke out on her white neck and she found herself trying to swallow something that wasn’t in her mouth. 
The noise grew louder still, beating on her ears until she folded them down against her skull, trying to drown it out. Her hind leg tried to step backward, but fear froze it in place. She tried to swallow again for the hundredth time, but her throat closed on itself. The only motion she could muster was the tremble in her lip, and that wasn’t even voluntary. 
The passage ahead of her began to glow with a deep purple light, but instead of illuminating the area, the light seemed to dim everything, sucking what little life there was out of the area. As it grew in brightness—for that was all Snow Drift could think of to describe it—the natural light faded and a coldness that had nothing to do with the temperature sank into the Unicorn’s bones. 
Two purple flames appeared in the darkness. Both were small, no bigger than specks, and they were so far away that they seemed to flicker in out and out existence randomly, but they never blinked out for long, and as Snow Drift watched, they slowly grew bigger.
As the flames drew closer, a third light appeared above them. It was deep red, glowing with light the same shade as freshly spilled blood. It pulsed constantly, sending twisted shadows through the purple light that made Snow Drift’s entire body seize in terror. She wanted to turn and run. She wanted to flee, screaming at the top of her lungs, but she could not tear herself away from the lights.
“One of you survived?” a voice asked from the darkness. Its power beat against the Unicorn’s body, forcing her to fall to the ground in spite of the pain it caused. “Interesting. Oh well. You know what to do.”
“No…” another voice said. It rang in the strange darkness, like a single bell in the dead of night. For a moment, Snow Drift felt hope dare to show its face in her mind once more. 
“Do not be foolish, girl!” the first voice said again. “If you want to have the strength to make it back, if you want to save her, you know I need every ounce of my power! You cannot make this trip alone. Now do it!”
“I…” the second voice trailed off, and the purple flames burned brighter for a moment. 
“W-W-Who…?” Snow Drift stammered, fear barely allowing her to form the single word. 
As if in answer to her frightened question, a lone pony finally came into view. Dark grey armor clung to all four of its legs and it wore a chest piece of the same make. A blood red cloak hung from its back and it seemed to flow despite the lack of air currents. Its coat was a darker grey than the armor, but darker still was the mane. It was a deep onyx, so black that Snow Drift felt like it would swallow her whole if she stared at it too long. Much like the cloak, the pony’s mane flowed on its own will, and small streaks of purple lightning danced through it from time to time, as if magic itself was trying to escape the black void. 
What Snow Drift had first thought were two purple flames were actually the pony’s eyes. She saw no signs of pupils though, just two purple masses that seemed to be leaking magical energy from the sockets, slowly burning off around the sides of the face. And even though there was no way to tell, Snow Drift knew that those to burning eyes were looking directly at her, slowing turning her to ash in the pony’s mind. 
But the most frightening thing was this pony’s horn. The blood red light was the glow from this pony’s horn, but it was unlike any Unicorn horn Snow Drift had ever seen. For one, it was longer than Snow Drift’s, or any Unicorn’s she had ever seen. And it didn’t match the pony’s coat color like every other Unicorn, but instead it was the same shade of blood as the light it emitted, and it looked like it had been burned into the pony’s head. The fur near the horn’s base was completely burned away. The skin was cracked, and Snow Drift couldn’t tell if blood was leaking from the cracks or if it was just the horn’s pulsing power, but she did know that it looked horrifically painful. It looked like the horn had been fused to the pony’s head and was slowly eating its way through the skull, drawing power from the pony’s very life force. 
“If you do not do this, your toy will perish,” the deep, dark voice said. It seemed to be coming from the pony’s mouth, but at the same time it felt to Snow Drift as if the words materialized out of the very air around her. “I need her energy. I need my energy! Now take it!” 
Snow Drift looked up at the soulless, purple flames and wept silently. She was going to die. Whoever, whatever this pony was, it was going to kill her. She wanted to beg for her life, she wanted to scream, she wanted to run, but all she could do was stare up at it as tears flowed down her face. This was how her life was going to end. Not in glorious battle striking down Earth and its Earth ponies, not held by somepony she loved, not even as a martyr for other Unicorns to rally under. She was going to be murdered the darkest part of Princess Platinum’s castle, her body—if there would even be a body at all—left to freeze on the ground, unknown and forgotten. 
Snow Drift felt something suddenly close around her neck. Pain raced through her as she was lifted into the air by an invisible force. Air was slowly crushed out of her lungs as the grip on her neck tightened. Her mouth popped open in a desperate attempt to breathe, or call for help, or even simply scream in pain, but all she could manage was a single gasp. She felt her eyes widen as the edge of her vision darkened. A single tear rolled down her cheek as her eyes began to roll into the back of her head. 
“She…she does not…have…” the soft voice whispered, and Snow Drift felt the magic around her neck instantly loosen. Air rushed into her lungs and she coughed violently, desperately trying to suck in as much air as she could even though she could still feel the magic holding her neck.
“Hm…you are correct,” the deeper voice said, still sounding like it was coming from the walls itself. “Interesting. I can sense my mark on her, but it appears she freed herself somehow. “
What…does that mean? the Unicorn thought as she focused on breathing. The grip on her was lose enough to allow some air, but if she tried to move at all, she knew it would instantly be cut off again. 
“It matters not,” the dark voice said. “You don’t need her. Snap her neck and be done with these pitiful rebels.”
“N-No…” the quiet voice said, and for the first time Snow Drift realized that this voice was coming solely from the pony in front of her, not echoing off the walls like the other. “She is…harmless…”
“Harmless?” the voice laughed and Snow Drift’s blood went cold. “She’s one of them! She’s part of the group that took your little toy. They tortured her, and would have tortured you if they were given the chance. They harmed you and your friends, locked you up like some filthy rat. They are nothing but insects, meant to be stepped on.”
“I…will not…”
“They are murderers, my dear.” The purple flames leaking from the pony’s eyes flared brightly and Snow Drift knew they were burning through her body and into her soul. “She is a murderer.”
“She…”
Snow Drift felt the magic around her neck tighten ever so slightly. She gasped again, raising her hooves to her throat in a vain attempt to free it. 
“She is…”
Snow Drift didn’t understand what was happening, but she knew that if she wanted to live a second longer, she needed to convince the quiet voice to spare her. She tried to speak, to tell the pony that she had not killed anypony during the raid in the city, but the grip was already too tight. All she could do was lock eyes with the other pony and silently pray that her pleading somehow reached the monster.
A blinding light filled Snow Drift’s eyes and she was forced to close them, expecting a moment later to feel nothing but pain, but instead all she felt was the sting of her eyes from the light. A moment later she was back on the floor, coughing and sucking down air once again. Without thinking, she scrambled backward on her flank, but lost her balance and ended up tumbling across the cold stone floor. 
“Get away from her or…” one voice called from behind Snow Drift. The Unicorn opened her eyes and saw three figures standing behind her. She blinked a few times to clear away tears, but her coughing refused to subside so her vision continued to tear up. 
“Who are they supposed to—oh, I see,” the dark voice said. Snow Drift could feel the sneer spreading across the pony’s face even though she wasn’t looking toward it. “Your friends.”
“Octavia…?” another new voice asked.
Snow Drift whipped her head around at the question. It was impossible. Lady Octavia had threatened Snow Drift, but she had never truly harmed her. She had even saved her life. 
Plus, the mare was an Earth pony. The pony before Snow Drift was clearly a Unicorn. There was no way this monster was…
As Snow Drift stared at the towering dark pony behind her, she felt a new type of terror fill her body. She saw it now. Beneath the grey armor she spied the feminine figure that she had been ordered to capture. Taking away the blood red cloak and calming the raging onyx mane revealed the smooth elegance of the cellist’s style. The burning purple eyes and pulsating red horn twisted her normally stoic face into the nightmare it was now, but there were still hints of her beauty hidden in the corners of it. 
This monster, this pony that clearly wielded power that Snow Drift couldn’t even begin to fathom, was the same one that had threatened to tear her horn off back in the small room at the inn. The one that had willingly walked into the trap to save a Unicorn she claimed to love. The one that had pulled Snow Drift out of harm’s way when her comrades had tried to kill her without a moment’s thought. 
Was this her true form? Was this why Keket had been so bent on luring her here? How had she ever hoped to control somepony like this? Even with all of them fighting together, Snow Drift doubted that the rebels would have been able to even slow her down. They hadn’t been trying to capture some important Earth pony. They had been luring a monster, and Snow Drift wasn’t sure that even Keket knew her full strength. 
“What in Equestria happened to her?” Snow Drift suddenly remembered the voices behind her and she turned around. Ice Air, Lyra, and Bon Bon were standing behind her, each one with a different expression of horror on their faces. 
Snow Drift found herself desperately wanting to get up and run to them, but the terror refused to let her move. She felt that even if she breathed too hard, the monster before her would wipe her from existence. It was all she could do to lay still and pray that these ponies could somehow save her life.
“Is that…?” Ice Air began, taking a small step forward, but Bon Bon quickly put her hoof out to stop her.
“Careful. I’m not sure that’s Octavia anymore.” 
“Look at her forehead,” Ice Air said, gesturing with her hoof. 
“Since when is she a Unicorn?” Lyra asked. Snow Drift could see the mare’s front legs tremble, and she knew it wasn’t just from her injuries. “I’ve heard of ascension before, but this…doesn’t feel right.” 
“No, this is something different,” Bon Bon said, stepping in front of the wounded Lyra and still keeping her hoof in front of Ice Air. “And whatever it is, I don’t know if we can reverse it.”
“Your friends are fools,” the deep voice boomed. “Why would you want to reverse this? Look at the power you now control, daughter!”
“Who the buck was that?” Lyra asked, her eyes darting around the room for a moment before returning to Octavia. 
“Your future ruler, slave!” the deep voice yelled, and the flames in Octavia’s eye sockets blazed with purple energy. “Now, make them bow to you, daughter!”
The horn on Octavia’s head glowed deep red and a moment later the three ponies were surrounded by the same aura. They each looked around for a moment, but then Ice Air pushed past Bon Bon’s hoof and her own horn flared with magic. The red aura vanished, but the Unicorn sank to her knees and gasped for air. 
“That…that’s not a horn,” she panted. “It’s a jewel that Keket found! She made it…into a necklace.”
Octavia’s nightmarish face twisted into a smirk. She brought one armored hoof to her head and gently stroked her new horn. “Yes, that pony took care to never let me out of her sight in order to keep me safe. Of course, it made controlling her much easier too, but she never realized that.”
Something in the back of Snow Drift’s mind clicked then. Ice Air was right. Their leader had never been without that necklace and that red jewel. And if it was now embedded in Octavia’s skull…
Snow Drift swallowed. The resistance really was dead now, and she was no doubt looking at the monster that had caused its destruction. 
“Right,” Lyra said with a shaky nod. “We get that thing off of her, and…hope she goes back to normal?”
“I guess,” Bon Bon replied, but her confidence was wanting. “And we still have to find Vinyl after—”
“No!” Octavia shouted. All four ponies jumped at the sound of the mare’s voice, because it was actually hers, not the deep voice that seemed to come from her and the air around them all at once. 
As Snow Drift watched, the flames blazing from Octavia’s eyes slowly died. Her face twisted and scrunched as if she were in pain as the light around her horn dimmed. The flowing cape behind her neck stopped moving and then began to fade from reality. The grey chest piece and armor leggings she wore cracked and fell away as well, silently turning to dust as they did. Even her onyx mane, which had been billowing behind her in a magnificent display, seemed to shrink and recede back into her skull until it was its normal length once more. 
All four sets of eyes watched the strange transformation in stunned silence. A moment ago, a pony beyond all of them had been present, radiating power on a level that threatened to crush them. Now that pony was gone, replaced by a haggard grey mare in a tattered cloak, heaving for air. Her head, which she had held so high only a moment ago, now hung low, as if the very weight of it was almost too much for her body. Her purple eyes closed repeatedly, as if she couldn’t stand the low light, but at least they looked like eyes again. Sweat trickled down her forehead, mixing with the black mane that now spilled around her head and hid portions of her face. She was the pony Snow Drift knew as Octavia once again, but she seemed to have aged a decade or more. 
The red horn was still fused to her head though, its crimson tip poking out from the black mass of her mane. While it wasn’t nearly as bright, there was still a soft red glow emanating from it, giving the mare an unnerving look.
“Bon…Bon…” Octavia said as she lifted her head, revealing that the cracks in her body near the horn were still there, scarring her beauty. She forced a smile and tried to take a step, but instantly collapsed.
Bon Bon dashed forward and caught her with her shoulder before she hit the ground.
“Octavia, is that you?” she whispered as she helped the mare steady herself. 
“I…am sorry,” the cellist said. She leaned on Bon Bon for moment, then stood on her own. “Especially…to you, Snow Drift. I…did not mean…He is just…so strong.”
Snow Drift only swallowed and nodded, afraid that if she spoke, the other Octavia would come out again. 
“Who is?” Lyra asked, walking up and putting a hoof on Octavia’s shoulder. “What happened? Why is that…thing stuck on your head?”
“Sombra,” Octavia answered. “He is…in here.” She raised her hoof to indicate the horn on her head. 
“Sombra?” Bon Bon asked, stunned.
“That Sombra?” Lyra added. “Then we really need to get that thing off of you!”
“NO!” Octavia shouted, the purple flames blazing from her eyes once again. She raised herself up to her full height, shoving her friends away in the process. For a moment, Snow Drift was certain the mare was going to transform again, so she buried her head in her hooves and closed her eyes, but when she opened them again, Octavia was back to looking exhausted and tears were welling in her eyes. 
She also noticed that Ice Air had stepped between her and the mare.
“I…am sorry,” the cellist said, hanging her head once again. 
“Octavia, you have to know what that thing is doing to you,” Bon Bon whispered. She reached out a hoof, but stopped just short of touching her friend. “What he’s doing to you.”
“Yeah,” Lyra added. “It’s not healthy. The sooner that thing’s off of you…”
“I know!” Octavia raised her voice again, but this time it was in frustration. “I know more than any of you. I can still hear him in my head, telling me to…do things to all of you. It is like a picking at the back of my skull, a pressure on my brain that I cannot relieve. If I could tear this thing off and smash it, condemning that monster to oblivion like he rightly deserves, I would do it.”
“Then—”
“I would!” Octavia yelled again, although she did not seem to be speaking to anypony present. “And I will! You have tormented my family for generations, and I will see you finally destroyed!”
“Master?” Ice Air said, carefully taking a step toward the ranting pony.
Octavia’s face whipped around and she glared at the Unicorn. “Do not call me that ever again,” she hissed. “He…likes it when you do. It is as if a snake in slithering through my mind when he laughs.”
“Very well,” Ice Air said, taking another slow step forward. “But why won’t you take it off then?”
“I…” Octavia’s eyes swelled with tears. She sniffed several times before she blinked them away. Then she turned her head to look through the hole in the wall she had first emerged from. She closed her eyes and focused for a moment, and the horn on her head began to glow brighter. 
Snow Drift slowly got to her hooves and readied herself—whether to fight or run, she wasn’t sure—and noticed that the other three were doing the same. All eyes were focused on the hole.
Slowly, an object surrounded by Octavia’s red magic drifted into view. It was large, the size of a pony. In fact, it looked like a pony as well. As it was drawn closer, Snow Drifted noticed that it seemed to have four legs and possibly a horn sticking out of its head. 
“What is that?” Ice Air asked, and Snow Drift wondered the same thing. It looked like a simple stone statue of a pony, possibly a decoration ripped from the castle’s walls. Why was Octavia interested in this?
Bon Bon gasped and Lyra swore once they got a good look at the statue though.
“Sombra’s magic,” Octavia began as she set the statue down carefully, stroking its cheek as she did, “is the only thing keeping Vinyl alive. If I remove the horn, she dies.”