CHAPTER EIGHT:
SALVATION
PRINCESS TWILIGHT SPARKLE
When the carraige began its agonizing ride to the Crystal Empire, it held only Rainbow Dash and I.
I didn't need an entire crew to come with me on what may very well have been a hunch, so I had to go over my options. I needed Sunset to stay with Violet and continue to help her adjust to the modern world. Cobalt had already gotten busy reading just about the entire library in an attempt to better understand Equestria's current technology, and I certainly didn't want to break him away from that. Trixie had to leave Canterlot the morning after to begin a small little tour of Equestria, and Starlight decided she wanted to help her out with her first show in Ponyville before she came back up to Canterlot. Finally, as much as she protested, I wanted Rarity to be at the castle when the other girls showed up: if she was there, I thought, they might not get as worried with a dear friend of ours present to reassure them.
That just left me with the world's fastest mare.
Rainbow was down for any adventure, but there were two reasons I wanted her to join me on my trip. The first was that she was an excellent fighter: having survived numerous scraps in her youth and eventually earning a black belt in martial arts, Rainbow's speed and combative prowess made her a nightmare for just about every villain we'd ever fought, sometimes becoming priority one even while I was in the mix.
I didn't like to think about the other reason. If something truly was wrong like I had a distinct feeling there was and I ended up captured, incapacitated, or killed, Rainbow could get to Canterlot very, very quickly. She'd be able to notify everypony in the castle exactly what had happened with a haste nopony else could manage, which certainly made me feel a lot better.
When I looked to my left to see what Rainbow was up to, I was met with a sight I had fully expected to see: the Element of Loyalty staring blankly out the window as our carriage rumbled on.
Rainbow liked to pretend that she wasn't a smart pony. She'd make her fair share of self-depreciating jokes--remarking often that she "wasn't the brainy one"--and teasingly called me an "egghead" from time to time, but I knew much better than that: she was very much among us and was far more intelligent than anypony ever gave her credit for. I knew for a fact that at this moment (and every other time we were headed straight for danger) she was running scenarios through her head at a rapid-fire speed, plotting out possibilities and theories. She may have been worried as I was, she may have been entirely confident, but there was no way to tell with her: 'Danger' was her middle name, and her nerves remained still as the calmest waters.
I heavily admired Rainbow Dash for countless reasons, and her ability to remain tranquil in what I had a distinct feeling was the face of hazard was well near the top of the list.
"Hey, egghead," I asked her teasingly. "Whatcha thinkin about?" My voice sounded weary and dull, but my mind had been racing at a thousand miles per minute: it was quite the odd combination, what with the body tiring and the mind never more awake. Rainbow shook out of her daze, it being the first time she'd heard me speak for quite a while, and she whipped back to me with a bit of a sly grin.
"The Crystal Palace," she answered curtly. "Just trying to see if I remembered the place, you know? Just in case." She leaned back in her seat, not hesitating to relax.
"Twi, you're really worked up over this. If this ends up being a waste of our time--and trust me, really hope it is--then you need to hit the hay on the ride back, sis. You deserve a good sleep." I laughed at that one, rolling my eyes to the ceiling before inexplicitly finding myself mimicking Rainbow and staring at my own window.
"I don't get bad feelings often, Rainbow," I told her, sighing loud and long. "I hope I'm wrong, but... I've been getting these weird gut feelings ever since I got to Canterlot last week. Something just doesn't seem right about this." I couldn't see what Rainbow was doing, but she didn't say anything for a moment. She thought my words over before finally responding after a silence.
"You're a fancy-schmancy Princess now, Twi. I'd trust your gut with my life... well, as long as it isn't your birthday party." I immediately turned around at that remark, my eyebrows playfully raised in an unamused glare as the slyest grin I'd ever seen grew faster and faster on Rainbow's lips.
"Are we still talking about this?" I asked her facetiously, helpless in my attempts to hid a smile from my face. "It was one night." Rainbow had already burst out laughing before I even finished and she shook her head violently at my last suggestion.
"It was not one night, Twilight. Don't even get me started on Fluttershy's garden party last year." I threw up a hoof to stop her, laughing just as hard as Rainbow and struggling just as well when I spoke.
"I have absolutely no intention to," I told her between giggling fits. I had a feeling that Rainbow had dug up my rare--uncommon--misgivings with alcohol in an order to calm my nerves: If I could tell that I was on edge, I knew well that she could too.
I couldn't be mad. It worked.
I don't remember much of the banter that followed before we got to the Crystal Empire. We talked about typical things: work, stallions, Daring Do, the weather--and time seemed to become a blur as the carriage chugged onward. Eventually, after what seemed to be the two of us trapped in an eternity of small talk, the carriage stopped firmly in its place and one of the two ponies pulling it opened the window behind them and peaked inside.
"We've arrived at the Palace, Princess."
I looked at Rainbow. I think I gulped, but she waved a hoof in dismissal before popping the latch on the carriage door and hopping out into the sun.
"It's probably nothin', Twi," she said when her hoof touched the ground. I sighed--I'd been doing that a lot today--and hopped out of the opposite side. Quickly, I skipped over to where the two ponies who had pulled the carriage were waiting, idly discussing something I couldn't decipher before I butted in.
"We should be back soon. Be ready to go at a moments notice, but if you feel like you're in danger leave the premise as quickly as you can." The two stallions nodded aggressively: satisfied, I went back around to meet Rainbow right in front of the Crystal Palace.
We were greeted with a familiar sight. The massive crystal arches that made up the palace's base were as extravagant as ever, and it still amazed me just how far off the ground the palace was before it truly began to form. The purple marble beneath us glimmered brilliantly in the sunlight, and the snowflake directly underneath the arches somehow glowed bright white even underneath the shade.
It was unbelievable, as always.
When I turned to Rainbow, however, she seemed entirely lost in thought. I'd immediately recognized the look in her eyes, and I spoke up to break her from her trance as soon as I could.
"Is something wrong?" I asked her, my words coming out far quicker than I'd like. She turned to me with her head cocked to the side in confusion.
"So you remember that one time we all visited the Crystal Empire about a month after the Crystalling because you had some sort of summit with the Princesses?" I nodded, my eyes steadily narrowing in confusion: I wasn't entirely sure where she was getting at. She turned away from me and pointed towards the giant snowflake in the center of the arches.
"While you were at the summit, the five of us wanted to visit Flurry Heart. We tried to enter the castle here, but the guard outside stopped us from entering. Dude was new on the job and had no idea who we were."
Suddenly, Rainbow's thought process clicked. I distinctly remembered it then: the girls had been waiting outside for over an hour before I got to them, and they were lucky I had already been through most of the summit. The guard's name was Steel Sentinel, and I had to tell him specifically to let us through so we could see Flurry. I'd talked to him quite a few times since then, and we'd always exchanged banter in regards to that incident: he was here just a month ago when I'd traveled to the Crystal Empire for Cadance's birthday.
There was no guard there now. The entire base of the palace was devoid and empty, and the longer I thought back--all the way to the first time I'd ever seen the Crystal Empire after its long disappearance--the more persistent a deeply disturbing thought echoed through my skull.
"There's always a guard here," I said aloud, the words ringing quiet and feeble. Rainbow didn't say anything at first, but after a few moments of silence she quickly stepped forward and made her way to one of the doors neatly embedded in the crystalline spires.
"Well, there ain't now," she said simply as I picked up my pace to follow. "I'm thinkin' you and Spike were maybe right to have a hunch." Before I knew it, we were at the door, and Rainbow immediately pressed down on the handle latch and pushed. It took no effort at all: the door, which for certain would be locked in daylight hours to complement the guard on patrol, easily opened at the slightest touch. Rainbow recoiled a bit at that, and she turned to me with a raised eyebrow.
We said nothing to each other before we finally trudged upwards, but our stares conveyed a novel's worth of words: both of our postures tightened, the alarms in our head frantically blaring at deafening volumes. The stairs might as well have been a mountain, and when we finally conquered its steep and daunting slope we emerged into the main hallway of the palace, where everything appeared to be unnervingly normal.
Everything was how I'd remembered it. The maroon carpet spanning for what must have been an eternity, the gorgeous crystalline walls and chandeliers, the moving paintings that lined the walls. It was all perfectly normal, except for one jarring instance.
It was dead quiet.
There was nopony here.
In a castle such as the Crystal Palace, there was always somepony to be heard. There were numerous servants that lived in the castle, as well as an entire garrison of guards, so the bustling of carts and the clanging of spears was all too common within the palace. The chefs could usually be heard shouting from the kitchen in any place you stood in, and there was always a messenger or two scampering about the hallways.
Not now. The silence almost made my ears hurt.
"Stay close," I said, looking over to Rainbow. She nodded immediately, and we gingerly walked down the hall together in silence.
We passed through the throne room first. The moment we stepped in, I could smell a nice lavender scent coursing through the room, and it didn't take Rainbow Dash a long time to say what I was thinking.
"This place is spotless," she mused, glancing around the room. The floor looked to have been very recently polished, and the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling looked as if they'd been bought yesterday. The throne itself, a strikingly beautiful crystalline chair emblazoned with Cadance's cutie mark in pure diamond, almost hurt to look at if I glanced at it right. It certainly looked as if the servants had done their best work in the room.
But they hadn't. They were gone.
"Oooooh, I'm getting the creeps," said Dash nervously. She nodded her head to the next hallway, and, despite not really having a choice in the matter, followed her lead. I remembered easily what the next doorway would bring: it was the beginnings of the large system of hallways that made up the castle's first floor, and it was a place I didn't particularly want to be at the moment.
The maze was fine at first. We didn't see anything particularly notable along the way, but the sheer emptiness in the air and the nothingness in the castle was grating heavily on both of us. It was like the worst kind of horror novel, waiting in suspense for a thing that may never come. The longer we walked, the worse it became, and I could feel my body convulsing internally with every step: Rainbow, too, seemed disturbed, as the mare who talked a mile a minute hadn't so much as whispered during our eldritch trek.
It wasn't until we rounded the hallway near the guard barracks that we saw it.
In the center of the hallway was a single, prone figure, slumped gently on the ground. It was a crystal guard, it's gleaming skin extinguished long, long ago. It lay idle in its heavy armor, the plate piling up uncomfortably whilst the prone soldier lie awkwardly. I couldn't tell how long it had been there, but the stallion hadn't just been felled recently, that was for certain.
I heard Rainbow gasp. She tried to keep it under her breath, but failed miserably: we had been staring at the figure for what seemed like an eternity, and when I finally broke my gaze and turned to her she held a look I had only very scarcely seen from the Element of Loyalty.
She was utterly petrified.
"Do you think h-he, he's... dead?" she asked me. The question was obvious--I'd been thinking it, too--but it was nonetheless a very good one, and with a very audible gulp I carefully walked to the downed guard.
The very first thing I noticed when I got close was the mane and fur: it was mottled and torn beyond belief. Some kind of massive struggle had to have occurred, as some parts of it had been tied together and others ripped from the body entirely. The face had been turned over recently, I figured, as some of the hair still remained in the spot directly behind the prone figure's head, but I wasn't at all expecting what I got when I carefully turned its head back towards me.
"AAAAH!" I shrieked, violently recoiling at the sight before me. Rainbow came running over immediately, and couldn't help but look down when she saw my hoof firmly glued to my mouth in horror.
Its eyes.
Or rather, its complete lack of them. The stallion's eyes were entirely pitch black, the sockets filled with a void that I couldn't really comprehend. The eyes were still present, but the eyeballs themselves were blacker than anything I'd ever seen. It took a slight shifting of my head to see only the barest glint of light upon the film, and I took a step back and forced myself to look away from what I was now one thousand percent certain was a body.
"What in Tartarus is that?" I said, exasperated and out of breath. Rainbow was still looking at the body, but had backed away a good two or three steps to stay right next to me. We both looked at each other at just about the exact same time, and the meaning in our gazes came through loud and clear: this had progressed far beyond a mere checkup.
Both of us made multiple attempts to speak, but Rainbow got her words out first, the franticness in her tone making her just barely understandable.
"S-Should we leave? Call f-for help?" she asked hurriedly. While the suggestion was very valid--Rainbow and I had been through a lot as Elements, but we hadn't seen anything like this--I immediately shook my head, pointing further down the hall.
"Celestia knows how much I want to," I began, doing my absolute best to recompose myself. "But... ponies could be in danger. If we find m-more of these bodies, we might be able to find what did it and put a stop to it." Rainbow's face looked entirely devoid of the confidence and bravado that had calmed me only hours ago, and so I quickly rested my hoof on her shoulder before I spoke to her next.
"I'm an alicorn princess, and you're a great fighter. Whatever this thing is... it hasn't fought us." Rainbow seemed to like those words, nodding slowly as they bounced around her head. She was lost in thought for a few moments, the thousand-mile stare she'd had not entirely gone yet, but she looked towards me again and pointed to the body: I made a quick business decision not to follow her hoof.
"We need to find the guard barracks. They're close, right? Do you know where they are?" I nodded confidently, both asserting that I did, in fact, know where they were while also agreeing with the suggestion at hand: we had to see if there were any guards left in the castle or at least a semblance of where they went if they weren't here.
The walk to those barracks was filled with a paranoia that chewed away at me slowly like a vulture on carrion. With every hallway corner we turned, I fully expected to find another body laying there or another horror in the middle of the hallway. My nerves had been entirely shot, and the occasional glance at Rainbow Dash showed that she wasn't holding up well herself.
We passed through the dining hall, precisely maneuvering around the massive table and many chairs that blocked the center of the room, and I was greeted with a very familiar sight when the two of us converged again on the other side.
Steel Sentinel, the guard that had roamed the base of the Crystal Palace, lied prone just like the last body we had seen. He was lying next to two other bodies, one a mare with a black coat and turquoise mane and the other a stallion with a white coat and navy blue mane, but the orange across the entirety of Sentinel's body gave him away. Unlike the other ponies I'd seen, Sentinel's body didn't show any heavy signs of struggle, and he looked as if he'd been there only quite recently. Rainbow's mouth was agape, and she looked to me with eyes that had slightly begun to water.
"T-That's the guy! That stopped us..." I nodded solemnly before pointing down the hallway again. It was a gesture the both of us had repeated numerous times today, and it was an action our bodies violently rebelled against, but with a deep breath I walked on: after a few seconds, I could hear the uneven hoofsteps from Rainbow following suit.
As soon as we began to walk down the relatively short hall to the entrance of the barracks, it came clear my worst fear had already been realized.
I could see in view a lone mare with a snowy coat lying sprawled on one of the beds, the void in her eyes contrasting far too clear for comfort with her fur. I stopped dead in the middle of the hallway and could feel myself begin to hyperventilate, my heart pounding furiously as if it were attempting to break out of my chest. Rainbow saw it too, of course, and she immediately let out a noise that I could only determine was a mix of revulsion and frustration. I turned to her with a look I couldn't decipher myself.
"We... we have to check, Rainbow," I told her, my voice sounding as thoroughly unconvincing as it could have. She didn't reply for a few moments, looking back behind her only to be greeted by the sight of more bodies. She quickly turned away and looked at me, gesturing towards the barrack doors with feeble faux confidence.
"Lead the way," she said simply, her voice cracking at the height of her sentence. Closing my eyes, I turned and walked straight into the room, mentally preparing myself for what my eyes would see when I ripped off the band-aid and opened them.
It didn't work in the slightest.
No amount of preparation could prepare me for the harrowing scene of the room. I couldn't even count how many guards there were, but there had to be just over twenty, some lying on their beds and other strewn about carelessly in a heap: all, however, had the horrific black eyes I'd come to see in the palace. A few beds were tipped over, and the desks in the corner of the room were in shambles across the entirety of the area. As I absolutely forced myself to look at the guards, my hoof covering my mouth again in sheer terror, I saw that there was clearly combative magic used in the area, with evidence of bolts both imprinted in the walls and seared into some of the guards' fur.
Rainbow, who had hung around just outside the doorframe, didn't get sick behind me, but I could absolutely hear every bit of the effort to stem it down. I took a single look around the room for one last time before my thoughts forced themselves into the air.
"What is this?" I spoke, my eyes wide as the moon and my voice empty and dull.
"Salvation."
The voice that answered was loud, and It certainly wasn't Rainbow's.
I whipped around and saw that Rainbow had done the very same. There was a pony I could only barely make out in front of her, so I quickly scampered to her side to get a better look.
The figure that had revealed himself was a unicorn stallion, slightly taller than the average male but very slim and fit. He had an artic white coat and his mane and tail was a pleasant shade of amber, and he wore what appeared to be a dark black cloak over the majority of his body. His face was uncovered, however, and for the millionth time that day I quickly became jarred at the sight of his eyes.
The purple mist bleeding into the air surrounded his gaze. His sclera was a sickly lime green, the veins in his eyes brought out by the shade. His iris was the color of blood, and his pupils dark as a moonless night.
I'd seen those eyes in King Sombra. I'd seen them in Celestia when she taught me a very important lesson, and I'd felt them in myself when I'd opened the secret passageway in this very castle's throne room long ago.
This pony had been entirely consumed by dark magic, and it didn't take me a whole lot of time to figure out that he had almost assuredly committed the travesty Rainbow and I had seen before us.
"Princess Twilight Sparkle," the stallion said. His voice was uninspiringly normal, devoid of any accent and maybe a little higher than usual: for whatever reason, it only made me more nervous. "I got your letters."
Letters.
Cadance.
Shining.
The grisly images of my step-sister and brother left in the states I had seen flashed through my mind, but they didn't fill me with fear. Instead, I felt a blazing boil rise through me, and I could feel my countenance twist in anger as I violently stepped forward and looked to the stallion.
"Where are Cadance and Shining?" I asked through gritted teeth, my voice piercing through strong and loud for the first time in quite a while. The stallion merely chuckled at the sight of my fury, nonchalantly shaking his head before he replied.
"No time for formalities, hmm? I don't know where Shining and Cadance are. I expected this Empire's sovereigns to be present, but from the information I've gathered, they're currently on a diplomatic mission to Yakyakistan. A shame," he mused, looking around the environment around him. "I cannot bring them the salvation the ponies of this castle have received."
In hindsight, I was very thankful this pony had shown up, as his personality had erased all the fear and dread we'd had inside us moments ago. I could tell that Rainbow, too, was enraged, and she quickly leaned backward in a combat stance before she barked out to the stallion.
"Salvation? You... you killed these ponies! We're gonna make you pay for this!" The stallion laughed again, but it wasn't harmless this time: it was deeply sinister, and every cackle was filled with malice.
"How that mare has misled the both of you," he began. "These ponies have found a greater purpose. A purpose you two shall find in yourselves."
The stallion gestured behind us with his hoof, pointing directly between Rainbow and I. When we turned around, we immediately stumbled backward: I didn't believe it was possible after what I had seen, but the sight before me had left me petrified.
The guards in the room, moments ago lifeless and limp, stood where they had fallen. Rainbow and I hadn't heard them rise from their positions at all: it was almost as if they'd been that way the entire time. Their armor hung loosely from their body, some of it strewn across incorrectly, but they didn't particularly seem to care. They stood disturbingly still, to the point where I could have mistaken them for mannequins had I not only just seem them in the state they'd been in moments ago. They didn't make a sound, they didn't move an inch, and they didn't say a word.
They merely stared emptily with the void in their gaze.
"These ponies have found the darkness," the stallion explained calmly. "Join them."
I didn't know who this pony was. I didn't know how he was doing what he was doing, or what his motive was for doing so. I did know one thing, though: I was surrounded by dark magic corruptions that I figured weren't looking to exchange pleasantries and that whoever it was that had been speaking to us very much wanted Rainbow and I to become one of them.
So naturally, I did the first thing I could think of: I shot a bolt of magic at his face.
I was well aware at this point how powerful this pony was, and I had been gravely afraid that he'd dodge out of the way with reflexes I couldn't see with the naked eye or stare it down and laughed as it harmlessly bounced off him. Thankfully, neither of those things happened, and the bolt sent him careening backward as it collided with his skull. The blast was concussive, but I had a feeling it wouldn't keep the stallion down for long, so I quickly whipped around to see a massive sea of ponies slowly advancing towards us.
"We can't fight all of these things!" Rainbow shouted. Her words bounced around the room, as the ponies still made absolutely no noise as they walked. I scanned the room quickly before an idea popped into my head: I grabbed Rainbow by the hoof and dragged her through the doorframe, using my magic to shut the door to the barracks tight.
"No, but we don't have to," I replied frantically. Using every seal and bind spell I knew, I ran my magic around the edges of the doorframe to firmly anchor the edges of the door itself. The ponies inside made noise now, banging loudly from the other side, but there was simply no use. My magic prevented them from even budging the door, so I turned back around as quickly as I could before I spoke to Rainbow again.
"We should be good for a while, but I don't know exactly how long that will hold. Stay sharp." She nodded firmly, and we both looked down the hall to see the stallion I'd just blasted seconds ago had vanished.
"Oh, come on!" Rainbow exclaimed, the tired frustration in her voice glaringly apparent. We both wanted to leave, but we had to fight our way out first, and I wasn't going to bank on this mystery stallion letting us waltz out the door. Regardless, I wasn't too thrilled with the prospect of letting whoever this was continue to do... this, and so if we had an opportunity to incapacitate him we absolutely had to take it.
We took a few steps forward, but my trained ears perked up immediately at a rapidly rising sound behind us. I'd come to know what magic sounded like on the charge from my youth around my entirely unicorn family and my many, many days spent under the tutelage of Celestia. As such, when I heard it behind the two of us, I immediately shoved Rainbow into the wall and used the momentum to push myself to the opposite one.
The stallion's draw was much faster than I anticipated, and while I managed to take Rainbow completely out of harm's way I felt a very painful beam of energy scrape across my face. It was only a graze, but I recognized the spell merely from the feeling: it was a laceration spell, though the dark magic behind it made it far more powerful than any I'd ever encountered. If I hadn't moved when I did, it was very likely the bolt would have pierced straight through me.
I hit the wall with a thud, though I was able to catch myself and prevent any chance I had of hitting the ground. When I looked up, I saw Rainbow had flown as fast as she could towards the stallion and was currently engaging him in combat, standing on her back legs and assaulting the stallion with her front hooves.
Rainbow knew how to fight unicorns--really, anything with a horn--in the sense that distraction is a magic user's greatest disadvantage. We needed to concentrate to use magic, and I don't think there's another mare in the world who can disrupt that as well as Rainbow Dash could. Her speed was blinding and she hit hard as Tartarus, so I was genuinely surprised to see that while our new stallion friend wasn't entirely unphased by her style, he was still holding up fairly well.
"My my, aren't you a fast one?" he quipped, sending off bolts of magic as hastily as he could. Rainbow was dodging just about every one of them, but she herself was only getting in a precious few punches, and it didn't take long before one of the stallion's bolts finally connected. The spell was blunt, and the impact to Rainbow's side was enough to send her flying through the air.
Ever quick to react, her wings opened immediately, and the Wonderbolt gracefully floated to the ground as soon as she righted herself in the air. I ran to where she'd landed, and as soon as she saw me her eyes grew wide in shock.
"Twilight! Your face!" she said, almost in a scream. I ran a hoof over it and quickly remembered that I'd been hit with a laceration spell: there was a LOT of blood, but I waved my hoof in dismissal before turning to our opponent, who this time had opted to stay where he was.
"Looks much worse than it is. I'll be fine," I told her, facing our opponent. "What do you want?" The pony stayed silent at first, opting to listen to the chorus of pounding hoofs at the door behind him before finally responding.
"To show you the light that is the darkness," he answered. "To show everypony."
Suddenly, he activated his magic, the sickly green aura engrossing his horn. Rainbow and I stood fast, awaiting whatever magic it was he was preparing, but it never came: despite his aura pulsating continuously, there appeared to be nothing actually happening.
That is until I looked behind him.
The magic barrier I had created was slowly slipping away, the stallion erasing my binding spells with his dark magic. I debated for a split second firing at him, but it would be no use, as he'd already done more than enough damage: the pounding of the guard ponies violently rocked the door more and more, and it would be a matter of seconds until it burst down entirely. Rainbow caught on as well, and she looked to me with a frantic expression as the pounding got louder and louder. I didn't look back at her.
There was only one option left.
"RUN!" I shouted, whipping around and galloping the fastest I could, but I immediately stopped to a grinding halt.
Some of the ponies I had seen lying on the floor earlier, including Steel Sentinel, had silently blocked the hallway while we were fighting the stallion. That wasn't all, though: they were joined by a multitude of other ponies, some of which I'd recognized as donning servant uniforms. The mass of black eyes' piercing gazes were enough to jolt my body into action, but Rainbow verbalized it before it actually occurred.
"FLY!" She yelled, taking to the air with a strong push. Once I joined her, I had a feeling that the silent terrors below us would follow if they had wings, and my suspicions were confirmed when a handful of the ponies rose up to meet us. I wasn't too worried about that, though, as Rainbow and I charged through the crowd with my magic blasting anything I could see take to the air.
Unfortunately, this didn't last long either, as the unicorns who this stallion had corrupted quickly fired their magic in a volley. Although they weren't strenuously accurate, they didn't need to be, and one bolt clipped the upper part of my wing and sent me sprawling to the ground. My yelp alerted Rainbow Dash, and she quickly flew to the side in an attempt to catch me, but she was too late: I hit the ground hard, which in itself caused a rather large problem.
My freefall would have merely been a bit painful if not for the way I had landed on my front right hoof. It touched the ground first and my momentum put my entire body weight on top of it, causing it to fold in on itself. I knew right away it was bad, but when I hopped up fast to start running I was met with a blindingly painful jolt up to my knee. I cried out again, but didn't stop running, using my three good hooves and holding my bad one up to my chest.
Rainbow noticed, but didn't say anything, instead opting to run ahead of me. I had only taken a few steps before a horrible realization had hit me.
They're going to be faster than me.
Though I couldn't hear them, I knew at least one would catch up. Rainbow was already outpacing me, and because their hoofsteps were silent I had no way to know if one was close or not. I looked down quickly at my hoof as I ran, and a primal thought came to my head.
I couldn't heal the hoof. There was absolutely ligament damage, and as powerful as I was I didn't know any spells that could mend it without seriously altering its structure. I did, however, know a spell that could stop the pain, and I quickly jolted the injured hoof area before letting it down again and running with all my might.
It would cause much more damage to the ligament, but this was a matter of life and a fate worse than death.
We rounded a corner, though we had to keep looking back to make sure they weren't getting any ground. I had a magical shield up behind us to block any magic that would come our way, and it wasn't much of a strain to continue as we aimlessly ran through the halls: although it was large in volume, the magic from the unicorns appeared severely neutered, which I chalked up to the effort of sustaining their reanimation (though it was still enough to shoot me down, it seemed).
Eventually, the things became distant, and Rainbow and I found ourselves alone. I looked around the hallways we'd been running in and found what I was looking for: one of the palace's many small utility closets. I ran over to it and opened it, silently gesturing for Rainbow to hop in. She looked around before following me, and we closed the door shut and flipped the light switch on before sitting down.
The both of us were entirely exhausted, and though it seemed I had taken the brunt of our injuries, it looked as if Rainbow was beginning to develop some severe bruising on her sides. I quickly grabbed a rag from the vast array of cleaning supplies and wiped my face with it, revealing that I still had a considerable amount of blood originating from my earlier cut. When we caught our breath, she looked down at my hoof and began to whisper.
"I'm surprised you can still walk on that," she told me, nodding to it. I shook my head and responded as quietly as I could.
"I can't. I numbed it so I could run. Listen, I'm going to teleport us out of here, but I need to make sure that--"
I stopped dead in the middle of my sentence, holding a hoof up and pressing my ear to the door. There were footsteps coming from the hallway, and I suspected it was the stallion. A few moments later, he spoke loudly through the corridor, confirming my suspicion: I knew he had to ability to mask his hoofsteps, but he didn't even bother as he called out.
"Come on out, Twilight!" He called, a creeping arrogance carrying through his tone. He was playing games with us now, clearly inspired by his overwhelming advantage, and it pleased me that he was that type of pony. I began to develop an idea, and I made sure to reiterate with my good hoof that Rainbow needed to stay absolutely silent.
Performing two spells at the same time was never easy. Depending on the spell, doing so for even a short amount of time could physically drain a unicorn for a few good minutes, but this opportunity was simply too good to pass up. I prepared two spells: the first was a bolt of magic, and the second was a quieting spell to prevent the continuous charging of said bolt to give away where we were or what we were up to. Blissfully unaware, the stallion continued walking forward.
"You know you can't hide from me," he mused, my heartbeats timed to the steps in his gait. I couldn't help but smirk as he waltzed right where I wanted him, and with all my might I removed the quieting spell and blasted off the bolt I'd been charging straight through the door in front of us.
I knew I would obliterate the door, but what was most important was the pony standing on the other side of it. The stallion promptly got thrust into the wall, and I knew very well he wouldn't easily be getting up from that one: he was a very powerful stallion, but I was an alicorn princess, and that may have been one of the biggest damn bolts of magic I'd ever unleashed.
Rainbow rushed forward, but I needed a few seconds to recuperate after the power I'd put forth. Thankfully, due to my experience and general level of power, it didn't take long, and I quickly ran to the scene to find the stallion pinned to the ground with Rainbow standing on top of him.
"I wouldn't move, pal!" she shouted. Thankfully, there didn't seem to be any of the corrupted ponies around us, so I advanced forward and stood by Rainbow's side to take a look at the stallion.
He was clearly dazed, the hit bringing him a healthy dosage of pain, but he didn't look too affected otherwise. He was tough to crack, that much was certain, and so I made sure to take advantage of the opportunity as I leaned down to face him.
"Who are you? And why are you here?" I asked assertively, making sure to step down on him hard for emphasis. I realized a moment later that it was with my bad hoof, but I didn't particularly care at the time: it didn't hurt yet.
The stallion looked up to me, and I saw something that almost made me step back.
He was amused.
He had been hit by a locomotive of a magic bolt, and careened hard into the wall. None of us were doing so hot in regards to injuries, but this pony that I knew had to have still been in an agonizing amount of pain had a nonchalant look on his face, as if he wasn't in any sort of danger. He looked up to me, though his visage wasn't worried: instead, it his glare was serious, and he raised his eyebrows as he spoke with conviction.
"Ask your master."
I opened my mouth to respond, but the sudden ignition of his horn caused both Rainbow and I to jump back. We stood prepared for anything, our weary bodies revolting at the thought of engaging in yet another extend brawl, but it soon became clear that we wouldn't have to. In a flash, he disappeared, leaving only the marble floor and the pieces of the door at our hooves.
Rainbow and I stood there for what seemed like forever. We were both thinking about what had just happened, and the entirety of the day played through my head on loop. Never had I seen anything as terrifying and surreal as I had seen in the last hour or so, but I quickly snapped out of my trance: we didn't have time to think.
I was certain he'd teleported away from the castle, but I didn't know whether that action would revert the ponies he had enthralled to their previous states or whether they would still be... activated, per say. Whatever it was, I wasn't going to stick around and find out, and so I ran over to Rainbow and quickly wrapped my wing around her.
"Hold on!" I said loudly, making sure to grip her as tight as I could.
I could feel the familiar magical wave wash over the both us, and it didn't take long before we had left the horrors of the Crystal Palace behind.