//------------------------------// // The Showdown // Story: Northern Venture // by Chengar Qordath //------------------------------// I stared incredulously at a mare I hadn’t seen for over a year. Last time we’d crossed paths, she’d been pretty happily settled into her nice little out-island commune. I certainly hadn’t expected to run into her thousands of miles away from Freeport, and trying to kill me and my friends. “What the hay, Starlight?!” Starlight smirked. “I’m taking you down. That’s what the hay.” I’d figured out that much when she blew up an entire building just to get to me. “Okay, why are you doing this?! Last time I saw you, I was saving your life from that crazy lich!” “What, and you think that means you own me now?” Starlight snapped. “Doing one nice thing for me doesn’t make me your slave. Besides, you didn’t come to save me—you came to save that village. I just happened to be there.” She snorted and tossed her mane. “Not that I asked you to help in the first place; you just showed up on your own. And we both know it’s only a matter of time before that lich comes back for round two.” I remembered some of those details a bit differently, but no matter. “Still doesn’t explain why you just tried to kill me!” Starlight’s smirk came back, twice as confident. “Surrender and maybe you’ll find out.” “Yeah, that’s not happening.” I had no idea what was going on with Starlight, but beating some answers out of her sounded a lot more appealing than surrendering. “Puzzle, Strumming, one of you get Kukri out of here.” “This one will do that,” Puzzle volunteered, flying up towards the mostly-intact bathroom door. “I'll see what we can do about clearing the bystanders.” Strumming leaned in and whispered. “Not to mention trying to find that anti-warlock throwing spike of mine.” Starlight snorted and waved them away. “Run off, I don’t care about either of you. Just don’t try anything or you’ll regret it.” “You’re just after me, huh? I suppose I should be flattered.”  I picked my way through the debris, heading out into the open town square. The inn’s explosion had started drawing a crowd of curious onlookers that Strumming was doing her best to disperse. “I don’t suppose you'd be okay with heading out to a nice unoccupied bit of wilderness for the rest of the fight?” Starlight scoffed and shook her head. “Like your buddies wouldn’t take that opportunity to grab every guard they can find and set up an ambush while you take me there?” I thought about offering to teleport her, but she’d probably just accuse me of planning to do something like teleport her to the middle of the ocean, or just leave her in the middle of nowhere while coming back to Coldharbor on my own. Which, to be fair, both sounded like really good ideas now that I thought about it. “I don’t know why you’re doing this Starlight, but if you don’t back off right now I’m taking you down. Hard.” I glowered at her as my eyes briefly flicked back to what was left of the inn we’d been staying at. “You’re not a stupid kid who impulsively robbed a bank anymore.” “No, that’s why I'm going to win today.” She grinned and brushed a hoof on her armor. “I’m way better than I used to be.” “Not hard to improve from where you started at,” I quipped. Starlight glared at me. “You really are an arrogant nag, you know that? I’m going to enjoy wiping that smirk off your face when I’m rubbing it into the dirt.” Her horn lit up, and she drew a sword off her back. “Or maybe I’ll just cut your head off, and keep it around as a trophy.” Kukri let out a loud gasp from her perch atop Puzzle’s back, staring at the sword. “That’s ... that’s Chainbreaker!” “Torch Charger’s sword?” I stared at the weapon. Now that Kukri mentioned it ... I’d only seen the sword once at a museum, but it did look familiar. “The museum,” Puzzle hissed. “No wonder the Council had the entire building under a security lockdown when we left. If it got out that someone stole Chainbreaker...” “It would bring their whole corrupt regime crashing down around their ears,” Starlight concluded smugly. “It’s nothing less than they deserve: Chainbreaker is the sword of freedom, the bane of tyrants. The Council doesn’t deserve to have it.” “Neither do you!” Kukri snarled, almost leaping down to charge her before Puzzle restrained her. “That sword belongs to Freeport and the clans, not some worthless spoiled brat with a trust fund and a god complex! You must have balls for brains connecting to that sputtering mess on your forehead if you think you can use Chainbreaker for compensation, because you don’t have the right to even be in its presence!” Starlight snorted. “What would you know? You’re just a stupid kid blind to the realities of the world around you. Chainbreaker isn’t the sword of Freeport’s establishment, it belongs to whoever’s going to tear down the corrupt old order and replace it with something better.” “And you think that’s you?” I asked, scarcely believing my ears. “Why not?” Starlight shot back. “Revolutions have to start somewhere. Just having the sword proves they have to take me seriously!” She wasn’t completely wrong. The sword might just be a really sharp piece of metal with mostly symbolic value, but symbols could be very potent things. Not that every single pony would instantly flock to Starlight’s banner just because she had Chainbreaker, but it would add a bit more legitimacy to her claims. People who’d normally just dismiss her as a malcontent with delusions of grandeur might take a closer look once they found out she was carrying around the symbol of the Freeport Revolution. Not that I planned to let her keep it. “Nobody’s going to listen to you, you crazy nag. You can pretend to be a revolutionary all you want, but Torch and Ushabti never went around blowing up buildings full of innocent people!” Starlight scoffed. “Like you can claim to be innocent.” Maybe I wasn’t exactly innocent, but I’d mostly been on the good side of things, and certainly hadn’t done anything to deserve death. No point arguing about that with Starlight, though. Especially when there was a much easier point to make. “I wasn’t the only one in that inn. There were kids in there!” Well, at least Kukri. Probably more too. “And they’re all fine,” Starlight answered cavalierly. “It’s not like I blew up the whole building, just the part of it you were in.” Considering how that could’ve ended if Kukri wasn’t in the bathroom when the spell hit, that wasn’t even close to a good enough answer. I was about to point that out when I thought about another building that had blown up back in Freeport, right around the time Starlight was supposedly robbing the Liberation Museum. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but... “Did you go after Frozen Finds in Freeport?” Starlight rolled her eyes. “Would you believe me if I said no?” I shrugged. “Considering I didn’t know you were capable of blowing up buildings or committing cold-blooded murder until a few minutes ago...” “Murder,” Starlight growled, “only applies to unjustified killings. Frozen wasn’t as innocent as you thought he was, he got what was coming to him.” “So you did kill him?” I demanded. “What did he do? What made you decide that randomly murdering an antique bookseller was a good idea? Or me, for that matter?” “I don’t have to explain myself to you,” Starlight shot back. “We’re not in Freeport, and even back there you’re not a cop, just a merc who works for the government sometimes.” I didn’t give her the satisfaction of rising to the obvious bait. Arguing with her wouldn’t get me anything, and I was a lot better served trying to unravel the rest of this mystery.  “So what’s with the armor? Looks like you stole it out the museum along with Chainbreaker.” Starlight grinned and slapped the chestplate of her armor. “Oh no, this is a perk of my new job. After you ruined everything for me with the commune, I had to find something to do.” “How did I ruin anything by saving your life and stopping a crazy lich from destroying your entire village?” About the only thing I could think of that I’d arguably ruined is that maybe if I’d let the crazy lich kill her, Frozen Finds would still be alive. “Nothing was the same after that!” Starlight snapped. “When I finally got back to the island to help repair all the damage that crazy Rising Fire did, everyone kept looking at me. Like it was my fault the lunatic tried to kill me and smashed up their village, and it was only a matter of time before the guy came after me again and put them all in the firing line. And I bet some of them were wondering if Rising’s ramblings about how I’m going to destroy the world in the future were right, and maybe they should’ve let him take me. Ungrateful jerks.” I decided to take advantage of the fact that she seemed to be in a ranty mood to try something sneaky while I kept her talking. “Okay, fine, so everyone was a bit weirded out after the fact. Still not clear on how that’s supposed to be my fault.” “You should’ve kept things quiet!” Starlight shouted. “If none of them had known that the lich was after me, I could’ve gone back to my life! Instead you ruined everything, and I had to go on the run to find a way to be ready for him next time he comes after me!” “Which evidently involves murder for hire,” I cut in. Starlight shrugged. “We all have to adapt to our situations. It’s not like you did anything different when you first showed up in Freeport.” “Not even close.” Not that I was especially proud of killing Metal Mome in all but the most technical sense, but the guy had been a murderous pirate and slaver with dreams of becoming a conqueror. There was a big difference between taking him down hard, especially when I’d made a good faith effort to bring the guy in alive, and Starlight killing ponies who as far as I knew didn’t deserve it by blowing up entire buildings. If she didn’t see that... “Fine. I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Frozen Finds of Freeport, the attempted murder of myself and my friends, and destruction of private property. I’ll work out the details on extradition with the Northmarch authorities once we’ve got you in a cell. I don’t suppose you’ll come quietly.” Starlight snorted. “Considering I’m the one who came after you, what in the world makes you think I’d want to come quietly? I shrugged. “It was worth a shot. And all the talking kept you distracted.” I let loose with the spell I’d sent the last couple minutes slowly building up. A thick sheet of ice sprang up from the ground, climbing up Starlight’s legs until it completely encased all four of her limbs all the way up to her barrel. Starlight’s eyes flicked down to the ice, then she glared at me. “You think this is enough to hold me?! I’m insulted.” A quick pulse of energy from her horn shattered the ice and sent cracks rippling through the cobblestones. That seemed to be enough to accomplish what Strumming hadn’t been able to, as the crowd of curious onlookers started nervously scattering as their self-preservation instincts finally kicked in. I also noticed that her magic had changed colors since the last time I’d seen. Instead of teal, it was a dark and ugly shade of orange. It was really rare for someone's magic to change colors; it took either a major personal transformation or a huge infusion of outside power. Considering she’d apparently graduated from misguided idealism to murder, she could qualify under either one. I could get answers once I had her down. With how much pride she had on display, I decided to poke it a bit. “I didn’t know if you were still as weak and pathetic as I remembered from the last time we fought. If you were, that would explain why you attacked from ambush: you knew you couldn’t win a straight fight.” “Don’t you look down on me!” Starlight snapped. “I’m a dozen times stronger than I was the last time you beat me, and you had to cheat to win then!” “Twelve times zero is still zero,” I quipped. Starlight snarled and unleashed a beam of raw destructive force. My first instinct was to teleport out of the way, but that wasn’t an option when we were in the middle of a town square; the beam would keep going until it hit something or someone. Instead I threw up a shield of solid ice, angling it so the beam would deflect up harmlessly into the air. At least, that was the idea. What I hadn’t anticipated was just how much power there would be behind her attack. My shield didn’t break and did manage to send her blast safely away, but the impact was hard enough to make the inner layer of my shield shatter, sending shards of ice straight back at me. I managed to turn my head enough to keep my face and throat safe and none of the chunks were all that big, but I picked up a dozen shallow cuts along my chest and legs. I snarled and threw a fireball at her, but Starlight countered with a spell I’d never been on the receiving end of before: Blightfire. The blast of entropic flame swallowed up my own attack and rolled straight on towards me. There was no way I could block it in time; I had no choice but to teleport clear, wincing as the flames hit a bakery. The good news was the building was empty. The bad news was it wasn’t a building anymore. “When the hay did you learn that spell?!” I snapped. “I told you I’ve gotten stronger,” Starlight answered with an arrogant smirk. “And that was just a taste of my power.” She threw out a quick spell I didn’t recognize, then snatched up several of the larger chunks of rubble and started hurling them at me I tried to teleport clear again, but when I did I popped into the middle of the town square, not at all where I’d wanted to be. A second later several large black crystals emerged from between the cobblestones, encircling me. A teleport trap?! That had to be at least as obscure as Blightfire, though at least I could understand why she’d look for that spell when she knew I could teleport. Still, something wasn’t adding up. She’d gotten kicked out of school before she even finished, and had spent the last couple years on an isolated farming commune. And now she showed up with a lot more power than I remembered, flinging way more advanced spells, and... “You didn’t just get a fancy set of armor, did you? That much magic in a new color, and your talk about a new job ... you made a deal with someone.” “Took you long enough to figure it out,” Starlight shot back with a savage grin. “What’s the matter, worried I might have found a way to surpass you?” Not that I would ever admit it to her, but ... yeah. Starlight had been a tough opponent back when I fought her two years ago, and while I’d gotten a lot better since then Starlight had grown even more. Whatever deal she’d made had given her a huge boost in raw power, and had evidently come with lessons to seriously beef up her spell repertoire. That didn’t say good things for where the balance between us was likely to be. Not to mention the fact that if whoever she was working for sent her after me, that meant I had some seriously strong enemies. But who could it be? Rising Fire wanted Starlight dead. Chrysalis? She’d never been the sort to recruit ponies; she only trusted her own changelings. I could see a warlock coven trying to recruit her, but they’d just make her a member of the group, and they couldn’t give her that sort of power boost. Maybe it was one of Celestia’s enemies? Plenty of them might try to get to her by going through me. Though if I needed to add Celestia’s enemies list to my own, that made things a lot more complicated, not to mention dangerous. No time to think about that, though—I needed to survive the next five minutes. “You think selling out makes you stronger than me? Borrowed strength is nothing; you didn’t earn it, and you don’t know how to use it. Let me show you what real power is.” I shot an intense light beam through the crystal trap, bouncing it around and breaking the crystals themselves before it went for Starlight. Starlight got a shield up in time to block the spell, though she grunted in effort when my attack connected. “Is that supposed to be real power? You must be getting tired already.” I grabbed the shattered crystals and hurled the shards at her in a telekinetic razor wind. “Tired? I’m not even sweating.” Starlight brushed the attack aside with a casual flick of her horn. “Only because Northmarch is too cold. But don’t worry, I’m just getting started.” She fired off another beam, and I got my shield in place to block. However, at the last second the beam swerved down, slamming into the ground instead. Dozens of cobblestones shattered, sending shrapnel flying towards me and anyone else in the area. My shield hadn’t been angled right to catch it, and while I did have my face and upper body protected I picked up several more cuts on my legs; by now, my winter cloak was barely staying in one piece. “Fine,” I snarled. “Let’s get serious, then!” I fired off a beam of almost white-hot fire, followed up by a blast of sub-zero cold that crystalised the air behind it as it rushed in. Starlight answered me with a bored yawn, conjuring up more blightfire and using it to simply absorb my attacks. How did she even ... I never even knew blightfire could do that! The main reason I’d never liked using it unless things were desperate is that entropic magic is by its very nature almost impossible to exercise fine control over. At least, for anyone who wasn’t a being of pure chaos like Discord was supposed to have been. I must have let my surprise show, because Starlight smirked triumphantly. “New trick. I’ve been doing a lot of studying lately, and with a way better teacher than you ever had.” She flicked the blightfire at me. I didn’t want to risk teleporting clear since the building behind me was still occupied, so I had no choice but to try and block it this time. I grabbed what was left of the last building Starlight had leveled with blightfire, throwing several chunks of rubble into the flames’ path. The one useful thing about defending against blightfire was that it didn’t act like natural flame. Give it something to destroy and it would cling to the target rather than continue on looking for more things to consume. That’s what made it such a nasty and effective combat spell: once it hit something, it didn’t stop until there was nothing left to destroy. While I was busy keeping her blightfire under control, Starlight unleashed another spell, firing off half a dozen magic missiles. The attacks came in fast, and I couldn’t afford to take my attention off the far more dangerous spell in front of me. Each of the missiles slammed into my ribs like a punch from an especially large and angry stallion, but they wouldn’t kill me the way the blightfire would if I let it get out of control. Starlight grinned as her spells connected. “Gotcha.” I grimaced and did my best to shut out the dull pain radiating from my sides. It wasn’t sharp enough to mean anything had been broken, so there was nothing to worry about but a new collection of bruises. “If that’s the hardest you can hit, I’ve got nothing to worry about.” “That was just a tickle,” Starlight shot back, lifting up one of her hooves and channeling power into it. “This is going to hurt a lot more.” She slammed her hoof down on the ground, sending a shockwave rippling towards me. I teleported past the shockwave, only to discover she’d set up a second shockwave right after the first. I did my best to stay on my hooves, but when that didn’t work I had no choice but to transform my fall into a combat roll, trying to make it look like that had been my plan the whole time. Starlight sent out another wave of her stinging missiles, the balls slamming into my back this time. I snarled in pain as I got back to my hooves. I was done playing nice. If she liked playing with blightfire so much, I’d give her a taste of her own medicine. I lashed out with a huge burst of entropic flames, aiming to put an end to the fight once and for all. Starlight just stood there and took it, standing right in the middle of the flames with a faint smirk on her lips as the runes in her armor let off a sickly orange glow. While the flames ate away at the cobblestones around her, they didn’t seem to touch the mare herself. She rolled her eyes and scoffed at the destruction around her. “Please, did you really think that was going to work? I’ve already proved I know the spell better than you do; did you really think I wouldn’t know how to defend against it?” I scowled and shook my head, trying to get my head back in the game. “What are you even trying to get out of this?! You think selling your soul for power means you’re better than me now? It just makes you a useful idiot to whoever duped you.” “The deal I made didn’t make me better than you,” Starlight smirked and started her next spell. “But beating you into the ground with all my new powers and skills kinda does. Look at this, I’m taking you apart and you can’t even touch me.” Her next spell started up, and the shadows leapt out to ensnare me. My first instinct was to counter the spell, but when I tried to manipulate the light to rip apart her shadows it did nothing. Starlight had just poured too much raw power into it, and I couldn’t break what she’d conjured. I switched tactics, firing the beam of light at Starlight herself. Starlight conjured up a crystal mirror to deflect my attack while her shadows wrapped around my legs, pinning me down. I tried a teleport spell, but evidently the tentacles had some sort of dimensional binding worked in that kept me locked in place. A second later more of those stinging missiles came in, one of them slamming into my solar plexus. I went down gasping, struggling to manage anything more than remembering how to breathe. Starlight took advantage of the opening to walk up and backhoof me across the cheek, chuckling to herself when I couldn’t do anything to stop her. “Not so arrogant now, are you?” Her tentacles hauled me back up. “What happened to all that trash talk about how you were gonna crush me?” She sat there waiting a few seconds for an answer, then scowled when I didn’t give her the satisfaction. “Whatever. If you can’t do anything but sit there whining while I hit you, I’m ending this.” Her horn lit up one more time, gathering a blast that would reduce me to nothing but a thin red mist if I let it connect. I pulled together every last scrap of power I could, conjuring up a multi-layered ice shield. Starlight smirked when she saw. “Oh, looks like you still have a little fight left in you after all. But it won’t be enough.” Her attack slammed into my shield, tearing straight through the first several layers. But then, stopping the attack had never been my goal; I knew I couldn’t match her raw power. Instead, the layers were there to disperse the force and spread her attack across a wider area. By the time it hit the last globe, her blast was so wide that instead of ripping through it slammed into me like an especially large and lethal tennis racket. With me as the ball. I had a brief impression of wild out of control tumbling, followed by a very abrupt ending. I groaned and picked myself up, trying to take stock of my surroundings. Wooden floors, a thatch roof over my head, and four walls ... three and a half now. She’d knocked me all the way into a house. Good thing my ice globe held up long enough to get me through the wall instead of being splattered against it. I groaned and hauled myself to my hooves, gasping when I felt a stabbing pain shoot down one of my legs. I looked back and groaned when I saw a much too large chunk of wood sticking out of my hip. That ... was bad. I clenched my teeth and used my magic to yank it out, quickly icing over the wound to keep it from bleeding. I did a quick check for any other injuries, testing out all my limbs. I could still walk, if not particularly well or quickly. And considering how the fight had been going up to this point, I really needed to consider running. Except that wasn’t an option. Even if I could get away from her with an injured leg and find somewhere to go to ground, she wouldn’t give up easily. She’d probably start tearing apart the town trying to find me, which would mean getting into a fight with the local authorities if they weren’t after her already. Maybe the town militia could eventually take her down through weight of numbers, but it wouldn’t be pretty. “Hey Sunset!” Starlight called out. “I know you’re not dead, but I can’t tell if I knocked you out or not! If you’re conscious, come out and surrender. If you’re unconscious ... well, I guess it really doesn’t matter what I tell you to do, does it?” I groaned and dusted myself off, trying to come up with something resembling a plan of action.  As I rustled through what was left of my robes, the runestone Argentium gave me tumbled out. I picked it up and gave it a quick once-over. “Whatever it is you do, I’d need a whole lot more of it to stand up to her.” My eyes flicked over the runestone, and a single part of it caught my attention. Mostly because it was the only thing I understood out of the entire complicated network or runes: a small cluster of symbols regulating how quickly energy would be released. Right now it was set to a very slow, almost unnoticeable trickle. If I just did a few quick tweaks... No. Messing around with a rune whose function I barely understood was a phenomenally bad idea. And even worse, I’d be quickly hammering out something in the field instead of doing carefully precise changes. That was a recipe for disaster. A beam of destructive force cut through the roof of the building, carving through the thatch roof and nearly caving it in. “Don’t tell me you’re already done!” Starlight taunted. “I wanted to have a bit more fun with you first!” On the other hoof, I was dead if I didn’t try something to even the scales. Screwing around with the runes might make me explode from magical feedback or something, but there was no way I could win as things stood. When the alternative was certain death, risking an extremely likely death instead was the best move I had. I scratched in my modifications to the rune and waited. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but there wasn’t any flash of light or dramatic surge of power or anything. There was just ... me. Sitting in the middle of a ruined house, with a crazy pony trying to kill me. Starlight unleashed her next attack, tearing through the building and carving towards me. Normally I would’ve tried to block or deflect it, but before I could even think about doing either of those things my body just moved on its own, stepping to the side and letting the beam slip past  by a hair’s breadth. The house started collapsing around me, and I moved again, making a short hop to the side a second before one of the roof timbers would’ve squashed me, then slipping underneath it for cover from the rest of the collapsing home. Starlight followed that up with another blast to clear away the rubble. I remained in place, letting the splinters and bits of thatch flow around me while I sat safely in cover. Starlight smirked triumphantly. “Found you. Wow, look at you, hiding behind a log like it’ll protect you. You must be really scared.” “Not particularly.” I had been a bit scared and angry a minute ago, but now all that had just kind of ... fallen away. Fear and anger were just distractions, just like wondering about why she was trying to kill me or who she was working for. None of that mattered right now. All that mattered was myself and my opponent. Starlight scowled at me, cracking her neck. “Do you still think you can win, you smug nag? I’m gonna wipe that look off your face.” Her horn lit up, and she fired off another beam of destructive energy, but once more I just let it flow past me rather than trying to counter it. Starlight blinked in shock. “Did you just ... doesn’t matter, dodge this!” She fired off another barrage of her magic missiles, sending a dozen of them shrieking through the air towards me. I dodged nine of them, and used a tiny magical nudge to make two more hit each other and detonate. The last I couldn’t dodge, but a quick flick of my horn conjured up a thin plane of ice that absorbed the attack and expended her spell’s energy. Starlight snarled and said something about my parentage that probably would’ve pissed me off if it weren’t so laughably stupid, or if I had a better relationship with them. Even as she spat more insults, her voice seemed to fade away. I still heard every word, but it was like they didn’t really matter anymore. “I don’t know what the hay you just did, but let’s see you pull that kind of horseapples with this!” She unleashed a massive wave of roiling destructive force that blasted apart the rubble as it came rushing towards me. I couldn’t dodge an attack with that wide of an area, but I really didn’t need to. There was only one tiny portion of that huge spell that mattered, and it was child’s play to open up a little hole in such a large and sloppily put together spell matrix. When Starlight’s attack ended I was standing on a tiny patch of intact ground in the middle of a debris field that included what had once been a house and a portion of the town square. “The buck?!” Starlight’s jaw dropped, then she growled and shook her head. “Doesn’t matter, if magic doesn’t work I’ll just bury you!” She grabbed several of the largest chunks of rubble she could find and hurled them at me. I saw my opening and teleported behind her while her attention was firmly fixed on the spell. By the time she recovered from that critical half-second of stunned surprise I already had my spell coming in, and the blast of raw kinetic force sent her flying, the defensive runes on her armor glowingly fiercely to shield her from any damage. A followup wave of ice shards tore chunks out of her mane before she managed to get a shield up, her teeth clenched from pain and exertion. I saw the perfect opening to unbalance her even more than she already was. “What’s wrong? Don’t tell me that’s the best you’ve got.” “Shut up!” she screamed, pouring more power into her shield. “How’re you doing that?! Those spells don’t make any sense! Don’t think just because you can pull some stupid new magic trick out of your plot means you’re going to win.” “You’ve already lost.” As she overcharged her shield more and more, I took the obvious path and teleported inside of it. A swift kick to the back of the head sent her muzzle crashing into her own shield hard enough to produce the crack of broken cartilage, and I followed it up by snatching away Chainbreaker. Starlight might not have seen it as anything but a useful symbol, but it was also a very good sword. Chainbreaker blurred in a lightning-fast series of cuts and thrusts, hammering away at her armor until the clash of steel on steel became a single long, high-pitched tone. Starlight screamed and dropped her shield, slamming her hoof into the ground and unleashing another shockwave. I teleported clear, sitting back and giving her a moment to realize just how badly she’d lost. Starlight gingerly touched her nose, then quickly withdrew her hoof with a pained wince. Despite her wound adding a faintly nasal tone to her words, she tried to keep up her bravado. “What’s the point of stealing my sword if you can’t even figure out how to stab me where I’m not armored?” “Who said I was trying to get past your armor?” I countered. Starlight blinked and stared down at her armor, finally realizing what I’d been doing: ruining every single one of the defensive runes carved into her elaborate set of ancient armor. There wasn’t a single rune untouched, and while they weren’t completely broken most of them would only offer a fraction of the protection they were supposed to. Starlight let loose with a frustrated scream. “How are you even doing that?! That’s impossible! Were you just bucking with me the whole time, letting me think I actually had a chance when you could’ve ended this whenever you wanted to?! Did you get some sort of sick thrill out of stringing me along?! Well buck you!” Her horn lit up one last time, unleashing a virtual storm of blightfire and hurling it all towards me. The spell was raw and unrefined, nothing but pure hate, anger, and the reckless desire to inflict as much pain and destruction as she possibly could. I held up a hoof and exerted a bit of willpower. All that hate and anger bled away, and the black flames obediently gathered together, concentrating down from a village-consuming blaze into a ball of pure black energy I could hold in a single hoof. Starlight stared incredulously, one of her hooves unconsciously sliding back as sweat appeared on her brow. “That’s not ... no, it doesn’t matter! Blightfire won’t work on me, Sunset!” Despite the brave words, a second later she threw up a shield spell, pouring more and more energy into strengthening the barrier between us. “I know.” I closed my eyes and concentrated on my other hoof, conjuring up a ball of pure light. No, not just light. Anima. The very essence of life and creation itself. I slammed my hooves together, combining the two opposing forces in a brief union that could only end in mutual annihilation. I took every scrap of energy that produced, and hurled it all right at Starlight Glimmer. The fallen unicorn had just enough time to get halfway through shouting something particularly obscene before the attack hit, tearing through her shield and sending her flying into what was left of the inn. The ruined building promptly collapsed on top of her with groan of shattered timber and crumbling masonry. For a moment I wondered if I’d killed the mare. Before I could go up to investigate, the pile of rubble exploded in a wave of sickly orange light, accompanied by an enraged scream. Starlight Glimmer staggered out of the ruins, battered and bloody. Her armor was nothing more than a few scraps of metal barely clinging to her, and one of her eyes seemed to have swollen completely shut. She staggered towards me with murder in her one visible eye, but she barely got halfway to me before her strength gave out and she fell to her knees. “It’s over.” I closed the distance, until I towered over her. “Do yourself a favor and give up. Whoever it is you’re working for, they’re not worth dy—” The rest of my words vanished when I felt a sudden stabbing pain in the back of my skull, but I quickly put it out of my mind. I didn’t have time for a headache in the middle of a fight, and I was ignoring pain from just about everywhere else. Starlight groaned and struggled to haul herself to her hooves, gasping in pain from the effort. “No, it’s not. I’m not going down. Not ever, and especially not to you.” Her horn flickered as she tried to manage a spell, but she didn’t get more than a few weak sparkles. “It’s over,” I repeated. “Just stop this while you still can.” I drew Chainbreaker, ignoring the dull throb in my forehead when I used my magic to hold the sword. “Last time you crossed me, I put a tiny little hole in your horn that would heal up in a couple weeks. Considering it’ll take that long just to extradite you, maybe we need something a bit more lasting.” Starlight’s eyes shot wide open in terror as I closed in on her.“No!” A half-formed spasm of wild magic shot out of her horn, heading straight for me. Normally I would have brushed such a weak attack aside without any effort, but when I tried that the slight headache that had been brewing in the back of my cranium instantly went up to skull-splitting agony, like someone had jammed a red-hot dagger into the back of my head. Starlight’s spell hit and knocked me over, but I barely even noticed that. Hay, I could barely even think past all the pain shooting out of my head. Eventually Starlight’s hooves settled down in front of my face, and her voice cut through the pain. “What’s the matter? You at the end of your rope?” She kicked me in the gut, then waited a few seconds to see if I would react. I wanted nothing more than to rip her apart, but I couldn’t even move. Honestly, the kick barely even registered compared to what was going on my head. “I get it now,” Starlight punctuated her declaration with another kick. “You did something to try and power up enough to take me on, and it backfired.” Her eyes flicked over to Chainbreaker, lying on the ground where I’d dropped it. “Should’ve known, there was no way you could ever come close to me without cheating. So ... what was it you were saying about how you were gonna cut off my horn?” She hefted the blade in her hooves, as though testing its weight. “Really, you should ask me to aim a bit lower. I’d be doing you a favor, compared to—” Whatever she was about to say next vanished when an iron spike shot over me and sank into her haunch. A second later it unleashed an electrical burst, and Starlight fell to the ground yowling in helpless agony, her limbs spasmodically twitching. Strumming stepped over to her, grinning. “Found my anti-warlock throwing spike.”