Celestia seemed bigger somehow. Perhaps it was the strange magic of this place at work, but Twilight felt smaller when she compared herself to her mentor—and hero. Dim stood guard near the archway that opened into the passageway of meat, and for this, Twilight was grateful, because it spared her the sight of it. Shining Armor had assumed that strange soldierly posture he had when resting while standing up. Twilight envied him just a little, that he could get comfortable in all this armor while she suffered through every passing moment.
She looked up at the fifth member of their party, Celestia’s hammer. It was silent, imposing, and like Celestia herself, supremely dangerous. The hammer was very much like its owner in so many ways. Large. Commanding. Striking, in more ways than one. Both were beautiful, but the implied threat of violence was very real. While magic would always be Twilight’s go-to solution, she understood the necessity of a bloody big hammer, a lesson hard-learned when fighting a golem in Castle Midnight.
“I worry sometimes,” Twilight said, her voice a soft, almost inaudible whisper. “What sort of hero am I?” Feeling doubtful, she gave her lip a good chew, just for a moment, all while looking up at her mentor. “I mean, I know I’m a hero, I just don’t know what kind of hero I am? So far, I’m not doing a great job at handling this place, am I? My brother had to carry me. My resolve has been tested and seems lacking. Sometimes… sometimes I wish that I was more like my brother… or like some of the heroes I know. Which feels weird, because I know ponies that want to be just like me. How strange, all of this feels.”
She felt foalish, awkward, and vulnerable, but did not stop.
“No matter what I do or how I do it, I could always be doing better. Is that what sets me apart from other ponies? Doing well, that doesn’t feel good enough. I always strive to go above and beyond. There’s just this need to give just a little bit more of myself to any situation. But this situation is strange to me, and I’m not sure which part of myself to give. I’m sorry if I snapped.”
Here, Twilight let go a halfhearted chuckle and then took a step back while saying, “Good talk.”
A mere moment later, something tickled Twilight’s sense of catastrophe.
Her blood froze and she was certain that her heart stopped beating. Beneath her armor, her pelt glazed with icy sweat. Her muscles turned to lead as magical fear robbed her of sensation. Shining Armor was already casting a spell—which spell, she could not make out—and Dim cast a spell on her, which warmed the icy deadness pemeating her flesh.
Recovered somewhat, Twilight brought her magic to bear. Something was coming, it drew closer, and it radiated an aura of dread. She began casting defensive spells, all of them that she could think of, and she cast them on both herself and her companions. Celestia was defenseless, vulnerable in this state. Teeth gritted, Twilight prepared for a spectacular defense.
Cold, creeping doom manifested in the form of a vaguely doglike skull with mismatched antlers that were like some fractal equation. It appeared suddenly, first as a shifting cloud of dust, debris, and filth, and then it gained sobering solidity. Twilight, whose heart was lodged in her throat, somehow kept casting defensive spells. Shining Armor too, was preparing for what was certain to be mortal conflict.
Twilight shouted out a warning: “Draconequus—”
“Demilich!” Dim shouted, finishing off her dire warning.
The chaos and confusion intensified as Celestia stirred, regaining her senses. Twilight’s knees almost buckled as her magic sense was overwhelmed by the demilich’s first spell cast: Hold. It struck Celestia and all movement ceased. Dim cast something that surrounded the demilich with a nimbus of light, and Twilight knew it to be some kind of modified anti-invisibility spell.
Then, much to Twilight’s horror, the demilich turned its attention upon her. Some kind of corruption ray fired from the demilich’s empty eye socket, a type of magic that Twilight had never encountered before. It was like Discord’s magic, but worse, so much worse, and this was fused with necromantic energies the likes of which she had never experienced. Before the beam struck her, Shining Armor raised his shield.
The corruption ray was a fate worse than death.
Twilight knew that, if struck, it would change her from living to undead. Her and her brother’s magics intermingled, and his shield held as the full force of the beam was brought to bear. Failure meant undeath and Twilight could not recall when the stakes had ever been higher. Celestia was held, bound, unable to move. She was probably too powerful to be made undead by the corruptive chaos beam, but Twilight had no doubts that the draconequus demilich would deal with Celestia at its leisure.
“It was a mistake to think that I am not a threat,” Dim said whilst drawing his alchemist’s shotgun stashed within his hat. “What I lack in raw magical power, I more than make up for with raw, creative brutality.”
With that, Dim took aim and fired.
Noxious, toxic green witchfire belched forth from the two massive barrels and eldritch green wibbles flew crazily in loops. There was a thunderous sound—rolling thunder that persisted for several long seconds—and the draconequus demilich bore the brunt of the point-blank blast. Covered in green goo, holes appeared in the skull as the foul eldritch alchemy went to work. Little curls of smoke rose from the many ever-widening holes in the skull. One antler began to sag, drooping, and Twilight felt the demilich’s magic falter ever-so-slightly.
The horrible corruption ray weakened as the demilich’s other eye socket flashed with light. She felt strange magics at work, awful, terrible magics that she feared would pollute her mind from the knowing. Twilight, fearful of the corruptive ray, took a chance. She took advantage of this distraction, this moment of weakness, and she reached out to Celestia.
Dim vanished.
He simply ceased to be.
One moment, he was reloading his alchemist’s shotgun, and the next, he was gone.
Not even a trace of his magic was left behind; he had simply ceased to be. Shrieking, Twilight poured all the magic she could muster into freeing Celestia, while also reinforcing her brother’s shield. The demilich was still dissolving, damaged as it was from Dim’s acidic alchemical assault. Dim was gone, wiped from existence, but his passing would not be in vain.
Still shrieking with rage, with fury, Twilight Sparkle broke Celestia’s bonds.
The massive, mighty hammer swung around as movement returned to Celestia’s body. A great and terrible light enveloped the hammer, the sort of light that purged everything that wasn’t good. The Sun rose in this odd place, and what a terrible Sunrise it was. What awful majesty Celestia radiated as she burst into flames. Her mane and tail, pastel rainbows, transformed into waving, flapping curtains of flame, awash with all of the colours of dawn.
No mercy!
Twilight’s ears rang with the terrible fury of Celestia’s voice. This was no longer Princess Celestia, or Headmistress Celestia the Schoolmarm. This was not her mentor. No, this was something horrendous, something Twilight earnestly wished that she had not witnessed. This was Celestia, the Fury. Cringing, wincing, almost pissing herself, Twilight threw everything she had into her brother’s shield, not to protect them from the demilich’s corruption ray, but so that she and Shining Armor might survive Celestia’s righteous anger.
Everything around Twilight ignited; the very air itself turned into a burning miasma of incandescent plasma as the local electrons went helter-skelter. Whatever danger the demilich posed was now forgotten as Twilight focused all of her concentration upon surviving Celestia. She and her brother stood within the confines of the nuclear furnace and she watched with fascinated horror as Celestia brought the hammer down upon the floating skull.
How was she even seeing anything?
Twilight did not know, nor did she dare question it.
With the hammer a mere inch away from the skull, time slowed. It was as if reality itself dreaded this moment, this impact, these colliding improbabilities. The embodiment of harmonious good was about to strike the manifestation of disharmonious evil; whatever followed was incomprehensible. Unfathomable. Little by little, the hammer plowed through the air, coming closer to the skull, while time slowed more and more. Twilight could feel the raw essence of time itself fleeing the area, fleeing the righteously indignant, angry alicorn, and she feared this moment might last forever.
Or, at least, a very long time.
Reality was sundered; all around Twilight, things looked odd. Mathematical equations danced in the flames—arcane arithmetic that damaged something within her mind when she tried to focus on it. There was no floor beneath her hooves, just a yawning chasm of nothingness. Glyphs, siguls, and arcane marks manifested and danced with the arcane arithmetic. Was she seeing the very fabric of reality? The structures over which reality was stretched?
In the middle of it all, Celestia was a burning orb of fury, and the draconequus demilich—a being of monstrous, inexplicable power, a recondite, abstruse entity—was little more than a common nail. Ages passed, whole epochs. Civilisations rose, fell, and rose again during the time it took for the hammer to close the distance. At a hair’s breadth away, Twilight Sparkle—now a doddering old mare who had lived too many lifetimes—forgot how to breathe.
When the hammer struck, there was a sound, but Twilight’s mind could not comprehend what it was. She felt a ripple, a weird wibble in the flow of magic as the hammer—now resting against the skull—ceased all movement. Twilight felt Magic itself go sour as it tried to determine this cosmic coin toss. Celestia had given her hammer infinite mass, incomprehensible, unfathomable mass, and said hammer had collided with the undead draconequus’ reality-warping powers.
Magic hesitated while determining the outcome, and Twilight had the distinct feeling that Magic was afraid.
She and Magic now shared something in common; a mutual terror of Celestia.
The coin rose and fell. Twilight had a keen awareness of it, even if she could not see it, could not comprehend it, she understood that it existed. Whatever happened next was something that her homeworld could never survive, and Twilight was thankful that it was happening here, in this alien place. Celestia had let go. A minute fraction of her full power had been revealed, and Twilight wished that she had not witnessed it.
It was only here, in this place, a plane outside of the standard boundaries of reality, that Celestia could be herself. Somehow, Twilight held back the crushing, consuming force just beyond her brother’s shield. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what poor Shining Armor was experiencing at this moment, as she couldn’t even begin to comprehend what was going on.
Much to Twilight’s terror, she sensed the coin land upon its edge.
There was a floor beneath her hooves once more. Twilight couldn’t recall it being there a moment ago—but it was here now. She was young again, spry, and the world around her wasn’t on fire. Everything seemed… normal. Celestia was Celestia again, the beautiful alicorn princess pony. Twilight blinked a few times as she tried to recall what had just happened. The hammer and the skull had touched—but what had happened next?
She could not recall.
Of the draconequus demilich skull, there was no sign. Not even dust. There was nothing. Even the memory of it seemed hazy, and Twilight felt her brain rearranging itself, perhaps trying to convince herself that the demilich had never actually existed. Shining Armor was stammering something, words that would not take proper form. Celestia breathed, and the sound was like a blacksmith’s bellows.
Dim was gone.
Try as she might, Twilight could not make heads nor tails of what had just happened.
“Dim…” Celestia was almost, but not quite, frantic. “Dim! Luna will never forgive me! I promised to return home with him. His recovery is her recovery… they recover together. I was supposed to keep Dim safe!”
Twilight did not know what to say and she stood silent, an observer of Celestia’s distress.
“All because I wanted to comfort Moon Rose,” Celestia muttered to herself. “I let my feelings override my common sense. Focus… focus!”
A curious dweomer could be felt, a new magic quite unlike anything that Twilight was familiar with. Clearly, the full extent of Celestia’s spellcasting was unknown, an unexplored frontier. Twilight, somewhat humbled, remembered that her mentor was once the Element of Magic, and this was why. Attuned to her mentor’s spellcraft, Twilight tried to learn what she could.
Meanwhile, Shining Armor gave himself a good shake to restore his battered senses.
“The demilich cast Imprisonment and sent Dim away,” Celestia said, her voice hitching. “Twilight, I have to save him. It will drain me though. The spell causes a great deal of fatigue.”
“I’ll do whatever I can to pick up the slack,” Twilight replied, eager to please.
“Twilight Sparkle… my faithful student.” Celestia’s voice softened. “I’m about to cast a Freedom spell. See if you can learn it, Twilight. Pay attention to the ebb and flow of magic. I trust you to know dimensional magics. This will open new doors for you, Twilight. New possibilities.”
Twilight listened as Celestia began to speak in the strange language of magic…
Dim popped into existence and appeared to be covered in clay. No, not clay, Twilight realised with growing horror, but blood and ash baked into a hard shell. She could smell it, the foulness of it, as Dim’s flaming umbral form continued to cook it. Dim was clearly… not himself, but was now a creature of shadow and flame, cloaked in darkness. He was the destructive terror they all feared he would become.
“Stop doing your balrog impression and tell me you’re okay,” Celestia demanded.
“I was almost a God,” he wheezed.
“Dim! I’m not fooling around with you!” Celestia’s helmet opened, revealing her face, and she bent down snoot-to-snoot with the vizard in his transformed state. “Tell me this hasn’t progressed to permanency!”
“I have learned the sundry terror of the common banana,” he replied.
“So help me, Dim… stop talking crazy! At least try to look like a pony again! I can’t stand this! It’s like losing Luna to darkness all over again!”
Twilight wondered if a mistake had been made, taking Dim so far away from the Crystal Heart.
“Mere seconds after my arrival, they took offense to my skin—”
Mouth agape, her chin against the cold metal of her helmet, Twilight realised where Dim went.
“—and they sought to correct my blasphemous form. I arrived in the midst of a vast hive city… made of meat. They wished to rid me of my skinvelope. Grotesqueries… parodies of life… made of meat. So many of them. The city stretched from horizon to horizon. I began destroying them, but mere destruction was not enough. Sterner measures had to be taken.”
Dim transformed, slowly, little by little, and took on the appearance of a pony once more.
“I had to detonate my banshee bomb,” he said, continuing. “Millions, maybe billions of lives, all gone in an instant. The sound stretched halfway ‘round the globe, if my enchantments worked as I had intended. Beneath my hooves, I felt the planet itself shudder and groan, gasping as it breathed its last. I felt it die…”
Using her wings, Celestia began brushing away the baked clay made of ash and blood.
Twilight, shivering, shuddering, recalled the words said earlier. The progression. Dim had conquered the planet… the planet made of meat. A living planet made of flesh would be quite vulnerable to a banshee’s scream, and a scream heard halfway round the world would be a very bad thing indeed. Now, it would be a rotting hunk of meat, a dead world.
She wondered how long it would take for its door to die.
“I was almost a God—”
“You don’t get to be a god,” Celestia snapped. “Not now, not ever. You get to be a husband and a father. You get to be Luna’s hope. Is that not enough for you, Dim?”
Twilight failed to notice that she was holding her breath.
Dim’s orange tongue was the only colour to be seen on his ashen body. He licked his lips, which caused the baked blood and ash to fall away from around his mouth. After a moment, while looking into Celestia’s eyes, he nodded, and this caused the big worried mother hen to let heave a sigh of relief that almost blew Dim over.
“It is enough,” he whispered.
Celestia lifted her head high. “Moon Rose is close. She’s gone through a door and she is in a safe place. I wasn’t able to get much information, but she seems to be fine and free of her abductors. She took your advice, Twilight Sparkle, and made some new friends. Now, let us hurry so that we might get her and then make our way home.”
At long last, Twilight was able to take a deep breath.