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// 9 Saving Celestia 
// Story: Escape from Hell 
// by Bronyxy 
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Luna surveyed the tangle of filaments and chose one, following it down until it penetrated Celestia’s coat. She shook off the feeling of revulsion and after taking a breath to calm herself, followed it down further from where it had burrowed through her coat and lodged inside her body. Luna could see the damage that the parasite had done to the body of her sister and was shocked. She also knew that she had to regard it as a completely detached academic exercise, because if she equated the injury to what it was doing to her sister, her mind would have become a maelstrom of conflicting emotions clouding her judgement. She knew that her best chance of defeating this parasite was by keeping a clear head and she couldn’t afford to fail.

Luna followed the filament to its ending which was around her heart and used her magic to anaesthetise it a little further up, and gently teasing the tip away. The parasite didn’t respond, so she continued, repeating the process a little further up, and then a bit further again until she was able to withdraw it from her sister’s body.
“One down” thought Luna, as she went back for the next. This one too had burrowed through her sister’s flesh and wrapped itself around another of her internal organs. Once again, she followed the painstaking process of anaesthetising the filament fraction at a time, before finally pulling it out.

Time and again, she repeated the process until all of the filaments associated with one of the hideous grey tentacles embracing Celestia had been removed, at which point the tentacle began to feel around, devoid of any guidance. Luna allowed herself to feel a transitory sense of triumph as she could now see that she had a process that would work, but was unlikely to be a quick task given the number of tentacles and the number of filaments each had feeding it.

Luna lost track of time, each set of filaments appearing to have attached itself in some way to all of Celestia’s organs. She could see that there was a two way flow along each, and it was clear that whilst the parasite was feeding off Celestia, she was in return being filled with poison. Presumably the ultimate phase of this process would be the death of the host, then the parasite would move on to find a fresh victim. 

The thought was horrendous, and Luna made a mental note to scour the dream realm for any more of these horrid parasites and dispose of them before more minds could become twisted in the living world of Equestria. She would start with those who had criminal tendencies, as perhaps this was the root cause of the disturbance that had turned them the way they were, after all, foals were not born evil and many turned away from society due to some inner disturbance. That would be a big job and she owed it to them all to at least try, but it would have to wait for another day. Right now she had another patient to save.

She was tired, but time did not matter to her as she was in a race to save her sister, and if she stopped for sleep, she was concerned whether the parasite would have time to reform and regrow its connections. No, she had to keep going, no matter what.

Finally she came to the last tentacle. By now, all the others were waving slowly around and gave the impression that Celestia was somehow underwater, resting on a sea anemone, the tentacles ebbing and flowing with some unseen current. The last one was the one she had been dreading most. She followed the filaments as she had with the others and found the first one penetrating through her ear and into her brain itself. She had hoped beyond hope that this would not be the case, and she cursed her luck that it should be connected to the most important organ in the body, especially as she was now at her most exhausted. A thought flashed fleetingly across her mind of what would happen to her sister if she misjudged this most delicate of operations, but pushed it far from her thoughts as she once more got to work, this time with an end in sight.

As the brain was encapsulated by the skull, the filaments had worked their way in through every conceivable entrance from burrowing through the cheeks to threading their way through her eye sockets and her ears. Luna wanted to gag, but kept her calm detachment as she set about freeing her sister one by one from the poisoning filaments. As with all the others she had extracted, they seemed to have a good grasp of equine anatomy and had made a coordinated invasion of every part of her body, the brain being no exception, and no part of it had been left untapped.

Delicately, carefully she worked her way along each in turn, unthreading every one from its intricately arranged path and pulling it clear, fraction at a time, each one delivering her sister one step closer to freedom from the parasite. She felt the weight of both responsibility and tiredness drawing on her and more than once had to double check she was doing it right; she was too close to the end to make a mistake now.

Finally she withdrew the last of the filaments from her sister’s muzzle, looking at all the reddening around the areas now showing clearly from where the others had been withdrawn. The last tentacle drew slowly away and joined the others in waving slowly around looking for its next victim.

Luna looked into Celestia’s dreamscape and found a relaxing garden with a stream running through and pretty flowers all around. This looked ideal, and so she levitated her sister, bringing her over to lay in a safe place where she made her as comfortable as she could before turning her attention back to the grey parasite that she had come to loathe for what it had done. It was exactly where she had left it, but without its host, looked now more like a giant overwatered pot plant. As she had become accustomed to it, she could see clearly how whilst the large grey tentacles were languid in their movement, the filaments which you had to know were there to stand any chance of seeing them, were moving around further and more rapidly, searching out for new prey.

The parasite was dangerous and would ensnare anything that approached it, even just closely enough to determine what it was. In a sense, Luna admired its existence; it lived on an ethereal plane that few could reach and had evolved to become the perfect predator, the only symptom in the living world being the change of the victim’s temperament. Admiration or not, she knew what she must do, and lit her horn, directing power that would have killed it outright with her anger alone.

She flowed her magical energy into it long after it had ceased to exist in this or any other realm, not only to be sure of its destruction, but moreover out of the need to rid herself of the memory of what it had done to her sister.

Suddenly, Celestia’s dreamscape seemed a brighter and happier place, some undefined optimism replacing the oppressive ambience that she had only now come to realise by its absence.

Luna walked back over to her sister and gave her a gentle nuzzle then checked her over. Her vital signs were weak, and her body was covered in lesions from where the parasite had tied itself so indelibly into her. She had no idea how long the attack had lasted or indeed how long it had taken to spread, but knew that it was behind her now. After having made one last check of her patient and her surroundings, she allowed herself to drift back to the real world.