//------------------------------// // The Turning // Story: The Guardian (K)Night // by InfiniteBrony //------------------------------// The world was cold and still and dark, and the full moon hung as silent sentinel to a young but desperately determined pony unknowingly running head long to her destiny. A single pony, with talent, will, and courage, in the right place at the right time. Holding a heart righteous and pure, unable to stand aside and do nothing when she had the power and knowledge to make a difference, no matter the risk or hardship that threatens her. A story as old as time, told time and time again in the tales of countless heroes throughout the world. The birth of an unwilling and unwitting legend. Without looking back, she galloped towards the dreaded Everfree Forest and what was sure to be life-threatening danger. Twilight Sparkle suffered no delusions about what she was doing – she knew full well that this was most definitely not a good idea. The Everfree Forest was dangerous and fraught with peril even at the best of times, let alone at such a late hour when all of the nocturnal hunters emerged from their lairs to hunt and feed. She knew that this whole endeavor was quite frankly insane. Despite that small voice in the back of her head called common sense telling her this was a Bad Idea, she continued on anyways, instead of immediately turning around and fleeing back home – no matter how much she desperately wanted to. She did her best to justify and reassure herself of the necessity of her actions, reminding herself that she was doing it to keep everypony safe, that there was no time to lose, that the letter she sent to the princess would have arrived by now, and million other excuses rushed through her mind as she ran. But the point remained - this entire venture was crazy. Though, as insane as the whole thing was, no matter how much her knees trembled with nervous fear and her breath hitched with trepidation, she couldn’t actually bring herself to turn away from her current path. Her excuses may have been razor thin, but they were still true nonetheless. Something had to be done, and she was perhaps the only one that could really do anything. Not only was she one of the most magically gifted and powerful unicorns born in the past millennium, but she most likely knew more about the fanatical cult calling themselves “The Will of the Eclipse” then anypony alive other than its current leader. Ever since the princess had come to her in secret in the dead of night those many months ago to ask a favor, she had spent a vast amount of her time researching them. Their history, their rituals, their practices, their beliefs, their purpose, absolutely everything. Many a night had been spent in the cramped confines of her hidden study in the basement; slaving away over rolls and rolls of parchment and thick, musty tomes under the light of a single candle burned down to just a stub, and with only dust and eye-strain for company. All just to find out who they really were and what they wanted. And learn about them she did. She really wished she hadn’t. She had discovered a great many things. Terrible, horrifying, evil things. Blackest of magics so foul and twisted that they should have never seen the light of day. The insane minds that created them were summarily executed without exception. Dark and horrible secrets that would be better off left and forgotten in the more gruesome annals of Equestria’s history. Dark and bloody rites and rituals that made a perverse mockery of everything she loved and held dear about magic that made her stomach twist in knots just to read about. Equestria was not the happy paradise it appeared to be on the surface, it had a dark underside that a select rare few knew about - and Twilight Sparkle suddenly found herself regretfully among their number. But if anypony could have handled this information in stride it was the studious unicorn herself. She had searched long and hard for the mysterious ‘Will of the Eclipse’. She followed their trail through the printed word, asking carefully planned questions of suspicious ponies, even spending many nights essentially moonlighting as private investigator, all in order to find the strange cult. And finally, on this very night she had found them. It was far worse than she could have ever imagined. Hastily, she wrote a note to the princess detailing her horrid and dire findings and requesting assistance. Briefly she woke Spike to send it, before galloping from her home and charging headlong into the depths of the Everfree Forest. Now here she was, running down the same familiar path she had traversed once upon a time on a night not quite unlike this one, back when she had first come to Ponyville and met the ponies that would change her entire life. Like then, there was a gathering sense of tension and urgency that hung thick in the air. The forest was eerily calm and silent, the usual baying and howling calls of its inhabitants were absent and the sky was utterly clear of any clouds. Despite how reassuring this would normally be, it only served to give credence to Twilight’s fear that she may already be too late. Offering a quick and desperate prayer to the full moon visible directly overhead, she spurred herself to move ever faster. *~-/^\-~* Thankfully, the path seemed much shorter than she remembered. That, and without a malevolent night goddess doing everything in its power to hinder her at every turn, Twilight quickly made it to her destination: The Ancient Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters. It hadn’t really fared well since she’d seen it last. Once looming and imposing towers, stalwart gates, and immutable stone walls all crumbled in the face of the ravages of time. The rampart overgrowth of the Everfree Forest had mostly reclaimed the majority of the stone work over the years, as the various spells that once held back the forest’s encroachment failed one by one. Most of the small sections of wall still left standing only did so with the aid of a thick net of ivy and vines. Only an old stone sundial in the center of what was once the courtyard stood free of foliage, the carpet of moss, lichen and dead leaves stopping a full foot away from it, creating a perfectly circular island of stone amidst the sea of verdant green and brown. The heavy gathering of fell magics in the air was obvious, already beginning to seep into and affect the surroundings. Dark and heavy storm clouds began to fill the skies above the ancient castle, roiling through the air and thickly pregnant will the promise of gale winds and torrential downpours. A tingling charge filled the air, causing the fur on the back of Twilight’s neck to stand on end and she could swear she smelt a faint scent of ozone somewhere nearby. The skin of her back crawled, and she felt as if countless unseen eyes boring into the back of her head with their hateful gazes from the shadows. Suppressing a frightened shiver, she hurried down the obvious path of disturbed leaves and crushed grass the cultists had left as they passed through earlier. Passing beneath a miraculously still standing arch of stone she crossed the threshold of the castle proper. Hurrying through the ancient stone corridors, Twilight found that fresh torches filled the sconces along the walls, throwing the crumbling stonework all around into sharp, flickering shadows. The ponies she sought had not anticipated their potential discovery, and as such made no effort to hide their tracks in the thick dust and debris that coated nearly every surface. Twilight followed the trail to a small side corridor, half hidden behind a rather large pile of fallen stones. Taking a moment to gather herself, she took in a deep breath and let it out before plunging into the darkness. No bright torches adorned the walls, nor did she dare light her horn for fear of revealing herself to those she followed. Staying close to the wall so as not to become lost, she pressed further into the oppressive gloom. The darkness became even thicker and more oppressive the further she went, pressing against her sharply as if the smother her. Soon it was joined by a cloying, sickening scent that pervaded the air. The reek only got worse the further she went, until it began to burn her nostrils and rake at the inside of her throat as she was forced to breathe it in. Not much later an eerie and off-putting chanting kept in an almost palpably hateful cadence began to suffuse the air, causing her ears to twitch and her fur to bristle along her neck and withers. Thankfully the pressing darkness slowly began to abate as the faint flickering of firelight slowly became visible around a bend in the corridor ahead. Unconsciously picking up the pace in a deeply instinctive effort to flee the dark, she hastened towards it. She turned around the corner — before quickly ducking back into the darkness and losing the contents of her stomach against the wall, the bile burning her throat as it came up. She’d found the cultist ponies – and what was making the smell. Even with the brief glimpse, Twilight’s sharp and analytic mind picked up nearly every detail. It wasn’t a very large room, perhaps serving as some sort of storeroom when the castle was still inhabited. There were a good many hooded and cloaked ponies, at least a dozen of them. They were all standing in a ring of swirling and intricate runes that glowed and flickered in a luminescence like a bright candle, and chanting in a strange and unknown language that grated against her ears. In the center of the concentric rings of looping runes was a small filly, barely old enough to earn her cutie mark, long dead and impaled onto the floor with a beautiful and ornate gold and silver spear. Great tracks of tears fell from her eyes and blood spilling from her mouth. The wound opened in her chest had long since pooled into the grooves of the stone floor, tinting the glowing runes an eerie blue where it touched. The look on her face though, said it all. She was conscious when they did this to her. Fighting hard to hold back her growing rage and rising bile at the sight, Twilight took deep and calming breaths – through her mouth, in a futile effort to avoid the smell – and tried her best to clear her head and think logically. There were at least twelve ponies here. With her prodigious magical strength combined with the self-defense classes her brother made her take (which she was now very grateful for) she might just be able to subdue them. Even so, there was still a factor of the unknown here. This was a very important and powerful ritual, and she wouldn’t be surprised if they had taken some sort of precautionary measure to insure its safety and prevent tampering. In addition, Twilight would have to be careful about destabilizing the ritual’s rune structure; there was no real telling what would happen if this one was interrupted or completed incorrectly. It could do anything from fizzle out and fade away, to suddenly and violently release all the pent up energy being used in harsh whiplash of concussive magical force; bringing what was left of the castle down on top of them. At least the cultists had yet to see her; so Twilight still had the element of surprise on her side. As Twilight stood thinking, the light of the runes turned to a harsh and pulsating, almost ultra-violet blue incandescence and the voices rose to a tumultuous and fevered pitch. Cringing, she cursed silently – the ritual was nearly complete, and it seemed that she had run out of time and options. The best she could do to stop them now was to rush in there and disrupt the ring of glyphs; thus destroying the ritual components and ritual in turn. It wasn’t a great option, but it was the best she had. Barring that, all that was left was to go for broke and charge in, horn blazing and consequences be damned. She desperately wished she wouldn’t have to do the later. There was the danger to herself, sure, but the danger to others was even greater. Even if they were evil, foal-murdering monsters they were still ponies; everything she’d ever been taught about magic and even her very nature rebelled at the thought of using her greatest gift to harm another. She needed to act fast. Judging by the cultists’ fevered tempo and the rapid pulsing of the lights, the ceremony would be complete any moment now. After that, there would be nothing she could do to stop anypony else from ending up like the poor filly in the center of the chamber or worse. She began channeling as much magic as she dared into her horn and held it there without shaping it. Hopefully this could all be over before it even began, all it would take was one well-placed burst of energy to gouge out the stone and utterly ruin the carefully carved sigils in the floor. Taking a moment to dampen the light of her horn and utter a silent prayer, she took a deep breath, steeled herself, and turned the corner, stalking silently towards the group of insidious ponies… … and promptly stepped on a thin and unseen wire strung across the doorway, activating some unseen mechanism with a jingle of bells and a sharp crack. Every head in the room immediately snapped to her as she held utterly still in stunned surprise. For a single moment all was quiet and utterly motionless, and even her heart held still as she frantically cursed her abominable luck. And then everything seemed to happen at once. All together, the dozen or so cultists charged her in a single furious rush, as a larger hooded figure in the back of the room shouted, “Get her!” Four pegasi barely managed to take wing in the cramped space of the stone room while four more earth ponies blitzed towards her as yet another four unicorns began to channel their magic into their horns in preparation to cast some sort of spell. Twilight immediately loosened the stored magical energy in her horn at the circle, hoping to destroy it early so she could take care of the cultist ponies at her own pace without having to worry about the ritual as well. She failed however, as a pegasus that was either particularly brave or just plain stupid dove into the path of the beam, taking the full hit and sparing the ring of runes. She was hurled backwards from the force of the hit, colliding with a charging earth pony and sending them both across the room to crash into the far wall with a loud and meaty thud. Judging by the unnatural angle at which their entangled limbs were bent, Twilight felt it safe to assume that they weren’t going to rejoin the fight, even as she fought down her gorge at the sight. Despite knowing their nefarious purpose she hoped that she hadn’t done any permanent damage. Unfortunately, there were still at least ten other ponies in the fray who were all hell-bent on stopping her. And most likely inflicting violent bodily harm upon her. The four unicorns chose that moment to unleash the spells they had charged, sending various blasts of energy and force streaking towards her and forcing her to snap out of her thoughts of concern towards the two downed cultists and concentrate on stopping the rest of them. Focus, Twilight, she thought to herself. Despite how much the sudden burst of magic use had winded her, she still managed to conjure up a transparent wall of lavender energy in front of herself on near reflex just as the hostile spells and nearest of the earth ponies reached her. The spells simply bounced off, ricocheting wildly into the walls and ceiling, while the earth pony crashed into the magically solid wall with a heavy thud. He rebounded off of it and stumbled about dazedly, tripping up a second pony that was hot on his heels. Rapidly backpedaling away from the two of them, Twilight slammed the magic barrier down on top of them both before they had a chance to recover and quickly sealed its edges to the floor, trapping the two ponies in a small dome of her magical energy. The remaining pegasi all began to dive-bomb her continuously, forcing her to pay attention to them and focus her concentration and spells upward as the unicorns charged up their horns again for a second barrage. She managed to keep them away from her sides with several waves of magical energy, which forced them to attack her head on and gave her enough time to form small shields to meet their steel-shod hooves. She couldn’t keep it up indefinitely though, the massive amounts of magic and concentration she’d already used in such a quick time was beginning to take its toll faster than she’d ever experienced before, her horn burning hot and her eyes beginning to cross. As focused as she was on fending of the miniature aerial assault, Twilight didn’t notice the final earth pony mare sneaking up behind her until the mare had pounced onto her back and tried to pin her in place as the cultist unicorns released another volley of magic. Thinking quickly, Twilight tore the pony from her back with her telekinesis and heaved her into the path of the unicorns’ spells. They blasted full-force into the impromptu projectile, causing the pony’s body to spasm and lock up and utter an agonized squawk through the clenched muscles of her throat. Twilight couldn’t help but cringe at the sight but didn’t think on it for long as two of the pegasi swooped down to catch her before she could land in the center of the room to disrupt the circle. Twilight fired a magical bolt of her own at one of them, only for him to quickly dodge out of the way. She tried again and again, only for him to prove increasingly more nimble and dexterous as he dodged each and every bolt, until Twilight became desperate enough to simply swat him out of the air with a massive wall of telekinetic force, using perhaps more strength than was necessary as he hit the wall with a loud crunch and fell to the floor in a still heap. Twilight swallowed thickly and quickly turned away from the sight. Meanwhile, the unicorns seemed to have wizened up and had been busy pooling their power together into a single massive charge. The two pegasi that were left swooped in on either side of her to try and catch her in a pincer-style attack. She waited until they were a scant few inches away from her and quickly teleported a few feet backwards, causing the both of them to collide head-on, rendering them both unconscious in what would have been a rather comical display in any other circumstances. The unicorns finally unleashed their conjoined energy, sending a massive blast of energy hurtling towards her. Knowing she wouldn’t be able to block such a large burst of magic effectively, she instead gripped it in her own magic field. With a pained gasp and a burning horn, she flung the malevolent energy aside, where it blasted a hole in the stone wall at least a foot wide and twice as deep. Knowing that every moment was precious, Twilight gripped all of their horns in her own magic field, and violently forced her own magic into them. For the several seconds Twilight locked her power with their own, she battled her opponents for hours across their mindscapes. One by one they fell, overwhelmed by the foreign magic Twilight pumped into them. Finally they all lie on the ground with bleeding eyes and ears, and with purple sparks dancing over their skin. Twilight briefly joined them on the ground as the strength left her legs, her panting breaths sharp in her lungs, the rancid air clawing at her parched throat. Her entire body started trembling and a single runnel of blood leaked from her left nostril. She could see the small amount of light emitting from her horn as it glowed cherry red from the heat, and smell the acrid stench as its tip smoked and burned. This wasn’t good, she had used up just about all of the magic she had left with that last gambit and was in the latter stage of Magical Fatigue. After several moments to catch her breath, she shakily rose to her hooves again, wiping the bit of blood from her muzzle and panting deeply. Having finally dealt with everypony else, she at last turned to the figure at the far end of the room. His hood was thrown back, revealing wild eyes dilated to pinpricks darting madly back and forth and an utterly psychotic grin stretching from ear to ear and almost splitting his face in two. His features were thrown into twisted and demonic relief in the strange and alien glow of the runes before him. He held one erratically twitching hoof above the glyphs in front of him as spoke. “You… you’re one of them aren’t you?! Huh, well?! Don’t lie to me!” he called to her, one corner of his eye rapidly twitching as he spoke. Caught off guard, Twilight said nothing, a bit disturbed by just how insane the pony seemed to be. “No, yes, no? Oh… well, it doesn’t matter anymore, nothing does, hehe. Yes, yes, you’re too late now, far, far too late! The heavens shall fall, desecrator! The heavens shall fall!” Stomping his hoof down the sigils flashed once on contact and a great shockwave rumbled around the stone chamber. With a rush of air and a peal of steel on steel, a blaze as black as midnight grew up the cultist’s leg and engulfed him in almost less time than it took for Twilight to blink. The fire branched out, clawing through the air and along the floors and walls, ensnaring the other cultists and the young filly’s body where they lay as well. The dark flames consumed them voraciously; in mere moments leaving nothing but ashes and a faint echo of mad laughter. The ash scattered on an invisible wind as the ground began to shake and the stone beneath Twilight’s hooves began to split and crack. Screeching, she leapt to the relative safety of one of the room’s corners and watched helplessly horror as the ponies died all around her and everything fell apart. Slowly the ultraviolet luminescence of the runes faded away to emerald flames as a demonic miasma began to seep through the cracks in the floor, filling the room with fell black mists. The air was filled with a horrific cacophony, as if some great beast were ripping apart a mountain as the very space itself above the runic circle was rent in twain. Gnashing fangs, crooked claws, and lashing tentacles all reached through the tear in space before dissolving away into shadows, filling the air with their tortured baying and furious howling. Eyes wide with horrid realization and panicked fear, Twilight leapt from her small corner in the room towards the portal, acting on pure adrenaline and instinct. Landing just before it, she immediately turned and lashed out with her magic, pushing with everything she had. Heaving and straining with the last scraps of her strength and magic she had left, she tried desperately to force shut the dimensional doorway – only to fail. It was a futile effort, for no matter hard she struggled she could barely slow its advance, let alone force it to recede. Shedding helpless tears she continued anyways, casting spell after spell, blowing through her Magical Fatigue and even blitzing right into Magical Exhaustion. The drops of crimson from her nose became a stream and blood began to join the tears running down her face. Even her ears and horn began to seep blood as her body began to fail her. Her knees began to tremble and shake as the strength left them, leaving her standing only through sheer force of will. Her breath came in sharp gasps, her head felt light but pounded and throbbed painfully in time with the beating of her heart, and her vision began to fade and blacken at the corners. Despite all of this she continued struggling – she couldn’t afford to stop or give up, for if she failed here then all of Equestria could be in danger. Finally, Twilight simply could struggle no more, her magic had run out utterly and completely. Collapsing to her knees as her will began to falter she looked to the portal in dismay. It swelled and throbbed, pulsing with the press of alien and demonic bodies as they pushed and fought to escape and invade. More bloody tears fell as she looked upon it in dismay. She was tired, so very tired. She wanted nothing more than to just go home, crawl into bed and sleep for the next three days straight. She never wanted this. She never wanted to skulk through the night, suspecting her friends and neighbors of being part of some cultist conspiracy. She never wanted to sneak about in a forest and fighting evil ponies. She missed being able to sleep at night without waking up screaming in a cold sweat as she dreamed of dark and horrible things. But mostly – she missed her friends. Twilight's mind began to wander as it started to shut down. Hazy memories of happier times appeared in her mind along with visions of things she wished to have done. As her fading consciousness played out her wants, another image came to the forefront. A small filly, laying in the center of a circle of runes and run through with a large spear as she bled onto the cold stone. More images soon followed it. Monsters running rampant in the streets. Sweet Apple Acres ablaze. Carousel Boutique crushed and in ruins. Her friends living on the streets. Ponyville cold, lonely and abandoned. Her imagination tortured her with visions of the nameless filly, but replaced her face with that of Apple Bloom or Sweetie Belle. Or Spike. Gritting her teeth, Twilight steeled herself and shakily struggled to her hooves once again. And then she broke one of the first and foremost rules of magic: Never cast in Magical Depletion. Closing her eyes, she began to focus and reached deep within herself, deeper than she ever had before. It took her a moment but she soon found what she was looking for: the source of all her magic – her soul. Slowly, carefully, she called upon it, drawing on its strength and letting it flow into her. Drawing her life-force into her horn to substitute for her spent magic, it began to glow. Instead of the usual lavender aura, the light was deeper somehow, richer and fuller with a shiny pearlescence. It waxed and waned with her heartbeat. It shone from the inside of her horn instead of the usual covering aura and filled her with a welcome warmth. Channeling as much of her life essence as she dared, she cast one final desperate spell. Immediately the soothing warmth of her soul receded and left her in a rush, leaving her trembling in cold and a horrible empty hollowness. She collapsed onto her side, her strength gone, even as the strange soul-light still filled her horn and her spell streaked towards the portal. The spell-bolt struck the rent in space and the room was filled with pearly light as massive chains of solid energy lashed out and snaked around it until it was completely ensnared. After a few tense moments, the portal’s writhing and heaving motions began to slow and, after a moment, ceased altogether. After several seconds of stillness and silence, Twilight allowed herself a small and tentative but hopeful smile… … only for the chains to shatter. The portal surged explosively outwards in every direction, filling the room with a tremor of dark energy. Horrid and monstrous shadows and incorporeal forms leapt from its depths and passed through the stone walls like so many ghosts, fleeing to roam and stalk Equestria as they saw fit. Not having the strength to do much more, Twilight could only lift her head and stare in horror and despair at her greatest failure. After several long minutes that lasted an eternity the flow of the countless shadowy creatures began to slow and cease, and the portal receded as well, but not before two final figures emerged as well. They were huge and grotesque, tall enough to tower over even Princess Celestia, their forms twisted and freakish mockeries of both life and physiology. One was almost normal, its body like that of a chestnut coated pony, bigger than anypony she’d ever seen, with hooves the almost the size of her head and an ebon colored tail. All of this served only to make its lack of a proper neck and head even more freakish. Where such features would normally be found on any other pony was the beginnings of another body entirely. It reminded Twilight of nothing more than the upper half of a deformed minotaur; with its sparse and patchy coat of hair, bulging and rippling musculature, flattened and muzzle-less face, sharpened teeth and hornless head. The portal finally closed completely as the two hideous monstrosities stepped out to it and took their first breaths of Equestrian air. The second beast was even more hideous, standing tall and slender on its hind legs. Its fore-limbs looked long, thin and powerful; hanging down to its knees and each ending in several talon-tip digits. Its face was as flat as its companion’s, with a sharp chin and large maw lined with several teeth and serrated fangs alike, a large upturned nose, and a pair of large and pointed dagger-like ears on either side of its head. A pair of massive, leathery, membranous wings lay draped around its body, covering it like a cloak. Its flesh was pale as the moon and utterly hairless, stretched taut against its frame and bearing the sickly white pallor of a corpse. Their claws and hooves both scraped against the stone floor as they walked forward and took in the sight before them. Bright and intelligent green eyes darted back and forth from beneath a shaggy mop of thick hair atop the head of the pony/minotaur hybrid as it absentmindedly rubbed the haft of the small stone throwing-ax slung through the thick leather belt around its waist. The two-legged one just stalked over to her and lifted her part way off the ground by a fistful of her mane. It spoke with a wheezy and rasping voice that made Twilight think of sandpaper and dust as it licked off some of the blood and tears on her cheek with a long, black, forked tongue, and said, “Well just look at what we have here, they left us an offering.” It smiled, its fangs glinting slightly in the emerald firelight and a trace amount of Twilight’s blood hanging in the corner of its mouth. It proceeded to lick away any of her blood where it found it, its cold and rasping tongue dancing across her suddenly burning flesh, calling to mind countless unwanted images of all manner of things that wiggled and squirmed under-hoof in the dead of night, making her tremble in fear and disgust. As Twilight was busy trying keep her heart from leaping into her throat, the hybrid spoke a few words in a language she didn’t recognize in a voice that was surprisingly pleasant, sounding like the chirping of birds and the soft crunching of gravel under-hoof. The pale monster finished licking away the blood from her face before turning to look at the hybrid. “I understand your caution but it is misplaced. Yes, I’ve already felt it, and besides, there’s no one around besides us and the little toy here,” it said, shaking her slightly in emphasis. She began to tremble even harder, shivering uncontrollably. The hybrid thing just frowned, crossing its arms and stomping a fore hoof twice. The pale one rolled its eyes before turning back to her and smiling even wider. It leaned into her, pressing its black lips against the nape of her neck, its rotted smelling breath ruffling the fine hairs of her coat, and slowly it started to add pressure and open its mouth. Twilight’s eyes grew even wider, and she began to thrash in terror, and in a near instinctual knee-jerk reaction she tried to force magic through her still-glowing horn to push it off of her. Instead of any sort of helpful spell or telekinetic force, her utter lack of magical reserves caused several pearlescent sparks of life energy to sputter from her horn. Each of the sparks fluttered and danced through the air like the embers of a dying fire cast adrift on the wind. Instead of simply fading and guttering out like simple motes of light, they fell on the pale creature, burning and scalding its flesh like a hot iron wherever they touched. The monster gave a tinny shriek of agony and tossed her bodily across the room and into the far wall by her hair with a flick of its wrist. She hit the wall forcefully and there was a dull crack somewhere inside her body, adding to her already numerous aches and pains. She lay on the ground in a broken and battered heap for several moments. Slowly and carefully, the pale creature stalked over to her once more, its face held in a tight grimace of contained rage. It gripped her around her throat and lifted her off the ground entirely, bringing her face-to-face with itself and boring into her with its own slit and predatory eyes. “You,” it hissed from between teeth grit in pain and anger, “have just made a very grave mistake. Your last mistake.” Throwing her to the stone floor it fell atop her, pinning her to the ground with its arms and surprisingly heavy body weight. It opened its mouth unnaturally wide, distending its jaw until its maw seemed open wide enough to swallow her head whole. Its jutting fangs elongated even further, daggers of bone growing and twisting from its maw. Saliva dripped from their gleaming tips as it stared at her with a hungry glint in its eyes. Then, quicker than her eye could follow, its head whipped forward, its fangs sinking deeply into her soft and tender flesh where her leg and shoulder met. Twilight screamed. Loudly. The pain was incredible and indescribable, shooting through her body in burning lances of hot agony. Gratuitous amounts of blood welled and poured from the wound, pooling thickly on the ground in seconds. She could feel every bit of it as her nerves screamed at her and her muscle and flesh separated from her body as the pale monster slowly brought its jaws together. With a twist of its head and a sharp jerk the beast tore away its mouthful of her meat, causing her to instantly lose all feeling in her leg and harsh lines of scarlet to shoot all over the walls. The monster swallowed audibly, its body giving a pleasant shudder as the hunk of her flesh slid down its throat. It turned to her and smiled, a glazed look in its eyes and her blood painting the lower half of its face crimson. Twilight trembled and shook even harder, beginning her screaming anew. The monster just gave a hollow laugh before pressing its mouth against her gaping wound, completely ignoring her fervent struggles and panicked thrashing as it ecstatically guzzled her life’s blood. Twilight pushed and groaned and heaved, thrashing wildly and desperately doing everything should the get the terrifying monster off of her. However, even with her consuming terror and panicked strength, the creature held fast, its tight grip like iron. She even tried desperately to use magic to force it off of her, forcing and channeling so much of her life energy that almost her entire essence resided in her horn, but the constant and mind-numbing agony drove out any thought or concentration she might have had and she could no more cast a spell than force the thing off her with her own limbs. Her limbs began to grow cold, her screams petering out and her vision going black. Twilight’s panic surged, and she tried one final, desperate act. Grunting and straining, she channeled as much of her life-force into her horn as she could, pushing until it felt as if her very soul itself was inside the spiraled edifice. Her horn shone with a pearlescent light so bright it hurt to gaze upon and burned like somepony was shoving spikes of glowing coals into her skull. Ignoring her, the monstrosity pulled back for another bite. Acting quickly, she twisted her neck around and managed to gore the pale monster though the chest, entering right through its heart and exiting next to its spine. For a single, eternally long moment – time seemed to stop. And then the world exploded. There was a great flash of blinding light and a rush of heat, as a sound not unlike the chiming of an enormous bell filled the air. For a moment the entire chamber was brightly illuminated, revealing a scene held in stunned silence. The light slowly faded, and the world seemed to rush in once more. The pale monster took its mouth off of her wound, leaving it to drip and spill blood intermittently, and with shaking and trembling hands it carefully removed itself from her horn. As soon as it was free it stumbled several large strides backwards and fell to its knees, clutching tightly at the mortal wound. Pulling its hands away, it just starred confusedly at the thick black blood staining them, as well as the pulsating and shifting multifaceted orb of pearly light that lingered in the wound, connected to Twilight’s horn by faded, wispy threads of energy. Twilight had collapsed completely as soon as she had thrust her horn, her heart and lungs ceasing. The last thing she saw as her world faded to cold and black was the creature looking at her, its questioning gaze full of confusion and fear. *~-/^\-~* The creature watched as the strange little thing that was supposed to be its meal sank into its deathly sleep. The monster’s face bore an expression of fear and confusion, and it opened its mouth to speak, but instead of words only a large gush of its own semi-congealed black blood flowed out its throat and dribbled down its chin. Slowly, it reached a trembling and questioning hand towards her as its legs blackened and turned to ash beneath it. It kept reaching for her, and fell forward with a soft thud, disturbing the ash that was its legs and causing them to lose their shape and scatter across the floor. The creature used its arms to pull itself along and crawl across the floor towards her, the blackness spreading and turning its body to ash as it did. Soon, the ashen corruption reached the creature’s shoulders, and it could go no further. Reaching for her with its right arm one last time, the creature’s expression slowly shifting from confused horror to comprehension and panic. Its raised arm fell to the floor one last time as the rest of its body returned to the dust and ash of whence it came. The ashes and dust that was once the pale creature stirred, and from them rose wisps of ghostly sanguine light. Some began to dissipate, but most coiled and coalesced within and around the pearlescent trails of lavender light that was already there. They intermingled, until they merged completely, leaving only wisp and fragments of pearlescent crimson. The light slowly receded into Twilight’s horn, causing her whole body to tremble as she drew in a large gasp of air. And then, she began to change. Mouth stretched in a silent scream, her body twitched and jerked, scarlet sparks dancing across her skin as loud cracks and pops resounded through the stone room. The shifting of bones, muscle and sinew was clearly visible beneath her flesh, writhing as if thousands small crawling things were wriggling just beneath the surface of her flesh. Her ribcage briefly collapsed, before expanding larger than it was before, the organs beneath it shifting and changing, some growing and others shrinking, some disappearing all together and new ones growing in to take their place. Her heart grew to almost twice its original size, growing new ventricles, and her lungs shrank. All the blood in her veins boiled, before being replenished and boiled away again, over and over. Her joints ripped themselves out of their sockets, twisting and turning, growing newer, stronger, more elastic sinews before violently popping back into place. Her bones expanded, growing longer, grinding themselves to dust as they broke and shattered and formed and reformed, growing denser and stronger. The edges of the gaping wound in her shoulder wriggled and writhed, shifting and bulging, growing together until there wasn’t a trace of it left. All the muscles in her body trembled as they grew and ripped and stretched, folding in on themselves over and over, growing denser and denser. Her skin began to bubble and boil, burning and sloughing off her frame in great liquid sheets as new, thicker, stronger flesh and veins, lustrous fur and gossamer hair grew over her muscle and bone. Her horn cracked and splintered and shattered, the slivers of bone and blood being pushed out as new, longer, sharper horn thrust its way out of her skull in its place. Her teeth cracked and ground to dust, falling out of her mouth as new, stronger, sharper ones took their place, with the addition of new fangs hanging from her upper jaw. Her muzzle extended to accommodate its new occupants, as did her torso and limbs. Slowly, the many loud and grotesque noises of Twilight’s body ripping itself apart and putting itself back together again abated, leaving the room in silence. With a shuddering gasp, her new, sharper ears twitched to and fro, as eyes blearily opened, revealing that they too had been changed. The irises had greatly darkened and the pupils were no more than vertical slits. For a moment, everything was silent. Slowly, the creature that was once Twilight rose to her hooves with sharp, jerky, methodical motions. With careful movements, she turned to the hybrid creature across the room, who eyed her with a mask of disgust, curiosity and terror. Swiftly, it dropped to its knees, bowing its head to her and uttering several lyrical words that were neither heeded nor understood. She just stared on impassively, uncaring and uncomprehending. Shifting into a crouch, her eyes began to glow faintly red. Any manner of logic or reason was long since gone, leaving only sharp, all-consuming hunger in its wake. Opening her jaw incredibly wide until it almost came unhinged, she let out a wailing shriek of an unnatural pitch that should never have come from any sort of equine throat. Pushing against the ground she pounced, leaping through the air and clearing the distance of the entire room in a single bound. The hybrid gave a startled yelp, shooting to its hooves and swung at her with a massive fist, connecting and sending her flying. She hit the wall with enough force to crack the stone, and fell dazedly to the ground, a little hurt but undeterred. Staying low to the ground, she rushed it again, only for it to swing wildly at her with its small stone ax, interrupting her wild charge. She bobbed and weaved, avoiding most of the panicked swings, but the beast managed to get lucky and the tip of the stone blade caught her skull, opening a furrow of flesh right above her eyes that instantly began to weep blood. She rushed it again, sliding under its reach with her belly against the floor and coming up beneath the hybrid’s body. Snarling, she jabbed her sharpened horn upwards, tearing easily through the beast’s flesh. She was however stopped shy of eviscerating it by a near solid wall of muscle. Yowling in pain, the hybrid leapt backwards, reaching down and grabbing her by the waist and lifting her up. Twilight lashed out and easily sank her fangs into the soft flesh of its wrist. As she suckled greedily at the crimson rush that flowed from the wound, the beast howled in both pain and fear, flinging her away against the far wall. Before she could recover from her daze, the beast desperately hurled its stone ax at her. Barely managing to avoid dismemberment, the ax still hit her in the side, carving a deep and jagged trench in her flesh, muscle and bone. Enraged at the sight of her grievous wound, she charged towards the lumbering giant. Finally having stopped panicking, it anticipated this and reached out with its arm in an attempt to grab her, only for her to leap on top of the appendage. Using her momentum, she craned her head forward, and drove her horn straight into its eye. Howling in agony, it reached up to clutch at the now ruined socket, just as Twilight used the momentary distraction to jump onto the beasts back. As it bellowed and trashed about, she reached up and sank her fangs deeply into the side of its neck. Clamping down tightly, she gave a single sharp twist, and completely tore the beast’s throat out. Blood sprayed everywhere, coating the stone walls, floor and even roof in a thick crimson flood. Giving a final pained, panicked, and rasping gurgle, the monster collapsed to its knees, clutching the mortal wound in a vain and instinctive attempt to stem the flow of precious fluid. Not even waiting for the beast to finish dying, Twilight immediately set her muzzle against what was once the monster’s throat and began to guzzle down the flow like a sweet nectar. She devoured her hard won prize violently and greedily, and so entrapped was she in doing so that she did not notice at first that she was no longer alone. *~-/^\-~* Standing in the doorway on the other side of the room was none other than the Princess of the Night herself, flanked on either side by a pair of her bat-winged personal nocturnal guard. Casting her gaze about the room, Princess Luna surveyed the blood and carnage with a growing sense of horror, her expression mirrored and magnified by her entourage. Swallowing several times to get the taste of rising bile out of her mouth, she spoke in a quivering voice, “Twilight Sparkle, we came as soon as we received thy letter of summons. Please, tell us just what in the Pit’s name… has... happened…” The lunar princess trailed off into silence as she spied the state of the pony she spoke to, with her blood-stained muzzle and feral, predatory eyes. Staring in shock, the princess worked her mouth open and closed several times before she could properly articulate her thoughts. Blinking owlishly and holding back a dry heave, she quietly asked, “What has happened here, young Twi—“ Before she could finish her sentence however, she was interrupted by Twilight leaping through the air towards her. Her fangs were bared in an animalistic snarl as she loosed an utterly terrifying screech of a volume that had no right coming from such a small pony. Luna reflexively up a shield of magic energy which Twilight collided with head-first, rebounding off of it. Both of the nocturnal guards surged forward and pinned her to the ground with their full weight, along with Luna’s telekinetic assistance. Twilight thrashed and struggled futilely against her bonds, snapping at Luna with her sharp fangs. The princess could only stare at her sister’s beloved student in disbelief. Her disbelief lasted only momentarily though, as a sudden realization struck her. She lowered her horn and touched it against Twilight’s, desperately using her magic to search and look through her, hoping and praying that she didn’t find what she was looking for. Her hopes were dashed and crushed almost instantly. Tears of pity and self-loathing filled her eyes, and after a moment she blinked them away and spoke softly to the struggling pony. “Oh, Twilight… We are sorry. So very, very sorry. We should have left sooner, should have flown faster, should have… have…” Tears threatened to spill from Luna’s eyes as she spoke, and she had to struggle to swallow the lump in her throat. “Thou doth not deserve… deserve this…” Gently, Luna cast a simple clarity spell on Twilight, straining to provide enough power to break through to her. Slowly, the all-consuming hunger and instinct that drove Twilight began to recede, leaving her mind a confused and clouded mess as her eyes began to lighten and dilate to a more rounded state, her body shrinking and rounding out. Disorientated, she began to struggle weakly, letting out plantative and unintelligible mewls and grunts. “Hush now, Twilight. It is time for you to rest. You will need it for what is to come,” Luna whispered soothingly, her face bearing a look full of compassion. Twilight tried to reach out to her and respond, but whatever dregs of adrenaline that had been fueling her body finally gave out. Blackness crept around the corners of her vision, and she felt herself begin to drift away, her mind filled with images of fangs and splashes of crimson.