Ponies had begun to arrive beneath the shield. They were thralls, or had been, some of them for longer than they could remember, a few for lifetimes that far exceeded those of any family members they might have had. Now, though, they were finally released; the instant they stepped through the dome, their masks fell away and they stood confused and terrified in the shadow of the Heart of Darkness.
Through the field hospitals, medics, and wandering ex-thralls, ponies barely noticed a pair pushing through in the opposite direction. One terrified them, and they ducked out of her way, because they recognized the armor of the Blue Knight. The other, though, was Holder Heartfelt, and nopony much cared.
Piwancha cared, though. She could not see well through the shield, but out of sheer instinct she knew that it was a complete and utter- -and literal- -war zone outside. She had no idea what she would find, but knew that it would not be good.
And yet Holder never slowed. In fact, he was oddly fast, no doubt due to the influence of the sword still perched on his back. That made Piwancha exceedingly nervous. If he was willing to run into the mad chaos outside the dome, then she could not help but wonder what horrors he was leaving behind to do so.
She could at least content herself with the view. For a pony was ostensibly a coward, he was remarkably muscular in his bucking components.
Not that there was much time. She saw the shield looming in the distance and, even without her horn, she could hear it buzzing.
“You know the access code, right?” she shouted.
“No. I don’t need to. Grab onto my back!”
Piwancha blushed, but did as was recommended to her. She was not sure why.
Despite being wrapped in power armor- -and consequently being quite heavy- -Holder did not even slow in the slightest. Nor did he slow when the buzzing magical energy of the dome became almost deafening.
“We can’t get through that!” cried Piwancha, holding tight. “We’ll fry!”
“We don’t need to go through it! Hold your breath!”
Holder jumped into the air, and Piwancha held her breath. As Holder fell, the ground gave way beneath him. In an instant he was tunneling at such a high speed that he seemed to be swimming through solid rock. Then he emerged on the far side of the shield. It was a dome, not a sphere; he had tunneled beneath it.
“Come on, let’s go!”
Piwancha slid off his back and looked up in horror at the wreckage around her. It was worse than she had thought.
Thirteen’s wings made a distinct buzzing sound as she pulled Penumbra across the sky. Her horn was lit, and she was casting a strange and foreign spell, lighting the way with a strange glow that seemed to penetrate far deeper than it ought to have. The windigoes saw her, but did not approach. Penumbra eyed them carefully, though. They were beautiful creatures, but she understood from her training that they were dangerous indeed.
The situation below was grim. Very little remained of the city, and what was left was little more than blasted ruins and shattered golems. The snow and ice of Hyperborea were already starting to overtake it. In some places, the war still raged, and explosions could be heard at the very edge of the Citadel’s shield. Ponies were still fighting, even though hope was failing. This made Penumbra swell with pride- -but also deeply ashamed of her own failure.
Above her, the sun had risen, but it was different. Instead of pale and hidden behind endless clouds, it was clearly visible, a cruel red sphere dominating most of the sky, its surface coated with burning storms that the old astronomers had claimed were larger than entire planets. Penumbra did not know why it was like that, or what it meant; Eternity was gone, and Thirteen would not speak. Yet in her heart, she knew that something terrible had happened, and would happen- -and that it was all because of her.
The situation was dire, but the shield still held. All was not lost. The idea had never been to win. It had simply been to buy time. And that was still the mission- -even if Penumbra was not exactly sure of what it would accomplish at this point.
Penumbra suddenly felt herself slipping from Thirteen’s grasp. Their altitude took a dip as well, and when Penumbra looked up, Thirteen immediately tightened her grasp again. She had apparently nodded off, if only for a moment.
It of course made sense, although Penumbra had not truly realized it until this moment. As skilled as she was, Thirteen only had the magical potential of a normal unicorn. Her advanced spells had drained her, and done so quickly- -not to mention her apparent resurrection.
“Can we land?” asked Penumbra.
Thirteen said nothing, but her altitude decreased. As it did, the spell that bound her wings began to fade and they separated into fine silvery thread. When Thirteen finally struck the snow, she collapsed to her knees.
“Thirteen, are you alright?”
Thirteen extended one of her front hooves, tapping at a space on her armor in a complex pattern. As she extended her leg, a hologram appeared over it. A hologram resembling a single, stylized eye.
“Authorization accepted,” said a voice. It was the same one that had spoken before, when Thirteen had been injured. “Host-Operator diagnostic condition: critical metabolic depletion, Resurrection sickness, and temporal shear strain to the extremities, bones, and internal organs. Attempting to correct...”
The hologram vanished as Thirteen tried to stand. Penumbra went to her side and helped support her.
“Your armor. I don’t think it’s power armor, but it’s magic, right? Or some kind of machine? Is it enough to keep you going?”
Thirteen did not answer. It was as if Penumbra was not even there. But her grip became tighter. Penumbra took that as an affirmative.
Something moved behind them. Penumbra lit her horn, although almost collapsed in the process. With the Alicorn Amulet, she had not realized nearly how much power she had been consuming. Thirteen was not the only one whose strength had been depleted.
“There is no need to make me fry! The hoofsteps you hear are those of an ally!”
Penumbra lowered her glow. “Did you HAVE to rhyme? I could have attacked you- -”
Crozea appeared from between to half-collapsed crystal buildings. It was clear that the battle had been hard. Her robes had nearly completely disintegrated or been burn away, reveling the golden armor beneath. Armor that predominantly bore Sombra’s seal, as well as her own. “I know that you would not strike a friend. And I can see that your power is at its end.”
“I can still fight.”
“It is not a matter of if you could. What matters is if you should.”
Crozea stopped. Then she hugged Penumbra, and Penumbra burst into tears.
“I couldn’t- -I couldn’t stop them!”
“I’m not concerned with the fate of your attack. What matters is that you came back.”
“But the Empire- -they were counting on me! Everypony was counting on me, and I failed! I let them all down!”
Crozea held Penumbra tighter. “We all knew it was an impossible task. That it was just too much to ask.”
“But now Nightmare Moon and Celestia- -they’re coming, I was the only one that could stop them, and if I couldn’t- -”
“Celestia will not be a problem,” noted Emeth, who had appeared beside Thirteen.
Penumbra squeaked in surprise. “Where did you come from?!”
“I have stated on many occasions that I do not remember my creators. But that was not what you were asking. More to the point, Celestia has been irreversibly terminated. Daybreaker has taken her place.”
“Daybreaker? I have no idea what that is.”
Crozea did. Penumbra could feel her start to shiver uncontrollably.
“If they have summoned the true goddess of the sun? Emeth, tell me, what can be done?”
“I am currently formulating a plan. One moment please.”
Penumbra released Crozea. “What is a ‘Daybreaker’? And why does it have such an awesome name?”
The question was answered by a sudden rumbling. Penumbra turned to see the buildings of her city lifting off their foundations, liquefying in response to magic that burned whatever it touched. The narrow street they stood upon suddenly became much wider as it was made into a grand and clear path fit for the one true royal of Equestria. High above, a group of support craft were crushed in an instant and allowed to fall, their engines igniting violently as they struck the ground.
Penumbra suddenly felt it. Heat- -and more than that, something deep and terrible. It was the same thing she had felt burning endlessly within Celestia’s heart, except now it had become visceral. It was real. And though all that hate and jealousy, it was laughing. Laughing because it had found something it wished to destroy.
Across the path of destruction, Penumbra saw her. Despair began to creep into her soul, although she did not know why. She had never been trained to feel it, and what was left of it had been relentlessly beaten from her- -but some deep instinctive fear had taken root.
She was an alicorn, the most beautiful of her race: purest white, with a mane of fire and a body clad in red-hot enchanted gold. All that stood in her path was destroyed by her presence alone. Even as Penumbra watched, golems charged her- - only to be reduced to boiling slag as they neared her divine presence. The only pony who could withstand her presence was one who stood behind her, clad in strange silver.
Penumbra took a defensive stance, lighting her horn.
That response was enough. Daybreaker smiled, and the slightest tip of her horn ignited.
In an instant, Thirteen had tackled Penumbra to the ground, shielding her with her armor. At the same instant, Crozea and Emeth leapt forward, blocking the path of the ray with their bodies.
Penumbra was instantly blinded by the sudden burst of light, and even with Thirteen covering her she could still feel the radiation and heat from the spell. It was not like Celestia’s magic. It was not planned and thought out, devised in accordance with countless well-researched theories of unicorn magic. It was directed to the point it could barely even be called a spell at all. There was no design. It was pure energy, and pure destruction.
Being unable to see, Penumbra was not able to see Crozea’s armor tear away, or to watch Emeth as his entire body was vaporized.
Then it stopped. Penumbra bushed Thirteen off her, cursing herself for having allowed her life to be saved twice by the same pony. The back portion of Thirteen’s armor was burned and partially melted, but the blast had not broken through. The pony inside the armor was still alive, though very weak.
Penumbra looked up, not knowing what she would see but having strong, terrible suspicions about what she might find.
Crozea was still standing. Her armor had been burned and melted away, to the point where all that remained was either molten or charred fragments. Her body, though, was completely unharmed. Penumbra could not recall having ever seen Crozea in the nude, and she immediately understood what her father had found so appealing.
Emeth, meanwhile, had not survived the impact- -at least not in a comprehensible way. His body had been completely vaporized, but had left behind a kind of hovering, gray sphere that would occasionally spark and hiss. Penumbra had no idea what that component was, but for some reason it had been the only part of Emeth to survive.
“Emeth! No!” Penumbra reached out to grab the sphere, but Thirteen weakly grabbed one of her rear hooves, holding her back.
Suddenly she felt heat.
Daybreaker beheld the scene she had created, her eyes pausing only a moment on Emeth’s remains before quickly moving to Crozea.
“Well well,” she said. “An immortal. How many souls did you need to condemn to eternal agony to get that?”
“How many did you claim to do the same?”
Daybreaker’s face contorted into a hideous grin. “ALL OF THEM.”
Daybreaker suddenly turned her horn toward Penumbra. This time, substantially more than the tip ignited. As it did, though, an enormous metal claw grasped her torso.
Daybreaker gasped. “Who dares defile my sexy royal body?!”
Her body ignited with even more energy. Penumbra cried out as she was burned, and Crozea threw her back, getting her out of range of the heat.
The claw began to disintegrate- -and as it did, it simultaneously began to regenerate, reforming itself out of new materials. Penumbra traced it backward, to where its machinery became indeterminate gray liquid- -and to where that liquid poured from the orbit of a certain gray sphere.
Threads shot outward from the sphere, plumes of billions of tiny golems working in unison. They landed upon the shattered crystal buildings, the destroyed hulks of other golems- -and others came from a distance, having rapidly acquired the pieces of the very sky-ships that Daybreaker had destroyed not minutes earlier.
Daybreaker raised her horn, blasting through the machines that held her and immediately directing her energy on the sphere. She fired, and the force of her light was immediately caught in the sphere’s gravity and drawn inward toward it- -only for a torrent of undifferentiated protean machinery to burst outward.
Taken by surprise, Daybreaker jumped back. Her armored sister moved to defend, casting a shield- -only for Daybreaker to violently throw Nightmare Moon into the whirring blades and gears to momentarily distract it.
“Sister!” cried Nightmare Moon, being sucked in.
Daybreaker only laughed. As annoying as this was, at least watching her pointless non-white sister suffer was still funny.
She attacked the mechanical force, vaporizing parts of it- -only to produce a vapor whose molecules were rapidly reassembled into new machines. It advanced like a wave, churning around Daybreaker as she desperately tried to fight it- -until it finally reached her.
The nanogolems swarmed her, immediately pouring over her body, their tiny carbon bodies replicating faster than they could be burned up. They began assembling material around her, and as Daybreaker screamed and ranged she was coated and encased in crystals.
The machinery suddenly exploded from inside, torn apart from inside by blinding silver light. Nightmare Moon managed to claw her way out, her magical armor having protected her from the machines- -and the First Law having prevented Emeth from having shoved her directly into his core.
The machines tore away, rapidly reforming themselves into a being. What they generated was a heavy quadruped, a thing that was most certainly not a pony but clearly based not on a machine but on a living thing. It was the barest shadow of Emeth’s creators, and none alive knew what their name had been.
He grabbed the others and began to run.
“Wait!” cried Penumbra. “The princesses- -”
“We do not have much time,” replied Emeth, sounding oddly calm. “We need to retreat. Now, ideally.”
Behind them, Nightmare Moon considered giving chase- -but was distracted by finding her sister imprisoned in crystal. This made her heart ache, but she understood the advantage. If whatever they had sealed her in was this incredibly resistant to heat, there was a chance it could contain her. At least until a cure could be found.
The material was in fact a form of crystalline carbon. Its tolerance for heat was so great that even Daybreaker’s heat could not melt it.
And yet the crystal began to glow and disintegrate. Heat was only a byproduct. A byproduct of nuclear fusion.
The carbon exploded as Daybreaker’s magic consumed it. The fiery blast immediately consumed her sister, who was set alight.
Daybreaker did not notice. Her mind was only focused on one thing.
And she continued moving forward, undaunted.