A small glimmer of hope sparked in Citrine’s chest as she stood up and leaned to look past Princess Twilight at the hole in reality. She knew she hadn’t completed the portal because she’d been caught off-guard by the sudden vacuum, but perhaps she’d done enough. Maybe after she’d set it in motion, the portal had fallen right in to the original path and had only just now made contact with the universe of Taryn. Perhaps…
Citrine’s heart sank and her ears laid flat as soon as she got a clear look at the hole. It wasn’t her father emerging; it wasn’t even a pony, or any other kind of creature. Spreading out from the rift in all directions, for the rift’s “opening” faced every possible direction at once, were long tendrils of some strange chitinous material, primarily black patterned with thin streaks of greyish blue and sickly yellow. The tendrils twisted about, as if exploring the space within the dome, until one of them encountered the mirror. Several of the tendrils whipped around to join the first one in wrapping around the mirror before violently tearing it apart and hauling the bits and pieces back through the rift.
“What are those?” Bella asked, looking to Twilight with trepidation.
“I have no idea,” Twilight said. “Pesci, scan them.”
“As you will, Princess Twilight,” the floating head-shaped computer said, flying closer and sweeping its scan-light over the nearest tendril. “They appear to be alive,” it reported as more tendrils appeared, snaking along the floor until they encountered the barrier. “Appendages to a larger organism, I would assume.” Pesci tilted slightly to the side as one of the tendrils lashed out toward it, as if reacting to the scan-light, and hit the barrier. “I am finding many possible matches in my database,” the computer concluded, turning away and floating back to the ponies, “but I cannot identify these things with satisfactory accuracy. My apologies, Princess Twilight.”
Twilight smiled, her anger at Citrine seemingly forgotten for the moment. “I didn’t expect-” she started to say, but then flinched when the tendrils all lashed out, striking the barrier with enough force to make it flash in reaction. “Hmph,” Twilight said, smirking, “you’ll have to try harder than that to get through a double-layered Shining Armor Shield.”
The tendrils seemed to take that as a challenge, as one of them coiled up into a ball and started slamming against the barrier. Others darted at the floor, knocking chips out of it until Twilight managed to conjure another, flat barrier across the ground.
“I think I’ve seen enough,” Bella said, glancing at Twilight, whose mouth was starting to bend in the manic smile of an impending research binge. “Maybe we should start trying to send them back and close the hole?”
“Ah,” Twilight said, jolting out of her trance, “yes, you’re right Bella. Come on, you two.”
Citrine opened her mouth to ask why her, but quickly closed it and approached the barrier alongside Bella and the Princess. She already knew the answer: Citrine had caused this, so naturally it was her responsibility to help put an end to it. As she waited for Twilight to consult the book and give her instructions, Citrine watched the strange tendrils continue to pound away at the barrier. More and more were coiling up to increase the force of their blows, and some of them had acquired spikes. The blows were coming faster and faster, and Citrine suddenly realized that it was because the tendrils were increasing in number, filling the space inside the dome to the point where the flailing tendrils were starting to get in each other’s way, and yet the impacts against the barrier were only getting more frequent. “If they keep squeezing in like that...” she muttered.
A crack appeared.
“Princess!” Citrine shouted, “it’s failing!”
“What?” Twilight exclaimed, looking up from the book. Her irises shrank as she saw the cracks – plural now – spreading throughout her barrier. “Back!” she ordered, slamming the book shut and focusing her magic on the dome. Bella, Ctirine, and Pesci ran back to the door, and turned back to see Twilight throw up a new, larger dome just as a tendril broke through the original and caused it to collapse. Twilight backed up quickly as the mass of tendrils surged out to slam against the second dome, cracking it with a single, coordinated blow to the entire surface at once. Twilight threw up two more domes, each barely lasting longer than a couple seconds, before she reached the doorway. Shoving her students back, she slammed the door shut and jammed her horn against it, infusing it and the surrounding wall with magic mere instants before the tendrils reached the edges of the room with an arrhythmic series of bangs.
Twilight held her position for several seconds as the banging of chitin against crystalline walls continued, and then pulled away with a weary sigh. “Ok,” she said breathlessly, “That should hold them.” She turned her head and gave Citrine a strained look. “Citrine, what universe did you connect us to?!” she asked.
“How should I know?” Citrine responded hysterically. “It’s not Taryn, I’m at least ninety percent certain of that!”
“I am nintey-eight-point-five percent certain,” Pesci volunteered. “I have no records of any organisms similar to those existing on any Taryn world within my core data-banks.”
“Wait,” Bella said, giving the computer a bemused look, “how do you know things about Taryn?”
Pesci turned to look at Bella, its eyes a pair of upward-curving green lines. “My operating system’s core is derived from the PSC unit that originally belonged to Ashen Blaze,” it explained. “During my construction, I was provided with a copy of a significant portion of that unit’s accumulated memory data as a seed from which my present personality developed. That data remains in my memory, but this is the first time I have had to access it directly since being assigned to Princess Twilight Sparkle. I have data related to additional universes besides Equestria and Taryn, including Valden, D-”
“That will do, Pesci, thank you” Twilight cut in firmly. “Keep an eye on the room, will you?”
“As you will, Princess Twilight,” Pesci replied dutifully and turned to face the door.
“Right then.” Princess Twilight’s mane returned to its normal state, but her face remained hard as she turned her attention to Citrine again. “Where was I?” she asked.
“Something about how you made the original Taryn portal, I think,” Bella said.
“Right!” Twilight said as Citrine shot her fellow student a scathing look. “We only managed to do it by bringing together the right ponies with the precise set of skills and magic artifacts needed to design the mirror and safely traverse the void between universes, and even then I had to be in the Taryn universe when I cast the actual portal spell. What made you think you could do all that by yourself, Citrine?”
“You’d already done it once,” Citrine answered, sullen. “I figured that you and your assistants had already done the hardest parts: figuring out how the spell works and laying out the portal’s path through the between-space. Repeating the spell and following that old path should have been much easier than doing it the first time.”
Twilight shook her head. “Even if-” She froze with an expression of total disbelief as something tiny fell onto her head. Looking up, she saw a long crack in the corner of the wall and ceiling that was growing and splintering even as she watched. “Oh, don’t tell me,” she growled, and then dodged as a chunk of the ceiling fell, creating a hole from which emerged one of the spiked blue- and yellow-striped tendrils. “That’s Harmony-infused crystal strengthened with my own magic!” Twilight exclaimed as the tendril whipped around, widening the hole to let more of its kind out into the hall. “How are they breaking it?!”
“Force of numbers and pure, unflagging persistence is the most likely answer, Princess Twilight,” Pesci said, tilting up to scan the tendrils. “No substance is truly indestructible, after all.” It floated up to the ceiling to look at the hole and tendrils from a different angle, and then dropped back down to head height, its eyes blinking red warning symbols. “I detect other breaches in the walls!” it said. “Containment is unfeasible at this point, so I must recommend immediate evacuation of the castle.” As if to punctuate the declaration, one of the tendrils snapped toward the ponies, striking the floor right next to Bella.
Twilight grimaced, but she nodded. “Ok. Pesci, inform the guards,” she said, “and send a couple of them to evacuate the School, just in case. Tell them to go out through the tunnels to the Diamond Quarter. Girls, one of you find the cleaning crew and the other evacuate the library. I’ll try to slow these ones down.” She blasted the hole with a bolt of magic, causing the tendrils to withdraw for a moment. “We’ll meet up at Spike’s house.”
As Bella, Citrine, and Pesci took off down the hall, a fresh set of tendrils burst through the hole, expanding it down the wall and throwing out so much debris that Twilight was forced to retreat down the hall a little before trying to retaliate.
Some meis I’ve turned out to be, Citrine thought as she galloped. Letting my pride cloud my reason. Father would be so disappointed. How will I even start to apologize for this?
She quickly shoved her personal problems aside as she approached the doors to the Map room and saw Spike and his three cleaning assistants leaving it. “Hey!” Citrine shouted, interrupting Spike mid-sentence as she ran up to the group. “We have to get out of the castle, now!”
“Why?” Mandible asked.
Citrine blushed in shame but answered, “I might have screwed up a spell and set some kind of tentacle monster loose. It’s tearing through the castle faster than Princess-” A loud crash from the Map Room cut her off, and everyone ran to see what had happened. One of the tendrils had smashed through the back wall and was whipping about looking for something else to break.
“Yikes!” Spike exclaimed, and then charged into the room to try and fight the tendril off. Before he reached it, however, the tendril suddenly twitched, went limp, and then dropped to the floor as the hole it had made closed up and cut it off.
“Hey,” Citrine said, looking hopeful, “the Castle’s fighting back! Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.”
“I’m afraid it is still bad, Citrine.” Everyone turned to look as the Map lit up and projected an image of Harmony in the air. “These alien things are too numerous and too strong; the best I can do is keep the castle from falling apart completely and insure that they do not get into this room. You must all get out and seek help. Drive this incursion back before it spreads too far!”
The griffons and Mandible didn’t need to be told twice, running for the main doors as the sounds of more walls being broken started echoing through the castle, but Spike and Citrine hesitated. “Harmony?” Citrine asked, “do you know what these things are?”
The spectral image shook its head. “No,” it said. “They are not of Equestria. Now go!”
With a flash of light, Twilight teleported to the front yard of Spike’s house. A quick look around told her that Bella, Citrine, Spike, and Pesci were already there and the creatures who had been in the library were still fleeing toward Ponyville proper under the guidance of the castle guards. Looking toward the castle, Twilight’s breath caught in her throat. It was still standing, but by now the strange spiky tendrils had breached the outer walls and wrapped themselves around most of the structure. It reminded Twilight of the Plunder Vine incident, but this time it seemed that the latent power of the Haven of Harmony alone wouldn’t be enough to repel the tendrils.
“Is everyone ok?” Twilight asked.
“The library’s clear,” Bella reported. “Everyone got out before any of those things got to the library. We had to leave most of the books behind, though.”
Twilight grimaced at the thought of her precious library collection being torn apart, but valiantly fought the feeling down. “Books can be replaced,” she said grimly. “How about the School?”
Pesci’s eyes took on a satisfied shape. “I went there with the assigned Guards,” it said, “and the evacuation appeared to be proceeding in a quick and orderly manner. Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, and Scootaloo have taken charge there.”
“Good,” Twilight said, relaxing slightly. “Looks like things have calmed down now, though. Now, we need to push back.”
“How are we… going to do that?” Citrine asked, nervously.
Twilight gave her a hard look, and then turned to Spike, saying, “I don’t think there’s enough of us here to be able to fight through the whole castle without getting surrounded. Spike, send a message to Princess Celestia, please. Tell her I need an emergency mobilization of the Guard, at least a full company, mostly unicorns and earth ponies. Maybe a couple dragon volunteers, if there are any.”
“On it,” Spike said, nodding before running into his house to find pen and paper.
Twilight turned back to Citrine with a severe frown that made the young unicorn’s ears fold completely flat against her head. “As for you, Citrine,” Twilight said, “I think your punishment for all this will start with joining me in getting back to the portal and-”
“Princess Twilight!” Pesci trilled in alarm. “There’s new movement from the castle!”
Grumbling, Twilight looked up at the castle again. “Now what?” she asked.
Six chitinous tentacles, each as thick as a tree, burst out of the top of the castle and shot out in different directions before spearing back into the ground at six perfectly equidistant points, one of which was nearly on top of Spike’s house. Spike came running out, holding a half-finished letter in his hand, to join the ponies in pulling back to a safer distance. The tentacles drilled deeper into the ground for several seconds, and then began to pulsate and expand, transforming into what looked like some kind of six-sided building with yellow, fin-like eaves sweeping out and up every ten feet. Spike’s house was demolished and swept away by the growing structure, which detached from the tentacle that had spawned it after reaching a height of about five stories. Creeping, twisted tendrils shot out from the base of the buildings, linking the six together in a perfect hexagon and connecting them all back to the castle.
Pesci’s eyes suddenly blinked red warning signs. “Krxstiul! Krxstiul hive buildings!” It screamed. “Evacuate the city! Full-scale military response required!”
“Wha-” Twilight began, only to stop when Pesci pressed up close to her face.
“I can’t explain here, Princess Twilight,” Pesci insisted. “It is rapidly becoming too dangerous to remain this close! Run! Now! And call for EVERYONE with military training!” Without waiting for a response, the computer zoomed away, screaming an alarm as loud as it could.
Spike and the ponies exchanged shocked looks. “I take it Pesci knows what’s going on now?” Spike asked.
The strange building started producing organic noises as openings formed in corners of the base and new tendrils started to slither out toward the group. Twilight blasted the closest one before snapping, “Let’s take its advice then! Run! Spike, new letter: we need-”
“All the Guard,” Spike said, putting pen to paper as he took to the air, “already writing.” He wrote as quickly as he could while keeping an eye on the situation. The unicorns were putting up a valiant fight, but there were simply too many tendrils just from the one structure for them to be able to destroy them all. Most of the tendrils that slipped through started weaving in and out of the ground and twisting around one another, trying to trap the ponies inside hexagonal pens.
Spike finished the letter with an excessively underlined plea for urgency and then spat out a tongue of flame to send it on its way before diving back to the ground. He landed just in time to help Citrine burn back one of the encroaching walls so that everyone could escape. “The letter’s sent,” he reported as the group pulled back to the next closest Ponyville building.
“Good,” Twilight said. “now let’s hope that help arrives soon.”