The harmony comet blazed bright above the Immortal Dream, winds shredding past and mountain peaks drifting by below as it sped its way north. A feline face stared through the windshield on the bridge, but his eyes weren't on where he was going, and his head was crouched just so he could fit inside.
With a trail of burning teal, the airship was no longer alone.
Starlight Glimmer drifted upwards, soaring slowly above a railing like a rising moon. Energy coursed over her body, crackling between her horn and cutie mark and everywhere else, her magic surge a long way from abating. She rolled, drifting to the side, and landed on the deck on all fours, the aura of flight around her body going out.
"Gazelle!" she shouted toward the open bridge, waiting for her adversary to come out.
The sphinx did, lumbering and squeezing clumsily through the doorway, unused to his new, massive size. He still crackled with an aura of acclimating power, but the pupils had returned to his glowing eyes, and they regarded Starlight with an expression of resignation and exasperation and malice and hope and dread.
"What is this," Gazelle rumbled, sparks leaking from his mouth when he spoke, "some kind of sick joke? Did you lose on purpose just to taunt me before coming back to finish the job? Or is this some second wind neither of us asked for? Why can't you leave me alone!?"
"You hunted me down first," Starlight replied levelly, her horn blazing. "Maybe you could have stood to leave me alone."
"Excuse you, I'm flying away!" Gazelle flared his wings aggressively. "Pot, meet kettle? How did you even get back up here?"
"Bad luck," Starlight replied. "Powers I never asked for."
"Oh, so you think you're cursed to haunt me as well." Gazelle rolled his eyes. "Wonderful. I have an avenging angel I don't want, and you don't want to be up here either? There's no possible way that could all have been avoided. What do you even want? It's not like you were doing anything with Gwendolyn. It's not like I was going after your friends. Face it. You couldn't leave me alone if you wanted to."
"I've had a very bad week," Starlight warned.
"Peas in a pod," Gazelle growled. "Why don't you invite me to tea instead so we can commiserate? I've tasted your emotions. I know how you feel. Maybe the reason you keep following me is because you want me to put you out of your misery. Or do you want to do the same to me!?"
He swept a giant paw. "Look at me! Look at this! Even when I bring Lyn back, you think there will be room in her life for a creature like me!? I can hear them…" He cringed, holding his stomach. "I can hear all the things they wanted in life… I can hear them begging me to do them instead! A million voices all urging me to become a musician or a doctor or a carpenter or a guard or a race flier or a smith or an accountant or a parent or a civil servant when all I'm good for is chaos and murder! They're taunting me with everything a creature like me cannot be, trying to give me hopes I know will be dashed… What use does Lyn have for a brother like this?"
Starlight watched him. He realized exactly what he was… but had no clearer of a path forward than she did. "You have your sister back, and you still want to die?"
"What are you here for?" Gazelle rasped. "I wish I wasn't a sphinx. I wish I was a pony… Do you think you're a force for good in the world?"
"Maybe," Starlight replied. "I want to be. But I told you, this isn't a good time. I've had a very bad day."
"You'll never let me rest." Gazelle sagged. "I don't deserve to rest. Even if I get Lyn back, I won't be able to keep her…" He began circling. "What will it take to get you to put me out of my misery?"
Starlight stared. Her legs were still limp from the climb, her body still covered in scratches and wounds from the prince's spiky breath. Jamjars' betrayal felt like yesteryear's wound, the trials of her decision to stay in Sires Hollow and say goodbye were an entire lifetime away. She was drained down to her core, stripped of her friends, the mysteries of her powers and body taken away, she had even been robbed of her resentment of Glimmer. All she had was frustration, determination and a wish for a world in which she could be at peace. After this battle, if she survived, she would go back to the south and live with her knowledge and try to be a normal pony, fully aware of who she was and what she could do. She would bury her role as Eylista, or try to coexist with it, but she would no longer be Starlight, the filly of the north who gave everything that she was and more to ensure she always got her way.
But that was tomorrow. Tonight, she could still do anything.
"I could threaten your friends," Gazelle volunteered. "I could promise to shred their putrid faces. Devour their brands, see how they like that sword of yours… I could raze all of Ironridge with this power. I could eat them alive, just like Garsheeva did to countless generations of sacrifices. I could go to a souvenir store and buy an audio recorder, and mail you their screams…"
"Shut up," Starlight spat. "You want me to kill you that badly? After you chased me all the way here and got your sister back and tried to throw away my keepsakes from my friends?"
Gazelle blinked. "Keepsakes? When was this?"
Starlight stalked forward.
"Whatever," Gazelle growled. "Have you ever had a goal that's the first step towards another one, and you never thought you'd complete it so chasing it didn't matter, even though you knew the next step would be impossible!?" He reared back, stopping by the railing and letting out a wordless roar to the heavens. "I have Lyn. I could find her a body! But I'll never be able to make her care about a monster like me!"
Starlight came closer.
"Lyn was beautiful. Lyn was perfect. Lyn was pure." Gazelle's eyes flickered with madness, and he waited, wings outstretched. "She would disown me faster than anyone in the world! And it's all the more easy to feel that with all these pathetic dreams floating around inside me that I could never live up to! Tell me how Garsheeva did it without going insane! Or was she all along? Or don't bother. I know there isn't an answer. Now hurry up and end me… Starlight!"
Starlight reared back, drew a hoof, and punched his chest with all she had.
Nothing happened.
Gazelle looked down at the filly connected to him by a hoof. "Why must you taunt me?" he whispered.
"I have had a very bad day," Starlight said, not budging. "I've had a very bad week. I've had a very bad last six months, last two years, last everything. Threaten my friends all you like. I know they can take you. I'm not going to fight you because you're a danger to them."
"Do you want to put that to the test?" Gazelle hissed.
Starlight looked up and met his eyes. "I'm going to fight you because you're an acceptable target."
Her hoof pulsed with energy, and she unpocketed the biggest boulder she could carry, sending it smashing into Gazelle and bowling him over the railing.
"SHHHHRRRAAAAAAAAUGH!"
Before she could even breathe, the prince was back, tearing into her with the force of a clawed train. A sharp pain in Starlight's flanks alerted her that he was coming, yet she didn't even need it to know what to do. Time slowed, and she saw him barreling out of the night…
Flash!
A crystalline shield solidified instantly around her, Gazelle's claws embedded an inch into the surface. Like a missile, he carried her off the ship's opposite edge, barely a second of airtime passing before they met the side of a mountain. Rocks exploded into gravel as Gazelle dragged Starlight along a sheer slope, plowing her shield through outcroppings and ledges and bumps in the ridge with a force that could have shattered her horn from even a single hit. But her magic no longer worked the way it once had, and the titanic energy demands of holding her shield together only felt good, allowing her an outlet for the billowing storm of energy born from her magic surge.
A tiny drop in the pain in her flanks alerted her to a spot where the mountains fell away, a split second where they were sailing through open air. Starlight's horn surged, and her shield shattered into thousands of shards, all seized in her expanding telekinetic field as she teleported out of the way. Like filings of iron aligning under a magnet, the crystal slivers all pointed as one, barreling into Gazelle as a thousand deadly knives.
Gazelle roared, spinning and wrapping his wings around himself in a shield of his own. The blades scratched at his feathers, but his own momentum deflected them, catching them and knocking them away…
Starlight appeared behind him, angled her horn and fired. A long, thin lance of crystal burst forth and kept growing, spearing like a solid laser and shooting straight through his wing joint before embedding itself in the mountainside below.
With a pained shriek, Gazelle spun again, this crystal too thin for her to keep it from shattering under his weight, and she fell back as he kicked off the rocks and advanced once again.
"GRRRRRRRRAAAAA…" Gazelle's maw opened and glowed, his wings beating like a dragon's, preparing a breath attack that would make the wounds from his previous ones look like paper cuts by comparison.
Starlight flew backwards, giving herself as much distance between them as she could, feeling time slow from Valey's cutie mark and wanting him to lock in his angle before she dodged… A searing, smoking pillar of spikes wrapped in shadows burst forth, and she had just as much time as she had hoped for.
Flash! Starlight teleported and immediately fired her horn, focusing her power into a mass of raw, burning energy instead of crystal this time around. Gazelle probably could have taken it with ease, but she was behind him and he couldn't see what it was, so he beat his wings and dodged.
The energy bolt soared over Gazelle's head as he roared toward her with a deadly swinging claw. Starlight teleported again… right into the path of her own projectile. She hoped this was as intuitive as it had looked before…
Her projectile struck, and Starlight reached out with her instincts, trying to pocket the energy itself like Maple had once done to a Sosan energy weapon at the very start of their journey. Her body flashed and sizzled intensely, feeling like a limb had just gone to sleep and was fuzzy as it woke up, only far more strongly and everywhere at once. The sensation almost disrupted her concentration, but Valey's cutie mark stepped in again, slowing time as Gazelle roared back toward her again.
Starlight countered, firing off a second energy bomb and unpocketing the first at the same time. The two projectiles merged into one, double-sized, and Gazelle had to swerve backwards to avoid it, spreading his wings and preparing to counter everywhere in the immediate vicinity she could teleport.
He didn't expect her to go for the projectile again.
Starlight caught it, her body surging dangerously, and she immediately flung it out again, adding another bolt to the blast in a midair game of dodgeball in which she threw the ball from every side. Gazelle ducked again, letting the blast soar over his head and immediately letting out a laser of spikes, ready to catch Starlight the instant she appeared in its course again. But instead of appearing in his beam, Starlight teleported onto his neck, grabbing hold and reaching up and catching the mass one more time as it soared overhead.
Her body felt like it could explode, like she might easily lose control of everything all at once or damage something important. But in the single second she had to spare, her horn pulsed, targeting her hoof and growing a crystalline dagger attached to the end, and she swung it, stabbing deep into Gazelle's backside.
There was a wound. She was touching it. Starlight unloaded the full force of her combined projectile attacks deep inside of her enemy's body.
With a shockwave that rocked the heavens, Gazelle dropped like a meteor, blasted down at an angle, trees exploding in a line along the ground as he plowed through them and rolled. Starlight stared. She could press her advantage, but if that couldn't finish him… She didn't know how long her magic surge would last. If it ended before she won, she would be screwed. The Immortal Dream was still on the horizon… She blasted off after it. She had to shore up her power while she could.
Starlight caught up to the ship, hitting the deck with a roll. It was still flying forward, set to a course with no pilot, but the mountains were only getting higher. She was in the peaks by now, the area where she had taken to the tunnels before, ice and snow glistening atop wildly jagged vistas below. Yet the mountains were still climbing, and the ship would surely crash if she didn't adjust its course.
Her legs gave out beneath her, still reduced to noodles from her climb. But her horn was fresh, so she flew into the bridge instead, dropping herself in the pilot's chair and yanking on the throttle just as the ship was soaring through a gorge between two icebound peaks. A roar of force pressed her back in the chair as the engine blazed and the ship swung about, pivoting and halting as though she had just dropped anchor at full tilt.
The ship swung about, looking back the way she had come. She could already see Gazelle.
The sphinx rocketed toward her, his momentum too fast to control. He would be upon her in seconds… Starlight stared at the controls. She had watched this ship be piloted before. Even Jamjars had piloted it before. She could work with this.
Orange light billowed from the harmony comet, and the ship reared back as Gazelle approached, speeding forward to meet him. Gazelle unsheathed his claws and drew back a paw, bigger than when Starlight left him as he continued to adjust to his stockpile and his size continued to increase. He swung, ready to smash the ship and Starlight along with it…
And he smacked into Mobius's impenetrable hull, the unstoppable bulwark that had saved the ship every time it crashed before. Starlight wheeled around and accelerated into a mountain, Gazelle stuck to the side of the prow with his claws embedded in the outer wooden shell, crushing and scraping him between the hull and the rocks like he had done to her in her shield.
The boat groaned and rumbled from the disturbance as Gazelle was dragged along backwards and rolled over and over beneath it and the stones. Soon, Starlight left him behind, the Dream soaring back out into the open. But that wouldn't keep him down, she knew. She pulled the ship into neutral and got up from the pilot's chair, leaving the console almost reluctantly… With a start, she realized it wasn't just a coincidence she was able to fly it. Amber's cutie mark was about knowledge of boats. It must have given her some measure of skill with airships, too.
Out of the corner of her eye, something glinted. The black sword. She had a cutie mark to use it once again.
She didn't have time to bond it, the whole deck shaking as Gazelle landed on the stern. He was huge, and as Starlight dashed out, he seemed to be growing even bigger… His size was swelling as his body knit itself back together. Every time she injured him and allowed him to use his regeneration, it adjusted him a little more to his cutie marks, and caused him to grow.
He stared at her, all sanity and reason gone from his eyes behind a wall of desperation and bloodlust. Starlight growled. As relatable as he might have been, if he would stop hurting her and be reasonable for a change, Gazelle was also a monster. Maybe killing him really would be a mercy… Either way, there was no turning back now.
She pressed the Indus sword to her flanks, adding its power to her own.
A pillar of light blasted through the sky as their bond was re-established, and without her bidding, the sword began to transform and change. It didn't feel disobedient. It felt like it was reacting to her needs, drawing power from Eylista and showing her what it could do.
Starlight's body glowed, the runic lights around her barrel doubling in complexity and strength. Surging, the sword hovered, shimmered, and grew, melding into light itself, swelling around the hilt where a giant copy of her cutie mark still blazed inside its triangle. The titan in the mural had wielded a sword capable of facing down Aegis… Well, she needed one capable of facing down a god too.
She remembered Glimmer's words, though. If these powers were fully reawakened, the resulting clash could destroy the world, just like it had ended Indus in an age long forgotten. Aegis had been powered by the three societal virtues, one of which was Eylista. It had fought against a creature with this blade. Starlight knew what she could do, knew there was no use in trying not to find out. Was this what Tetra had been worried about?
But she wouldn't destroy the world. She wouldn't lead to that bleak future in her visions. She would sit on this power forever if she had to, preventing it from being used… as soon as she had freed Gazelle from himself. She wouldn't use it in the future, but tonight, she would learn what it could do.
The sword reformed… halfway. It was still made from black metal, but pulsed with blue light, leaking in veins from its copy of her cutie mark that reminded her of the lighting veins in Mistvale. Halfway up, she lost sight of the metal under a shimmer of midnight blue, like it was still transforming and couldn't even manifest the extent of its blade. But the sword was taller than Princess Celestia. Gazelle might have been massive, but here was a weapon she could use.
Recalibrating Nightmare Module emulation mode for Eylista API, her Nightmare Module voice announced, Gazelle leering down at her, raising a paw to attack. Emulated cutie mark containing encrypted information detected. Decrypting… Found NIGHTMARE_07. Star Module is now available for use.
Starlight's eyes widened. The module Luna made for Garsheeva, one that could take and transfer cutie marks at will, baked into the specially modified cutie marks Garsheeva gave to her lieutenants… Seraphim, the mare whose journal Gazelle had read, had been a lieutenant who fled to Equestria, dying where Garsheeva couldn't reclaim the mark and prevent it from entering the lifestream. Shinespark had one day received the mark herself. All that, Starlight had pieced together individually at one time or another… and now her cutie mark had copied Shinespark's along with her other friends'. The Star Module was now a part of her cutie mark.
She was fighting Gazelle, and suddenly had a weapon designed to kill a sphinx.
Gazelle's paw struck, big enough to crush her against the deck. Starlight struck back, shearing through his leg with the sword, willing the seventh Nightmare Module to activate. It did.
As the sword tore through him, Gazelle roared in agony, no wounds appearing on his coat yet a stream of light blasting out of him, dozens of motes of light ripped free by the module's power. Starlight felt them all, held in her aura, sacrifices and sarosians who had been torn from Garsheeva by Chrysalis…
She wouldn't condemn them to reliving their memories in moon glass, and she wouldn't leave them with Gazelle. So Starlight let them go.
Gazelle staggered back, tripping on the ship's stern, giving Starlight a look of insanity and fury. Starlight pressed her attack, staggering forward and slicing again. Gazelle screamed as another, bigger wave of cutie marks was torn free, set adrift on the winds, and they soared toward the corners of the world, ready to rejoin the lifestream and be reborn as ponies again someday.
They were dying. Starlight was letting them perish. She could catch them, trap them, save them for the day she hunted down Crystal and kicked her out of the Daydream network and got all those sarosians' bodies back and reassembled them and saved them and given them back their lives and families and perhaps become their new goddess and protector and savior and princess and queen…
But she didn't. Starlight saw a road before her, an entire life that she could have if she just held onto the past. It was supposed to be good. What wouldn't be good about saving an entire continent, giving them their lives back when they had been cruelly stolen away?
…But if she let them go, their hopes and dreams could move on to new lives. If the batponies still had their souls attached, who could say they wouldn't be reborn entirely? She didn't know how the lifestream worked. Maybe it would even keep them together as family.
Or maybe it wouldn't. She couldn't know, not without going to Indus and studying the world and learning exactly how it worked and how it had been made and everything else that it would take to reforge it in her image. But that wasn't who she wanted to be.
Starlight roared, swinging again, a wave of cutie marks flying free as Gazelle was repelled, tripped and fell off the stern, Starlight jumping after him. Mountains sailed up around Starlight as she dove, flying past like possibilities she was leaving behind, freed cutie marks rising behind her like stars. The whole purpose of the Nightmare Modules was to hold those close, to take other ponies' hopes and dreams and hope that they would care about her instead. But she could live without this. She would find a way to live without this, without fighting against time and fate to keep anyone from losing anything ever again. These ponies comprised countless faces that she had never known, and she would prove she could live her life without suffering because she had let them go and said goodbye.
Gazelle hit the ground, landing in a twirl and kicking back off and roaring toward her with a blast of deadly spikes. The sword hummed, and Starlight switched modules, its veins of blue changing slightly as it switched to catalyzing her shield instead. The spikes clawed their way upwards and soared around her, battering her shield but unable to leave it with a scratch. Breaking it, it seemed, was a thing only her sword could do.
Starlight switched back to the Star Module the moment it was safe. If there was one drawback to using the sword, it was that it didn't seem able to activate multiple Nightmare Modules at the same time… She pounced again, swinging viciously for her target.
Gazelle was starting to learn. He swiped at the blade from the side, hitting its safe, flat edge and knocking it away before bringing his other claw around for a titanic slam. Starlight reacted with Valey's cutie mark, shielding herself again right before she was sent flying across the sky. The crystal around her dispelled much of the impact, and she wheeled around in the sky, accelerating back towards Gazelle as he roared up at her for more.
CLANNGGG!
She couldn't use multiple Nightmare Modules, but Starlight could use one alongside her crystals. Shielding herself again, floating inside a crystal sphere while wielding the sword with its own power, Starlight and Gazelle rammed each other, another burst of cutie marks torn from the prince as both were knocked flying. Gazelle followed up faster than Starlight could follow, but this time when they rammed, Starlight teleported to his other side, taking all the momentum he had launched her with and crystalizing her horn in a giant spike, appearing and plowing into his back. She let the spike break off, embedded in him, and soared past with a twirl and slash of the Indus sword, earning a screech and a roar.
Flash! Flash! Flash! Starlight darted around and Gazelle flailed, clashing in explosions of light. A familiar sensation of quiet, determined despair passed through her aura, and for a split second, she held onto a cutie mark for a tiny bit longer than usual: it was Senescey, Felicity's sister. Starlight's attack had earned her a brief second of reprieve, and instead of using it to press her advantage, she held Senescey close, murmuring a wish for a better life… and then Starlight let her go.
Gazelle charged up from below, grappling at Starlight and catching her, and she surged again, crystal spiraling from her horn and locking her to his paw. With the force of a cosmic lever, she gripped herself in flight magic and strained to the side, locking them both into a spiral as her crystals crept up and encroached on his wings. Harder, Starlight pushed, and faster they both spun, until they hit the ground, Starlight flinging Gazelle onto an icy crag like she was throwing a hammer.
The prince got back up, but didn't fly again, staring up at her and panting. He hadn't grown anymore since she started draining him. Ever since Starlight had re-bonded with the sword, he hadn't gotten a hit in. Gazelle was losing.
"What are you doing!?" Gazelle shrieked, enough lucidity returned that he could speak. "You're throwing them away!"
Starlight hovered, the runic ring rotating around her barrel and the sword hovering point-down at her side. "I'm letting them go."
"Why!?" Gazelle screamed. "Don't you know how powerful they are!? Don't just spite both of us out of them! Are you hoping for a pyrrhic victory? Can't you see how helpless I am? Have you lost your mind!?"
"I don't want power," Starlight replied. "I want to be a normal pony, and you do too! And normal ponies don't hoard everything they find, especially not hundreds of thousands of souls of ponies they don't even know!"
Gazelle sneered. "Then what were you doing with Lyn and that stockpile?"
"Holding on." Starlight looked down, floating above him in a corona of blue. "Because I've lost so much, I can't bear to lose anything more, even if it was never mine to begin with. And maybe I'll regret this tomorrow, but I don't need them and neither do you. We'll either hurt them by not doing what's right, or hurt ourselves by clinging on too hard. So what if they're all I have? I am not giving up on my life and not giving up on the chance to meet more ponies and make more friends who are my friends and I can appreciate while they're there!"
"PATHETIC!"
Starlight winced, spittle from Gazelle nearly reaching her hundreds of feet in the air. "You're just saying that to sound righteous," the prince snarled. "Oh, this is the good way, be like a commoner peasant and don't stick up for yourself, blah blah blah. Do you think I care about what you've lost? If you're trying to say you know how I feel, prove it by putting me out of my misery!"
He roared forward, a brutal clap closing in on her from both sides, preparing to crush her between his paws. Starlight darted down to meet him, noticing that his mouth was open for a roar, yet he didn't seem to be charging a breath attack… Her horn burst into a stream of crystal, flying down his gullet and freezing his throat solid, blocking his windpipe and forcing him to choke. Gazelle crashed to the ground again, clawing at his esophagus, and Starlight landed on his prone side, driving in the Indus sword like a spear from the heavens. More familiar sensations washed over her, the fear and ambition of Navarre and Crystal's jaded, love-starved malice and cynicism. Was it wise to let Crystal go, give her back whatever part of herself had been caught in the moon glass? She had told Starlight it was like Shinespark, where the her in the real world wouldn't even be aware there was a second personality in the obsidian…
Wise or not, Starlight was beyond questioning wisdom. She wasn't going to be a continental hero, was done chasing after monsters who didn't come for her first. These souls weren't hers to hold. And whatever had brought her to this point, she was going to make the most of it, setting even her fears of her enemies free.
Gazelle gagged, retched and vomited, expelling Starlight's crystals in a spiky mass. He turned to regard her again… and suddenly, Starlight felt a terrible sensation.
Her magic surge was waning. However powerful she would be without it, it wouldn't be enough to effortlessly shield all of Gazelle's blows. It might not even be enough to fly.
And yet Gazelle hadn't even started shrinking. She had removed thousands of cutie marks, but he had consumed hundreds of thousands. Even with the Star Module, could she close this fight out?
She was Eylista. The only thing she could do was try.
Her sword hummed, and she switched to the Dishonesty Module, the very first one she had ever gained. Her shadow gripped her hooves and swirled up around her, she bid the sword to hide its runes and shrink into a tiny, easily-missable stick, and just like that, the night was her ally. The full moon glowed brightly above, and under its light, Starlight was all but invisible, cloaked in her own shadow.
Gazelle let out a grunt of confusion and surprise, but Starlight was already flying away.
Her legs wobbled again as she landed on the deck of the Immortal Dream, hovering at the entrance to an icy canyon valley just where she had left it. She nearly fell flat, letting the shadow cloak down as she opened the door to the staircase and tripped down the stairs. The door to the engine room was still open below. She needed help, and she knew where to look.
Above, the harmony extractor's rails blazed with a cloud of orange stars, the extractor helmet seated over a windigo heart that looked mostly fresh. Starlight crawled to the suitcase containing the others, her scratches and cuts aching and burning from being dragged across the ground. But the latch came undone, and there were the hearts: all but one of them filled to the brim with energy from the Flame of Honesty, stored up and ready to be used.
Starlight pulled out the hearts and activated Maple's cutie mark, pocketing them all at once. Her world went orange.
Hello, Sister, the flame said in her mind. I see you decided you're done running.
"Help me," Starlight panted, her senses overwhelmed by exhaustion and the flame. "I need help!"
Easier done than said.
Her senses focused again, the empty windigo hearts dropping to her sides like discarded ammunition shells. The crackling overglow had faded from her horn, but now it was replaced by orange flames rising all over her body as the Tree of Honesty lent her its power. Her body felt buoyed, lifted, like she was swimming in a river of hot, rising wind, yet made of the same. How much time did she have? How much strength?
The black sword flashed back to a blade at her side, back to its normal size so it could fit properly inside.
Starlight ran for the deck, feeling somehow lighter with the power of the tree coursing through her. Whenever the trees powered her up before, it was enough for one good, strong, free spell. When Maple had used the overcharged windigo heart, she had enough for one almighty blast. Whatever the tree had lent her, it wasn't enough for a prolonged battle. The Star Module wouldn't work fast enough. She had to finish things now.
She stood on the deck, and Gazelle rose over the side like a dark phantom, ragged and bleeding. Maybe he was closer to the end than she thought… She couldn't really know. And there was no time to risk it.
"What are you waiting for?" he whimpered, his voice rumbling through the heavens, echoing off the walls of the canyon and risking an avalanche in the distance. "Are you that fed up with your life that you want us to finish each other together? Is that why you're stalling? Waiting for me to get the upper claw?"
His eyes blazed. "Then hold still and DIE!"
Gazelle's throat glowed, preparing a final, mighty breath attack pointed straight at the deck of the Dream. Starlight's horn blazed in response, no crystals or Nightmare Modules out to counter this one. A cascade of spikes torrented forth in a swirling, twisting, terrible pillar, and Starlight answered with a deluge of orange flames.
Their beams collided together in midair, smoke and spikes and fire spewing all across the mountains, burning holes in the snow and ice where they landed as Starlight's attack solidified into a monochrome crystal beam. And then faint threads of other colors wove their ways in, pink and red and midnight blue… and Gazelle was pushed back until he hit a mountain, the beam smashing into his chest and exploding into crystals, fusing into the rock and pinning him there against the sheer, vertical wall. Gazelle was trapped. Starlight's horn blazed, holding him in place. That was what she had. Her horn could hold the crystals for about a minute longer, and then it would all be over.
She needed a way to finish it that was even stronger.
Slowly, as if time had slowed to a crawl, Starlight stepped onto the bridge, her horn sparking and blitzing with orange. She seated herself in the pilot's chair, grasped the wheel, pivoted the ship about until it was facing the trapped sphinx dead-on. She locked eyes with him, and the sword floated up outside the windshield. It pointed at him like a needle, thrusted, and stayed… and with a final use of the Nightmare Module, Starlight fished around for the two cutie marks she wanted most: Gwendolyn's, and his own.
She got them. Gazelle roared inside the crystals in pain, struggling against them, and she knew no matter how hard she tried, they wouldn't be able to hold. But they had to. She called the two marks back, pulled back the sword, and switched its module one more time, pointing at the floor and conjuring a small patch of moon glass. Both marks sank inside.
Starlight nodded at her work. There was clinging onto things she didn't want to lose… and then there was honoring the wishes of a defeated enemy. It wouldn't hurt to hold onto the hope that maybe someday, she could bring them back as normal ponies together, free from their memories of the Empire and the influences of the bodies they were born into. It would give her something to do in the future. It would give her a reason to survive.
Flash!
Starlight teleported, her horn having enough power left to manage it simply because she willed it to. She didn't know what would happen after this, if having her cutie mark would change the fate she almost met last time. But she did know a way to create an attack big enough to end most anything.
Her telekinesis reached upward, rising through the floor of the bridge and onto the control panel, locking around the throttle. The harmony extractor burned overhead, powering the ship just like it always did. It was attached to the windigo heart with a small helmet, designed to go over ponies' cutie marks…
"I'm sorry, Maple…"
Starlight lifted the helmet off the heart and set it down on her own, praying that her new cutie mark would let her overload it and not disappear.
With a flash of searing blue, the helmet hit the ground, smoking and useless, the wires connecting it to the rest of the machine evaporated so totally that they left lines burned into Starlight's vision where they had once been. But the machine was barely charged from that, and she was still here. It wasn't enough. She had tried to use the harmony extractor for a final, all-out attack, and all she had succeeded in doing was burning out the cables to its power source.
But Gazelle wouldn't let her walk away now, and neither was she willing to. She had to try harder. With another flash of her horn, she conjured even more crystals, raising a pillar beneath her and lifting her up, into the rail mesh and directly into the engine's cloud.
"Sir! The drill bit on the testing machine just exploded!"
"What? Someone, fetch the maintenance logs!"
"Sir, I don't think this was the testing machine's fault…"
"We're not seeing any signs of stress or bending in the leverage test, either! The drill bit does have a maximum rating… What if it's legitimate, and this is the alloy we're looking for?"
"Are you serious? You think this could be the one?"
"Go find another drill bit and fix the testing machine. This merits more investigation."
"Yes, sir!"
Starlight was standing… floating? She wasn't sure… inside a lab of some sort. The details were hazier than she could make out, like it was seen through a fogged window that only let pass pink and red and orange. She felt disembodied, like she was along for a ride. It could have been like her visions of the future, yet it felt more similar to… her restored memories.
The scene faded and changed. She was looking through the same filter, but now it was easier to understand what she was seeing: a young unicorn mare with a short, messy mane, teenage and not fully grown. A suit of alicorn-shaped armor stood nearby, and more ponies along with her, and she stood behind a control panel as others passed around the dim outline of a helmet. A telltale swirl in the background could only be the rails of a harmony extractor.
"Firing it up…" a young Shinespark's voice said. "Weight reading is decreasing by a tenth of a pound. Please don't let this be a fluctuation. All the math checks out. Father said this would work…!"
The scene changed again, and Starlight continued drifting. Where was she? What was happening? It was almost like she was seeing…
She was on the deck of the Immortal Dream, though it seemed half-complete. The detail in the image was somehow finer now, and she could see that suit of armor again, a later, larger, more-defined revision. The armor was crouching, carving fine patterns and details into the woodwork around the entry to the bridge.
"I wonder why I'm doing this," the armor murmured. "You probably can't hear me. Or maybe you can? One machine to another. I guess I want to leave my mark upon this world too, you know? I'll never tell Shinespark, but I hope I don't last much longer. As interesting as it is to exist, this brand that empowers me is hers. She shouldn't be kept separate from her destiny just because she thinks she has to for her plan. She's smart. She could find another way. Ah, sorry for rambling. Just not a thing I'd tell anyone who was actually listening…"
Once again, the scene changed. Starlight saw herself along with all her earliest friends, sitting down to a meal with Shinespark and the leaders of the Spirit. Everyone was talking, but their voices weren't preserved… yet the memory had a rosy tint to it, like it was a fond one. And soon after, she saw Maple being carried to the engine room, set there and connected to the harmony extractor. She saw the engine flare to life, and suddenly the filter she was looking through became that much clearer.
Starlight saw dozens of ponies crowding aboard, felt ice and sleet pelting her from the outside as the ship participated in a high-altitude rescue mission. She felt a burning surge of energy as a filly connected herself to the harmony extractor, felt herself giving everything to hold together, saw the filly disappear and Maple cry out and felt a silent wish for their safety…
Ponies crowded aboard her, and goodbyes were said. Starlight saw herself and Maple staying aboard, Willow and Amber leaving to go back home. She felt Shinespark playing a message from her mother on the ship's terminal, felt a lonely Jamjars tacking posters to the walls of a cabin, saw Maple sitting in the kitchen taste-testing soup and Shinespark laying on her back in the engine room doing maintenance, heard Gerardo and Slipstream swapping stories on the bridge and saw herself from the farthest distance of all, as if someone had always been looking out for her yet she had never seen it for herself.
"Indeed you are," Gerardo Guillaume said, addressing everyone, crowded around. "You've never visited a true battlefield, Amber, but if you had you'd be able to feel it. Not just any place there was a skirmish, but some of history's truest conflicts… In the same way that a chapel might feel sanctified through what is done there, the land remembers. There are some places where you can merely go and sit for a while, and even with your eyes closed and no one for miles to tell you, you know something has happened in that place's history."
Starlight felt a glow of pride, a feeling of protection, a feeling of being known. She saw herself soaring through the night, reaching down to help ponies in Mistvale, taking on Grenada and Harshwater and remembering. She could hear Felicity complaining, heard Amber's voice join Gerardo's and Slipstream's on the deck, saw herself soaring through a storm while Gazelle lurked in one room and Lyn refused to talk to him and Crystal sat in another, laboring and holding herself in pain. She saw the world go vertical as she once again fought to keep her crew safe, strained to keep from exploding and scattering them across the sky as they pushed her engine to the limit and soared up the Aldenfold in a high-speed chase.
She remembered being dormant, the foggy filter returning as no energy remained for the extractor, remembered her crew being defeated and despondent and wishing she could do more than provide shelter for their heads from the rain. And yet it was a wish, a primitive feeling and yet a desire to keep them all safe. She saw a filly again, gray and lifeless after her battle with Crystal, merely existing for weeks on end, trying to reach for her and not being felt. Starlight felt her engines explode again, fighting one more battle to hold together and trying one more time not to sink as monsters shattered her decks and railings and ponies hugged each other inside, the ponies who had made her and loved her and allowed her to fly. Starlight remembered her harmony comet slicing through one of them as it reformed, annihilating the monster and giving everything to protect her crew.
She remembered coasting through the waves, being rescued by a tugboat and towed into safe harbor. She remembered Shinespark, horn shattered, just as broken as she was, and she remembered Valey in a cheerleader uniform, galvanizing dozens of students to take her apart and tend to her wounds and put her back together with just as much love and hope as her original creators. She remembered a party held on the docks where she was moored, a celebration and a wish for happiness and safety for her crew, and she remembered flying on.
Starlight tried to reach a hoof for the thing she remembered being, for the ship she had turned out to be the namesake of. "Are you… alive?"
"Hello," a voice responded, distinctly one entity and yet carrying tones and quirks taken from every one of her friends. "I am your ship."
Starlight gaped. "What…?"
"I am your ship," the ship repeated. This was… This was the way Aegis had talked. It may have had a voice, but its mannerisms reminded Starlight exactly of the metal dragon. Somehow, from sufficient use of harmony extractors or sufficient love from the ponies who made it or any other manner of ingredients Starlight didn't understand at all, it seemed like these machines were able to take on lives of their own.
"I love you," the ship added, though Starlight had already seen that from reliving its memories. "I want to protect you."
Starlight opened her eyes, hanging in the harmony extractor in midair, her mane glowing and ethereal and blending into the starry harmony cloud. "And I want to protect you, too."
Her horn reawakened and her cutie mark blazed, drawing on a wellspring of power merely fighting Gazelle had been unable to bring out. Gazelle roared, the crystals holding him to the mountain fragmenting as Starlight's flame powers ran out, and yet a new wave of strength reinforced them at the last moment, catching him midway through his escape. Crystals exploded out from the ship, too, covering its front and bridge and deck and hull and everything but the harmony comet, which had ran out of orange and was now a deep midnight blue. The harmony cloud in the engine room surged around Starlight as the extractor reacted to her presence, power draining like an unthrottled source, a hole in the bottom of an infinite ocean, and the comet whined and built, escaping its boundaries above the ship as Starlight armored the hull even further.
She had found a new friend, one she didn't even know she had. One who had helped her to stop the windigoes before, and one whose help she needed again now. She was going to ram a sphinx, ram a mountain, and she couldn't afford to lose them and let them take the hit. Starlight screamed, her body flickering as she strained her horn even more and reached the limit of what she could give the extractor in turn, blackness straining at her vision. With the last bit of focus she had before passing out, her aura expanded to the mountains themselves, performing her old scanning spell, verifying she was still pointed right at Gazelle… and it hardened around the ship's throttle, grabbed it and forced it all the way forward.
There is a limit to how high pegasi can fly.
Sometimes, they test the atmosphere, but it invariably grows too cold, then too thin for their wings to find purchase. Higher still, it becomes impossible to breathe, and beyond that lies space, empty and pure. From high enough in the sky, well beyond that threshold, one could see from edge to edge of the world, beholding the whole thing at once, the Aldenfold running across it like a scar. And higher still, one might find ground again, a place that only alicorns have seen.
There, on the surface of the moon, there might have been a princess imprisoned, the creator of the Nightmare Modules, the moon glass meteor fallen from her realm. She might have been the one responsible for all of Starlight's worries, and she might even have had a telescope, or been looking down at the world with her naked eyes, from a height at which the biggest mountains looked like curls of thread in a rug.
The odds of that were unknown. But if she had been looking, been focusing from her lonely perch on one particular tassel-sized mountain in the Aldenfold, on the night when Starlight fought Gazelle with the Immortal Dream, she would have been able to see a bright pinprick of light, and watch the mountain explode.