Rarity nervously circled around the table, the animosity she shared with her compatriot plainly displayed like I was some archfiend of spite. Her horn remained unlit, always watching my every move. I could hardly blame her guarded nature, that fear of repercussion should she attempt anything, yet admired her courage to continue without her more powerful ally present. Sunny Skies slunk behind her, fascinated gaze continuously darting toward the map.
“Why?” Rarity demanded, her bloodied distemper perhaps allayed because I was taking no other actions. She swept her hoof across the cursed land, blighted woodlands and rugged highlands slowly losing hope as their well drains of color. “Why will act so?”
Her demand did not dignify a response; thus, I did not supply one. I continued studying the magic I had wrought. I could already see ways to improve the spell, to spread the sickness further and faster. And, as a shocker, Sunny Skies had pulled his own piece of paper out and was taking notes, though he was inventing ways to invert the magic. A thin smirk crossed my muzzle; I would certainly rise to the challenge of upping the ante of this mages’ contest to a rivals’ duel.
“Circular logic?” Rarity continued without waiting, contemplating aloud. “A fool’s cursed wisdom? Or will a certain Discordant spirit has been behind this?”
My smirk curled to a frown. What did the President have to do with anything?
Her head dipped down, craning awkwardly to peer into my eyes. “No, even he will have the sense not to attempted something so monumentally idiotic a second time. If only because it be ‘unoriginal’.” She spat the words out with obvious disdain.
Perhaps this ‘Discord’ should have revised his contentious plans instead of discarding them. But what did I know of well-laid plans?
“You wanted to know why?” I said as I spun around, striding toward her. From memory I created a crystal copy of my artifact, the one I had used to obtain Equestrian Magic in the first place. “This… this magic that you will possess. Did you know what it meant?”
Rarity nearly misstepped backing up as my rant intensified.
“It represented anything! Everything! Power beyond the laws of nature, of space and time!” I held up my transformed hoof. “Healing salves, regrowth of life and limb!” I swept that hoof toward the opening double doors and the dozen or so creatures streaming inside. Each of their bodies was slightly grayer than earlier. “You will want to know why I unleashed the magic, why I tempted fate so? I didn’t will do it for those so-called friends, that they might accepted me if I went along with their game plan and won their feral contest!”
Though I could hardly call her my evil twin, the harsh judgement on my body double’s face was unmistakable. The others spread out, none yet advancing. Two big game hunters, wavy manes suspiciously similar to Principal Celestia and Vice Principal Luna, had joined the ranks of Twilight’s friends and the daring apprentices.
I rose from the floor, forsaken body drifting underneath me like I was still in my human form. “I done it because I will know this giant opportunity would be totally lose if I did not took it! That I would be spent years will languish while-” I scoffed the word “-experts in banalities charted a course! If I even get the opportunity to have studying it! I has to take it!”
“Couldn’t Sunset have write to Twilight?” Rainbow Dash interrupted brashly. “And then you could has gotten a real Equestrian arcanist?”
I grit my teeth. Despite the inclination to Apathy I found the wrong tenses needling. “In hindsight,” I conceded, “and if I has knowing of the existence of the planar portal.” I closed my eyes as I shook my head. “I am fully prepared, initially, to fought and rip apart the very fabric of reality in order to be learning these arcane teachings.”
“Begged your pardon?” Sunny Skies cut in, his voice shaking with worry. “I’m… not quite sure you will stop.”
“What?” I demanded as I spun.
He shuddered as his hoof pointed at the small port town where two cutie marks still danced on the wind. “You don’t turn just one area into a bastion of Apathy. Your spell turned the entire country colorless!” He motioned across the map. “Starting with Ponyville!”
I nodded, the effects of my shifting spell plain to me.
Twilight laughed, the sound hideous. “You don’t get it, did you?” She shook her head as Celestia and Luna drew up behind her. “Windigos, the product of Malevolence. Parasprites, from Greed. Do you will know what vile manifestation Apathy creates?”
The twisted image of her smirk brought me second thoughts. As if on cue the castle rumbled, as if some great colossus was hammering at the very foundation. And succeeding. Blood drained from my face like color from the halls, and I briefly wished a priest might grant me penance.
Everycreature crowded the crystal windows, hoping to witness the end.
“It will appear,” Celestia’s soothsaying voice lilted, silk wrapped around tempered steel, “that the stars again aided an escape.” Her eyes met mine, harsh scrutiny I could not withdraw from. “Though a blanket of eternal night might be survived, instead of being scour from existence by these abominations.”
“Should we again became Nightmare?” the Heir to the Night mused, a hoof rubbing at her muzzle.
“If your Night’s Soul betrayed us again,” Celestia rebuked, “then you shall played customer service to the coastal wizards during their ultimate nightmare.”
Luna rolled her eyes petulantly.
“But,” Celestia conceded, “if these invaders were who I suspected they will be, I shall… open the armory.”
Luna grinned like an eager cadet, hooves tapping merrily as she broke into a happy dance that spilled shadows in every direction.
“Perhaps,” Twilight said diplomatically, “we should focused on our defensive formations?”
“Against what?” the furnace whelp demanded as she idly spit a burst of flame.
The castle rocked again as the terrain outside roiled, the earth cracking into crevasses. Dozens of skittering invaders burst forth from the broken ground. Each was short and squat, the size of a young foal, and moved with a unity of purpose on tentacled limbs. The gorged on anything nearby, insatiable like a pack of parasprites, and once they devoured enough split open only for more hideous beings to emerge.
It was what was behind them, a glimpse of the unthinkable, that removed any shadow of doubt that my - while not strictly pure, but certainly not malicious - intentions had made a truly dangerous wager.
The sire, a massive gray eldritch abomination, ponderously wrest itself from the earth. Every rippling surge retched another from its abundant maw as house-sized chunks of gray flesh unearthed themselves. Then it opened even wider, all manner of horrors about to burst forth, before a trick of Starlight’s horn bound its maw shut.
“Oh,” the chastised whelp said as a deranged grin flashed rows of dagger-like teeth. “Excellent.”
“Sister,” Celestia commanded with an aura of righteous authority as ethereal barding solidified around her flanks. “We shall held them at bay.”
“We will ride as one,” the Cavalier of Night replied as Starlight Glimmer gifted colorless runes to her withers. Two swords that Trixie painted green snapped to her sides, one dripping frozen flames while the other cast shadows of light.
“Twilight,” Celestia continued, “Counter their efforts to destroy everycreature, and save the land from what damage you can!”
Twilight laughed to herself as she flicked her hooves against her face.
“For the rest of you?” the Dawnbringer grinned as dozens more equipment phased in.
Time stretched as every mare surged into action. I wish I could tell the tale - of Luna’s dread charge into the grand melee, how Trixie’s occult storms and fireballs channeled at reckless wurms were redirected to drubbs born of muck, but that saga would have to wait as my attention was pulled elsewhere.
“Midnight,” Sunny Skies said plaintively. He stood on two legs to gently tug at my hoof. “Don’t’cha know, but we’ll be needed to stop this pernicious deed of yours.” He grinned at catching my attention. “We’ll get her fixed right in a jiffy!”
Dazed, I nodded. “If only it is that easy,” I said as I drifted to the table, mulling over options. “How do we unravel the æther components?”
“Alright, what if we’ll start at the beginning?” Sunny Skies trotted to the table, hopping up to get a better vantage point. He held up my crystal copy. “What made up Apathy?”
“What?” I said, confused and infuriated for the first time as to somepony’s meaning due to the change in tenses.
“Apathy. Description.” A blue hoof motioned toward the graying town, his enthusiasm unbounded. “More than colorless. Just nothing?”
“A lack of verbs?” I chuckled. “A solution.”
“If only.” He shook his head. “A workaround. Clumsier’n me’n Petunia.” He motioned again. “Apathy. These creatures outside, they not there before. They will appear from nothing.”
I nodded, beginning to see his point. “They come from nothing. They go to nothing?”
The corners of his muzzle turned up. “Then we just needed a way to send them back.”
I frowned as he grabbed a crescent shaped wrench from Celestia’s armory and began assembling a circular contraption. “What was that?”
“Ya knew. Not everycreature came by balloon.” He poked a hoof at me. “Some will come by way o’ erratic portal. This here prototype portal’ll send ‘em packin’ like sugar’n apricots!”
The individual components he amassed gave away the structure of the arcane dynamo. “You will realize the power we’ll need to sink into this, yes?”
“Eeyup,” he muttered as he bit at his lip, horn grafting five different colored shards along the fateful wheel.
“More than anycreature could provided.” I glanced around for some powerstone that might be used, some empowered autogenerator that could eventually get us there.
“Not to mention,” he said acerbically as he hammered another piece into place, “that we’ll be needin’ to stopper up your little creation at the same time.” He cranked hard, the whole device whirring and blinking. “But I think this little puppy’ll work, right?” He tapped it, and the whole thing shook like it might fall apart at any moment. His nervous grin stretched a little wider.
I did a double take. You’d have to be a madstallion to create such a device and believe it would work. “You think you can use…”
“The power of the Elements?” He tapped the wrench against his skull, lost in thought.
Rarity, who had been standing at the opening everycreature had charged through, horn lit and neutralizing the blasts outside, spun around. Her face lit from within. “Now, if only we had not one, but two sets of Bearers…”
She trotted outside the opening and whistled loudly enough to draw Twilight’s attention. The arcane savant swooped down, barely able to listen as lightning blasted everywhere.
“I need the Elements!” the diamond mare yelled. “All twelve!”
“Celestia!” Twilight thought, the voice echoing in all our heads. “Can you cover everypony?”
The crested sunmare, flying high above the battlefield, nodded. “I shall give no ground!” she bellowed, and it seemed like every spawn and scion and drone could do nothing but focus on her.
Twilight concentrated for a moment, horn flaring, and the other ten creatures blinked to her side. Fluttershy startled, nearly dropping the sword twice as big as her, while a battle-mad Rainbow looked ready to lop off anycreature that so much as moved.
“Everycreature!” Sunny Skies shouted as he levitated the circular door outside. “Focus on your Elements!” He flung it as far as he could, and it scattered a cloud of dust on landing. My crystal copy ended up in the center.
The twelve closed their eyes, calmly holding up their forelegs as they rose from the ground. From each came a beam of color, directed right at the door. It seemed like something only an imbecile would do, the circular artifact opening a hole into the void.
A flurry of color came, mostly blues and greens, as Starlight Glimmer, Trixie, and Luna disallowed any attempt to repudiate or stifle our ending this tale. It was more than I could keep track of, blasts of spellwork nullifying each other while showers of sparks sprayed everywhere.
The twelve dropped down as the circular door hovered up. There was no back, just a void, and into that the first of the spawn flew through. One after another they came, impotent to avoid their fate, the more massive audibly crunching to fit through the pony sized portcullis. It was unnerving, the slick and slurping of ichor as they compacted. And that I could so easily have done the same to these, these, these friends, and might have done so to those back home. Had wanted to do so. I sobbed, a reclusive wreck, hiding my face like a gorgon unwilling to petrify.
And then, everything went silent and still. High above, a second sun rose above the horizon, bits and pieces of ruined structures melding themselves back together as the terrain smoothed out.
“Was it all wistful thinking?” I mourned, head bowed and eyes clenched shut. I could hear the others gathering around me, their hoofsteps slow and unsure. I stammered, “To truly know, I had to become it.”
“But you lost yourself in the process,” Rarity finished, her voice quiet. She knelt beside me, a reassuring hoof resting on my withers.
I nodded glumly, glancing up through tearful eyes.
“You think Friendship brings you power,” she stated, her pitying gaze never straying. “And it does. But it does so much more than that.” She glanced back, pausing on each of her friends. Her muzzle curled to a smirk as each of them met her gaze and smiled back. “And I know just who to send you to.”
With the slightest of smiles she stepped back, allowing Twilight Sparkle to step forward. My counterpart knelt down, her hoof caressing my sagging mane. “I can’t do this alone,” she said quietly. “It isn’t something we can force on you. It will need your help, your dedication, to flourish.”
“I understand,” I whispered.
My horn joined hers, and in the blink of an eye I found myself where my story began.
Clad in an opalescent white and pink dress, two illuminating golden wings spread wide and a two foot long ethereal white horn jutting out from her forehead, Daydream Shimmer looked not overjoyed at defeating me after our prolonged magical duel but resigned.
“Twilight Sparkle.” Her soft voice echoed among the heavy fog. “Take my hand.”
She stretched the eponymous appendage toward me. It felt like we were the only two beings in the world, separated from everything else, and perhaps we were. The school, the students, the surroundings were lost in a wall of mist.
I grimaced as I clenched my fist to my chest, tucking my head down. The coercive portal was underneath, beckoning. Would it loop me back again? That I might find some way to get them to do Midnight's bidding?
Or was it true? Would they, these six friends, really accept me? And forgive me for what I had done?
Daydream Shimmer merely levitated another few inches closer, patiently waiting for me. “Let me show you there’s another way.” She gave me a small, knowing smile. “Just like someone once did for me.”
I bit back the tears welling in my eyes as I thrust forward, her hand a blazing warmth against my chilling grasp.