Far above, in the highest points of the sky, a giant pink pearl orb flew by at hyper speed. Inside was far larger than it appeared, having several floors of rooms. Near the top of the structure was a control room. Sitting in the captain's chair was Princess Celestia.
To her, right was Luna, inside a status pod. The white alicorn checked the destination once more while keeping her sister in her sight. Celestia wiped the fear off her face and told herself, "This is okay. We're almost there."
"This is a stupid idea..." Luna grumbled. "Why should I listen to the warning of Blood Diamond's lover? Especially after he nearly killed me."
"Because..." Celestia didn't know how to word this at all. "Hollow Prince can be trusted."
"Can be?" Luna questioned her wording anyway. "Sounds like you are trying to convince yourself as well as me."
"It's not Hollow Prince that I'm questioning." Celestia placed her hand on the side of the status pod. "You don't have to use all of... her power."
Luna took a deep breath to calm her nerves. She stared onward as the giant blue hourglass came into sight. "Rex is in danger... And so are these time travelers... If Hollow Prince is right..." Luna didn't know how to finish that thought either. The blue alicorn narrowed her eyes on her sister. "Celestia, make sure the time travelers never find out we're here..."
"Why?"
"I don't know..." Luna grumbled. "I was told by..." She rolled her eyes away and whispered a name. "We can't make direct contact with them."
******
Back in the Pegasus Isles, the undead was reaching a peak. It was the perfect time for help to arrive. Twilight and Cold Blue landed with grace, stabbing into the undead on the way down. Silver Pear, despite being covered in a levitation spell, provided by Twilight, crashed face-first into some cloud grass. Rex came up from below, trapping many corpses by the legs within his shadows. Clover followed last, landing on Silver Pear's back.
The undead was pulled away from any nearby victims by Rex and toward Twilight and Cold Blue as they charged their weapons with magic; Twilight wielded her kopises, and Cold Blue, with his falcata.
"Cresent Moon!" Twilight channeled.
"Spring Song!" Cold Blue waved out.
They both swung blasts of magic outward, taking off the heads of each undead Rex had trapped. They didn't have to worry about holding back. They had been told by Rex to take each one down as quickly and as efficiently as possible. The two wizards were already working on their next spell when more charged in.
The undead charged at a few pegasi mares near Silver Pear. Hearing their girlish shrieks was enough to bring him to attention. He jumped over and bashed one undead with the hilt of his claymore. Spinning it around and slicing two others in half, before impaling one in the head. He gave a wink at the mares, but then the corpse he stabbed started flailing about.
Clover clung to the earth pony's back thanks to some magic. She bashed the enemy several times but it wouldn't go down. Silver Pear sneered at the extra weight but kept up with the group.
"Stabbing and bashing will only slow them down," Rex shouted as his chains ran around the undead's neck in a sawing motion. Splashing blood over Silver Pear as the head was taken off. "The best suit is to chop off as many limbs as possible to ensure they can't scratch, stab, or bite you."
"Can the disease spread from host to host?" Twilight questioned.
"No, only the one that cast the spell can spread it. Any who die within the field of effect will rise to his command." Sweat dripped from Rex's face as he summoned more chains. "We are too far from the field of effect. And only an umbrum can contain such a spell."
"Agreed, but you are not a full master," Cold Blue confirmed.
"Really?" Twilight was in disbelief until Rex confirmed. "Either way, Aitym is not an umbrum at all, not even a dark magic user."
"Yes, but using my memories of the event, he managed to find a way to stabilize them." Rex regretted.
"Doesn't mean he's the one that first activated the spell." Twilight pointed out some of the dead being unicorns. "Could he have used Princess Platinum as a conduit?"
"Unlikely. Some of these undead are too old to match up with the moment she went missing."
"That only leaves one possibility," Cold Blue corrected as he stabbed a massive undead corpse. "The wendigo."
"Of course, their species are masters of necromancy," Twilight confirmed as she flipped over and chopped off the arms of the massive one, with Rex taking care of the head. "What was the spell originally used for?"
"Defence..." Rex hesitated as the memories flooded back. "My species was under attack by some unknown force..." He waved his head as the images played in rapid fire. "I never knew what the force was. Only that the alicorns were in some way connected to it."
"What?!" Twilight's eyes widened. One of the undead tried to grab her in shock, but Silver Pear sliced it in half.
"Yes, the alicorns were connected, but I never understood how." Rex lowered his eyes but still took down more undead. "When the spell activated, something went horribly wrong. It was meant to only affect the umbrums and have them only target outsiders... not each other."
"Maybe if we figure out the anomaly that caused the original spell to go wrong, we could..." Twilight was stopped by Rex's disapproval.
"A better idea would be to take out Aitym since he's the one currently twisting the spell." Cold Blue stabbed another with his ocarina dagger. Playing a few notes, blasted sound magic through several other ones nearby.
"But, how? This place is several miles wide." Twilight sliced another in half. "We only landed near the center to hit the biggest crowds first--" She was stopped as a massive shaking through them all about. Turning toward the source, she saw a pole of light and dark magic.
"Looks like somepony is already giving him a good fight." Rex used his chains to draw a new circle in the shadows, aiming toward that direction.
"That power can only be Starlight..." Twilight flipped into the shadows, dragging Silver Pear and Clover with her.
Rex and Cold Blue wanted to follow, but the shadow stopped. The pathway faded as Rex took a step back. The umbrum grabbed his head as intense pain pulsed through him. His chains receded and his power damped.
Cold Blue narrowed his eyes only to stop at the sight of the dark alicorn amulet's glow. He pushed Rex against the wall and demanded, "What are you seeing?"
"I don't know what you are talking about?" Rex pushed him away and attempted to open another doorway through the shadows. However, nothing came forth, making him angry. "Damn it, not now..."
"Your magic is being redirected by that damn amulet, which means?"
"I know what it means!" Rex yelled at him.
Cold Blue grabbed out his ocarina dagger and placed the note in his mouth. "Who is it? Twilight or your mistress?"
"Neither..." Rex narrowed back. "But the visions say... Someone close is going to die!" The umbrum forced a shadow to finally open, covering his face in sweat.
"I see." Cold Blue turned toward the direction Twilight and the rest had been sent and played a few notes. The notes took physical form and flowed through the winds toward Twilight's destination. "Where?"
"The... dagger."
"That dagger! Fine..." Cold Blue stopped as his ears picked up something. Looking up to the sky, his eyes narrowed on the clouds. "Go on ahead of me..."
"Not like you to let me win--" Rex stopped as Cold Blue pulled out his falcata.
"Go, now!" Cold Blue roared.
Rex took his leave, he didn't notice what the intense hearing of the siren was picking up. Far above them at the very edge of the giant blue hourglass, a single red snowflake dropped. It was heading for Cold Blue's direction.
******
Back on the titan airship, Starswirl turned on the scanners to figure out where they were. Looking outside proved pointless as there were thick clouds all around them. It was clear that they were high in the sky, but how high? Starswirl couldn't exactly take another chance of falling a great height. Yet for all he knew they could be just thirty meters above the ground.
"I could survive thirty meters..." He stopped and waved the thought away. "Not without any broken bones and then how useful would I be?" He turned his attention to the communication controls. "I need to figure out what's going on outside..." His eyes narrowed as pressing the buttons did nothing. With the airship in lockdown, he couldn't use the electronics without unlocking it first and he still lacked the password.
"Knowing Fredricson it's probably related to mares and his whoring around with Lady Cat..." Starswirl stopped and thought about it more. "Wait, his dead son. Mon... Mon..." He facepalmed. "Rex and Clover would know more, he was their former ally." His mouth moved to the words in his thoughts, trying to shock his mind into remembering. "Mon... Mon... Mon Grand..." His eyes softened. "Mon Grand Etalon."
He gritted his teeth and typed in the password. The alarm blared and the screen pulsed red. "What? I thought for sure..." He stopped his thoughts mid-sentence and tried typing them backward. "Nolate Dnarg Nom."
The reaction was long this time, the longest twenty seconds he ever had to deal with. Soon enough, the screen shined green. A new alarm rang and the doors unlocked. The communications and sensors came back, lighting Starswirl up with joying. "Now, where are we?"
His typing was stopped instantly upon seeing the strangest part of all. He could only look at the screen with wide eyes at the sight of an endless ocean just beyond the clouds. "How did we get this far out?!" His eyes narrowed as he typed faster. Fredricson was always far better at working this machine than Starswirl.
Moving the scan out further revealed the truth. The titan airship was several miles out into the Celestial Ocean, near an all too familiar island. "This makes no sense. What am I doing outside of..." He ran over to the door and opened it. Now he could force his magic to part the clouds without being blocked by the airship itself.
Removing the veil urged his fears and confusion. Seeing the ocean was one thing, but just beyond them was an island he thought he would never see again. He narrowed his eyes at the still frozen and burnt remains of a castle outcasted to the ocean. "That's the former homeland of... the sirens." Starswirl stepped back in utter loss of reaction. "But how? This is thousands of miles away. It would have taken months to get here."
"And yet, you traveled here in an instant." A new voice caught the old wizard off guard. The horrid smell brought his face away from the source just above the door.
Starswirl covered his mouth but kept his eyes on the rotting corpse floating above him. "And you are?"
Thule let loose a massive decaying grin, barely containing his tentacles in his cheeks. He did not answer his name and simply pointed to the castle. "Deep within that hellish warzone... he was born."
"Who?"
"Lord Frost, the icy beast you all fear!!" Thule laughed at the old wizard's lack of knowledge.
"And you are?" Starswirl turned the question back to him.
Thule bowed to the old wizard. "I am the light in his darkness."
Starswirl's eyes widened. "That phrase... Thule." The old wizard trembled back and attempted to hide his cold sweat. Without giving the corpse a chance to see, he slammed the door shut and ran back to the controls. He didn't stop there, pushing all the controls to full blast.
Thule frowned in disappointment. "So that was Starswirl the Bearded." He held out his hand to the titan airship. "Reasonable reaction when a child like him faces an ancient being like me." With that, the rotting hand split open revealing thousands upon millions of tentacles, shooting at such great speed and size that seemed physically impossible for his shape and body.
In fact, as each tentacle spread outward into massive hundreds of feet bigger than him, the flesh of the body pulsed and twisted as if flowing like a piece of fabric across the water. It took only seconds to reach the titan airship and stop it in place. "Careful..." Thule sneered. "I just barely got this container a few months ago and unlike Aitym, all hosts eventually die under my command."
******
Nearby where Twilight's group arrived, Starlight's group was flying around as the horde of corpses rushed after them. They were caught off guard so badly that all they could do was dodge. Starlight spun around and sliced the wings of some, while Clovis teleported from place to place.
Commander Hurricane was in complete shock. Her famous bravado had faded at the sight of her brothers in her mind. She showed incredible hatred for Dartz, but the second she saw Zword, she broke completely. All she could do was stand in the air, unaffected by the undead swarming toward her.
Just in time, Twilight, Clover and Silver Pear landed between her and the attack. Twilight sliced a zombified griffin in half as she landed. Silver Pear arrived behind, swinging his claymore horizontally to clear out as many forces as possible before placing Clover on a table.
"Could you be more graceful?!" Clover mocked. "I've seen drunk clowns with better moves." She stopped as an undead got the pass. With little care, she bashed her bow staff into the monster's head, knocking it toward Silver Pear's claymore.
"Hey, I don't do good with heights!" He barked back, grabbing the table for balance.
"You'll be fine with my spells!" Twilight jumped over them. "Now keep fighting." She twirled around and landed by Commander Hurricane. "What an honor it must be?" She mocked the shock, unknown why such a legendary warrior had shattered.
"She's not okay with her brother being a host for Aitym!" Starlight landed beside them.
"Well, I know the feeling!" Twilight laughed shyly. "I'm sort of at fault here, after tossing him out of the siren sisters."
"Calm down, honey." Clover spoke nicer, "You didn't expect him to jump into the nearest light magic user."
"Would have been useful information if I knew Rainbow Dartz was a light magic user." Twilight took down another corpse. "Let alone a sibling of the legendary Commander Hurricane."
"Yeah, we should have notified you, deary." Clover apologized.
"Deary, honey?!" Starlight stepped between the two. "Am I missing something--" She was stopped as Twilight gave her a tight hug.
"Nothing at all my student, just apparently, I've been adopted." Twilight pulled away as another corpse tried to grab them both. Luckily, Starlight and Twilight stabbed it together.
"Missed you too, Teach." Starlight gave the happiest grin she had in a long time. Even if it was in the middle of a warzone with the undead, she was still glad to see her teacher after so long. Though, she had no idea of the time difference between the two's separation. Such a thing would have to be revealed later.
"Enough about reunions," Clovis interrupted. "Any ideas on how to stop the undead?"
"Stopping the caster, obviously!" Twilight answered. "Rex confirmed that himself since it was his species that forged the spell."
"Right, that would be useful if we knew where Aitym was?" Starlight answered back.
"Yeah," Clovis confirmed, just as ashamedly. "We lost track of him after his shock to the Commander."
"Okay," Twilight leered over Commander Hurricane's shocked look. The mare still hadn't moved once despite the battle happening around her. "Does she act a lot like Rainbow Dash?!"
"The founder?" Clovis questioned.
Starlight's eyes lazed. "Wrong Rainbow Dash." She pulled Clovis and Silver Pear out of the way as Twilight charged magic into her fist.
"No, not the founder of Pegasus Isle, the Rainbow Dash from my timeline, AKA my ex!!" With that, Twilight punched Commander Hurricane in the gut so hard that it knocked her directly into the crowd of the undead.
"What are you doing?" Silver Pear was stopped by the utter laughter in the crowds.
"As Rainbow Dash would say, waking up a bitch!" Twilight winked at the burst of blood and body parts as Commander Hurricane broke from her stooper and charged her way out.
"What the fuck is wrong with this hot mare?!" Commander Hurricane crashed into the table.
"Glad to see no matter the timeline, you still like it rough." Twilight laughed at the parallels in the timeline. "Now come on, we have to stop Aitym."
"Twilight..." Starlight spoke up. "What is this Aitym?"
"What do you mean?" She stopped.
"I thought he was an alicorn at first..." She flinched at her own body. "Is he like me?"
"No..." Twilight waved her head.
"But, he said..." Starlight tried to word it but she found it strangely hard. "Ny... Nykur."
"Nixie is another way to say it... The Kelpie and Nixie." Twilight laughed. "I saw it when I attacked his image in the mindscape. They are what the alicorns were before..." She mumbled the rest as even she was unsure of every detail she saw was true or not. "Now he is nothing but a nuckelavee. The defiled remains of an alicorn spirit beyond death."
"I see." Starlight straightened herself. "So, not an omnipony. Thank goodness."
"Enough arguing what the fuck he is!!" Hurricane screamed. "I'll punch him, beat him, stab him and kill him!!" She took off to the sky, leaving the others to follow behind her. Neither knew what direction she was going, but it was clear she was after blood and her only target could be Aitym.
*******
Back in the Crooked Wing, the place grew silent after Silver Pear left. It wasn't because he was the life of the party or the source of much joy. In fact, usually Hermes could keep the party going purely on his own. However, he was noticing something was very off with Red Steel.
The big wall of fur was constantly staring out the window. The griffin was unsure why only that ever since they left he stopped drinking and refuse to react to anything from his tricks to the voices of other conversations. Red Steel never spoke a word around the griffin, but it never felt like silence until now.
It was an eerie cold silence that struck through each of the patrons so easily. Slowly but surely, each one of them felt on edge, but neither knew why. Some of them wanted to question this turn in the buffalo, but none of them wanted to bug him. So one of them pushed the griffin closer.
Hermes crashed right into Red Steel and apologized. No response was given in return. In fact, the buffalo's breath stopped completely now. Hermes slowly reached out and padded his friend's shoulder. "Is something wrong, old pal?"
Red Steel kept his calmness and never turned away from the window. It wasn't facing the battle that Twilight mentioned. It wasn't facing anything. Outside was the view of the Celestial Ocean. This vast blueness covered everything beyond the window and yet it appeared as if the buffalo were looking directly at something.
After what felt like forever, the concentration in the buffalo faded, and a cold sweat replaced it. Without giving any more hesitation, he pulled out a telescope from his pocket. He zoomed in the same direction he had been looking before.
Hermes was perplexed by this object, as he had never seen it on his friend before. As far as the griffin knew, the buffalo hated such 'advanced' technology, deeming anything greater than glasses to be worthless. And yet, here was the buffalo using this telescope so effortlessly. Hermes leaned in closer at the sight of writing on the side. It was far too small to be from Red Steel and it had faded to the point of being unreadable.
"No...." A single word was uttered from Red Steel. Hermes jumped back as it had been the first time he ever heard the buffalo speak and yet more words followed that only brought more confusion. "It can't be him..."
"What?" Hermes reached for the telescope, only for his hand to be swatted away with extreme force. The griffin was scared by such an attack, but the fear in his friend's eyes was just as terrifying. "Who is him?"
Red Steel pointed out to the window, as something finally came into sight from beyond the edge of the horizon. It was a flag, bearing the symbol of the griffins.
"My species!" Hermes raised an eyebrow. "What about them?"
"No... it's who is with them." Red Steel's eyes narrowed. "... Carnival Carnage."
******