Under the rubble of the Giant Hour Glass, Starlight and Silver Pear slowly got their strength back. Yet they still lacked a way out of this rubble. The unicorn searched the walls of the cave-in, hoping to find out how thick it was. Meanwhile, the earth pony was carving on one side of the walls. Starlight tried to channel out the noise of Silver Pear working hard as she continued to think.
"There has to be some way out of here," Starlight muttered to herself.
Silver Pear paused and looked at her. "Are you sure about that?" He dropped the broken end of the table and stopped stabbing the walls. "We've been at this for hours."
"Well, I'm not giving up," Starlight snapped and tried to summon some magic. Just like before the magic was fizzled out. However, this time those sparks moved toward something. "Hold on..." She tried again, maintaining a longer stream of magic.
"What do you mean?" Silver Pear wiped the sweat off his face.
"Its as if..." She repeated the spell one final time in a completely different direction only for it to flow to the same spot. "Something is calling on it... No, eating it!" Her eyes widened and she grabbed the broken table stand. The unicorn stabbed it in the direction of the flow. The wall cracked, but not by much.
"This is pointless." Silver Pear complained. "The rock is too dense there."
"Yet, that's where the magic is flowing!" Starlight yelled back at him. She reared back the table and sliced at the wall. It gave a bit more. "Now, come on help me."
Silver Pear growled and grabbed another piece of broken metal. Soon both were attacking the same wall. Pound after pound, they beat against the wall. The work was hard, but they needed to get outside and help in any way they could. The pair had no idea how long they kept up this routine. Their hands and legs ached, but the path of her magic kept them going.
"Come on!" Starlight cried out, sweat pouring down her face.
"Just a bit further!" Silver Pear pushed onward with more vigor. "We can do it!"
Starlight reared up and rushed forward, stabbing the wall with the table leg. A loud crack echoed through the cave in walls. The table leg snapped in half and the pair fell to the ground. The ceiling gave a groan and the walls vibrated. Starlight quickly got up and stood by Silver Pear's side. He leaned on her and she on him. The two took deep breaths as the walls continued to shake.
Neither one separated until the shaking stopped. Much to their disappointment, the walls settled down and no opening appeared. Defeat trench at their shaking legs. The unicorn and the stallion stood up straight and stared at the wall in front of them for several seconds before turning to each other.
"Will we ever get out of here?" Silver Pear's eyes widened in defeat.
"We have to!" Starlight urged him. "We have so much more we need to do!" She pulled away from him. "I need to find my teacher and finish my training. You need to find your mother and fix your family's problems." She pointed to herself and then to him repetitively, trying to find more examples, but the only other one that came to mind was, "We need to get out of here..."
Silver Pear jumped forward and caught her as she collapsed to the ground. "Are you alright?" He looked over her with a worried expression.
"I'm just tired." Starlight lied as she pulled away from him. "I... I just want to go home."
Silver Pear frowned, knowing what she was feeling. "I know what you mean." He paused to take in a deep breath, and slowly, he started to laugh.
"What's so funny?" Starlight crossed her arms and scowled at him.
"I just realized something." The stallion held his head high. "It's not important."
"What does that mean?!" Starlight was suddenly so offended. Especially, as he laid her aside and stood up. "You have to tell me now."
"No..." Silver Pear crossed his arms and shook his head. "Instead, I'm going to break you out of here!!" With that, he rushed at the wall with his bare hands.
"What?!" Starlight yelled at him. "What are you doing?!"
"This is ridiculous!" Silver Pear slammed his hands against the wall. He punched at the wall with his right and left fist, but he had no luck. Despite that, he kept going, scrapping at the wall until his knuckles bleed. "Yes, we just need to keep going!!"
"Stop!!" Starlight screamed as blood streamed down his arms. Yet, it was as if he suddenly couldn't hear her. She pushed against his back and even kicked his legs, but nothing could stop him from continuing to hit the wall. "Please, Silver Pear! This isn't going to work!!"
"It will!!" He growled at her strangely. "I know it will!!" His fists hit the wall harder than before.
Starlight didn't know what suddenly came over him until she saw his eyes turn maroon red. It started soft, but a faint maroon glow formed over his hands from all the blood. His muscles became stronger, and he never stopped.
"Silver Pear!!" Starlight's mind flashback to the images of the Pale Mare taking over Twilight's mind. She feared the same thing was about to happen here, with Silver Pear. "Stop!!" She wrapped her arms around him and begged. Yet a different transformation started to form.
His hair got longer, his teeth sharpened, and foam poured out of his cheeks. He didn't know what was happening to him only that her holding him was the only thing stopping him from ripping her apart. Instead, all his rage was being channeled into attacking the wall. He didn't know what was bringing this out of him.
The edges in front of them started to shift on their own. A large chunk of the wall crumbled and fell away. Daylight shined through a new hole in the wall. It hit his face and snapped him out of his wrathful rage.
Starlight was surprised as Silver Pear fell to the ground. She pulled away only to find him out cold. The bloody hands turned back to the natural red and stopped glowing. Seeing freedom and a lack of madness from Silver Pear, she breathed a sigh of relief. "We did it. Now let's go find my teacher and the rest of the group--"
She was stopped as a nightmarish shadow loomed over the Giant Hourglass. One might assume this was from the centaur, but the sight of Silver Pear's maroon blood flowing toward it said a very different story. Starlight stood up and held out her right hand. Channeling the smallest amount of dark magic, she found it flow the same exact direction as the remains of maroon blood.
"Another dark magic user... Or could this be the Pale Mare?" She feared both possibilities and tipped Silver Pear over her shoulder. Running toward the source she hoped to find Twilight okay and maybe not the source of this far darker transformation that seemed to be affecting anyone nearby with even the slightest amount of dark magic inside them.
******
Back within the mindscape, Twilight and Clover finally found the memory they were searching for. It hit them with a bang as they crashed down through a hellish warzone happening within the past version of the Giant Blue Hourglass. Twilight held up her wings over Clover on pure reaction, unsure how real this memory was going to be. It was from neither of their past, but from the minds of Rex and Cold Blue so they were unsure how dark and twisted this was going to get. However, they needed answers, even if it was from this hell.
"This was a bad idea, Twilight!" Clover tried to shout over the explosions.
"I'm aware!" Twilight retorted. "Now, try and spot Rex or Cold Blue."
Clover narrowed her eyes and tried to locate either one in the chaos. It was tough, the smoke and blasts of magic making it impossible to tell anyone apart. It didn't help that the smoke was a mix of maroon red and cyan blue.
Twilight thought back to the memories she had already witnessed from Cold Blue perspective, but this was different. His sight of the warzone was from above and broader, like he was summarizing the details. This was different for Clover too, as she witnessed memories from Rex before the warring broke out.
"I remember that Rex was hesitant to join the fighting." Clover tried to clear her thoughts.
"Strange compared to what we know of him now." Twilight narrowed the range of her wings when she was sure the explosions weren't affecting them. "Nowadays, he's a warrior, true and true."
"No!" Clover argued. "He's always hated fighting, especially killing."
Twilight laughed at the thought. "The last kind shadow, or a murderous shade."
"You know that phrase." Clover was shocked by her confirmation.
"Yes, Cold Blue mentioned it from time to time while we trained." Twilight glowed her horn to speed things in the memories up.
"From time to time..." Clover stood up and turned away. That line really got to her, the way Twilight said it sounded exactly like how Rex would refer to his past. The speech was much like an immortal's endless parade. Flipping back to the title, "The alicorns were the first to call him a murderous shade." She was stopped at a massive shadow of wings flying above them, distinctly alicorn wings. "One exact alicorn in fact." her eyes narrowed at the turquoise feathers.
"The first ruler of the Crystal Empire..." Twilight motioned the memories even faster. "We aren't here to see him." Scanning until she found an image of Rex, her eyes widened at him close to Princess Luna. "That's not what I expected."
"He served the princess for many centuries." Clover gritted her teeth and bowed too. " She never told me why he left her command. Truthfully, I was more overjoyed with him working with me instead of...--" The unicorn was stopped as Rex spoke.
"Please, there has to be another way!" Rex argued with Princess Luna.
"No, if you must face the evils of your past then so should I!" Luna's spoke with a deep voice that sounded so familiar to Twilight. "We are afraid it is the only way." Her eyes glowed and knifed like a crescent moon.
"Clover!" Twilight stepped in front of her. "No, not this..." She trained her stance, and her reactions forgetting this was just a memory. "Why would she rely on her?!"
"What do you mean?" Clover tried to reach out to them. "Why is Princess Luna speaking in a third person?"
"No, it's not Luna speaking at all." Twilight narrowed her eyes and prepared herself. "Nightmare Moon." Just as she said, the princess's form was twisted into the dark alicorn mare. "But why? Why her in this warzone?"
"Look!" Clover pointed at Rex's form also shifting. The power from his dark alicorn amulet shined brightly and distorted all nearby light into darkness. "I've never seen him use so much dark magic."
"I see..." Twilight's wings flexed. Even though this was just a memory, she too could feel the dark magic within her getting stronger as well. "Being around even a false dark alicorn is enough to greatly increase the mastery of dark magic. No wonder Cold Blue wanted me to train with him for fourteen hundred years."
"Fourteen hundred what?!?!" Clover screamed in shock until they were both stopped by another shockwave above them. They backed away at a massive blizzard building above them.
"It's affected Cold Blue as well." Twilight spun the memories around until they came upon the images of the giant blizzard, Nightmare Moon and the ultra powered Rex clashed with the giant Ixion. "Here it is, the final battle."
Thousands of shadows swarmed out from all over the entirety of the Giant Blue Hourglass. Hellish rain blasted alongside them, crashing through the giant centaur's defenses. They were followed by another far bigger storm of crystals, three different types clearly from the three alicorns of the Crystal Empire. From behind, two mighty flames rose up to consume the centaur's legs, channeled out of Celestia and her father. it was truly an inspiring sight to see all these powerful beings working together to slay this monster.
"Yes, but how did they win?" Clover bit her lip as the centaur fought off the powers so easily.
"We need to know and now!" Twilight tried to move the memories further, but they refused. "What?" She summoned her strongest spell, yet the memories stayed in place. "Why?"
"This is as far as the memory bubble will go!" Hollow Prince's voice echoed around them.
"No, we need answers!" Twilight tried to move the memories again, using all her strength. However, a random crystal flew by and cut her hand. She winced in pain and was kicked back into Clover's arms by intense winds.
"What's happening?" Clover found the winds fighting her too.
"The memory has become too real for us." She pointed to their shadows fading into the magical battle happening before them. "We're running out of time."
"But he's not defeated yet!" Clover argued. "We need to know how Rex defeated him the first time--" She was stopped as Twilight threw up her wings to protect them both from massive flames. "Twilight!!" The mare shrieked at the agony on Twilight's face.
"No..." Twilight fought through the pain. "I need to stand strong."
"Why?!" Clover wanted to step in and help her.
"Because my father is standing strong!!" She pointed to Rex's power overflowing outward over them. He looked more like a mad monster of endless shadows than the stallion that Clover loved. Yet, Twilight could still see the umbrum that would one day raise her preincarnate.
"If it is true..." Clover wrapped her arms around Twilight. "Then that makes you my daughter too!"
"You mean..." Twilight was stopped by her actions.
"I love and adore Rex more than anything." Clover smiled and channeled her magic with Twilight. "And I would be honored to call you daughter."
"Thank you, mom!" Twilight tried to match the flow of combining magic. It projected a large shield over them as the memory continued to play out.
Rex's shadows grew larger and larger until he stood taller than skyscrapers. Yet it still wasn't enough to bring down the centaur king. "It's so strong!" Twilight threw back her head. "Yet, what was the tipping point?!" She gestured her hands over the memories to zoom in, hoping to get a clearer picture. "Hold on..." She stopped at the center of the Giant Blue Hourglass. The hurricane winds had stopped in place.
"This is the place where Rex chased that body snatcher in the future," Clover confirmed. "This has to be the place of the final moment."
"Yes, but look!" Twilight pointed out to the scythe standing in the center. "It's shaking." She zoomed in until they were standing right next to it. Just like with Nightmare Moon, Twilight could sense another burst of dark magic surging within. It felt like she was floating above everything in creation just being near it. "What is this power? Why does this scythe look so familiar?" Her eyes narrowed on it.
"That's the Chains of Pluto!" Clover answered her.
Twilight's eyes widened. "I've seen an umbrum wield this before..."
"Another umbrum--" Clover was stopped as the scythe suddenly shot out of the ground and span in place.
Twilight's wings spread outward, and a voice echoed in her head. Even though this was just a memory, she felt a desire to answer it. No, it was if she wanted to beg for it's power and strength. "I must take it..." Clover pulled her hand away from it.
"That is the voice of Pluto, the last titan to exist in the realm of the living and the first son of Sanity." Clover yanked Twilight to the ground as the scythe flew at them. It went beyond them and exited the hurricane ring and rushed toward Rex.
The giant umbrum's shadows reacted violently to the scythe clashing with them. Rex screamed in agony upon touching his hand on the surface of the scythe. The surrounding shadows rushed into his flesh as he took hold of the scythe. The thousands of shadows turned into millions of shadows, merging with his form and stabilizing into a different monster altogether. Rex's form was now like that of a dark alicorn cloaked completely in the black outside of his horn, no longer blue but a more distinct maroon red.
At that moment the memory faded completely. "What?! No!!" Twilight screamed out as the answers faded before they could see the truth.
******
On the flip side of the mindscape, the images of a different warzone shined outward, knocking the princess to the ground. Her legs shook from all the running and kept moving in the air as if she wouldn't stop escaping. Despite being trapped in a bubble of Aitym's making, she could sense the emotions blasting from another memory altogether.
They cracked through the edges of her prison, flooding through the images of her father and her naga guard dying over and over. The thousands upon millions of souls swarming around her shrieked in fear and greater agony than ever before. They saw the same thing as her and raced away faster than she had been running.
Everything came to a stop as she tried to stand. A wave of fatigue and nausea rushed over her, yet relief was edging at the tips of her face like a dazed sleep breaking forth. Tears streamed down her eyes as she spotted her father's statue being replaced by the ship he left on, then him by her side at the birthday party. The image of her guard lying dead on the ground flipped to the image of him loving her then to the image of her knighting him. It was as if every image was playing in complete reverse, going back to the first memories she had of the two.
"It wasn't your fault." Her mother's voice echoed behind her. She covered her ears hoping to tune her out. "This wasn't your fault, Mira." Her mother stepped behind her and wrapped her wings around her, resting her chin on the top of Mira's head. "It wasn't because of you... them..." She let the pieces of bubble fall to reveal the shadows of Twilight and Clover on the other side. "They are to blame."
"No! This wasn't them! This is my fault!" The princess narrowed her eyes on them. Her mother's words dug into her head despite her blaming being elsewhere. "I am the fault..."
"Wrong," her mother spoke softer. "You need to blame them." She held up her hand to Twilight and Clover embracing each other. The princess saw this but didn't see it the same way her mother did.
She saw Twilight and Clover embracing each other as a mother and daughter would. It made her look up to her mother's chin over her. "They have a loving family."
"No!" Her mother's voice got more hateful. "They are lying to themselves. Their false love is blinding you to reality!" Her hands moved like claws around their image. "They are to blame for your pain. All things around you are to blame." The souls from before swarmed back between her mother's fingers and over her, grasping her neck. "The soldiers are to blame. The weak are to blame, everyone else to blame, but you."
"Mother," the princess struggled against her words. Something felt very wrong about her reasoning at this moment. Looking at Twilight and Clover, she saw a love she never knew before. That was a real mother and daughter. It was nothing like her own relationship. Her father raised her, her naga guard stood beside her, but what did her mother do for her. A thick dryness filled her throat as she turned to her mother's face. The beauty was slowly being replaced by the truth. "Please! This isn't right!"
"What do you mean?" Her mother was caught off guard as she broke free from her grip.
"You don't know them, not like I do." The princess's head flinched as memories hit her like a truck. These were very different from the ones before. They were so very terrifying, yet she couldn't turn away as they played out around her. The mere sight of them made her mother shrink away.
These images were of her mother's rage at everything and everypony she loved. Attacking her father for being weak, breaking her naga guard for phasing in battles. No, her face flipped away as these made no sense. her mother never did any of that. The images played even faster than the previous memories and even harder than she ever felt. They forced her eyes open, not out of a cold rage, but out of a strange sense of kind curiosity, as if they wanted to show her the real truth that she had been denying the whole time.
She jumped back at the images of her mother slowly morphing into herself attacking these characters in her life. No, this image of herself spoke with her mother's voice and used her magic. It was a complete stranger, no, a reality that had been hidden! This wasn't who she was, this was her mother speaking through her.
The princess turned to her mother as the images played, but she no longer needed to see them at all. All she thought she saw was her own self-hatred, but in reality, it was the hatred of another. "It wasn't my fault."
"Exactly--"
"No!!" The princess stepped toward her mother with defiance. "I'm not to blame, you are!!" Holding her hand up, her rapier appeared, tipping at her mother's throat. "You pushed me into every single action, ever since the day you died... on my birthday!" She swung to the left, sending out a blast of dark magic. "You have been speaking to me from the moment you lost your breath. No," Throwing magic on the other side as well. "You spoke with my voice, moved with my hands, tempted my will under your command until it became my will." Rushing forward, she braced the blunt hilt tightly against her mother's windpipe. "Soon it became that my will no longer exist in your shadow!!"
"No," Her mother gasped out in pain. "You can't mean that, I am your mother!!"
"Yes, but you lost the right to that the moment your corpse went cold!!" She pulled forward, slashing her mother's neck open. "The moment I began to feel guilty for your death. That was the day I lost myself!!" No blood splattered outward, instead sand dripped out.
"You... need me... Please, Mira ask for... my help..." Her mother's eyes narrowed at her with a hateful glare as she dropped to the ground. "You need more power and might."
The princess laughed at her statement, stepping up and trampling her foot into her mother's skull, breaking into smoke. "I am Princess Platinum!! I don't need some weak soul's power. Nah, I am power incarnate." With that final word, the bubble shattered and she started floating upward, to the exit of the mindscape. Her final gaze was on Twilight and Clover, before waking back up in reality.
******