"Parallel—" said Windfall, slowly and carefully, wanting very much to be certain whether she had heard the alicorn correctly or not. "—universes."
"That's right," Twilight confirmed.
Windfall had a hard time taking in the concept. She understood both words, but placed together… She decided to take it one step at a time. "If they're parallel, that means they never meet, right?"
"Ah! A fan of geometry?"
"Trig, actually. Comes in very useful for artillery calculations. Wouldn't want to drop a rock on the wrong target."
"Oh." Twilight stared at her for a moment and then shook her head and got back on track. "You're right; the universes never meet, but cross-connections can be made. I've used one, myself!"
Twilight fully expected Windfall to pepper her with questions about travelling to another universe, but the mercenary mare was too practical in the face of an unknown (albeit hogtied) threat. "So what do these connections look like? Can we find it and shove the maniac back through it back to wherever she came from?"
"They're mirrors usually. At least that's what Starswirl always used. But they can look like anything. A door, a book, or even an overstuffed green velvet chair."
Windfall really did want to ask about that last item, but persisted. "So, can we find this connection, dump her back in, and break it so it doesn't work anymore?"
Twilight sighed. "She probably made the original, so I don't think that would be a long-term solution."
Windfall thought for a moment and then said, "Look, don't take this the wrong way, but…"
"Go on."
"I know she's you, sort of, but she's a pretty damned evil version of you—"
"I absolutely agree. Go on."
"So… If you do your magic on my horseshoes, and mojo up a nice sharp knife, I could…" Windfall winced at the horrified look on Twilight's face. "I'll make it quick and painless, I promise!"
Twilight opened her mouth to forbid Windfall from doing any such thing. But she paused and slowly closed it again. She would be the sole ruler of Equestria soon. She would undoubtedly have life and death decisions to make. She had to be ready to make those decisions based on what was best for the kingdom and not her personal feelings.
The twisted, giant version of herself had been directly responsible for the seemingly pointless deaths of many ponies at the very least, and given the methodical nature of her bizarre labyrinth, would continue destroying equine lives in pursuit of her own ends... If she wasn't stopped.
Twilight's horn lit and half of the mass of Windfall's front shoes flowed away in a swirl of twinkling lights. The cloud settled on the tunnel floor into a straight, thin blade.
"The edge is only one molecule thick," Twilight said in an unsteady voice. "Be careful."
After giving Twilight a surprised look, Windfall took up the knife in a practiced pastern grip and turned toward the huge, bound alicorn.
She was awake and watching them.
"Uh," Twilight began. "I'm sorry, but—"
The world twisted in on itself and both Twilight and Windfall staggered and cried out. It felt to them as if they were simultaneously being frozen and roasted alive while being shredded under a field harrow. But the gigantic pony was screaming, too.
The agony ended after what seemed like an eternity. Twilight staggered to her hooves and called out to the other alicorn, "Don't use magic again! Don't cast anything, or we—"
As might be expected, the maniac didn't listen.
The three of them were only briefly affected the second time, because the maniac had attempted to break through what she thought was a suppressor of some sort with shere power. If it had been any sort of normal magic-nullifying ring, she would have easily blown it off her horn in a cloud of metallic gas. As it was, she merely increased the power of the spell woven into the steel cone. Before she passed out, one of the least unpleasant sensations Windfall experienced was the feeling that her own teeth were trying to burrow upwards into her brain.
Twilight had been partially prepared to resist the side effects of her magic disrupting matrix. She instantly cast a double shield around herself on a frequency that mirrored the two unequal "legs" of additional mana that the sigils on her steel cone added onto the maniac's spells.
It was just barely enough dampening to allow her to retain consciousness. The tunnel around her went out of focus briefly and then settled back into clarity. Twilight was fairly certain that the distortion had nothing to do with her own eyes. She dropped her shields and staggered over to look at the unconscious alicorn.
The cone that generated the disruptive additions was distorted as if it had been exposed to extreme heat. Twilight realized that it wouldn't survive many more such blasts of magic, assuming that the pulses of distorted waveforms it generated didn't kill all of them or collapse the tunnel first. Twilight was astounded that the big alicorn had only knocked herself out. The monster had been in direct contact with the sabotaged mana flow; and after feeling it from a distance and through a powerful defensive shield, Twilight could hardly believe that the alicorn's attempt at escape hadn't physically torn her apart.
Twilight looked around to find Windfall out cold, but still breathing. Fortunately, when the pegasus had dropped the ultra sharp knife, it had fallen clear of her body.
"Windfall! Wake up!" She nudged the pony's shoulder with a hoof. There was no response.
If Twilight risked waiting for Windfall to wake up first, she'd risk everything. It was up to her to do what had to be done.
A wave of nausea swept over her as she lit her horn and levitated the knife.
= = =
Windfall vomited up a bit of half digested grass as she woke. Her head swam and she couldn't see anything. The darkness around her was complete. But she definitely heard something. A pony was crying somewhere nearby. She got her aching legs under her body but wisely decided not to try standing up.
She smelled blood. "Princess?" she croaked out.
The weeping quieted, but it didn't stop entirely. There was a noise as if somepony had tried to speak, but they only managed a strangled sound.
"Twilight! Are you okay? I can't see anything!"
"Don't..." The word was half a sob.
Windfall tried to stand then, but wobbled and fell back to her knees. She crawled in the direction of the crying. "Hang on, Princess. I'm coming."
When she got close, she could smell the blood. She reached out and her hoof contacted something warm and solid. A little nearer, and she got a leg around what seemed to be Twilight's hips. Windfall squeezed lightly and said, "It's okay. I'm here." It was a ludicrously awkward hug, but it was all she could manage.
"I—I couldn't do it," Twilight sobbed.
Windfall didn't need to be told what "it" was. "She's still alive?"
The pegasus felt her nod, and pulled herself up to a sitting position using Twilight's shoulder for support. "When she wakes up, are we going to—"
"She's awake now," Twilight said.
"What? Are you…" Windfall was getting a little irritated at having to guess at what had gone on while she was out. "Can you make some light?"
"I—I hope you don't hate me for this. I couldn't kill her, so I…" A faint violet light formed at the tip of Twilight's horn, and it was all Windfall needed to see what was beyond her.
The huge alicorn lay beneath a hemisphere of magic, her face contorted in an ugly snarl of rage. She was screaming something, but no sound reached the two ponies outside the bubble. Broad streaks of blood flowed down over her face from where her horn… wasn't.
The long spire, still encased in Twilight's improvised steel cone, lay outside of the shield spell in its own separate puddle of blood.
Windfall's first thought was that it was a clever and reasonable solution for a pony adverse to killing. Her second thought was that it was obvious that Twilight was on the edge of falling apart and that she'd better get her snapped out of her funk and headed for an exit as soon as possible.
"We need to get out of here, Princess. Help me up."
Twilight and Windfall used each other for support as they got to their hooves. Windfall surreptitiously scooped up the bloody knife and very, very carefully tucked it under one wing. She hoped they wouldn't need any weapons, now that the maniac was neutralized, but she wasn't going to be caught unprepared if they did.
"How long will that shield hold, Princess?"
"A day, maybe? If her Earth magic is proportionately as strong, and if she snaps that wire and starts kicking… I don't know. An hour or so?"
"Then we'd better get a move on, unless you want me to finish the job."
Twilight shook her head violently. "No… Just… No. Let's go."
The huge alicorn suddenly stopped struggling and silently screaming, and rolled over to where she could touch the floor of the tunnel with one of her bound wingtips. The maneuver rolled her hips so that her cutie mark was clearly visible for the first time.
Twilight stared. It was her mark, of course, but the five smaller white stars were gone. They weren't missing; dark smears something like burn marks had replaced them.
"C'mon, Princess! Let's get—"
"No, look!" Twilight pointed, not at the distorted cutie mark, but at where the maniac had used the tip of a primary feather to write a single word on the floor in her own blood: TIME
"Buck that, Princess! We need to—"
But Twilight walked away from the pegasus and toward the other alicon. She looked at the word for a few seconds and then said, "I'm going to alter the shield to allow sound to pass outward. If you try anything, like knocking us out with the Royal Voice, I'll seal it back up and we will leave, understood?"
The giant under the bubble nodded her bloody head. There was something wrong with her eyes. The edges of her irises shaded from the expected purple to a metallic gold near the edges.
Windfall gritted her teeth. Every bit of her long experience in perilous situations told her that immediate flight was the only safe course to take. But Twilight hadn't steered her wrong yet, and she wasn't going to leave her friend alone with the monster.
"All Equestria is in deadly peril," were the first words the giant spoke. She spit them out in a carefully enunciated staccato, as if speaking to a dim-witted foal.
"Your Equestria," Twilight replied.
"No!" The huge pony kept herself from snarling out the reply only with a huge effort of will. "Our Equestria. This Equestria!" She slapped the word she had written on the floor with a bloody wingtip, turning it into an illegible smear. "You're from my past, not a different dimension."
Twilight eyes narrowed. "I don't believe you. I would never—"
"Say that again in a thousand years! Or two thousand, or five! You have no idea what you're capable of, you infant! You mewling pupa!"
"She kicked your gigantic ass," Windfall helpfully pointed out.
The maniac turned her gaze to the pegasus. The golden borders of her irises sparkled in an eerie and menacing way, and Windfall instantly regretted saying anything.
The strand of wire binding the huge alicorn's left foreleg snapped with a loud twang as she raised her hoof in an imperious gesture. "You worthless fragment of—"
Her words were cut off and the shield went semi-opaque as Twilight's horn blazed.
"Stop it!" Twilight's voice wasn't loud, but it carried a tone of absolute authority. "I am willing to hear you out, but only if you speak calmly and refrain from insults and threats. Otherwise I will collapse this tunnel on top of you and worry about the implications later."
The bloody alicorn lowered her hoof and studied Twilight for a long moment. Then she nodded.
Twilight altered the shield again and said, "Give me the most concise summary of the situation that you can."
Behind her, Windfall muttered low under her breath, "Oh blistering wind, this ought to be good."
= = =
=