With an air of trepidation hanging around them, the Battle Foals and co. allowed themselves to be enveloped into the pocket of light, fully expecting a harrowing climax at the summit of the mountain where the city of Canterlot no doubt laid in ruins. They prepared themselves for the absolute worst…
Slowly, the light dissipated, and the Battle Foals readied themselves for a big brawl. However, they were welcomed by the sight of the city, covered by glaciers like Manehatten, but every building was eerily still intact. Even more eerie was the fact that there was not a soul in sight, frozen or none. The only greeting they received was the ominous whistle in the wind surging throughout the city like a horde of frantic ghosts.
“Th’hell? What gives?” Turf War asked.
“Was this place already evacuated?” Shadow Shroud asked.
“We had begun the process, but… to be brutally honest, I didn’t think everypony would make it out.” Luna said.
“Then perhaps those left are in hiding.” Knight’s Soul said.
“More importantly, why aren’t there any monsters attacking us? We’re smack in the middle of the city!” Valkyrie said.
“Musta relegated all their forces down the mountain to keep us from climbin’ it.” Kickbacksaid.
“They couldn’t just magically make more?” Bullseye asked.
“Wouldja rather they did?” Kickback replied. “Ah suggest we keep real quiet-like. If the enemy don’t know we’re here, maybe we can jump ‘em from behind.”
“If there are survivors here though, I think we should ensure their welfare. I can only imagine what might be going through their heads right now.” Greensprout said.
“Y-Yes… L-Let’s…” Quantum stammered as she glanced around the frozen city.
Everyone looked at her with concern. “Is all well, Quantum Tech?” Zebota asked.
“Oh. Yes, I’m fine. Sorry…” she said. “Shall we then?” Everyone nodded and walked in a decided direction. All the while, solemnly looked around of the grand city she once called home. “Had I only stayed, perhaps… No, no. Don’t be mad.”
Moving as silently as they could, the group scoured the city for any signs of life, friend or foe. But the streets were completely desolate. Not even a hoofprint could be seen in spite of what must have been a frantic exodus. It was as if nopony had ever been there.
What buildings they could enter that weren’t completely overtaken by glaciers weren’t any less silent. Every shop, every house, and every possible dwelling was eerily pristine. Everything was in place as though the entire city was a giant set piece with everything placed as normally as could be. All that was missing were residents to reside within them. The city was dead silent.
“Ok, sorry for being Captain Obvious here, but something feels super off.” Spiral Galaxy said.
Zebota concentrated onto his brooch. “Yes. I sense… not undeath, but… something between mortality and immortality.”
Quantum read her scanners. “It’s as if the entire city is encased in a residual consciousness, a powerful one, and that it matches the brainwaves we measured.”
“‘Residual’? You mean it’s not here anymore?” Fire Fight asked.
Greensprout held her Gaia Root and focused on it as it light like a lantern. “Perhaps the body isn’t, but I can see what Quantum Tech meant by a consciousness.”
“It could have been like this…”
“Hmm?” Luna looked around upon hearing a strange voice. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted, if only for a split second, the silhouette of somepony darting into an alleyway far down the street. “Hm!? Over there!”
“What? Where?” Air Slash said, instinctively drawing his swords.
“Over there! Somepony ran around that corner! Did you not hear them?” Luna said.
“What? But I don’t sense any vital signs anywhere.” Greensprout said. “And… I didn’t hear anypony.” Looking around, nopony seemed to.
“And yet there is where this consciousness is moving.” Zebota said.
“Then it’s likely a trap. Maybe we shouldn’t follow them.” Twilight said.
“Yeah, but… Look, this is probably the stupidest thing we could do, but our only clue might’ve been what just ran around the corner.” Fire Fight said.
“We’ve already willingly walked into the spider’s web anyway. Our best, and maybe only option would be to play its game in order to expose it.” Shadow Shroud said.
“Man, it’s just one mind trick after another with this thing.” Frostbite said.
“Who or what did we make an enemy of...” Tidal Wave muttered.
“Let’s quit beating around the bush and find out.” Bullseye said.
Without further delay, the group followed the silhouette. When they reached the alleyway where Luna had seen it disappear into, they found that it had done just that- disappeared.
“We were both ill-fated.” Luna heard in her mind
“What the- even with the wall?” Tidal Wave said.
Twilight looked at Zebota and Quantum Tech. “Are you two able to track it?”
Zebota concentrated intensely onto his brooch as Shrapnel sniffed the air around him. “It hides it aura from even me. Truly, we are in its space.”
“And I can barely keep a lock on it whatsoever.” Quantum said. “There’s a blip on my radar, but it’s moving far too erratically for me to reliably trace.”
“Then how are supposed to- Huh!?” Luna suddenly felt an aggressive chill up her spine that somehow prompted her to turn around. When she did, she caught sight of the same silhouette running down the street. “There! After it!” She soared down the street without another word, and the Battle Foals could only follow her.
“But I’m now free… and I’ll exact revenge… for us both…”
They came to a stop when they had reached Luna, who was looking around frantically. “But… how?”
“Did you lose sight of it, Highness?” Air Slash asked.
“Yes! It just dissipated in the mist.” Luna said.
“Let’s keep it together. We know this is most likely an illusion, but it’s also most likely leading us to something. Let’s just keep following it.” Twilight said.
“With caution, of course.” Knight’s Soul said with his sword drawn.
Every so often, the silhouette would appear, and the Battle Foals would follow it. Little by little, it would lead them to a different location, almost as if it was indeed leading along some planned path. Each time they followed, it seemed to get closer, and they could more clearly define its appearance. It was small in stature and at least had an equine body. There was a point where it briefly looked directly at them before darting off, and a faint light-blue glimmer from its eyes. It took them a while to notice, but as they kept following it, the air became more and more frigid.
“But first…”
“Huh!?” Luna said, looking around.
“They… must… DIIEE!!!”
A sudden flash of light enveloped the entire city. Once it died down and the Battle Foals could open their eyes, they were shocked beyond words to see the grand city in a severe state of ruin. Buildings were halfway, sometimes completely destroyed and still overtaken by glaciers, the streets were littered with piles of driving snow, and there were more frozen ponies… except some of them were very explicitly dead.
Some ponies where impaled by ice stalagmites, some has sheets of ice digging underneath their skin and freezing them on the inside, and some were crushed beneath fallen ice boulders. They even noticed wounds on some that were a telltale sign that they had been ravaged by the various ice monsters they’d encountered on their travels. Kickback could barely find a place to vomit.
“No… No!” Twilight exclaimed.
Luna was too horrified to speak, and gawked helplessly at the destruction of her city and people. A tear fell from her eye, and it froze instantly before hitting the ground.
Turf War slammed hit shield with his hammer. “ALRIGHT!! THAT’S IT!! NO MORE HIDIN’!! NO MORE MIND F***S!! GET YO’ LI’L B**** A** OUT HERE RIGHT THE F*** NOW SO WE MERC YOU!! C’MON!!”
His challenge was met with silence. Deafening… still… silence. So silent, that the world’s volume itself felt as if it’d been turned down, even as the driving snow churned in the air like freezing butter.
Taking a deep breath and big gulp, Luna looked to the sky. “It’s as he says! Show yourself, you fiend!” she commanded.
Suddenly, the air began to swirl more violently, and the glaciers began glowing fiercely. They knew their fight was finally coming.
“RAAAWWWWRRRR!!!!”
A draconic roar inexplicably resounded across the city as the glaciers shone more intensely. As expected from last time, the intact ponies were risen as expressionless ice zombies. However, something more bizarre, more gruesome happened as well.
Small wisps of hazy light dispersed from the glaciers, falling as gently as snowflakes into the dead corpses. After a few seconds, the hazy light erupted from the corpses, and a soul made of frigid air emerged, each being the respective deceased pony and having pupil-less eyes. A few more seconds later, they churned more air around themselves and froze it into armor, making them recognizable as the aggressive windigos. Each one aggressively howled and wailed at the frightened Battle Foals.
“W-Well, uhh… this is awkward…” Valkyrie said.
From street and airspace, they were hopelessly surrounded. Everywhere they looked, soulless eyes and gnashing fangs were ready to assail them, more than they had faced before.
“PRINCESS CELESTIA!!” Fire Fight exclaimed. Sure enough, the solar sovereign was frozen deep in a block of ice, thankfully still intact, but her face was frozen with an expression of terror, a terror mimicked by Luna at the sight of her.
“HOW COULD THIS WOODSTOCK GET ANY WORSE!?” Crazylocks shouted.
It got worse. From behind Celestia iceberg marched two more ice zombies, two unfortunately familiar ones.
“NO!!!” Twilight exclaimed.
Before her stood the soul-shriven forms of her brother and sister-in-law. Even worse, their infant daughter floated beside in the same state. Unlike the other zombies, small areas of their bodies were occupied by patches of glistening ice, namely the backs of their heads where antenna-like icicles protruded. The icicles lit, and every enemy surrounding them charged them like mad dogs.
“NO TIME TO THINK! JUST ATTACK!!” Fire Fight ordered, igniting his horn like an Olympic torch.
Frostbite and Valkyrie, knowing how to best stop the attack, soared high and started targeting all of the glaciers. Valkyrie summoned her ancestral light as Frostbite simply summoned his innate fury as they started smashing through them.
Whatever aerial resistance they met was answered by Air Slash’s swords, Bullseye’s arrows, and Crazylocks divebombing into them. Spiral Galaxy, Kickback, and Quantum Tech even provided anti-air fire on occasion. They just knew they had to be careful not to harm the zombie to greatly. The windigos on the other hand, they went full force on. They were significantly more vicious than the ice zombies, as was expected. They exhaled micro blizzards and fired icy lightning from their eyes, which Frostbite had to shield his comrades from.
Back on the ground, it was the same story, except they had to rely on Fire Fight’s sheer willpower to conjure enough fire hold back the frigid magic of the windigos, all the while holding off their vicious assault. Spiral Galaxy helped some by gravitating the ice zombies away from the fray so that they could focus on the windigos, but Tidal Wave had a tough time defending her having only melted ice and snow to work with. Turf War smashed through already dilapidated buildings in a desperate attempt to help destroy the glaciers, but often had to shatter windigos in the process.
The princesses took the fight to their captured family. The zombified royalty, even little Flurry Heart casted dangerous ice spells, such as summoning barrages of ice spikes, casting freezing frost swirls, and erecting ice walls to block the princess’ own magic. Twilight’s fear of harming her family held her back, but Luna was determined to free her sister, and fought to her peak. Even so, even with the might of the moon itself backing her raw fury, it was a complete and utter stalemate. Everything was total chaos.
The frigid weather caused the Battle Foals to wear down more quickly, and it felt like no matter what they did, they weren’t making any progress… because they weren’t. Much to their horror, the armor of the windigos and the control glaciers steadily regenerated.
“What’re we supposed to do now!?” Tidal Wave said. Suddenly, they heard the howls and roars of more ice monsters ascending the mountain.
“This is bad…” Quantum Tech said, trying in vain to think of a solution that would save their lives.
“We have no choice.” Twilight said. “Everypony! Get close to me! I’ll get us out of here!”
Choosing to take a chance with the princess of friendship, everyone rushed towards her. On his way over, a rush of adrenaline-fueled Frostbite, and he locked onto the frozen Celestia. “HERE GOES NOTHING!”
With the zombified royals distracted by Luna, Frostbite body slammed into the iceberg, shattering it and scooping the unconscious sovereign in his arms. He quickly banked back around to Twilight.
“Oh, thank you, Frostbite!” Luna said. The icy drake merely winked at her.
“Ok, hang on!!” Twilight said. She quickly focused her magic, enveloping everyone in a pink light.
A dark shadow suddenly appeared in the sky above them. When they looked up, they saw a skeletal serpent covered in icy armor slithering through the sky. It had frills around its neck rather than wings, and it had the same energy produced by the glaciers gleaming from throughout the gaps in its body.
“LEAVING SO SOON?” From it boomed the voice of a young filly. “I PUT THIS WELCOME PARTY TOGETHER JUST FOR YOU, YOU KNOW.”
Twilight’s magic swirled more fiercely around everyone as the dragon’s magic seemed to hold it back.
This was it. They finally met their foe, the being that has taunted them and wrought such terrible havoc across their beloved kingdom. Even in their desperate situation, Fire Fight courageously looked the beast right in its eye. “WHO ARE YOU!?!?” he demanded.
The dragon laughed. “Does it matter? You and all of Equestria will soon be nothing more than icy waste anyway! I will rid this world of this DESPICABLE kingdom and it’s DISGUSTING people, and I WILL FINALLY have peace!!!” she declared. “Besides… those two can tell you all about me anyway.” Her piercing gaze turned towards Luna. “Isn’t that right… old friend?”
“What!?” Luna said. The dragon’s rib cage open up, and within its heart was the silhouette, except it was assuredly the true mastermind’s flesh.
As Twilight’s magic was becoming able to take effect, Luna’s eyes widened in complete horror as she was able to make out the full appearance of their foe. It was a small school-aged filly with a light blue coat, and mint toothpaste-like mane. Her eyes were a noticeably pale blue with barely any pupils visible within them, if at all. “YOU BETRAY ME!!! YOU BOTH BETRAYED ME!!! ALL OF EQUESTRIA BETRAYED ME!!!”
At last, Twilight was able to fully cast her spell, and everyone was swallowed by the light, teleporting them to another location.
As she was caught in the light, Luna could only think one thing. “This can’t be… Snowdrop!!”