//------------------------------// // Finishing Moves // Story: The Stars Will Aid Their Escape // by Drhoz //------------------------------// Twilight shook her head, and strained against the restraints. Helpless. Helpless. Looking into Herald's unmasked face, paralysed with terror as the Outer God had gleefully poured his knowledge in her mind. Every fact poison, every truth bleak and undeniable. Princess. Got to help the Princess. “How many of your little pets died in the fireball, your Solar Highness, as you boiled the valley down to bedrock?" Oh, those poor ponies... poor Princess... hold her, comfort her mentor, just as she and all her kind had been comforted and nurtured by the Alicorn of Day. Oh, the fillies. The fillies. Other times, other worlds, he showed me, other people, things like people, offering up their children to him. Appease him with their lives. He didn't need it. Can't die. Amused him. "... a mere thermonuclear explosion couldn’t kill me ... nothing can .... I had to retreat and find another way into your domain..." She remembered other visions, other forms Nyarlathotep had worn as he strode laughing through dying worlds... Can't think. Oh. Oh no. The stars will aid her escape. Stars. Eclipse. Their escape. They wait. They're waiting, waiting for the time, the season, history will end. Read it. He knows I read it. Dangerous. Have to warn them. Weeping with fear, remembering an ocean of faces, an ocean of slime, babbling nonsense... So slow. Thinking, so slow. Feels like drowning. Drowning in slime, remembering that vision, long ago, ponies long dead, an ocean of oozing slime... Princess, have to warn you, have to warn my friends, but your magic making me so slow! Planned this? Planned everything. Make me mad and stupid, so I couldn't warn them? Oh. Everything. Everything he says. Making us all mad and stupid, angry and stupid. Victims. Won't be victim. Won't let my friends be victims. Spike between me and the monster... so brave. My Number One Assistant, so brave. Fighting through madness, fighting through sedation, my friends, my brother, stumbling over the words. “The Princesses will be WEAKEST!” Too late, too late, he's beaten us. I can hear the screaming, he's won. Falling back into darkness. Madness is a mercy now. TWILIGHT. Madness, I can hear Princess Luna, it hurts so much that I let them down. Just give up, close my eyes, hope I won’t have to hear what happens to my friends... TWILIGHT. CAN THOU HEAR US? Princess, I’m sorry, I’ve let you down, let everypony down. THANK THE STARS, SHE CAN HEAR US. Princess? Celestia? Luna? I can’t see you. Remembering everything... lessons from Celestia, pressed against her flank, under her wing, on cold nights under the sky as you told me about the stars... Luna, so lonely, so lonely, and I’m going to lose all my friends, oh Princess.... TWILIGHT SPARKLE, WE ARE TRAPPED. WE NEED YOUR HELP. WE CANNOT STOP THE HERALD FROM HERE. I can’t, I can’t, he showed me what he is please don’t make me think about him please Princess TWILIGHT SPARKLE. THIS WILL DISTRESS YOU, AND WE ARE VERY SORRY. YOU SAVED US FROM NIGHTMARE... NOW... WAKE UP *** Shining Armor galloped down the Eastern Colonnade, frightened ponies staring into the sky and the half-seen shapes that seemed to press against it. On both sides the walls of the Palace loomed pallid in the darkness, and above the towers wailed with a freezing wind leaking down from the stars. Behind there was the screams of his stallions as the tree-things fed upon their lives. Ahead, there was battle. A score of unicorns were trying to hold back the last of the Dark Young. Obviously it had broken free of the railyard, and had flowed and swarmed up the nearly sheer cliff face as it made to join its unspeakable kin. One the pegasus officers keeping civilians out of the way saw him coming, and turned to shout, as the unicorns tried and failed to hold the monster back, or stun it with magic, and avoid its own. “Armor! What the hay is going on? Why hasn’t the sun come back yet?” “They got the Princesses! I need every unicorn I can get! Even civvies, if they passed their final year magic exams. Spread the word!” “But what about this thing? We can’t just let it run riot!” Armor narrowed his eyes, and looked at the monster, then up. He braced himself, and his horn lit up with the magic of telekinesis. A twelve-ton marble statue of Commander Pansy fell on the Dark Young from four stories up. “Right!” shouted Armor, ignoring the expressions on the ponies splashed with the black and stinking ichor. “You heard me! Every unicorn I can get! Meet me at the garden gates! MOVE IT!” *** Three of the ponies rushed the parapet, stared down as the tumbling glass vanished into the darkness and the falling water. Two did more. “Dash!” screamed Rarity. “Catch me!” and leaped over the stonework into the abyss. “Rarity!” shrieked Fluttershy, as her friend dropped from view. Dash gave an incoherent scream of her own, and burst after her, a blur of motion. Spike was still struggling to his feet, head still spinning from Herald’s blow. He saw Rarity leap, and his heart thumped against the inside of his chest. Felt like it was choking him. Like something huge, struggling to break free, as he turned on the black abomination that was gazing down into the darkness and the noise, and saying something he had no desire to comprehend. “Well, that saves time. So, which of you wants to be next?” Pinkie didn’t move. Applejack pushed past her, saying something a nice mare really shouldn’t say. The thoughts were whirling, spinning like symbols on a fruit machine. We can’t stop him. We need all the Elements to even try. He said he’d hurt us if we tried. The Princesses could make him go away. Celestia made him go away, last time. But the Princesses aren’t here. But if they were here and they tried to stop him it would be really really really bad. Herald was turning towards her, mask furrowing.... Her eyes went wide. Celestia can make him go away. But they can’t do it here. But they’re not here. Her hair rebounded, her mind fizzing, her thoughts lined up with a jackpot ka-ching! He moved a hoof, pushing Fluttershy out of the way; the eyes of his mask lighting up like the Friendship Express at the other end of a tunnel... She reached across to Spike, grabbed him and held him up between herself and the Messenger of the Outer Gods. “Spike!” she cried. “POST HIM!”