Equestria Girls: Friendship Souls

by thatguyvex

Episode 157: Keeper of Shadows

The restricted section of Canterlot City’s library was not an ideal place for a battle, which it’s present occupants swiftly realized. Starswirl’s Reigai kept nimble on his feet, flitting from spot to spot amid the tightly packed shelving aisles with the use of Flash Step. Chasing him was a growing tide of creeping shadow, bookshelves, ceiling, and floor alike all being covered in a coating of ink black from which emerged snapping arms of darkness. Starswirl kept ahead of this seeking limbs of shadow, but noted their accuracy and speed was increasing as ever more of the few light sources in the library were being snuffed out.

“Hiyaa!” 

The cry came from Starswirl’s left and he made a swift upsweep motion with his Zanpaktou’s iron fan form. It deflected a trio of spinning hammers forged of magical energy, one of which went flying into a bookshelf and smashed through it, while another impacted the ceiling and send chunks of stone crashing into other shelves, scattering ancient tomes in every direction. Starswirl’s face heated and his jaw spasmed at the sight, heart flip-flopping in his chest. And he didn’t even technically have a heart, as a puppet infused with an artificial soul!

“Blast it all you illiterate ingrates, stop destroying perfectly good literature!”

Radiant Hope, leaping from behind cover of another set of bookshelves with her horn acting as a bright beacon, shouted at him while conjuring more hammers, “I’m not trying to hit the books, you insufferable whatever you are-”

“Reigai!”

‘-don’t care! If the books matter so much to you, then stop fighting me and Sombra and surrender yourself. Or leave, doesn’t matter which.”

She combined her conjured hammers into a sort of spinning hammer ‘wheel’ which she sent flying after Starswirl like a very blunt and glowing buzzsaw, but he burst out of view with another Flash Step and ended up behind her, his iron fan held towards the unicorn’s unsuspecting back, “Not until I’ve collected at least a few tomes. Now why don’t you take a deep breath?”

He expelled an invisible gas from his Zanpaktou, the kind that could rapidly turn lungs to bloody mush if inhaled. Radiant Hope would have reflexively done so if Sombra hadn’t acted faster, realizing the danger she was in. Shadows flew beneath her hooves and sucked her into their depths, quickly depositing the mare dozens of paces safely away from the deadly gas. Sombra might not have been able to react in time if the amount of shadow in the dark library aisles didn’t give him amble extended senses through the area. Essentially wherever there was shadow, Sombra felt all, and via this understood the strange weapon Starswirl wielded was producing that gas.

“Be careful,” he told Radiant Hope, partially emerging from the shadow next to her, “I don’t know all of that weapon’s tricks, but it can make deadly poison gasses at least, and possible more.”

“Well that’s terrifying,” Radiant replied, “How are we supposed to stop him?”

“Answer is, you don’t!” Starswirl said loudly, appearing an aisle down from the pair, “I may have to hold back some to avoid annihilating all this tasty knowledge, but neither of you seem to have the speed necessary to- Gah!”

As he’d been talking, Sombra had looked his way with razor focus and sent a gauntlet of cutting shadow blades at the Reigai. The clawing darkness emerged from the ground or ceiling, or darkened shelf corners, all ripping and tearing at Starswirl at once. Yet even caught a tad unaware, Starswirl was able to deflect with his iron fan acting as a giant shield, while simultaneously throwing himself backwards down another shelf aisle.

“How troublesome. The information Starlight Glimmer has on this world seems woefully incomplete. It made no mention of ‘shadow ponies’,” Starswirl commented with a dry huff, and thrust his Zanpaktou forward, “But no matter, let there be light!”

Creating a combination of certain chemicals, Starswirl generated a brilliantly bright burst of light, followed by a continuous glow from the chemicals burning in the air like a miniature set of flares. Fortunately he kept these chemicals away from the books, but the burning flares of light created a stark white center of brightness in the library that forced back a fair amount of shadow, causing Sombra to grunt in annoyance.

With less shadow in the area he lost his sense of where Starswirl was, but he concentrated his magic and cloaked darkness around himself like a bubble and started to force it outwards, counteracting the flare. “Radiant, let me see what I can do to halt his movements. Save your strength until you're sure you can get a solid hit on him.”

She nodded, eyes flickering with worry for him, but conjuring a new magical hammer to her side, “Got it.”

With that, Sombra pushed outward with his shadow magic, pulling upon the elemental darkness both within himself and that which dwelled naturally in all the world’s own shadows. He encased the flare within a shell of shadow, cloaking the rest of the library back into darkness. Feeling through the shadows, he sensed Starswirl and realized the Reigai had circled around behind him and Radiant, and was now standing at the mouth of the aisles opposite where he’d been before.

“Hado Number Sixteen: Akarui Yajiri.” (Bright Arrowhead)

Intense white light was drawn by Starwirl’s finger in a triangle shape, which then formed into a solid wedge like an arrow’s tip forged of light, about three handspans wide. It launched from his hand and flew straight for Sombra’s back, but Radiant Hope had been looking the right way to spot the attack coming and just barely sent her hammer of conjured magic to interpose itself. Even so, the Kido arrow still hit with enough force to shatter the translucent hammer and burst with enough light energy to break more bookshelves and sent both Radiant and Sombra sprawling.

Starswirl grunted at the sight of more broken and disarrayed books, “Oh for love of the likely ineffectual Soul Queen! I can’t even use a low level Kido in here can I? Utterly ridiculous. How am I supposed to fight under these conditions?”

He then snapped his fingers as his eyes lit up, “Ahah! Change of tactics!”

The man vanished with another Flash Step, Sombra helping Radiant get back on her hooves as he closed his eyes for a moment of concentration to sense Starswirl’s movements. 

“Great, what’s he doing now?” asked Radiant, glowering as her magic summoned a pair of hammers this time, looking left and right to try and see where Starswirl had gone off to.

“He’s... back at the entrance,” Sombra said, frowning, focusing on the details he could sense through the nearby shadows, and after a moment his eye snapped open, “I think he’s using that giant fan of his to try and fill the entire library with gas!”

Which was, in effect, a very efficient plan. While the restricted section was not a small place, with enough gas pumping out of his Zanpaktou, Starswirl would be able to fill the entire set of chambers in a few minutes. Since there was only one entrance to the area, he’d be able to see Sombra and Radiant Hope coming if they tried to stop him head on. 

That said, Starswirl probably didn’t know the full extent of Sombra’s connection to the magic of shadows and darkness. While his connection was nowhere near what it was in the height of his ill-fated time as “King” Sombra, he still commanded a strong unity with the element he was born from. So, in response to the gas that was rapidly filling the restricted section, Sombra was fast to grab Radiant Hope and pull her down into the shadows with himself, while at the same time conjuring a thick mass of darkness to take shape within the entrance chamber to the area.

To Starswirl’s view from the staircase leading down into the section it would look like the doorway and the room beyond had become utterly flooded with darkness so thick that it looked as if the library had simply vanished into a void.

Frowning, Starswirl continued to pump more toxic gas from his Zanpaktou into that void, but while he sensed the gas was still entering into... somewhere, he could not be sure it was actually going into the restricted section anymore. His spiritual senses, still unused to the sensations of magic, just couldn’t tell if that magical void of darkness was merely a thick shadow cloaking the library room, or an actual otherworldly void that led to some other space that could absorb the gasses harmlessly.

Either way, he kept pumping in gas for a few good minutes before stopping and scratching at his beard with one hand, “Hmm, well this is a conundrum.”

Briefly he considered his options. Unbeknownst to his adversaries, Starswirl had not been idly evading around with Flash Step the entire time before. He’d been pocketing books left and right, stuffing his robes with whatever tomes he could. Granted he hadn’t the time to grasp at specific titles like he’d been told, but he figured Starlight would have to be satisfied with whatever random magical books he’d nicked from the restricted sector. They had to be valuable if they were in this section of the library at all. Still, he was loathe to give up without finding at least one book on the specific topics he was here for.

Yet this shadow pony and his silly hammer-obsessed mare had put him in a bit of a deadlock with this dark void before him. He could try exploding the walls around it, but that would just do more damage to the books within. His Bankai was out of the question, given its size and power output would cause even more local destruction. 

While he pondered, however, the shadow void in front of him bulged outward, and a series of ropes of pure darkness shot out at high speed. Starswirl dodged back, but found several of the ropes had moved past him and were now criss-crossing the staircase upwards to block his retreat. It was then that magic hammers started flying out of the void at a steady torrent. Starswirl braced his iron fan in front of him and started absorbing the blows, but each impact was strong enough to rattle the Reigai’s artificial bones and even drive him back a step or two, closer to the net of shadow ropes that were now behind him.

“Hmph, never did like fighting in enclosed spaces,” he muttered, and from his Zanpaktou burst several jets of scalding pale liquid. This was a highly caustic acid that started eating apart the staircase and the stonework of the passage in front of him, until the support beams in the walls gave out and the entire stairwell started to shake and rumble.

Starswirl then flung a hand back behind him and cast the same Kido he had earlier, “Hado Number Sixteen: Akarui Yajiri!”

The blinding white arrow of energy sliced through the shadow ropes behind him and gave him an opening. With a quick Flash Step Starswirl found himself retreating up the stairs to the higher levels of the library while he felt the stairwell behind him collapse from the amount of acid he’d used to melt stone and wood alike. Looking down amid the dust he sighed heavily, realizing that while he could excavate the collapsed stairwell and get back into the restricted section, it’d take him time to do so.

Time that shadow pony would likely use to be ready for him, and time that would also mean the arrival of additional guards that would cause him to waste further time dealing with them. By then, who knew if this world’s Luna would be done with the two Platinums or not? He didn’t fancy a duel with these alicorn Princesses, especially when his sole goal was the acquisition of knowledge and not getting disposed of by Starlight Glimmer.

Muttering to himself he went back up the stairs, checking the books he’d randomly grabbed during the brief battle.

Some of it looked promising. A few tomes that looked like journals of prominent unicorn mages. Some kind of alchemical recipe book by someone named... Meadowbrook? Interesting. Curious, he strolled casually back down the library halls while cracking that book open, swiftly forgetting all about the battle or his mission as he hungerly devoured the knowledge written upon the pages. He didn’t even see, much less pay attention to, the frightened ponies he passed by on his way back out of the library, including a rather uneasy looking Moondancer who watched him leave with sweat upon her brow.

As soon as he was gone outside, Moondancer quickly ran back down towards the restricted section, fearing the worst.

She skidded to a halt at the top of the stairs, where the collapse had filled in the lower half of the stairwell.

“M-Mister Sombra? Miss Radiant Hope?” she called down, and nearly jumped out of her sweater when Sombra’s voice spoke behind her.

“We are well.”

Sombra had emerged from shadows conjured through the floor, Radiant Hope clambering up beside him with her breath coming in short gasps.

“Whew... Sombra, warn me next time you yank me into shadow space. Not exactly a lot of air in there, you know?” Radiant said, hoof to her chest. Sombra smiled at her warmly and touched one of her legs with his hoof.

“Sorry about that. Ahem, now, Miss Moondancer, did you see that bearded miscreant leave?”

“I did,” Moondancer confirmed with a gulp, “He had his face buried in a book and didn’t even glance at anyone as he left.”

Sombra sighed heavily, “So he did grab some tomes during the fight. Damn. Even at random, any book from there could be dangerous.”

“Shouldn’t we chase him then?” asked Radiant Hope, and Sombra frowned thoughtfully.

“I don’t think so. He was at a disadvantage in the library due to the limited space to move and all the darkness around. But it’s still broad daylight out, and in a much more open area like the city streets we’d be the ones at a disadvantage, especially without as many natural shadows for me to work with. Instead I’d rather try and follow him.”

“Can you do that?” said Moondancer, “He seemed so fast.”

Sombra showed teeth in a not-quite smile, “Not to worry. There may not be as many shadows in daylight as in night, but day still casts shadows in every corner. I don’t know how far I can follow him, but I’ll go as far as I can. With any luck, I may discover where their base of operations is.”

Radiant Hope grasped his hoof with hers, eyes filled with earnest concern, for she knew she couldn’t go with him if he was to travel in shadow for an extended period of time, “Please, Sombra, be careful.”

His eyes warmed as he placed his horn briefly to hers, whispering, “For you, always.”

With that, he melded back into the darkness of his own shadow, which then became a shifting streak amid the library’s own shadowed corners. 

----------

Despite one being a clone of the other, Luna swiftly found that the Reigai of Platinum had a rather different fighting style from the Soul Reaper herself. Whilst the genuine Platinum fought with a cold, practical focus that often sought to unbalance then overwhelm with her ice-born attacks, the Reigai...

“Hah! Let’s have at you, Princess of Night! You’re the perfect opponent to stretch my legs with.”

The woman came at Luna in a swirling dance of cutting ice sheets, punctuated by azure slicing arcs of her actual Zanpaktou. Luna parried readily, but the Reigai’s motions were unpredictable and erratic. The ice she conjured from her sword moved more like currents of water than the ridged forms of ice the real Platinum created. 

Torrents of this liquid ice descended from the inverted fortress above, creating artic twisters that cut across Luna’s path. Each twister was filled with chunks of spearing or slicing ice, and while Luna could have summoned a protective barrier to crash through them, she preferred not to risk injury and focused on evasion. Her body was buffeted by frozen winds, but she swiftly weaved through the twisters whilst clashing axe to sword with the laughing Reigai all the while.

Luna felt a tremor in the ground of pure ice beneath her, and was not surprised when the ice parted and a huge statue emerged behind her, that of a stern faced human samurai chiseled from the ice and bearing a large naginata in it’s cold fists. The fifty foot statue thrust it’s spear blade at her, which Luna met with a magical circle of deepest blue she summoned before her. The blade hit the circle and was halted in a wave of sparks, and then the circle’s runes burned bright and set loose a bolt of power that pierced through the ice giant’s spear and burned a hole through its center. 

The Reigai pressed in behind Luna, throwing out her left hand to coat it in a slicing sheet of ice that turned her arm into a second sword. She worked both arms in a blurring pattern, hammering at Luna, who sent her own axes of black ice to meet the blows with equal speed in a ear splitting clash of sound like a whole glass factory being smashed at once.

Then the real Platinum, appearing from behind her fallen ice giant, raised her own Zanpaktou and cleaved it downward in a deliberate and precise slicing of the air. Absolute frozen cold exploded out in a vertical sheet of ice that tore towards Luna in a fraction of a heartbeat. Even so, Luna was able to pop out of the way in a single burst of teleportation, leaving the Reigai to Flash Step aside as the arctic pressure wave flew past her.

“Your aim could use work,” the Reigai Platinum told her real counterpart, who sneered back at the clone.

“And you need to learn tactics. Chopping at her mindlessly isn’t going to work!”

“I’m not chopping ‘mindlessly’. It’s called swordsmanship, and I can’t believe I let myself get so lackadaisical about it that I started to rely on sneak attacks. Did I forget to polish my sword skills once Magnus was no longer there to push us forward?”

Platinum’s growl at her Reigai was as fiercely real as a death threat, “Do not speak that name. You have no right.”

Luna cleared her throat loudly, having teleported a fair distance above the bickering pair, “Are you two done yet? I can leave the pair of you to fight one another, if you prefer?”

“Hah, see?” the Reigai said, pointing up at Luna with her sword, “This Princess gets it! She didn’t sneak attack us while we were arguing. She has a sense of honor.”

“Well, it’s more accurate to say I don’t feel pressed enough to want to cut my fun short,” Luna said, admittedly not entirely disagreeing with the Reigai as she took a few heavy breaths. She was getting quite the workout, fighting these two. “I’m enjoying the exercise of skills I rarely get to use. It would be a shame to end this too soon.”

“A woman after my own heart,” the Reigai said with a surprisingly warm smile. She then made a rolling eyed gesture towards the real Platinum, “I still find it hard to believe how much the real me has changed. I hardly feel like we’re the same person at all.”

“Because we are not,” Platinum stated bluntly, an aura of thick blue reiatsu and raw cold forming around her, “I did away with my naiveness a long time ago. You are a poor copy of a younger, more foolish me, who could never have protected her son the way I have mine.”

She formed ice around Fuyokogo in a wide encasement, tripling the tulwar’s length and width, and then set the ice covered blade to a frozen glow of pale blue as she poured spirit energy into it. With a gesture she brought forth more ice carved soldiers to the battlements of her fortress, aligned with ballista and arrows, which then filled the air once more with a blizzard of projectiles. 

Luna set about deflecting or dodging this dizzying array of attacks, but between natural and magically enhanced speed and the casting of defensive barriers, she was able to hold her own. But the projectiles were only meant to distract her as the real Platinum engaged with her empowered Zanpaktou. In bursts of Flash Step, Platinum flitted like a swift flake of snow around Luna, looking for an opening. And when she spotted one she carved in with her ice covered Zanpaktou in a white arc, slicing right for Luna's chest. The Princess' eyes shifted in that same heartbeat, feeling the attack, but even she still struggled to react to Platnium's strike, powered by all of the former Captain's skill and speed in Flash Step. Luna was only able to swing around one of her axes, and she and Platinum crossed in a blink. Hot pain swept through both of them as arcs of blood kissed the air, Luna taking a bleeding slice across her chest, penetrating the ice black armor she wore there, while Platinum's left arm bore a freezing over wound of ruby red blood from shoulder to elbow.

Watching from down below, Platinum's Reigai gave out a sigh, shaking her head, “I don’t get it. Pipsqueak won’t even talk to her. How is making him miserable ‘protecting’ him?”

Of course within the Reigai’s limited memory she only knew Pipsqueak as a newborn, without the weight of having raised the child yet. Perhaps that was Starlight Glimmer’s intent, to ensure the Reigai wouldn’t clash with the real Platinum in regards to having the same connection to the child? Which seemed to backfire, since all it did was give the Reigai a very different perspective on things than the real Platinum had. Regardless, as younger and more ‘naive’ as the Reigai might seem, she knew she had to help her real counterpart defeat the Princess.

So she didn’t think about it too much and flew up into the storm of projectiles. The real Platinum had halted her storm of projectiles and with a gesture from her Zanpaktou had caused the arrows and ballistae bolts of ice to break apart into shards and join together into several dozen large, flat sheets of ice. These sheets had smooth, polished surfaces that were reflective, and while the Reigai charged in at Luna, the real Platinum started to send these reflective sheets to spinning down around the alicorn.

Freezing liquid ice poured out of the Reigai's blades and she snapped both of these streams at Luna in a dizzying pattern. Even as Luna sought to block these attacks, she found the freezing water, filled with chunks of ice, splashed around her axes and started to freeze over her own limbs. Grunting, Luna felt her limbs being slowed by the unnaturally freezing ice, and the Reigai rushed in harder then, chopping hard with her swords. Luna, with a wolfish growl on her lips, leaned into the attacks, sending her axes flying outwards with her magic while making use of her iced over clawed hooves to catch the Reigai's swords.

"Think you cold enough to freeze the Princess of the Night?" Luna said with glowing blue eyes, and a dark frozen aura exploded out of her as she reared back and formed a lance of black ice around her horn, "I've felt deeper, darker cold during my thousand years imprisonment on the moon!"

She hammered her ice covered horn forward. Platinum's Reigai twisted her body to the side, even as her arms were held firm, and Luna's horn tore a chunk from the Reigai's right shoulder. Pain washed over the clone's face, but so too did a pleased smile, "Good! There's no glory in beating a weak foe."

Suddenly the ice blade covering her left hand broke apart as fresh gold energy pooled around the Reigai's palm, "Hado Number Thirty Two: Okasen!" (Yellow Fire Flash)

A horizontal arc of scintillating yellow energy fired out of her palm straight into Luna, blasting the alicorn backwards and breaking the wounded Reigai free of her grip. Though smoking a little from the blast, Luna spread her wings and quickly recovered, but then found herself confused as she was abruptly surrounded by reflections of herself. It took her a second to realize she'd been surrounded by the sheets of reflective ice that the real Platinum had created, but not all of them. She felt a painful slice at her flank and spun around to see a flicker of motion coated in red. Some of the sheets of ice were making reflections of her as a distraction, but the other sheets, thin as razor blades, were flying around and slicing at her like planes of deadly glass.

Luna twisted left and right, more feeling than seeing the translucent sheets of ice flying towards her. She did her best to ignore the odd motions of her reflextions, which kept distorting her view and made it hard to discern where the real attacks were coming from. Once or twice more she felt razor ice sheets slice past her, cutting red lines in her flesh, but Luna had already been summoning her axes back to her. She'd intended to use them to attack the Reigai, but instead she called her axes towards her like flying battering rams, telekinetically guiding htem through the sheets of ice to shatter them one after another until the axes reached her side and left a hole in the array of ice sheets for Luna to fly through.

Both Platinum and her Reigai were waiting for her. The intent of the reflective ice sheets was just to keep Luna occupied for a moment while the pair joined together and both began chanting a Kido invocation together. Both Platinum's had their Zanpaktou held outward at an upward angle and gathered streams of gold energy into the swords. As one both crossed their blades in an X-pattern slash while shouting as one, "Hado Number Seventy Eight: Zangerin!" (Slicing Flower Ring)

Two spiked arcs of curved gold light formed together into a cross that flew into Luna with castle leveling force. Luna had no time for a complex counter, instead charging into the attack with a leading beam of thick azure magic that flew from her horn into the combined Kido spell. The resulting explosion was large enough to send cracks running through both of the floating islands of ice and blasted Luna and the two Platinum's alike backwards, Luna smacking into the ground hooves first, breathing heavily, while the two Platinums both went to one knee, equally sucking in tired breaths.

"Getting tired?" the Reigai asked of her progenitor, and the real Platinum snorted, forcing herself to stand once more, ignoring the way her wounded left foreleg twitched weakly.

"Hardly. And you?"

"As if I'd fall behind," said the clone with flash of confidence in her lips.

Eyes flashing with intent, Platinum's Reigai made a downward slicing gesture with her Zanpaktou at Luna. From her inverted fortress a series of terrific cracking noises could be heard. On the inverted island an entire rainstorm of giant, ice forged shurikens descended, spinning about in an air screaming mass. Luna let out a tired huff and flew up into the air to meet them, letting fly a series of thin magical beams to cut through many. The surviving shurikens moved under the Reigai’s direction and hovered around Luna in a small swarm. Rather than move in to attack, however, the shurikens exploded, filling the sky Luna occupied with bursts of freezing mist so thick it was like a pea soup of fog.

Platinum herself, seeing an opening, made a gesture with her free hoof and brought forth from below a titanic pillar of ice, pointed to a razor tip at the end, and sent it hurtling up through the mist. Luna was struck this time, although she did dig both her hooves coated in ice claws into the pillar to absorb the blow. The pillar continued to rise, moving so fast that it all but instantly slammed Luna into the “roof” of the inverted island above with enough force to send a fracture through half the edifice.

“Not bad, old me. I think we're wearing her down,” said the Reigai, and Platinum let out a withering sigh.

“We too are being worn down. We need a more decisive blow to end this, although we cannot afford to kill her. I need her alive to tell me how to cure Firefly.”

As if to confirm Platinum’s words, a blast of blue magic cut through the pillar holding her against the island above, and from the pillar’s shattered remains Luna descended like an angry diving hawk and went right for the Reigai, axes barred. 

Platinum’s Reigai was just fast enough to get her own blades up in time to meet Luna’s attack, but the Princess, who was bleeding slightly from a cut scalp, struck with such force that a sonic boom sent the Reigai hurtling into the first floor of the fortress in the center of the island. 

Moving just as swiftly as Luna had, the real Platinum flew forward with hyper sonic force and cut a path of icy blue with her Zanpaktou at Luna’s unprotected back. Luna turned just in time to get one, but not both axes in place to block, and found herself driven along the same path she’d sent the Reigai, pushed by Platinum exerting as much reiatsu as she could to boost her strength and smash the alicorn into the first floor of her fortress, breaking through one of the walls.

Now in the large and regal entry chamber of pure white ice that occupied the fortress’ first floor, Luna squared off with both Platinums, the Reigai having regained her footing and the real deal standing just short of the throne that stood at the fortress’ entryway. All three were bleeding from their respective wounds, which stained the white icy floors with red, yet they all remained alert and focused upon one another.

“I’ll confess fighting two of you at once is bracing,” Luna said, holding one of her axes towards the real Platinum while she floated the other around to keep guard against the Reigai, “But aside from a few scratches you’ve not made much progress in forcing me to concede defeat.”

“Have we not? I think you make light of your wounds, Princess,” Platinum said, her eyes turning to sheets of thin ice, “How’s your wing?”

Luna forced a smile, flexing her wings, and doing her best to ignore the growing agonizing ache from the one that had previously been severed. The curative magic had done much to restore it, but the connective tissue was still not fully repaired, and the strain of the battle was taking a toll. While the wound on her chest was the deepest of the injuries she'd taken, it was far from fatal. Even so, she could feel herself getting worn out, although her two opponents didn't look any better off to Luna's well trained eye.

“Well enough to finish this,” Luna replied with conviction, then she paused. Her ears twitched as her eyes focused on something beyond Platinum. 

Platinum briefly suspected some kind of trick, but knew the look of someone sensing things far away, and chose to take the risk of redirecting her attention from the foe in front of her to spreading her senses outward. Her Reigai looked at both Luna and Platinum with visible confusion, which somewhat irritated Platinum.

“Open your senses,” she told the Reigai, “Or have you lost your skill in that area due to your vaunted ‘swordsmanship’?”

She was aware her high level of skill in spirit senses had been developed after Flash Magnus’ death, so her Reigai counterpart likely wasn’t nearly as good at it as she was. For Platinum it only took a few seconds of focus to sense what Luna had likely sensed earlier. The Princess was actually attuned to magic and had probably already been keeping at least one proverbial ‘eye’ on what was happening with her sister many miles away.

Now that Platinum was sensing it, she could understand why Luna had lowered her offensive stance. 

She felt Starlight’s reiatsu, sharp and potent, but also eclipsed by two other powers in the same area. One had to be Celestia, and it was concerning just how incredibly potent the energy Platinum sensed from the alicorn was. Not just magic, but spiritual pressure, and the kind that would rival the Captain Commander! But then there was another power out there with Celestia and Starlight, somehow hard to pin down but disgustingly strong in it’s own right. For a moment Platinum nearly confused it for a Hollow, fearing the likes of Tirek had somehow found his way to Equestria, but no, this was different. Spiritual pressure was intermixed with the unusual buzz of magic, yet while Platinum was still unfamiliar with the differences between types of magic this sensation felt distinctly unpleasant, like touching something slick with grease. 

“Okay, what’s happening?” asked the Reigai, “I can’t... sense whatever the two of you are.”

“Quiet, then,” Platinum commanded, and locked her eyes with Luna’s, “This power I’m feeling. What is it?”

Luna gave Platinum a most grave and shadowed look, “A reason for all of us to adjust our priorities.”

“Perhaps,” Platinum said, raising a hoof towards Luna and turning it over as if to suggest Luna place something in it, “Then again, my only priority is restoring Firefly to good health at this moment.”

Shrewd creases entered Luna’s brow, “Are you seeking to bargain with me?”

“Clearly you wish to go to your sister’s side to lend your assistance in dealing with whatever it is we are sensing right now,” Platinum pointed out, “As long as I and my Reigai stand here to challenge you, you can hardly afford to do that, can you?”

“I’ll point out Starlight Glimmer may be in need of assistance as well,” Luna put forth, but Platinum shook her head.

“Starlight Glimmer would not desire I abandoned my task to cure Firefly’s wounds just to lend her aid where she may not even need it. No, Princess Luna, my objective remains clear. It seems it is yours that has become... complicated. I am only here because you have something I want. I have no interest in harming Canterlot’s citizens. I’m no even all that interested in finishing our duel-”

“I am,” said the Reigai, but Platinum turned a hard look towards her and the Reigai threw up a shrug, “But I can wait.”

“Ahem,” Platinum cleared her throat, looking back to Luna, “Give me the means to heal Firefly’s injury, and I and my Reigai will depart. I give you my word we shall not bar your path to go fly to your sister’s side, even if you decide to combine your strength against Starlight. I also swear to withdraw this day and do no harm to your citizens.”

“You offer little for the price of healing an enemy of Equestria,” Luna pointed out.

“A clear path to go to your sister, which you quite obviously desire to do.”

“Achievable if I simply defeat you and your clone.”

Platinum’s lips pressed into a tight, mirthless line, “Which you have yet to do, and even if you can, how long will it take? How long have we paused to talk? Every second, possibly precious time your sister may lack, if the strength of this mysterious new foe is any indication.”

There was a look as hard as mountain stone in Luna’s eyes, but beneath it was the tremor of uncertainty. Platinum didn’t blame her. She had no idea what to make of the power she sensed, only that she could tell it placed even the likes of Starlight Glimmer and Celestia in danger, especially if those two had weakened one another in their battle. She could see the weight of decision pressing on Luna, and ultimately the alicorn made a frustrated sound. Her horn lit up with a sheath of blue light, and the air shimmered next to her with a faint ripple as she withdrew two objects.

One was a weather worn and faded shaft of a bow, while the other was a crystal vial of faintly glowing blue liquid. Luna floated the vial over to Platinum’s hoof, while she kept the oddly old and dilapidated bow close to her side. Platinum sensed a faint power from the bow, but it was hard to tell just what it was.

“I shall take your offered deal, Platinum,” Luna declared, “That potion counteracts the curse my spell placed upon Firefly’s wounds. Know that I always intended to heal her, rather than allow her to suffer continuously. Also know that as long as you and yours threaten our realm, there can be no peace between us. Be it today, tomorrow, or soon enough... you will ether be made to abandon your course, or taste defeat. And rest assured-”

Powerful magic coursed out of Luna in a surge, her eyes turning a pale blue of solid light, “-if you face me again, you will lose. Now begone from my city, before I change my mind!”

Platinum tucked the vial away in her robes, and then nodded to her Reigai, “Come. We are done here.”

“So be it,” said her Reigai, “No duel is satisfying when the combatant’s hearts aren’t in it anymore.”

The entire fortress shook and then filled with wane light. In a sound of shattering ice, everything burst into a cold mist of ice dust. Luna watched as twin torrents of this mist of ice crystals, the raw spiritual energy of both Platinum and her Reigai’s Bankais, moved in a stream back into their respective blades. In mere moments the two giant floating islands and their fortresses were gone, and the two Platinums stood with Zanpaktou resting in their sealed states once again.

“We’ve no time to waste,” said Platinum to her copy, “And from the feel of it, neither does Princess Luna.”

----------

...A short time earlier.

With the harsh star of uncompromising sunlight growing ever denser and larger in the sky, to the point that Starlight could no longer make out Celestia at all amid the glare, she turned a sweat beaded glanced towards Chrysalis. The changeling queen had her eyes shut tight, lips pulled back in a strained sneer, her jagged horn occasionally sparking with motes of wafting emerald light.

“Uh, not to rush you or anything, but Celestia isn’t going to be charging that spell up all day,” Starlight said, licking dry lips that were a result of the air itself being burned away of any moisture for miles around, “So some of that love magic would be great right about nowish.”

“I’m trying!” snarled Chrysalis, giving a shout of pure frustration as she stamped a hoof and shook her head, “Do you think this is easy for me!? I’ve never shared love, you imbecile! I... don’t... know... how!”

“Yeah, I’m starting to get that,” Starlight said, biting her lower lip in rushed thought, her mind charging down multiple pathways in the flash of an instant.

Gauging by the power build up she was sensing, both the density and focus of the magic and spirit energy that Celestia was still gathering, Starlight imagined they had minutes at best before the alicorn would unleash a spell of such magnitude that even with her best defensive Kido or even an attempt to counter with a Grand Rey Cero would amount to little more than delaying the inevitable by a few seconds. Starlight wasn’t even sure this half of the continent would survive the blast, let alone herself and Chrysalis. 

Did she have to do it? Did she have to use her Bankai? Even with that, there was no guarantee she’d be able to counter what was coming, although she did think it was possible, given the way her Bankai actually worked. 

But if she did that, then she’d stand no chance against the Zero Division. Her Bankai was the card she’d been saving specifically for that confrontation. Using it now would effectively be the same as abandoning her cause, the entire reason she’d done all she had to get to this point in the first place. Starlight couldn’t accept that outcome. She’d sacrificed too much and come entirely too far to throw it away just to take down one obstinate, overpowered equine! 

But what were her alternatives?

“-tarlight!”

Sure she could try fleeing at full speed. She was pretty exceptional with Flash Step, so she might well clear the continent before it was blown to smithereens. But that would leave Chrysalis to die, not to mention who knew how many potential innocents who lived within a few hundred miles? Starlight knew she was no saint, especially given she still worked with the Second Espada, but her goal was still to minimize the sacrifices.

“-ey! Are you listen-”

So fleeing wasn’t an option. What about reasoning? It was obvious Celestia was no longer entirely in her right mind. Perhaps she could get the Princess’ mind back on track and on a less destructive path? That didn’t seem likely, but it beat doing nothing. Then again, perhaps Starlight could get Celestia to target her in the air? Fly above Celestia to ensure the blast went up out of the atmosphere instead of hitting the planet? 

“-HEY!”

“Aaaah!” Starlight jumped at the sudden, exceedingly loud shout in her ear. Her changeling wings flipped out and buzzed to keep her in the air, and she blinked down at the person who’d been calling to her. For a moment she was too shocked to respond, then blabbered, “Trixie!? What in the world are you doing here!? I thought I told you to run!”

Trixie, with Eisenwand standing proudly at her side, adjusted her hat and cleared her throat loudly, “The Brave and Beautiful Trixie of the Bount does not run. Er, not for long anyway. Especially when you’re in danger, Starlight. So I have returned to lend you my aid. Um, in whatever capacity that might be.”

Trixie looked up, blinking against the intense light shining from Celestia’s spell, “I... was somewhat hoping you might know how I can do that, because Trixie doesn’t actually know what to do.”

Chrysalis was giving both of them a flat, shoulder slumped look, her eyes conveying a wealth of disappointment, “I’m starting to think I should have just let the ponies put me in Tartarus. I hear it’s quiet there.”

“Shall I crush the insolent bug, Mistress?” asked Eisenwand, and Trixie waved him off.

“Oh don’t mind her, whoever she is. Huh, Starlight who is this weird looking bug lady?”

“Weird looking bug lady!?” Chrysalis said, affronted, “I’ll have you know I am Chrysalis, Queen of the changelings!”

“Uh-huh,” Trixie said, ignoring Chrysalis and focusing back on Starlight, “So, um, Starlight? Plan? Also, why do you look like the bug lady-”

“Chrysalis!” shouted Chrysalis.

“-not to say you look as weird as she does. You have such lovely colors! Very pretty,” finished Trixie.

“Uh, thanks?” Starlight replied, “But seriously Trixie, while I appreciate that you came back, explicitly against my orders mind you, I kind of think the situation we’re in is a bit more than what you could handle. I’m seriously drained of spirit energy, and need some genuine love to feed on, hence the changeling form I’m taken on, and...”

She blinked, looking at Trixie again, who in turn looked back at Starlight earnestly. “I know I’m not anywhere near as powerful as you, Starlight, but there has to be something I can do. I won’t just leave you behind. No way. Not happening. Trixie will stay by your side until the end, so don’t even think of trying to tell me to run away.”

Starlight might have had a few blind spots in her observational skills, but once she focused in on something it didn’t take her long to work things out. In this case, she noticed the rose hue of Trixie’s cheeks and the fervent pitch to the Bount’s tone, and it rapidly clicked that Trixie’s loyalty may well have had more to it than just paying Starlight back for taking her in all those years ago. 

“In fact,” Trixie was declaring boldly, throwing a hoof skyward, “I’ll fly up there on Eisenwand and distract Celestia myself! I’ll buy  you time to get away, even if it costs me my-”

“Hey Trixie, hold still a sec. I don’t think this will hurt, but just roll with it, okay?” Starlight said to a startled Trixie, and took a deep breath before opening her mouth wide and letting the natural instincts of a changeling take over. 

She wasn’t entirely sure she was doing this right, but the Pearl of Changing conferred a fairly complete instinctual understanding of the abilities of whatever new form it’s user took on. So she wasn’t that surprised when a deep green light, tinged heavily with streams of blue, rose from Trixie’s eyes and mouth and flew into Starlight’s waiting mouth. 

Not knowing what to expect, she wasn’t prepared for the stark burst of flavor that assaulted her senses. No comparison to any food she’d eaten as a human or pony could possibly have compared. It was like drinking in the most refreshing stream of pure spring water upon a throat dying of thirst, while at the same time ingesting the raw heat and fulfilling spice of life itself, delicious even as it seared the taste buds. It was like tasting every juice laden fruit the world had to offer, all at once, and letting it replenish every tired pore in one’s body. No earthly drug could have matched this ecstasy, this feeling of fullness deep inside her core.

It was overwhelming, amazing, beautiful, and horrifying all at once.

She knew, knew from taste alone that Trixie loved her. Instinctually she could pick out the subtle meanings of the flavors of the love, too. She could taste the way the love was interwoven with a profound sense of devotion, admiration, and even a sense of embarrassment as these feelings. Yes, there was some lust there, a physical attraction, but that was more an undercurrent to the devotion that overrode the rest of the feelings forming this stream of life giving love.

Starlight rapidly felt this power fill her, and her body converted that magic into strength. She felt her spiritual energy replenish, the intermix of magic inside of her changeling body converting the power into something her soul could use. The Hogyoku pulsed brightly in her chest, absorbing some of this power as well, and filling Starlight further with rejuvenated might.

By the end of it only seconds had passed, but Starlight and Trixie were both left gasping.

Trixie nearly fell, but was caught by her Doll, Eisenwand giving his Mistress as concerned a look as a largely expressionless suit of living armor could, “Are you well, Mistress?”

“Y-Yes, I think so,” Trixie said, putting a hoof to her head and giving herself a shake before looking to Starlight, “What was that?”

“I, uh... just ate some of your emotions. Hope that was okay?” Starlight said, dizzy, but recovering. She turned a questioning look towards Chrysalis, who was observing Starlight with an oddly... subdued and knowing look that made the changeling queen’s face appear far more solemn than Starlight had ever seen it.

“Is it always like that?” Starlight asked, and Chrysalis made a ‘tch’ sound and nodded her head.

“It is. Every time. The flavors change in small ways, but the intensity never does. The first feeding does leave an impression, however.”

“I kind of see how you and your people got addicted to this,” Starlight admitted, but she then swiftly turned her attention upward. By now the glare of light had reached a blinding tint and the sense of incredible magic and spiritual build up was at a feverish pitch. A roaring rumble combined with a strong static buzz had filled the air, and Starlight felt the vibrations in the ground beneath her hooves. They were out of time.

“Okay, do or die, girls. Here goes nothing,” Starlight said, and turned up her own refreshed spiritual pressure. 

Levitating her Zanpaktou, she pointed Yaban’na Megumi towards the light shining above and focused her attention upon the sense she had of the spatial distortions surrounding Ponehenge. She felt out the best spot to target, where the fabric between dimensions was thinnest. Starlight then began to pour her spirit energy into her blade, as what she was about to do was far more than open the small portals that Yaban’na Megumi had torn open thus far.

At the same moment, high above, Celestia was at the very center of a bleached white nimbus of gloriously terrifying white sunfire. The rings of power that stemmed from her wings had conjured the growing matrix of a High Magic circle, filling it with the near endless stream of power from Celestia. What she was doing was something normally only possible with Luna’s assistance, but the power of Eos rendered it well within Celestia’s reach.

Not that she wanted that. Indeed, inwardly the Princess warred within her mind, trying to wrestle herself back under control. 

The memories and personality of Eos was like a consuming conflagration, eating up Celestia’s thoughts even as she battled the blaze. 

She could feel the ancient alicorn’s unrelenting conviction, and fought back with equal resolve. Eos desired to not only wipe out the enemies before her, but Celestia could sense the former goddesses fervent and burning want to reassert the world as she once knew it. If Celestia lost this mental fight, Eos would use her body much as Iah had used Luna as “Nightmare Moon”, although that personality was a result of a temporary fusion of Luna’s pain and loneliness alongside Iah’s confused memories of still fighting a war with her sister. In the case of Eos, who's memories were more complete due to her deceit in forging her Relics, the result if Celestia lost would likely be closer to a genuine rebirth for Eos. Possibly worse than any pseudo personality that might have otherwise resulted.

And a result that Celestia refused to allow to come to pass!

The spell that Eos was trying to unleash was too powerful, too destructive. It would result in untold damage to the landscape, and too many nearby communities, despite Ponehenge’s remoteness. The ash cloud alone might cause severe environmental problems. Celestia could not afford to allow this to happen, even as Eos’ mind continued to hold just enough sway to keep the spell charging up. Celestia’s resistance was slowing that process down, which was why it had been taking so many long minutes in the first place, besides the incredible amount of magic, “divine” or otherwise needed to enact the spell. 

At this point nearly as much spirit energy was flowing into the spell as raw magic was, making it more powerful than even the original version that Celestia and Luna would have used. 

While Celestia was not gaining ground in her mental struggle, she was holding enough of a grip to try and alter the spell. If she couldn’t halt it’s discharge, perhaps she could lessen it’s impact by focusing it into a different shape. Eos was attempting a pure blast of power, without constraint. Such raw energy could be manipulated into fueling a new form, one no less powerful but with a form focused on localized destruction.

In small, subtle shifts, the magic circle around her body shifted as Celestia wrested small bits of control to change the spell into something different, fueling a change in the High Magic.

Eos felt the change and Celestia was washed over by a flood of her searing ire.

Your heart is weak, young one. You balk at the thought of using your power to remove that which threatens your way of life. No measure is beyond use for such a worthy cause! No sacrifice too great. Do you believe sentiment alone can protect what you hold dear!?

Celestia pushed back against the mind melting tide of emotion and memory and planted her mental hooves firmly against it, her own mind and soul shouting back with resolution, No, but I do not rely on sentiment, Eos. I armor myself with reason, consideration, and compassion. I hold close a blade of fair justice, meted out when needed, and only when reconciliation fails. I fight when I must, not for myself, but for the harmony of all. Not for my glory, not for worship, not even for love of my people if they do not wish to grant it. Only for the sake of this realm’s peace. A peace I will not allow you to destroy for a dream of an age that has long passed from this world!

A roar like the stellar eruption of a solar flare crashed over Celestia as Eos vented an eon’s worth of rage upon Celestia’s mind, trying to burn away the Princess’ stubborn resistance and change the spell back to its original form. Amid this, Celestia was assaulted by a lava flow of Eos’ memories, burning themselves into Celestia as she was surrounded by their hot intensity. 

While fragmented, the memories themselves were clear as day, and Celestia found herself momentarily arrested to shocked silence by what she saw. 

What? But this is-

Eos tried to seize upon Celestia's weakness and attempted to assert full control, but Celestia had not lived as long as she had by allowing even surprises to force her to drop her guard. As taken aback as she was by what she’d seen, she sensed Eos was weakening the longer Celestia had to adjust to the memories.

The two were more or less evenly matched, still wrestling for control, when the spell finally finished charging up. It was designed to go off, regardless, and the best Celestia could do was finish the last glyph within the High Magic circle to alter the spell to the desired result. She had no idea if Starlight Glimmer or Chrysalis had any chance at all of surviving even the altered spell, but there was nothing she could do about that now.

The burning point of unrelenting sunfire in the shape of a spherical magic circle began to expand. The six rings of light detached from the sphere and returned to Celestia’s wings, their work done. Bolts of sizzling star flame rushed along the edges of the sphere, which started to change shape as it gained edges and defined angles. White fire solidified, while still pulsing and flickering with tongues of sky searing heat. The solid shape had the consistency of metal, but only in the barest sense of the term, as it appeared forged of a star’s fire and burned with that endless cosmic radiance.

It was, in essence, a hammer. One as large as a mountain, and containing all the fury of the sun.

Eos’ voice let out a faint, questioning huff.

Stella Malleus?

Celestia responded curtly, Not quite. Stellar Malus requires both I and Luna together. This is a more personal version, operating at a smaller scale. ‘Diem Ruptor’ is it’s name.

She heard Eos’ grunt of faint approval, Day Breaker. At least you have a good sense of names. This will surely annihilate those fools below, so I’ll allow you this small moment of control, Celestia. But this contest between you and I is not over. I will have this body, in time.

Celestia felt Eos retreat inside her, like a tide pulling away from a scorched beach. It was a feeling of immense relief to Celestia, but heavily tainted by the knowledge that Eos’ mind was only lurking within her, and would no doubt look for another chance to seize control in the near future. Celestia had held out long enough to keep Eos’ memories from overrunning her, but the inherent conflict remained. She doubted other Inheritors would have to face such a long-term contention, as Eos’ plan had clearly been to make her Relic more problematic than others, but it was still a nasty reminder that even for the others there might be similar conflicts, depending on the compatibility between the Inheritor and the one who’s memories and powers they’d inherit.  And, unfortunately, Eos’ parting gift before retreating into the recesses of Celestia’s mind was to send a burst of magic forth to speed the Diem Ruptor on it’s way, sending the titanic hammer of solidified sunfire flying down towards the ground like a burning comet.

The air howled at the giant hammer’s fall, a cone of air pressure burning away in front of it as it fell.

Celestia couldn’t have stopped it in time, and was stuck watching to see what Starlight might do. She could sense her opponent down there, along with Chrysalis and... Trixie!? And surprisingly, Starlight Glimmer’s spiritual pressure had recovered immensely! But how? Starlight had been all but drained to the point of defeat, but now Celestia was sensing a recovery that brought the human turned alicorn nearly back to full strength. 

And Celestia felt that spirit energy of Starlight’s spike as the Diem Ruptor careened towards the ground, rising higher and higher to a sharp point.

What is she...? Oh... oh no...

“Starlight! Wait-” Celestia started to shout, but it was too late. 

On the ground, a fearful Chrysalis and Trixie watched as a literal mountain of solid sunfire shaped like a hammer was coming straight towards them. Starlight Glimmer reared up on her hind legs, and with her magic drew Yaban’na Megumi’s screamingly sharp blade across the air while shouting, “Sora no Ichibu!” (Part the Sky)

One of Ditzy Doo’s Shikai techniques, Sora no Ichibu filled the estoc blade with a shimmering field of spirit energy and extended it outward like the world’s sharpest measuring tape. This extended blade of spirit energy carried with it the Zanpaktou’s signature ability to cut through anything, even the bonds of space and dimensions. 

And Starlight used it to drag the blade right across the “lid” of the dimensional prison she sensed around Ponehenge. 

The translucent blade of spirit energy flew up into the sky a few hundred feet and tore a path from right to left, and in its wake the very air opened up like a wound, split open into a void of utter darkness.

This gigantic opening continued to expand, until it was like an eye of shadow in the sky, large enough to act as a perfect obstacle between the ground and the descending hammer of sunfire. Celestia watched, horrified as the Diem Ruptor flew right into the opening of all consuming darkness. Horrified, not because the attack failed to connect with the ground, for honestly she was rather relieved by that. Rather she was horrified because she knew exactly what Starlight had just done and what it meant.

They didn’t have much time!

Celestia immediately teleported to the ground, appearing in a flash of sunlight right behind Starlight, Chrysalis, and Trixie.

All three gasped and turned, Trixie all but leaping behind Eisenwand, while throwing a hoof out to point at Celestia as she shouted, “Hah! You see that!? Starlight Glimmer easily defeated your supposed doomsday attack! And now that she’s back to full power from, um... whatever she just did, not that Trixie minded, you’re in big trouble!”

Celestia saw now that Starlight Glimmer had taken on the form of a changeling queen, which did much to explain how she’d regained her power. Celestia almost admired the cleverness of that, if not for the stupidity of what had just occurred.

“There is no time!” she said firmly, looking Starlight Glimmer in the eyes, “You have no idea what you have just done.”

“What have I just done? I kept me and mine alive from your overpowered attack, Celestia. Don’t get angry because I’ve still got some fight left in me,” Starlight said, readying her blade, but Celestia just shook her head and planted her own sword in the ground, which seemed to confuse Starlight.

“No, you don’t understand! We’ve no time to fight one another now! The place you have torn a doorway into, it is a prison. A prison that must be closed immediately!”

Starlight’s face grew a hint of concern as she slowly lowered her Zanpaktou and glanced up at the opening of vast darkness, “I knew it was a prison, but to what? I mean, that giant doomhammer of yours just flew in there. Whatever’s on the other side has to be toast, right?”

“How can you be so clever, and yet so ignorant at the same time?” Celestia breathed, “Neither I or my sister are responsible for creating this prison, and never in our many years have we dared considered opening it. The one trapped within, in the Limbo beyond, we have no notion of the limits of its power! My spell may have wounded it or stunned it, but that’s it. Now if you have the power to close that opening you have made, you must do so, now!”

Starlight Glimmer read the absolute seriousness etched on Celestia’s metallic gold features, and was unable to find a lie or exaggeration in either the alicorn’s tone or the note of fear underlying it all. Whatever was inside this prison, it was bad enough to frighten Celestia into temporarily forgetting all about their fight and imploring Starlight for aid. A part of Starlight thought to bargain. To demand something in return for helping close the opening into this otherworldly prison. She dismissed the thought as fast as it arrived. She’d only done this to survive Celestia’s spell. Starlight had no desire to put this realm in any more danger than was necessary to complete her goal. Her guilt was already hefty enough knowing that her world’s Chrysalis was in the Crystal Empire right now, even knowing she’d sent Zecora and Redheart’s Reigai there to prevent casualties. 

“Fine, I’ll do it,” she said, casting a brief look towards her companions, “Trixie, Chrysalis, get clear.”

“What!? But Starlight-” Trixie began, but Starlight cut her off sharply.

“Don’t argue with me, Trixie! Get your beautiful blue butt out of here before you use up the last of your luck. There’s nothing more you can do to help now.”

Chrysalis cast a shifty glance towards Celestia, “I have zero objections to running, but are you going to interfere, Celestia?”

Celsestia gave Chrysalis a withering look in return, “This crisis is far more important than dealing with the likes of you, Chrysalis. Flee if you must, and may you have the wisdom to not cross my path again or even dream of harming my little ponies. Otherwise...”

The heat turned up around Celestia's body for an instant, wreathing her body in a quick burst of melting flames. Chrysalis let a visible gulp pass down her throat before nodding and slowly backing away from the alicorn.

However, just then, a voice spoke. One that resonated in the air with a rough, unnatural warble that carried with it the chill of a starless void. 

“Oh, folks are leaving already? But I’ve not had guests to speak with in so, so long.”

All eyes turned up towards the large, open portal into the dark prison. From that jet black abyss of nothingness, two narrow eyes of solid white stared back at them, and the shadows creased beneath those eyes in a inky grin.

Starlight, ever sardonic, raised a hoof and waved, “Hello. Sorry about the hole in your door. Wrong address. Just give me a sec and I’ll have it closed up.”

“Aha, humor. How... quaint,” said the voice from the darkness, then before anyone could blink a cascade of numerous tendrils of solid shadow shot down like a rain of black arrows. Starlight and Celestia were fast enough to evade, but Chrysalis and Trixie were both caught and found themselves wrapped in those tendrils, then rapidly hauled into the air.

“Aaaah! Starlight! Eisenwand! Help!” Trixie shouted, while Chrysalis hissed. Eisenwand’s ruby red eyes glowed bright as his misty mane and tail of dark iron flickered and he summoned forth his lance. He tried to fly up and penetrate the shadows binding Trixie, but the Doll quickly found himself slapped away by a thick tendril of darkness that struck with all the force of an ocean liner being used as a croquet mallet. Eisenwand hit the ground in a heap, although he stubbornly stirred to start standing again. 

“Let go of me this instant!” Chrysalis shouted, and although her limbs were bound, her Bakkoto was still able to move at her will. The serrated chain blades shot outward and coiled around, filling with magic and spirit energy via an emerald aura as they cut and sliced at the shadows holding her. However the blades couldn’t penetrate more than some of the tendrils, and more descended to wrap up the blades of her Bakkoto, while the voice spoke ponderously.

“Oh? I sense not just magic, but the power of the soul. Has the time come already? Has my counterpart fixed Her precious Cycle by now? Delightful. It seems patience truly is a virtue. A virtue Starswirl always did lack.”

“Hey! Big, dark, and smug!”

The eye slits moved towards Starlight as she spoke, and narrowed further as Starlight vanished with a Flash Step. Yaban’na Megumi sliced out with supreme severing power, and cut the tendrils holding Trixie and Chrysalis, causing both to fall back to the ground, while Starlight remained standing on the air and looking up into the abyss where the voice had come from as she pointed her Zanpaktou at the white eyes that stared back at her.

“There’s only room for one egotistical, cryptic talking jerk in this world, and I’m filling that quota right now! Time for you to go back in the hole!”

She used Flash Step once more, and a hail of abyssal tentacles shot out of the darkness at her. Their speed was impressive, and may well have caught up to even Starlight, but a flare of solar flame cut across the air and severed dozens of them at once. Celestia, wielding Caelum Carnifex like a living shard of the sun, burned a hot white trail in Starlight’s wake. Each swing of her sword let out a crescent of almighty heat, tearing into the darkness with wild abandon. 

This bought Starlight time to get to the edge of the dimensional opening she’d created, where she shoved Yaban’na Megumi’s blade into the beginning of the rift. There, she took a deep breath and focused on using the Zanpaktou’s ability in its inverted state, which allowed it to stitch up portals it created. Normally small portals could just be willed shut, but for larger rifts it required time and a steady input of energy to effectively sew shut the opening. 

The voice let out a long, deep rumbling sound like a peal of thunder, “Ah, I wondered if I’d recognized you or not, Eos. Her Inheritor, rather? You are quite fortunate the Pillar’s spell still binds me to this cursed Limbo. Yet if I strain enough, I can push my power through this opening. Enough to deal with the two of you.”

Darkness concentrated more firmly around the portion of the void where the eyes of sickeningly wane white resided, and expelled outward in an ugly flood of shadow. Celestia was forced on the defensive, holding her burning blade of sunfire in front of her to try and withstand the sudden deluge of void energy. There was little else that could describe it. The shadows were not mere darkness, but felt to Celestia like the elemental magic of the void, of the absence of harmonic energy. Much like the world had been slowly decaying and dying from the lack of harmonic energy due to the broken Cycle, the power this being was firing towards her was like the elemental opposite of Harmony. 

She had to draw upon the full potency of her Relic and the magic within to generate enough power in her sword to split that deluge. 

“Okay, Celestia, seriously, what the buck is this guy!?” Starlight shouted, closing the portal meter by slow meter, “My senses can’t make him out. There’s spirit energy and magic in there, but it’s all twisted, even worse than a Hollows!”

“I don’t know!” Celestia shouted back, outpouring so much magical sunfire that she was creating a searing pillar of white fire around herself and her blade, one that bored a hole in the ground beneath her while slamming into the void above, although to little visible effect up there, “Starswirl’s journals only ever spoke of a friend, lost to shadow, and the need to sacrifice himself and his fellow Pillars to keep that shadow bound in Limbo!”

“Tch, Starswirl always had a talent for skewing the truth,” the voice said disdainfully, “Although in some ways I feel I owe him thanks, for I’ve learned more of this world’s past than I ever would have as his humble ‘friend’. They’re all in here, you know? My mentor, his comrades, my ‘friends’, all bound together by their spell. Do you not wish to save them?”

Celestia ignored the voice’s words, mostly because she sensed the ill-intent and the deceptive attack incoming. While this dark entity could not seem to project it’s full power into the world outside it’s prison thanks to the spell that bound it there, it still had more than enough capacity to be a deadly threat. Piercing strands of shadow, no thicker than pencils, had curled around behind Celestia and sought to perforate her unprotected back while she still struggled to maintain a font of sunfire to hold back the entity’s main body.

To Celestia’s surprise, a fan of black bladed chain whips flew up between her and the attack coming at her back. With emerald fire, the chain blades transformed into a set of wider, protective scales that took the brunt of the piercing shadows. At the same time, bright red circles of arcane sigils formed of spirit energy flew up into the mass and burst with flashes of light that, admittedly, did little to inflict any damage on the shadows, but did redirect one or two away from their intended target.

Looking down, Celestia saw Chrysalis and Trixie had not fled, but remained, the changeling looking like she wanted to vomit at her own actions, but still stubbornly and pridefully using her Bakkoto to form the protecting fan of scales. Trixie had withdrawn a wand with a ruby tip from Eisenwand’s chest, casting hexes upwards in a futile but still brave effort to lend aid.

“Do not say anything, Celestia!” Chrysalis demanded, “I am not helping you! I just need to ensure whatever this thing is doesn’t escape to make my own life difficult!”

“Trixie, on the other hoof, refuses to slink away! Besides, Starlight might still need this!” Trixie declared, withdrawing the scroll that Starlight had given her before, “Eisenwand, go take that to Starlight, swift as you can.”

The Doll nodded at the command and snatched the scroll in his iron jaw before spreading metal wings to take to the air. Starlight found herself both grinning yet also grinding her teeth at the sight of her two companions being so idiotic as to stick around under these circumstances. “Idiots. Idiots both of them. Guess that makes me the Captain of the Idiot Division, then.”

Closing the opening into this prison of Limbo was slow going. Yaban’na Megumi was far less inclined to close up holes as it was to tear them open. Each slow meter took far more time than Starlight wanted, and she could feel with bile on her throat the power and attention of the being beyond the void. 

“Figures Equestria just had to have some insanely powerful ancient evil whatever sitting around,” she muttered, “As if I didn’t have enough on my plate with the Second Espada running around, Zero Division pulling all the strings, and these Princesses breathing down my neck.”

“Aren’t you the judgmental one?” said the entity’s voice, it’s eyes sliding across the void to hover closer towards her as she struggled to continue closing the opening. It’s attention on her was like a cloying sensation of a thick, cold fog on her skin. She heard a breathing from the void, this thing was scenting her. “Hmm, you’re not a native of this realm. Too much foreign power. That thing in your chest, it is distinct from any magic artifact I’m aware of. What are you, I wonder?”

“Keep wondering, buddy,” said Starlight, “Although since you seem so chatty, you got a name?”

“Starlight, you probably shouldn’t be talking to it!” Celestia pointed out, “It’s trying to distract you!”

“She’s right, you know,” said the entity just as it formed a blade of darkness that it sent curving towards Starlight, who flung a hoof out and chanted a Kido.

“Bakudo Number Eighty One: Danku!”

The shimmering plane of spirit energy snapped into place and took the brunt of the blade of void, but even that high level Kido started to buckle after a second, forcing Starlight to temporarily halt her closing of the portal to bring Yaban’na Megumi to bear against the darkness that stabbed through the barrier. Fortunately the Zanpaktou’s insane sharpness was enough to sever through the elemental blade of void and caused it to dissipate to either side of Starlight, but she got the impression the attack hadn’t had the being’s full force behind it. She quickly got back to closing the opening, while Celestia’s horn expanded it’s magical field in a saturating burst of golden flame. 

The six rings of light shot from the Princess’ wings and channeled the magic from her horn into a series of barriers formed of white sunfire that guarded Starlight. This freed her to continue her work, but left Celestia more vulnerable as more shadow blades thrust out to try and clip the alicorn out of the sky. Celestia relied on her radiant blade to defend herself, the hulking weapon cutting through shadow after shadow as she blazed an evasive trail through the air. 

Eisenwand reached Starlight, slipping the scroll to her as the rings of light moved to let him past.

“Thanks,” Starlight muttered, “Now get your fool Mistress out of here!”

“I obey her orders,” Eisenwand stated simply, “If she wishes to stay, I remain at her side.”

“Why is everyone being so stubborn today!?” Starlight shouted.

“I do not know,” replied Eisenwand.

“That was a rhetorical question!”

“I see.”

“Do you!?”

“...No,” Eisenwand said, then turned and flew back down towards Trixie, who continued to fling hexes up towards the void with no visible effect.

As if nothing had changed, the entity returned it’s attention to Starlight and said, “It’s Stygian, by the by. My name, that is.”

By now more than half the portal was successfully closed and Starlight turned a deep frown towards the shining white eyes in the void while keeping her guard up and not halting her closure of the rift, “You are awfully talkative for a mysterious being locked in an eternal void that the near almighty half-deity alicorn is frightened of. Especially considering you don’t seem to be able to use your full power here, and I’m getting this hole I ripped open closed real soon.”

“Yes, you do seem to have made quite a bit of progress closing the hole you tore in my oh so comfortable prison,” said the entity who identified itself as Stygian, “Honestly it’s just nice to have someone to talk to. Haven’t worked the old language skills in a long while. Besides, I’m not worried. Even if you close this opening, I now know where my prison’s weak point is. A weak point I never knew existed. Now, in time, I’ll escape on my own, even if it might take a few centuries. So be it now, or later, I’ll have my proverbial day in the sun. Of course I’m eager to have company over, even if I remain trapped for a time longer, and those courageous but quite illogical individuals trying to help you seem quite exposed.”

“Dammit!” Starlight grunted as she saw a flood of shadow bubble out of the void in one big burst. It surrounded Celestia like a temporary shell, shutting out the Princess’ sunfire for a moment.

Then tendrils of darkness rushed both Trixie, Eisenwand, and Chrysalis once more. Trixie flung hexes as she backpedaled and leaped on top of Esidenwand’s back. The Doll flew into the air and lashed out with his lance at the shadows descending on him, but his physical might was no match for the raw void that wrapped around him and his Bount.

Chrysalis hissed and transformed herself in a burst of green fire into the shape of a tiger-like creature with white fur, black stripes, and a tail made out of sharp, segmented bone. Her Bakkoto was still attached to her tiger form’s right arm and she tried to cut and slash her way free of the tentacles of shadow that surrounded her, but she too was soon caught in a tight wrapping of darkness.

Both Chrysalis and Trixie were hauled skyward and into the void, while Starlight screamed her frustration.

She was not about to let those she’d dragged into her mess pay any kind of price for her own actions! 

In a flash she ceased her work on closing the portal and used Flash Step to instantly translocate herself into the void, cutting off Chrysalis and Trixie’s path. With all due speed she took the scroll Trixie had given her and took it up in a magical levitation spell while transforming from a changeling back into an alicorn to gain an additional burst of magic. That magic she used to fire out rapid beams of power to push back several seeking tendrils of shadow that came her way while at the same time she extended Yaban’na Megumi and diced through the shadows holding her companions.

“Next time I tell you two to go, you go!” she shouted, and slapped the scroll onto Trixie’s back and activated it, while swiftly using a binding Kido.

“Bakkudo Number Four; Hainawa!”

The bright yellow rope of spirit energy she summoned with the Kido she used to bind Chrysalis, Eisenwand, and Trixie together, and then promptly used both of her hind legs to kick the group down and out of the void. 

Chrysalis looked up in mute shock, while Trixie got a hoof free of the binding Kido with enough time to shout half of Starlight’s name while Eisenwand held her tight with his metallic hooves. Then the scroll beacon did it’s work, and Starlight was grateful Ocellus and Pipsqueak back at the base were still on the ball with the Crossgate’s controls. All three of them, bound close together, were targeted by the same teleport and transported away to safety in an eyeblink.

“Clever and self sacrificing,” Stygian’s voice commented, and within the void itself that voice felt like it came from everywhere at once.

Starlight saw his “eyes” hover over her, two giant white slits that she now saw were attached to a massive equine being of shadow, like an outline of deeper darkness upon the void it occupied. It was almost like an alicorn, winged and horned, yet it’s body was no more than a shade upon a moonless night, save for it’s two depthless white eyes. 

“I do wonder, however, what you were thinking just leaping into Limbo on your lonesome?”

She cut around in an arc of instant motion, slashing with Yaban’a Megumi into the pervading mass of shadows. She felt the Zanpaktou touch only the barest hint of resistance, as if the barely discernible shape of the dark equine figure was little more than mist. Starlight pierced that darkness with her senses, searching for any semblance of life... and thought she did feel some trace of something in there, but it was cloaked with such a heavy blanket of confused and mixed sensations of magical and spiritual power that pinpointing anything specific was nearly impossible. This entity, Stygian, whatever he was, struck her as being similar in strength to the likes of Tirek or Sombra. Despite that, she also sensed something off about him, although she couldn’t place a hoof on what that was. 

“Couldn’t just let you nab my allies like that. Makes a girl jealous,” Starlight quipped, mostly in hopes of keeping him talking. She knew she had a bad habit of liking to talk too much, and got the impression Stygian may have been cut from similar cloth. She needed time to close that rift, and she felt Celestia’s magic building up, even though the alicorn was still covered in a blob of shadows just beneath the dimensional opening.

Furthermore, Starlight sensed more of Celestia’s magic inside the void, and to her surprise she caught sight of a glittering spectacle in the darkness beyond. The hammer of the Diem Ruptor was still there! It floated in the depths like a shard of shining white diamond.

An idea formed as Starlight saw shadows mass around her, Stygian’s voice echoing in the empty expanse. Shadow blades came for her from all sides, and Starlight turned herself into a spinning blender of sword strikes to try and deflect them all whilst Stygian’s voice vibrated in her skull.

“Jealousy is an emotion I’m quite familiar with. It’s frustrating, to know yourself to be better than what others deem you worthy of. Worse still to know one has purpose, but to be unable to fulfill it. To know the world is not as it should be, and be unable to change it. It fills one with rancorous rage.”

“Buddy, you’re preaching to the choir on that front, but kind of hard of me to care when you’re also trying to kill me,” Starlight shot back, sending her body into a sudden somersaulting spin that cut like a saw through several shadow blades in order to break through the mass. Several others managed to cut her in the process, but she managed to tear free for a moment, and she halted herself and turned around, smearing blood from one of her wounds onto her hoof before aiming it out into the void. Magic poured from her horn and into a sphere of pulsating purple and black energy that grew from her hoof.

With a disruptive burst of force she fired a wide Gran Rey Cero that speared into the darkness.

“Impressive,” said Stygian, the beam having missed the indistinct equine shape of shadow that seemed to represent his body, “But you appeared to miss by quite a margin with that beam.”

“Wasn’t aiming at you,” Starlight said, and smiled as she saw her Gran Rey Cero impact with its intended target; the mountain sized hammer of concentrated sunfire that was the Diem Ruptor.

She thought she saw the vague form of darkness turn it’s ghostly white eyes behind it and nearly frown as Stygian grumbled, “Oh bugger all.”

The gigantic hammer cracked under the impact of the Gran Rey Cero, not because the beam was the more potent force, but because the spell was designed to detonate upon sufficient impact with just about anything. Having entered the void, the hammer had not met contact with anything solid, as Stygian’s ‘body’ had not been in the path. Now, however, the beam of Hollow energy was more than enough to trigger the spell’s detonation. The resulting flash of light was bright even in the depthless dark, like the sudden birth of a star. White fire rushed out in a magical tide that shook the void, filling it with an ear-splitting roar of power.

Starlight had erected a barrier of magic around herself and added an additional protective layer with another Danku Kido, but even then the wave of explosive force and destructive sunfire nearly shattered those defenses, sending her hurtling backwards uncontrollably.

She was caught, however, by steady and warm hooves, and Starlight shook the fuzzy cobwebs from her senses to see it was Celestia who’d caught her and held her steady. Shadows melted behind the alicorn Princess as her burning blade of almighty sunforged metal cut a path around her, having freed her from the binding darkness below and struck a path up into Limbo.

“How long will it take to finish closing this portal?” Celestia asked, even as she ejected a terrific stream of blistering white fire from her horn that ripped through a growing wall of shadows that had been flying towards them.

“Not sure. A minute or two,” Starlight guessed, “Can you buy me that time?”

“I will do whatever is necessary,” said Celestia without a hint of hesitation as she spread her wings, which lit up the emptiness of Limbo with rays of unbroken light. Then she was off, a streak of sunlit rage and destruction that faced off with the limitless shadows and their keeper. 

“Strong words, pawn of Eos and Harmony, but I will not be denied forever!” called Stygian’s voice from all corners of Limbo as a tide of unrelenting, jet black power rushed to meet Celestia.

Starlight tried not to get distracted by the sight of it. Celestia swinging her blade in constant, golden arcs. The rings of light from her wings firing a continuous set of raw sunlight turned into deadly, void clipping lasers. The bestial roar of sunfire rocketing from Celestia’s horn in a pure white river. All set against a seemingly constant string of stabbing shadows of spears, blades, tendrils, and grasping jagged spikes. The collision of magic and spiritual powers alone was shaking the void with concussive waves of force, and Starlight could see those waves even disrupting the world outside the rift, cracking the ground with their might.

Shame all she could do in that moment was focus on closing that rift, like a determined welder fixing a rupture in a pipe. With dogged determination she set Yaban’na Megumi to work, slowly closing the opening it had torn. She did all she could to step up the pace, pouring all of her spirit energy into the task, but if she rushed the job too much then it’d leave a weakened portion of the “lid” she’d sliced up. She wasn’t about to make it easy for this Stygian entity to break out again.

All the while, Stygian poured more and more power towards Celestia, surrounding her with countless weapons of shadow seeking her flesh. Yet even as she cut them down in their multitudes, she herself was starting to flag. The long, long battle with Starlight, and now this, was burning through her reserves of magic at a horrendous pace. Even with the Relic, her power wasn’t limitless, and she was having to bring it all to bear to keep the darkness of Limbo’s prisoner at bay.

And his voice struck at her mind, chiding, taunting, “You never answered my question. Do you not wish to save them? The heroes of old who sacrificed themselves to put me here?”

As if to punctuate his words, the mass of equine shadow, stained dark as ink, charged Celestia with all the speed of shadow. A deeply curved blade of forged void was held in hooves of writhing black as it cut towards Celestia’s head, and she met it with the burning dawnlight of her own sword. Both blades intermingled in a flickering haze of daylight and voidshadow, while Celestia poured her strength against Stygian’s. Her face betrayed no weakness, even as his words cut at her.

“Of course I would wish to save them, but they bound you here with their own magic. Ending that spell frees them, but also you, and while Starswirl never told me all of what was happening back then, he made it clear that this prison was never to be opened.”

“And yet here you are, at Ponehenge,” said Stygian, “Did you think to dispose of a troublesome problem in this place, as Starswirl did? Oh, like teacher like student, eh? Ever practical minded Starswirl seemed to raise an equally practical Princess. If only he was as loyal to all his friends.”

Their blades parted in a mutual clash, and globes of darkness formed around Stygian’s sword which he then hurled at Celestia. The globes grew in size as they flew at Celestia, who countered by interlocking her rings of light together three at a time to form two arrays that fired focused bursts of incomprehensibly bright sunlight that cut through the darkness. At least in part. One sphere still broke through the beams and struck Celestia dead on, even as she used her sword to shield herself. A severe tearing of dark energies exploded through the void, and Starlight heard Celestia cry out in pain.

“You doing alright back there!?” Starlight shouted, still focused on closing the rift. She was so close now that it was getting to the point that there wouldn’t be room for her and Celestia to escape through if they waited much longer.

“I...I am fine! Keep going! Do not wait for me!” Celestia bellowed, surrounding herself in a vast storm of white flames. Using her wings to guide the fire in a swift motion, she sent titanic sheets of incinerating flame to burn the shadows around her. Cracks in her metallic armor bled sunlight and droplets of blood that burned like white hot phosphorus, but Celestia did not pay her injury any mind as she poured forth raging waves of divine flame to push against Stygian’s encroaching tide of darkness.

“He still dreams of you, did you know that?” Stygian said, “I can peer into their minds, each of the ‘Pillars’, my old friends. They get to enjoy the stillness of sleep, while I am stuck mulling things over in this dreary place. Starswirl still thinks of you and Luna as his students. I could show you where they are. They’d be so easy to pluck from this place.”

“Silence! You’ve no bargain to offer me that I’d dare consider. Even if I must expend my all to hold you at bay, you are not leaving!” Celestia's answer echoed loudly through the emptiness, her resolve reflected in the ever greater volumes of blinding sunfire that exploded from her wings, horn, and even her mouth and eyes as she threw all caution to the wind and poured her power against the void. 

Starlight could feel that all encompassing heat searing her back, but didn’t dare lose focus on her task. The hole was finally closed enough that it was just barely sufficient for her and Celestia to pass through. If they were to escape, Starlight would have to close it from the outside once she was out...

...Which, she realized, she could do right now, without waiting for Celestia.

It would solve one incredibly huge problem with her own plans to get Celestia out of the way. It wasn’t like Celestia hadn’t been considering doing the same to her not so long ago.

Calculation flew through Starlight’s mind, weighed against numerous desires. Above all she wanted Zero Division defeated, cast down, Hell dismantled, and Sunburst freed, and with him, the world itself free to become a better place for both the living and the dead. She’d sacrificed so many morals and ethics to get to this point. She’d allied with a crazed Hollow like Chrysalis, knowing full well that people would likely die as a result no matter what precautions she took. She knew she was stained by her choices and even if all of her plans came to fruition, there was no erasing the wrong she’d done to get there. She was even able to mostly convince herself it’d be worth it in the end.

As long as Zero Division was defeated... did anything else really matter?

She thought she had only one path to take, even if it was over the bodies of others like Celestia. Even if it meant ruining lives like those of Sunset and her friends. Even if it meant becoming no better than those she despised. 

For some reason at that moment she thought of Firefly, who’d kept loyally to her side this entire time. Then she thought of Platinum, who sacrificed so much for her son, and lost nearly everything, yet still had not abandoned all of her principles. She thought of the odd, budding friendship between Pipsqueak and Ocellus, as unlikely a pair as ever there was. She thought of Trixie, who’s love and admiration was still something Starlight could taste on her lips. 

I’ll do anything to bring down Zero Division... but I won’t become them. One day, I still want to look Sunburst in the face.

Celestia was nearing exhaustion, and even her vision was somewhat blinding by the volume of raw magic sunfire she’d shot from her body in an all consuming wave before her. And for a wonder, it had worked to hold Stygian back. As potent as he was, even he couldn’t entirely withstand such a massive outpour of magic stemming not just from Celestia’s might, but the reborn divine magic of Eos. Such an unbridled wall of celestial fury was enough that even a being such as him had to focus on shielding himself, lest risk losing the mortal anchor that was his core. 

“Mmph, I am now understanding just how strong Eos was, and admittedly your power compliments hers rather potently. Harmony seems to function as intended, for a wonder. That said, you cannot keep that up forever.”

“She doesn’t have to,” Celestia heard Starlight say, just a moment before she heard the metallic clinking of chains and saw a length of chain tipped with a pointed head at the end fly right by her field of vision. 

The spike tipped length of chain touched her side, and Celestia had a second to glance back and understand what was occurring.

Starlight had transformed her Zanpaktou once again, shifting it back to the multi-chained form of Screwloose’s Zanpaktou, Sakuran. One length of chain had touched Celestia, while the other Starlight had sent flying down out of a now much smaller opening than when Celestia had last looked. The rift was now just barely large enough for a full grown pony to slip through, and it’d be a tight squeeze for an alicorn of Celestia’s stature. Fortunately that was irrelevant for the ability Sakuran possessed, which instantaneously transported Celestia from where she was squaring off with Stygian, all the way back to the middle of the standing stones of Ponehenge.

“Starlight Glimmer!” she called upwards, now only able to see Starlight through the small hole in the air that the once wide opening to the void of Limbo had been.

Starlight, not entirely a mad martyr, did try to use Sakuran on herself as well, but found Stygian faster on the draw and discovered the chains and their spiked tips were almost immediately wrapped up in his shadows and held fast from moving. She too was quickly surrounded by solid tendrils of darkness, now that Celestia was no longer able to hold it all back.

Still, Starlight tried to yank herself through the hole, but wasn’t overly surprised to find her path blocked by yet more shadow that filled the passage and held fast even against her physical strength.

“That was a surprise,” said Stygian, his eyes in the darkness hovering towards her, “I thought for sure you’d leave her here to save yourself.”

“Think if there’s anything I’ve learned today, it’s not to bet against Equestria’s Princesses,” Starlight said with a dry chuckle, “Besides, I never do anything without thinking it through.”

In a split second she called back Ditzy Doo’s Zanpaktou, and even as she was held tight by thick strands of shadow, she was able to summon forth a burst of strength from within. The Hogyoku kicked in, not just amping up her Hollow reiatsu, but pouring for a burst of the magical sunfire, Celestia’s own magic, that it had absorbed during the battle with the mighty alicorn.

It wasn’t enough to free Starlight entirely, but it was enough to allow her to shove Yaban’na Megumi into the edge of the remaining rift, and in a final push of strength, she sealed the hole shut, leaving herself trapped with Limbo and it’s still incarcerated occupant.

Celestia looked on, mouth open, at the now empty air above her, and the unbroken blue sky. 

The rift was closed, Limbo, the prison of Ponehenge, secured once more. And Starlight Glimmer had sealed herself inside it along with one of the most dangerous beings in Equestria’s long history. Celestia couldn’t fathom if that had been courageous or insane of the human woman who she’d just a short time earlier been fighting against, but now been strangely saved by. 

With a tired breath, she sat back on her haunches and with slow deliberation forced the remaining power she’d drawn from the Relic of Eos back into a sealed state. Flames bled off of her and her armor transmuted to liquid gold, all stirring into streams of power that floated into her sword. Her metallic fur of shining gold returned to its usual snow white coloring, and her mane lost the huge of consuming white fire to become it’s multi-toned flow once again. Finally, Caelum Carnifex itself faded in motes of white light to become a humble looking, broken sword once more. The power remained within the Relic, ready to be drawn forth again... along with a waiting Eos’ memories and personality that would no doubt seek to take control when Celestia called upon the Relic, but that was a trial for another day.

“Sister!”

Luna’s voice surprised Celestia as she turned to see a streaking blue meteor making it’s way right towards her. Luna landed with the readiness of a huntress, her own Relic of a bow held firmly in her magic as she looked around.

“I am... late, aren’t I?” asked Luna, noting the surrounding devastation and distinct lack of enemies present.

Celestia sighed, but did offer her sister a wane smile, “I’m afraid so, Luna. Today’s battle has ended, but I suspect more will come. Starlight Glimmer is... out of play, for the moment. But that may lead to further problems. Tell me, what happened in Canterlot?”

“You first, sister. What happened here? I sensed... I don’t know what I sensed, but it was enough to make me want to fly to your side as fast as possible.”

“An awakened shadow from the past,” Celestia said with weight, “One I fear may not be done with us, or Starlight Glimmer for that matter...”

----------

Starlight was held as tightly as if she was buried beneath the stone of a mountain, unable to even see a glint of light any longer. She couldn't so much as move her limbs, although she could still draw upon her spiritual power if she wanted to. Technically, if she wanted to fight, she could start flinging Ceros about, or call more Zanpaktou from Seikai Chitsujo. But that seemed like a waste of energy, especially considering she’d guessed right and her new “host” hadn’t decided to kill her.

Of course all this silence was getting annoying.

“Hey!” she said into the void, “If you were going to kill me, I figure you’d be doing it already, so what’s the hold up?”

A strain of equal irritation filled the voice of Stygian’s reply, echoing from everywhere in the dark, “Perhaps I’m merely thinking of the most appropriate way to dispose of you, now that you’ve ruined my chance at a swift escape.”

“Sounds like an excuse to me,” she said, and she felt the shadows tighten around her.

“Upsetting me further seems like a poor choice of final acts.”

“Urk, maybe... but you said it yourself, Stygian, you haven’t had anypony to talk to in a very long time.”

His scoffing noise was like a stone skipping across ice, “I’m uncertain you and I have much to talk about, after you aided Celestia.”

“I helped her, yes. I wanted her out of my way, but after what I saw her pull today with that sword of hers, and this ‘Eos’ she apparently got all that power from, I decided she’d be more useful to my plans out there causing problems for my enemies than in here causing problems for you.”

That was only a partial truth, eschewing that she just hadn’t wanted to take that final step of abandoning what few morals she had left. Still, she wasn’t entirely lying, either. She’d discounted the Princesses as being a force of sufficient strength to deal with the likes of Triek, let alone the Zero Division. She’d revised that opinion, and knew that Celestia remaining in play meant that if Tirek launched an all out assault on Equestria it was better Equestria had its full complement of defenders present to give the Hollow King a rude welcome.

Of course the Second Espada was still an issue. Without Starlight around to hold what little leach Chrysalis had, who knew what might happen? Even with the Reigai she’d created with instructions to keep Chrysalis from going on a rampage, that woman was too much of a wildcard for Starlight to trust that going smoothly without her own presence to oversee things.

Which was why she hoped Platinum’s plan to gain Firefly’s cure had worked, and that the fight in the Crystal Empire might at least weaken Chrysalis for a time. Starlight had not predicted something like being trapped in this void dimension, but she had anticipated the possibility of losing to Celestia, hence her contingencies. 

And even now, she had far from given up. If her Zanpaktou could open this prison from the outside, she imagined it could also do it from the inside. But before that, she had to find a way to deal with this prison’s occupant. Since overpowering him in a contest of raw strength seemed unlikely, it was time for a different tactic.

“Look,” she went on, since Stygian still hadn’t killed her or gagged her, which she took to mean that he was listening, “You seem to have a story behind you, and I’ll admit it’s one I’m curious about. You knew who that ‘Eos’ Celestia tapped into was, and mentioned more than a few interesting tidbits that piqued my curiosity. I also don’t think I’m crazy to say it sounded like you were rather curious about me, since you didn’t seem to recognize who or what I am, let alone why I was here on Ponehenge, fighting Celestia.”

“Hmph, you have a practical way with words combined with a convincing tone that reminds me entirely too much of Mistmane,” Stygian said in a resigned, yet intrigued, voice, “My instincts tell me you are trouble, Starlight Glimmer. Yet you are right, I’ve been alone for a very long time, and boredom is a mighty motivator. I suppose I can kill you at any time I deign to choose, and I am curious about you, although you might be surprised at what I already know...”

She felt the constraints around her loosen, and on instinct she created a platform of reishi beneath herself, standing in the void upon a pale purple platform of spirit energy. Stygian’s white eyes appeared in the darkness before her, his real form still shrouded in the shadows he kept close.

“So then,” he said, “Let us talk.”