Princess Celestia held her eyes so wide, I saw white all around. A bright desaturated rainbow blur hid her mouth. In the dawn light, the faceted illusion lit the half of her body not lit from the horizon, as well as the interior of the pavilion. Unlike in the library, greyed prismatic colors spread like an infection down her neck toward her forelegs and along her back toward her hindquarters. Vines connected growing patches of fibrous cedar-like tree bark. The patches massed over major muscles, pressing, applying pressure, trying to force the white alicorn to stand—or break her apart if she failed to comply.
She fought, shaking and jerking, now hitting the floorboards as she thumped back down. Joints crackled.
I sensed her cutie mark magic raging. I saw what I'd read examining her mark in the library: a connection to the earth. Energy heaved upward from the ground in golden pulses through the floor in time with the aura around her horn. In moments, a stream of it curved up and through her, blowing and beating her mane upward, then bending and shooting toward the horizon and whipping her tail to point along the flow. The force did not seem to care that it had to go through a massive stone castle to do so.
The castle did not burst into flames, but Celestia had.
I'd heard not only the crackle of her joints, but the crackle of fire as she became more and more frantic. Individual flames flickered around the barked areas as she fought having to stand as the curse fashioned her into a puppet. A few patches slipped. On her shoulders. As if she had melted them like wax.
Celestia jumped suddenly, and tossed her head. Her crown went flying, hitting a rafter with a clank, kicking out and bounding across the lawn. When I saw her head bandage burning and the fur underneath where the crown had rested smoking, I understood. Gold conducts heat very well.
While I stood aghast, Twilight cried, "Princess Celestia, Princess Celestia! What's happening?"
She tried to scrape off a patch with her hoof, but jumped back as if she'd touched a hot stove. Despite his concussion, Twilight's brother rolled onto his barrel and reached for his sister.
Twilight looked at her hoof as it if had betrayed her, her face darkening as it had when I'd stuck her brother.
She shouted at me. "What've you done to the princess!" She stalked toward me, but Shining Armor hooked her rear leg. He dragged her back as she strained against him.
Startled into motion by the unexpected, I queued Shield. That worked for solids—
Celestia thrashed again, lifting on her forelegs in increasing distress. Were flames a solid that Shield could repel, or energy? Did I need Mirror Shield? If Twilight also attacked with objects and the curse fired Force from Celestia's horn, could I juggle—?
I got an answer.
Celestia flung herself up and heaved with her neck. That dislodged her peytral. She lifted her muzzle toward the ceiling. Upward the heated metal flew, assisted by a yellow aura popping in around it.
The quarter pony weight of gold did not hit the ceiling as the laws of motion demanded. It curved sharply down, directly toward my eyes.
I threw myself aside—and into a post. My nose broke in a gush of blood, but at least I had a head to have a nose that was broken! I scrambled around the post and saw the peytral missile crash through a second flimsy decorative wall and heard china explode beyond.
My magic would have prevented me throwing a killing blow. I didn't know if the limit to my wish-based magic applied to alicorn magic, however. I had my hoof to my hose and thanked my luck and training I still breathed.
Twilight said, thinking aloud, "There's no such thing as curses! Nothing is going to happen at the Summer Sun Celebration! Starlight, what've you done?"
Celestia stood on all four hooves now. She jerked and fought, but the patches and vines grew all over her body. She blazed with flames, but with nothing on her, they did not consume her fur or skin. I noticed the patches looked less colored, more glassy and transparent.
She was winning!
She was...
She...
Celestia turned smoothly, then jerked a rear hoof like a marionette with a broken string. Then that same hoof placed itself calmly on the floor. The puppeteer had fixed it.
Shuddering, getting back on to my hooves, I remembered cutie marks. They were magic substantial enough to color skin and fur, and to move with the muscles underneath. Yet, insubstantial in that they were an organ that was little more than an aura, without substance, when removed from the body.
Like a cutie mark, the bark and network of vines grown over her by the curse now absorbed into her skin.
Celestia's head turned and craned down to look at the runt. The curse had lost interest in me, having finished its bombardment. Twilight tugged her rear leg, resisting Shining Armor's grip even as he sat, tensing to tackle her.
Suddenly nose to nose with a nightmare, Twilight's eyes widened. The ruddy aura around her horn flicked to life as she asked the cursed flaming alicorn, "Why didn't you raise the sun?"
Celestia spat a word out through the blur, one that could have nothing to do with the curse. It was...
"Run!"
Celestia's aura intensified. Fire whooshed.
Twilight was about to die.
I answered as loudly as I could, baiting the alicorn. "Celestia was leaving me another clue about the curse. Thanks to me, she had a hard night last night and had an excuse to neglect her duties. She wants me alongside to fight it when the curse fully triggers the day of the Summer Sun Celebration. Isn't that right, regicide!?"
Celestia found enough control that she half reared and pedaled her legs. Twilight jumped back, kicking her brother's nose doing so.
The alicorn thrashed the floorboard once, twice, thrice—Celestia fighting her curse and failing—until she faced me, waving her head around. Fire swirled around her now like a swarm of bees, not keeping up with her movements as it waved about on updrafts and breezes. My stomach sunk with the realization that the curse had mastered the magic for raising the sun.
In hopes Twilight would understand, and everypony would hear, I added, "The curse is now going to kill everypony who knows."
I backed up. Shield or Mirror Shield? Teleport would have been better but, because of injuries and exhaustion, I wasn't there. I pushed my flank into a wall bashed open by a peytral. I jerked, stabbed by splinters. I tasted salty blood, which flowed across my mouth and dripped from my chin.
My tongue found a tooth that flapped like a hinge.
A feathered meteor struck me, the same instant the alicorn attacked.
The air knocked from my lungs, I felt heat and saw blinding flames whoosh to either side of me. Flung further into the pavilion, in a tangle of legs and wings, we bounced first off the wall and then slid away.
Fire followed us. It wasn't me who was on fire.
I thrust down my front left hoof. Something cracked. I saw stars as I threw us into a roll and kept us rolling. Flames puffed under us a few times until we stopped. The servant's pantry had tablecloths. I flung one over Streak, and hoofed out the rest the flames, then dragged us back out of her direct line of sight.
I threw aside the scorched white linen and found an even more scorched blue pegasus. All the hair on her flank was burnt off. A slurry of soot mixed with blood painted her haphazardly to her wings. Her tail was naked and raw.
I impulsively hugged her, then whimpered: My left leg. Broken. Not to mention new bruises from hitting a wall and the floor. "Getting your tail burnt off is a bad habit!"
"Stupid me," she moaned.
With lots of hope and nothing else, I dragged us to our hooves, both of us bloody. Her rear was raw and she shook as she stood, but stood nevertheless, determination fighting the pain writ across her face. I pressed my broken leg to my chest. "Can you fly?"
She flapped her wings once experimentally as I got my bearings. With Twilight's motor mouth, it was only seconds until the curse noticed her. As she nodded, I pointed at the opposite side of the pavilion and said, "Get back in the sky. Tell us what she's doing."
Citron yelled, "She's coming your way!" He punctuated that with a strobe of amber light, and the whoosh-bang of a Force bolt striking wood.
Smoking fragments flew and rattled across the floor. Streak dodged into the shadow of the bright light and thrown debris. Momentarily pinned in that spot, she poked out her camera with her wings, clicked the shutter twice, then took her queue to wobble and flutter into the air.
That would be a picture I'd want to see.
I leapt into motion along a parallel interior hall of the pavilion. However, between my nose, my left foreleg, my withers, tightening bruises, and the pull in my right rear flank, I reeled around and hit a cabinet; tea cups clattered and broke.
I scrambled away, should the alicorn attack by sound alone.
"Going to save Twilight," I said lowly, not entirely sure I'd be in time.
Another fire roared to life.
Of course it did. Citron loved to see things burn. The pavilion was wood.
I heard another whoosh-bang as he took another shot, which spurred me to race into the adjacent exterior room. I now understood the building was laid-out as six north and six south pavilions with service areas and hallways in between. I'd reached the last room at the northeast. I moved rapidly toward the garden, fearing Citron would be her next target, if he wasn't dodging her already!
Approaching the banister, I saw flames illuminate the lawns and shrubbery from my left. The blazes were Citron's. Though Celestia on Ponyville Way had used her ability to read magic flows by waving her horn, I doubted with her internal struggle the curse could make her do that. I crawled to avoid smokey air near the ceiling while trying not to cough. I quickly studied the lawn, rock border garden path, the redwood banisters, the trees to my right and tried to piece them into a mental model together with the green tile roof I'd noticed when entering the pavilion complex.
I cast, applying alicorn simplification to the equations. A rainbow of spinning numbers across my sight convinced me I had the spell up, but as I descended the steps to the lawn, I nonetheless prepared to jump aside. "I'm invisible. Going to try pulling Twilight away."
The fence-like walls around the exterior had a single strengthening beam between posts. Shining Armor pushed himself over the edge as he dragged his sister. He landed with a hard crunch on gravel, tail spinning. She slipped after. The runt hit her horn on the beam, windmilling her legs, and landed on top, causing a grunt as she knocked the air out of his lungs.
Beyond, Celestia faced outside. The prismatic bark patches had virtually disappeared into her white fur, but flames circled and pulsed around her body. I saw pink areas coloring her chest; red seeped from a long sinuous burn where the peytral had rested against her. She ranged on Citron, who taunted her. She lowered her head and a gout of fire blossomed out, but he dodged behind a willow tree.
Fire was neither solid nor solely light. Would either Shield I cast work?
I trotted on three legs, getting closer. What could I do to take attention off of Citron so he could find a safer position?
I heard the hiss of the feathers from a pony in a stoop. A hoof-sized border stone arced down. It missed Celestia's right shoulder and hit the floor. It didn't bounce, but slid under her and bashed into her left rear hoof. That hit her golden horseshoe, none of which she'd flung off. It rang like the bell that announced the end of a prize fight. Her leg shot from under her. She spun clockwise and sat hard enough that she yelled out.
"Again!" I yelled a Streak, "But expect she'll be looking."
"I'll try."
Citron dashed across the yard for the cover of a massive earth pony statue. Celestia looked momentarily stunned. As I made it to the siblings, nearly tumbling over on them, I clearly heard Celestia force out more words.
This was worse. "Save me!"
Great, I thought, another impossible task.
Twilight raised a shield, almost a full half-dome. Thick like her brother's. Hopefully sturdy, because Celestia fired at them. The intervening banister took the brunt. Flaming flinders flew over my head as I ducked. Shining Armor flinched, knocking into Twilight. Her shield wobbled as the wood bounced off, but it held.
I touched Shining Armor. I said, "Don't look. It's Starlight. Can you move back?"
"I'm trying," he said, "But I'm barely keeping from throwing up."
A symptom of concussion. I glanced at the red in the sky. "Can you drop the Shield?"
"My magic is stunned."
I groaned. Maybe I could levitate them away? With Twilight shielding? Another gout of fire shot at us. Her shield flung it to the eaves, which burst into flame.
It crazed, however, as if hit by a hammer.
Scratch that plan.
Were I to shoot her with Force at point-blank range, could I knock Celestia down? Would it be worth becoming visible that close? Would Teleport be of anything but a temporary reprieve if we were trapped within the shooting gallery of Shining Armor's dome? She'd hunt us down one by one.
Another stone hurdled from the sky, but Celestia jumped aside unaffected by the loud bang, and dashed to the edge of the stairs, craning her neck horn alight but never getting the shot.
"She's figured out your trick, Streak."
Citron shot at the steps. She fluttered up instead of retreating toward the fire. Not far. The curse hadn't yet wrested control of her wings and she crashed on to the lawn, wings splayed. It looked embarrassing, but not at all disabling.
No matter what I did, chances were one of us would get blasted in the next minute. Were we to scatter, what could we do? Hide—would the curse subside as it had in the library? Wait for Twilight to get so angry that she fought her mentor of a dozen years? Sunset had explained that when Twilight opened a chasm all the way to Tartarus, Celestia quickly brought her magic storm under control.
We were so dead.
Last night, I had thought I had seen death, too. Then I'd worked cutie mark magic.
I looked at Shining Armor's flank. The blue shield and stars cutie mark curved along the skin and bulging muscle, seamlessly replacing skin and fur coloration. I sensed unyielding strength against any force. Running Mead's had radiated conceit and bacchanal contentment as his talent made ponies drunk and suggestive, like the spilt beer in the mug of mead depicted by his obscene mark. Totally different ponies.
"Keep Twilight quiet," I ordered the stallion. "Don't move. Don't get noticed. Citron, Streak, don't fire at Celestia. You might hit me."
I levered myself up and walked where the alicorn furled her wings. She shook her head and levered herself up from the charred grass with her front then back legs.
I sensed energies rising from the ground as she stepped away. Was that the strength she used to fling celestial bodies around the crystal spheres? The huge glyph of the sun, with the big round yellow globe and twisted triangle prominences, was indeed the size of my head.
She didn't act as if she saw me or sensed me. She looked for her last antagonist, side stepping toward me to see around the statue.
Running Mead had been looking away when I chose to attack. I'd been prone on a damp cobble street outside the Hooflyn Delicatessen. I hoped not to be seen by the constable Running Mead had taken over with his mind control magic. I knew then that when I did what I had to, I'd be noticed.
No different now.
I said through the gum, "I'm going to disrupt her cutie mark. When I do that, she'll go down. Be ready. Get Twilight's help. I will be occupied when it happens and I don't know if it will last."
Yeah. It wouldn't.
Not long.
I had no bottles!
I sensed the magical organ like a halo around a spark as I waved my horn. I sensed the active connection to the earth, the streaming of the energies, and a tangled web of something else I could not define. Still, I clearly understood where the mark nestled just forward of her hip and below her tail bone.
I reached out my magic, like adjusting my body position before attempting to throw an opponent. Whilst what I did was my cutie mark talent, it disrupted Don't Look Don't See Don't Hear completely. Burning magic digits flung out chaotically, like I'd struck an ice sculpture with a hammer. I froze, hoping that my lack of movement might award me an instant more of not being noticed.
I gasped and dashed my magic into her flesh. Our only chance was to disrupt the abomination quickly; I thrust forward feeling the Barthemule transforms balancing and locking, letting me grasp for the invasive roots of the magical organ. I flooded in splendors of magic. My blue-green aura lit up Celestia's side even as I sensed the ebb and flow of blood through her hindquarters, saw the marble essence of her bones, and reached through rubbery shoals of tissue and organs.
I grabbed something as tangible as it was virtual. With desperation anchored in fear that I would die momentarily should I fail, I pulled for all I was worth.
Celestia whinnied and reared, and searing heat curled the fur on my face, chest, and forelegs. I was a pony length off of her right side. She tried to wheel around, but her muscles all spasmed at the same time. Either it was my attack, or her normal mind taking the opportunity to attack the curse.
I pulled and pulled, and the mark budged. Again, it acted like pulled taffy. It lengthened elastically as it levered away, growing harder and harder to pull. I instinctively backed up, as if dragging a log with a rope clamped in my jaws.
Unexpectedly, that helped!
The alicorn fought the attack, jerking and teetering, her whinnies and screams piercing the air.
Citron's magic reached out for Celestia's saddle area, his amber aura evident. Streak swooped in. Together he pulled and she kicked. I heard a thud.
The alicorn tumbled over away from me.
The mark jerked free!
Her flames instantly extinguished, snapping off. The difference felt like a splash of ice water.
The alicorn thrashed and kicked on the lawn where she landed with a thump. She screamed once in pain, then cried, "Save me! Tie me up. The curse, the curse!"
Meanwhile, exhausted, I landed on my bruised and slashed flank with a three-dimensional globe of a sun blazing in front of me.
Floating.
Rotating.
Prominences rising, falling, and splashing like lava in the caldera of a volcano.
The disembodied cutie mark wriggled and flexed and surged as it fought my magic grip—like a fish out of water trying to slap the fisher-pegasus with its tail so it could jump back in.
I must have struggled with it for the better part of a minute because Streak cautiously approached, shaking so hard she shuddered. She nevertheless raised her camera at the most astounding sight she had ever seen.
I thought: If I only had a bottle!
Then I thought: What if I put the cutie mark into somepony else?
Wobbly on three legs, I limped the few pony lengths to Shining Armor. Twilight looked up from her brother.
She dropped her Shield, and her red half-dome flickered out. Then the mouth of the otherwise oblivious archmage-in-training opened in horror. She backed away, the whites of her eyes showing, forgetting both Celestia and her brother.
"What have you done!" she screamed.
I plunged the mark into Shining Armor's haunch. It sunk in, but when I let off on the pressure, it surfaced like a rubber ducky in a tub.
Riiight...
Nopony had two cutie marks!
Could I reach in and grab his?
I dashed my magic in at the same time as I shoved Celestia's mark. The reaction surprised me: Like trying to push a second large bread into a too small basket, the original "bread" popped out.
Shining Armor shouted something obscene he probably didn't want his sister to hear and fainted. I now held an ethereal three-dimensional blue shield with three stars orbiting it like moths around a candle.
It struggled and tugged, of course, but not back toward the stallion! No, it pulled behind me. Toward the only cutie mark void.
I blinked and let go.
The mark streaked and plunged into Celestia's thigh. She gave a startled whinny, as if hit by lightning, and bucked herself upright, yelling, "My Stars!"
Citron, who'd been a pony length from tackling her, jumped back, stumbled, and landed on his rump.
Blinking, shaking her head, Celestia said, "Can it be? My sister Luna will return on the morning of the 1000th Summer Sun Celebration!"
Her eyes went as wide as dinner plates. She hurriedly shouted, "The stars will aid her escape. She'll bring a night that'll last a thousand years! You heard me?"
I nodded.
The alicorn sat blinking, mouth gaping, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Starlight! Oh, my stars! You've broken the curse!"
I stared at her flank. We all did, and Streak took another picture. The innocuous shield and stars cutie mark looked ridiculously small. My skin went cold. It had nothing to do with blood loss, though I wiped the blood still dripping from my muzzle.
I shook my head. "We've won the battle and lost the war, Princess. I've doomed Equestria to eternal night."
The alicorn got up, stepped over, and sat beside me. Warm wings enfolded me. "You've broken only the part of the curse restraining me. This is true. My sister will return, but now I'll have you to help me." Twilight barged in between us and hugged her mentor. I pulled out of the embarrassing feathered embrace as she added, "I'll have all my students. We can prepare. We can plan."
"But we won't be alive!" I exclaimed, looking into her violet eyes.
We blinked at each other, then it sunk in and I smiled. "I've only switched your cutie marks! Is there any reason why I can't switch them back?"
Shining Armor said ominously, "You are right, Starlight. You won't be alive."