“Ow!” Twilight Sparkle clutched her head in pain, a sudden headache spiking through her skull. The book she was carrying fell, just barely grabbed by Spike before hitting the floor.
“Whoa! What’s the matter, Twilight?” Spike asked her in concern.
“I… I don’t know. I just got a headache all of a sudden, it came out of nowhere,” she said. There was a strange feeling to it as well, like something was wrong. A terrible feeling of foreboding and trepidation was running through her but she didn’t know why. It almost felt like… that very moment when she realized Nightmare Moon had returned.
Twilight Sparkle bit her lip, unsure of what was going on. She led Spike to the Cutie Map room to see if anything was happening.
Frost gathered on the glass of every window inside Hoofica Castle. In the Queen’s personal chamber, Red Wing suddenly shivered and clutched his body, letting out a shuddering breath and seeing the cold vapor in the air. The Queen and Brass Hoof did the same, and even the unconscious Star Petal shivered and tried curling up as well.
“D-Did it just get colder in here all of a sudden?” Brass Hoof asked.
“Yeah...” Red Wing nodded and walked back over to open up the door leading out of the room. The rest of the resistance still there were shivering as well, also confused. “What is this?”
“Oh, Wish no...” Rainbow Dash looked on in despair as the black liquid swallowed up the filly in an instant. The entire contents of the sphere poured out and churned around its vessel, drowning and coalescing around her. Waves and waves of it rippled about, spiraling, twisting, contorting, growing, until it took on a shape.
A horse rose up out of a black whirpool in the middle of the lab. A black swamp from which no light could escape. Despite seeing how much liquid despair was in the sphere just a moment ago, Rainbow Dash somehow intrinsically knew that the pool of liquid the Avatar was rising from was impossibly, infinitely deep. The form of the Avatar was a large pitch black horse that grew until its entire upper body was coming out of the bubbling pool of despair. Its skin was liquid like oil, eyeholes without eyes, larger than even any alicorn. At its midsection, where it met the pool of despair that it was rising from, its skin was stretched taut like something trying to break through a sheet of plastic wrap. It stopped with only half of a horse being formed, the bottom half staying in the dark swamp around it that covered the floor, almost stretching far enough to reach the other ponies in the lab.
When the Avatar opened its mouth, great strands of black liquid stretched with it until they snapped and the abomination could fully open its maw.
“OOOUUUAAAHHHHHH!” An unnatural wail emerged from within, causing both Rainbow Dash and Dreamweaver to wince and cover their ears.
Icicles formed on the ceiling and a deathly cold washed over the ponies. The Avatar of Despair raised its large hooves and arched back as it wailed, like a horse rearing up on its hind legs.
“You feel different,” Heartless said as she looked up at the Avatar. She tilted her head back and forth as if trying to figure out just what to make of this new monster.
“Wish! Wish, please answer me!” Rainbow Dash yelled at the dark abomination. She shivered as the Avatar continued its rearing pose for now.
“I’m afraid that isn’t going to do you any good. It’s already over,” Dreamweaver smirked at her.
“Shut up, you monster!” Rainbow yelled at him as well.
Dreamweaver ignored her insult like water off a duck’s back, merely looking on at The Avatar of Despair he had created with pride and joy on his face. “Ah… this is truly wonderful.”
The Avatar finally stopped its wailing and rearing movement, lowering its hooves and head and gazing around the lab with its empty eyes. It passed over Heartless. It passed over Rainbow Dash. And its face came to a rest on Dreamweaver.
“Father.”
Dreamweaver smiled. “That’s right, Avatar. Spread your despair to the rest of the castle, to the rest of Hoofica, and then to the entire world. Fulfill your purpose for me!”
The Avatar of Despair seemed to stare at him for a moment longer before briefly turning its attention to Rainbow Dash and then back to Dreamweaver. Its great head lowered and the bubbling pit of despair it rested in started to churn. “You as well.”
Before Dreamweaver could say anything, a tendril of black slime shot from the Avatar’s body. It knocked Rainbow Dash aside and grabbed Dreamweaver, crashing him through the window right behind the two of them. Rainbow Dash fell to the ground with a grunt and looked up to see Dreamweaver being held in the sky by the tendril, cuts and pieces of glass all over him.
“A-Avatar… w-what are you doing?” He asked it, horrid fear and confusion evident on his face.
The black goo of the tendril started to spread over his body, other ropes of it grasping around his limbs, his neck, his head, and his horn.
“Father. If you wish to spread despair across the world. You must know what true despair feels like as well.”
A rending series of crunches and snaps filled the air and Rainbow Dash had to look away, the vaguest silhouette of a mutilated body burned into her retinas. She heard something falling and looked to see the Avatar’s black tendril receding back into its body.
“No… Wish… this isn’t you. That’s not what you wanted,” Rainbow Dash said to her, shaking her head as she stood up. “Please, please fight it. You can’t do this, Wish!”
“There is no Wish anymore, Rainbow Dash.” The Avatar shook its large head at her. It looked up at the icicle covered ceiling, as frosty wind now escaped out into the sky around the castle. “Now… fall.”
A magical shockwave came from the Avatar that briefly warped space and buffeted both Rainbow Dash and Heartless. Rainbow felt her teeth rattle around but it was only a mere symptom of what had just been done. The icicles on the ceiling broke and shattered while cracks spread through the floor, up and down the walls, and across the ceiling. The tables and shelves inside the lab shook and fell over as a tremor went down the tower and throughout the entire rest of the castle. Everything was shaking slightly and the cracks in the stone continued to grow as Rainbow Dash looked on in horror.
The entire castle shook as if an earthquake had just happened, but to most of the ponies inside it there was no warning or explanation for what was going on. Servants, maids, straggling guards and resistance fighters, all looked around as cracks appeared in the walls. Windows broke, chandeliers fell, paintings dropped from the walls, dust fell from the ceiling as tiles broke away and shattered. Every tower, every wing of the castle, it was happening everywhere.
Dotty yelped in fright as the grand chandelier in Wish’s boudoir crashed to the floor, almost on top of her. The polished stone floor was shaking and practically splitting apart right underneath her and some of the walls were already beginning to crumble. Not seeing any other option, she tossed off her maid uniform and spread her wings, flying through the window to safety.
It only gave her a few cuts and bruises when she broke through the glass—small compared to being crushed.
Down in the royal wing of the castle, Red Wing and the ponies with him looked up at the high ceiling of the atrium outside the Queen’s chambers. Cracks were spitting all across it. Along with the walls and the floor all around them.
“No...” Red Wing said as he saw what was happening.
“What is going on?! An earthquake?” The Queen yelled from back inside.
“S-Sir, what’s happening?” One of his subordinates asked.
Red Wing gulped, a frightened sweat starting to pour down his face. Brass Hoof now came out with the Queen as well, and Star Petal had gotten back up.
“Captain?” Brass Hoof raised an eyebrow at him.
“Everypony… stay calm, but listen to me. We need to round up and evacuate everypony from the castle. Hoofica Castle… is going to collapse,” he told them.
“That’s impossible! There’s no way this can be happening!” The Queen screamed at him. A lot of the other ponies here seemed to be in disbelief as well.
Red Wing ignored her but affixed his strong gaze to his fellow resistance ponies. “We need to act fast, there’s no telling when it will all fall to pieces but this shaking and the cracks throughout the walls… it’s definitely happening. Go throughout the entire castle, and quickly! Get the servants, the guards, even the Inquisitors, we need to get them all out of this castle right now!”
“Yes, sir!” His ponies saluted and ran back towards the throne room even as pebble and bits of stone from the ceiling started falling around them.
“C-Captain...” Brass Hoof said as she came up to him. “What about Dreamweaver?”
He clenched his jaw and ground his teeth. “Unfortunately it seems we’ll have to deal with everything else later. Saving the ponies in here and getting them all to safety takes priority now. I’ll get the King.”
“A strong lifeforce. Overflowing, just like yours, Rainbow Dash.” Heartless said as she blinked at The Avatar of Despair. “But different. Cold. And… empty somehow at the same time.”
The Avatar turned its attention to Heartless for the first time as the tower threatened to collapse like a periscope with all of them in it. Rainbow Dash watched as a bubbling appendage stretched from the bottom of the Avatar, emerging from the swamp and lifting up, rising over Heartless. A massive six-pronged claw formed from the appendage while black slime dripped from it. The Avatar brought it to a rest over Heartless’s head and shadowed her with it.
“Hm?” Heartless continued to smile.
The claw slammed down onto the pink pony, covering and swallowing her completely before dragging her back to the bottomless swamp—the bottomless pit of despair—that existed under and inside the Avatar.
Rainbow Dash couldn’t even feel happy or relieved about that for the moment though. There was still far too much to worry about.
After doing whatever that was to Heartless, the Avatar turned its grand head back to Rainbow Dash. “Rainbow Dash...”
“Wish, please, you have to stop this.” Rainbow Dash begged.
“I told you. Wish is dead, gone, there is only despair now and what lies beyond it. Come and let me show you. Become one with me. Everything. Everypony. Every creature. Will become one with despair,” The Avatar said and multiple tendrils slowly slithered out from its body.
Rainbow Dash shook her head and stalwartly stood her ground. “No, Wish. I’m not letting that happen. And I’m going to save you.”
“There is nothing to save! Nothing is left. Nothing matters anymore. Join despair, Rainbow Dash. Join me now,” the Avatar’s various tendrils shot towards Rainbow Dash and she had to fly through the limited space in the lab to avoid them.
Luckily for her, the tendrils weren’t especially fast or prehensile. But at the same time, she wasn’t feeling too good either. Everything she had been through was bearing down on her and threatening to crush her under months of trauma and malnourishment. A black tendril coming at her was dove under and then she spiraled between two more, flying circles around the Avatar.
“I know that’s not true, Wish! You just can’t give up! Listen to me! Listen to my voice and don’t give up hope,” Rainbow Dash tried to help her.
The Avatar sent a pair of grasping tendrils that tried to worm their way around Rainbow Dash and pull her in but the pegasus still flew away from them fast enough. At the same time the castle continued to shake and the Avatar paused in its attempts to swallow up Rainbow.
“Why do you continue this? Everything is already over. The pony you’re trying to save is gone, she can’t hear you anymore.”
Despite the situation, Rainbow Dash grinned. “You’re a bad liar, kid. You still are. If you want to take in everypony like that… then why didn’t you take in Dreamweaver the same as Heartless?”
“…I didn’t want him.”
“That’s right,” Rainbow Dash nodded. “I know it hurts. I know it must hurt in a way I can’t even comprehend. But I know you don’t really want to do any of this. I know you’re just lashing out, and things feel hopeless, but please, you have to hold on. I know you don’t really want to spread despair like this, you don’t want to hurt others but you’ve been changed by all that horrible stuff. But if you just keep fighting and believe in me I know I can save you and make this all right.”
A stone fell from the ceiling and crashed down to the floor between them.
“It can’t go back. I don’t want to go back. You don’t need to die here pointlessly, Rainbow Dash.” The Avatar said. “The castle is collapsing… do you want to be crushed with it? If you join me in despair then at least we can be together. That is what I desire. Everypony will drown, but you will still be there with me. You are the only one who ever cared. They never loved me. Nopony ever loved me. But if you really care so much about me, then join me, and we can be together forever in eternal, unyielding, despair.”
“No. I promised you, Wish. I promised to help you. I want to see a real smile on your face. I-I want to see you happy. And that’s never going to happen this way,” Rainbow Dash felt a mild wooziness overtake her and she almost drifted out of the air before catching herself. “S-So whether you like it or not—I’m saving you.”
“It doesn’t matter. Give up,” the Avatar said and sent its tendrils out at her once more.
The ends of some of them blossomed into the forms of venus flytraps, grasping claws, hands, nets, and anything else one could think of that could grab a pony and pull them in. All of them were going for the blue pegasus that the Avatar so desperately wished to swallow up and make part of it.
“Really have to make this difficult, huh?” Rainbow muttered as she dipped and darted between them.
It was an unceasing assault though and she was being overwhelmed by sheer numbers and her own failing body. The Avatar had no sense of combat, no strategy, it just waved its tendrils about and shot them at Rainbow Dash like an uncoordinated child trying to swat a fly out of the air. Unfortunately it was working. There was no room for maneuverability and Rainbow simply couldn’t go at her usual speed right now. A snapping claw nearly clamped down on her head while a hand tried to grab her tail, Rainbow had to twist her body like jelly to avoid them both at the same time and then kick herself off another tendril that was swinging about in her direction.
“Wish!” Rainbow Dash yelled as she kept on dodging and flitting about. “You need to stop! Let me get you out of there instead of you trying to pull me in. Come on, Wish! You’re just a scared little filly who didn’t deserve any of this, let me help you!”
“There’s no reason. Why go back to a world where nopony loves me? Where nopony ever loved me?”
“That isn’t true! Your mother loved you!”
“She died rather than be with me.”
“She was scared and in pain, Wish! You heard what your father said, what he did to her! She wasn’t thinking clearly!”
“She wasn’t thinking about me—Wish. That pony is dead now and never coming back. I’ll make the whole world feel the same despair.”
Rainbow Dash grit her teeth. “She needed help too but nopony was there for her. She didn’t hate you! Now I’m here, right now, to help you. So let me!”
“No.”
A black tendril snaked its way around Rainbow Dash’s hoof and pulled her to the ground, slamming her into the broken stone floor.
“Gah!” Rainbow Dash coughed in pain.
“Come, Rainbow Dash.”
The tendril pulled her towards the bubbling pool at the bottom of The Avatar of Despair and despite how Rainbow Dash fought to pull herself free and drag her hooves along the floor to stop it, she could no nothing. Right as she reached the pit of despair itself, she looked up at the great head peering down at her. She tried to mouth something to Wish but couldn’t in time. Cold numbness crawled up her body as the black despair enveloped her. Swallowed her. Absorbed her.
Rainbow Dash was taken inside The Avatar of Despair. And she fell.