The wolf-creature pounded towards the two fillies like a furry freight train: its jaws agape with strings of saliva, claws ripping at the dusty street. It looked unstoppable, but Luminous braced herself to accept the charge on her bladed helmet, which glowed brighter and brighter as the spell began to catch. Then a shadow flickered over her and the wolf abruptly found its direction changed by a red blur that hit it hard enough to roll it out the other end of the alley.
Surprised, Luminous released the spell with a yelp, and the bolt traveled over the tumbling mass of red and brown fur to hit another passing wolf-creature, which promptly lit on fire. Luminous and Applebloom ran out away from whatever had hit the wolf-creature and into the middle of town, which was in chaos.
Dammit the inn-keeper fought beside the town guards, along with the mayor: a golden-coated earth pony stallion with a brown mane and eyes of bright green. The Diamond Dog was fighting with tooth and nail almost as effectively as the wolf-creatures were, while the guards did their best to coordinate an orderly defense of the town, led by the mayor, who continued to issue orders in a clear, firm voice even as he helped fight.
Luminous winced as a guard took a hard hit from a wolf-creature and skidded towards them. The wolf-creature ran forward to follow up, only to meet Luminous' blinding spell coming the other way. It screamed and went down as a pegasus tackled it at full speed, and its scream mingled with Applebloom's and Luminous' as they were abruptly picked up in a green light and flung back towards the defenders. “More stragglers, Long Hoof!” a pale green unicorn called as gaining the attention of the mayor. The golden earth pony grunted in acknowledgement as he bucked a wolf-creature hard enough in the face to scatter teeth.
Applebloom tried to say something but was overruled by the loud voice of the mayor, “Get them to the station!” He kicked the stricken wolf-creature again to spin it to the ground, while the unicorn nodded and started to move towards the fillies, looking concerned.
Luminous braced herself to argue with the unicorn when Applebloom bit her tail and hauled back. Surprised, Luminous fell backwards as the earth pony filly jumped forward to stand between her and the unicorn, her monocle flashing in the sunlight on her face. “You stay away from her, bug!” Applebloom declared loudly, while the unicorn's expression darkened. Luminous' eyes widened with realization as the 'unicorn' tried to maintain a concerned look.
“Just come back here,” he said through gritted teeth, “And we'll get you to safety, alright? You can't-” He broke off with a very un-ponylike scream as Luminous' flare spell blew up in his face. Both fillies ran away full-tilt while he was clearing his vision. They dodged between the dead and those still fighting, their purchases trailing behind them.
Luminous blasted a small but lethal hole through a wolf-creature that tried to tackle Applebloom, who led her towards a tiny space between two buildings. It was a tiny gap, just barely big enough for them, and would certainly have deterred all but the most determined of attackers. It was unfortunate, therefore, that Luminous was still wearing her saddlebags.
Applebloom flew through the gap with the precision that comes from survival instinct. Luminous tried the same thing and had the breath knocked out of her as her saddlebags hit the buildings on either side, spraying gear and edibles everywhere. Luminous's crystal-clad hooves chimed angrily as she scrabbled at the ground to try and push herself through, but the saddlebags refused to give.
“I'm stuck!” Luminous shouted shrilly to Applebloom, who turned sharply and ran towards her friend. She grabbed her friend's hooves and hauled on them, but all it succeeded in doing was shoving the saddlebags down Luminous's armored body where they hooked on her rear legs.
“Y'gotta drop the bags!” Applebloom shouted to her over the din of battle, which was growing ominously closer. “Ain't no way through here with em!”
Luminous shook her head fiercely, “We've gotta get to Twilight! Who knows how far away she is! We need all this!” Luminous tried to push through again, while Applebloom hauled on her stubborn friend, until a massive explosion made her fall back on her rump, the shock of the sudden release sent Luminous back into the street on her back.
“The train!” somepony cried as a great howling went up. Water rained down around Luminous, followed by bits of shrapnel. She winced as small shards of metal and bolts rattled off her armor, and rolled away from what seemed to be a chair from the train, the saddlebags around her legs clanking discordantly. She looked up as a shadow grew over her and her eyes widened. What looked to be a smokestack came flying through the air, aimed straight for Luminous. She tried to run, but her legs were tangled in the straps of her saddlebags. In desperation, Luminous gathered all the strength she could muster and cast the shield spell she'd been taught between her and the falling metal.
Pain, indescribable pain lanced through her horn and head as the shield flashed purple, then everything went dark.
Luminous fell through darkness. She felt the terrible sensation of falling without any context of where she was or where she was falling to. Terror gripped her, and she struggled to right herself, to find something to push against or grab to right herself or arrest her fall. She thrashed in the darkness until panic drove the breath from her lungs, her heart racing, until her fear began to be supplanted. In its place, Luminous began to feel a sort of terrible longing that grew into a deep pain of the soul: a loneliness that transcended mere isolation.
Luminous curled up in agony, filled with despair. She could think of nothing but all the ponies she could never see again, all the things she would never do. She felt like the joy was being sucked from her, filling her with anger and sadness. She had failed Applebloom, who was likely dead she felt, and she knew Twilight would never want to see her again.
The sharp tones of Luminous's parents' voices echoed through her reality, “if only she'd hit the ground...” Their voices blended with her own, and Luminous felt them justified, even as each syllable punctured her spirit with fresh pain. She felt her fury at their abandonment, and heard the screams of the bullies she had blinded before. She found herself filled with fresh anger at their mocking words, an anger that drove heated spikes through her and seemed to draw something vital out of her.
The pain and emotional tempest deepened and darkened until a bizarre scent filtered through to her senses: the peculiarly lavender-like scent of fox. She remembered it from a visit to Fluttershy's cottage, when she'd been tending one of the creatures, and the memory sparked a violet flame in her mind. The darkness began to burn, and with it the feelings of loneliness, anger and despair were consumed. Luminous willed herself towards the fire, which crackled and radiated a heat that should have frightened her. Instead she flew towards it, the darkness of her mind defined by the distant, strange light.
As she arrowed towards the fire, she felt a million sensations at once: hugging, laughter, the scent of snow, followed closely by the overwhelming scent of burning paper. A green core began to open in the violet flame, like a window in the fire. Luminous fell through the conflagration, into consciousness. The familiar pressure filled her mind once more in a way that was indescribably comforting, until her full consciousness returned and she found herself surrounded in an underground darkness, with her lungs burning and the stench of death and damp slamming into her nostrils.
Luminous, rather appropriately, threw up.
Luminous hacked and coughed up some horrible mucus-y substance. The vile reek of her own vomit mixed with those smells that were already filling the chamber, gagging her further until she forced her rebellious stomach to calm down by cataloguing her situation. She noted she could no longer feel her armor on herself, or her saddlebags. By the way her coughs weren't echoing, this was probably a rather small chamber. She felt bruises on her legs that suggested she'd dropped some distance, but nothing felt broken. Her coat and mane felt matted and sticky, and whatever it was that was soaking her smelled very strongly of whatever it was she had hacked out of her lungs.
Now that she could breathe, she could feel the closed-in heaviness of the air, which still tasted like bile and foul substances. It was hot and humid, and her ears picked up a muted buzzing not unlike the sound of a busy nest of hornets. As she lay on the floor, she also realized rather belatedly that she was laying in whatever fluid she had coughed up, and it was soaking into her fur, along with her own sick.
Luminous, fortified by systematically taking in whatever she could of her foul-smelling environs, and well aware that she was laying in a pool of unspeakable substances, steeled herself and conjured light. She immediately muffled a scream as the luminescence she called lit the snarling face of an insectoid creature not a few inches from her nose where she lay on the floor. After a moment, reason reasserted itself and pointed out that the creature was very much dead, given that the head she was looking at had apparently belonged once to a body that lay to the side of her. The chitinous carapace had been parted cleanly at the neck, and the stench of the body was what had gagged her initially.
The room, she saw as she stood painfully, was no more than two ponylengths wide and octagonal in shape. The majority of the room was filled with a dripping split cocoon that was hanging from the ceiling. This, Luminous felt, explained the bruises on her legs, but there was no sign of what had killed the creature with her or set her free. She examined the tiny room for some sort of exit, which turned out to be on the ceiling. Given the fact that the creature in with her had wings, it wasn't entirely unexpected, but it did complicate matters.
She didn't have anywhere near enough strength to levitate herself, like she'd seen Twilight do very occasionally, and the cocoon looked far too slick to climb up. The stench of the room kept distracting her and threatening to make her add to it again, but she stubbornly kept looking for an avenue of escape. She tapped lightly on the walls, which were far too thick from the sound of it, on the floor, which seemed to be solid rock, and even tried to tug down the cocoon for use as a sort of stair, but it was glued too firmly to the ceiling.
As she tugged on it, a drop of the foul-smelling goop from inside it dripped down, and, paranoid of a cave in, Luminous's immediate shield spell bounced it up, out the hole in the ceiling. The filly stared up at the hole, thinking, then licked her lips and focused, then jumped up and conjured a modified shield under herself.
The shield immediately reversed her momentum and amplified it as she hit it, and propelled her upwards with a bright flash and a slight searing of her hooves, which stung as she rocketed up towards the hole. She managed to scrabble and catch the edge of the octagonal hole in the ceiling. She hung there for a little bit, back legs dangling as she hauled at the slick stone, until she caught onto something that gave her desperate hooves purchase. She pulled with all the might in her slight frame and the strength given by years of being Twilight's squire.
When she had pulled herself up and resumed the light spell she had unconsciously suspended to focus on her unorthodox trampoline spell, she found herself in the middle of dozens of more creatures, and glowing like a flashlight. Except these creatures were still breathing, and most definitely still had their heads. Horrified, Luminous realized she had pulled herself up with the perforated leg of one of the creatures. No less than seven others were arrayed about the room, their faces all pointed towards her. She looked around, expecting a buzzing attack, only to be greeted with a faint snore. For some reason, all the creatures were asleep, and had apparently done so quite suddenly if the one that was face-planted against the wall with its wings spread was any indication.
Luminous looked around, and was mildly surprised to find that the room she was in was furnished. Chairs ran around the vertical walls of the octagonal floor, there was a rug of sorts that had been pulled away to allow access to the chamber she'd catapulted out of, and on the ceiling some sort of dim purple light emanated from what seemed to be a light fixture. It was enough to see by, barely, and it cast strange shadows while at the same time it made Luminous' fur seem to glow. She was by far the brightest thing in the room, which was even sparsely decorated with painted neon designs on the walls.
Luminous attempted to look for an exit, and found that there were four octagonal doors made of some sort of stone and cleverly joined to the wall so as to show no seam. A loud buzzing came from behind one, so she checked the others first. She found a pair of bedrooms, judging by the way large cushions with strange, membrane-like curtains were in abundance, and what seemed to be a bathroom. The mechanics of how creatures that ate love would go to the bathroom made Luminous' imagination give up, especially when presented with the bizarre contraptions in the room. There wasn't even a tub, just... Tubes.
She closed the door carefully and checked to make sure all the creatures were asleep still before moving to the biggest door. The buzzing became loud and insistent as she approached, Luminous licked her lips before she very gently opened the door just a sliver.
It was a major causeway. The buzzing was caused by hundreds of chitinous creatures all buzzing their wings as they flew or hopped down a long, winding, octagonal corridor. She couldn't see much from the door's position, but it looked rather busy. Worse yet, the lighting was the same dim purple lighting that would make her show up like a lightbulb. Swallowing her disappointment and rising panic, Luminous tried to think of a plan.
She looked around, looking for something she could use as a disguise in amongst the creatures' things. Annoyingly, the creatures seemed to have absolutely no interest in clothing. She found toys, mostly carved from crystal or bone, but not so much as an accessory or scrap of clothing. Not even saddlebags. Frustrated, Luminous ransacked the whole apartment, looking for anything, even in the mysterious and disturbing 'bathroom'. She knew she was running out of time, sleep enchantments were iffy at best, and whoever had saved her and enchanted the creatures probably had expected her to be free by now.
It was a mildly disturbing thought to Luminous, who didn't like loose ends. She had no clue as to who or what had saved her from the cocoon she'd been trapped in, or woken her from her terrible dreaming. It felt too good to be true, and Luminous had a gut feeling that it was.
Her suspicious thoughts were interrupted though by stepping on something sharp enough to make the pale filly yelp with pain. She looked over worriedly, in case the sound had woken the creatures in the room with her, but they just slumbered on. She carefully looked down at what she had stepped on, and saw it was a small, perfect prism. She stared at it for a moment as thoughts clicked together in the gear box of her mind, then started to cast.
Light bent around Luminous, deforming the filly strangely for a moment until she vanished entirely from sight. Of course, with all the light going around her, Luminous realized she couldn't see. She tweaked it a bit until she could see blurry shapes in the dim purple light without compromising the spell, and was fiddling with it when a horrible insectoid scream rent her thoughts.
Luminous held the spell desperately and kept it from unraveling as she looked around. The creatures were no longer in the room, but there was a terrible buzzing and screeching coming from the hole in the floor. The bug-like beings had come awake as she had been messing with her spell, but from the sounds of it, they'd discovered the dead one down below. Luminous edged towards the door to the causeway, intent on slipping out rather than be in the room when more of the strange creatures came buzzing in. Before she could quietly creep out though, a flying, black-carapaced horror came straight for her.
Luminous tried to duck, but ended up being clipped by the upset insect and they both tumbled out into the street. She rolled into the middle of the octagonal corridor, not quite tangled up with the creature, and froze. Hundreds of buzzing wings carried fanged creatures around too quick for her to see. The flashing teeth and screeching noise that punctuated the buzzing was horrible and nightmarish to the filly, who forced herself to stay still and unseen. After a while, the creatures seemed to be more interested in the apartment she'd just left and were swarming around it, so she very slowly crept to the sloping wall and started moving up the corridor.
Luminous crept unseen through the long, octagonal hallway, staying away from whatever creatures stopped and sniffed. Her disguise had the unfortunate quality of failing to conceal her scent, which was somewhere between a sewer and a mass grave, and the gagging noises some of the carapace-covered creatures made always made her heart skip as she swiftly trotted away.
She had absolutely no idea where she was going, but the passage seemed to be going steadily upwards, without variation. The buzzing creatures around here continued to make their screeching noises and fly about in haphazard fashion as they visited ledges on the walls, chatted with each other in mid-air, and other things that looked entirely too normal for a hive full of love-sucking insects.
Luminous tried not to think about it for the moment, but everywhere she looked, the creatures were acting like, well, ponies. It unnerved her to think that they could be so very similar to ponies, and still steal and feed off their love. She wondered what they thought of it; was it like milking cattle? Like shearing sheep? Come to think of it, if they impersonated ponies to get their love, where did the ponies go? She was still wondering about it when the corridor opened into a jaw-dropping sight: a massive octahedron-shaped cavern, filled with the loudest buzzing noise she had yet encountered.
Hundreds of buzzing wings flurried about, carrying the creatures of black chitin about on various errands. Hundreds more passageways perforated the walls, each as wide as the one Luminous had just reached the end of, and they all pointed towards the center of the room, which was a riot of neon color.
As her eyes adjusted to the sudden sight of so much color, Luminous realized she was looking at a palace of sorts. Its spires seemed to grow out of the rock below, and up towards the ceiling like antlers: Intersecting and spiking off seemingly at random. Everything was brilliantly neon in a way that clashed and smashed the senses, and it made looking at the castle painful. Luminous was so caught up in it, she failed to hear the creature coming up behind her before it collided with her rump with an insectoid yelp and sent her tumbling down the slope of the octahedron-shaped chamber.
After what felt like a painful eternity, she rolled to a stop, flat on her back. She opened her eyes with a quiet groan, and found herself looking up at two very surprised-looking sets of compound eyes. It was wearing armor made from some sort of silvery metal, painted with neon edges; it was the first clothing amongst the parasites Luminous had seen, and it looked very well cared-for. The creature stared, Luminous stared, then the black-chitined horror let out a fanged screech, and hundreds of its kin changed direction and swooped for her.
Luminous immediately set off a flare spell, as bright as she could make it, and was rewarded by a pained scream that echoed deafeningly throughout the huge chamber. She scrambled to her hooves even as the flying creatures started to crash blindly into the floor around her. She ran through the open arch into the castle courtyard, blessing the open architecture of the hive, though a guard's flailing appendage caught her as she ran past, and the perforated limb gouged a line in her fur with a surprisingly sharp edge.
She dodged between a deadly hail of falling creatures, and ran straight for the central structure, dimly aware of the line of agony burning across her right flank. A set of guards burst out of the doors, four abreast, their neon-painted armor shining with the purple light and giving their already nightmarish appearance a new layer of terror. They lunged for Luminous as one, and found themselves grasping air as the filly quickly made another force-field and bounced off it over their heads, her hooves trailing smoke as she seared them again.
Luminous hit the ground hard, but rolled with it up to her hooves, ignoring the pained comments of her light burns. She dashed for the nearest doorway, which was octagonal and more garishly decorated than the others, though this one had doors made of solid black stone. Behind her, the guards belatedly changed direction and were charging after her. Luminous ran straight for the door, then threw herself to the floor.
As she'd hoped, all four guards hit the doors at top speed and knocked themselves out. They failed to budge the door, which was disappointing, but by the sound of the rising buzzing from outside, Luminous needed to think of something quickly, before the citizens broke in and mobbed her. She wrapped her light-bending spell around herself to buy some time, and froze as the whole room filled with the citizens she had blinded before.
It was terrifying to stay still, very clearly outnumbered, and to trust in her own spellwork. The creatures were searching every door in the little entrance hall she'd burst into, but they made no move to take the unconscious guards away, aside from moving them out of the way of the large doors she'd tricked them into crashing into.
The doors opened outward, into the entrance hall, which explained why the high-speed impact had failed to budge them. Luminous desperately wanted to see what was through them, partially because the creatures searching the entrance hall kept coming alarmingly close to brushing against her, up until their noses wrinkled and they looked elsewhere.
Eventually the crowd lessened enough for her to creep towards the open doors. Every step sounded like a thunderclap to Luminous, who was starting to feel the pressure in her mind again, pulling her inexorably towards the doorway. The unconscious guards were still slumped across the leaves of the door like rather grim doorstops, and Luminous stepped very carefully as she walked past them. Her wounded leg though wouldn't lift high enough, and her right rear hoof tapped against the guard's armor like a clapper in a bell.
Luminous froze as the sound attracted the attention of every creature still flitting through the entrance hall. For a nerve-destroying moment, she thought she'd been found out, but at that exact moment the unconscious guard stirred a little and fell over on his side. The phenomenon explained, the creatures went back to buzzing about the stone chamber, screeching to each other.
Luminous felt the sweat bead on her brow as she very slowly finished walking over the guards. She forced herself to breathe normally, and quietly, but it was several moments before she could turn her gaze from the entrance hall and to the chamber she'd just stepped into.
Luminous had to bite back a yelp of surprise as her hoof, which had been about to walk into the room, found itself stepping onto something soft and fleshy. She took the step back, struggling to keep her balance, and became caught in the sight of the room before her.
The chamber was easily a hundred ponylengths across, and perfectly spherical. All around the edges, a bright green substance like the stuff that had made up her cocoon stretched towards the middle in apparently random strings, covered in odd lumps, ending in a massive throne carved of obsidian. The walls were a mixture of boggling neon patterns and deep passageways. Everything pointed towards the throne, which was empty, and polished to a bright mirror shine.
She had stepped on what seemed to be a road of sorts that led to the throne. It was made of the weird substance that was strung throughout the chamber, and in it were even odder lumps that ranged in size from no larger than a foal up to full sized pony. Luminous looked closer at one about her size, and she had to stop herself as she unconsciously backed up in horror. Inside, a foal no older than she was was curled up, slumbering.
Luminous looked around in sudden, chilling realization and counted hundreds of cocoons. And that was just the ones in this chamber, who knew how many more were in the tunnels. She wondered if any of them held Applebloom, and felt a crushing guilt that she hadn't thought of her friend before that moment. She'd been so wrapped up in finding Twilight, she hadn't spared a thought for her friend, who had been caught in the same blast. She was so lost in her own guilt that she almost collided with another guard as he flew past her into the room, his perforated wings buzzing.
As she watched, the armor-clad chitinous terror, its neon markings different from the ones she had introduced to the door, flitted up to one of the nearby cocoons, this one holding a mare, and sank its sharp teeth into the membrane. The pony inside started to tremble and thrash, and the creature's eyes closed in what seemed to be pleasure. As she watched, the holes in its hooves and wings closed, and soon a completely whole creature pulled away from the cocoon, licking the green liquid inside off its carapace.
Luminous firmly kept herself from retching as she looked away and crouched to let the sated creature fly past. It was incredibly difficult for her to let it pass without striking it down, but survival instinct kept the white filly's urge in check. The whole creature started moving about the unconscious guards and it calmly began biting into one, which immediately started to stir. As she watched, new holes began to form in the sated guard, and others began to close on the unconscious guard. Luminous blinked, until she realized the first guard was passing on whatever it was it had taken from the pony and they were somehow healing from it. Soon the injured creature was up and about, and flitted to another cocoon to finish the process while the first passed on the healing bite to its brethren.
Unlike before, the guard moved to the cocoon above the throne, which was bigger and more prominent than the others. As the guard reached the cocoon and prepared to feed however, the pressure in Luminous's head rose to a crushing intensity. Her head wrenched around, and Luminous's breath froze in her throat. The guard was mere moments from biting into a cocoon that held a pony whose silhouette she could recognize in her sleep: Twilight.