//------------------------------// // Chapter Twenty // Story: Clipped Wings // by Desrium //------------------------------// Chapter Twenty The best laid plans can sometimes be taken from the past. But the same is boring! "Take a message, Auburn. For our report to the Princess." Starswirl said to me. I quickly retrieved a quill and parchment from my pack."Tell her the problem is solved." he told me to write. "That's it?" I asked. That surely could not have been all! Starswirl nodded. "I think it best left unsaid. Perhaps it is best the Magus stay forgotten." were his last words on the matter, and it was with those words that my adventure...or misadventure of the Magus Magnus came to an end." Klaxon looked up to the sky. "Damn," he said and shook his head. There was a short note at the very bottom of the last page, but Klaxon was not so keen on reading it. "I think Starswirl knew what he was talking about when he said forgotten, Auburn." Alana leaned forward to read the block of smaller text that was spaced out from the rest of the account. "Auburn knew why his mentor had wanted the story of the Magus Magnus to never see the light of day, but as the denizens of Equestria began to forget the incredible deeds of the old unicorn, he felt it best to show them. The story of Starswirl and the Magus Magnus would become one of the most popular stories in Canterlot, and served as a warning to those who sought nothing but power." She pulled back and shrugged. "Knowledge is a special kind of power, I guess..." Falcon Wing opened his mouth to offer his own insight when the duel at the castle created a thunderous cacophony that would have drowned out his voice. He looked back at it, seeing rubble raining down from the tower, flaming. "What is with these magical ponies and their towers...?" he asked no one in particular. Klaxon scooped the book up and put it in his coat this time. "Starswirl was able to beat him with a single spell. Steiner's been up there throwing how many of them at the Magimus. What gives?" he asked. "The Magimus must have read the story too, Klaxon. I think he learned from the mistakes of his predecessor. Would explain the metal. He doesn't want to torn apart as raw energy alone. He needs... what would Steiner say... an anchor." Alana said matter of factly. Falcon Wing raised a brow. "That was...very perceptive of you, Alana." he told her. She scoffed. "Have I done anything to make you think that I am not perceptive?" she asked somewhat incredulously. "It takes a special kind of pony to find Sparkle Cola in a train station... and pony of even higher caliber than that to drink the two hundred year old stuff." Falcon Wing argued. "So no, you might have eyes as sharp as Klaxon over there." "Sharp eyes and sharp aim. I think my father might still be alive if you had been the one holding that rifle!" Klaxon said jokingly. The joke immediately made the two others feel uncomfortable, with Falcon Wing chuckling weakly and Alana looking horrified. "But...I was just a filly..." "Whoa sister, easy now. Just kidding around," the bronze stallion added swiftly. "About your father? I seem to recall that being a... very touchy subject when I first met you." said Falcon Wing. Klaxon paused to think of his reply and when he got it, he said: "Lets just say, this little trip and our friend in the tower has given me a learning experience. One a bit more profound than a talk in a cellar can provide." "And if we want to teach our friend a lesson of his own, we need to get rid of those panels he carries around. Otherwise he'll be too tough to beat," Alana said. Falcon Wing noted how strange it was that Alana was the one to put the conversation back on track to the matter at hoof. "She's right, we can talk about this all later. Right now, Steiner needs us to save his ass," Klaxon said. He shot another look at Alana. "Pardon." "If it's your way then fine. You don't have to apologize to me whenever you swear, Molasses. Only Falcon Wing has to do that!" Alana responded and then she broke off into a full gallop towards the castle. Klaxon followed suit. If the situation had been under different circumstances, he might have felt a twinge of embarrassment that his jab at Falcon Wing reached her as well. Likewise, if things had been different, the red pony would have said something about that last part. Falcon Wing extended his arcane-tech wings and shot off into the sky. He intended to lend his magically gifted friend a hoof while Alana and Klaxon made their way up through the palace itself. The fear that it was going to collapse had not subsided. In fact, it only grew as the magnitude of power within grew. The Magimus coiled like some kind of flying snake, a wingless dragon, his incorporeal white body wrapping around the edges of the chamber, enclosing Steiner within his magical form. Tendrils of energy converged on Steiner from all directions, forcing him to keep up a shield as he had done to the Magimus. Except the Magimus' power could not simply be dispelled, it was just too great, even now. "You are so stubborn!" he exclaimed. "Just like Starswirl! You just will not give up!" "As long as I am able to fight I will, Magimus!" Steiner replied, his voice otherworldly and unsettling as well. The effects of such concentrated magic seemed to make everything monstrous. "Ah, but you cannot keep this up much longer. I can sense that you are wasting away from your valiance! Be it by my intervention or your own unwillingness to surrender, you will die," the Magimus snarled. Steiner bared his teeth, regarding the Magimus with a hateful glare. It was true. He was not used to summoning so much of his power at once. His body was beginning to break because of it. He started to think tactically. He was going to die, that much was very much likely. But as he was now, he could still win. He just had to go all the way. He would die, but he would take the Maxim Magimus with him. Yes...that seemed preferable. A battle where the both of them were struck down was many times better than one fought only to end in crushing defeat because of fear for his wellbeing. If dying meant ridding Equestria of this malevolent entity then so be it. "Steiner!" Falcon Wing's voice reached him and for a moment, the glare disappeared and was replaced with shock. Then worry. "Stay away!" Steiner boomed. The fool of a pegasus would be flying into his own demise! But it was too late, the courageous pony flew into the chamber through the missing chunks in the palace walls, dodging streaks of spectral energy that made their way to the skies above. For a moment, Steiner could feel the Magimus' assault lessen. The feeling of dread that came over him was instantaneous. "Ah... so the pet finally comes to his master's aid. Your timing... could not be any worse. Well, that isn't correct. You could have arrived when he had already died... wouldn't that have been... ironic?" the Magimus rumbled with a cold, calculating calmness. What he had for Steiner was simple anger, the desire to crush a rival as it were. But Falcon Wing? He had hate. Cold, repressed hatred spawned from more than a millennia of living in somepony else's shadow. A pony that the pegasus reminded him of in many infuriating aspects. "Falcon Wing get out of here! He is going to murder you!" Steiner barked. "I can handle him myself!" "Destroy the metal!" Falcon Wing shouted, bobbing and weaving in the air in front of the Magimus. The serpentine pony's eyes followed his movement like a cobra being charmed. "Destroy the met --?" "It's how he maintains himself! He must've done something to them so he doesn't go the same way as the Magus Magnus --!" The Magimus unleashed a terrible soul rending screech, Falcon Wing finding himself thrown from the air onto the blackened, rubble covered floor. He rose to his hooves somewhat shaken, but resolute all the same. "Bet you weren't counting on us finding the fucking book did you, you shit!?" His eyes widened. If he had been less agile than he was, he would have been struck by the magical lightning bolt which blew apart the floor where Falcon Wing had been standing seconds before. The pony swallowed hard. Suddenly, having metal wings was not as awesome as he initially thought it was. "I will enjoy ripping you apart. I will enjoy ripping you apart then putting you back together! I will enjoy ripping you apart, putting you back together then VAPORIZING YOU!" the Magimus rumbled. Falcon Wing let out a sharp cry of pain as the arcane abstraction began to act upon his words. The unimaginable yet strangely familiar feeling of having innards rearranged underneath his flesh made his body tense in anguish. Steiner was not having any of it. "PUT HIM DOWN" the pony boomed in a fit of renewed ire, the aura surrounding him expanding into a jagged, chaotic mass of power. As the energies swirled around him in unpredictable paths, the rubble of the chamber started to clatter then float. Steiner's eyes were miniature, blood red suns. A pillar of energy shot forth, diverging when it hit the Magimus' neck and locking it in an entropic field of magical energy and then flinging the former Guardian's head into the far side of the chamber, pinning him there with a metaphysical clamp. Falcon Wing was released from his malignant mental grasp. "And you mean... to tell me he is not your pet!?" the Magimus snarled, vines of white energies swirling around the red, writhing angrily. "How I wish I can make this painful for you. How I wish you had bones to break... organs to rupture... flesh to flay. But instead I only have your mind to play with. Perhaps that will suffice --" "No, Steiner don't!" Falcon Wing implored desperately. Steiner turned his head slightly. Slightly. The Magimus was still in full view. He was bracing against any spell the Magimus could throw at him. "I understand that you're angry. I know that you want to make him suffer for all that he's done, but it isn't justice or retribution if you do it out of rage!" Falcon Wing exclaimed. "It only makes you just as bad as him!" "How noble!" the Magimus spat mockingly. He whipped his ethereal tail around, sparks of magic jumping from it, heading right for the red pegasus. Falcon Wing prepared to leap out of its way when it smashed hard against a crimson shield. "He is right," Steiner said simply. He directed his focus to the plates of metal that constantly floated alongside the Magimus. They glowed a hot red, and for the first time in ages the Magimus showed true fear in his emotionless visage. "Stop you idiot! You know not the havoc you will bring!" "Well if the book was anything to go by, this entire fucking tower is going to come crashing down!" Falcon Wing responded. He had to go warn the others, to tell them to turn back. He could only hope they hadn't gotten very far up the spire... "Falcon Wing," Steiner said commandingly, "get the others a safe distance from here." "Oh good, you're a mind reader now." Falcon Wing thought. He speedily departed through the nearest hole in the wall, diving from the tower through the stabbing cold air of the frozen north. "Just like any good pet, he heeds the orders of its master without hesitation!" the Magimus snarled spitefully, fighting a losing battle with the seemingly boundless power Steiner had mustered. It was all too easy to forget it would be the end of him...