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// SURVIVAL GAME: Mane Six vs the Weeping Angels 
// Story: My Little Pony vs .......... 
// by Ecthelion_Yuda 
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Screams echoed through the cave that the ponies were currently standing in. Twilight turned around and saw Fluttershy curled up in a ball on the floor, rolling around and letting out the most horrific and heart wrenching wails that she had ever heard. Pinkie Pie trotted over, noticeably placated by her fights, and gently laid a hoof on her broken friends shoulder. The high pitched howls of Fluttershy pierced the darkness like a dagger for the next few minutes until she eventually stopped. However, whilst she had stopped screaming, the sound of her sobbing still resounded around the cave. Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, Applejack and Rainbow Dash all slowly walked over to their distraught friend and held her lightly, letting her tears dampen their coats. As they all looked back over their last few brawls, the lives that each of them had taken began to weigh down on them. All of the blood that had been spilt by their hooves seemed to drown each of them in sorrow. Each pony could see the faces of their victims as they held each other, weeping bitterly in the darkness reliving each dark moment of their careers in murder. Less than a week ago the six little ponies had been sweet and innocent creatures, just going about their business and living life the way they wanted. Now they had become cruel, vicious murderesses and it cut each of them very deeply to think of how far they had fallen. About how little force it had taken to make them kill.

“Well, isn’t this a touching little scene.”

Rainbow Dash wheeled around and glared up at the draconequus Lord of Chaos and snarled. There was pure hatred in her eyes, but Discord just laughed at her.

“Does it feel good to play the victim now? Does being the villain not have the same feeling as being the hero?”

His voice was laced with malevolent glee. Rainbow Dash could feel her blood beginning to boil, her rage beginning to build up immeasurably. She had taken down Pikachu and all of those Digimon, so surely she could defeat this insufferable monster. She leaned back slightly and launched herself at Discord. The Chaos God simply batted her away with his tail, barely blinking as he did so. Applejack took up her chain and prepared to attack, but a sparkling blue cloud pinned her blade to the ground. From the shadows behind Discord, the figures of Nightmare Moon and Queen Chrysalis stepped forward. All three of the powers that had trapped the six ponies in this arena of bloodshed and murder were now stood before them. There was no way that this could be anything but bad news.

“We’ve gathered you all here,” Chrysalis began, her two tone voice echoing through the cave disconcertingly. “To tell you all a little bit about your next challenge.”

Nightmare Moon cleared her throat before stepping forward and speaking up.
“This place where you now stand is called the Aplan Moratorium, but these days it is known better by its other less savoury name: The Maze of the Dead. Your challenge is simple, girls. Survive in this place for two hours and we will move you onto your next arenas.”

Discord began to chuckle to himself in a way that made every single one of the ponies anxious. If Discord was laughing, that meant that there was something even worse about to come.
“Of course,” he began, “that doesn’t really seem like much of a challenge does it? So I felt it was only fair to inform you that you are not alone down here. We have trapped six of your nearest and dearest in this maze with you all over the place. You have two hours down here, you have to use that time to find everyone you can. Everyone that you have managed to find will be taken home at the end of the two hours and their memories altered so that they don’t remember any of the events that occur in this place. However, everyone that you fail to find...” Discord grinned maliciously.

“Is stuck here.”

There was a peculiar hush as Discords words registered with the ponies, leaving an eerie calm before the storm. They all began to frantically search for a possible exit from the cav e they were in, they needed to find their friends. But Discord wasn’t finished yet and he cleared his throat loudly to attract everyone’s attention.

“There’s one more thing too ladies. There are... things, down here that are not particularly friendly. I’m not going to tell you who or what they are, that would be no fun. But I am going to give you three clues. Clue number one: they are masters of hide and seek. Clue number two: If you can see them, they can’t see you. But if they can see you, you can’t see them. CLue number three: I hope you are all good at playing Granny’s Hoofsteps, for these creatures love that game. Well,” Discord said, bending backwards in an over exaggerated show of fixing a crick in his back. “That’s all from us. Arrivederci!”

The three monsters vanished into the darkness, and the tiny amount of light that they had provided vanished with them. Without hesitating, both Twilight and Rarity lit up their horns so that they could get a better view of where they were. The cave they were in was actually just a tiny alcove that opened up into what appeared to be a much larger subterranean expanse. Twilight cast a spell that sent a large ball of light up into the air above her, bathing everything in a midnight esque moonlight. The cavern they were looking out into was gargantuan and the walls were covered in things that resembled old Saddlearabian buildings. Statues lined every available surface and cliff edge, giving the impression that the place had once been a city. Twilight tried to take in everything that she could, not only to help her find the six missing ponies, but also to try and work out what manner of creature Discord could have been warning them about.

Behind her, Fluttershy was still crying her eyes, completely and utterly inconsolable. THis was no surprise really. After all, her calling in life was to look after other creatures, to tend for them when they were sick, to care for them when they were lost and tired. And now this monstrous contest had forced her to kill. No wonder she was so torn up about it. The other ponies didn’t like killing and believed it to be wrong, but for Fluttershy it was far more than that. Even in self defence, killing completely challenged her nature, her instincts. It forced her to become the exact opposite of who she really was and it was truly awful. Twilight wanted to spend a few more minutes comforting Fluttershy, but six of their friends were out there, trapped in the Maze of the Dead, and they had less than two hours to find them all, so Twilight gathered all of the ponies together.

“OK girls, we have less than two hours to find all of our friends and get them out of here. Now, i know we’re all pretty messed up from the ordeals of the past couple of days-”
(“That’s putting it nicely...” Rainbow Dash mumbled.)
“But for now we need to try and put that all behind us and stick together.”
Twilight straightened herself up and brushed her mane out of her face with her front hoof.
“Right now, all that matters is that our friends are in danger and we are the only ones who can help. Whatever problems we have to deal with can be sorted out later on, but right now we have six ponies to save. Discord, Chrysalis and Nightmare Moon are formidable opponents, but they made one mistake with this survival game, and that was putting us together. With the power given to us by our friendship, there’s nothing that we can’t do.”

Fluttershy dried her eyes and got to her hooves. She still couldn’t speak properly for fear of bursting into tears again, but the mere fact that she had managed to get up was enough of a signal that she was ready. Applejack wrapped her chain around herself in such a way that she could get at it easily if she needed to. Rarity located three relatively large, sharp crystals hidden in the dirt and threaded them into her mane in case she needed them later on. Pinkie Pie found some large stones and loaded them into her Party Cannon before slipping the cannon back into her purse. Rainbow Dash stretched out her wings as far as she could and folded them back in again, making sure that she was limbered up in case of any problems. Twilight made sure that her light spell would remain in the air without her around. With her horn still acting as a torch,Twilight found the tunnel in the wall on the far side of their alcove and the six ponies began moving, hoping that they could save everyone in time.

The ponies splashed through puddles of water that had accumulated on the ground from the steady dripping of the walls as they galloped through the tunnel. Given that the current arena was called a moritorium, Twilight surmised that it must be some form of burial chamber. If she was right, then the civilisation that had chosen this burial site must have had some beliefs centred around statues. There were beautiful carved stones of what appeared to be human women weeping, their faces covered by their hands. In various places, the statues had been eroded beyond recognition, but they must have been beautiful at one time. Part of Twilight’s inherent curiosity wanted to take the time to examine the statues and find out what they represented, but there was a far more demanding task at hand. But there was something wrong. Something was playing on Twilight’s mind and no matter what she did, there was no way of shaking the sickening belief that somewhere, somehow, Twilight had seen these statues before.

Without warning, Pinkie Pie skidded to a halt and bellowed at the others to wait. Everypony jumped and Applejack went for her chain, fearing an attack. But Pinkie Pie didn’t seem so much scared as she demonstrated an awareness of her surroundings that was uncommon for someone like Pinkie Pie. Slowly, she made her way over to a smaller tunnel that branched off from the one they were in and tilted her head, as though listening out for something. She shut her eyes and concentrated until she could clearly make out the sound of a little filly crying. Without a word, she sprinted off down the corridor, the other five ponies following her. Before long, everyone could distinctly hear a child crying and as they ran on the noise got louder and louder. Thirty seconds later, Twilight’s torch was shining down on the quivering little body of Applebloom. Applejack leapt forward and wrapped her front legs around her little sister and squeezed her tightly. Applebloom blubbered something about being scared and alone, but Applejack just whispered words of comfort in her ear and stroked her mane, repeating over and over that she would never let anything bad happen to her. After a few seconds, Twilight coughed lightly to let Applejack know that it was time to get moving again. The two farm ponies got up and followed Twilight and the others back through the passage and into the main tunnel again.

Once in the tunnel again, Rarity pulled Twilight aside to get her out of earshot of the others. There was a confused and very scared look on the seamstresses face as she whispered in the purple unicorns ear.
“Twilight dear, when we came through this tunnel earlier, were any of the statues in the middle of the path?”
Twilight just shook her head.
“Then could you please explain what 
is doing 
.”

Twilight stifled a scream as she looked past Rarity into the tunnel in the direction they had come earlier. There, right in the middle of the tunnel, stood one of the statues its face still covered by its hands. Twilight was absolutely certain that it hadn’t been there before and she found it hard to believe that something would have moved it there just to scare them. That meant that the statue moved of its own volition. And if that was the case, then she knew exactly what monsters Discord had trapped them with. Twilight called everyone around her.

“I think I know what creatures we’re dealing with in here.” Twilight was terrified, but she tried to keep her panic under control. “Discords clues all make sense now. No one knows what these monsters are really called, how old they are or where they come from, but the common name for them is the Weeping Angels.”

“And what do these Weeping Angels look like exactly?” Rainbow Dash snapped, somewhat unimpressed with Twilight’s enigmatic description.

“Take a look at any one of the statues here, that’s what they look like. At least, that’s how they look when you’re looking at them. Remember what Discord said about them being masters of hide and seek, and how they couldn’t see us while we could see them? That’s because when they are being observed, while you are looking at them, they become statues. To all intents and purposes, harmless. But then you take your gaze away. Then you blink. You turn your back. And all of a sudden they aren’t statues any more. The Angels feed off of potential time energy and they have two ways of getting this. The first is that they zap you back in time and then feed off of the energy of the moments you would have had. But if they are weakened, then they’ll probably settle for the second option of just killing you and feeding off of all the moments you should have had if you had lived. They are ruthless and brutal, and we are completely surrounded by them.”

Every single one of the ponies began to scan every wall, corner and ledge, searching for a place where a statue was that shouldn’t be. They couldn’t have been in the maze for more than ten minutes, but already they were in grave peril. Every statue in this titanic mausoleum was secretly a demon plotting how best to hunt down and kill the little ponies. The survival game just got about fifty times harder.Not only were they searching for five more of their friends, they were trying to avoid the Angels and make sure that they got to everyone else before the statues did. Thinking quickly, the ponies arranged themselves into a circular formation with Twilight at the front and Rarity at the back providing light in both directions down the tunnel so that no Angel could sneak up on them. Time was of the essence, but safety had to come first. As long as they were watching every possible direction, there was no way that an Angel could catch them off guard.

Walking slowly through the tunnel, the seven little ponies kept their eyes open, looking for whoever else might be stuck down here with them, while at the same time doing their best to ignore the scrabbling noises of clawed hands climbing the rock walls around them. Up ahead there was a small thumping noise, like tiny hoof beats. Around the corner, a miniscule rabbit appeared. Its scratched behind its ear nervously as it hopped forward and thumped the floor with its foot to try and drown out the awful noises in the tunnel.

“Angel Bunny!” Fluttershy yelled as she rocketed forward.
Twilight tried to stop her, but it was too late. The little yellow pegasus had already bolted forward and snatched up the little bunny in her hooves, holding him close. The usually moody white rabbit returned the hug with just as much vigour. Unfortunately, the flurry of pink and yellow that Fluttershy created as she flew provided enough of a distraction to attract the attention of every other pony in the tunnel. They looked away only for a second, but that was all the time it took. Screams rang out as the ponies looked back down the tunnel and saw a group of six Angels, their arms stretched out towards them. Twilight span around and saw a group of three Angels bearing down on Fluttershy’s position. They were completely surrounded, unable to move in either direction without losing sight of either group of Angels. Twilight’s brain began to go into overdrive as she tried to think of a way to get past the Angels and out of the tunnel safely. After a few seconds of deep thought, she had a eureka moment.

“Everyone, form a circle in between the two groups of Angels, make sure you get in nice and close.”
Without hesitation, the seven other wanderers gathered around the purple unicorn, never once taking their gaze away from the statues surrounding them.
“Now, on my signal I want you all to shut your eyes for exactly two seconds.”

Rainbow Dash was completely bewildered.
“But I thought you said that they couldn’t attack us if we keep looking at them. How is letting them attack a good idea?”

Twilight just shook her head.
“It’ll be all right Rainbow Dash. If anything, this is going to get us out of here alive, for now at least. Are you all with me?”

The other ponies mumbled various affirmations that they were willing to go along with Twilight’s plan. With a loud shout, Twilight gave her signal and everyone pinched their eyes shut tight. There was a harsh scraping noise as something slid quickly over the rough stone floor. After two seconds the seven ponies (and one rabbit) opened their eyes. Applebloom let out a terrified shriek as she stared into the face of a demonic snarling statue. The formerly beautiful features of the Weeping Angel had been replaced by vicious, bestial fangs and claws. The grace and mystery of the living statues had been replaced with hate and savagery. Applejack started and leaned over to Twilight.

“OK Twi, now we’re surrounded with even less room to maneuver than before. How exactly was this meant to help us?”

Twilight however, was not scared at all. in fact,she was smiling from ear to ear. She was completely calm and gestured rather nonchalantly towards two of the Angels.
“Applejack, what do you notice about these two?”

Applejack studied the two statues for a moment, unsure of what Twilight was talking about. But after a few seconds it dawned on her and the orange pony let out an audible sigh of relief. Now she understood what Twilight had done.The Angels were no longer a threat because they could no longer stop being statues. All nine of the Angels were arranged in a circle around the ponies and while the ponies stayed where they were, all that the Angels were looking at was them. However, once the ponies moved, the Angels would be staring at each other. The Angel’s greatest weapon had become their greatest weakness. They were being eternally watched by each other. Gradually, each of the wanderers left the circle and resumed their course down the tunnel.

The tunnel opened up into the main catacomb where Twilights light spell was still illuminating the walls. Doubtless many of the statues had moved in their absence, but the open nature of the humongous catacomb dulled some of the fear that the ponies felt. So far, two of their friends had been found, but that meant that there were still another four left somewhere, hiding in the dark, stalked by the greatest killers that evolution has ever made.Fluttershy stopped walking for a moment, but her hoofbeats had been so quiet that no one had really noticed.
“Um...girls?”
Still no one else stopped. Fluttershy silently cleared her throat, but the others trotted further forward.
“Girls?”
Still no one turned around.
“Everypony stop and listen to me for a minute!”

Fluttershy’s bizarre outburst had earned a few quizzical looks from the other members of the party, and the little pegasus suddenly felt very shy again. but what she had to say was important enough to force her past that.

“Well it’s just that, since we’ve found two of our friends, we could find out what they have in common?”
The other ponies gave it some thought, but they couldn’t come up with anything that Angel Bunny and Applebloom shared aside from being very important to one of the ponies.
“Well, think about it this way. Applebloom is very close to Applejack, and Angel Bunny is very close to me. But we knew that was going to be the case from the beginning. So what else do they have in common? They are both friends of ours who would be easy to capture and wouldn’t be missed right away.”

Applebloom gave an unimpressed snort and Applejack made a face like she had just been slapped.
“What do you mean not missed? My little sis has plenty of friends who would notice she was gone, not to mention Big Macintosh and Granny Smith. And Miss CHeerilee would know if Applebloom didn’t turn up to school today!”

Fluttershy sank down, scared of her friend and upset that she had insulted Applebloom, but the fact was she knew she was right and she needed to tell everypony else her theory. it might save them, so Fluttershy kept going.
“Of course, I didn’t mean that she wouldn’t be missed at all. What I’m saying is that she wouldn’t be missed right away. Children get sick all the time, so it might not pose that big an issue at school, and because Applebloom is always hanging out with Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle, it’s safe to assume that Big Mac and Granny Smith could put her disappearance down to her being with them. It wouldn’t be impertinent of them to believe that, given the circumstances, would it?”

Applejack opened her mouth to say something, but in all honesty she knew that what Fluttershy said made sense, so she just apologised and  relented.

“With what we know,” Fluttershy continued, “who are the friends and family members of the rest of us who could be kidnapped with the minimum of fuss, for maximum impact on us?”

The ponies thought for a few moments before Twilight’s face went paler than Rarity’s.
“Oh sweet Celestia, they took Spike.”
“It’s going to have been Scootaloo for me,” Rainbow Dash said, her voice little more than an angry whisper.
“I can’t think it would be anyone other than Gummy for me, especially since they took Angel Bunny for Fluttershy.”

“Sweetie Belle.” That was all Rarity could say as she stared off into the middle distance. She couldn’t believe that her darling little sister had been taken into this ghastly place. The mere thought of what the Angels would do if they found Sweetie Belle before she and the others did made Rarity physically sick. She heaved a few times, but due to the fact that she hadn’t eaten anything in the past few days nothing came out.

Suddenly, part way across the catacomb, Pinkie Pie saw a small shape scuttling along the floor. At first she thought it might be an Angel, but then she realised that she could properly see it moving. Unless there were other creatures besides the Angels in the Maze of the Dead, she had just found the third of their missing friends. Squinting, Pinkie Pie tried to find some identifying features that would let her know who it was. As the little pony crawled directly under Twilight’s light spell, Pinkie could make out the bright yellow fur, huge blue eyes and curly orange mane that could only belong to one pony.

“Oh no,” Pinkie snapped, getting everyone’s attention. “Rainbow Dash, you’ve got to help. I know who they kidnapped for me.” Tears fell down her face and onto the hard rock floor.
“Please, it’s little baby Pumpkin Cake.”

Rainbow Dash’s eyes opened wide at the mention of the name. Pumpkin Cake was just a baby, less than a year old. There was no way that she could survive for very long in this dreadful place. In fact, it was a miracle that she had managed to last this long. She spread her wings and leapt down into the catacomb. She had to get to the infant quickly, but at the same time she needed to be flying gently enough not to accidentally hurt the child when she got there. In less than a second, the cyan pegasus had touched down next to the infant. She scooped up Pumpkin Cake and took off again. She chanced a glance backwards and saw a group of five Weeping Angels just over ten metres away. If Pinkie hadn’t noticed Pumpkin when she did, Rainbow Dash was certain that the baby would never have been seen again.

As Rainbow Dash came in to land, Pinkie Pie pulled the infant in close and held her tightly. Pumpkin Cake gurgled innocently, blissfully unaware of the great danger she had just been in. But Pinkie was crying harder than she ever had before. The tiny child in her hooves had been in terrible danger, and with just over an hour left of the survival game, she still was. On top of that, they still had to find Spike, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle. Pinkie pie had been wrong about Gummy, but the others were probably in their theories of who had been stolen from them. They needed to find everyone as soon as possible.

Each of the ponies scanned the area for another tunnel, but it appeared that the way they had just come from was the only path on this level, so they had no choice but to try and find a different route. On the eastern wall, a narrow staircase wound up to the next floor. Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash went first, followed by Pinkie Pie with Pumpkin Cake resting on her back, then Applebloom and Applejack, with Rarity, Fluttershy and Angel Bunny bringing up the rear. It was a peculiar sight, but it meant that there were no blind spots where the Weeping Angels could attack from.

At the top of the stairs however, things were not going well. As Twilight and Rainbow Dash came to the top, they saw that the narrow walkway ahead had been blocked by four Weeping Angels, all stood in a row. Beyond them, Twilight could see two more Angels that had been frozen as they entered the tunnel less than fifty yards away. There was definitely another survivor hiding in there, and the Angels were quickly hunting them down. Twilight knew that she needed to get everyone past and into that tunnel, but with the roadblock of Angels before them, there was nothing that they could do.

“I could fly over them and find out who it is that those guys are chasing? As long as you guys keep an eye on the Angels out here, I should be fine, right?”
Rainbow Dash made sense. She was definitely a fast enough flier to make a scout mission seem reasonable, and there was nothing stopping her from getting past the Angels who were trying to block the path. On the surface, it was a solid plan, but Twilight had spotted a problem and she wasn’t willing to let Rainbow Dash take such a huge risk.

“You could get past these ones easily enough,” Twilight began. “But what if there are Angels in the tunnel that we can’t see? Without me or Rarity to act as a torch, you wouldn’t be able to see them before it was too late. You’d be dead the second you turned the corner.”

“So why don’t you teleport across with me?”

Again, Twilight shook her head. 
“In this darkness, the flash from my teleportation spell would cut everyone else's vision for a few seconds. That could easily be enough time for the Angels to attack and I can’t risk that. I just don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Suddenly, Applejack let out a growl that sounded like it should have come from a Timbre Wolf. She leaped over Pinkie Pie, barged past Twilight and Rainbow Dash, unwound her chain and started spinning it above her head. With a grunt, she brought it down through the top of one of the Weeping Angels. The blade slid through the rock as though it were made of cream cheese and the statue fell in two pieces. Applejack span around and decapitated the statue on the edge of the path. With a solid kick, she tipped the headless statue into the ravine below, relishing in the sound of the satisfying crunch as it smashed against the solid rock floor. With a smile, Twilight decided that she was going to join in on this destruction and sent a blast of concentrated magic straight into one of the remaining two Angels, blasting it to dust. Applejack cleaved the final statue in half, leaving a clear path for the ponies to travel down.

“Twi,” the orange farmer panted. “Why didn’t we just do that in the first place?”

Twilight took a moment to catch her breath before replying.
“The reason is that it’s going to be even more difficult now to find everyone. We had to destroy those Angels, but it means that every Angel in this moritorium now has a personal vendetta against us. The Weeping Angels have been called the loneliest species in existence, because they can’t ever look at each other, they can’t ever speak to each other. But they are also some of the oldest creatures in the universe. THey share a social consciousness, like telepathy, and it allows each of them to communicate with one another without needing to see or speak to each other.”

“And now that we’ve killed four of the Angels in that bond,” Rarity interrupted. “They will treat us as actual enemies.”

“Exactly,” Twilight continued. “When they were chasing us before, it was strictly business. THey needed time energy, we were a potential source of that energy. But now that we have killed four of them, it’s personal.”

Applejack seemed to understand and wrapped her chain back around her body. THe ponies set off towards the tunnel, after Twilight had made sure that the two Angels at the entrance were facing each other, so they wouldn’t become a problem in future. The group took up their circle formation again and set off into the darkness. They cried out the names of the three remaining ponies who they needed to find and the echoes filled the darkness in an almost physical blanket of noise.

For almost an hour they kept on walking, kept on shouting, and Twilight, Rarity and Rainbow Dash began to get more and more hysterical. They knew they were running out of time to find their missing friends.

Suddenly, a scream pierced the darkness and Rarity bolted down a secondary tunnel. She knew that squeal, it was definitely Sweetie Belle. The other girls ran after her, glancing back as frequently as they could to hold back the advance of the Angels chasing them. A few metres down the corridor, there was a larger cave. Inside, Scootaloo stood at the mouth of another small tunnel bellowing Sweetie Belle’s name over and over again. In the dead centre of the cave stood an Angel with Spike in its grasp. Rarity didn’t even look at Scootaloo or Spike, she just charged down the tunnel where Sweetie Belle had gone. Fluttershy hesitated for a moment, greatly concerned about Spike’s predicament, but she eventually decided to follow Rarity. Rainbow Dash slid to a halt beside Scootaloo who just stared up at her, tears in her eyes.
“Please Rainbow Dash, you have to bring Sweetie Belle back. Spike’s hurt and Sweetie Belle ran off. Please, you have to help.”

Rainbow Dash scooped up Scootaloo and flew off down the tunnel after Rarity and Fluttershy. Spike may have been hurt, but as long as someone was keeping an eye on the Weeping Angel and either Pinkie Pie, Applejack or Twilight was with him, he should be fine. Rainbow Dash forced herself even faster, as fast as she could travel in this darkness. There was only about a minute left.

Applejack and Pinkie Pie didn’t know what to do. On the one hand, Spike was in the clutches of a Weeping Angel. On the other hand, he was still alive and Sweetie Belle still hadn’t been found yet. When Twilight came in, she screamed at the sight of Spike, the stone claws of the Angel buried deeply in his flesh. His head was being dragged up by one arm and the rest of his body was being pinned to the statue by the other. Twilight quickly composed herself, albeit not very well, and told the others to go after Sweetie Belle. Reluctantly, Pinkie Pie and Applejack headed off down the tunnel after Rarity. Alone with Spike, Twilight fired a blast of magic into the ceiling of the tunnel she had just come through. There was no way that she was letting any more Angels come in here to interrupt her.

“I’m so sorry Spike. I we had just gotten to you a little sooner...”
“It’s all right Twilight.” Spike’s voice was weak and croaky. The claws of the Angel had clearly done more damage than was clearly visible. “You have to go and help the others find Sweetie Belle. It’s too late for me now-”
“Don’t you dare say that!”
“No Twilight, it’s true. This statue has very sharp claws, I can already feel my body begining to wind down around me. I can’t even move my tail any more.”

Twilight was crying uncontrollably as Spike spoke. She knew he was right and there was absolutely nothing she could do to change that. There were only thirty seconds left, and she knew that the others needed her help in finding Sweetie Belle, but she just couldn’t bring herself to leave Spike just yet.
“You were a wonderful assistant. Spike,” Twilight managed to say, sobbing over every syllable.

Spike laughed before tilting his head towards the tunnel that everyone else had already gone down. Fifteen seconds. Twilight nodded and began to run. Spike must have blinked, because there was a gut wrenching squish from behind Twilight. She turned around and saw the Angel holding Spike’s head aloft, blood dripping down its arm onto the floor. His limp, lifeless body dangled from the other arm, still twitching a little. Blind with fury, Twilight unleashed a magical barrage that reduced the entire cave to rubble, destroying the Angel as she dropped to the ground and wept for her friend. Seven seconds.

Rarity charged down the tunnel as quickly as she could, tears streaming down her face. She shouted and hollered Sweetie Belle’s name, hoping that with less than ten seconds to go, her sister would pop out from the shadows and be safe. She kept running, kept shouting for as long as she could. From the darkness ahead of her, Rarity could hear Sweetie Belle calling out to her in return. She must have turned a corner up ahead and was only just out of sight. Rarity leaned forward and sprinted even faster than before. The corner came upon her and Sweetie Belle’s voice was as clear as day to her now. Rarity broke into a huge smile as she realised that in a few more steps she would have saved her sister and Sweetie Belle would be all right. Rarity rounded the corner and ran straight into the light of the portal to her next arena.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile, rounding the self same corner, Sweetie Belle called out for a sister who was no longer there. A moment ago she could hear Rarity’s voice brilliantly clearly, but now there was nothing except a slight electrical buzz in the air. A shuffling noise behind her made Sweetie Belle jump. She turned around and saw one of the statues in the middle of the tunnel, right behind her. Sweetie Belle blinked and the statue had edged even closer to her. Sweetie Belle screamed and ran, only to have her screams cut short by the feeling of cruel claws tearing through her body. She died alone, terrified, screaming in the dark...