Twilight began sobbing in near panic until Applejack yanked Twilight's tail and pulled back from the still-growing mass before them, all the ponies sitting in startled silence. Marc hissed at the confused Unicorn with a vengeance matched only by herself seconds before.
"Hey! Twilight, think! The one you should be blaming is over there!" Marc pointed an accusatory finger at Discord, "He lied to you, to the Princesses and wrecked the good time we worked out!"
Disocrd did not respond. In fact, he started laughing.
Marc walked purposefully over to Ditzy. She was beyond words in her state, too worked up to utter anything but strangled sobs. All eyes were on the tall human as he cradled the crying mare in his arms. “Oh, ditzy…It’s fine, It is all fine…”
Discord groaned out into the air, "Oh, please! You have no idea what you’re talking about, you dumb alien!” Discord flew a few loops and landed at the other end of the throne room, perching grandly on the twin thrones on their dais. “Luna is trapped, and given time, will be lost! Dimensions are truly horrid without a roadmap, you see.”
Fluttershy was cowering behind Pinkie Pie, covering her head with her hooves. She glanced up, hearing the voice, but the roiling blackness before her overwhelmed her again. Pinkie tried to console her, but kept her eyes on the mass as well. She looked expectantly at Marc, apparently having worked out the solution that he was only now uncovering.
Applejack stood undecidedly, mincing on the spot. "Twi? We gotta do somethin'!"
Rarity stood by, mane failing as she looked about wildly between Twilight and Princess Celestia. Twilight herself looked deep in thought, Discords words playing about her mind.
Rainbow Dash flew up to the Princess’s side and pleaded, "What the hay just happened? Tell us what to do, we’ll fix it!"
"SILENCE!" Everypony stood stock-still at Discord’s vast shout. Marc Looked up, but Discord could only be seen by those on the wing. Though, at that moment, Celestia allowed herself to lower to the floor, staring resolutely at the dome before her. Marc swallowed hard and carried his weeping friend up to the solar Princess, looking at her boldly and asking simply, “You let Discord write the letter you sent to Twilight, didn’t you?”
Celestia frowned and nodded. The time for apologies or explanations was passed, and time was short. “Marc, this magical field is trapping Luna. That fact that it is still up indicates that she is alive, but…it cannot be broken. I have tried, the Elements tried, but I fear that the energy we put into trying to break it, the closer it comes to severing us from Luna forever.”
“So Luna is trapped…wait, cutting us off from her? Then where is she?” Marc asked, confused, remembering
“Very well, then, Luna, I will face you down. Not here, but somewhere equally familiar to our unwitting pawn.”
“Marc, she is in your home world.”
Marc nodded. The forces of two worlds were focused in the sphere before him. The greatest might in all of Equestria had been bent on breaking it, and it, and it had only grown stronger. So what of something from the other side of the pond?
Damn, Pinkie is smarter than I thought.
Marc shook the idea and whispered in Ditzy's ear. "Hey, now, you'll be okay. You did good, actually. If you hadn’t done that, the Princess would already be gone. You saved her life." He wasn't sure whether this was true just yet, but if he was wrong, it wouldn't matter anyway. This room would probably cease to exist.
Marc walked up to the field, not really sure what he was going to do, but knowing that it wasn't really that bad of a deal. His choices now were to die running from a giant collapsing magic-thing, die trying to stop its break-up, or actually succeed. Of course, going out with a bang would be better than running. He’d tried that. It hadn't worked. If this was his last act, it would be in defiance of that idiotic demon who started all of this.
An idiotic demon who’s agitation suddenly seemed to increase upon hearing the silence from the other side of the field. He flew up over the mass, looking down on the phalanx of ponies watching a lone human walk up to the boiling surface and reach out a hand."What? No! The Princess will die! Do you know how much energy is in that field-!"
Celestia hissed and Discord fell silent. Marc looked back at the group. Twilight had realization dawning in her expression. She looked at Pinkie, who was grinning. The pair cheered then, and incongruous sound amid the ruins and shattered glass. Her friends walked forward and looked at Marc, scared but hopeful, to stand in a line facing him. Marc turned back to the huge force field, and thought. They believe in me now, when it counts; I cannot fail. Here goes nothing.
He stepped into the field. Amid the massive pulses of sound and sensation that hit his body harder than anything Vinyl could have played, he heard the draconequus Discord roar.
Half a minute later he came to on the floor inside a pitch black hole. Before him was a hazy whit light that glowed faintly to dispell the darkness. Marc wondered what had happened. He stood up in the supercharged atmosphere that made breathing a severe task and nearly swam through the mist of static in the giant bubble. He only saw the shape of the figure under the light when he was nearly close enough to touch her.
"Princess!" He coughed out. The air invaded his lungs and chocked him from the inside, electric charges playing through his system. He stopped everything when he felt a voice echoing in his head.
"Marc? How did you get here?"
Marc fell down and sat there under the height of Luna as her aura lit the darkness around them. "Princess…"
"Think, Marc, to be heard."
Oh, great, they're telepathic. No one decides to tell me this...Why?! Marc quickly covers this thought with another, realizing that the Princess had most likely heard that.
"Princess, I am here to help you out."
"Ah, Marc, I could not have hoped for so much." She sounded tired, even in thought.
“Princess, why can't you just bust your way out? Just close the field."
“No, Marc, this is different. I’m in your world. I can see a large stone building and a grassy lawn I am not in my body. Elemental beings can race from world to world if they with, but Celestia and I are not among them. We earned our powers, and so when we travel worlds, as our selves now may,our bodies cannot follow. The field is around me is the membrane that keeps the worlds apart and it protects my body in my absence. But...Something has interfered. Discord. I would fight him, beat him once and for all, but he led me here. In my anger, I did not think he could so ensnare me. I am not as you see me, Marc, I am not with you. I cannot be unless I am returned!”
Marc looked up at the stoic form of Princess Celestia above him. Immobile, completely still. Yes, absent.
“I have tried. My body is my home, and I should able to return to it with ease, but the energy required to return me is being drained by the very air. More and more energy has been added, even after I had stopped trying, destabilizing the construct. If it collapses now, We will be both be stuck in your world.”
Marc knew what was happening; he could see it. The field was trapping pure energy inside it; with nowhere to dissipate to, the level of energy inside the dome had increased way past saturation to unstable levels. Enough to destroy the Princess's body if she could not return to it and break the hold it had on her being. Both them would be trapped on earth.
Home.
The air began crackling.
Marc thought for less time than He thought he should have."Princess, use me. You are talking to me, right? That means that you can somehow connect us, even through this storm. Now it can't be much of a step to send yourself into that connection. If you use my body as a link from my world to yours, you can travel through me!"
"Marc, this will be too much for you. Your mind may not survive the weight of my consciousness."
Marc laughed, "Princess, I have had some heavy thoughts: do it, you are needed still." He stood again and grasped the Princess's neck in a hug. He didn’t know if this was right, but whatever happened, it felt like he was doing the right thing. For the briefest moments, he thought back over his life, and everything that had ever happened. He thought of his family, the orphanage. He thought of Gail. The last thing he saw in his mind’s eye were wo bright happy golden eyes, and he wished them well.
Then he felt a massive wave of memories and experiences rushover him. He was witnessing everything that had made Princess Luna who she was, from her earliest memories, the stars, the great wings of another alicorn, to finding the power that allowed her and Celestia to defeat the raging Discord and spread love and tolerance throughout Equestria. The breakdown of Luna’s mind was at once vast and resplendent, and unnaturally solemn. The moon flashed before his eyes. The centuries of memories began to force his own mind aside, shattering his sense of self and obliterating that made Marc who he was.
"Thank you, Marc."
Everything went Black.
*****
Twilight watched in trepidation as the massive aura extended, pulsed and began tearing apart the columns of the throne room. Huge pieces of masonry tumbled from the high arched ceiling, crashing into the field and floor with a cacophony of sound as the leviathan dome of pure energy began to ripple and shudder. All of that energy, pent up into one point, was almost unmanageable in its brutality.
Then, it all collapsed inwards to form a single bright light, glowing bright like the sun at midday, before forming a bright impenetrable outline of the Princess in her glaring beauty, her wings flashing light across the room on every beat as she hovered at the centre of the hall. In her embrace, Twilight thought she made out the smaller, still form of their unexpected saviour.
Luna slowly gathered all the power that had built up around her and focused it. She clung to the form in her hooves, but turned and faced the aghast Draconequus hovering before her. She lowered her head, the sheer energy pent up in her figure whipping the air into heatwaves and glowing in dazzling beams from her eyes. She spoke one word for the entire city of Canterlot to hear.
“BEGONE”
The white light rolling off of her body shifted shades and built up into a deep, golden glow. The light began humming loudly, drowning out Discord’s exclamation. No beam of light struck him though: a single, indelible flash, and the entire world knew that Discord was no longer a threat.
He wasn't even there anymore.
Luna allowed herself to be pulled to the ground by gravity and her own exhaustion. She laid out the form of Marc on the burnt stone floor and stood in quiet vigil over the form that had just saved her, and likely her world.
Ditzy looked up from her position, and saw what she now realized she had feared from the second she had seen the carriage take off without her, the very reason she had flown all the way by herself in the hope of avoiding. "N-No! Marc!" She flew over to his side crying out loud as she did. She slid into his side, warm, still alive, and wrapped herself around him.
In some hope of returning him, she hummed out the tune that had preceded all this horror, hoping that it would rekindle the life she wished to see.
But Vinyl and Octavia's song had no effect.
All the ponies sat in silence as they stared in grief at the still living but consciousless body of Marc.