Celestia’s form blurred as she sped through the sky, her face contorted with rage at her student’s final defiance. Twilight rolled to one side, her wings of shadow cloaking her in darkness as she disappeared in a puff of shadow before reappearing directly behind her teacher. Her horn flashed, a bolt of silvery Breaking magic flashing through the air and catching her in between the wings. Celestia cried out as it ate at her back before kicking back, her horns catching Twilight directly under the chin.
Bones snapped and popped as her jaw shattered, blood spraying everywhere as the unicorn flipped head over hooves through the sky. Blinking through tears of pain, Twilight could feel the bones in her jaw knitting themselves back together even as her helm flew from her head, exposing her face for the world to see. A roar rose from the walls as the defenders realized who had returned to fight for them.
Celestia followed up with a neat thrust from her blade, which Twilight managed to turn before her own magical weapon flicked up in a neat sideways sweep, shearing a snippet of the billowing scarlet mane from Celestia’s head. The blades met again, Twilight’s attack from above caught on the shaft of Celestia’s sword. Celestia’s counterattack was swift and brutal, three diagonal cuts of the blade that culminated in a devastating downward sweep, one that Twilight was forced to avoid by sacrificing some altitude.
Reaching inside of herself, Twilight called upon the power inside of her, feeling the archetype of Knowledge surging through her soul. Focusing on Celestia, she felt her horn blaze with light as her vision changed, growing white around the edges. Celestia’s form flickered and split, as if she was caught in several different and brilliant sources of light casting shadows. They moved as Celestia did, each of them taking a different action, and Twilight realized with a jolt that she was seeing brief moments into the future.
Her blade caught Celestia’s attack easily, and her teacher’s defense was easily bypassed, her blade leaving a red line along her teacher’s flank. Twilight heard Celestia grunt as she pulled away, appraising her student once more, and seeing her in a whole new light. Twilight readied her blade again, and her wings propelled her forward. She saw her teacher’s shadow sweep its blade forward in an attempt to forestall her, a blow with her full force and power behind it.
Twilight tucked her wings in close, spinning as she avoided the beam of golden light, her own grey blade taking Celestia through one wing. The Alicorn cried out in pain as she jerked back, the neat hole turning into a jagged cut as she fell to earth, her magic even now closing the wound. The crater she left was deep, the crater of something much larger than what she appeared to be. Twilight smiled to herself, thinking that her teacher was finally beaten.
And then Celestia began to take her seriously.
Twilight was unable to perceive the next blow, it moved so fast that she was unable to react at all. The blade sunk into her shoulder with practiced ease, digging out a chunk of flesh before she was able to feel the pain from it, and by the time that the signals reached her brain, the blade had already dug more of her from the other shoulder, leaving her with a pair of notches in her flesh.
Celestia’s hoof caught her in the temple, and Twilight felt her vision flicker as she hit the earth at an incredible speed. The flesh reappeared in a flash of light as the scrambled nerves sorted themselves back out. Twilight’s innate knowledge of where Celestia was going to be was the only thing that saved her from the finishing blow. Without conscious thought, her magic activated itself, and she disappeared from the crater just as it was devastated by a massive magical discharge. Celestia came after her quickly, and soon Twilight found herself on the defensive.
The duel raged on, Twilight unable to react to where Celestia was but able to anticipate where she would be. Their blades met and clashed with such force as would shatter mountains, Celestia’s strength and speed only countered by Twilight’s newfound foresight. The pair wielded only their weapons, moving too quickly and focusing too harshly to even consider the use of magic. And in a way, there was no need for magic here. This contest was a contest of dominance, plain and simple, and the emotions were primal and full of rage. To use anything other than physical skill would have been to admit defeat.
To onlookers on the walls, it appeared as if the air in front of the castle had erupted into a conflagration of sparks, and blurs of purple and white. Craters appeared spontaneously, the air crackled with arcane discharge, and the heat that was generated from this contest of wills and minds rolled towards the sky in waves. Any trees, any structures remaining in the open, any boulders or hills that dared to reach towards the heavens were pulverized, turned to dust as one contestant or another slammed into them with ferocious speed and force.
The crash of blade on blade was like thunder or the breaking of the tide, the flashes of light too brilliant to endure without losing vision, and the gusts of wind that buffeted the castle forced the awestruck spectators to crouch low against the constant spray of grit and liquidized rock that was being generated by the speed at which earth was flying. Each pony and Gryphon huddled low, the Changelings retreated to the castle grounds, and even the sky seemed to hide itself behind rumbling thunderclouds, generated by the intense magical discharge. Not a soul in the Regia would dare to venture forth to interfere with the deadly dance being woven in blood and steel.
Twilight felt herself tiring as Celestia’s blade lopped off an ear, the spray of blood staunched immediately as the appendage began to regrow itself. It didn’t bother her at all; she was far beyond even pain. She healed faster than her teacher by an exponential factor, but there was only so much even her newly enhanced body could take, and she was, after all, only mortal. A very powerful mortal, but a mortal nonetheless.
Celestia bled from a half-dozen wounds, none of them lethal or even particularly debilitating. Her thrusts were still sure and true, her defense as iron-hard as when she had started, and she appeared to be regaining control of herself. Her expression was drawn and hard, her eyes flashed with the threat of further violence, and the air around her was beginning to crackle with even more power.
Twilight swung her sword overhead, putting all of her magical weight behind it as they drifted closer to the ground once more. Celestia caught the blade, her face inches away from being bisected by her own weapon as she struggled to thrown back her student’s assault. With a grunt, she pushed back, and Twilight disengaged her teacher, standing on top of the shattered earth she was supposed to be guarding.
“Celestia, stop!” she cried. “This isn’t the way to handle things, we need to talk! If you don’t cooperate with me, things are going to get really bad!”
Celestia’s voice was brazen bells, ringing like judgment. “The only talk we will have, Twilight Sparkle, is you giving me your surrender.” Her horn flashed, and Twilight suddenly felt a terrible pressure bearing down on the inside of her skull as her heart seized. “Now, kneel!”
The sudden mental assault caught Twilight by surprise, and she could feel the Element in her chest pulse with heat not her own as Celestia forced herself inside of her student’s mind, laying waste to whatever defenses she had. The pain was excruciating as Celestia attempted to rewrite Twilight Sparkle’s personality for the second time. This time, she was not nearly so gentle as she had been before. Now there was no need for games, no need for delicacy.
Twilight found herself suspended in a sea of fire, her psyche smoking as it slowly burned her personality away, to be replaced with Celestia’s mindless devotion. She struggled to reassert herself, to reach for the power of the Aether she knew to be just out of reach, but every thought towards defending herself was annihilated before it had the chance to fully form, and so she could only delay the inevitable as Celestia pushed harder, and harder, and harder still. Twilight gasped, hooves scrabbling desperately at her head as she tried something, anything to get Celestia to cease her assault.
“You know how to make it stop, Twilight! All you have to do is give me your surrender! Surrender, Twilight! Kneel!”
Twilight felt her back bend, her knees begin to buckle. Her head bowed low, and she could feel the last vestiges of her essential self clinging for dear life in the raging inferno that her mind had become. Her body ached, and she found herself thinking on how easy it would be to just let go, to submit after a long struggle that she was tired of perpetuating. Just as she began to bend a knee, her saving grace arrived.
Tarantella erupted from the clouds like an avenging angel, lightning trailing behind her pearlescent wings as she struck the monarch full force, driving her into the ground as lightning coursed through them both, causing Celestia’s magic to flicker and die as electricity coursed through her body. The Alicorn collapsed under the combined weight of the blow and the weather.
“You kneel, you tyrannical zoccola.” Tarantella snarled, swaying on her hooves as she stood between Celestia and Twilight. “You dare to touch her? Come and take me, if you think yourself hard enough.”
She wasn’t alone. Three more Condottieri slammed into the ground, each of them brandishing weapons made of adamantium and holding a firm line between the monarch and her prize.
Twilight raised her head off of her hooves, trying her best to reassert herself. “Tara…no…”
The mercenaries moved not an inch as Celestia rose from the ground, smoking ever so slightly as she calmly regarded the four Pegasi. Her wings spread open, glowing with soft light as her horn began to heat up. “Remove yourselves. You get one warning.”
The Gale Dancers sprang into action, the three lieutenants leveling pikes at Celestia as they rushed forwards in a loose line, Tarantella bringing up the rear. Celestia incinerated one where he stood, but the other two managed to close, slipping out of her field of vision as they thrust their pikes at her sides. The Alicorn didn’t move an inch or bat an eye as the spearheads shattered against her coat, and Tarantella’s next blow was blocked contemptuously as Celestia shattered her foreleg for her impertinence. The Condottiero grunted, flapping her wings to rise to Celestia’s height before swinging with her other hoof. Celestia simply moved out of the way, her wings buffeting the smaller Pegasus as she casually crushed the life from another of the lieutenants.
The last remaining pony leapt onto her back, seizing Celestia’s neck in his hooves as he attempted to twist it. Celestia’s coat flashed brightly, and the pony was reduced to black ashes that simply refused to cling to her body anymore. This was all the opportunity that Tarantella needed to close with her, however, and Celestia did not expect what came next.
Drawing a dagger from inside of her armor, Tarantella rammed it directly into Celestia’s eye, where it stuck, quivering obscenely as the monarch screamed in pain. The Condottiero drew another, using the first as a handle to swing herself around. The second one sank in, its path true as Tarantella drove it deep, twisting the handle as she landed gracefully on three hooves. Tarantella sprang forward with a shriek, ignoring the pained thrashing of Celestia as she hammered blow after blow on the handles of the knives, driving them deeper and deeper.
Celestia’s magic flared brighter than Twilight had ever seen it before, and Tarantella found herself propelled through the air at speed, skipping over the jagged ground before tumbling to a limp halt. Celestia’s magic roughly seized the twin blades, yanking them roughly from her now-bloody sockets as her magic turned inward, forcing her eyes to repair themselves at a rapid rate. Blood wept from the holes where her eyes had once been as she stalked toward the Pegasus, pinned to the ground by the force of Celestia’ magic.
Tarantella Allegretta found herself spread-eagled, her hooves pinned to the earth with her chest presented to the sky and her wings fully extended. Celestia blinked once, twice, as her eyes opened once more. They were a bloody red, and saw only in black and white. For the first time, Celestia’s eyes matched her view of the world. She strode towards the Pegasus, the twin daggers held in her grip before they shot forward, flipping end over end once before burying themselves to the hilt in her wings.
“You dare?” Celestia asked, her voice as terrible as the sun. “You dare take sight from the Sun herself? You dare to keep me from the paradise I wish to create?” The daggers were withdrawn from Tara’s wings as tears of pain crawled from the Pegasus’s eyes. “So be it.” The daggers began to glow with heat, the adamantium heated to the temperature of a raging inferno.
The twin tools flashed, and the Pegasus’s wings fell limply to the ground, the stumps cauterized as Tarantella thrashed weakly against her magical bonds, trying to escape. Celestia’s horn crackled as the daggers were lifted towards the sky, and she looked down on the crippled Pegasus before her. “Make repentance, upstart slut. And give my regards to Ultimo.”
Tarantella’s gaze was fixed on the sky, and as one final tear slid from her eye, she relaxed. This was it, then. The end. The dagger sped down, and Tarantella had time for only one thought as she shut her eyes.
Cara Mia, forgive me…
Applejack groaned, the coils of amber magic surrounding her pulsing fiercely as she pushed with all of her might, the weight of the Regia’s main tower pressing her into the earth even as she pushed it back into the air. Pinkie Pie’s face was screwed up in concentration behind her as her tendrils of magic plucked any stragglers from the rapidly collapsing structure, setting them down away from the tower as best she could before more of the sky-blue magic she Wielded crawled into the windows and gaping holes once more.
Fluttershy held the line right next to Applejack, and her magic was almost as strong as the Earth pony’s. While Applejack took the majority of the weight, Fluttershy seemed to be focusing on the weak points in the tower, patching it up instead of letting it fall apart piecemeal. The occasional bit of stone fell from the Regia’s tower, but by and large it held together remarkably well. Still, it was already leaning heavily to one side as a result of the magical beating it had taken, and anypony could see that there wasn’t much that could be done at this point.
“Where in tarnation is Luna?” Applejack hollered, feeling her hooves sink into the ground another half inch.
“She went to go secure Cadance!” Pinkie Pie called. “Said she was too dangerous to be left unrestrained, and that she was going to make sure she stayed out of commission!”
“Looked pretty out of it to me!” Applejack grunted. “Could really use her help right now…”
Fluttershy groaned as she pressed against a massive chunk of rock. “We have to hold on! Rarity’s still inside!”
It was true, and one of the main reasons why Applejack was pressing against the tower with all of her might. Two Crusaders had died in less than a day. She had lost her sister, and she was going to make sure that Rarity had every chance to save her own. That being said, the tower had minutes left, if that. The Wielders still didn’t fully understand their powers, and they were certainly not at full strength.
“Come on, Rarity.” Applejack said through gritted teeth. “Where are you?”
Rarity leapt through the crumbling remains of the tower, her hooves sticking to the floor with a simple charm as she forced herself to climb through yet another collapsing doorway. Her destination was clear; it was getting there that was the problem. The vault in which at least a hundred ponies sheltered was mere floors above her, but she couldn’t risk teleportation through the already unstable structure. If she went even a little bit wrong, she could end up outside of the tower, hundreds of meters up, or even worse, trapped inside of a wall.
Her eyes lit up as she saw the main staircase leading to the antechamber before the vault, and she sprinted forward, willing her hooves to disengage from the “floor” just as she reached the stairwell. Reattaching her hooves, she galloped up the stairs at a breakneck pace, compensating for the strange angle by leaning into the side wall of the stairwell. Her lungs burning, her chest heaving, she stumbled up the stairs as best she could, almost falling more than once, but pushing forward all the same.
Her heart sank upon reaching her destination. The vault was there, right in front of her, but the way was blocked. She could hear the faint cries of trapped ponies behind that wall of fallen debris, and realized that the only reason the vault itself hadn’t collapsed was because of its hardened exterior. She also realized that the only thing keeping this entire floor from collapsing was that vault.
Rarity was faced with a choice. Either leave the vault and save the tower from collapsing just a while longer, or clear the debris, open the vault, and hold off the collapse for as long as she could. It was obvious to her what she had to do. Gritting her teeth, she felt violet magic spill from her horn, coating the chamber in arcane energies. So prepared, she seized the pile of rubble, and with a swift yank, threw it to the side and the door open.
“Everypony listen!” Sweetie Belle called, hefting Cirrus on her back as the vault shifted yet again. “Climb up the sides of the walls, Pegasi carrying the weak and the young! If you stay away from the back of the vault, there won’t be as much debris, and a greater chance to break free!”
There was a rush as ponies stampeded towards the blocked vault door, forcing Sweetie Belle and the few guards that had made it inside to flare their horns in warning. “Don’t push!” she called. “Everypony will get out of this just fine if we stay calm and orderly!”
The tower shook again as it shuddered towards the ground, and screams of fear arose from the young and a fair number of the older ponies as well. Sweetie Belle recognized how badly things were going, and knew that they didn’t have much time before the entire tower collapsed. She resisted the urge to scream herself, knowing that she had to present a brave face for the others. She was the only one with a level head, and she needed to keep it. Even the guards were starting to panic a little.
There was a terrible scraping sound from outside, the sound of rubble moving around, and Sweetie Belle tensed. Surely this was it, the final descent of the tower, and with it the ponies who had taken it as refuge. She reached for Cirrus, and felt the filly’s tiny hoof take her own.
It was a surprise, then, when the door of the vault was torn from its hinges as if it was made of cheap and flimsy wood. Sweetie Belle’ turned to see her sister, standing before her, shining in alabaster glory as the ponies began to cheer and push forwards. Sweetie Belle stepped to one side, letting the tide pass her by as her eyes met Rarity’s. They both nodded. There was work to be done.
In twos and threes the ponies stepped through the vault door, and as quickly as she could, Rarity rounded them up in groups. She only had the energy and control for one last attempt at teleportation, and if she was going to take everypony, she would need them as close together as possible.
“Cluster together!” Sweetie Belle called. “Get as close as you can, and hold on to the ponies next to you! Don’t let go, not for anything!”
Half the ponies had left the vault, and the tower was on its last legs. Sweetie belle could feel the floor shaking beneath her, and she leapt into the vault to hurry more ponies out of the door. There weren’t many, and she could feel it in her bones. They were going to make it; they were all going to make it.
“Rarity!” she called. “Start focusing! Get them out of here!” She turned to Cirrus, holding out her hoof. The Pegasus reached for it, a smile on her face, and their hooves met for the briefest of moments.
Then the floor shook once more, and the filly tumbled from her back towards the back of the vault, her expression shocked and frightened. Sweetie Belle didn’t hesitate, sliding back down the sharply slanted floor after her. The two of them hit the back wall, and Sweetie Belle seized the filly, placing her on her back once more. She kicked off from the wall, climbing back up the floor just in the nick of time. The back wall collapsed, exposing them to the drop below, several hundred meters to the ground.
Sweetie Belle could see the teleportation spell beginning, Rarity’s face pleading with her as more magic poured from her horn. It was too late to stop it now, if she did every pony with her would be doomed to die. Sweetie Belle scrambled up the floor, just yards away from the edge of the vault threshold. Rarity reached for her, her expression frozen with fear as she began to glow brighter and brighter, almost gone from the tower entirely. Sweetie Belle locked eyes with her sister for the final time, smiling as she reached behind her back.
Cirrus’s hoof touched Rarity’s just as the entire party disappeared. Sweetie Belle smiled, feeling the tower rumble and shatter from the magical backlash. The resulting shockwave caught her in the chest, sending her speeding towards the back of the vault. As she shot out of the hole, she could see the tower leaning towards her menacingly, descending inexorably towards her, more and more quickly. She smiled, finally at peace with herself.
“This is what finding the truth gets you, Sweetie Belle.” She chided herself gently. “It’s dangerous. Now look at you, about to die.” She closed her eyes. "Still, I wouldn’t have traded a bit of it. Not a bit. See you soon, Scootaloo, Applebloom. Wait for me.”
There was a terrific impact, and then everything went very, very still for Sweetie Belle.