//------------------------------// // Nadir // Story: Unfinished // by redsquirrel456 //------------------------------// Twilight’s friends never understood her. She hated that about them. She remembered all the times she had tried to be the voice of clarity, the voice of reason in the group, all the time she’d spent trying to just organize their lives and makes things smoother, better, more efficient. Applejack had been so stubborn. Rarity too. Pinkie Pie especially. She especially hated Pinkie Pie. The time she had tried to figure her out, only for her to just brush off every attempt she made to make the world just that much more orderly. That was what Celestia wanted, wasn’t it? That was why she controlled the Sun and its motions through the sky, dictating every facet of life across the planet. But she had the nerve, the sheer, unmitigated temerity to accept one of Twilight’s stupid little letters about how sometimes you just had to trust. If Celestia was any real kind of ruler, she would have told Twilight how wrong she was. Celestia wasn’t about trust. She was about getting control and keeping it for as long as possible. It was easy, wasn’t it, for an immortal to stay in infinite control? Ultimately, that was what Twilight wanted. To have perfect, total power over any given situation. She was Celestia’s faithful student, after all. And now Celestia would see how far she’d come. But Applejack and Rarity stood in her way, barring her passage at the bottom of Canterlot’s mountain path. “We ain’t lettin’ you go any further,” Applejack said in that inimitable, immovable way of hers. She stood strong, her legs ramrod straight as her hooves pressed into the earth, digging into the gravel at the base of the path. “This all ends here, Twilight. Ya gotta stop an’ come home, now.” “I am going home,” Twilight whispered, her voice as light as the breeze. “Up there is my home. I wasn’t born in Ponyville. I wasn’t even born in Canterlot. I was born in the light of stars, and my bones are made of dreams.” “I’m certain I have no idea what you’re on about,” Rarity said, lifting her chin, “but something has gone to your head. And we will make it right. By Celestia, we will—” She was thrown back by a blast of magic from Twilight’s horn, crashing onto the slope behind her. She bounced off the packed dirt and rolled up the path, coming to a stop on her belly. Applejack was already charging her, throwing a lasso she procured from under her hat. Twilight sighed and enveloped the rope in her magic before throwing it right back, looping it between Applejack’s hooves. The noose tightened, halting her gallop and sending her flopping to the ground. “I defeated an entire company of royal guards just on the way here,” Twilight murmured, waving her hoof about. The rope followed her motions, pulling Applejack into the air and making her dance like a marionette. “That’s almost a hundred ponies who have trained their entire lives. What did you expect? And where’s Rainbow Dash?” “Makin’ sure Pinkie an’ Fluttershy are all right, no thanks ta’ you!” Applejack sneered. “It ain’t right what you’re doin’, Twilight! We’re gonna stop ya if it’s the last thing we—huuaaa!” Twilight twisted her hoof. The rope spun once and snapped, sending Applejack hurtling towards the solid base of Canterlot Mountain. Just before her back cracked into the rock she was enveloped by shimmering blue and let gently down. The rope came undone, twirling to Rarity’s side. “I warn you, Twilight,” she whispered, “I am no expert wizard, but I can hold my own in a magical duel. It was all the rage in Canterlot not long ago. I’ve kept up on the latest tactics.” Twilight laughed harshly, her voice scratching her throat as she growled at Rarity. “You’re not fighting Twilight, Rarity. You’re fighting Magic itself. The power of creation and annihilation flows through me even as we speak. There’s nothing you can do to impede me. I haven’t obliterated this entire landscape because I simply chose not to.” Rarity sniffed, as imperious as any highborn lady of Canterlot. Her face distorted into a grimace as her horn sparked, and a second layer of magical power encased her horn. From all around Twilight, the ground split apart and lifted up like the opening of a great maw, then angled inward and snapped shut around her head, swallowing her whole. Inside the mound of dirt, Twilight sighed and flicked her head to the side. Earth and rock blew outward in all directions, forcing Applejack to cover her head and Rarity to throw up a shield. Rarity’s face betrayed little more than inconvenienced surprise. Twilight smiled. “You always did have an eye for imperfection. Using the tiny cracks and faults in the rock to lift it all up and try to imprison me... unoriginal, but impressive for a unicorn of your level.” She wiped some dirt from her shoulder. “Now watch this.” Her broken horn snapped and hissed as magic shot from the stump. It hurtled towards Rarity, who strengthened her shield as much as she could. Twilight’s magic split apart just before impact and slammed into the barrier from a multitude of directions, overwhelming Rarity’s focus. Any unicorn could put as much of their energy as they could into a single point. Not every unicorn could spread their attention in so many directions, and even fewer could hold so many directions in equal strength. Rarity’s shield popped like a soap bubble. Beams of light struck the frail unicorn and jolted her with the impact, lifting her off her hooves as searing heat and freezing cold bit into her skin from all around. Rarity was too shocked to scream, her mouth quivering with inaudible gasps of shock and pain as she was driven into the ground and her face was crushed into the dirt. Applejack did that for her, screaming her name as she barreled into Twilight, but her headlong charge was stopped dead short. She scrunched inward like an accordion and flopped onto her back, gasping for breath as she clutched her shoulder. It must have been dislocated after striking the magical barrier Twilight had thrown up just before impact. “Silly ponies,” Twilight whispered. “None of you know what you’re up against.” She wrapped them up in her magic and whisked them away in a flash, reappearing further up the path. They were about halfway to Canterlot, standing near the edge of the cliff. Rarity, still struggling and whimpering in Twilight’s grip, tried to hit her with a defiant burst of magic. It plinked off Twilight’s chest. Twilight sighed and threw Rarity against the side of the mountain, letting her drop to the ground with a bleeding gash in her forehead. Then she turned to Applejack, who had a hoof around her leg and tried to pull her down. “Not gonna... let you...” she grunted. Twilight ignored her and wrapped her magic around Applejack’s throat, dragging her slowly, ominously to the edge of the path. Applejack’s three working limbs dug furrow into the dirt, her breathing coming in short, quick gasps as the ledge came closer. “Twi... Twi, please...” she squeaked through her constricted windpipe. “Twi, I’m your friend... it’s me, Applejack!” Twilight pulled her to the edge, letting her front half dangle over a drop hundreds of hooves high. All she had to do was release her and Applejack would plummet. Applejack’s muscles were tight and rigid, pressing her hooves into the dirt in a last-ditch effort to keep from falling. Her eyes looked up at Twilight, glittering with tears. “Twilight... please... I’m scared of heights!” Twilight lifted Applejack and dangled her in the open air. She liked the way Applejack’s eyes bugged out as her grip tightened.   “This is control,” Twilight whispered to herself. “You hear me? This is how to stop a pony from doing something you don’t want them to.” “T... Twilight!” Applejack wheezed, gagging on her own choking breaths. “Sugarcube, please!” “Celestia just keeps throwing you ponies at me,” Twilight sneered. “She has no respect for me at all, does she? She spent so long dictating the actions of others all she can do is use others as a shield when she starts losing. Why do you suppose she does that, Applejack? Whenever Equestria faced a real crisis, why were we the ones to pull her flank out of the fire?” Applejack couldn’t answer, of course. She was too busy clawing at her throat with her one working forelimb, uselessly bucking the air with her hind legs. Twilight answered her own question, airily. “Because she doesn’t really know what control is. She doesn’t really know what it means to take another pony’s life into her hooves and mold it to her will. She might have tried with me—and to an extent, all of Equestria—but she can never really get it right.” She grinned, glancing up at Canterlot, still far above them. “But I will.” She looked back down to the ground, equally far below. “I could drop you, you know. But I won’t. That’s me being in control.” “If you won’t kill me,” Applejack gasped, “then there’s somethin’ of you left in there, Twilight! Y—you gotta... haack! Listen to me!” “No. I don’t listen to anypony anymore. I write my own stories now. And soon, when the Elements are mine, all of you will be powerless to stop me. And the world will be just the way I want it to be.” Applejack’s eyes narrowed, sheer grit letting her show her anger through the pain. “You ain’t gonna win! Twi... won’t... let you!” “She already did. Now if you don’t mind, I need to—” She stopped short as a blue blur slashed through her vision, scooping up Applejack and disappearing around the bend. Twilight watched the empty air, listening to another bullet-zip swoop behind her and carry Rarity away, leaving a distant sonic boom in its wake. She smiled. “I was wondering when you’d show up,” said Twilight. “See if you can catch me.” She turned back to Canterlot, and in a flash of purple light, she was gone. ---------------------- Twilight Sparkle crossed the gap between inactivity and initiative in the distance of a single step. She disappeared from her own mind’s eye and fell back out into the middle of her own consciousness. She was herself and every single part of Twilight around her, keenly aware of her own form within her head, and yet felt just as present inside every neuron and flash of emotion, every whim and fancy that crossed her mind. Color and emotion and light bled together, creating a cacophonous, swirling landscape of fractal edges and swirling shapes. She stood on the edge of it and couldn’t see where it ended. She had no form and knew she was everything here. A sound like a discordant horn tore through the mindscape. The lights and colors were torn apart by fire, expanding out in massive holes like a melting film strip. She was falling apart at the seams. Willing herself to close her eyes, she consolidated everything she was and brought it into herself. It rushed inward and became her until she knew everything she could have grabbed had been, and disappeared into herself. She found herself in the middle of an infinitude of space that stretched as far as her own willpower could take it. It seemed dark, but that was only the darkness of empty space, of potential energy and incubative waiting. If it was darkness, it was the darkness of her own mind. So why did it feel so cold and unfamiliar? Why did nothing happen when Twilight cast out her thoughts to impress themselves on the mindscape? “So this is what the inside of my head really looks like?” she said with some indifference, hiding her anxiety behind petulance. “How... dull.” Magic, now deep within Twilight, agreed with her quietly. Her mind had been a beautiful place, once. Now it was nothing but the great blank space wandered by the little purple unicorn. They didn’t have much time left. She walked on and on into the void that never came closer and never went further, eventually reaching a raised dais of some kind, made of polished marble. She put her hoof on it with a quiet click, and then a gong rang through the darkness. A semi-circle of light expanded out from where her hoof touched the stone, guiding her eyes as it hurtled out towards a pure white marble throne, imposed over the blackness. Upon the throne was a dark shape, quiet and brooding. Its jet black body sat in leisurely repose with its slender limbs stretched over the arms of the throne. As Twilight walked closer, more details came into focus: the long horn sprouting from its head, the shroud of mist in place of a mane and tail, almost disappearing into the background except for the twinkling of stars inside of it. “Nightmare Moon,” Twilight said across the distance between them. The alicorn smiled lazily and turned her head to Twilight, regarding her with a coy, knowing look. “That’s one of my many names,” she purred. “Come closer, won’t you?” Twilight trotted up to the throne, standing before it and glaring up at the dark alicorn. “It’s over,” she said. “It’s all over now. I’ve won. Magic is on my side and I’m not giving up anymore of myself to you. You took advantage of a moment of weakness. That moment is over.” Nightmare yawned. Twilight stepped forward again. “Are you listening? You’re beaten, Nightmare! I’ve found you and now it’s time to kick you out of here! This is my mind!” “Our mind,” Nightmare retorted. “This is it, Twilight. This is the last refuge. Your final redoubt. And even here, you find me.” “I’d find you anywhere,” Twilight said quietly. “You’re fear. Fear is in everypony’s mind, no matter who they are or how powerful. You’re the things that we all worry about. You used that against me.” “And here I am!” Nightmare crowed, turning over onto her back and throwing a hoof into the air. “Look, Twilight! Look at how thoroughly you have lost! This is your mind, and all you can think of is you... and me.” “No,” Twilight said, shaking her head, “that’s not all. I did a lot of thinking after you left me. I realized was scared. I was so scared of being rejected by Celestia and my friends. I was scared of what being me really meant. Most of all I was scared that all I’d learned might have been mistaken. Celestia was always the one who taught me, molded me, told me how the world worked, and so she became my world. I’d been disappointed by all my friends at least once, and I disappointed them too. Celestia never once let me down. She always knew what to do, and had faith I would if she didn’t. I knew one day she’d fail me, too. Everything I learned pointed to that possibility. But like a child, I ran away from it and wanted everything to say safe and sterile. All my adventures were a distraction from those thoughts, and every time I got to the end she was there to congratulate me, to tell me I was one step closer to being who she wanted me to be. I came so far I’d convinced myself my fear just wasn’t there anymore. And then you came... and Celestia told me those terrible things...” She trailed off and felt Nightmare’s cunning stare burn into her. “And then all those fears came rushing back, and I didn’t know what to do with them. I ran from them. I let them take control. ” She looked back up at Nightmare, her stance firm and defiant. “But I know what I want now. Celestia kept a lot of secrets from me, but even if those secrets are painful, I want them to come out. I want to be a part of them! I want to know and love ponies for who they are, not just what I’ve been told about them! I want to know the truth and live it with my friends! Otherwise what’s the point? The truth hurts. It’s like when I used to cry about getting shots. I didn’t want the pain of a vaccination, I just wanted to never get sick. But I’ve grown, Nightmare. I know life isn’t without pain, even in the places you never thought it would be. I’m finally ready to accept that pain, wholly and without regrets. I’m ready to start living.” Nightmare leaned back, her expression inscrutable, and Twilight took another daring step towards the throne. She matched the dark alicorn’s gaze; unfathomable cruelty colliding with unshakable resolution. Nightmare smiled and uncoiled her front legs. Her hooves drifted to the floor, resting on the marble. One after the other, she brought them up and rapped them down, again and again, in slow applause. “Bravo, Twilight Sparkle. Bravo. You’ve done just what I hoped you would.” Twilight felt the cold chill of shock run down her spine. Magic recoiled inside her, ready for anything. “What do you mean?” “I mean that your being here, facing me in one last climactic showdown, is exactly what I intended. It’s how these stories work, Twilight! You played your role to the tee without even realizing it. Perhaps you should’ve read more Daring Do along with your precious textbooks.” “The story’s not over!” Twilight shot back. “Your power means nothing until you take every part of me! And I won’t let you take this.” Nightmare huffed, blasting twin jets of steam from her nostrils. “You do not know yourself as well as you think. I’ve obliterated every piece of your mind there is left to run to. Everything you have left, everything you are, is standing before me right now. Your resolution, your bravery, your magic: all of it is wrapped up in one soft, bite-sized package. It took everything you have to face me without fear, and that everything is standing right in front of me, ready for my embrace.” A conceited smile creased Nightmare’s features as she stepped the rest of the way off the throne, standing tall over Twilight. “All you have done is brought me everything left for me to destroy. And when you are gone there will be nothing left here but me.” Her wings snapped open to their full extent and the entire landscape changed. All around Twilight old stone columns sprang up and vines crawled over them, the dais became a broken stone floor, and an arched ceiling stretched overhead. Nightmare’s throne stretched and warped until it became a six-armed pedestal, and at her hooves appeared five stone spheres with gem-shaped slots carved out of them. Outside the broken windows was the endless twilight of a night sky. Nightmare placed her hoof on one of the spheres and sighed happily. “Remember this, Twilight? It’s where you beat me before. I can’t have the real thing, but I don’t think the irony will escape you. It will please me greatly to lay the memory of your death over that of my defeat.” Twilight scraped her hoof on the ground, kicking up dust. “You’re just as arrogant as the first time.” “No more than you, swaggering into my throne room. I wanted this, Twilight. I wanted you to come in righteous indignation, ready for the last battle. I wanted you to know that all your hope, all your dreams and aspirations and willpower, your very soul was not enough to defeat me.” She took a deep breath, savoring the moment, and when she looked at Twilight again, her stare made Twilight shiver. “Now come to me, Twilight. Come and give me everything.” Twilight started at a slow jog, pointing her shattered horn at Nightmare’s throat, quickly building into a furious gallop. Magic resonated inside of her, pulsing with raw power. There were no spells, because the Nightmare had eaten all of those. There were no strategies, because this was no battle simple tactics could win. There was nothing but Twilight and Nightmare, who lowered her own head and charged. Twilight had nowhere to reach into for extra strength, no reserves, no well of power in her spirit, because her spirit was right here. There wasn’t even a hope that all she had was enough. Just movement and action and the last thought she would ever have: that the Nightmare would not win. Twilight didn’t flinch as Nightmare bared her fangs. She just narrowed her eyes and pushed her legs that much harder into a flat-out sprint. She didn’t even blink when Nightmare’s jaws suddenly opened wide, wider, and then wider still until they were big enough to swallow her whole. Twilight saw herself in those precious few moments before impact, stripped of everything but the will to fight and survive. A bright glow sprang from her horn and quickly worked its way all around her body until she was a shooting star, flinging itself into the maw of darkness. As the void closed in around her and Nightmare’s jaws snapped shut, Twilight did not deviate. She charged ever onwards, down, down into the dark, spreading her light as far and strong as she could, until she was lost to her own sight, and the last glimmer of herself was gone. ----------- It hadn’t been terribly hard, making her way through Canterlot. Ponies who got in her way were thrown to one side or just scattered out of fear. The Royal Guardponies who came to the defense of the city were easily paralyzed. Half the city was behind her with a single teleport. Another battalion of guardponies, another bored yawn, and they were all in various states of incapacitation. She blinked, and an entire platoon of pegasi fell to the ground with wings that snapped shut and refused to open again. She sighed, and another clump was encased to their necks in solid earth. Unicorns with horns turned limp, earthponies stopped dead when their legs froze up and refused to obey. She didn’t want to kill them, and so she just stopped them in place and blinked to the next part of the castle, seeking the siren call of the Elements of Harmony. Death had no place near her. Outright slaughter was beneath Magic, which was an inherently creative force. It was made of life and had to be ordered to deal out death. No, she would be a kind ruler. Much more kind than Celestia. Everywhere they came at her, and everywhere she stopped them with a simple flick of a cosmic switch. This was a display of power. Of control. It was a display of truth that even Celestia hid from: that she had power and had been afraid to use it. But no more. Rainbow Dash was behind her every step of the way. It was impressive, seeing her show up just seconds after she teleported across the city. She was only able to get a fragment of a sentence out before Twilight was gone again, and then she would appear once more, a blazing blur of color at the edge of Twilight’s vision the moment she was finished dispatching the next clump of ponies who tried to get in her way. At one point, she got bored with Rainbow’s ceaseless pursuit, and simply put up a wall right in front of her. She didn’t stay to see if it worked. She appeared in Celestia’s throne room, which doubled as Luna’s when night came. Upon seeing her, bewildered court ponies fled for their lives or stood still from stark terror. Knowing she had all the time in the world now that there was nopony with the power to stop her, Twilight tore the throne from its place and crushed it in her magical grip, reducing it to a fine powder. It was a childish thing to do, but Twilight could be afforded the luxury of spite after all she’d been through. Expending as much energy as it took to breathe, she appeared in the Hall of Harmony, standing before the door that housed the Elements. Their siren call was a deafening shriek in her ears It would be so easy from here. Almost boring. What test of skill, what drive was there for a near-god to have when there was nothing that could defy her? Well, remaking the entire world, to start. Celestia wasn’t here. Luna wasn’t here. There would be no final clash, then. No great battle to decide the fate of Canterlot. That was fine. She didn’t want the city too banged up for her purposes. Before she could go further, a sound split the sky.  A tremendous boom followed by a massive crash made the entire building shudder. Twilight turned to one of the stained glass windows, smashing a vase through it to see outside. She just caught the remnants of a rainbow trailing to the horizon, blazing outward from some unseen point. The rumbling grew louder, and layered over that was the sound of something more shrill and unfocused. It was a pony’s voice. Twilight muttered to herself as she was able to make out the words, drawn out and spoken with equal measures vehemence and desperation. “TWILIGHT!!!” The ceiling exploded. --------------- Dusk didn’t want to believe it at first. There was no way it was that easy. The Nightmare hadn’t killed them, Applejack hadn’t caught them, the world hadn’t fallen apart, and now here they stood in front of the door that led to their salvation. It stood at the end of the hall as if it had waited for ten thousand years. The once vibrant paint illustrating the somber, magical designs were now faded and cracked. The walls were pitted and overgrown with dead vines. In the middle of the door was the keyhole, waiting for a horn, his horn. The dark speck seemed to beckon him, urging him on to some unforeseen doom. Nothing felt real to Dusk, nor did it feel right. He walked the length of the hall in silence, penitent. All of his friends—all of Equestria—had died so he could open a door. The crushing weight of so much responsibility hung over him like a shroud, and every tentative step brought him closer to the point where it dropped and dragged him down. The click of his hooves on the marble floor tickled his ears, teasing him with the enormity of the silence around them. It enveloped all of Equestria now, and outside the stained glass windows he saw nothing but darkness all around. Dusk had the distinct feeling that something was watching through those windows; an invisible audience that waited, baited breath and all, for the climax to this sordid tale. “This is it?” Rainbow asked next to him, and though he whispered the silence was such that his voice thundered in Dusk’s ears. “This is what saves the world?” Rainbow approached the door with a heavy limp, trying to move his wings as little as possible. Most of the feathers had fallen off by now, and all that was left were a few long primaries that shivered at the slightest bump, ready to drop. “I don’t know,” Dusk whispered. “I don’t know anything anymore, Rainbow.” “Don’t start with that,” Rainbow said. “Just don’t, Dusk. This is it, okay? This is what ends it all..” Dusk felt numb. His movements felt scripted and automatic, like an actor in a play. That was all this really was, wasn’t it? The Nightmare kept calling this a story, and they were near the logical end. He just had to keep his hope up that the Nightmare was wrong and that it couldn’t stop the Elements once they were in Dusk’s hooves. He covered half the distance in silence, moving slower as he neared the door. A wall of uncertainty hit him like a wave, pushing against him and making him want to turn back. What if the Elements really didn’t work? What if his broken horn didn’t unlock the door? Then what? He walked through the cloud of questions, keeping his eyes on the small hole in the center of the doorway, aiming his horn to it as surely as it had a tether attached. Rainbow stood next to him, wheezing. “That’s it, Dusk. That’s it. Just a few more steps. Come on, come on, this has to work, please let it work...” He fell away at the last few feet, leaving Dusk to complete the task alone. Rainbow’s hushed pleading was soon drowned out by the sound of blood rushing in Dusk’s ears, growing louder and louder the closer he got to the door. Just a few more steps now and everything would be all right. This is really it, he thought. But why doesn’t it feel like winning? He stood in front of the door. It stared back, nonplussed and unobtrusive, with no inkling that it was the key to saving the world. The inanimate mechanisms keeping him from the Elements were similarly indifferent, moving only when told to and stopping when they had to. Is that all this was? Me going through the motions and waiting to reach my proper place? Nothing I’ve done has made a difference so far. Why would that change now? The image of a mare with his cutie mark flashed in front of his eyes. It didn’t matter what he believed or wanted. It only mattered that he got to see her one last time. He put his forehead on the door, letting his horn stump rest just above the hole. He felt the pressure of the horn against the stone, but nothing else. Gently, he dragged his horn down the door until it caught on the edge of the hole, and with a final, resigned sigh, pushed inward. To his surprise, his horn started to glow. More than that, it projected magic into the door, feeding it into the runes carved into the keyhole, drawing power from the sigils and channels weaved into the very stone. Spiderwebs of lavender light were flung in every direction, prompting the door to shudder, rumble, and move. Dusk fell onto his haunches, his mouth dropping open. It couldn’t be that easy. It couldn’t! But the door continued to groan and grumble, swinging outward with slow, deliberate aplomb. Dusk stood on shaking hooves and walked into the fog of magic dispersing from the door’s hinges. He stepped into the light-struck mist, peering into the room beyond. On a small pedestal there rested a box. The box was decorated with the gems that each Element represented, teasing him with a façade of hope. There was no lock. It just waited for him to open it. Dusk stepped forward, accelerating to a slow jog, and then he was running to the box, snatching it up and clutching it to his chest. His vision tunneled, blurred by tears. His chest tightened and his vision narrowed. He caressed the majestic curves of the lid and touched the latch, pulling it open with slow reverence. Inside sat all six Elements of Harmony, patiently awaiting their Bearers. They stung Dusk’s eyes with their untarnished beauty, glimmering with an inner light that peeked up at him like the sparkling eyes of a newborn foal. “Rainbow!” he sobbed, holding the box up to the pegasus. “Rainbow, look! They’re here! They’re really here!” Rainbow let out a breath, and all his strength went with it. His shoulders drooped and his head dipped low. “That’s... that’s great, Dusk,” he said in a broken, trembling voice. “That’s really great.” “We can do it now! We can save them! We can save everypony!” “We just need to make them work,” Rainbow added with a dull smile. Dusk nodded frantically, jarring his own skull as he waggled his head up and down. “Yes, we can do it. We can still do it! We just need a moment to think about it, and then the Elements will answer us like before. All we need is—is...” He stopped short as he saw the shadow creeping up behind Rainbow, who was utterly unaware. “Yeah,” said the pegasus, still wearing a sad, exhausted smile. “We really did it, didn’t we Dusk?” Dusk’s happy grin melted away. His eye twitched as the shadow ballooned to thrice Rainbow’s size, looming over him. From the darkness an equine head emerged, eyes fire-red sunk into its skull, pitiless and imperial. An array of sharp spikes formed out of the Nightmare’s body, aiming straight down. Dusk opened his mouth, and the Nightmare lunged forward. “Dusk, I want you to know,” said Rainbow, “even if this doesn’t work... I’m glad we made it.” “Rainbow,” Dusk said in a raspy, too quiet voice. Too quiet for Rainbow to hear the urgency in it, too quiet to warn him— The first spike plunged between Rainbow's shoulder blades, erupting out of his chest in a spray of blood and something else that wasn’t quite blood. Rainbow looked down, transfixed by the shadowy instrument. His jaw bobbed up and down. “What?” he asked. “What?” More deadly tendrils came down, sliding through flesh and bone as easily as a hoof dipping into a pond, each blow punctuated by a quiet, drawn-out moan from Rainbow. The pegasus stood wide-eyed, uncomprehending as the Nightmare callously twisted its tendrils and brought the impaled pony up, displaying him as a gruesome trophy. Dusk didn’t move. He didn’t fight. He didn’t know how, as if all the knowledge and motivation was suddenly sucked out of him. The feeling of distance and dissociation grew and grew until he was miles away, reading it all in a storybook while huddled under the sheets of his bed, separated from the horrible sight by ages. He saw the Nightmare give him a sick, scornful smirk. Rainbow twitched, looking down at Dusk. His pupils were constricted, dancing with mortal terror. “Dusk,” he croaked, “r... ru—” The array of spikes twisted in unison, pulling apart in every direction. Rainbow’s body stretched for an eerie, awful instant, and then scattered apart. There was a sharp ripping noise like parchment and a burst of explosive noise like a fireball suddenly erupting before snuffing itself out. Rainbow’s body blew away like a pile of leaves caught by a strong gust, falling apart from the inside out into dust that glowed for a brief, beautiful moment with golden light before turning to dull, muddy ash. Dusk caught the shortest glimpse of Rainbow’s limbs and tail, still reaching, twitching, grasping for life for one moment more, and then all of him was gone. Dusk stared at the settling cloud of embers that used to be his friend. He dropped to his knees and screamed. It was a long, drawn-out cry of primal grief and denial that shredded his vocal chords and squeezed his lungs painfully for every last drop of breath, and when that was spent reached even further to pluck out pieces of him he didn’t know existed. In that scream he demanded with every fiber of his being, every last bit of life he had left that Rainbow be brought back right now, that the Nightmare not be given its victory so easily, that time itself be turned back, for his horn to work right so he could turn back time. But then his scream trailed off into a quiet, choking croak, and then to nothing. And when he was done Rainbow was still dead, and the Nightmare still stood before him, smiling. The Nightmare tilted its head. “I win.” Dusk watched Rainbow’s ashes settle on the floor and scrabbled to reach them, gathering them up in his hooves. He wheezed and grunted incoherent words, cradling the remains to his chest. Chuckling, the Nightmare paced a slow, steady circle around Dusk, its ethereal hooves making no sound on the marble floor. Wispy black tendrils trailed over Dusk’s neck and mane, teasing, gloating. Dusk didn’t hear the Nightmare’s taunts. He just stared straight ahead as tears leaked in a slow, steady stream from his eyes like an open faucet. “I did everything I said I would. All is as it was written. This story was never yours, Dusk. Do you see it yet? Do you see how utterly pointless your existence is?” Dusk started to stand, still holding what he could of Rainbow to his chest as he turned back to the Elements of Harmony. The Nightmare was a step ahead of him, gripping it with magic and turning the box bottom-up. The Elements clattered to the ground. The noise was like a death knell to Dusk’s ears. He reached out with his magic, but his horn sputtered. “No,” he whispered. “No. Not yet.” He darted for the Elements, trying to grab them with his bare hooves. They slid just out of his reach. The Nightmare stood over him and grinned. “These old things? You want them?” “They’ll never let themselves be destroyed by you!” Dusk screamed through his raw throat. “Give them to me! They’ll answer me! They have to!” He looked up at the Elements and thought of his friends and all they’d sacrificed to get this far. The Elements did nothing. “Work!” he shouted. “Work!” The Nightmare dropped them to the ground again. The clatter sent a knife into Dusk’s heart. The Elements didn’t deserve to be treated like that. “Stop,” he told the Nightmare. It raised its hoof. “Stop,” Dusk said again, his tinged with more desperation. “I said stop!” The Nightmare’s hoof came down on the Element of Magic. There was no retaliatory blast of power, no righteous fury that said the Nightmare wasn’t allowed to kill the hope of Equestria. Just a single, solitary crunch. The Nightmare raised the other Elements in its magic, and without any visible effort, crushed them into fine shards. The fragments scattered over the floor. “I warned you, Dusk. I warned you that your story would find its end here, and yet you rushed ever onward, hoping against hope that I was wrong. It is this moment I always savor. The time when those who sought to fight me finally see the truth: there is no victory in this world. There is no altering your fate. There is only me. I am everything, and I say that I am triumphant.” The Nightmare leaned down, coiling its neck around Dusk as the unicorn blindly scrabbled around, trying to scrounge together as much of the Elements as he could. A silver-edged blade came to rest against Dusk’s neck, and he froze. The Nightmare puts its mouth right next to Dusk’s ear, whispering to him quietly, intimately. “Every story comes to an end, Dusk. And now... so does yours.” The blade pressed against his throat, hard enough that he felt it cut into his skin. A line of agony split open his neck, and Dusk was aware of the cold metal just starting to sever the important bits underneath. Something snapped inside of him. He felt a low rumble and three concussive blasts, and was vaguely aware of everything around suddenly being blown away, save for what was left of Rainbow’s ashes. The keen edge of the blade left his throat, along with the cloying closeness of the Nightmare. He felt his horn come alive, buzzing with power like a lightning rod that just caught a thunderbolt, and then released all that energy in a series of rapidfire bursts. He turned back and saw the Nightmare surge away from him, its mass heaving and distorting as it boiled with angry noises and aimless flailing. Abruptly, the whirlwind of movement ceased, and the dark alicorn rose from it again, staring down the now glowing unicorn. But the sudden surge of power did nothing to abate its hunger or its rage. In fact, it looked even happier now than before. “Yes, yes, yes!” it crowed. “That’s how it must be! Give it to me, Dusk! Give me everything you have! The anger, the fear, let it all be consumed by the darkness until you are nothing!” Wordlessly, Dusk looked down at the ashes in his hooves. Slowly, his hooves parted, and the ashes fell in a gentle shower, scattering across the floor. The hurricane noise of his out of control magic was utterly silent to him as he watched the last vestiges of Rainbow Blitz drift away. I’m sorry, he whispered in his mind. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I couldn’t save anypony. I couldn’t save Equestria. I’m sorry, Solaris. Your student finally failed you. He looked up at the Nightmare, its inky black mane flowing, wings outstretched until they nearly spanned the width of the hall. But I’m sure as hay going to take this monster with me. He planted all four of his hooves on the ground and pawed at the stone The Nightmare threw back its head and laughed. “Oh, but this does take me back! What a wonderful way to end this story: it ends as it began. Now let us put the finishing touches on our tale!” “Yes,” Dusk said. “Let’s.” He had no control of his magic. He had no repertoire of spells to access. He had virtually nothing left. But he did have his memories driving him forward, and his hooves, and his teeth. It would have to do. Dusk lowered his head, and the Nightmare answered in kind, presenting a long horn that sharpened itself to a fine point. Dusk and the Nightmare charged in unison. There were no final revelations for Dusk. His life did not flash before his eyes. There was no lingering feeling of regret or sorrow. There was nothing left but this final act of defiance. The Nightmare loomed up faster than he thought it would, larger than life, and then there was no time left and their final collision was upon them. In the millimeter left between their horns, there was a spark.