Twilight stared at the princesses with wild eyes and began to laugh the same way she had earlier “haha, you’ve gone mad as well. We’ve all gone completely mad.”
Luna smacked her hard. “We have NOT gone mad! Nor will we release him completely. It would not be the first time he has been called upon to serve us. It is part of his punishment.” Twilight, though trembling from being hit, seemed to have regained some of her composure.
“But how will we even summon him. You intend to use me as a host to make it easier, but that means you also have one fewer caster. You, me, and Celestia would already be hard pressed to do the spell ourselves, and she has to maintain the shield!”
“You already know what we intend to get the energy.” Luna said coldly. At that, realization washed over Twilight.
“No. I won’t help you do that. It’s monstrous! THEY’LL DIE!” she shouted, though her voice contained far more pleading than anger.
It was not Luna who replied this time, but Eisenhorn. “M’lady, with all due respect, you will help her do that. Yes, we’ll die, but that’s alright. If we don’t do it, we’ll die anyway, and that fiends demonic children will eat us. We’d rather move on and see the friends we’ve already lost, knowing our sacrifice will help than stubbornly cling to some stupid ideal and suffer more for it. Sometimes, you can’t save everypony. Sometimes, ponies die.”
Twilight bowed her head, tears streaming from her eyes. Luna took this as a tacit acceptance and began to draw a circle around the lavender mare. The rest of her preparations took but a moment more. The spell itself was fairly simple, since it was really just invoking a clause in a different spell. All the same, the amount of energy needed would certainly consume the four unicorns who had accompanied Twilight. In addition, it would leave Luna incredibly weak for several days. Celestia’s only acknowledgement of the world during all this was a grunt and a single tear. Luna spoke the word that would invoke the magic, and silently prayed that she wasn’t making things worse.
Twilight felt the Other’s presence flooding into her body. It seemed to take an eternity but really only took a second or two. As the Other’s mind began to take control of her limbs, Twilight tried to fight it off.
“Stop!” It commanded. Twilight felt compelled to obey it, even as part of her screamed in protest. Soon she was completely unable to sense anything with her body, a sensation that caused her to panic.
“If you calm down, you would realize that you can still sense things with your mind,” the Other said drolly.
“What are you?” asked twilight’s mind.
“I am a pony, more or less. That’s not really important right now, though. You do know that your princess is on the verge of losing, don’t you?” he said. At least, Twilight thought it was a he. She wasn’t entirely certain how gender worked when one was possessing minds and bodies. “Would you like me to save her? To be quite honest, I don’t really care how this ends so long as I get to have a bit of fun.”
“I thought you had to obey us!”
The Other chuckled. “Well, it’s true that I’m not really free. I am required to kill that thing at some point. I also have to make sure that neither you nor the princesses die for real, but that leaves me a lot of options. For one thing, I could keep them barely alive for years, as they are eaten over and over again by those stupid pests. I can also make you watch the whole thing. Still, that sounds pretty disgusting, so I won’t do that, probably. Besides, it may sound strange, but I miss being in my cell; it’s next to a library, and He lets me do as I please, mostly.”
Twilight was disturbed by the calm almost bored way he talked about watching people be tortured for years on end and was even more frightened by the thought of having to watch it. She began to suspect, however, that despite his words he really was going to help and that he was mostly saying such things to tease her. She also considered the fact that she might have gone mad yesterday, and this whole thing was a horrible hallucination. “So, you’ll help us?” she chanced.
“Hmm, maybe.” He responded dispassionately. “On the one hoof, I could make you all beg, but on the other, you did just sacrifice four innocent ponies to bring me here. It would be rude of me to simply refuse to help. Indeed, it would quite go against the laws of hospitality. Rules are rules, you know.” Twilight began to wonder if even her imaginings were going mad. “Very well, I’ll squish the bug. I’ll even let you take a peep through these eyes and ears since you were kind enough to talk to me; it’s been about a thousand years since I got to talk to anyone other than that old windbag.”
True to his word, Twilight could suddenly see and hear again, though she had no control over anything. The first thing she saw was Luna passed out on the ground.
“Don’t worry, she’s quite alright, if a bit plum tuckered out.”
Next her gaze drifted towards Celestia who was visibly straining to hold the barrier at this point.
“Hello, sweet Princess Celestia.” He said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “Do allow me to take that off your hooves.”
The shield around them vanished, and Princess Celestia dropped to her knees from exhaustion. Despite there being no visible barrier the monster’s strikes still failed to reach them. Now, instead of slamming into and washing over the barrier, each blast simply diffused as it got close to them. The only indication of any magic being a faint glow around Twilight’s horn.
The beast began to scream at them. If it had tried to speak words, they were lost in a roar of anger. It increased the amount of energy pouring out of it. Twilight could see that the city surrounding them was rapidly being reduced to rubble. The increased effort did not seem to phase the Other. His reaction was, quite simply, to yawn and scratch his nose, well, Twilight’s nose.
“You’ve bored me. You’re also too loud.”
Twilight’s horn began to glow brighter. Suddenly, the monster found itself casually picked up. For the first time, Twilight could see its shape clearly defined. It had no clear relation to the disgusting creatures they had fought the night before, being a dull black rather than a shade of white. It was shaped much like an elongated dragon, though instead of spines on its back, there was a writhing mass of tentacles, and its tail held more resemblance to a scythe than the spear-like tails most dragons had. It contorted trying to fight the magic holding it up, then it began to scream. Twilight could not understand what was happening at first. Then she heard the snap. The screaming stopped immediately. The body dropped to the group, limp.
The Other teleported them to Canterlot Castle. The palace was a wreck from the attack. Over the next few days, the Other used his magic to repair much of the castle and the town. When he wasn’t cleaning up, he was in the library looking at books that had been written since his last trip to Equestria.
When the horrible creature in the colony had died, all of the other Devourers had lost their minds and begun to attack one another. Shortly after, ponies began to make their way back home. The Other wrote a letter on Twilight’s behalf to her friends explaining that she was alright and that she just had to help around Canterlot for a few days. Celestia had recovered enough to address the people the day after their battle in the underground city. All in all, things were getting back to normal, though no pony would ever forget about the lives lost in what would come to be called “The Second War of the Mountain”.
Then, as things were settling down and Twilight had become used to being merely an observer in her own life, the Other announced that he was leaving.
“It’s been fun, little one, but I have to be going. It isn’t a good idea to leave one’s body for extended periods of time. Don’t worry about the spell to send me back, it’s trivial for me.”
“Wait, you still haven’t told me who you are. Every time I’ve asked, you just brush it off and find something else to do. Why won’t you tell me?”
“Twilight, that’s a story for another time. Come see me face to face, and I’ll tell you.”
“I thought that was impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible; some things simply aren’t worth the price.”
“That isn’t an answer. At least tell me what you did to get imprisoned for thousands of years.”
He sighed. “Very well, the short version of it is simple: I killed somepony and started a war. Pretty common occurrence in those days, actually. I was not a normal pony though, which is why they bound and sealed me. I’m no longer allowed to travel where I will or do much magic of consequence. The long of it can wait. If you want to know so badly, come find me.” And with that, he popped back out of the world, leaving Twilight with a sudden rush of feeling. Not being accustomed to standing up for the past few days, she simply toppled over. She decided to see the Princess before heading back to Ponyville, eager to see her friends. She found the Princess in her private quarters filling out and signing paperwork. Celestia gave a faint smile and invited her over.
“I see our guest has gone home.” She commented. Twilight walked over, still a little unsteady. The lavender mare sat down next to the Princess.
“Princess, how do you carry on? You’ve seen so much more of these wars than I have. How can anypony go through that and still be alright?” The tears began to flow faster than they had at any point during the war.
“Because I know I have to. I have to be alright so that those I care about can continue on as well. But you don’t have to suffer alone. Talk to your friends, let them know how much you care, and remember those who are no longer here. It is for their sake that we continue on.” For a while neither of them said anything, Twilight simply leaning on the Princess as if trying to disappear into her coat.
Six months later, the world had largely recovered from the initial shock of the war, the last reminders of those gone from the world were the rows of fresh headstones in every cemetery. Twilight and her friends had been reunited, each one of them glad to see she was unharmed. Slowly, Equestria’s wounds were healing.