//------------------------------// // 16 - Dark Powers // Story: Succession // by Helrael //------------------------------// Succession Chapter 16 - Dark Powers “Another cave down, still no Team Cyan,” Twilight sighed as she reached the dead end of a cave that had seemed a mile long. “It’s been... what, four hours? Ugh, we’ll check the next one.” Her connection to the green crystal faded once more, and she and the two pegasi turned to begin their trek back through the cave. “We aren’t gonna find them, are we?” Cloud Slicer asked despondently, flitting ahead of the pair. “They’ve been gone for too long,” Twilight agreed, teleporting across a minor chasm. “If nothing else, we’re at least clearing out this part of the crystal caverns, I suppose.” “‘Cept there’s nothing at all around here,” Whirlwind observed. “Kinda creepy,” Cloud Slicer agreed, peering down a small crevice he had missed the first time. “How could they all just disappear like that?” “Magic,” Twilight suggested. “I think we’re chasing the thing that maimed all the dragons in Dragoncrest Valley. Making half a dozen ponies vanish shouldn’t be beyond its capabilities.” “There’s hundreds of miles between Dragoncrest and Canterlot,” Cloud Slicer observed, frowning with confusion at Twilight. “What makes you think it’d come here?” The unicorn shrugged. “It just seems like the same guy to me.” “Sounds like you’ve met it,” Whirlwind offered. “What exactly happened in Dragoncrest? Never heard.” “I... met the dragon hunter.” The ledge Twilight had been walking along tapered off ahead of her, and she teleported a few hundred feet forwards to where the cavern floor became more easily traversable. “I don’t know what I can tell you about it. The council doesn’t want me revealing any details until we know for sure he’s real.” “W-wait up!” Cloud Slicer called out, rushing to Twilight’s side along with Whirlwind. “We need to stick together, remember?” “Sorry. But we’ve been here for four hours without anything happening,” Twilight pointed out. “I doubt it’s even here anymore.” “Or maybe it’s waiting for us to lower our guard,” Whirlwind warned her, wary eyes scanning what little of the cavern was visible from the light shining from Twilight’s horn. “How can you not be sure this thing’s real? After you saw it for yourself, after what it’s done here?” “It’s complicated,” Twilight brushed him off, resuming her trek back through the cave. “Easy for you to say,” Whirlwind scoffed. “Shouldn’t we at least know what we’re dealing with?” He paused, then pointed a hoof at something near the opening of the smaller cavern they were within. “Gimme a light on that.” Twilight obliged quickly, extending the reach of her illumination spell to reveal a regular crystal outcropping sticking out of the wall. The pegasus sighed, either in relief or disappointment, and continued. “And if you think you know what’s been killing Team Cyan, shouldn’t you tell Coup?” “It’s... an alicorn,” Twilight relented. “But I’m not even sure it’s actually here, so I don’t see the point in telling Coup.” “You don’t think she should know Nightmare Moon might be down here?” “It’s not like she can do anything about that!” Twilight argued. She shook her head. “I’m not even sure I can...” “Now that you mention it... how’re we gonna get an alicorn out of here?” Cloud Slicer asked of the two, none of which could offer any answers. “It might not be an alicorn,” Whirlwind offered somewhat optimistically. His gaze fell on Twilight. “Right?” “I might be mistaken,” she admitted. “Whatever the case, I’ll...” Kill him. “I won’t give up,” she amended, rubbing her head as a brief surge of pain rolled through her skull. The three ponies eventually entered into the enormous main cave they had arrived at almost four hours ago, now speckled with tiny magenta stars, Twilight’s magical flares marking the countless passages they had already searched. What had begun as a frantic race against the clock through the crystal caverns had quickly turned into a tedious search when the three of them had reached the giant cave, the trio overwhelmed by its sheer enormity. For reasons they had yet to discern, the breadcrumb trail of cyan flares had ended abruptly near the entrance, forcing the ponies to go through each and every passageway connected to the large cave in search of the missing team and their mysterious killer. “At least we’re getting there,” Whirlwind observed as Twilight marked down the tunnel they had just come from. “I only see thirty-something caves left!” Twilight was about to answer when she saw something moving just outside the area lit by her horn. A loud thump echoed throughout the cavern, and Twilight quickly pulled the two pegasi by their tails towards herself, barricading all three of them within a force field before whatever had just appeared had a chance to strike. “What is that!?” Whirlwind demanded, but nopony answered him. When the creature ahead of them failed to move any further, Twilight created a second force field around it to trap it. Still, it didn’t move. “It doesn’t seem to be alive,” Cloud Slicer muttered as the three ponies started approaching the new arrival. Upon drawing closer, the light shining from the unicorn’s horn finally revealed a white pegasus mare. “Is that‒?” “Whitewing,” Whirlwind confirmed. He didn’t immediately continue, his expression hardening as his gaze swept across the corpse again and again. “Do... Do you think she made it to Team Cyan?” Cloud Slicer asked him. “Before... this?” “Sirius said as much before the three of us left,” Whirlwind reminded the other pegasus. “Right...” “Something’s bitten her in the neck, severed her spinal cord,” Whirlwind told the two others, gesturing loosely at Whitewing’s neck. “Most likely, that’s what killed her. I’m guessing what we just saw and heard was her corpse falling down from somewhere above. Twilight?” The unicorn nodded, and a cone of light shot forth from her horn, revealing a narrow opening in the ceiling above. “They’d just searched through a giant cave,” Twilight muttered, remembering the last words they had heard from Team Cyan. “Pale Pass and Iron Sword had gone first, which must mean Iron Sword had to be flown.” “So it happened up there,” Whirlwind gathered. “And it looks like the killer’s still‒” “Twilight!” something called out in a playful, singsong voice before cackling gleefully, the echoes of its laughter coming from everywhere at once. It wasn’t the alicorn, yet to Twilight, it sounded no less menacing. “I’ve got something to show you!” Whirlwind turned to Twilight. “Someone you know?” She nodded, staring at the opening in the ceiling of the cave in search of whatever had just spoken. “I’ve heard that voice before. During the ursa major mission.” “That was before I joined,” Cloud Slicer admitted. “What happened?” “I tried performing a memory spell on it, but I couldn’t get through to it. I did see one particular memory, though. Some creature, it looked like a pony, slaughtering everything around it while laughing. When it had finished, it jumped straight onto the ursa’s head, looked it in the eye, and spoke to me, as if it knew I was going to perform my memory spell on that exact ursa. I think it’s the alicorn, but I can’t be sure.” She lowered the force fields she had formed about herself and the pegasi as well as Whitewing’s corpse. “Whatever it is, we can’t let it get away. We need to get up there!” “Need a lift?” Whirlwind asked, lifting into the air. Twilight shook her head. “We’ll be too exposed if you’re carrying me. I’ll protect the two of you while you fly up there. Once you’re inside the tunnel, I’ll create a force field for me to stand on and teleport up to you. We’ll figure out what to do from there.” “You sure going straight up there is the best option?” Cloud Slicer remarked nervously as a magenta force field formed about him and Whirlwind. “There’s no other way up there,” The other pegasus pointed out. “And our orders are to kill that thing.” “I’ll make sure nothing happens to you,” Twilight promised Cloud Slicer, setting the protective bubble around the two pegasi in motion. Beating their wings a bit more forcefully, they lifted upwards at a steady rate, reaching the ceiling and passing into the tunnel after a few seconds. As soon a they did so, a horizontal, disc-shaped force field appeared a few feet below them, providing Twilight with a surface to teleport onto. “See anything yet?” Twilight asked hurriedly as she appeared within the tunnel, eager to get to solid ground instead of holding herself airborne. A raised hoof from Whirlwind silenced her, however. The unicorn listened intently, but through the lingering echoes of her own question and those of the mysterious predator’s laughter, she was unable to pick up on anything. “I heard hoofsteps,” the pegasus explained in a hushed whisper, never taking his eyes off the narrow opening at the top of the vertical tunnel. “It’s pulling back, but slowly.” “Then we need to go after it!” Twilight insisted, lowering her voice as well. “If this is the alicorn I think it is, then we can’t afford to lose him!” “Why do you keep saying ‘him’?” Cloud Slicer tried asking, but Whirlwind didn’t seem to care about that. “I think we need to give this a little more thought than just barrelling forwards,” he objected. “Whatever it is, it can speak, and it took out Team Cyan without being seen. If it can do that, chances are it can set traps as well. And if it’s confident that it can take you on, Twilight, I don’t like our odds. Even less if it’s Nightmare Moon.” “Well, what do you suggest we do?” Twilight challenged the pegasus. “Just turn around? As long as this thing is on the loose, nothing in these caves is safe!” She lowered her head and focused her magic on the rim of the tunnel just below her, marking it down with a dozen flares so nopony would miss it. “That doesn’t mean we need to walk right into its trap,” Whirlwind countered. “We should contact Coup and call for reinforcements.” “It’ll take them at least half an hour to get here!” Twilight argued, raising her head again. “He could be anywhere by then!” “Can we at least contact Coup first?” the pegasus demanded, quickly growing tired of the argument. “I need to get to solid ground first,” Twilight explained. “It’s not easy to magically suspend yourself like this. We’ll go up there,” she said, pointing at the opening above, “secure the area, and send a message.” “Fine,” Whirlwind grumbled. “You go first. We’ll watch your back.” With a nod and a flash, Twilight vanished from the tunnel and appeared at the mouth of the cavern above. Judging from the smooth crystal walls of the tunnel she had just been in, Twilight had assumed it had been carved out naturally by a source of water long ago, and she now found herself standing on the bed of what had once been a small waterway. The sleek crystal underhoof was covered in a layer of ice, making it hard to balance, so she teleported herself further into the cave and out of the dried up waterway, forming a protective shield about her instantly. The cavern was just small enough for Twilight to be able to light the area up completely without too much effort. There were only two paths leading out of the cave, the first being the one Twilight had just emerged from, and the second being a continuation of the dried up waterway that apparently cut straight through the cave, creating a very narrow tunnel that seemed unlikely to fit anything larger than a pony. “Anything up here?” Whirlwind asked as he hovered into the cave along with Cloud Slicer. Twilight was about to shake her head when she found yet another lifeless pony, this one tucked into a corner on the far side of the cavern. Her nose wrinkled in disgust at the sight, and she pointed out the corpse to the two others before turning her gaze away. “Iron Sword. This has to be where Sirius really started panicking.” “And that was four hours ago,” Whirlwind muttered grimly, he and Cloud Slicer approaching their fallen comrade carefully. “Celestia... It’s not even a clean cut. Coup and Iron Sword were in the same squad back before The Great Tragedy,” he spat, stomping a hoof on the ground angrily. “She won’t be happy about this.” “All the more reason for us to stop this thing,” Twilight insisted, her prior determination returning after recovering from the sight of Iron Sword. “If we don’t stop him now, he’ll keep murdering innocent ponies!” “It ripped Iron Sword’s head off without anyone noticing!” Whirlwind objected. “If it’s waiting to ambush us, we don’t have a chance!” “I’m not gonna let that stop me!” “How can you not be worried?” Whirlwind asked of the unicorn critically. “That monster could be anywhere at this point. There’s a good chance it can hear everything we’re saying.” “If I give up, I lose!” Twilight insisted stubbornly. “Everything...” She gave a deep sigh. “But... I shouldn’t ask you to come with me. We’ve cleared out everything between here and the camp. You can take Iron Sword and Whitewing back; I’ll take care of whatever’s up ahead.” Cloud Slicer didn’t seem to agree, but looked to Whirlwind, who in turn looked at Twilight for a long moment, deep in thought. “What we should do is contact Coup,” he finally said. “Tell her what we’ve found and... and that we’re going in after this monster together.” Cloud Slicer nodded his assent, and Twilight found herself nodding as well, albeit grudgingly, summoning her connection to the green crystal far below. “Twilight here. We finally found Whitewing and Iron Sword. I’m afraid they’re both dead. We found the place Sirius started panicking too, and the killer is still fairly close. Most likely, it’s set a trap, so we’ll proceed carefully. Whatever’s prowling around here is the same thing that freaked out the ursa major near Wild Weald, and I think it’s responsible for The Great Tragedy and Dragoncrest as well, but I’m only guessing. We seem to be getting close to the surface,” she added, taking note of the significant drop in temperature between the enormous cavern below and where she currently stood. “You’ll probably hear from us again in a minute. Twilight out.” The glow of her horn dimmed, and a cone of bright light shot forth instead, illuminating the tunnel ahead of the trio and revealing a sticky trail of blood left behind by the killer. “Pale Pass was the one that died with Iron Sword, wasn’t she?” Cloud Slicer asked of the two, taking an uneasy look back at where they had come from. “She was wounded,” Whirlwind corrected him. “And knocked unconscious.” “But she’s not here…” The other pegasus frowned as he realized what Cloud Slicer was saying and threw a cautious gaze at the tunnel ahead of them. “So either they pressed on…” “Or the bodies were moved,” Twilight finished for him, stepping toward the tunnel. “That thing isn’t Nightmare Moon, is it?” Cloud Slicer gathered as he followed after Twilight into the tunnel. “No,” Twilight admitted. “It’s much worse.” “No talking,” Whirlwind urged, squeezing ahead of the two others as they walked. “We can at least try not to spring this thing’s trap.” “If it doesn’t hear us, it’ll see us,” Twilight whispered, shaking her glowing horn for emphasis, but she received only a shush in response. Sighing, she decided to simply comply with the pegasus’s wishes. The protective force field around her expanded to envelop all three ponies as they plodded on ahead and up the steep incline in silence, the crystal walls surrounding them soon receding in favor of plain granite. The change in scenery forced the unicorn to further intensify the light shining from her horn as the ponies put behind the many reflective surfaces. The trail of blood they had been following eventually diverged from its path through the tunnel and curved around and up the wall to their left, the footprints somehow reaching the ceiling only a few feet above them before becoming too faint to discern in the darkness. The tunel terminated soon after the trail of footprints did, ending in a narrow crevice. The winds rushing through it created a constant series of unnerving whispers, and Twilight shivered. A soft chuckle emanated from whatever lay beyond the tunnel, alerting them all to the presence of the predator up ahead. Twilight glanced back at her companions, both of whom nodded their head seriously, before she continued, stepping in through the narrow fissure and into yet another cave. Most of the area was littered with huge chunks of rock, all of which seemed to have emanated from the far side of the cave. There, a large opening marked the only other way out of the cave, and the faintest hint of moonlight shone through it, telling the three ponies that they had finally reached the surface. It was colder as well; every square inch of the area was coated in a thick layer of ice, and despite long since having acclimatized herself to the chill underground, Twilight’s breath was fogging again. She stepped forwards, treading carefully on the ice and preparing to increase the feed to her illumination spell to light up the entire area. Just as her horn began brightening, however, it went dark without warning, robbing the ponies of their only light source as well as their force field. “Twilight!” Whirlwind hissed at the unicorn, pulling closer to her immediately and assuming a defensive stance. “I-I dunno!” Twilight tapped at her horn in panic, but received no response. Before she could lower her hoof again, something hard smashed into her side, knocking her away from the others and into a pile of granite rubble. Twilight screamed out in pain, but was cut short as her assailant struck her square in the face, following up with a sharp blow to the horn that broke what little arcane focus she could muster. The exclamations of both Cloud Slicer and Whirlwind were drowned out by the guttural roar of whatever was attacking her as it began truly pummeling the downed unicorn. After a few seconds of the merciless beating, it started pressing down on her throat in an attempt to either strangle her or crush her windpipe. “Get... off her!” Twilight’s assailant was pulled off of her and slammed against the ground by Whirlwind, who immediately threw himself at the attacker to restrain him. The creature howled and screamed back at Whirlwind, and now that they were both caught in the faint moonlight of the cavern, the unicorn realized that Whirlwind was holding down a light blue pegasus, not the killer. “You...” Whirlwind grunted as he fought to restrain the maddened pegasus. “You alright?” he called back at Twilight, who could only gasp for air in response. “H-Hail Trail!” the pegasus shouted, turning his attention back to his captive. “Shut up and calm down! That’s Twilight! Twilight Sparkle!” “Get off of me!” Hail Trail only shouted, nearly breaking free of his captor’s hold as his struggles increased. “It’s coming! It’s here! It’s everywhere!” “It’s not here!” Whirlwind insisted. “And you aren’t helping us find it!” “I-I’m alright!” Twilight finally managed, fighting to get back on her hooves. She had started bleeding profusely from the nose, and she wiped her face sloppily with a hoof. “Sorta... He’s with Team Cyan, right?” “They’re dead!” Hail Trail screamed. “All dead! We waited and we waited! One by one it took us!” “We’re here now!” Whirlwind tried reassuring him, but Hail Trail shook his head. “The reinforcements you asked for!” “Too late!” he screamed. “Get off of me!” “It’s me, Whirlwind!” the pegasus holding him shouted. “We went to The Canterlot Academy of the Royal Guard, remember!? Cloud Slicer’s here too! And we’ve got Twilight Sparkle with us! The old captain of the Sword! The most powerful unicorn in Equestria! We’re your friends, Hail! You’re safe!” The light blue pegasus stared at Whirlwind with wild, crazed eyes, breathing shallowly and rapidly as he fought to comprehend the other pegasus’s words. Eventually, he seemed to calm down, casting furtive glances at the darkness surrounding the ponies before speaking. “Everypony’s gone, Whirlwind! It hunted us down one by one. It killed Iron Sword and it all went to Tartarus after that! We tried continuing, but it started laughing. Icarus went next. Th-then Skysweeper’s head came rolling out of the darkness. And it laughed. It laughed! Sirius kept screaming at you to get here! We called for help so many times, but you never came! We waited and died for hours!” “Calm down,” Whirlwind insisted gently, holding back the light blue pegasus as he steadily became more and more agitated. “We tried finding you, but we had to search that entire cave below. Took hours.” “We left the markers!” Hail Trail broke free of the pegasus’ grip and got up, pointing an accusing hoof at them both. “We left the markers! Just like Coup said! So you could find us! You should have been here! You should have saved us! Instead I’ve been... I’ve been hunted around like a wild animal for... for... f-I don’t know how long!” “We’re sorry,” Whirlwind interjected. “It’s that thing’s fault. And we’re gonna make it pay, right?” “Did you see him?” Twilight asked, once again wiping away the blood on her face, though only more came flowing from her nose. “Did you see the killer?” “No!” Hail Trail shouted, fixing his wide-eyed gaze on the unicorn. “We didn’t see it! We heard it! It whispered and cackled as it took us all. Everyone felt it in the end... But we didn’t see it!” “We will soon enough,” Whirlwind stated, laying a comforting hoof on the pegasus’s shoulder. “Twilight’ll stop it.” Hail Trail eyed the unicorn critically, still breathing heavily. Eventually, the pegasus shuddered violently before calming down. It only lasted a moment before he tensed up again, though. “Where..? Where is he?” Whirlwind raised an eyebrow. “Who?” “Y-you said Cloud S-Slicer...” Hail Trail muttered, trembling again. “Wh-wh-wher-where is he!? Don’t tell me he came with you!” Whirlwind swore as he took a quick check of his surroundings. “Cloud Slicer!” he called out, but upon receiving no answer, he muttered an impressive string of obscenities and stomped a hoof against the ground. He eyed Twilight, who could only shake her head helplessly. The unicorn tried reaching out to her magic again, and this time succeeded, summoning enough light to drive away the shadows in the entire cave. “He’s gone! What in Tartarus happened!?” Whirlwind demanded of Twilight. “I don’t know! Something blocked my magic! How about asking him!?” she countered, gesturing angrily at Hail Trail. “This is bad,” Whirlwind muttered, ignoring Twilight’s suggestion. “At this rate we’ll end up like Team Cyan.” “It can’t have gotten far,” Twilight reasoned. Without further warning, she grabbed hold of the two pegasi with her magic and teleported all three of them to the moonlit opening on the far side of the cavern, creating a force field around them as she did so. “Are we sure it didn’t go back the way we came?” Whirlwind asked the unicorn as the three of them climbed the loose rocks scattered all over the exit of the cavern. “If it did, we’d never find it in that giant cave,” Twilight answered, then nodded her head at a small, but fresh spatter of blood on the icy rocks they were traversing. “I think it’s already too late for Cloud Slicer.” Whirlwind muttered something under his breath and shook his head. “You should let Coup know what’s going on.” Twilight nodded, and her horn brightened a bit. It took her a while to lock onto the green crystal far below, but she managed to establish the connection all the same. “Twilight again. We found Hail Trail. Alive. He must’ve mistaken me for the killer when he saw us. He attacked me, and while Whirlwind subdued him, the killer made off with Cloud Slicer. We think it’s headed towards the surface, but it might have slipped past us, so stay on your guard down there. We’ll try and catch this thing, but we might just end up chasing it out of the caves.” “So what exactly happened back there?” Whirlwind asked almost as soon as Twilight’s connection to the green crystal had faded. “Why did your magic cut off like that?” Twilight shook her head. “I still don’t know. The killer must’ve blocked my magic somehow. Or maybe it’s because we’re so close to Canterlot and whatever’s going on there.” “Well, is it going to happen again?” “I don’t know!” she groaned. “It’s not happened before!” The moonlight surrounding them brightened as they walked, and soon the cavern ceiling above receded fully, revealing the ominous, swirling clouds in the night sky and the brilliant full moon shining through their center. The cavern walls surrounding the three ponies remained, however, and Twilight realized that the canyon they now found themselves in must have been the result of the cavern’s ceiling collapsing fairly recently, explaining the piles of loose rocks covering the ground. “Coup was pretty serious about us not leaving the caves, ” Whirlwind commented nervously. “Does a collapsed cavern like this still count as being underground?” “It does if we want to find Cloud Slicer,” Twilight answered, picking up her pace. Ahead of her, the canyon split in two, and she could see what looked to be a pony lying in the middle of the intersection. Immediately after catching sight of what she could only assume was Cloud Slicer, she saw a golden light emerging from the smaller of the two passageways up ahead. “Is someone there?” a familiar voice challenged the three ponies, coming from somewhere far ahead of the group and echoing throughout the canyon. “Twilight!” the lavender unicorn called out, and the golden light dimmed enough for her to make out Amber Vane and a group of ponies following behind him. The two teams met each other at the intersection and at what turned out to be a skeleton of a pony, almost completely picked clean of any flesh. A green horn protruding from its skull identified the skeleton as Sirius. “Are you alright?” she asked the other team. “Just about to ask the same of you,” Amber Vane replied, glancing nervously at the skeleton and giving Twilight and those behind her a worried frown. “We ran into the corpse of Icarus a minute ago. Found a skeleton of somepony too.” His frown deepened “What happened to your face?” “Nothing,” Twilight groaned, doing another attempt at wiping away the blood covering her face. “Team Cyan’s been hunted down by... something,” she explained. “We were sent as reinforcements, but we’ve only found Hail Trail so far. Of those that are alive, at least. You haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary?” “If they had, they’d probably be a lot fewer,” Whirlwind observed, casting a sideways glance at the completely traumatized Hail Trail. “Apart from the two casualties, no.” “We found Cerulean not that far from base camp,” Whirlwind muttered, more to himself than anyone else. “Then Whitewing and Iron Sword...” “Iron Sword’s dead?” Amber Vane asked in disbelief, but Whirlwind ignored him, leaving Twilight to give the other unicorn a sad nod. “Hail Trail makes four,” the pegasus continued. “Sirius and Icarus too, along with somepony’s skeleton. That’s seven, which leaves us one final member of Team Cyan yet to be found. Either Pale Pass or Sky Sweeper. And Cloud Slicer too.” “How could this happen?” Amber Vane questioned Twilight worriedly. “I mean, we had trouble with some snakes, but... how did something wipe out Team Cyan? What was it?” “We don’t know,” Twilight answered, nodding at the passageway yet to be explored. “It probably went this way, though. Unless it’s managed to scale the walls here while carrying two ponies.” Whirlwind cleared his throat loudly, making Twilight stop in her tracks and look back at him. “Coup?” “Oh. Right.” Yet again, her horn began to glow as she summoned her connection to the crystal by Coup de Grâce. “Twilight Sparkle here again. We’ve reached the surface and met up with Amber Vane’s team. They found Icarus’ body and somepony’s skeleton, either Pale Pass or Sky Sweeper. We found the skeleton of Sirius as well, so it’s Cloud Slicer and one more from Team Cyan missing at this point. We’ll explore the area together and see if we can’t find the last two and whatever killed them.” As soon as Twilight severed the connection, a loud cackle sounded throughout the large fissure, its echoes almost immediately drowned out by the scream of Hail Trail. “No! No! Nononono! You won’t get me!” Before anypony could react, the pegasus had turned tail and was galloping down the way he had come, Whirlwind following soon after in an attempt to catch him. For a moment, Twilight hesitated, but eventually turned away from the receding figures of the two pegasi and turned her attention to the path she had been heading toward just a few seconds earlier. “C’mon!” she shouted, teleporting ahead of the gathered ponies before setting into a gallop herself. Jagged stone walls passed by her in a blur as she barreled on ahead, but she was almost immediately met by a dead end. Both Cloud Slicer and Sky Sweeper sat propped up against each other, both of them displaying a small, but fatal-looking wound in the neck. “Where’d it go?” Amber Vane asked as he arrived at Twilight’s side, his eyes darting about in search of the unknown killer before his gaze settled on the two corpses. As soon as he spotted the grisly sight, Sky Sweeper’s head detached itself from the rest of the body and fell to the ground with a dull thud, reminding Twilight of what Hail Trail had said about the unfortunate pegasus’s demise. “How is it doing this!?” “I don’t know!” Twilight replied, frustrated with her elusive target. Before the unicorn could react, a large projectile sped right past her head and landed between her and Amber Vane. Twilight’s gaze was pulled toward the ground long enough to identify the projectile as a now shattered skull, and she immediately returned her attention to the top of the cliff face, trying to spot whoever had thrown it. “It’s up there!” “Wait!” Amber Vane urged her, putting a hoof on her before she could vanish. “Coup said... we...” He was trembling badly, his eyes darting back and forth between Twilight and the two corpses as he spoke. “Coup said that… we weren’t supposed to go up there,” he managed. “It’s too dangerous. And you’d be going directly against her orders.” “This is the closest I’ve ever been to catching that thing!” Twilight hastily argued, her gaze returning to the area from which the head had been thrown. “I need to know if it’s him or not!” “Him? What are you talking about!?” Amber Vane demanded, but as soon as his hoof left her, Twilight disappeared in a flash, reappearing above the canyon. A series of mangled train tracks and a giant pile of rubble was the first sight that greeted her. The Canterlot Central Station, located just outside the city proper, had not only been decimated, but flattened completely by something of monumental size. No doubt whatever did this also caused that cave to collapse... the unicorn observed as she swept her gaze across the rest of the city, her heart growing heavier with every second. The skyline’s changed again. No matter where she looked, Twilight could see none of the many towers of Canterlot, and it seemed everything within her limited line of sight had been destroyed in the same manner as the Central Station. In her absence, Canterlot had become a ruin. A frigid wind blew across the area, nearly throwing the unicorn off her hooves, and she groaned at the cold. Her horn sparked to life as she summoned a spell of both heating and illuminating, a cone of light soon extending from her horn and sweeping across the immediate area in search of the killer. “Twilight! Get down!” Amber Vane called out from far below her. She looked back to see the nine ponies gathered near the terminus of the giant fissure, all calling out to her desperately. “Head on back to the base of operations!” Twilight shouted back at them. “I’ll be fine!” A vantage point, she instructed herself, ignoring Amber Vane’s protests. It can’t have gotten that far. The unicorn set into a swift trot, heading toward the closest building that had been left standing by what Twilight began to suspect had been an ursa major. A thunderous avian screech boomed out across the ruined wastes of the outskirts of Canterlot, and Twilight ducked her head down as she ran, cutting off the light shining from her horn. The roc, wherever it was, didn’t seem to be interested in the pony, however, and so she reached out to her magic again only moments later. Hoping that the flash of light would attract no unwanted attention, the unicorn teleported to the top of an abandoned brick house, for once appreciative of the perpetually full moon shining far above as she surveyed the area. No sign of it, she concluded dismally after a minute of searching, shaking her head with frustration. What was it? The alicorn? Why did he kill all those ponies? Why was he down there!? Did he find the Elements before me, or did he just want to kill a handful of soldiers? Once again finding no answer to the questions surrounding the dark alicorn, Twilight turned her gaze to the palace grounds, still several miles away and hidden from view by the rest of the mostly ruined capital. Coup de Grâce won’t be happy I went to the surface, she reasoned with herself. Neither will the council. This might just be my last chance at searching this place. If the Elements are somewhere in the caverns, the teams will retrieve them and give them to my friends and I. If they’re still up here somewhere, I’m the only one able to find them. I have to try. “You cannot find them.” Twilight whirled around and leapt away from the source of the voice in one swift motion, only to find a few wisps of smoke evaporating into nothingness. “Show yourself!” she shouted at the alicorn, but received no response. “When the time is right,” the alicorn finally continued, this time from somewhere to her right, “no sooner, no later, you will find them within the heart of Canterlot.” The unicorn scowled at the empty air next to her, and her horn started glowing dangerously. “You led me all the way up here! What is it you want?” The alicorn did not answer, and Twilight was instead thrown off balance by a powerful gust of wind from behind her. She immediately turned around and groaned as she found herself standing before an ursa minor that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Twilight took a silent step backwards as she held her breath, the enormous bear eyeing her with a mix of interest and mild hostility. She attempted a placating smile as she took another step back, but bumped into something unexpectedly. Turning once again, she found the alicorn standing right behind her. “Would you like some help?” he offered, a menacing smile upon his lips. Twilight stepped back toward the ursa cautiously, lighting her horn. “Your help? Like what you did when I faced the diamond dogs?” The alicorn lifted an eyebrow, and his smile remained. “You blame me?” Twilight glanced back at the ursa, only to find that the bear had stopped moving, surrounded by the red shimmer of the stallion’s magic. “You said you never lie,” she said, turning back to him. “Tell me you didn’t... mess with my head while I was down there!” “I awakened something within you, nothing more. I am afraid you slaughtered those dogs on your own.” “What did you do?” Twilight demanded. “Why... ‘awaken’ this... whatever!?” “You will see.” He nodded his head at Canterlot. “After all, it is why you are here. Now, this creature...” The ground shuddered, and warily, Twilight took her eyes off the alicorn to look back at the ursa, which now floated in midair, a helpless expression on its face. “Say the word, and I shall end it.” “It’s a baby!” Twilight objected. “It’s an obstacle,” the alicorn countered coolly. “If you continue to avoid the walls that surround you, you will find that you are trapped. I am offering to help you.” “Clearing the way for the path you want me to take,” Twilight concluded with a sneer. “What if I want to go in another direction?” “I thought your dreams had shown you the folly of such a decision. But by all means‒” He put a hoof on his chest and bowed his head briefly “‒knock this wall down.” Twilight needed no further encouragement, her horn lighting up immediately and firing a bolt of lightning at the alicorn. As she had expected, the spell struck an invisible shield and vanished, rendering her attack completely ineffective. “You can do better.” “You’re not invincible!” Twilight told herself more than the stallion. “Not outside the nightmares!” A concentrated beam of light escaped her horn next. Even though it stopped at his barrier again, she kept at it, sweeping the beam back and forth across the shield in search of weaknesses. When she failed to find any, she tripled the power of her spell, causing an explosion that rang out across the ruined city. Wincing at the noise, the unicorn stopped. An ursa major had appeared near the canyon from which she had come, she realized, and it regarded the two equines and the floating minor with bewilderment. “One day, perhaps,” the alicorn sighed before the unicorn could resume her assault. “But not today. You lack the power to shape your destiny, Twilight.” He stepped closer to the unicorn and extended a hoof toward her. Twilight was about to shy away from his touch when something about the dark alicorn’s eyes changed. The amber color intensified suddenly, and whatever lay beyond those eyes became drained of all color and muddled to the point where everything but those eyes fell into complete obscurity. His hoof touched her lightly on the forehead, and she found herself unable to move away. “And for now, I remain the undisputed master of this realm.” His hoof pressed against her forehead a little firmer for emphasis before drawing away. He blinked his eyes, releasing the unicorn of whatever trance held her. His eyes left her and turned instead to the helpless ursa behind her. “The choice is not there. Not for beings like you and me. You are not free. You can knock down this wall,” he said, nodding at the ursa, “or you can perish.” He gave her a knowing look. “And you cannot perish, can you? You cannot allow yourself to give up,” he whispered into her ear, standing suddenly at her side rather than in front of her. Twilight took a shaky step away from the alicorn, reaching the edge of the ruined building they stood upon. She shuddered, both at the spell he had just cast on her and his touch. “What’s the catch?” she demanded after recovering. “Why do you want to help me... knock that wall down?” The alicorn chuckled. “The catch? I kill the child.” Twilight’s gaze went to the ursa minor, whose entire body distorted wildly before disintegrating, leaving nothing but the lingering echoes of its pained howl cut short. “I kill the father.” Without taking his eyes of the unicorn in front of him, a scarlet fireball launched backwards from the tip of his horn, tearing through the air in a wide arc and with a loud hiss before striking the ursa major poking around near the canyon. The ground shuddered as soon as the fireball impacted, enough to make Twilight’s teeth rattle, and the distant ursa major became immediately engulfed by an inferno that dwarfed even the titanic bear. Dust and pebbles between the unicorn and the explosion were thrown into the air as a shockwave rolled across the area and toward her, and Twilight had no time to react before she felt something akin to a giant fist smashing her off the building and into the air. The next thing she knew, she was lying in a large, abandoned garden atop a flattened, withered bush, cuts and scrapes all over her body and a loud ringing in her ears. She couldn’t hear herself groan as she slowly rose to her feet, but the alicorn’s voice was crystal clear within her mind. But I don’t kill the mother, he finished. Very faintly, Twilight registered a terrible roar of anger that carried across his point perfectly, and the unicorn looked back the way she had come, through a ruined hedge she had nearly torn down while flying through the air. A third ursa, the same size as the one killed in the explosion, had appeared at the ruined building she had been standing on a moment ago. Although she could barely hear it through the ringing in her ears, Twilight felt the vibrations in the ground from the ursa major’s second roar. There are walls that guide you, that you need, the alicorn told her, and upon looking closer, Twilight realized that he had already vanished. With the stallion gone, the ursa’s head turned instead toward Twilight, snarling ferociously. And there are those you don’t, limiting you in your growth and progress. Learn to tell the difference, and I will see you in a few days. Behind the enraged ursa, the alicorn’s destructive spell had left nothing but a smoking crater, wiping out not only the father ursa, but erasing all signs of the canyon Twilight had come from. She had little time to ponder the fates of the pony soldiers she had left behind there, for the mother ursa now closed the gap between herself and the unicorn in a single step. As a monstrous paw swept across the garden, crushing everything in the area with ease, Twilight narrowly managed to teleport almost a hundred feet backwards and out of the ursa’s immediate range. Safety’s out the window, the unicorn concluded, firing a powerful explosive charge at the ursa before her. It was struck square in the forehead, but the massive bear only grunted in response. If I can’t get back to the Sword of Equestria, I’d better make the most of what I’ve got. I’ll grab the Elements and get out of here. She teleported once more as the ursine lunged at her, setting into a gallop toward the heart of Canterlot as soon as she rematerialized. She threw back another explosive spell at the ursa, following up with a lightning bolt that did little to slow it down, and she resumed teleporting rapidly from place to place in an erratic zigzag pattern in a failed attempt at throwing off her pursuer. The ruined buildings rushing past her in a blur became larger and larger and the cracked and crushed paved streets became wider and wider as she made her way through the very suburbs in which she had grown up and into the older parts of the city. And as the ruined houses and shops around her increased in size, so too did the giant pieces of debris scattered across the roads, making it harder and harder for the unicorn to navigate the city. She had made it to one of the major streets of the capital when a patch of slick ice unexpectedly found itself under her hooves, and the unicorn crashed head-first into the pavement. She groaned as her nose and the few scrapes she had gotten from her encounter with Hail Trail began bleeding even more, using her magic to wipe away the blood running down past her lips. Simultaneously, she quickly summoned a sharply angled triangular force field about herself, somehow managing to hold it as the ursa major tailing her slammed its paw down on top of her. The beast howled at the heavens as it cut itself on the pointed force field, and Twilight unleashed the most powerful bolt of lightning she could muster, aiming to curve it around in midair to strike it within its exposed maw. The dizziness brought on by her recent faceplant onto the concrete surface of the street, however, robbed her of her accuracy, causing her to hit the ursa’s eyes instead. At least that should blind it for a while, the unicorn observed, and cast her gaze about for an adequate hiding spot. A partly collapsed but solid-looking marble structure that Twilight recognized as one of the city’s banks proved itself a favorable candidate. Before the ursa could recover, Twilight cast a come to life spell on a quartet of rocks that quickly dashed off down a side street, mimicking the sound of hooves fairly well. With the distraction in place, Twilight then teleported inside the bank, allowing herself a moment of respite as she leaned against a cracked wall within the ruined building. Before long, the heavy footfalls of the ursa echoed all over the city as it set in pursuit of Twilight’s decoy, and the unicorn let out a sigh of relief. That could have gone better. If only that alicorn didn’t try sabotaging me everywhere I went! Still, could have been a lot worse, I suppose. At least no one else... The unicorn paused as the temperature surrounding her suddenly dropped, far more drastically than was natural. The entire building creaked dangerously as a monumental gust of wind buffeted its broken walls, the small cracks and holes in the marble walls producing a high-pitched howling as the wind tore through them, undoubtedly loud enough to draw the attention of every single creature in the Canterlot area. Before the unicorn could rise, her hind legs were already glued to the floor by a thick coating of ice, and she gritted her teeth at the sudden cold. By the time she had freed herself, every single exit in the bank had frozen over, windigos diving in and out among the ice as they howled at the intruder. “And there goes any chance of stealth,” the unicorn sighed, using her magic to blast apart the ice in her immediate area as it sought to envelop her again. She aimed her horn at the nearest exit and unleashed an explosive charge, managing to blow the icy barrier apart without much difficulty. The sight of a frozen alleyway greeted her, and she galloped on ahead into the icy passage and away from the hostile windigoes, not noticing the strange figures in the ice all around her before it was too late. With a guttural ape-like roar, a fist appeared from a wall right next to her and struck her square in the face, sending her flying backwards to an already gathered pack of the bipedal ice monsters. Although she was blinded by pain, the unicorn remembered what Team Yellow had said of the strange creatures’ strength and immediately summoned a force field about herself, assessing her injuries as the monster pounded away at her defenses. Why the face!? she complained as her mouth quickly filled with the huge amounts of blood flowing from her nose, gagging at both the smell and taste. She prodded gingerly at her muzzle, and although the pain was dizzying, it didn’t seem like anything was broken. Without warning, the shield around her shattered under the ice beasts’ assault and Twilight narrowly managed teleporting her way out from the middle of the angered throng before they could catch her. She reappeared near the end of the alley and unleashed yet another explosive charge aimed at the ice monsters, blowing apart half of the pack before she set into a gallop once more, struggling to orient herself in the ruined city. She turned left and found herself running up a minor street that was hardly wider than the alley she had just been in, the task of running uphill made all the more difficult by the increasingly abundant patches of ice covering the ground. Taking her eyes off her hooves for an instant, Twilight saw another swarm of windigoes flitting about above her, leaping from rooftop to rooftop as they left behind trails of solid ice, soon forming a white, glittering overhang for the street she was currently galloping through. The unicorn quickly realized the winter spirits’ intent as needle-sharp icicles grew out of the ice above her, and she summoned her force field again as the makeshift roof began to collapse on top of her. Can’t keep this up for much longer, the unicorn thought, grimacing as the path ahead of her was overrun by windigoes, the ground icing over immediately and growing sharp spikes everywhere. Seeing nowhere else to go, the unicorn teleported off the street and onto the rooftops overlooking it, thankful that the buildings in this area had been left relatively untouched. The flat rooftops provided her with a large, somewhat steep staircase as she continued uphill. From her position, it was hard to determine how close she was to the palace, but spotting the remains of the hospital she had woken up in after The Great Tragedy a few hundred feet to her left, she figured she was getting close. Standing next to the hospital, however, was yet another ursa major, this one even bigger than any of the ones she had previously met. It seemed to have noticed the commotion caused by both the bipedal ice creatures and the windigoes, as well as the bright flash of the unicorn’s teleportations, for its eyes were currently riveted on her. Knowing it would be able to close the gap between them in just a matter of seconds, Twilight sighed as she came to a halt, spending the little time she had on gathering her energy for another bout with one of the enormous ursines. This is getting out of hoof. Scratch that. It got out of hoof five minutes ago. Now it’s complete and utter chaos. The unicorn bit her lip as she came to the inevitable conclusion. I have to turn back. The barely perceptible sound of ice against ice caused the unicorn to turn her head, providing her with just enough warning to dodge out of the way as one of the bipedal creatures lunged at her. They can scale buildings. Noted. By the time she had blasted apart the one before her and three others behind it, the ursa was upon her, one of its monumental paws smashing the building she stood upon to pieces. Twilight herself proved once again to be too elusive for her enemies, teleporting onto a neighboring building and firing a continuous bolt of lightning at the star-like insignia upon the massive bear’s forehead. The spell was enough to significantly slow the ursa, but as she concentrated on holding back the large creature, another flock of windigoes caught her by surprise, appearing out of nowhere to whirl about her legs and encase them in ice. The unicorn gasped at the sudden stab of pain as the ice materialized out of nowhere and quickly crept up her belly and along her sides, threatening to completely envelop her in a matter of seconds. Forsaking her lightning bolt spell, Twilight summoned a wave of fire that swept around her immediate area, vaporizing the windigoes and halting the hastily advancing ice. Before she could manage to free herself, however, the ursa had recovered from her attack and was once again preparing to crush her. Realizing she couldn’t dodge in her current state, the unicorn summoned her telekinesis instead. The paw bigger than her own library bore down upon her and, screaming with the effort, Twilight barely managed to push it aside in midair. The roof she stood upon sagged dangerously as the ursa’s paw grazed and demolished one of its underlying walls, threatening to bury the frozen unicorn in a shower of bricks and mortar. Quickly noting that the ursa had been close to losing its balance, however, Twilight summoned a magenta glowing rope that looped around the bear’s huge fangs before both ends connected with her horn again. She tautened the magical rope just after the ursa regained its footing, and as it lifted its head just slightly, the unicorn was ripped out of her icy cage and away from the encroaching ice monsters. She now hung freely below the ursa’s jaw, but manipulating the magical rope, she was able to swing herself onto the top of its massive head, taking a moment to recover and orient herself from the new vantage point. A moment was all she had however, as the ursa suddenly shifted beneath her as its left foreleg gave way without warning, the bear grunting in pain just as Twilight’s magical rope disintegrated. Moving with remarkable agility, a strange creature leapt onto the head of the ursa major, standing only a few feet from the unicorn. The creature was not like anything Twilight had ever seen or heard of, which in itself was enough to confound the knowledgeable unicorn. Like the ice creatures, the being before her was a biped, standing upright on thin, multi-jointed legs that ended in a series of wickedly sharp, jet-black claws that served as feet. Its chest was elongated almost to the extreme, with ribs clearly visible against its mottled midnight blue and olive skin, giving the creature a starved appearance that only served to further unsettle the unicorn. The arms, all four of them, had much the same appearance as the legs, having at least six joints, but were remarkably longer. As the creature stood there and stared at her, its arms hanging loosely at its sides, the razor-sharp points of its foot-long sickle-like claws nearly touched the ursa’s scalp. It had no visible head nor mouth, and its four eyes were instead located on its chest, two of which were staring Twilight in the eye while the other pair took in the rest of the unicorn’s body. Spikes ranging in length from an inch to half a foot jutted out from the creature’s skin at random all over its body, quivering as the creature breathed. All in all, Twilight’s newest potential foe stood almost eight feet tall. For five seconds or so, the two were silent, assessing each other and looking for any weak spots. Finally, the unknown creature made its move, leaping gracefully across the ursa’s head and swinging its two bladed right arms at the unicorn. In response, Twilight erected a sturdy barrier between herself and her enemy, but, to her surprise, her force field disintegrated as soon as her opponent’s claws came in contact with the shield. She backpedalled desperately, but failed to fully avoid the creature’s attack, its long claws cutting three deep gashes into her left foreleg, slicing through the flesh as if it were butter. Twilight screamed in agony, but managed to teleport out of reach before the thing could follow up with a swipe of its left arms. As she materialized on the ursa’s back, the bear, spooked both by the presence of the odd creature on its head and the unicorn’s scream, threw itself to the ground, attempting to crush the creatures standing on it by rolling around. Twilight teleported once more, ending up on the nearest building, the Canterlot hospital. The clawed creature proved to be equally evasive, floating through the air as it leapt across the hundred foot gap between the ursa and the hospital. The thing hardly had enough time to land thirty feet ahead of her before Twilight switched to a more offensive tactic, firing lightning bolts, explosive charges, and fireballs at it in rapid succession. Whatever magic-cancelling effect the creature’s claws possessed, however, worked just as well on offensive as defensive spells. Waving its four limbs about gracefully, it neatly parried every single one of the unicorn’s spells, advancing steadily. Making matters more difficult, the ursa’s attention had now returned to her, and a hastily dropping temperature suggested the presence of windigoes. Trying to focus on the present situation and not the horrible memories her spell brought to mind, Twilight used her magic to call upon the same, violent fires she had used against the diamond dogs. The roaring flames flowed freely from her horn, spinning about her body protectively for a few seconds as it grew more and more powerful. Breaking free of its orbit finally, the fire lashed out at the clawed thing, overwhelming its defense as it struck its side. The biped was thrown off its feet and driven straight into the face of the ursa major, who roared angrily as the flames struck its eyes. Another roar from behind her drew Twilight’s attention away from the enemies to her left, and she spotted that night’s fourth ursa scowling at her as it recognized her as the one attacking the other bear. Looking ahead of her again, she saw a swarm of windigoes appear on the other side of the hospital building, rushing straight at her and leaving behind a crackling trail of solid ice. I can’t do this. The two ursas, one charging at her and the other preparing to pummel her with a massive paw, slowed suddenly, and the clawed creature leaping at her and the windigoes rushing along the roof of the hospital froze in midair. All around her, time ground to a halt as the unicorn in her desperation reached out once more to the core of her being, her surroundings melting away in favor of the white skeletal structures, the strange organic structures, the multicolored trees and lanterns, and most importantly, the cascades of magenta and blindingly white sparkles. Doing her best to grab hold of every single scrap of magic she could find within herself, she flung them at the surface, once more making her latent energies manifest in an effort to ward off her many attackers. Time resumed its normal pace, and the unicorn’s eyes opened to reveal two globes of incandescent white. Her horn took on a blazing brilliance of not only magenta, but white and black as well as her body lifted into the air, a powerful whirlwind forming about her. Her entire being flashed briefly before an orb of pure energy appeared at the tip of her horn, exploding outwards in all directions as it expanded blindingly fast, completely destroying the hospital she stood upon and driving its rubble into its foundation. All of the creatures within two hundred feet of her were blasted away, and the windigoes howled in pain as they were blown to smithereens. Instead of dropping to the ground as she had done the last time, the unicorn instead floated gently downwards, touching down in the center of the crater she had just formed. As the magic left her and she accidentally put weight on the leg sliced up by the clawed creature, however, she fell over with a grunt of pain, clutching at the heavily bleeding limb. Eventually, the dust all around her settled, and as it did so, Twilight was overcome with despair. The four-armed monster was still standing, and not alone were the two ursas relatively unhurt by the explosion, they had also been joined by the ursa major Twilight had lured away in the first place. The bipedal ice creatures had arrived in a force numbering at least a hundred, and several swarms of windigoes had gathered overhead, summoning a thick coat of ice that crept along the still warm surface of the crater, threatening to envelop her in just a few seconds. A long series of roars announced the arrival of a hydra, and after just a few moments, three quartets of the reptilian heads appeared at the rim of the crater. By the time the unicorn had managed to get to her hooves again, another booming avian screech told her the roc somewhere was watching the scene closely. Despair turned to an overwhelming panic as she threw her gaze about, realizing that the creatures of Canterlot had her completely surrounded. She tried teleporting, but the powerful spell had drained her of nearly all of her powers, her horn sputtering uselessly when she tried summoning her magic. I could run, she suggested to herself, eyeing the small army of beasts gathered about her. It’ll be hard with the state of my leg, but I’ve tried worse. Which way though? Without teleportation, I can’t dodge the ursas’ paws; they’d crush me if I got any nearer. The claw... thingy won’t allow me to pass by. Too quick. Same goes for the ice creatures. That leaves the three hydras. What I wouldn’t give for wings in a situation like this. Ugh, hydras it is, then. The one near Ponyville was pretty clumsy. If I can get past any of the monsters here, it’ll be them. Refusing to worry herself with the details of what to do after escaping the crater, Twilight tried to turn around to face the reptiles. A sudden stab of pain in the three hooves she stood upon, however, told her that she had underestimated the speed of the advancing ice brought on by the windigoes’ presence. Grunting with exertion, the unicorn barely managed to pull her front hoof free before it became fully frozen, but as she sought to free her hind legs as well, her foreleg slipped out from underneath her. She collapsed on the frozen ground and the ice coating quickly seized her chest, locking her in an awkward position just as the creatures all around her began to advance. She pushed furiously against the ground with her two forelegs, screaming as her left leg became covered in the blood gushing out of her deep wounds. Her efforts were met with nothing but pain and failure and soon all four legs were trapped, the ice having already encased her hindquarters and rapidly creeping toward her head. Realizing that any physical solution to her predicament was now beyond impossible, the unicorn returned to her magic, her horn fizzing and sputtering violently as she tried desperately to find a spell that would save her. She poured more and more effort into her magic, but the buzzing only intensified and the horn grew steadily hotter as if it were overheating. The heat quickly turned excruciating and produced a splitting headache that only grew more horrible by the second, but still she pushed on, confident that if anything would save her, it would be her magic. And finally, something somewhere inside of her stirred. As if recognizing its significance, as if instantly knowing that this and this alone would save her life, Twilight turned to it, doing everything she could to unleash its secret power. And as she did so, her entire being shifted monumentally and irreversibly. Her horn ceased its useless sputtering, and the stream of tiny magenta sparks leaping from its tip died away. Instead, an almost deafening crack rang out all over the ruined city, shattering her icy cage and stopping the hostile monsters dead in their tracks. Twilight was pulled to her hooves by her horn as whatever spell she had set in motion began to take effect. A series of wispy tendrils extended slowly from her horn, snaking about in the air and fluttering about gently despite the massive bursts of wind plaguing the crater. The winds died down quickly in response to Twilight’s magic, and the monsters all around her fell silent as well, save for a few that were growling nervously. Like snakes, the tendrils suddenly lashed out at a number of her enemies, striking mostly the ice creatures and windigoes but latching on to an ursa and the clawed monster as well. A strange feeling came over the unicorn as the tendrils all connected to her enemies. A sense of despair, several of rage and confusion, and multitudes of fear and suffering overwhelmed her without warning, but her spell continued without interruption. A loud rushing sound erupted from each of the magenta tendrils, growing steadily higher and higher in pitch as all of the alien emotions bombarding her all transformed into pure, insurmountable fear, soon followed by excruciating pain. The unicorn paled when her spell continued its work, the tendril ripping and tearing not at her enemies’ flesh, but at the innermost core of their beings, pulling mercilessly as the creatures all around continued their unbearable suffering. And somehow, she felt every ounce of pain she inflicted upon them, not experiencing it so much as remembering, the agony sickening her rather than crippling her. Two of the ice monsters suddenly collapsed, and the tendrils withdrew from the corpses and retracted into the unicorn to fill her with a surge of power that felt both welcome and disturbing beyond measure. Twilight tried to move, to end her spell, but she was paralyzed, frozen in place as she stood at the center of a crowd howling at the pain she brought upon them, all of them suffering far worse than she had ever done herself. She knew it somehow, could feel it. The hundreds of voices echoed in her mind as they screamed and roared, their pain somehow experienced firsthoof by the unicorn as a punishment for what she had begun. A dozen more ice creatures fell over and just as many windigoes evaporated into nothingness as she ripped the very essence of their being from their bodies, consuming it to fuel her own magic which had by now already reached astronomical levels. The clawed creature began advancing despite the tendril sucking it dry of everything that made it what it was, swinging its claws blindly as it sought to put an end to the source of misery. Without directly wanting to, Twilight focused her powers on the strong creature, the tendrils spreading out from her horn all leaving their chosen targets and grabbing hold of the biped instead. The clawed thing fell to its knees, and although it possessed no mouth with which to scream, its pain was still crystal clear to the pony. It was far from enough to stop her merciless onslaught, though, and soon its physical remains were all that was left of the clawed creature. Whatever had driven it, whatever had animated it and been at the core of its being was now a part of her, part of the crackling energy buzzing at the tip of her horn. Her terrible spell finally ran its course as the last of the nightmarish tendrils retreated into her, but her horn continued to shine, overflowing with the energy it had stolen. Twilight opened her eyes, realizing that she had held them tightly shut the whole time, watching the scene somehow through the eyes of her prey. The four-armed being had collapsed just a few feet from her, its claws no more than an inch from scraping her left hind leg. The corpses of the strange ice beings were strewn all around her, but plenty more had survived, watching the unicorn in awed silence. Twilight felt as though her mind had been split into countless pieces during her spell, and although it had been made whole again, it seemed as though it had taken on an alien shape, no longer welcome within her own body. As she slowly regained her awareness, so too did the remaining monsters surrounding her, and a hundred hostile gazes settled on her. The unicorn, however, was beyond worrying. With a dazed expression, she looked at her own horn, growling and blazing with the power it now held, stolen from the beings she had killed. Acting more on instinct than anything else, she seized that power and shaped it into a teleportation spell, one that would carry her far away from the dangers surrounding her. Thus, with a loud pop and a blinding flash, Twilight vanished from Canterlot. Having spent the last minute furiously trying to squeeze every single speck of magic she had into her spells, the unicorn quickly realized that she had overshot her teleportation spell. Canterlot, with its bloodthirsty denizens and beyond freezing temperatures, was gone, its massive but ruined brick and marble structures replaced by the much smaller rustique houses adorned with thatched roofs that she had come to miss so sorely. “Ponyville...” Twilight muttered to herself, casting her gaze about in wonder. “I went all the wa-gah! Argh!” In her distraction, she accidentally put weight on her left foreleg, and the still heavily bleeding wound pulsed painfully before the unicorn toppled over, clutching at the leg as she stifled a scream. “T-Twilight!?” a slightly familiar, but mostly startled voice called out as the unicorn fell, the sound of galloping hooves soon reaching her. “Where’d you come from!? What happened to your leg!?” The unicorn finally remembered the voice as belonging to Davenport, owner of the Quills and Sofas shop. As Twilight lifted her head weakly, she saw the earth pony hurriedly take of his vest and wrap it around her injured leg, carefully helping her to her hooves again. “Thanks,” the unicorn managed, suddenly feeling very tired from teleporting several miles. She winced as she experimentally wiggled the maimed limb. “Could you..? A hospital...” “Of course!” Davenport stuttered in panic as he saw his vest get soaked in a matter of seconds. The stallion was soon joined by an equally worried Lyra, both of them positioning themselves at Twilight’s sides for support and helping her limp forwards. Twilight glanced at her surroundings again, this time noticing a rather large crowd that had simply stopped dead in their tracks in shock at the sudden appearance of the bleeding unicorn. Must be strange for something like that to appear in the middle of the town square, Twilight reflected, gazing back at the trail of blood she was leaving behind. I wonder... she thought idly, her mind becoming steadily more and more fuzzy. I wonder how much blood I can afford to lose. Her vision darkened, and a dull thump as she hit the ground along with somepony shouting her name was the last thing she registered before losing consciousness.