//------------------------------// // Reign of the Night // Story: Purity Corruption // by TheBlox //------------------------------// Sunday night seemed to come pretty fast with the uprising excitement of going back to school. Altruise practiced and shared her magic with the other ponies in Trottingham over the passing week, full of confidence and full of her regained joy. School was just a morning ahead. With all this excitement, it was hard for Altruise to put herself to sleep. She began thinking about how fun it was going to be, how things will be different now that she could execute magic properly; to learn new magic, to be like the rest of the unicorns. With a spinning mind of enthusiastic joy, and as well as nervousness, eventually Altruise managed to put herself to sleep. * * * * * In the middle of the night, Altruise woke up to loud whispering chatter coming from her window. A groan, and the filly sat up in her bed, glancing tiredly at her clock. It was only midnight; she had slept for merely two hours. Standing to her hooves on her bed, she tiredly motioned to her window and opened it up and glanced outside. With the window open, the chattering outside was amplified; ponies from all over town were on the streets, all looking up at the sky. They were all pointing a hoof, and many of them were panicking. Altruise looked up at the sky to see what they were all looking at. In the black and starry sky, there was an alicorn, black as the night itself. “Nightmare Moon…?” Altruise immediately assumed, but that didn’t make sense. Nightmare Moon was still trapped on the moon from nearly a thousand years ago when Celestia banished her there. Squinting her eyes, Altruise took a more careful gander at the alicorn; it was no mare, it was in fact a stallion. His cutie mark stood out significantly; it was a golden supernova. “Altruise, get away from the window!” Altruise immediately heard her father gallop up from behind her. He quickly shut the window and pulled the filly away to the exit of her bedroom. “Dad!? What’s going on out there?” The filly questioned, struggling to move in her father’s grip. “There’s no time for that. Downstairs, now!” The pegasus brought his daughter down the steps in a rushing pace, muttering to himself loud enough for Altruise to hear him. “Not now, goddess, not today…” “Dad, what are you talking about?” Altruise began to panic herself, “Dad, what’s happening!?” “Altruise, silence!” Her father ordered, entering the living room where her mother was. The pegasus and his wife shared a concerned look with each other, and the mother activated her horn. “Mom? Dad? What’re you doing?” Altruise whimpered. From the spell being cast from her mother’s horn, the sofa all lifted off of the floor, and the carpet across the floor rolled up in her magic aura to the wall, revealing the floorboards beneath the carpet. In the center of the room there was a trapdoor; furthering her spell, she opened up the trapdoor, which lead to a staircase to a cellar. “Altruise, get in.” The pegasus instructed in a fatherly voice. “Dad, why do we have a basement—” “There’s no time!” Her father interrupted, “Get down, now!” Altrusie’s eyes began to fill with tears. “I-I don’t want to leave you though.” “Altruise.” Her father glared at her, “Down!” Altruise wept and hiccupped, “Y-yes Dad.” With sobbing eyes, she obeyed and limply trotted down the stairs. When she was half way down the steps, she turned to look up at her parents looking back down at her. Expecting them to come with her, the trapdoor shut on her. “MOM!! DAD!!” Altruise galloped up the stairs, trying to push the trapdoor open, but it wouldn’t budge. “NOoo!” She gasped for air through her sobs, “Don’t leave me in here!” A sudden crash shook the entire house, and Altruise lost her footing, tumbling down the stairs to a concrete floor below. Limply standing back up, she looked around her; the walls were made of solid rock. This was no basement or cellar; this was built to be a bomb shelter. * * * * * On the surface, Altruise’s mother covered the flooring back up with the carpet, and put the furniture back down on the floor. “I-I didn’t think he’d be back.” The mother turned to the pegasus with tears, “Nopony has heard of anything from him for so long… We haven’t practiced enough!” “Nonsense.” The stallion declared, “Everything will be alright.” The unicorn whimpered a few times, but nodded. “We need to do this. For Altruise.” The ground suddenly rumbled, and the walls around them began to crackle and rip apart with a black aura like a swimming shadow, and their roof was lifted off of their house. “WHERE’S THE GIRL!?!” The alicorn peered down below at them, as their roof was hurled far off into the southern forest with ease. “She’s not here.” Altruise’s mother called up to the alicorn in furious tears. “Is that a fact?” The dark alicorn of a flaming shadow for a mane growled. “Then why don’t you spare yourself a humiliating death and tell me where she is?” The pegasus turned to his wife and took a deep breath. “Okay. Like we’ve practiced.” His wife nodded to him briefly, and he returned his furious glance to the alicorn in the sky. The unicorn activated her horn, and she surrounded herself in a magical blue sphere, while from this magical sphere, a chain of lightning beamed into the pegasus; a gentle cyan aura of his wife’s magic surrounded him. “You have your magic focused?” “Yes.” The cyan unicorn replied. “Good. Now go to the streets.” The stallion father growled, and took off to the sky. The unicorn galloped to the street to avoid any destruction on their home with their daughter beneath it. “Nebulous, get out of Trottingham!” The pegasus charged with the full force of his speed. The alicorn just glared down at him with a very bored look. “EAAAH!!” Altruise’s father lunged himself into Nebulous, who teleported the moment he got anywhere near him. The pegasus stopped and searched around for the teleported alicorn, and felt a sharp slam to his back with the hind legs of his enemy’s hooves. “GAH!” The pegasus flipped through the air in pain, and caught himself in the air during flight again. Wincing in pain, slowly, he looked back up at the alicorn with a bit of a smirk. Nebulous looked back at him with somewhat impressed widened eyes, then he took a glance down at the unicorn surrounded by the blue bubble. “Healing magic.” He determined, looking back at the pegasus. “I guess I’ll just have to kill you faster then so she can’t heal you quick enough.” With that, he flew toward the pegasus with a glowing horn. “I’m interested to see how you plan on getting through this alive!” “Shut up!” The pegasus yelled, swiftly shifting around the alicorn in zigzagging circles. The alicorn rolled his eyes, and began firing black sparks of magic at the pegasus flying around him. He kept missing, as the pegasus was just too fast of a target. “You’re beginning to annoy me.” Nebulous muttered in a cold and bored voice. Rolling his eyes, he glanced back down at the streets at the ponies watching. “I know what’ll slow you down.” A twisted grin, and he illuminated his horn, glaring down at the ponies on the streets. “EAAAAAH!!!!” After a loud growl, a powerful bolt of lightning struck to the ground from his horn, and trailed across the street in explosions of dust, debris and fire; the lightning trailed through the wall of ponies, and shrieks were heard echoing through the skies as the pegasus watched them all burn to death. “NOO! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!” The pegasus shrieked angrily and slammed a hoof into the back of Nebulous’ head, ending his chained trail of lightning, “THIS IS OUR FIGHT!!” He glanced back down at many of his dead friends and felt a lump in his throat, “Oohh, no… W-what have you done?!” Nebulous rubbed the back of his head with a grin, “The same thing I’m going to do to you and your pathetic wife.” “GAAAH!!!” The pegasus roared furiously, slamming hoof after hoof into the alicorn, who was being struck by each assault, completing his combo with a solid buck to the alicorn’s skull, sending him flipping through the air. Nebulous flipped around a few times, and caught himself in flight again, cackling hysterically, “Oh, how I miss the pain!” He coldly laughed through his crooked teeth, “I want to see how much of a punch you can pack with even more rage rushing through you.” With that, he focused his magic on many of the Trottingham houses, and tore them out of the ground, lifting them all up at once. Hiding ponies were exposed beneath the shelter of their homes that he had lifted away from them, and he laughed, “Look at them. They’re like useless little insects.” “NO DON’T!—” With a loud crash, the pegasus watched the homes all drop down on top of the ponies inside, and the roofs all caved in on top of them all in a cloud of debris. “NOO! STOP IT!!” The pegasus shrieked. Nebulous then quickly turned to Altruise’s father and gripped him in the air with his levitation magic, holding him in place. “What’s the matter? I thought you’d put up a better fight than this.” “W-why are you doing this?” The pegasus whimpered, being held in place by Nebulous’ magic. The alicorn looked around, thinking about an answer, then he shrugged. He looked back into the eyes of the pegasus with his blood-red piercing irises, and grinned. “I could put you down nice and gently if you tell me where I can find your pathetic little girl.” The pegasus flared his nostrils in anger, “If you so much as TOUCH her—GAAAH!!!” With the twist of his wing, he felt the burning sensation of it being broken. “You’ll do what?” Nebulous grinned, holding up the pegasus. * * * * * Meanwhile beneath their home, Altruise continued her efforts to shove the trapdoor open. “MOM! DAD!” She sobbed, and with the attempt to use her magic, she put a levitation aura around the trapdoor, and tried pushing it up. She forced it harder, and it lifted up a little. Through the little space she had opened the trapdoor from, she could see the carpet rolled over the trapdoor. With a panic, she pushed her magic out harder. “COME ON!” With a full thrust, the trapdoor slowly tore through the fabric of the carpet, and once she had opened it up, the first thing she saw was the night sky above her; no roof. In the sky, she saw her father in the black aura of the alicorn’s levitation, with Nebulous staring him down. Frightened, she lowered the trapdoor to hide herself, but kept it open enough to continue watching; tears ran down her face. “Daaad…” * * * * * “Well if you want to fight back so bad I could just let you go now and give you a second chance at fighting me…” The alicorn suggested coldly. “W-wait, NO!” The black aura surrounding the pegasus vanished, and he began falling to the ground. Attempting to fly, he felt a stinging pain in his wing. A few pathetic flaps here and there, the pegasus plunged to the ground like a rock in a cloud of dust. “Now… Let’s put you out of your misery—GAH!” An explosion of energy struck his wing; the alicorn was caught by surprise. Glaring down at the unicorn surrounded by her blue bubble, he frowned at her. “Hmm, that wasn’t very nice.” Taking a nose-dive, he flew down toward her. The unicorn panicked and backed away in a frantic motion. Nebulous slowed down, and landed on the pavement of the street in front of her. “D-don’t come any closer!” She wept. “Aw, but that spell was so inviting.” Nebulous gritted his teeth in a grin, “That’s a nice shield. How many kicks does it take to get to the center?” With that, he turned and bucked the sphere, which made a loud static sound, with damaged ripples through the force field. “OW!!” The unicorn grabbed her head. “Ohh felt that did you?” Again, he turned to buck the shield a second time, sending another jolt of pain through her head. “AH! Please, stop!” Altruise’s mother went to her haunches and began to sob, “Oh please, goddess, please…” “Please, goddess, please.” The alicorn imitated in a mocking way, “Oh how pathetic that sounds.” He turned, and bucked her shield again. “GAH!!” She clenched her head tighter around her horn, crying. “P-please…” “How annoying. Let’s shut that trap of yours.” Just as Nebulous readied another buck to her shield, the pegasus lunged into him from the side; they tumbled across the pavement, rolling to a stop with the pegasus on top and his wings spread out. “I’LL KILL YOU!” He roared from the throat. “Hmh.” Nebulous grinned, “That healing magic is pretty powerful.” He teleported, appearing a couple stories in the air. “C’mon, pegasus, let me see you fly with that crippled wing.” Angrily, the pegasus jumped off the ground, flapping his wings; he made it a few feet in the air—with the wing partly healed from the magic—but collapsed back into the ground. A second attempt, he jumped and flapped his wings, trying to reach the alicorn. “AAAAAH!!” Another fail, and he collapsed into the ground in a cloud of dust. Nebulous rolled his eyes, “Put some effort into it. This is pathetic.” “SHUT UP!” Altruise’s father shrieked, jumping up toward him, flapped his wings, and made it about half way between Nebulous and the ground before he lost control and fell to the ground again. “Here’s some motivation.” Nebulous turned to the unicorn, and with an illuminated horn, he struck her with a tense bolt of lightning, striking her directly on the top of the shield. “AAAHHH!! I CAN’T HOLD IT!!” She shrieked painfully, clenching her horn, “GODDESS HELP ME!” A burst of adrenaline, and the pegasus lifted off from the ground at an incredibly powerful velocity, and slammed the alicorn straight into the chest—ending his lightning chain attack—and knocking him out of the air and to the ground with him. Landing on the pavement, he began slamming his front hooves into the alicorn’s snout repeatedly, cursing at the alicorn at the top of his angry lungs. With a forceful blast of magic from the alicorn’s horn, the pegasus was knocked back, and he rolled across the pavement to a stop. Limply, he stood up back into a battle posture. The alicorn stood up himself, and wiped blood away from his lips, keeping his crooked grin. The cuts and bruises on the pegasus slowly and magically healed up, and his battle posture grew stronger with each passing second. “The only thing you are doing with your wife’s healing magic, pegasus, is prolonging your death by a few sparing moments.” Nebulous gritted his teeth, “And you’re making this so much more fun for me… I get to torture you longer this way…” An explosion struck the alicorn from the back again; he twitched angrily and turned back to the frantic unicorn in her bubble. “You just don’t learn.” With his back turned, the pegasus flew up to him from behind and bucked him in the back of the head; Nebulous flung forward and slid across the pavement on his front. With a limp, he stood to his feet and turned back to the pegasus, laughing, “You’ve got a lot of nerve to—” His back turned from the unicorn, she struck him with another force of magic that exploded against his backside, sending him collapsing forward toward the pegasus, who again bucked him into the chest, and Nebulous rolled backwards on the pavement. Lying there in ground for a few moments, he stood to his feet, and turned his head to the pegasus, then to the unicorn, back to the pegasus, then he looked to the ground, chuckling. “What is it with you and your laughing?!” The pegasus growled, “Shut up!” “Heh… Well I’ve had enough fun for one night.” The alicorn grinned, and quickly he turned to the mare in the bubble, and from his glowing horn, he struck her shield with a bolt of black lightning. “AAAAHH!!” The unicorn shrieked and trembled, collapsing to her haunches, “AAH I-I CAN’T!! I—I—” A loud energetic shatter, and the shield around her vanished in a vapourizing explosion. When the shield was destroyed, the unicorn collapsed into the ground, merely unconscious. A weak and helpless groan, she tried getting up, but was unable to. “I-I… uh…” She collapsed again, weakly limping herself to her hooves; shattering the shield put a toll on her energy. The connection of healing magic that she was transferring to the pegasus was no longer in effect. The pegasus galloped up to the alicorn yelling, “LEAVE HER ALONE!!” “So persistent, but so stupid.” Nebulous declared, waiting for the pegasus to reach him. When the pegasus was close enough, the alicorn sent a bolt of magic that struck him in the chest; the pegasus tumbled across the pavement to a stop, and winced painfully. Limping to his feet, the pegasus grumbled. “I-I’ll—” “You’ll what?” Nebulous grinned, lifting the limp pegasus in an aura of magic. He turned to the weak unicorn, and picked her up in an aura as well. Helplessly, they levitated there in surrounded black auras of his magic. “You’ve bored me. I’m done here.” With that, he hurled the two ponies through the air, and they each collided with the statue of Celestia in the center of town, dropping like stones to the ground beneath it. Nebulous marched up to the two helpless ponies and glared down at them. “Very well. Since you won’t tell me where the girl is, I’ll give her a reason to come looking for me.” His horn began to glow, and the two wounded ponies looked up into his blood-red eyes with terror. * * * * * Altruise frantically made her way through her broken home, and exit her house through the non-existent door. Looking around her at the debris of broken buildings, rubble and dead ponies, she lowered to the ground in traumatic shock. There was a grey haze of dust that covered the place with ominous feelings. “Mom? Dad?” She heard her voice echo back to her in the silent ghost town. “W-what?” Down the pavement road, she saw her parents beneath the statue of Celestia, and Nebulous standing over them with a menacing glowing horn. He lifted onto his hind legs, and with a yell, he dropped his front hooves to the ground and struck the two ponies with a crackling burst of lightning from the sky. The moment the bolt of lightning hit, Altruise’s eyes dilated, and her entire life with her parents flashed before her in a blink. In a panic, she hid behind a rock, peeking up over at the alicorn with tears running down her cheeks. Nebulous stood tall, and looked around at the ghost town; his glare turned to Altruise, but she hid lower behind the rock in time, and he didn’t see her. With powerful flapping wings, he took off to the sky, and flew off into the distant horizon, without looking back. Once the alicorn was out of view, Altruise whimpered and came out from hiding, slowly trotting to her parents beneath Celestia’s statue. The closer she got, the more her cries echoed back at her. “Mooom…? Daaad…?” Altruise hiccupped between her sobs. When she got close enough, she looked down at them, and her tears ran down her face even harder. A slight squirm and her father weakly coughed. “DAD!” Altruise cried, collapsing next to him. “Dad…??” Slowly, the pegasus opened his weak eyes, and painfully turned his neck to look up at his daughter. “A… Altruise.” He winced in pain, and tears streamed down his own cheeks. “I…” Feeling himself drift away, he took the last bit of his strength to say one last thing. “Don’t forget who you are…” That said, his head collapsed back into the ground, motionless. “Dad?” She nudged him, but there was no response. She turned to her mother, and nudged her too. “Mom?” She glanced back and forth between her parents, and the more she did, the more she felt a painful dagger striking her heart. A whimper, and she collapsed to the ground, cuddling between them in tears. “Why, Celestia…?” She wept and hiccupped, looking up at the statue, “Why…?” Sobbing, she laid there nestled between her parents, and cried herself to sleep under the starlight. * * * * * Hours had passed since Altruise fell asleep in tears. She kept dreaming and gasping in her sleep, twitching her legs. The same nightmare repeated over and over, watching her parents dying repeatedly, being murdered by that black alicorn. Suddenly she felt a hoof on her shoulder, and she immediately woke from her sleep shrieking. “NOO!” She flipped around and swatted the hoof of a stranger who had just woken her up from her slumber. She looked up at the stallion stranger who stared back down at her with his grey eyes. He was a full grown pegasus who had a dark navy coat and a black mane. His cutie mark was that of two silver swords crossing. “Are you alright…?” The stranger asked the filly with a calming tone. “Who… who are you?” Altruise whimpered fearfully; after her current events, she was struggling to trust him, and would probably have a difficult time to trust anypony else at this point. “My name is Drake. I don’t mean any harm.” He ensured her, lending a hoof, “Let me help you…” Altruise looked around her at the ghost town, and then back down at her mom and dad. She was seemingly hesitant, and didn’t want to leave her parents. “Can I have your name?” Drake requested, trying to befriend the poor filly. “A…Altruise…” She replied, keeping her eyes on her parents. A chilling breeze rushed through the air, with ashes scattering in the wind. “I’m guessing that these are your mom and dad…” Drake calmly exclaimed. Altruise just nodded in response, but didn’t turn to look Drake in the eye. “I was flying overhead and saw what happened to Trottingham, I’m surprised to have found a survivor.” Altruise continued to remain silent. “How did you survive this…?” He kept trying to get the poor unicorn to speak. “They protected me.” Altruise said, feeling heartbroken. There was a pause for silence. Just the cold breeze was heard. “Altruise…” Drake placed his hoof on her shoulder, “I’m sorry, but there isn’t anything we can do for them now.” “Please don’t tell me that.” Altruise spoke between sobs, “I should be dead too. That way I wouldn’t have to feel so alone.” Drake sighed and looked at their surroundings. “I can’t leave you here.” “Yes you can.” Altruise wept, lying down beside her parents, wanting to just give up there. “Tell me, what happened…?” The Pegasus whispered. There was a pause, but Altruise managed to answer after a few moments. “A black alicorn was here. He destroyed everything… My mom and dad hid me before this happened.” “A black alicorn? But Princess Celestia is the only alicorn in existence right now I thought… Apart from Nightmare Moon who has been trapped on the moon for almost a thousand years now.” “No, it wasn’t Nightmare Moon…” Altruise tried to explain herself. “It was a stallion; his cutie mark was a supernova.” Drake’s eyes widened a little, “I know who that is…” “Y…you do?” Altruise turned to face him to listen. “His name is Nebulous, and he isn’t an alicorn at all. He is merely a unicorn, who knows how to create the most advanced spells known in Equestria. His wings aren’t real; they are made from his magic.” “How do you know him?” Altruise questioned. Drake looked down at the filly and deeply sighed, “The same reason as you… My parents are also both deceased.” Altruise’s ears lowered, feeling a related connection to the pegasus. “This was years ago, I was maybe just a few years older than you when it happened.” Drake explained, “I know what you’re going through right now… I know what this is like.” Altruise sniffed, and more tears trickled down her cheeks. “It hurts…” Drake let out another sigh and knelt down beside her. “I’ll take care of you, Altruise.” The filly looked up to the pegasus, acknowledging that she had no other options. Hesitantly, she stood up from next to her parents, and took one last glance down at them. Drake put his hoof over her shoulder to try and comfort her. They turned around together, and walked side by side through the rubble, leaving Trottingham. Altruise kept looking around her at all of the dead ponies, whimpering. Drake looked down at her with a sigh. “Hop on my back.” He suggested, “Close your eyes, you shouldn’t be seeing any of this… I’ll fly us somewhere safe.” Altruise whimpered and nodded, crawling onto Drake’s back like he suggested and gripped onto him. She closed her tired, tear drenched eyes, and Drake gently started flapping his wings, and lifted into the air away from the ghost town. Altruise kept her eyes closed as they got further from Trottingham, until her destroyed hometown was no longer visible over the horizon. * * * * *