Chapter 2: Night Mare
The double-doors partitioning the corridors burst into smoking fragments as Twilight strode purposefully through the castle, the marble flagstones growing hot and cracking under her platinum-shod hooves. She hadn’t bothered changing out of the ceremonial regalia she’d worn to the conference, and most of the ponies in the castle had never seen her wearing it. Unlike the two older Princesses, Twilight famously shunned all royal finery, making her somewhat of a particularly-beloved Everypony. But not now. Now she was wearing her knee-high hoofguards, her star-shaped jewelled necklace, her glittering crown, and combined with the expression of white-hot fury on her face...
She was an angry god, an utterly terrifying image of approaching death and despair to the poor helpless mortals who saw her now. There’d been two hundred years of total peace. No living pony had ever seen an angry alicorn, but they were seeing one now. The guards and attendants were turning tail and fleeing, unable to stay in the same room as this furious spirit of magical vengeance.
She came to the top of the last staircase and scowled at the doors before her as the two pegasus guards cried out in fear and leaped through the tower windows. The doors exploded into dust and splinters. Without hesitating, she strode through the smoking arch for the first time in more than nine hundred years, the first time since that terrible week long ago, the week that Rainbow Dash had died.
The first of her friends to die. The death of a loved one was always hard, but she'd seen many, many deaths over the last ten centuries. Every creature dies. With death being as much a normal part of life as birth, even her Sisters and herself would die one day. At least, natural death was a normal part of life. All of her friends had died from old age - all of them except Spike.
Murder was never natural.
“Twilight!”
Celestia came galloping through the cracked archway as Twilight continued her march towards the doors at the far end of the hall, the doors that took the magic of all three Royal Princesses to open. “Twilight!” the eldest alicorn called again, sprinting past her lavender Sister and stopping right in Twilight’s path, hooves splayed, wings flared, a look of confusion and concern on her face. “What are you doing, Littlest Sister? The castle is in an uproar! What has -”
Twilight didn’t break her stride, smacking her Biggest Sister out of her way as she continued on towards the Vault. Celestia smashed into the ancient stone wall with an ear-splitting crack, shattering the intricate stone patterns for dozens of feet in all directions.
“LITTLE SISTER,” thundered a regal voice.
Princess Luna had materialised out of thin air directly in front of Twilight. The youngest alicorn didn't even blink. The Princess of the Night found herself colliding face-first with the thick stone wall of the chamber, right next to her gaping older sister.
With twin flashes of sunlight and moonlight, the two older Princesses vanished and reappeared together, side-by-side, in front of the Vault of Harmony’s magically-locked stone doors.
Their wings were raised. Their horns were glowing. Their eyes were surprised and confused.
“What’s wrong, Twilight?” Celestia asked, her face pleading. “What happened at the conference? Where’s Spike?”
“He’s dead.” Twilight’s voice was totally devoid of emotion. Both Celestia and Luna gasped as she halted before them, her horn blazing crimson-gold. “Please, get out of my way.”
Luna was the first to find her voice. “Tell us what has happened,” she managed to say.
“They attacked me. The dragons attacked me. Please get out of my way.”
“They ATTACKED...?!” Luna lowered her wings, her mouth agape. “Why?!”
“I believe that Fracture’s exact words were ‘And now we have a bargaining chip’,” Twilight said acidly. “Pathetic fool. He deserved to die. Please -”
“TWILIGHT!” Celestia gasped. “You killed a dragon?! You killed their ambassador?!”
“Spike killed him.” Her mouth twisted into a vindictive smile. “He killed them all.”
Both Celestia’s and Luna’s minds were spinning in shock. Spike... He wasn’t even a thousand years old. Barely two hundred feet long from snout to tail, he would be completely dwarfed by a fully-grown dragon. And he had killed... “How many?” Luna breathed, visibly wilting.
“Twenty three. Now, if you don’t mind, please get out of my way.”
“He...” Celestia sat down in shock. Twenty three dead dragons. No. No, no no, twenty four. “He killed them all?” she gasped, shaken to her core. “He... He died in the fight?”
“He survived the fight. He survived it. Barely. His wounds... His Dragonfire... He... I was... On the way back he... I...” Twilight’s voice broke. “I was trying to... I couldn’t get him back here in time,” she whispered, closing her eyes for a second or two. Then she scowled, and glared at the other two alicorns. “Please, just get out of my way,” she repeated again, no sign of weakness in her suddenly granite-hard voice.
Tears were trailing down Celestia’s face as she slowly stood up again. She’d been Spike’s first teacher before presenting him to Twilight. She loved the “little” dragon as if he’d been her own child, like she loved all of her little ponies. So old, but so young... And now he was dead, along with so many more of the magnificent magical creatures... “Why... How did this happen?”
Twilight lost her patience.
“He’s dead because they attacked me. They did this. They killed him. They attacked me in a foolish attempt to capture me, to force Our cooperation with their stupid plan to shorten the days. I held several at bay, and he did the same.” Twilight’s eyes lost focus for a moment as she remembered the destruction. Her voice grew softer. “They started the violence, they started it when they... They couldn’t get close to me so they attacked. One of them threw a boulder at me, a massive boulder. It was probably, I don’t know, it would have been either Sizzle or Rumble, they were the biggest I think. Rumble was more than a thousand feet long. It was probably Rumble, he could have lifted that boulder easily. And of course Spike intercepted it, just before I moved to whack it aside. It was bigger than he was... It exploded when it hit him. I thought it had killed him, but...”
Celestia and Luna both looked stricken as Twilight continued, not snapping and angry anymore but speaking hollowly, disconnectedly, as if she was telling a story that had happened to somepony else. “He went mad. His rage was... I’d never seen such rage. He killed two of them so fast, I don’t even know how he did it. He ripped their heads clean off, but I didn’t see how, then... The killing... All of them. When he lost his wings, he started levitating instead. And he never was very good at that spell. I’ve never seen anything move so quickly, it all happened so fast... He was snatching them out of the air in front of me where I was holding them, breaking their necks, ripping their heads and limbs off, using the dead as clubs against the living, even after he lost his eye he didn’t slow down or stop... He set one on fire, I thought dragons were completely fireproof but his breath was so hot and bright, brighter than any Dragonfire I’ve ever seen, he actually set a dragon on fire...”
“How long...” Luna whispered. “How long did this battle go on for? Could you not have done anything?”
Twilight’s head dropped slightly, her unfocused gaze seeming to go right through her Sisters as she continued speaking in that flat, hollow tone. She had started trembling. “It was all over in about five seconds. And I don’t think I could have stopped him, it was like he’d lost his mind... We weren’t very high, but the dead hadn’t even hit the ground before it was... It was too late. Most of them were in pieces, and he was such a mess, I couldn’t teleport him back here, I...” Her eyes snapped back into focus. “THEY KILLED HIM!” she suddenly screamed, screwing up her face as her faux-calm demeanour evaporated. “And I’m going to kill them in turn! All of them! Every last one! EVERY LAST ONE!”
Her Sisters backed up, their tails brushing the impassable doors to the Vault as Twilight glared at them, taking deep, violent breaths. Celestia was terrified, and she had absolutely no idea what she should do. Nearly two thousand years ago she’d seen another pony behave in almost exactly the same way as this, and that pony was standing beside her right now. She could almost feel the fear coming off Luna’s trembling form as her Little Sister relived the terrible moments of her own first uncontrolled transformation. That had been the result of centuries upon centuries of bitter jealousy, and the malicious intervention of an ancient spirit of chaos when Luna was at her weakest. What was this? Anger? Rage? Fury? Was this a sudden thing or had Twilight been brooding on this for years? What could she and Luna do? She knew that she only had moments to act - maybe she could remind Twilight of a few things...
Luna beat her to it.
“Twilight, you’re an alicorn. You’re an Eternal Sister. Please, you must calm down! You have to control your emotions! Remember what can happen if we let our stores of emotion run loose, they can overpower us, change who we really are, make us call upon unnatural dark powers that we would never normally be able -”
“EVERY SINGLE LIVING DRAGON IS MY HELPLESS PREY!” Twilight Sparkle roared in a voice that shook the entire castle.
Her eyes flashed pure, blank, blistering white as the two magically-protected stone doors behind her Sisters crumbled into dust in her fury. A small jewelled wooden chest sat on a low pedestal, waiting for her to claim and command the infinite magical power contained within. She and her Sisters had guessed what was happening with the Elements as their Bearers had passed away. She knew they had guessed correctly. She knew precisely what would be in there. Just one lone piece of magical jewellery...
Mine. All mine. The Element is MINE!
With this final greedy thought on top of the towers of vengeance, sorrow and fury that had driven her mad, the transformation began.
Twilight’s eyes flicked from blazing white to dangerous red as her flowing lavender mane and tail both exploded into roaring yellow flames. As the violent concussion from the sudden ignition shattered all of the tall stained-glass Legend Windows lining the walls of the ancient antechamber, the third Eternal Sister’s full suit of gleaming battle armour materialised upon her legs, flanks, neck, wings and head with a hot red flash. Flaring her enormous platinum-bladed wings wide, she narrowed her eyes and gazed with palpable murder at Celestia and Luna as her coat began to glow, to radiate blinding light and blistering heat, to turn from soft purple to the colour of the sun. As her Sisters’ eyes opened wide, she spoke in a voice that was not her own.
“MOVE ASIDE, OR DIE WHERE YOU STAND.”
The two older alicorns shared a mortified glance. Then, as if a murmur of understanding passed between them, from one mind to another and back through their stare, they both turned their heads in unison and gazed at their furious youngest Sister with nothing but deep sadness in their eyes.
“We won't stop you, Littlest Sister.” Celestia took a step to the side and sat down, as Luna mirrored the movement to Twilight’s right. “We wouldn’t be able to, even if we tried.” She took a deep breath, closing her eyes briefly. “Just remember what you swore to yourself after Rarity’s funeral. You vowed to never touch the Elements again.”
Rarity.
Her last pony friend. Spike’s beloved wife. The most generous soul in Equestrian history. The unicorn who had lived to see three centuries. The pony who had loved a dragon with all her heart until the day she’d died, looking far more like she was only aged twenty-one, rather than three-hundred-and-twenty-one, on that awful morning so many lifetimes ago when she’d breathed her last breath. When she’d gasped her last word.
She’d said “Spike,” and Spike had started wailing, and Twilight had joined in, and they'd held each other and cried together for hours after she'd stopped breathing, and then the mourners had come, thousands and thousands of them, some young, some old, but all of them were orphans, and Spike and Rarity had dedicated their lives to the service of so very many of the poor parentless souls...
Rarity.
Rarity.
The name that Spike had screamed through his agony as he’d burned away to nothing.
The memory of the only thing that could have stopped her from exterminating every single dragon in the world before moving on to potentially every other living creature...
Rarity wouldn’t want this. Spike wouldn’t want this.
She didn’t want this.
With a sudden whooshing sound as the fourth Night Mare died aborning, Princess Twilight collapsed into a sobbing heap of lavender feathers and clanking metal on the floor of the Antechamber of Harmony, aghast at what she’d almost become, devastated by what she’d very, very nearly done. Luna crouched down beside her, covering her shaking form with a protective wing as a very timid-looking pegasus guard slipped shakily into the room and sidled up to the very-relieved-looking Princess Celestia, his eyes wide, an expression of complete terror on his face.
“Your... Your Highness. A re-re-representative of the d-d-dragons is h-here, and he says that he n-needs to speak with y-you, P-Princess Luna, and Princess Tw-Twilight ur-ur-urgently,” he squeaked. “Th-they... They’re ter-ter-terrified. They - they want to sue for peace.”