Timelines almost completely peeled apart, taking their respective occupants with them, minus Twilight/Sparkle. Sweetie Bell, Sparkle, Trixie, Cobalt, and his chicken all faced one another, while Twilight waited on the side. Sparkle specifically stood so as to obstruct Trixie's path. "Stand aside! Trixie has to go rescue her friend!" the latter cried out.
"Hell. No."
Trixie would have none of that. "And why the buck not? That is Trixie's friend out there."
"And that," she said, pointing to the billowing, acrid, black smoke trail fading into the distance, "is an undead killing machine that is nigh impossible to stop. Be thankful he wants to save Rarity and not eat her."
"How do you know?" Trixie screamed. "How do you know that that abomination won't kill my friend?"
"Trust me; he wouldn't," Sparkle assured.
"Trust you?" Trixie screeched, outraged. "Trust you? How could Trixie trust you? You're a bucking necromancer, and one that wouldn't put down her pet monster when it is clearly out of control! Trixie would have to be insane trust somepony like you. Excuse me," she teleported to the other side of Sparkle, "I have a friend to save."
"Oh no you don't!" Sparkle's magic ensnared Trixie and slammed her down onto her stomach. "I will not let you get caught in the crossfire. I did not teach you to charge blindly towards dark magic, and I did not tell you to bucking throw your life away!"
“Let Trixie go! Let her go right now!"
"Cobalt, would you kindly escort Sweetie Belle to her home and inform her parents of what's going on?"
Cobalt found his legs and lips moving on their own. "Come along, Sweetie. Let's get you home."
"But my parents have already left. Is Rarity going to be alright?"
Sensing a change in the conditions, Cobalt's geas adapted. "Then I'll take you home and wait with you until everypony is safe, OK?" Regaining voluntary control of his speech, he added, "Sparkle and Thorn are very good at what they do. I'm sure that they'll get her home soon enough." Together, stallion, filly, and chicken left the three other unicorns.
Trixie struggled to stand, and was surprised when the magic holding her down suddenly cut out. She stood and looked back at Sparkle. The mare was staring at something unseen, her eyes unfocused and distant. The horn atop Sparkle's head absorbed the light, showing that her magic was doing something that Trixie couldn't identify. Then, the changes started.
First, the illusions surrounding her shattered, revealing her still rather gaunt face. That didn't last long, as the flesh underneath the skin started to flow and grow, filling out as if she had been eating well and exercising regularly for years. Her fur, thin and dull from neglect and poor nutrition, seemed to thicken up and gain new life before Trixie's eyes.
The effect would have seemed miraculous, if it were not for a couple of details. Her eyes had turned red with green sclera, oozing purple mist. Her horn grew longer and, along with her teeth, grew sharper. Blood poured out of her mouth, despite Sparkle's neck making rapid swallowing motions.
Light shone, and Twilight faded back into Trixie's view. "Sparkle!"
A minute before, Thorn violently landed in Rambling Rock Ridge, shattering the ground. Diamond dogs swarmed out of the ground, abandoning the collapsed surface tunnels. The blood-lusting berserker of a dragon spied his prey, and lunged.
The first diamond dog went down his throat before it could blink, already cut to ribbons by sword-sized teeth. The second met a similar fate. The third through sixth died in a blaze of sickly-green fire. The fourth through tenth died from having their life drained away by his mere presence, leaving nothing but empty husks that slowly crumbled away.
That was only the first thirty seconds.
The spell in her horn was cast almost reflexively. Without the emotional suppression, the things she was seeing might break her.
She could see everything. When Thorn became emotional, Sparkle could feel what he felt. When he became enraged, the connection between the two enabled her full, unrestricted access to Thornecrovitar's senses.
Currently, that was the taste of raw or burnt dog flesh in her mouth, the sight of absolute carnage, the smell of loosened bowels and bladders, the sounds of agony, and the feel of blood running down claws that she did not have. To make the sensation worse, the life stolen by Thorn fed her, and the magic made her stomach fill with what he ate.
Dog meat appeared on her tongue. Dog blood ran unendingly down her throat. She coughed, choked, and then kept swallowing, more by reflex than for any desire on her part. Sparkle's vile magic took the stolen flesh of the dead and used it to fix the wear and tear on her body from years of neglect.
Her body and magic reveled in the sensation; her mind was artificially otherwise occupied. In a dreamlike trance, aware but uncaring for what she sensed, Sparkle looked in the general direction of her sister.
"Sparkle, talk to me. What the hell is going on?" Twilight asked.
Dispassionately, Sparkle replied, “Thorn is so very hungry, and diamond dogs taste so good. He feeds me as he eats. I see what he sees, feel what he feels.” Dog blood trailed down her chin and into her robes as she spoke.
“You’re seeing through his eyes? Sparkle, stop the spell,” She commanded. A white-magic encased hoof whacked Sparkle’s horn, causing the active spell to splutter out and die.
Sparkle’s eyes constricted to pinpricks. Upon her mind snapping back to reality, her stomach violently voiced its disapproval all over the ground.
The fun evaporated from Thorn’s mind. The slaughter he enjoyed so much up until now was suddenly no fun any more.
A dog lost it’s head, and it’s soul was swallowed before it could make the leap to the afterlife. Thorn sighed, finding the activity suddenly quite tedious. He still hadn't found his precious Rarity yet, and until then, he would systematically execute every last soul in this cave.
He trudged forwards, leaving a trail of blood behind him; some was his, from the dogs’ futile attempts at defending themselves, while the rest was from the dogs themselves. He dislodged a spear from his neck and launched it at frightening speeds, impaling a fleeing bitch.
Sometimes, being a monstrous bastard could be so troublesome.
Twilight sat by her sobbing sister, uncaring that Trixie had left. Her hoof rubbed Sparkle's back comfortingly, but her voice was at a loss. "Sparkle... I..."
"Didn't bucking realize that I was trying to keep myself sane?" She said between sobs. "Didn't realize that I don't like seeing through the eyes of my nightmare of a son?" Her voice was steadily growing louder and angrier. "Didn't realize that I have to stop myself from feeling? Didn't realize that after every bucking rapist, every murderer, every assassin after my head, every zombie, every poltergeist, every single one of the horrors I face, I have to strip the emotion from my memory so I don't go into clinical depression? You didn't, did you?"
"No! Because you don't tell me this stuff!" Twilight insisted. “It’s always ‘It’s nothing’ or ‘nothing happened’ or what-have-you. But I know you. If you'd just come and talk to me, really talk, then maybe you wouldn't have to scramble your brain so much.” She gave Sparkle a tight hug, uncaring of the bloody vomit all over her sister’s coat. “But this has to stop. By suppressing your emotions, you're taking away the very thing keeping you a pony.”
“What?”
“By taking your emotions away, you're telling yourself that life doesn't matter. Soon enough, you will believe it all the way to your core, and then what?”
Sparkle stared at Twilight, eyes wide. She said nothing, so Twilight prompted her, “Say it. Say what will happen.”
“I’ll be a monster.”
“Right now, you are my sister and one of my best friends. Would you please stay that way? For me?”
Sparkle nodded.
A warm, moist current of air blew across Rarity’s form, rousing her to wakefulness. The first thing she noticed was the smell, rancid and metallic, a combination she had no context from which to understand it by. The next thing she noticed was the distinct sensation of pain fading away too rapidly to be normal, which, while confusing, was quite pleasant.
The third thing she noticed was that the areas of her body where the diamond dogs had crippled her were moving and squirming in ways that were rather disconcerting. Broken bones set themselves, her eardrums grew back in, and the metal tube that had been shoved into her trachea popped out, letting the hole sealed itself and restoring her voice.
Her eyes healed next, and she immediately opened then when she felt no more pain. She shut them again in an instant, wishing she hadn't. Scooting backwards as quickly as she could, she stifled a scream. There was a sliding noise, like stone-on-stone, which made Rarity open her eyes again to face the threat.
The dragon - if it could even be called that - sat before her; its gargantuan mouth wide open, easily big enough to swallow her in one gulp, and stained a very familiar shade of red. Strangely though, it was exhaling a strange, green mist, which swirled around Rarity and sank in through her skin. She watched, wary but fascinated, as the mist healed every cut and bruise left on her body.
Of course, being trapped in a cave with a dragon that exuded a rather terrifying presence, even if it was healing you, tended to make one stay quite awake. Thus, Rarity sat as still as stone, but was tense and ready to flee at a moment’s notice.
The dracolich’s jaw closed, ending the stream of ethereal mist. When they reopened, words poured forth instead of anything magical in nature. “Ah, my beautiful Rarity, how are you feeling?”
“I am... decent,” she replied.
“Just decent?” he asked. “I should think you are feeling better than just decent. Your injuries are gone, and I have given you an extra twenty years of life to go with it. You should feel fantastic.”
“T-twenty years?”
“Mmm... yes, give or take a few. When one is a connoisseur of souls like myself, he learns to take the scraps of memory from his food. I saw them try to break you when you wouldn’t find gems. I saw them take your gorgeous voice. It stands to reason that if they tried to break you, they should give you some of their life energy in return.”
Rarity shuddered. “Are they...?”
“Dead by my claws?” He chuckled, a deep and booming sound. “Yes, very much so.”
“Oh.” She swallowed her emotions, content with sorting them out later when the current situation was resolved. “And, if you don’t mind me asking, oh kind and mighty dragon, I don’t believe I caught your name.”
Thorn frowned slightly. “Why, Lady Rarity, we have met before. I was a bit smaller then, sure, but I would have thought you’d have recognized me. I am Thornecrovitar, the life-eater. You know me as Thorn, the son of Necromancer Sparkle.”
“Oh,” she said again, her ears tilting back against her head. “I, uh, got your many letters. They were, um, lovely... Darling.”
“I know you burn them without reading them, my little jewel.” Thorn was more annoyed than anything, but Rarity misinterpreted that as rage. “Your sister mentioned as much.”
The thought of Sweetie Belle being anywhere near the beast made Rarity explode with courage and anger. Charging right up to his massive head, she looked him right in the eye. “NOW LISTEN HERE, YOU GREAT BIG BRUTE! I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU ARE! IF YOU SO MUCH AS PUT ONE CLAW ON SWEETIE BELLE’S HEAD, I WILL DESTROY YOU!”
Thorn erupted in booming laughter, shaking the cavern they were in. “I like this side of you. You have a fire worthy of a dragon. But no. If you’d allow me, I will personally carry you to your home and your sister, where you will find both none the worse for wear.”
“Hmph.” Nose up high, she trotted around the dracolich and into the tunnel behind him.
“You know, I would be offended If I had healed somepony and they refused to thank me,” Thorn commented, though he hadn’t turned to face her. “For you, though, I will let it slide.”
Rarity stopped, realizing that just because he was a brutish, unholy abomination, didn’t mean she had to stop being a polite, civilized lady. “Thank youuuuHOOOAHHHAAHHH-”
Thorn’s tail had wrapped itself around her and snatched her up, interrupting her words of thanks. The loud grinding of stone and the feeling of rapid ascension left Rarity disoriented, until she realized that Thorn was burrowing up through the ceiling and taking her with him.
The climb up took less than a minute, which was amazing considering that they had been just shy of a mile underground. Warm sunlight shone against Rarity’s coat for the first time in two days. It finally clicked in her mind that she might really be free, and not stuck in a nightmare.
The dragon bent his tail, bringing her forwards. In nearly a single motion, he transferred the alabaster pony into his claw, sprung forwards, and took flight.
The timely twins looked up, seeing the huge dragon fly overhead. Silently agreeing to put sister drama aside to deal with the more pressing issue. Arriving at Carousel Boutique only a few seconds after the dragon and his passenger did, they appeared in time to witness the tearful reunion of two other sisters.
“Mom, Twilight, could you check Rarity over? She was horribly wounded when I found her; brute-force life-injections can only do so much.”
The twins went to work immediately. Rarity protested their intrusive horn-poking at first, but then balked when she heard Twilight’s diagnosis.
“I have what?”
In lieu of an answer, Sparkle’s horn zapped the affected leg, neutralizing the problem before it actually became one. “You had a staph infection, emphasis on had. I took care of it.”
“If she hadn’t, you’d have lost the leg. The staph infection was in your bones and muscles. Untreated, you would have started rotting from the inside-out,” Twilight replied. “Though, to be on the safe-side, we should probably get you to the hospital soon.”
“Yes, quite,” Rarity said, a little green in the face. “Not to offend you two or anything, but I’d rather have the opinion of a Doctor over some mares I’ve barely met.”
Twilight looked hurt that her friend wouldn’t trust her, until it clicked that this was the other Rarity she was talking to. Nodding, the group turned and headed towards the hospital, with the slowly-shrinking-but-still-behemoth-sized lich following closely behind.
It was then that other ponies decided to interject, specifically Trixie, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and about a dozen ponies from either the Ponyville militia or the local Royal Guard. The polychromatic-pegasus swooped in for a diving kick to the dragon’s snout, screaming, “Get away from them!” at the same time. Simultaneously, the other ponies put themselves as a blockade between Rarity and company and the dragon. Trixie erected a shield with her magic., just to be safe.
Thorn could roll with the punches, however, and swiftly caught the incoming pegasus. He moved to smash her against the ground, but was interrupted by Sparkle. “Thorn, stop!”
Everyone obeyed, with not a single muscle moved in any of the bodies present. Recognizing both the dragon and the speaker, one of the guards turned around and addressed Sparkle when he was sure that the dragon wasn’t about to kill the pegasus or the rest of them. “Necromancer Sparkle. What is the meaning of this? Explain your dragon and why you are not in Canterlot.”
After ordering Thorn to leave town for now, she quickly filled the guardspony in, even producing a signed permission slip from Celestia herself, which had taken over a week to get. (Celestia’s court secretary kept “losing” her appointment, as usual, and what should have taken an hour took far longer.) When he was satisfied that everything was in order, that nopony was hurt (despite the copious amounts of blood still on Sparkle’s face and chest), and that the dragon was indeed gone, he let them go and dismissed the ponies who had gathered to defend their town.
Trixie and her Applejack and Dash, as well as Sweetie Belle, embraced the recently returned Rarity. Trusting that they could take care of themselves, Sparkle turned and walked away without another word.
She nodded at Cobalt and his chicken, who had been silently following them since Rarity had been returned. The two (plus a chicken) headed back to where Sparkle had set her box, the one she had brought to test Cobalt with.
After reacquiring her possessions, the two of them then swiftly made their way out to the edge of town, and stopped along side a small lake.
There, they met up with a still shrinking Thorn. His belly now looked disproportionately swollen, as he shrank while the digesting dog corpses within did not. Cobalt, who could guess but didn’t know for sure why Thorn looked the way he did, simply took it in stride.
“Now, you sit here and hold your hen while I go try to clean this off,” Sparkle said, pointing to the mess on her chest. “Try talking with it, just to keep your focus up. Oh, and be thankful you didn't get a rooster; I wouldn't have wanted to tease you about you playing with your cock.”
“No worries, Ms. Sparkle,” Cobalt said. “Just, are you doing alright?”
Sparkle took a long time to respond. “Honestly, I don’t know. I’m a bit spent.”
Entering the cool water of the lake, Sparkle sighed and relaxed. True, she did have a spell to clean even the toughest of organic messes (which, if overpowered, could dissolve whole bodies), but there was something purifying about cleansing in a beautiful body of water.
She swam over to the edge of the lake. “Thorn, we need to talk.”
“Yeah, mom?” he asked as he rested his head against the lake shore, no longer large enough to swallow her whole.
“This obsession with Rarity has gone on long enough. You committed genocide for her, and you’ve met her once. She is not your damsel to rescue, she is not your lover, and she is not something to add to your hoard. Yes, you saved her life, but your possessiveness and bloodlust is getting way out of hoof.”
“What are you saying?” he growled, his hoarding instincts starting to overpower his family body.
A book appeared, summoned by Sparkle’s magic, titled Dread Necroptica: Mind. “I’m not saying anything, Thornecrovitar. I’m fixing my son. But first, I need to kill the monster sitting in front of me.”
Her horn erupted with dark power, undulating with six distinct layers of aura. Cobalt, even on the opposite side of the lake, could feel the psychic darkness enshrouding his mind. The normally optimistic stallion frowned. He lowered the chicken to his lap and held Elizabeak protectively.
Cobalt didn't know how long he and Elizabeak sat like that, but he knew that Ms. Sparkle was suddenly right next to him, snapping his trance.
“Put her back on your head,” Sparkle commanded dispassionately. “I’m going to take a nap. Wake me when you think you can’t hold it any more. And Cobalt, would you kindly not look in the box I brought?”
The sun was low in the sky when Sparkle was awoken by a gentle nudge to the shoulder. “Hmm?” she groaned as she awoke from dreamless sleep.
“Ms. Sparkle, I’m done,” a tired looking Cobalt said. Beside him, Elizabeak stood contently by his leg, pecking at some of the corn Fluttershy had provided.
“Alright. How long?”
“Five hours, Miss,” he answered.
“That’s great,” Sparkle replied. She stood and stretched out a bit. “You've made really great progress. Cobalt, you've passed the first test.”
Cobalt grinned like a colt on Hearth’s Warming morning. “WOOHOO!” He cheered. Sparkle grinned back, though not nearly as much.
“Unfortunately, the second test I have for you today isn't nearly as fun or easy,” she said.
Cobalt, still grinning, said, “Don't worry. I can do it! Right, Elizabeak?”
“Bawk bawk,” the chicken agreed.
“Now, I need to explain a bit before I actually tell you what the test it. The results of this test will determine how we go about your lessons in the future. If you fail or refuse the test, I will finish teaching you fine magical control and how to read spells from book, and that will end your lessons from me. Pass, and I will make you the heir to everything I know. It will require you taking an even more powerful and restrictive geas, but that will offer you a level of defense against corruption by dark magic that you cannot get yourself.
“Now, this test is one that the Royal Guard uses to prepare soldiers mentally for wartime conditions. It will be hard; your body will probably fight you every step of the way, and I've done my best to make it even harder than what the guard has to go through. Do you still want to try?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Sparkle nodded. Her horn darkened and the large box they had been carrying around all day opened. His eyes looked upwards, still under the “do not look in the box” order. When he heard the box close, the geas finally let him drop his eyes, letting him see the unexpected sight of a picnic set up and a portable grill with a fire in the coals.
He was confused as to the purpose of the set up, and even more so when he noticed the discrepancies. Firstly, there was no food to be seen, and secondly, there was a large traffic cone present, of all things.
Elizabeak squawked, surprised at being picked up in the dark aura and dumped head-first into the upside-down cone. Her head poked out the bottom, and she vocally clucked her displeasure about it.
A sharpened knife was set before Cobalt on the mat. “Remember, you can refuse at any time. Now, step one: Slit Elizabeak’s throat and drain the blood.”
He picked up the knife and deftly slit the two veins in her neck. Sparkle raised an eyebrow at the ease with which he did the task, both in the skill and the lack of hesitation in killing an animal he’d seemed to be already attached to.
“Next, pluck the feathers. I have warm water to help you.”
Again, he did as instructed with a mechanical ease. His expression looked oddly serene, and Sparkle made a mental note to look into his background some more because of it.
“Use your magic to pull out the entrails. Don't worry if they're damaged.”
Again, he did so without complaint or hesitation. An idea crossed her mind; she would check to make sure the geas’s “lesson” clause wasn’t interfering with his actions. She wondered if he wanted to refuse, but couldn’t.
“Cobalt, would you kindly answer the next two questions truthfully; Do you want to stop, but are not speaking up because you want to pass? Are you in full control of your actions right now?”
“No, I do not want to stop. No, only because you are making me answer these questions,” he replied.
“Then cook and eat the chicken.”
He did.
An earth pony by the name of Red Fields stumbled into his mother’s Canterlot manor late that evening. “Where have you been?” She asked shrilly. “We had a very important client come by with a job proposition today. A Lord of the land, to be precise. Since you were not here, I accepted it on your behalf. These are your instructions. Burn them when you are done.”
The middle-aged unicorn passed the younger earth pony an envelope, which he took easily enough. “Thank you, mother,” he droned. There was no love between the two, only business.
“Get ready for bed. I will expect a full explanation when you wake up tomorrow morning before you go gallivanting off to do Celestia-knows-what, and it better not be anything that disgraces this family more that you already do.” She stuck her nose up like any other elitist unicorn in Canterlot. “And wash that blue paint out of your fur before it stains the furniture, young colt.”
Red Fields silently trudged up the stairs, entered the bathroom, and immediately grabbed the mouthwash. He swished and spit. “Ugh, that was disgusting...”
He set the envelope on the counter, pulled the recording crystal out from its hiding spot in his mane, and stepped into the shower to remove the body dye. When he came out, his blue coat was now as red as his name, and the painted cutie mark had faded, revealing a knife-shaped mark instead.
The letter was still unopened, so he picked it up and emptied it of it’s contents. The letter within was very short and to the point.
Kill the Necromancer, Twilight Velvet Sparkle.
You have one month.
His one escape was now under fire, and he would have to do it himself. The recording crystal, which he had been using to take notes, now represented a threat to the secrecy he had sworn to, and the geas had him crushing it under hoof in seconds.
That very geas had no clause against killing his mentor, and she had ordered nothing of the sort, but only now did he see why something like that would be left out. As it was, Red “Cobalt” Fields had to figure out how to kill her.