“It appears we are at an impasse,” the giant confidently purred, dusting dirt and debris from his broad shoulders.
The blasted landscape around us stood still, only the occasional rolling pebbles joining the disturbed wind in its melody. The edge of the Everfree had taken quite the beating once Tirek had decided to beeline towards my castle and myself after siphoning Ponyville’s magic.
My costume looked ready to fall apart, but the mask at least held strong; clearly one of Spike’s stronger works. Even Rarity’s contribution to my appearance was defying expectations.
“How about a trade, Princess Twilight?” he added, making my friends appear in floating bubbles behind him with a snap of his fingers. “Their release, for all the-“
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
“What?” the red beast asked, perplexed and infinitesimally more frustrated than a second before. “What are-“
“Of course I’m going to say yes, you big red dunce! Who do you take me for, someone who hates her friends?”
Said friends suddenly voiced a chorus of objections, none of which were powerful enough to be heard over Tirek’s violent shout of “DO NOT DARE INSULT ME, LITTLE PRINCESS!”
“Sheesh, fine. Are you going to release them or what?”
He snorted in annoyance but freed them nonetheless, unceremoniously dumping them on the ground. All except Discord.
“Ahem, when did I say he wasn’t a friend?”
“Oh? After he betrayed you, you still-“
“Excuse me? I didn’t know I was talking to a friendship expert, mister I-eat-everyone-because-my-ego-can’t-stand-the-thought-of-having-peers! Let. Him. Go. Too.”
His arm, still outstretched towards Discord, fell back to his side and curled into a fist. He also literally growled, but I expected that from a brute like him. He eventually snapped his fingers once more, dropping Discord to the ground.
“Once I have your magic,” he growled, covering the whispered conversation between Discord and Fluttershy I could see behind him. “I will personally torture you endlessly for your insolence.”
I rolled my glowing eyedots. “Yeah, whatever; blind trust in friendship and all that, yadda yadda let’s get on with it!”
I opened my mouth, presenting my empty maw to him and waiting for his… whatever he did to eat pony magic. His horns crackled with energy, and the orb of magic appeared between them. I felt a pull in my entire being, and suddenly my magic was being vortexed out of my mouth.
After just a few seconds I felt wobbly, and I noticed one of my hind legs suddenly falling apart. Wow, forget about friendship and saving the world; this was immediately of the utmost interest! I was coming undone! How fascinating!
My body kept scattering apart, the collapse drawing closer to my head until I felt even it falling to the ground once nothing remained to support it.
But I was still conscious somehow, my completely indeterminate “body” being pulled towards Tirek’s mouth along with my magic. This was… decidedly less exciting; whatever was to happen to me inside Tirek was almost guaranteed to be at least slightly less pleasant than being dead. I would have frowned if I still had a face.
In a flash, I found myself looking at the pile of bones and cloth that I inhabited minutes earlier. Strange.
Stranger still was the sudden cry of “Bleeugh, necromancy? Since when do you ponies employ necromancy? That was disgusting!” that I let out of my fleshy mouth and in Tirek’s voice.
“Wait a minute,” I said, still in Tirek’s voice, before clamping my hands over my mouth.
“What was that?” I asked between my fingers, immediately pulling them away to reply “That was me, Tirek. Apparently I’m your magic now.”
I paled. No, really. For the first time in ages I felt blood drain from my silly fleshy face. “You…” I said, suddenly terrified. “Me,” I replied smugly.
“You knew this would happen, didn’t you? It was all a trap!”
I broke into laughter. “You greatly overestimate my understanding of what’s going on with my existence, Tirek! Haha! I was honestly expecting some kind of friendship magic shenanigans to save me at the last second, but I was apparently wrong! So deliciously wrong! I can feel your entire power as if it was my own body! This is amazing!”
“No,” I whispered, horrified. “Yes!” I replied, shooting a small magic laser out from between my horns. “And I can even control it! That's just wonderful!”
“No no no no no!” I shouted, shaking my head. “Yes yes yes yes yes! I’m going to try something now!”
I heaved, pushing every bit of magic I could feel out of my mouth. Hm, vomiting. That was something I hadn’t felt in a while. The magic poured, forming a pile of ethereal goop at Tirek’s rapidly shrinking hooves; until I felt even myself leave his body. I joined up with the gooey pile of pure magic; and when I did I found I could immediately control it all again.
“This is working even better than I thought it would!” I yelled in my own voice this time, my ghostly, grandiose ventriloquism echoing to all corners of the valley. I could see everything around myself, all at once and at a level I had never even experienced. I could see atoms. Tirek was a black, empty shade devoid of magic; just like my friends behind him. He was still weakly screaming “nooooooooo” while I towered over his form in my globous, unformed body of pure magic.
I could see every thing, every being, every object and even every speck of magic for millions of miles around, in all directions. The tree of harmony drew my attention like a beacon. Behind the forest and the ground, I could see it, silently calling out to me with its bright magical glow. I brought a formless appendage to my formless chin, considering my options.
“That could work, I think.”
The long, serpentine tendril of magical energy I extended towards the tree reached it in seconds. I looked down, or rather I kept looking at everything everywhere while focusing a little bit more intently on the shriveled shadow whimpering at my base. Tirek pitifully thought ‘my magic… why…’, because I could somehow read thoughts at that point. He opened his mouth and began trying to suck up my magic, but I pulled it away from him and decided this was enough.
Focusing on the filament linking me to the tree of harmony, I zapped all my magic into it. Every ounce, every little particle of it, pouring it out until I couldn’t feel anything anymore. The leylines vanished from my sight again, my vision shrunk back to only three dimensions, and I found myself just floating in midair, devoid of any bit of energy that could let me do anything.
Maybe this was finally it; the end of the line for me, the last stop. Dying in a noble act of sacrifice did sound pretty swell. Maybe I’d get to see the afterlife soon.
But then the tree of harmony kinda exploded. Or at least that’s what it looked like when thousands of bright streaks of magic burst forth at incredible speeds, shooting out of the depths of the forest and speeding away in all directions. My friends stood in awe and stared at the blinding myriad of lasers outshining the sun; and then, one by one, some of the beams turned and began heading straight for them. The lasers were too fast, and each of them was struck in turn. From where I floated I could see their cutie marks reappearing, and I was happy to see the tree had done exactly what I hoped it would do. It had given back everyone’s magic! I turned to look at the forest and the last beams fading away behind the horizon…
Except one. One last beam, a spiral of black, pink and purple; one final, solitary laser, curving straight towards me.
“OH COME ON!” I would have shouted if I had been anything more than an invisible ghost at that point. The beam shot through my consciousness, colliding with my bone pile in a great flash.
I suddenly found myself looking at Applejack, her front hooves pinning Tirek’s face down in the dirt and her mouth agape at my sight.
That look of surprise! I looked down at my own hooves, only to find them as spookily skeletal as before. My body had reassembled, and I was standing on the tatters of my clothes. …Of course I wasn’t brought back to life, what did I expect?
“Twilight! We thought you were dead! Again! …Why d’you come back… uh, again?”
After I graciously collapsed to the ground, screaming ‘Why’ at the top of my nonexistent lungs- in a very dignified manner, mind you-, we all quickly took Tirek back to Tartarus and called it a day. Pinkie, on the way back to Ponyville, forlornly mentioned that she had just remembered that weird six-locked chest offered to us by the tree of harmony, and that we didn’t get to see what was inside even though she felt like we were supposed to somehow.
Oh well. If it really was important I imagine we would have opened it at some point.