"Oh my." Blueblood pulled a hankerchief from his vest and dabbed at his forehead. "This is a mess. A real mess."
Before him, the the burning wreckage of the skydock gatehouse. Some of the houses close to the gate had also caught fire, and though the fire could only spread in one direction, the local volunteers battling the inferno were losing the battle, unable to clear fire breaks before the magical blaze jumped to the next house.
Blueblood rocked forward and backwards gently, trying to think of more to say. The militiaponies he'd brought with him to respond to the explosion they'd heard were looking him for directions. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the blaze... The way the curls of flame danced and twisted in the wind as they rose reminded him of the Ritual in the throne room, and that the awful energies could sicken and destroy the stoutest stallion.
"Lads, ahem, you go in and help those ponies." Blueblood stuttered vacantly. "Need to, um, stop that fire before it eats the city- err, consumes the city. Burns it. The city." He licked his lips. "I don't feel so good."
While the militiaponies rushed to the locals' aide, Blueblood staggered back wards, trying to get the light out of his eyes. He sat against a cart in the road, trying to calm his breathing.
"I'm gentlepony of high status. Ponies like us aren't ruffled easily." He mumbled, rubbing his temple. "Good ponies are not phased when they act with honor and dignity. I bet none of the rest of the circle have doubts. Not Lady Aurthura. Not that snake Phyte! Certainly not Sel Lech! Bah! I bet Sel Lech is laughing it up in whatever hole Lady Velvet has assigned him to! The little scoundrel. The little usurper. He acts high class, but he's just an imposter! He's not cut out for this game."
"Blueblood." A voice cut through his paranoid fantasies.
"Eh?" Blueblood looked up. Twilight Velvet's maid was before him, standing prettily in her little outfit, looking expectant. "Um, hello... you."
"I am looking for Lord Night Light." The maid informed. "Have you seen him?"
Blueblood stood up. "Well, no. I haven't seen him for hours, since the dinner." He glanced towards the burning gatehouse. "I, uhh, did hear he was in this area. He- He might be in there."
"Hmm." The maid looked over her shoulder south, in the direction of Chateau la Garde. "Lady Velvet is still awake. She is on her way. Hmm..."
While Blueblood scrambling to look busy before Velvet arrived, the maid trotted towards the burning gatehouse. The whole structure, raised out of the strongest marble, stone, and brick, had been reduced to a heap like so much refuse, while all the flammable scaffolding and supports burned.
The maid was about to turn back when she spotted movement. Night Light was still alive, dragging something away from the rubble.
"Lord Light!" The maid called out, clambering over the rubble where she could to reach him. "Lord Light."
Night Light was moving a pony body. It was one of the gatehouse guards, crushed and burned. Night Light moved the unfortunate soul beside a row of bodies he'd already recovered: They were all burned to varying degrees, the crispiest of them looking like an ashen mummy.
"How can rule of law exist in a world where a pony can destroy dozens of lives in one thoughtless instant." Night Light uttered, barely above a whisper. He continued his gruesome work, dropping the body then going back to digging in the rubble for the others. "This brutality... So impersonal, so thorough."
"Lord Light, you have other duties to attend to." The maid slid down the pile of rubble to him. "There is so much to do, and none of us have time to dig or mourn."
Night Light paused his work.
The middle-aged stallion was covered in dust and ash. His eyes were red and wet from the ash in the air. His hooves were scratched and chipped, where his magic failed and he resorted to digging through chunks of stone manually.
"If not me, then who?" He asked hoarsely. "These ponies... were my friends. I cared for them."
The maid tapped her hoof. "Lady Velvet sent me to give you an updated list of duties."
Night Light gnawed on his bottom lip, his look vacant. "... I knew the terror we inflicted on others could come back on us, but I wasn't as prepared as I thought. I just need a moment." He sighed. "I just... wan't ready. Hopefully I'll be ready next time."
"My lord, you have conducted yourself admirably so far. There is much still to do." The maid said.
"Please be silent." Night Light said softly.
The maid pursed her lips, eyes darting back to the south. "My lord, Lady Velvet is coming.
"I said be silent." Night Light stood up. "Why must I have you hound me for my failure? Are the wails and crackling flames not enough?"
The maid stood up strait, eyes straight ahead.
"What a fool thing it was, keeping you around. Why are you still here? You're not needed. Go back home." Night Light berated her. "Whoever you are, whatever you are, get thee gone.
"My Lord, you too emotional. I can not obey when your reasoning is compromised." The maid said.
"Have you ever been so angry and upset, you know what you are doing is wrong, but you do it anyway?" Night Light whispered. His horn lit up with magic, and the Blackhorn Sword levitated from where he'd tossed it, returning to his side. "Maybe it will be cathartic, but I suspect it will just make me angrier, knowing it won't be permanent. No, you'll just come back. Then again nothing is permanent, and all can be undone." He slashed sideways with the hefty blade. The maid collapsed and her head rolled off. "Except for the divine. All under heaven can burn but those skies above will always twinkle and shine."
"Having fun?" A familiar voice rolled from behind him. Twilight Velvet stood lonesome by the smoldering ruble. She looked tired but smug.
"There is a buzzing in my brain. Are we sure we haven't completely destroyed this planet with our meddling." Night Light lowered the Blackhorn sword. His eyes were drawn up to the full moon. "What are we going to do, Velvet?"
“When I heard the gatehouse was burning I was afraid you were dead.” Velvet said. “I was... Inconsolable.”
Sighing, Night Light stepped back back from the decapitated maid, and approached Velvet. “I am sorry to have troubled you like that.”
“These things happen. I needed to be drawn down from my ecstasy anyway. The Cloudsdale Fleet has just been destroyed, and I would have been drooling all night without the sobering news.” Velvet said soothingly, the narrative taking shape in her mind. “Right now, I'm just glad to see you're safe."
Night Light stared at the charred walls of the closest houses, and at the corpses of the citizens too slow to escape the inferno he’d brought down on them. “I'm the safest I have ever been.” He agreed quietly.
Velvet looked past Night Light, to the burned bodies of the guards. "Any other survivors?"
"Not besides the perpetrators." Night Light said, choking up.
"Ah, yes." Velvet's eyes grew unfocussed, as she concentrated on something Night Light could neither see or feel. "That inconvenient flea, Sunset Shimmer, passed through here. Better that she is gone from Canterlot." She cleared her throat, blinking away the daze. "If there is a benefit to the mass casualties here, its that nopony can contradict the narrative: The Cloudsdale fleet assaulted the gatehouse. These ponies heroically sacrificed their lives to save to save Canterlot, and save you."
"Very good Velvet." Night Light said emptily.
“The city is in your debt. When this night is over we'll honor the brave martyrs. So on, so forth.” Velvet cleared her throat. "Try to stay alive, Night Light. ... I've grown very reliant on you. I would have a hard time doing it all myself."
"That is very kind of you to say, Velvet." Night Light knew his wife was trying to be nice. "If you don't mind, I need a rest." He motioned back towards the dead maid. "I can't furfill my duties in a timely way. Please accept my apologies."
"That fine. I need a rest too." Velvet cracked a very slim smile. "I was just going to head back to Castle Magoria. Would you join me?"
Night Light bowed his head. "Yes Velvet... I'd like that very much."
Night Light took a moment so secure the Blackhorn Sword to his belt.
While the volunteers and militia battled the fires consuming the neighborhood, Night Light and Twilight Velvet strolled up the street. At some point, Velvet began leaning her head against Night Light's neck. Night Light, besides wondering if she found the ash covering his coat disgusting, let her.
Blueblood waited until they were out of sight to abandon his spot in the bucket brigade, running north mumbling something about the opera.
Airships like the Slashing Dancer, were not very large or sturdy- About five ponies on the bridge and another dozen in the engineering spaces. That was just large enough that when a stallion screamed bloody murder on the bridge, it echoed through the hull to the back.
Sunset Shimmer pressed her ears back against her head. She'd head enough screams over the years to identify exactially what was happening to the unfortunate screamer.
“W- What was that?” The cowering pegasus next to her her asked, cringing in horror at the sound of one of her comrades being mauled.
“It’s what I’m trying to save you from.” Sunset whispered consolingly. Then, her magic lanced through the pegasus’s head, ending her life instantly. Ten seconds and another spell later, and the corpse was disintegrated, and of no use to Astral.
That was everypony in the airship dead, Sunset thought. Astral Nacre was literally eating the pegasi crew, gaining energy from them. The damage the alicorn had taken from the fall from the cargo airship had healed, once her seemly featerless face had cracked open and closed around one of the unsuspecting crewponies. From there she'd succumbed to her bloodlust, chewing through the crew in her blind hunt for Sunset.
Sunset, on the other hoof, was wracked by pain shooting up her legs, telling her they were probably broken. She'd tried to heal them with her magic, but her rush job still caused her agony with every step. She was very lucky Astral was distracted, letting her crawl into the dark spaces and preform mercy killing on the pegasi to keep them out of Astral's maw.
It was a kind of attritional battle Sunset was very unused to, but in hindsight one she should have prepared for: Even though she didn't want to fight alicorns, it was naive to think she would be able to put it off forever.
The screaming died off, confirming to Sunset all the crew had indeed been killed. But all was not silent. The ship creaked and groaned, and the wind howled on the other side of the hull. Sunset held her breath, a hard ask with how much pain she was in.
"Give me fire. Just something to heal myself with." Sunset whispered to the air. A little light flickered at her horn, and some of the pain went away.
Then, from very close by, another scream, this time feminine. “N- NOO! NO! NO! N-” The door of the room Sunset was hiding in, the small burst open. The screaming mare only got halfway though, when she was violently jerked backwards. The wails descended into pathetic gurgling. It was so loud and visceral, and little flicks of blood spashed into the room.
“Holy Celestia.” Sunset swore silently to herself. She was less desensitized to pony suffering than she thought.
The air was getting thin and breathing was harder. This was a bad environment for a pony to fight in.
“Hee hee hee hee hee.” Astral’s demented giggle echoed through Sunset’s mind. “Did you get tired of waiting for me?”
“Not as much, no.” Sunset whispered.
The alicorn's shadow loomed by the door, then pulled back. Sunset waited tensely.
"Nopony is ever ready, when the end comes. They think they are. The sickened elder, wasting away on their bed, may think they are prepared, but when oblivion looms, they try to fight it off." The voice came form everywhere, and Sunset could not determine the direction. "They try."
"Nopony deserves an end like you." Sunset stood up.
"What we deserve effects none of what we get!”
The alicorn stepped into the room, wearing a horrendous mimicry of plague doctor garb, made from torn scraps of uniforms stitched together with tendons. The customary beak was fashioned from some unidentifiable bit of bone. "Oh, this is not as nice as the costume I took from the hospital. More appropriate though. I feel, with every inch of my being, like a personification of death." Astral's eye stared out from under the little hat she'd found. Eyes so very different from those of the other ancient alicorns.
"I thought you were supposed to be a god of life." Sunset backed away. She jealously cursed the limits of her pony body, that she could not be so terrifying as Astral, even if it came at grotesque costs.
"Oooh, life is death, death is life. Death is death. But life is not always life." Astral’s spasming and writhing flesh and bone, was enough to give any pony nightmares for years. One of her errant tentacle-like strands of hair brushed against the spray of blood, absorbing it like a sponge. She moaned in delight. "What a poet I feel right now. Quickly jot it all down, so I can sort it when I'm lucid."
“Gods, you’re monstrous.” Sunset blanched. Fire, don't fail me now, she thought. She called all her power to her horn.
Sunset cast a fireball, hoping to catch enough of the wood and cloth around Astral alight. Astral anticipated it and she effortlessly smashed through the planks to escape into the adjoining room. Losing sight of her target, Sunset peppered the general area with piercing bolts of magic. All became still again, save that now significant portions of the airship were now on fire.
The hull groaned in protest as it lost its structural integrity bit by bit. A creak and the sound of splintering wood was all the warning before the ceiling split open and a cannon from the deck above fell through. It's momentum carried it through rest of the decks, but stopped short of making a hole through the bottom. Sunset could hear it rolling through the perishables and cargo below. Pins of Watery moonlight were begining to shine between planks of the hull.
“Alicorn, come back here! I don't have time for this game.” Sunset yelled into cold dark air. The fire she had started was beginning to crackle in earnest. “Looking for more ponies to pray on? I’ve killed them all, even the captain! He had such a stupid expression on his face too, like he couldn’t believe it was happening. I bet you’ll have that expression as well, dumb beast!”
With a banshee howl, Astral darted up through the new hole in the floor, catching Sunset completely by surprise. The alicorn tried to grapple the smaller unicorn but fumbled and continued through the next two rooms as well. Sunset bounced off the roof and fell to the wood floor, hard. She stumbled to her hooves as quickly as she could, coughing up blood.
“Mother bucker! I can’t dodge in these tight quarters!” Sunset coughed, grimacing. The pain in her legs was joined by pain in her spine. “If I don’t get to the top deck I won’t last two minutes.”
The sound of splintering wood alerted her that Astral was making another pass. She charged her horn for a quick teleport but it was too late. Astral came from the side this time and collided with Sunset. They hit the outer bulkhead, which bent and splintered from the impact, but stopped their momentum.
Astral drew back, eyeing Sunset’s limp body. The yellow unicorn would have been screaming in pain if all the air hadn’t been forced from her lungs, for many of her bones had been broken by the force of the attack despite her armor.
“What a HUNT this is! Big game! Oh, but we are both hunter and hunter. Is this more a duel of titans?” Astral laughed. Her body was loosing definition the more manically excited she was. Parts of her legs and torso completely unwound into the constituent muscle, vessel, and ligament, to thrash violently for a few second before rejoining the pony shape.
Sunset collapsed forward, only able to gargle. She couldn't see or breath, inches from death, but strangely all she could feel was an odd heat deep in her gut.
"Death, death, death! This has been the satisfying kill that eluded me with that pegasi fleet. This is... joy. Gods are made for killing gods. Playing with mortals is base decadence!" Astral screeched to nopony in particular. “This was an imperfect creature, a mortal, and even though she had a god's magic about her, she failed. Inevitable!"
Sunset focussed on the heat she felt. She rolled on her back, and the beams of moonlight felt like splashes of cool water on her face.
Fire, old fire. Sunset heard a distant buzzing, like a voice through a lead pipe. the Sun was trying to speak to her! If only she had her books with her, she could embrace that voice and use its power.
Fire come back to me, Sunset thought. Let me use you for the glory of the alicorns of Light.
"I could crack her open like an egg. I could saw in her in half. I could squeeze her. Anything to get that magic out. I want that fire. Death, death, death." Astral babbled to herself.
A deep throbbing bellow, more pyschic than physical echoed through the airship. Astral quivered, for she had not made it.
Sunset Shimmer peeled herself off the floor, adjusted her helmet, and took a fighting pose.
"You don't think I'm perfect, and you're right, but none of us mortals pretend to be. We will out our holes by Light of our goddess." Sunset felt no pain. Yellow magic danced about her horn. “Fire hasn't failed me. I'm in full control now."
Astral roared gleefully. “Yes! Show me more!
A blast of magic to the face interrupted Astral’s retort, followed by another to the chest. Sunset's horn burned brilliantly, like a star, as yellow magic flared out to her will.
Astral's magic-torn flesh shifted back into position, reforming her face and shoulder, though the plague-doctor outfit burned away instantly. The alicorn was too quick to be hit by the third blast, dodging backwards and disappearing into the remaining structure of the airship.
Sunset laughed. “Now you see-” She was unable to continue. The air was getting very thin. In the moment of calm, she began to notice the icy bite of the upper atmosphere, sucking all the heat from her body. A new factor the Sun's power could protect her from, a ticking timer counting down to when she would inevitable pass out from hypothermia or lack of air. The fires in the cabins had already gone out, starved for oxygen.
Sunset quickly cast a stopgap spell to prevent herself from going comatose, but it would not address the actual effects on her body. She wouldn’t notice if it became too much for her until she was dead. But she would feel fine. Fine enough to keep fighting.
First things first, she had to get above deck. She prepared her teleport, and once again Astral charged out from the shadows. Sunset threw herself to the ground and Astral passed overhead, bashing through the outer bulkhead and into the empty skies. She watched the alicorn tumbled in the fierce air currents for several moments, before completing the teleport and relocating to the top deck.
The cold was even worse in the wind, and the Blackhorn Armor didn't offer Sunset much in the way of insulation. The top deck of the little scout airship was a mess- The indent where Astral Nacre had crashed down was surrounded by the blood and viscera of the first victims. That was not the only problem, for the mast was showing signs of serious strain, as it was never meant to operate such a high altitude. The balloons were bursting at the seams, and Sunset speculated the only reason they had positive buoyancy at all was that so much of the airship had been broken and blasted off.
"I've got only minutes left." Sunset appraised. Not having wings would present a serious problem if the airship tore itself apart. Another problem the Sun's power couldn't solve. "This looks like the end for me... Well rats."
With neither the time or the willingness to contemplate the end, Sunset Shimmer knew all that was left was to do what she'd come back to Equestria to do: Preform the last sequence with Entanglement Theory and complete the Sequence.
So the door would close on the drama of ten years, of a Traitor preforming a last duty. Sunset would not fail this time.
An indignant roar sounded from off the stern, and Sunset could see Astral beginning to recover from her tumble. She had a clear shot, but she wanted something that could account for the alicorn's evasiveness. Sunset gathered her magic, calling more to herself than any the attack previous. When Astral was about even with the ship she cast the spell.
A swarm of luminous bugs were conjured above her head, little magical bombs that trembled with barely restrained energy. “Get her.” Sunset wheezed, gesturing at Astral.
The swarm did as ordered and flew to intercept Astral. The alicorn noticed the buzzing cloud and shot an arc of magic at it. The swarm parted to let the spell pass through, then hastened at their target. Being nothing more than magic in a thin membrane with wings, they collided with Astral and detonated.
The explosion was massive, and the blinding light washed over the Slashing Dancer. The pressure wave, however, was not so gentle, tearing boards off the hull and imploding the bow. Sunset blocked the propelled debris with a shield, but the wave still pushed her back.
After several seconds it settled down, as it seemed even the howling wind had died. A sound like squishing flesh and crunching wood could be heard from nearby; Astral must have landed hard.
"She still made it on the ship? She should be go! Damn!" Sunset cursed weakly. "I don't have any time. I have to force her off before Twi finishes the experiment ritual!"
For Astral, her vision was consumed by yellow, then white, then red, then black. Then, brown are red, as she slammed into the forecastle of the Slashing Dancer in an uncontrolled spin.
“How it burns! This is so exciting.” Agana's flesh sizzled, as she dragged herself back together. "I may not be able to defeat her! That would be very annoying." She reformed into her normal pony-ish shape, but the tissue remained charred to a crips. She felt like an burnt sausage.
"Bravo!" She psychically screamed. "Your skill is undeniable. But you can win a dozen bouts, and still not win, but lose once, and it will be over for you."
Astral suddenly became aware of two pony auras on the airship, besides the Traitor's. Sunset Shimmer had been wrong about finishing off the crew! Astral knew she had to reach them and consume them to keep up her energy for the fight. And what luck that the two unsuspecting ponies were coming right at her.
Astral sat up.
“Well, this is a fine how-do-you-do.” A pony shouted over the wind. A teal pegasus mare with a tousled white mane spilling out of her Wonderbolt armor. “Remember me?”
“Fleetfoot? By the stars!” Astral gargled. "I didn't recognize your aura!"
“I won't pretend to know how you alicorns operate. I won't ask you to account for... for what you've done.” Fleetfoot trembled. "Not yet. I... I don't think your capible of it yet."
"Capable of it? YET?" Astral leaned in closer to the pegasus. "You were with the fleet." Her beady eyes locked with Fleetfoot's. "... Rain Gnash is with you. Not literally, but..." Astral could feel it now, how Fleetfoot's aura was intertwined with the second, Gnash's. It took her a few moments to put everything together. "Ahhh, I understand! This is what happened when I used your soul to repair hers! How sublime. How sublime! I did that without realizing!"
"And I came to ask if you can undo it!" Fleetfoot barked. "Have you any idea of the torture, having another pony in your head all the time? No privacy, no personal thoughts? Release us from this curse or we will both go mad!"
"Of course I know how it feels. I was made that way!" Astral laughed. "Oh Fleetfoot, I am overjoyed. I have been flailing in ignorance, trying to touch the Dreamscape. I need you to come back with me, so I can figure out how I did it the first time. Oh I'll become so powerful-"
"I you won't fix me than it's over! I'll kill myself right now!" Fleetfoot wailed. "We can't like thi-"
Fleefoot was cut off by a golden bolt of magic ripping through her shoulder, spraying blood over Astral’s face. She tried to turn around but another magic bolt speared her through the chest, knocking her backwards into into Astral’s hooves, revealing Sunset Shimmer, silhouetted against the moon.
"Huh, a Wonderbolt. A friend of yours or something? Eh, whatever. I've got you where I want you." Sunset hummed. “Get off this airship, and go back to Canterlot. I don't want to hurt you any more but I won't hesitate to scower you down to ash if you get in the way."
Astral wasn't listening to Sunset. “Fleetfoot?!” Astral pressed her nose against Wonderbolt’s neck to check her pulse. She was alive but in shock. "Ack! Pony, let me leave with her. I... I will not get in your way again."
Sunset licked her lips. "It is tempting to believe that." A whine filled the air, originating from somewhere between Sunset's ears. She cringed, her look becoming severe. "But I can't. I can't let you interrupt my work. I'm too close. My patron correctly tells me that a Dark one like you is instinctually driven to lie and fight. So... I have to destroy you. That's a real shame."
Astral felt a spark of vigor as her flesh absorbed Fleetfoot’s spilt blood. She could consume the pegasus in the blink of an eye, and use that energy to blast Sunset into oblivion. There would be no dodging at their distance.
But she hesitated. She needed Fleetfoot to understand how to enter the Dreamscape.
And more than that... Astral felt an unfamiliar pang of kinship with the pegasus. "You would assume an alicorn is so easily beaten, Traitor?"
“As a friend of mine would say, assumption and supposition have nothing to do with it.” Sunset grinned deviously. She grabbed Fleetfoot hoof in her telekinesis and slung her over the side of the airship. “Bella Ciao!”
Astral stiffened, hesitative, before she spread her wings and vaulted after Fleetfoot.
“That's just pitiful. The Sun wants you dead, and who am I to argue.” Sunset watched the two pulled towards the earth, thousands of meters below. Their fall would end before then.
Another spell, even more powerful than the magic swarm, coalesced at her horn. A ball of rippling yellow and gold, and everything it’s radiant light touched was warped and pulled towards it’s throbbing surface. It grew to the size of a volleyball, and then began spouting gouts of vaporous fire in all directions. A little sun, the ultimate manifestation of the solar power within her.
Nearly instantly, the deck around Sunset was scoured into ash and all the nails, hinges, and other metal parts began to glow red from the heat. The wind started up again with a swirling gust that surrounded Sunset and her spell.
“Yes! Yes! Let me be your vessel, let me be your agent! When you trust me with your power, nothing can stand before us!” Sunset’s pupils lost their focus as she was overcome by her mania, and her shrieks of laughter descended into maddened babbling. “Alicorns! Alicorns! I fight you, I kiss you! I kill you, I birth you! OooOOoH! If Celestia could see us now!"
She leaned over the side of the airship, and focussed in Astral Nacre, tumbling through the atmosphere.
Far below, on the valley floor, the remnants of the Cloudsdale Fleet was regrouping. The airships that had survived and not fled were landed here and there, loading the wounded. The ships doctors passed among the worst, burned or crushed, triaging them.
While the other Wonderbolts were scouting the valley for more survivors, Soarin was at the edge of the makeshift camp, watching the lines of stretchers going up and down the airship gangplanks. It was unlikely that even half the bodies could be recovered from the crashed and twisted hulks burning all around them, pyres onto themselves.
If only they had listened, he thought despondently, none of this would have happened. Why hadn't the Admiralty listened, when Spitfire and the Wonderbolts unanimously told that only death awaited in Canterlot? His resentment was growing, not just for Velvet and her monster, but the Cloudsdale regime that had all but pushed the loyal ponies of the fleet into her maw. All she’d had to do was bite.
"Fleetfoot..." He whispered to the sky. "Are you going to be okay?"
Suprisingly, the sky answered. He was a glimmer of light, high high high above. There had been flashes up there before: Somepony was putting on a light show, Astral Nacre most likely.
"Tshh," Spitfire turned away. He could not bear to know the monster was still up there, having its cruel fun.
“Look! It’s the sun!” One of the ponies nearby yelled. “We’re saved! We’re saved!”
“Huh?” Soarin looked back up at the glimmering light.
It was a mere glimmer no longer. It looked from the valley as though there was a new star in the sky, brighter than any other and twinkling- no, not twinkling, wavering. It was definitely not the sun, but nor was it meaningless. Soarin's thoughts went to fire.
The strange light was drawing the attention of more and more of the camp. “Ave Celestia!” Several ponies chorused. “Ave Celestia!”
"A bare-bones skiff or maverick balloon? What could possibly be up that high?” Soarin mumbled to himself. “Maybe a scout skiff. We never saw if the Slashing Dancer crashed. Is that her burning up there?" He wondered. "Wait..." The light elongated and became brighter.
Like a zipper dividing the skies, or a stream of water from a pitched, a hellacious column of energy poured down from the new star in the sky. Despite being many of kilometers away, the column of energy that linked the earth to the dot of light was blinding. It was just like the solar beams that had inducted the endless night, but exponentially more violent and uncontrolled. For several seconds the entire camp was lit up like it way daytime.
Then it dwindled.
It was dead quiet. The moans of pain from the triage area and the chanting of hopeful ponies both died under an oppressive rumble that rolled over the entire valley. There arose from the distant hills where the beam struck an inferno of incalculable enormity, which seemed to match the very mountains around the valley. A whole swath of the Don hills north of Canterlot had been set aflame.
If Celestaia had returned, she'd lost all care for precision and collateral damage. The torch-like light was still in the sky, preparing itself for another attack.
“Did Astral Nacre do that? Something else?” Soarin uttered breathlessly. "Fleetfoot, be safe and come back to us! Please!" Another day, another ungodly power causing trouble for everypony.
For Astral, the ungodly pillar of light was not a distant lightshow. One moment she was shooting down through the sky to catch up with Fleetfoot, the next she was on fire, her skin burning and her blood boiling. She desperately fought to stay conscious through the torment of the infernal fire basting her. She could feel herself being burned away layer by layer by the unrestrained solar energy, until it was over and she was something like a blob of meat falling through the air.
Concentrating with the last of her wits, she regenerated herself as much as she could. She fell uncontrollably, spinning to face the burning ground below her and the rapidly shrinking shape of the skiff in alternation.
Attacking Sunset Shimmer had not worked out so well. It would have been a fantastic boon, to take the power the mortal was hoarding. It was not to be. The Traitor (Astral thought the epitaph was ridiculous, for she cared not for pony concepts of treason) was too powerful. Like Ancepanox had been too powerful. Like Twilight Velvet was too powerful. Astral's ego was taking a beating almost as bad as her body was taking.
Though her eyes were of no use, Astral Nacre was dazed by the sensory overload she was experiencing- the air crackled with the residual energy of the solar beam.
Astral stabilized her tumble, spreading her wings and regaining some control. She swerved out of the crackling air, into cold skies.
Down below her, she felt a faint sign of life, two tied souls falling together.
“Fleetfoot!” She psychically screamed out. If she'd had a mouth, the rushing air would have surely beat her words back into her throat.
Shockingly pegasus was alive- she had been in Astral's shadow and had been largely spared the obscene power of the solar beam, but the superheated air around them had set her partially aflame.
Astral could feel the aura flicker. Fleetfoot would soon be dead.
Astral’s heart ached in a way she could not describe. It was not longing or embarrassment but a more selfless despair she had ever experienced before. She had inflicted tremendous ills upon hundreds of ponies but only now that she saw Fleetfoot dying did she begin to feel remorse for any of it. It was very slowly beginning to dawn on her, how mortals lived and breathed and experienced the same world as her. They felt pain!
Astral had to save Fleetfoot, not just for what could be learned from her, but because it was the right thing to do.
Astral reduced her profile, swooping down with all speed. She had to reach Fleetfoot.
But up above, fire loomed again. Astral could feel Sunset Shimmer building up to another attack. The Traitor was serious about killing her.
The thick and hot air at once ripped at her raw skin as her speed increased, the feint pegasus magic within her pushing her past her terminal velocity. The gap between her and Fleetfoot dropped rapidly, but the growing power of the Light, taking up the sky above like a luminous cloud, was about to be cast again.
Astral reached forward, trying to open her eyes despite the wind. Her hoof touched Fleetfoot and adhered, allowing her to pull the small pegasus into a protective embrace. It was supremely uncomfortable, as her flesh stung with a needy hunger amplified by proximity to pray, but Astral fought against the urges and kept herself from consuming Fleetfoot.
Now came the tricky part. They were still thousands of meters high and about to be scorched to ash. Astral didn’t know what to do in face of the apocalyptic power blooming overhead.
She tried to extend her wings but the fleshy appendages weren't hadn’t healed enough to even slow their combined weight, not matter how hard Astral tried. In her strain and desperation she lost focus on her other parts, and her legs began to absorb Fleetfoot’s skin where they gripped her as her tentacle mane penetrated her like a metastasized melanoma.
“NOO!” Astral howled, trying to pull herself away. With the regeneration from Fleetfoot’s blood she underestimated her own power and strength, shredding both their skins. It was sheer horror. Was this how ponies felt when they saw her tear ponies apart?
Time was up. The air began to shimmer, and the solar beam came down again. Astral could feel herself be consumed by fire. Her every mote was being displaced, teleported to what she could only assume was hell. Her senses stopped working, and her existence became null…
She bounced against a cold, unyelding floor.
"Oof!" Astral slid one way, Fleetfoot another.
“Goodness Gracious, Astral Nacre! I asked you to destroy the fleet, not get yourself fried! You silly mare.” A familiar voice chided, accompanied by a slap across her face. “You could have been killed! With how much work went into you, you'd think you could stand to be a little more careful."
“Mother?” Astral croaked. With a snap of realization, she felt that her body was whole and her senses functional. With her beady eyes she looked up at Velvet, who in turn were looking down at her.
They were in... (Astral looked around) Castle Magoria, in one of guest chambers. Night Light was staring red-eyed from the adjacent bedchamber.
Velvet gestured out the window. Astral saw the light fade, as the solar beam intended to destroy her faded away.
"I teleported you out just in time. You have no idea how lucky you are." Velvet chided. Indeed, the unicorn's horn still still swirled with the green dragonfire magic she’d used to teleport them there.
Astral was too dazed and confused to understand what was going on for a few minutes. "I'm, sorry, Velvet."
"It's not all bad. You obliterated that fleet like nopony else could have. You've proved your utility." Velvet continued. "And what's this pony? Fleetfoot? My my, Astral, you keep bringing home pets you expect me to care for." Velvet laughed tiredly. "Before you ask, no, we haven't found your earth pony friend yet. But trust me, we're still looking."
Astral nodded absently. Finding Ripple Wreath didn't seem that urgent, considering what she'd just been through. "Yes, Velvet."
“Now stay out of trouble. I have my ponies looking out for your friend and they should not take too long.” Velvet trotted to the chamber door and knocked. Her maid came in and scooped Fleetfoot up, her apron staining red with the pegasus's blood. "Take her to the University Hospital immediately."
"Yes Lady Velvet." The maid said. She traded a quick glance with Night Light before scurrying out of the room.
Velvet licked her lips. “Well, that's it then. You look like you need rest too. Take the duke's chambers. When you feel better, perhaps we can discuss what you learned about our enemies. Good night, Astral.”
“Goodnight Lady Velvet.” Astral mumbled, slinking out.
Velvet rubbed her eyes. "I'm so bucking tired." She yawned.
Night Light, pleased the guests had left, flopped back into the bed. "We will close our eyes, and when we open them again, it will be a new day."
"Hmm... I think you're right. This treacherous night has run its course for us." Velvet lay herself beside him and rolled herself into the covers. "Goodnight, Night Light.
"Goodnight, Twilight." Night Light kissed her on the forehead and blew out the candle.
No amount of yelling, threatening, or glaring had forced the awful Manifestation to send Celestia to the top of the Tower.
It had come suddenly, right in the middle of a sentence. The fabric of the dreamscape crunched as Celestia popped into existence at the top of the tower. While she was recovering from the spacial jump, the Manifestation arrived beside her.
"Have I failed?" She asked herself and the Manifestation. "I came here to save Twilight Sparkle from Forlorn Spark. Did I doom her instead?"
The scene before her was predictable but disappointing.
Ancepanox and Agana were circling around each other, duelists waiting for the other to act. Nothing had changed from the unfair fight among the crumbled tower, but the atmosphere was entirely different this time. Ancepanox was less manic, more calculating. Agana was less gloating, more cautious. They circled and circled, their eyes locked in a stare.
Celestia's own eyes was drawn to another change since the last fight: Ancepanox had a weapon, a silver sabre she spun slowly in her telekinesis. Celestia immediately recognized the weapon was real, or as real as a weapon could be in a dream- Just as the dreamer forms of ponies were manifestations of their souls, the weapon was some kind of manifestation of a real world counterpart. Celestia could feel an anguished aura from it.
Something wasn't right. Celestia heart was seized by a sudden dread she couldn't explain.
“I don’t see this ending so well for me.” Celestia muttered. “or my young life.”
“Don’t intervene.” The manifestation warned. “With your renewed power, you'd gravely hurt them both. As long as Ancepanox keeps fighting, you can't.” The monstrocity's frown turned into a sly grin. "Unless you want to hurt her."
“Quiet, monster.” Celestia said with more vitriol than she’d intended. But it was right. She kept her body pulse with the sun's energy. Once tapped, it would be hard for Celestia to restrain herself.
She had to watch the clash of the two Dark ones, until one was defeated and thrown back.
Ancepanox and Agana circled the center. Ancepanox prowled, holding her sabre out menacingly. Agana floated above the ground.
"Mooneater, come defeat or victory, tonight you will learn something very important for a Dark one. Do you understand what the eye is? It is the tool by which we discern light from dark, friend from foe, truth from lies.” Agana cooed.
“Indeed.” Ancepanox agreed.
“But most of all, mine eyes see corruption. Mine eyes see SIN.” Agana whispered. “You may have eyes in your head, but truly can they see the world spinning round? Is it only what you have been told, or do you know it for YOURSELF? The only way for you to defeat me is if you find your eyes. Ah, but we begin now!”
Agana reached up to the sky. The dark blot of darkness in the void above, shaped as an eye, sent out a ghoulish light that coalesced on her. The foul light became a pillar, like an infinite river of oil coming down from on high. The oily pillar stopped, leaving a pool on the ground, which reshaped itself into a pony-like figure, a new shadow shade.
It was much more substantial shade than the previous ones, disgustingly tarry as opposed to shadowy and wraith-like. It had the form of a pony, tall and muscular, tied with chains across its torso and legs. It could not breathe easily for the rusty bit and bridle locked over its head, and every ragged breath was a fight to get through its displaced jaw. Of the nose there was no sign; Every bit of the face that was not covered by the chains was scarred beyond recognition.
Out of this monstrosity bled red light from two eyes, the windows to the abject hatred of the chained beast. Agana had not easily subdued it, nor did it suffer subservience easily.
"Another of your victims? He doesn't look very happy with his predicament." Anceapnox remarked.
"You have brought your tool to this battle. You have that right." Agana intoned. She summoned her magic to her horns and pulled on the shade's reigns, jerking the him towards her. "I will use mine."
"Mine's nicer." Ancepanox hefted her sabre. "But it’d look better red."
The shade opened it’s mouth a bit wider, and a chilling yowl rolled out from the back of it’s throat. It tried to charge forward, but was caught by the chain. Fighting to keep the monstrosity restrained, Agana drifted a bit closer to the ground, and her hoof bounced against the black stone. With the clink of keratin against rock, the signal for the duel to begin to earnest rang.
Ancepanox moved almost too quickly for Celestia to see, dashing forward and slashing wildly with her sabre. The big shade jumped to meet her, taking the slashes with indifference and responding with beastial ferocity, bucking and biting at whatever flesh it could reach. It’s jagged hooves and tombstone-like teeth did some on their own, but the rusted and cursed chain dragged against Ancepanox’s skin and ripped off a patch from ear to breast.
Ancepanox jumped back to let the grievous wound magically heal. Agana took immense pleasure in holding the shade back and watching it choke itself with it’s leash.
“This sinful retch is from before your time, Celestiaan. He was one of the first pilgrims to wander into the Vacuous Arcanum and submit themselves to me." Agana craned her head to face the sun princess. "If you know your history well enough, you may recognize him."
The shade was more depraved a beast than any pony Celestia could confess to knowing, and if her math was right it must have dated to Celestia the First. But something about it’s restless mannerism reminded her of an old friend, only a decade gone.
“I knew that thing’s descendant. That thing... is an ancestor of the Lightdowser dukes of East Unicornia.” Celestia watched the shade battle against its bindings.
“Close guess, very close. It was one of the Dark Lady's mortal progeny, bred into the Lightdowser line. In a way he was a distant cousin. Purpleoak, Duke-consort of the Duchess Lightdowser of old.” Agana grabbed the shade with her magic and turned him over to appraise him like a prize animal. “The blood of the Deava is sprinkled here and there in the dynasties of Equestria even to this day, is it not, Celestiaan?"
“Bloody fascinating.” Ancepanox panted. She was a little disheartened at how badly the shade had hurt her in so short a time. She took a deep breath and focused her magic on herself. Her dreaming form healed itself. "Hey, Agana! Any chance Twilight Sparkle is descended from the Dark Lady?"
Agana cast her odd eyes back to the dark alicorn. "Hmph. No."
Ancepanox had no feeling one way or another. She was only curious, with how Twilight Velvet had talked about her ancestral power and responsibilities, if the predecessors of House Twilight had some spark of otherworldly blood in it.
And Velvet's implementation of the ritual had, in her own words, needed 'blood of the Great Ones'. That had evidently been code for the descendents of the divine creatures bred into the old noble dynasties of Equestria. Rain Gnash, Seacrest Sabonord, and Foaly Flux.
But wait, how could uncle Foaly have 'Great One' blood, and not Twilight Sparkle?
Ancepanox gave a scruinous look at the slavering Purpleoak shade. There was only a suggestion of pony features in the husk, but there was also a hint of elle ne sut quoi that differentiated it subtly from the other shades…
Agana noticed her staring. "You can feel his mind, can't you Mooneater. Yes, he is not so fargone as the others. His mind remains intact despite his degradation! The virtues of alicorn blood. Ho, I wonder if that is how your little Ripple Wreath survived me... Eh, no matter." The peacock alicorn patted the shade on the head. “Are you making friends, boy? Am I not good enough for you anymore? Oh, Mooneater, you had better watch out for this one! He is a real… ladykiller!”
The peacock alicorn launched into a fit of giggles at her own pun. She further powered her horns and hurled the shade at Ancepanox as though she were putting a shot.
Ancepanox’s surprise lasted less than halfway through Purpleoak’s involuntary flight. She drove her sabre upwards on his downwards arc, and skewered him through his gut. Purpleoak was none too pleased and fell over while trying to dig the sword out.
Ancepanox took advantage of his distraction by blasting him point blank with a storm of magical energy. The chain and the sword conducted the arcs of purple electricity along their length, burning a huge swath of Purpleoak’s tainted black body and burning out his abdomen.
But the ravaging of his body only drove Purpleoak on. The sabre slipped free of his seared flesh, and he returned his attention to murdering Ancepanox. He howled and charged forward, and this time the black alicorn had no sword to protect herself with. She tried striking out with a hoof but the shade latched on, shaking her like a dog in an attempt to rip her leg off.
Agana could not stop laughing as she pull on the chain, dragging the entangled combattents along the ground.
Celestia was having a hard time keeping herself from fainting at the grotesque wounds Ancepanox was taking.
“Don't intervene.” The Manifestation floating beside her warned again.
Ancepanox kicked out again and again at the frenzied beast, beating fruitlessly against its horrid head. Finally she caught it square in its lower jaw, and the already displaced joint dislocated. Purpleoak roared in rage as Ancepanox scrambled away, and with a sickening crunch he smashed a hoof against his own face, putting the mandible back into position.
“Holy buck. You’re a tough bastard.” Ancepanox got back to her hooves. There was so much red in her black fur she looked like a revolutionary flag. “But so am I.”
She telekinetically grabbed the sabre but tucked it in her mane like a hairstick. She moved her hooves far apart, bringing herself close to the ground in a wrestler's pose.
Unintimidated, Purpleoak charged. Instead of taking him head on, Ancepanox juked and threw him sideways. His attack carried him a meter farther until his chain leash snapped taut and his head snapped back while momentum kept his body moving forward. He fell on his back and Ancepanox was immediately upon him, stomping mercilessly at his underbelly where it had been burned. Still at the end of his rope, Purpleoak could not get up. He suffered the trampling with a panicked yowl as he tried in vain to kick at her.
Celestia’s stomach churned as the brutal spectacle carried on for over a minute. By the end of it Ancepanox had splashed black viscera across five square meters and turned the shade’s chest cavity into a bloody dugout canoe. Slowly, the infernal fire in his eyes died, until they were only ashy pits in his scarred face. His soul extinguish, Purpleoak’s body turned to dust and dispersed on the dream’s ethereal winds.
"Rest in peace... bastard." Ancepanox wiped her forehead. She let out a long sigh. She trotted back across the tower to Agana, making a trail of bloody hoofprints. “That was a good fight. I... feel strange.”
“Ha ha ha ha! Yes it was good, very good!” Agana chuckled. She kept her distance from the advancing Ancepanox, drifting backwards for every step forward. “I almost doubted you Mooneater. I almost believed you would die to that pathetic thing, but nooo. You are stronger!”
She clapped her forehooves together, a field of maroon magic encased the keratin like gloves. Celestia could see it was not a proper spell, but more like a malevolent bastardization of life force. It must have been comparable to earth pony magic, twisted into a weapon.
“There's no shame asking Celestia for help, you know." Agana chuckled. "When two weak creatures alone can not fight the predator, they form a pack. Even then they sometimes fall. It's just the natural way of things!"
"You're invoking the Naturalistic Fallacy. You know I'm going to have to penalize you for that." Ancepanox chuckled darkly. She waggled her hoof. "Show me more wisdom, my Suzerain of Sin."
This time, Agana initiated. She moved with fairy-like grace, gliding a hooflength above the black stone in defiance of gravity, her waving veil of vines dragging behind.
“Witness us, Dark Lady, as your disciples battle for your glory! This will be a majestic duel for the ages. For once the weak crumple the real fun begins! Our eyes will open to heaven's wonders.“
Agana pounced, her hooves trailing watery light behind. Ancepanox jumped back while casting a magical shield, but Agana smashed through it like a bull through glass and connected her punch against the black alicorn’s shoulder. A wave of maroon energy rippled along Ancepanox’s body from the point of impact, and she was thrown back halfway across the tower.
With Agana steadily drawing closer, Ancepanox pushed herself up. Her fur sizzled from Agana's magic. “Those scrawny legs pack a punch. Not bad for an anorexic bird-headed bitch!” She snarled. "Give back Twilight!"
“Look at her Celestiaan, acting as though she understands the potential and scale of divine power.” Agana laughed.
“Don’t intervene.” The Manifestation reminded Celestia.
The peacock alicorn charged again. When she reared back to punch, Ancepanox threw up her own hoof, casting a ward around it at the same time. The two magic-encased hooves bounced off each other with an explosion of light, from which Agana immediately followed up with her other forehoof. Too out of position to block, Ancepanox cast a microshield in an attempt to deflect the punch, but Agana adjusted and shattered it just as easily as the first one. Still, it gave Ancepanox enough time to back out of her reach, as Agana swiped down with wing and hoof.
With her strike whiffed, Agana was showing her neck, and Ancpenaox capitalized by drawing her sabre and in the same motion slashing downwards to decapitate. Agana tried to pirouette out of the way and partially succeeded, brushing the sabre away with her wing before it had done more than graze her. Ancepanox stayed on the offensive, alternating sword slashes with bolts of magic, both of which Agana was knocking aside with well-timed movements of her wings.
"I can keep this up forev-" Agana's taunt died on her tongue, as one of Ancepanox's bolts of magic burned right through her wing, scorching the feather and sinew to black. "WHAT!" She tried to block with her hooves.
Ancepanox's sabre cut through Agana's left hoof and hacked away half her foreleg. The spray of blood distracted Ancepanox momentarily and Agana jumped backwards, almost colliding with Celestia.
“Ahhh! What have you done?!" Agana gawked at her stump leg. "This... This is amazing! Beat at me, scream at me, saw at my bones until they are grit! Yes, Mooneater, yes!” Agana raised up her mutilated limb straight up. The murky eye above trembled, and the leg was healed back in a wave of dark light. "This fear I feel, this ice in my guts... It's the same that I felt before I killed my physical body. This is the way to transcend my constraints once more. Make me fear you! Make me fear god, and mercy! Oh yes!”
“SHUT UP AND DIE ALREADY!"
Ancepanox tensed up. With shocking speed, she charged forward, her horn burning bright. Agana had no effort pirouetting out of the way. But Celestia, behind Agana and not expecting the charge, was almost caught on Ancepanox's horn, before she threw herself to the floor; Most undignified.
Ancepanox slid to a halt at the opposite side of the roof and reoriented herself back towards Agana.
"I'm starting to see what you mean. Fighting for my life fills me with an energy that I never knew I needed. I felt it while killing Glori's knights, and I was utterly intoxicated by it!"
"Killing who?" Celestia muttered. "Run that back by me?"
"You're saying the quiet part loud, Mooneater." Agana grunted, clacking her beak haughtily. “I am beginning to doubt myself. Perhaps you really are that shallow. You do not kill and fight, not in service of a worldview, or an ideological praxis, but because it is... Fun?"
“Enough about ideology already. Trying to tack on some 'Ideology' to all this is just creating epistemological assumptions! This isn't a bucking society! This is a dream! I am a dreamer!" Ancepanox raged. "Hey, here's some ideology for you: Kill all alicorns. That's what I'll be chanting until I have Twilight Sparkle back. Now observe my praxis!"
Ancepanox charged again.
To the observers, Celestia and the manifestation, something has subtly changing about Ancepanox. It was like if the fight were a puppet show, and the puppeteer for the dark alicorn was doing everything a little too fast, a little too hasty. Ancepanox was getting stronger, gaining a kind of mastery over her dream form, or perhaps, her dream environment.
Anceapnox's charge cut through the air light a lightning bolt, he sabre-slashes leaving a silvery trail behind her. Agana didn't dodge this time, bracing with both her wings and hooves. They crashed together, the sabre getting locked in between Agana's pinions. Rather than withdraw and charge again, Ancepanox leaned into the attack, even shoving against Agana's wings with her shoulder. Like two rams, they pushed and pushed against each other, snorting and braying.
“Do you think I talk too much? This is not talking, like crude forms would do in the physical world! We are but points of will in a sea of thought, with coursing energy carrying concepts that our feeble consciousness struggle to apply our limited understandings to.” Agana tilting her head forward, her cold breath, ticking Ancepanox's nose. “It is the only way we may hope.”
"How many times to I have to repeat it. Give Twilight back to me!" Ancepanox growled.
Celestia didn’t understand at all what was going on. "Don't get overwhelmed." Celestia exclaimed. "She's just trying to get under your skin. Keep a hold of yourself!"
"I'm trying!" Agana shouted back cheekily.
With a roar, Ancepanox twisted whole body to try to strike with her forehooves while still maintaining pressure with the sabre. Agana flared her wings apart, wrenching the sabre from Ancepanox's grasp, then threw up her hooves to block the punch. But the sabre dissipated, reappearing Ancepanox's other hoof, and she slashed upward. Agana was cut from pelvis to shoulder, and with a startled squawk batted Ancepanox away with both wings.
"Ah! Ah! Good hit." Agana winced. "I'll get you one better, I promise."
"Agana! Ancepanox! Please stop! Something is wrong!" Celestia called out, increasingly nervous.
"Damn right somethings wrong! She's not dead yet!" Ancepanox licked the length of her blade
"If you come between us, you will be both of our target, Celestiaan." Agana huffed, waving Celestia away. "This mare has a very skewed understanding of this world. She is due some HUMILITY."
Celestia clenched her teeth. "If you keep at this, she'll snap! Stop tormenting her."
"I don't want your hollow concern." Ancpeanox rumbled. She nodded to Agana. "You promised to do me one better, didn't you? I'm waiting."
Agana nodded back. She sauntered forward, her hindlegs not quite touching the ground as she floated, until she was right in front of Ancepanox again. "You cut me badly." He rubbed a hoof over the gash on her breast, closing her eyes. "What a sin, to pain a god like this! Oh oh! I must pay you back... with like sins."
Agana's eyes flew open. She twisted her whole body around, swinging her leg around in a twirling back-hoof smash. Ancepanox leaned out of the way but Agana kept twirling, smacking her back with a wing.
Ancepanox jumped back in, trying to sever Agana's outstretched limbs with her sabre, but Agana was much more mindful of the quick blade, and danced backwards. When Ancepanox tried to strike with her hooves, Agana blocked iwth her own hooves. When Ancepanox tried to stab with her horn, Agana caught it in between her pinions, the jerked the other alicorn's head back.
"You should think twice before using a vulnerable organ in such a way. You wouldn't swing your brain about like a bat, would you?" Agana chortled.
Ancepanox screaming in impotent anger. "I'll cut your sh-"
Agana knocked Ancepanox in the side of the head with one hoof, clanging off the blue steel helmet. While Ancpeanox staggered back, dazed, Agana smashed her in the face with an elbow, and spiked her into the floor with the other hoof.
"Leave her be!" Celestia shouted from behind. "If you kill her, I- I'll show you NO MERCY."
"Relax, Celestiaan. as I said I'm just teaching her some humility." Agana said. She kicked Ancepanox in the throat, sending the smaller alicorn spinning back. “Does this not make you glad? Celestia, old friend, deep in the recesses of your memories, you know this is GOOD and RIGHT. Your progenitor kicked this phantom down. You feel something inside when you look upon that face, because you know it is what you must do too.”
Once hoof at a time, Ancepanox pulled herself up. She was once again mangled and battered, and her dreaming form was beginning to fray. “Ngg, don't listen to her Celestia. She's desperate. I have her on the ropes.”
She attacked, but was considerably slower than before. This time Agana did not bother dodging as the black alicorn slashed sideways with the corrupted sabre, instead throwing up a hoof while shifting her weight, which deflected the slash just enough to miss her torso. Ancepanox sluggishly recovered and slashed again only to miss again in the same way. Infuriated, she began a wild flurry of attacks, and each time Agana danced backwards while knocking the sabre away with just her hooves. The waltz ended with Ancepanox collapsed on the ground, struggling to take in breaths.
“I’ll bleed you white.” She promised between ragged breaths. “I’ll pull you apart like soaked meat.”
"You were doing very well before! Recapture that feeling! You're getting close to understanding the difference, why I have power and you don't." Agana said with mock encouragement.
"Ughh." Anceapnox grimaced. Laying like she was, she saw the dark blotch in the sky, that wretched eye, framed behind Agana, like a black halo.
If Agana didn't have that eye to tap into, she would be nothing. Just like how Celestia would be nothing without her Sun's power.
These alicorns... They were puppets! Pretenders! Vessels of someone else's power! They had no skill or power of their own! Ancepanox, the mare who had created herself from nothing, could rage against them all she liked... To no end.
"When was I at my best? Where do you think my power should come from?" She asked softly, grinding her teeth.
Celestia watched, numb fear creeping over her. Ancepanox's eyes… Purple though they were, they quivered with ferocious rancor like somepony else’s.
Celestia saw fleeting visions of the forgotten past, of eyes just like those staring into her own. The moon had shone brightly overhead, heralding the consuming evil that would tear apart minds and nations alike. White teeth like knives, the figure had, stained red with a Celestia’s blood.
Nightmare Moon, and the beast that called itself Ancepanox, were as one. Not similar, but nearly identical. The once-pony did not look like Nightmare Moon in the dream simply from a combanatin of ego and spitefulness... She had become that in the waking world as well! Oh, how Celestia had denied the truth to herself! 'Convergent evolution', Celestia had told herself before, and her mind had submitted to that convenient lie.
"You... You really did it." Celestia mumbled. Oh, that saucy glance Ancepanox had thrown her, when Celestia had offered her dead body to Agana in return for peace! That had been a knowing look, from a creature who'd done the same thing, but to the other sister!
Celestia tried not to imagine it, but to her horror realized the dark alicorn she'd been speaking too must have been what she now looked like in the waking world. That ancient blue steel armor, vessel for Twilight Sparkle's orphaned soul, had clasped definitively onto its old owners body, to seal in union two two sides of the Dark: Theory and practice, dream and dreamer.
The former Twilight Sparkle had not abandoned her name for fun. She had literally transformed herself into another pony with another body.
"My gods..." Celestia sunk to her knees, trembling. She tried to catch Ancepanox's glance, so she could ask her question. Not 'why', because the night's fights and argument had answered that. Celestia knew why she'd done it, but not the other question.
"Twilight... How... How could you?"
"How could I not." Ancepanox hissed under her breath. "I was a dead mare, a mere revenant bound to shitty old armor! No transgression was too much to reclaim ponyhood. Do you think I was happy, having to defile my friend? I loved Moon! She's a part of me now..." She averted her eyes, trying to push away the shame she knew she should not have been feeling.. "The other choice was your body, Celestia. But I... I couldn't touch you. I couldn't even look at you. I don't know why. Was it because I hated or loved you too much, to see you laying over Twilight like that, eternally sleeping? I thought you'd made the ultimate sacrifice. How wrong I was."
"Twilight..." Celestia mumbled. What did she want? What she she want from her former student? Acceptance and forgiveness? Understanding? Compassion or love? Celestia could not tear herself away from Ancepanox, the pony that had known her best, who'd shared her experiences, who'd warmed her heart, who was to be her heir.
Celestia fell back on her haunches. "Ooohhh... Why? Why?" She sniffled. "My sister! My sister! What is wrong with my head!"
Agana regarded Celestia’s anguish. The peacock alicorn cracked a thin, satisfied grin. She leaned over and whispered to Ancepanox. "We could kill her, you know. You could take revenge on the one who cost you everything."
But Ancepanox wasn't paying attention to her. The dark alicorn was staring off to some far off horizon, unblinking.
Displeased she could get her jollies out of her, Agana stepped away from Ancepanox and went over to bother Celestia.
"Oh Celestia, oh Celestia! This little nightmare brought doom to you and your kin! Without her, none of this would have happened. Death, Celestiaan. Death to the world of Light. As the old adage, muttered by the flagellant apostles drowning in sin, goes: Your dooms has come, as it always does, from a source of your own creation.”
Who was listening to the Suzerain of Sin anymore? They were all absorbed in their own misery. They were angry and afraid, and resentful of everything that had put them in their situation. They wished for it all to be over, for it all to have been a dream... A figment of the imagination that could never truly be. Real life would never be so cruel...
Ancepanox staired out, past the edge of the tower, to that far off horizon. Agana was still engaged with ranting nonsense at Celestia, so Ancepanox crawled to the edge of the tower unopposed.
What was out there, that had her so transfixed? She didn't know herself. Was their a horizon? Was it just more void, more emptiness? The Tower of the Bard was the only occupant of the dream... Or was it?
Ancepanox felt connected to something out there. Not literally at the horizon, but past the bounds of the dream, beyond Agana's ranting and Celestia's misery. There was more to it than the dream... But of course there was! There was a whole world up there! Not even an esoteric world of dreams and heavenly lights- The thinking, breathing, stomping, romping, WAKING WORLD.
Ancepanox felt the ponies she had connections with- Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, the fillies, Spike, Ripple Wreath- rage and storm at the injustices they had suffered. They had a shared experience, a shared motivation!
Ancepanox's personal hate alone couldn't drive her to victory. But a shared pain, a shared hate... why that was the beginning of ideology. With the powers of allies, the strength of one mare could become the power of many.
Ancepanox laughed to herself. She felt... At peace. Not at peace with her external conflicts, oh no, but with herself. She knew where her power and strength came from.
But there was still one missing element. Celestia had her sun. Agana had that malignant eye. What would Ancepanox have?
"And like I said earlier, my ideology is: Death to the alicorns." Ancpeanox said out loud.
Agana, lost in her harangue, didn't hear her. "... the central conceit of which captivated you for centuries. Utter weakness, so typical of you, Celestiaan, that I should have hoped you would strive past in..." More blithering nonsense the likes of whitch had never been heard before.
But Celestia, the target, of Agana's rant, tingled at the soft voice. She broke out of her sorrowful catatonia, sitting up and looking to Ancepanox.
Ancpeanox's eyes had gone completely black. Not a good sign. "Oh no." She gurgled. "What have we done?"
That got Agana's attention. She looked where Celestia was looking. "Finally."
"Is the Tower a sign of mortal unity and strength, or of coming together to challenge the gods? Both? " Ancepanox asked rhetorically. "That drive was inside me all along. I'm building another Tower with my new friends."
"And the world thanks you for it." Agana nodded. "At least, I certainly do. Look at her Celestia! She is reaching her potential! One Tower of the Bard wasn't enough to reach heaven. A second might do it."
"You have completely miscalculated this time." Celestia said moreosely. "This has spiraled out of control for the both of us."
Celestia’s senses tingled! She jumped back as a bolt of black energy scorched the ground where she’d stood. She looked, aghast, as Ancepanox got up and charged her magic for another bolt.
"I have the means to do it now. Theory and practice, theory and practice. I can and will hurt you." Ancepanox hissed out.
Celestia had known from the first moment that this would happen. A little filly who could blast apart a tower was a dangerous, unstable thing. A filly who set classrooms on fire out of spite for her fellow students deserved caution and sanction, not private lessons. Celestia should have known.
"I knew it would come to this, but I prayed it wouldn't."
Eight hundred years of pain postponed was catching up with Celestia, but now she only felt numb. It was always mean to to be like this: Her student, mired in hate, lashing out at her. Twilight Sparkle, was never meant to be, designed instead to be replaced by darker things.
That tragic soul, looking at her with a hatred of infinite depth, was heir to the creature of darkness she'd consumed to craft her body. It was Ancepanox, and it was Nightmare Moon.
It was fated. Nightmare Moon's victory a thousand years ago was becoming manifest.
"My sister... You are becoming my enemy."
“Glad we understand each other.” Ancepanox felt so strained could hardly breath. Her fur stood on end and her wings shook in restless upheaval. Vivid visions of her tearing Celestia apart painted themselves over her visions, so forceful she had to bite her serpentine tongue to distract her from fulfilling the murderous impulse right then and there. "Do you want it first? Or Agana?"
“Something abominable has awoken here. Something sinful.” Agana pulled her beak into a smile of pure malice. “And through Sin, conflict, and strength propel us to higher states of evolution. You, Mooneater, are getting closer to becoming a god.” She bowed. “Now we can REALLY fight.”
“Go buck yourself. NO no nononono… I’ll do one better. I’ll buck you. Yes, I'm gunna knock your block off, and then I’m going to stuff the block down your throat and RIP your stomach out to get IT BACK.” Ancepanox growled. Red began to seep into her vision. Oh how she wanted to bathe in the blood of that hulking peacock, and wear it’s collarbone like vest. It’s eyes would adorn her horn and it’s entrails would be weaved into a courtly dress! Words could not articulate how much she wanted to turn her foe into pulp and roll around in it.
"Stars above, she has really lost it." Celestia mumbled, seeing how Ancepanox trembled as she fantasized all manner of death and horror. Beating the dark alicorn, making her accept defeat, would not be enough.
"You want to attack her together?" Agana laughed, sauntering forward. "On three! One... Two..."
"Stop!" Celestia shouted.
The color of the dream changed. It took on a shade of grey, and all motion slowed, until finally it stopped. Agana was cought in mid utterance. Ancepanox was frozen while drawing her sabre. The Sun at the far horizon and the murky eye high above shined on in their different ways. Phantom Time had descended on the dream.
Did it extend to the waking world? Celestia truely didn't know. She was surprised that it worked at all in the dream. Phantom Time was a contrivance of the Sun's power. As a guest in Twilight's dream, by what right did the Sun dictate if it moved or now?
Celestia didn't know. She didn't care about the metaphysics of the thing.
"I need more time. I'm not ready for this. I'm not ready to hurt her." Celestia whispered to herself, backing away from the other alicorns. She couldn't bare to look at them, but to fight, she would have to. "H- How can I resolve to hurt my closest friend?"
She looked to the sun. Even in this frozen state, the Phantom Time, the Sun wavered ever so slightly.
"Please." Celestia begged the Sun. "Y- You can give them the memories to make them understand! If we all just... just understand, then there won't be any more fighting!"
The sun didn't answer her. It had given Celestia its power, but now it was all up to Celestia.
"She defiled my sister, I know. She wants to destroy me, I know. She could destroy Equestria, I KNOW! Is there any chance I can still save her?" Celestia shouted into the void. "What can I say? What can I do? How do I bridge the gap between us?"
There was a rustling sound behind her.
Celestia turned back around.
From out of the vines that entangled Agana's limbs, a purple hoof dropped. Twilight Sparkle pulled herself from the vines, dropping to the ground.
Twilight's appearance had changed again. Her head was entirely missing, replaced by a vauge haze of black and purple that coiled and billowed around the rest of her body too.
"T- Twilight?" Celestia stuttered.
The bloated body of the Manifestation of Sin (Celestia had forgotten it was there!) hovered over to Twilight. "Keeping track of the two Twilight's hasn't been easy on you. Heh heh. is it you're having so much trouble reconciling yourself with Ancepanox because you've pushed off all your guilt for the both of them onto her alone?"
"My guilt?" Celestia asked vacantly. She searched desperately for signs of eyes or a face in the cloud surrounding Twilight.
"The thing about you, Celestia, is that you're not a true believer. Nuh uh, not at all. So when you paint over your sins with the language and absolution of ideology, you know you're lying." The manifestation chided playfully. "If you were a Deava or Dark alicorn, that would be great for you. But you're not."
Twilight Sparkle jittered to the side, wandering unsteadily on her hooves. She moved in the direction of Ancepanox.
"Twilight!" Celestia cried out, her tears welling up.
"How did you not see this coming? You don't share their dream? You're an outsider." The Manifestation said. "If you really think you can keep control here without resorting to drastic measures, you're too sentimental."
Celestia's breath cought in her throat. Yes... She was sentimental.
She knew what she had to do if she was going to live. She'd always known.
Celestia wanted to live.
Celestia had to kill them all, like her Sun had told her.
The headless visage of Twilight Sparkle made her way to Ancepanox. The little 'unicorn' paused, then threw her hooves around the black alicorn. A spark of light passed between them.
The grey palor faded. The dream regained its color.
Ancepanox looked momentarily surprised that she was hugging Twilight. She released the smaller pony, and Twilight fell backwards, limp, to the ground. Twilight was Twilight again. There was no sign of the monstrous or mystical aspects that had marred her in the dream. What was left was plain, innocent, uncorrupted.
"Did you do that Celestia?" Ancepanox asked, whispery quiet.
"I wish I had." Celestia said.
Ancepanox's heart filled with eager anticipation. The two Twilights, the two interpretations of the nightmarish hatred of the Dark dream, were unified.
Memories, oh gods so many memories, swirled and churned within her. Ponies, coming together for a common goal, a common fight, based on shared experience... That was real strength. Shared power, honed to a point.
Agana clutched her head. "Celestiaan... Did you just use the Phantom Time from within the dream?"
"I thought I did but it was a trick." Celestia muttered. "Twilight Sparkle has spun us for a loop, and led us to help Ancepanox."
"But don't you see this is exactly what we want?" Agana asked. "This mortal was deprived of her dream. Through self-searching and exploration, she defines her life and discovers her own dream. Or rather, rediscovers! Our premise about the nature of the world is proven true when..."
As Agana droned at Celestia, neither of them were paying attention to the subject of their argument, probably because she was unusually silent.
Ancepanox was thinking, thinking building up her thoughts to the honed point they would need to be. Not in a language of ponykind, but of concepts, ideas, patterns, shapes, abstracts things that swirled and churned in her brain as she processed her assertions. The roaring words that filled her head were thus: All alicorns must be destroyed, all mortals could come together for that goal, without alicorn interference mortalkind could be the master of its own destiny.
Ancepanox tilted her head back, staring up at the dark splotch above, the malignant eye Agana had summoned. Unlike the sun, which Twilight had lived under her whole life, that eye was something unusual and unknown, but no less a representation of a magical power.
Just as she looked up at it, the enormous sky-spanning eye looked down at Ancepanox. She could feel the weight of its attention. It called itself the Corrupting Eye. It was a link to another dream, Agana's dream, which allowed the peacock alicorn to draw power from it. Such was Agana’s trick, to use power from her own dream as a crutch.
Bridging dream, connecting them together... Such a magnificent power it would be, to be able to bring together all dreamers, and lash them to the single, monumental undertaking.
That was what the Tower of the Bard meant, after all. But it could not bring its own pilgrims. The Tower relied on other creatures to bring it its builders.
Agana was still talking at Celestia. "...and nigh is the time that you shall embrace the dregs of your soul and harken to the banners of the lords of Dark. They and we shall spill out over the land, and the perfidious ponies shall face their lies with sorrowful hearts!" Agana's preaching reached fever pitch. "And now you see that the nightmare, that which is the deepest reaches of ponykind, is but a pale shadow compared to the true abyss, the true work of the Dark Lady and master of this world!"
"Agana. Agana!” Ancepanox said louder, drawing Agana’s attention. She fell to a lopsided crouch and held a hoof out, as if begging for something, or perhaps to embrace something right in front of her.
"Do you ever think about how much their is to know? Individually, even the greatest of us are sordid, ignorant beasts."
Agana was silent for a while, mulling if she would continue ranting at Celestia or address Ancpeanox's question. "I try not to. Is it not the whole point of this struggle to transcend ourselves, to join with our heavenly gods in that place where knowledge and time are meaningless? Being weighed down by individual weakness is pointless. What is weak will die. What is strong will consume the weak. That's the way Dark operates, Mooneater."
"But not how I operate. You've made a big to-do about worldview, and while you've focused on 'world', I've been thinking a lot about 'view'. I'm starting to see connections between things, so to speak. Not just in a visual sense, because after all this is a dream and we a dreamers, and everything around us is just a stew of thoughts in a pony's mind. Nonetheless I see. Light, dark, and the shapes out minds hammer it into. It compels me to consider the organ behind it all, the thing that lets us 'see' the world."
Ancepanox glanced over to Celestia. Her mentor’s suffering melancholic frown contorted her own into a grin.
“Our eyes.”
Celestia saw a ripple of distortion exploding out from Ancepanox’s horn, curling and consuming the fabric of the dream like an event horizon. Everything froze as the hole expanded to every edge of her vision.
"Sister, STOP!" She tried to jump at Ancepanox.
But Celestia was torn from Twilight's dream, and her consciousness was assaulted with waves black, then white, then a watery rose. The freezing air was filled with the wail of airry horns, and as they crescendoed to a soul shattering blare, Celestia felt the hole retract, and she was grounded once more in the relatively solid plane of a dream.
She looked up, and the world around her and Agana had changed. She was in a great cathedral library, surrounded by a million tomes of a life's wisdom stacked to the ceiling on every of a dozen floors. High above, a stained-glass oculus let a beam of dusty light shine down through its brilliant image, two snakes eating the other's tail.
"I'm beginning to see your point about things going out of control." Agana cawed.
While Celestia and Agana were thrown one direction, Ancepanox was thrown another. She tumbled in a colorful world of shapeless forms, her eyes squeezed closed, until she felt her hooves touch down on something solid again.
The moon was as grey and lifeless as it had been the previous time Ancepanox had been there. The empty and dusty plain stretched to the horizon in every direction, interrupted here and there by craters and hills. The sky above was the cleanest black imaginable, but speckled with glimmering stars more beautiful than could ever be possible on the planet below. Like little eyes, they watched, ever more pleased.
Ancepanox stood there for a while, admiring the blues and greens and yellows of Equestria. It was so small from the moon, so that she imagined for a moment she could reach of and crunch the orb between her hooves.
"I did it." Ancepanox whispered to herself. "I controlled the dream. I made it do what I wanted. I..." She let her sentance fall off. But the silence of the Moon was overpowering, and she felt compelled to keep making sound, to remind herself she still could. "I have to know more about this power- Magic that can control the Dreamscape." She knew somepony who'd have her answers.
Ancepanox didn't know how to get the Moon Princess's attention directly. There must have been a phrase or pattern she could speak to summon her, but Ancepanox opted to try something else: She knew how to get the Moon to react against her hostilely.
As she had while casting the Ritual, Ancepanox reached out to the Moon and tried to use its magic- And like last time, something pushed back, trying to punish her for the attempted theft. Ancpeanox clenched her teeth and hung on, keeping the Moon's attention for as long as possible, before it finally threw her magic back at her. Ancepanox let out a labored breath.
There was a subtle crunch from behind her.
Ancepanox allowed herself a thin smile. Her attention-getting trick had worked. She turned to the new arrival.
It was ethereal alicorn mare, diminutive and blue. Her features were reminiscent of the regal bearing of Celestia, and yet tainted by an unbelievable sadness.
"How did you get here?" The blue alicorn asked quietly.
"Eat the moon, become the moon, or the more squishy pony bits of it at least." Ancepanox laughed at her own joke. The smaller alicorn was unamused. “Some silly creatures have taken to calling me Mooneater. By comparison you got a raw deal... Isn't that right Luna?"
Luna. That was her name, wasn't it. Celestia's sister had been cursed to be forgotten, yet in a moment of weakness, or perhaps a crack in the wall, Celestia had let that word slip.
Yes, Luna.
Though Luna was not much more than a ghost of the alicorn, the spirit’s face lit up in recognition. "Luna. Luna. Luna... A raw deal, says you? But I have a name! You feel empty in that way. I feel for you, who gave up your name."
"Willingly." Ancepanox interjected. "Your choice was fated, but I did this to myself." She sucked her lip in, nodding slowly. "It's ironic. We have swapped places, you and I, after I lived my life under the sun and you on the moon."
Luna stared at Ancepanox for a long while. "Twilight?"
Ancepanox let out a laugh. "Yes I am. I got ahead of myself, and forgot to introduce myself." She bowed, tickling her nose with the moon dust. "I'm Ancepanox, the Nightmare of the Moon. Viscountess. Princess. At your service."
"Twilight, Twilight, I am not sure how to feel about this situation that has come over you... but... I am very happy to see you." Luna took a step forward. "Praytell, did you think me gone?"
"No, I knew you were alive, in some way or another. I thought you'd just be mist, or a shimmer of light." Ancepanox said. "That you're alive, aware, and talking to me is more than I could have hoped for."
"You are right to say 'in some way or another'. I am in quite a state." Luna apologized. "Don't burden yourself with me any farther. I will have a long time to consider my condition."
Ancepanox gave her a skeptical look, but obliged. "You didn't know it was me last time I reached up to the moon to tap its power."
"I remember. Nightmare Moon had just been destroyed. I..." Luna trailed off. "It has been a long, long time since I was in this form. You will forgive me if I trip over my terms. I was Nightmare Moon. I will never be able to extract myself from that idea, even if it belongs to you now."
"And it does belong to me now." Ancepanox grinned. "I fully understand your condition."
"And I yours. I didn't mean to hurt you in your time of need, denying you like you mentioned. I had just suffered loss, death, pain, and was thrown back to my moon after so brief a time on the Bright World. I was defending what I had, instinctually."
"I know. I was angry at first. I almost died." Ancepanox nodded. "I was trying to preform the Ritual, you see. I was trying to come alive again, be a pony again. Seeing my own body fight against the ponies I cared about... I was willing to fight and kill to take control of myself again. Or not even myself! Anything! I raged for agency over my path!" She growled, then sighed. "I was willing to make a victim of you and your moon, so that I could live."
Luna shook her head sadly.
"I found another way, obviously. No hard feelings." Ancepanox said. "My fellow pony suffered in your stead. Heh heh. I accidentally killed my friend Rarity. She's been given over completely to the nightmare, and that's caused a whole slew of problems."
"Killed?" Luna breathed.
"I brought her back. Yeah, Rarity's a lich now." Ancepanox cleared her throat. "At the time I didn't really confront the fact that a pony died because of my actions. I more focussed on Rarity's victimhood. If I had thought more about the consequences of my actions, perhaps this all would have ended up differently. She wasn't the last."
There was a lull in the conversation.
"This place makes me feel safe, serene. I couldn't be angry if I tried."
Luna advanced closer, cautiously like a cat. "I sense blood on your breath." She looked over the black alicorn body, manifested here for her to see. "You look as I did yet..." She ran a hoof over Ancpeanox's neck, where the flesh merged with the armor. "different" She shakily caressed seam at her nose. "mutilated. perverted."
"That's not very nice." Ancepanox frowned.
Luna sighed. "That armor was made to be put on when was was necessary. For you to have embraced my sins and the dark curse so unreservedly... It chills to guess what you are capable of."
"Merci beucoup." Ancepanox gave a mock bow. "I feel capable of a lot. I feel in charge. I got the agency I was looking for."
Luna stepped back, giving her fellow alicorn her room. Luna had bright blue eyes. Ancepanox could see her own reflection in those eyes, how her own eyes were speckled with splotches of purple.
"So now you're going to ask me what I want." Ancepanox said, leaning in.
"I am."
"I have control over my own fate. Now, I have to extend the same to the ponies that matter to me." Ancepanox said. "I need more power."
Luna sat down in the lunar dust. "Power against who? Against what?"
Ancepanox found the question amusing. "Why limit myself?"
"I hope you realize, because of all ponies you should, that the end of this night that has gripped the earth will not mean the end of the strife. One phase will end, another will begin. That's just how it is." Luna said. "Act one, God against god. Act two, god against mortal. Act three, mortal against mortal."
"What's the next stage of that dialectic?" Ancepanox asked with a snicker.
"Mortal against the ashes." Luna said. "You find this humorous? There is terror looming. You contribute to it if you are not careful."
"Yeah, you never did put much trust in pony morality." Ancepanox hummed. "Maybe that's why I had to succeed you. You see, I'm working on a thesis too. This adversarial dialectic, mortal against god, this against that... I've been hearing a lot of theories this night, but yours stuck with me. But I can't hate mortals like you do, even if they are miserable little saps. They're my... my people, you know." Ancepanox tried to smile. "So, I ask myself how I can through my strength improve their existences."
"I admire your optimism, if that is what I am truly reading in your words." Luna paused. "But you still have not explained what you want from me."
Ancepanox let silence hang for a while. "I want your legacy. If I'm going to keep mortals from destroying each other, I need to be the other half of your little dialectic. But I won't have the objective of solving or synthesizing it, no, the aim will be to freeze it. Gods willing, if mortalkind has me as their eternal, unceasing rival, they will never transition into fighting each other or gaining new and more vicious foes."
"Twilight, it's not about being foes, its about fundamental opposition. It's the way things are." Luna's immediate concerns were written on her expression. "And what is this you say, abut my legacy? I don't understand what you mean at all."
Ancepanox gestured into space. "You know. Your ancient cause. Your ancient aesthetic. Your... your dream. And I don't mean the Moon! You know the one I mean." She scowled, like she knew she would be rejected. "I've got the rest of your hand-me-downs, after all."
"But why would you desire such a dream?" Luna asked somewhat sharply. "With the benefit of hindsight, I see now that it was as much a symbol of my sins as the body you now bear. There was no justice in it, only spite. To have let what should stayed a mere dream boil into a life destroying obsession was truly my undoing. But perhaps I answer my own question."
"That you do." Ancepanox agreed.
Luna sighing, took a step towards the much taller alicorn. A spark passed between them.
Luna felt simultaneously unburdened, and as though a great part of her had been lost. When she looked again, Ancepanox was surrounded by a subtle silhouette of pulsing red and black energy that slowly faded against the cosmic backdrop.
A gust of wind rolled over the moonscape, sending up eddies of sparkling grey dust.
"Has it worked?" Luna asked cautiously.
"A moment please." Ancepanox said distractedly.
She felt like she had met an old friend after years of separation. Her mind was pouring over Luna's dream. It was same one that had been bound to the Nightmare Altar: The Everfree Throne room, aged and ruined, where Twilight Sparkle and Nightmare Moon had met every night over the months.
There was power in that dream. Ambition, pride, hatred, and all the other emotions that had compelled Luna to begin her war. They had waited for a thousand years until captured and directed within the Nightmare Altar. What a perfect bait it had been for the latent and sleeping darkness of Twilight Sparkle.
Ancepanox felt her stomach growl, but she wasn't hungry. If Celestia had had a hart time telling apart the old and new Nightmare of the Moon before, she would be having conniptions after. The dark princess was coming back together, minus its weakest link, Luna.
She let out a little breath, nodding to Luna. "It's all there."
"You are making me apprehensive. I've accepted, LONG past accepted actually, that it is not my role to lord over ponykind. In the deeper decadences of my nightmare I forgot that." Luna said. "I am not the pony to tell you your path-"
Ancepanox tilted her head. She was hearing echoes of Celestia's faux-concern.
"But consider if you are taking this path because you think it is best for ponykind and your friends, or because it is best for you." Luna concluded.
"Nothing is 'best for me'. Like you, I accepted that I would not be materially enriched for my choices." Ancepanox said.
Luna threw her counterpart a sidelong look. "You know that's not what I mean."
"Why do you even care? You don't have a horse in this race anymore." Ancepanox snorted. "You confuse me, Moon."
"That I once walked down your path, does it not concern me? Am I wrong to wonder if it was my personal failings, or the inherent weakness of the dream that led to my ruin?" Luna reminisced. "There is more than a glimmer of similarity between you and I now. It's... disconcerting to see so frightful a reflection, and yet... Well, I won't retread my rude comments. I almost feel the need to impose my choice and discretion upon you. What will you do, acting in skin that pulsed around my bones, that grew from my flesh? I wish that I did not need to wait, for these questions do so burn in my heart."
"Believe me, I want those questions answered too. But I don't even have the luxury of sitting around and waiting." Ancepanox kicked up a little dust. "Hee hee, it's almost a forgone conclusion between us isn't it, that if I go back I'll be the lord of the entire planet."
"Yes. With Celestia gone back to her sun, and me here on my moon, you will be the face of the divine." Luna agreed sadly. "Barring other unforeseen factors."
"Indeed." Ancepanox felt a tug of morose fancy! Luna didn't know about the way Celestia had lived on in Twilght's dream, or about Agana, or Myriadess's death, or any of it.
And that state of affairs would continue for the moment.
For several minutes they sat in silence, listening to the lunar winds sing over the dunes.
"I have to go. I'll be back sometimes soon." Ancepanox promised. "And then you shall have answers and so, hopefully, will I."
"Until next time, Nightmare of the Moon." Luna curtsied. "By the gods and stars, I hope that you discover what that title means, and how you may embody it."
"My lady." Ancpeanox bowed back. "Now watch this. I dream-walker I've become, by watching and learning."
She faced away, and prepared herself for the final step. An eye opened in the air, that abyssal hole from which no light escaped, a cosmic eye. "See you when I see you." Ancepanox stepped into the event horizon, which shrank down to nothingness behind her.
The ghost of the moonscape was left to stare wistfully at the planet she'd lost forever.
"What is this place?" Celestia asked herself, observing her new surroundings.
To be honest, Celestia had thought leaving Twilight Sparkle's dream would immediately kill her. But there she was, in a different environment, a different dream.
But the longer she stood there, taking it in, the more Celestia's chock and horror grew.
There was no mistaking what that grand architecture, a kind of vaulted cathedral-library, was: Ancepanox had somehow dragged them into her own dream. There was a bone-chilling atmosphere to the place, like one would find in a catacomb, completely at odds against the open and breezy architecture.
"Oh goodness." Celestia whispered to herself. "I have been set up."
The cathedral-library was built around a voluminous atrium, and Celestia stood on one of the highest levels, looking over the mezzanine down the floors to the bottom. Above her, through the colorful skylight, was clear skies as blue and beautiful as on the loveliest day in waking world. But that sky was empty! Celestia could no longer feel her Sun, or the thrumming power it had given her. She felt castrated, like her guts had been torn out.
Perhaps it had been planned, or had been a last second ploy, Ancepanox had cut Celestia off from the source of her strength.
"Why? Why would she do this?" Celestia sense of inevitable doom only grew.
Agana, on the same mezzanine as Celestia, laughed melodiously. Her beaky grin had broadened to terrifying proportion. "Is something wrong, Celestiaan?"
A shadow passed over the skylight- Agana’s familiar, the great corrupting eye, HAD followed them. It was circling and peering through the windows of the cathedral-library.
"What does it mean when a dog shows it's belly to you, or when a lion bares its neck, or a soldier kneels and bows his head?"
"You actually don't think she's surrendering." Celestia said. 'This is an offensive move. She is not vulnerable here like you think."
There was movement from the corner. Twilight Sparkle's dreaming form had come along with them, still limp and unaware. Celestia moved closer to Twilight, crouching protectively over the small pony- Twilight was at greater risk away from the Tower. Thankfully Agana now was seeming completely apathetic to Twilight now, having transitioned all her attention and intentions onto Ancepanox.
But that did not mean Twilight was out of harm's way. Especially not in this dream, where an air of tremendous pain and turmoil hung heavy in every corner.
"Agana, something is not right with this place." Celestia whispered. "If you have no more use of us, please send us back to the Tower."
"Oh Celestia, do you beg? I don't know what to make of you. Why didn't you help your student when she was fighting me?" Agana laughed. The peacock alicorn wandered around the library, peering down the rows of bookcases, striding in circles around the reading tables and piles of books positioned here and there. "That you would descend to a state most pathetic there was no doubt, but this is a level far beyond even I imagined. Ha ha ha! This is everything I forwas and more, for..."
Agana continued rambling as she disappeared down another row of bookcases.
Celestia used the other alicorn's willing distractedness to retreat, taking Twilight under her wing and going in the opposite direction. She felt helpless, more than a little afraid, and more than anything angry. Celestia limped her way through the maze of bookcases to one of the corner stairwell inset into the wall.
"...and what a fascinating juxtaposition, is it not? Compare this introspective and enclosed space to the infinite monolithic grandeur of the Tower. But are they not both adulations to heaven?" Agana's harsh voice echoed as she knocked over pedestals and rifled through the piles of scrolls. "Both are as much a key to controlling their owner. Dreams and dreamers, one and the same."
Among the sound of books clattering to the ground, there was the sound of something glass shattering. "Oops." Agana titered.
Celestia darted into onto the spiral staircase, and crept down to the lower floors. "I have to find my way out of this place. I have to go back to Twilight's dream." She whispered to herself.
She should have known that Dark alicorns would inevitably ally against her. Past considerations and sentimentality would only hurt her in the end. That was just the way things were.
Celestia knew she should have listened to her mother Sun and killed them all, but could she still believe that when she had to face Ancepanox eye-to-eye?
Confusingly, the ground floor was already disturbed, with most of the tables smashed and chairs overturned. A smear of dried blood extended from the far wall to right under the serpentine oculus skylight, at the center of the atrium. Celestia saw a pile of black vines, dead and dried.
With Agana still ranting on the floor above, Celestia ventured to inspect the old tangle of vine. At its center was a small chunk of silvery metal, split down the middle. Though its paint was scratched and flaking, Celestia could recognize the delicately painted red eye.
"Myriadess." She breathed. Like a grotesque trophy, Ancepanox had manifested proof of her kill into her dream.
There was a rustling sound, and Celestia saw a hint of movement in the dark in every corner of the bookcases around her. Creatures of the dream had come to inspect the trespassers. Hundreds of slitted purple eyes and the predatory faces behind them watched unblinkingly. Ghostly nightmare-like apparitions, impressions and iterations of the dark alicorn, each a clone of that ragged black alicorn body.
Seeing that Celestia had noticed them, they smiled thinly before disappearing deeper into the shadow of the bookcases and tables.
Running was all Celestia could think to do, but the library seemed inescapable, omnitemporal, crushing in its vastness and closedness. Every book and scroll, bearing the memories of a life turned tragic, spelled out to Celestia a promise of certain and unavoidable doom.
"What is wrong with this place? Why does it feel so... unclean? The gleaming marble, the immaculate books. But a sickness lay underneath.
From the floor above her she heard the deep and churning growl of dark magic, and the airy whine as it tapered off.
"Ancepanox." Celestia whispered, looking up time to see the dark alicorn vault from above, landing on a table.
"Celestia." Ancpenaox bowed. "Do you like this place? I made it myself. Not inherited, not given by god, MADE." She hopped off the table. "A library is fitting, isn't it? Not only on the aesthetic level, but the meaning: A place of knowledge, accessible, open, welcoming, and collective. This is my corollary to the Tower."
"Gods preserve me, what a monster you are." Celestia muttered, staring emptily at the black alicorn. She couldn't stop thinking about how her sister's body had been twisted into that shape, a perverted remaking by a cursed soul. It made her so very very angry.
"Why thank you. That means a lot to me, coming from you." Ancepanox smiled and nodded. "I can't be a mortal any more, and I refuse to be an alicorn. What else can I be besides a monster? It's the only category left for me."
"Twi-" Celestia caught herself. Every instinct revolted at the notion of addressing the nightmare before her, but she forced herself. "Ancepanox, though this place's aura is like poison to me, I must stay to see this through. We can still ally. Agana is still here, and still powerful. The prospect of her victory is very real, despite your expanded power."
Ancepanox chuckled. "Are you saying that because you're cut off from your sun?"
Celestia ground her teeth. "Obviously I am. But together we-"
"What's this 'we' business? I rejected you several times already, and it's fairly inevitable I will turn on you again."
From what Celestia had heard and seen, it was almost certain. "Yes, you will turn on me."
"And I desecrated your sister, and you probably think I'll cast your empire into centuries of anarchy, and I threatened to kill you, and I threatened to rape you..." Ancepanox counted off. "I did a fair bit of yelling and threatening actually."
"The yelling is... excusable." Celestia said.
"I'm insane. I'm careening off a cliff. That's how it much look to you at least. The execution of my plans requires me to destroy you. Aren't I the antithesis to everything you supposedly stand for?" Ancepanox leveled. "And somehow, you still want to reach out to me. Maybe I'm not the insane one here."
Celestia tensed, for she openly admitted to herself that Ancepanox terrified her like nothing else. Twilight had been the wheel around which the fates of so many had spun, before catching and breaking and burning. "Sister, I know for certain that Agana is a threat to Twilight. That's all that matters to me right now. For her, I shall bear it."
Celestia let Twilight slip out from the wing where she'd nestled her. She set Twilight in one of the study chairs, and stepped around behind it. "This is our common cause, Ancepanox. She is the reason we will work together, despite our differences."
Ancepanox tapped her hoof, thinking it over. After a moment she laughed. "You make a sound argument." She let Celestia be hopeful for a heartbeat. "But no. Piddle off. I'll never accept your help ever again."
"Sister-"
"SHUT the BUCK UP." Ancepanox growled. "I'm not you sister. I'd have killed myself, having to live my life knowing I was kin to a thing like you, Celestiaan."
"You dare say that wearing her skin-"
"I'll say whatever I want! This is MINE now!" Ancepanox shouted over her. "What are you going to do? Who are you going to report me to? Ooh, the guard? The army? Your nation? Pissants, all of them. Every single one of them. I'm on top now."
Celestia gnawed her bottom lip, silently burning in her raging resentment.
"And you know, I'm on top BECAUSE of them. I'm the mortal above all others, but if there were no ponies, there'd be no me. I'm their SIN." Ancepanox chuckled. "You can't kill me until you kill every single pony on this earth. That's who I am, Celestiaan. I'm the corollary of the Tower, n'est pas?"
"I don't know who you are." Celestia whispered. "Get this over with."
"You'd like that." Ancepanox sniggered. "Stay put for me. I have bigger threats to deal with."
"You can't defeat Agana alone. You KNOW that." Celestia hissed.
"Keep watch on Twilight. It's all your good for anymore." Ancepanox grinned, showing off her knife-like teeth. She cantered into the shadows leaving Celestia alone again with Twilight.
Somewhere above them, Agana's ranting still rang out, echoed around and down through the library. All alicorns would die, Celestia thought. It reminded her of an old memory, of a Celestia long past gone, and it said god against god, god against mortal, mortal against mortal.
Agana eventually realized nopony was listening to her. She went silent, and took in her surroundings more fully. On the bookcase beside her were thousands of books of varying sizes.
Agana scanned the book titles. They read out names like 'My first kite', 'Playing Hopscotch with Shining', and 'Another Day of Hating my Classmates'. Agana wondered if there was anything hidden among the books, a special memory that gave some special insight into the dream-owner's nature.
A small black tome caught Agana's eye. It was very thin and had been shoved to the back of the bookcase where it had gathered dust and spiderwebs, a memory that hadn't been visited in a long time. Agana pulled it with a hoof out and dusted off its cover. 'Neighbor's Cat Kills a Songbird'.
Creaking sounds and the clip of horseshoes on stone let Agana know the other alicorns were creeping up on her. She craned her head around, her wings flapping in agitation.
Ancepanox stepped to the entrance to the bookshelf aisle. "Are you enjoying yourself?" Her tone was courteous but her eyes betrayed a seething violence.
"Very much, yes." Agana opened up the little black book and skimmed over the index.
The memory of 'Neighbor's Cat Kills a Songbird'. The memory had been made when Twilight was just a filly, a few weeks before her seventh birthday. "I wanted to get to know you better. I wanted to see if I could discover why you of all ponies had the Tower of the Bard."
"I don't know and I don't care." Ancepanox said. "The same can't be said of you and Celestia. Your fawning is honestly disconcerting."
"Don't get cocky. I need your dream, not you. If I could use the one without the other, I would." Agana flipped through the book.
'Twilight Sparkle was looking out her window one day when she noticed the neighbor's tabbycat playing with a little red bird. The filly rushed outside and shooed the cat away but it was too late. The little red bird died of its injuries.
The next time she saw the cat, Twilight threw rocks at it. Her big brother asked her what she was doing and when she told him Shining simply said the cat didn't know any better. Twilight accepted that answer, and after that she only felt sorry for the poor ignorant cat.
The month after, when Twilight learned how to summon magical fire, she burned the cat alive and threw it's body on the roof for the other birds. If a cat could not know better, it was up to Twilight Sparkle to bring the justice to them.'
Where the rest of the book was printed in orderly script, the last paragraphs were scrawled hastily in charcoal mixed with blood. Agana closed the book and put it back. "This memory isn't real, is it. You've gone far enough in your act of self-recreation that you are building memories out of whole cloth."
"What you see is what you get." Ancoanox said. "I couldn't go on existing like this- a fissured, disparate creature. I have to bring the past into line with the present or I'd go crazy."
"It's very impressive, and ambitiously transformative." Agana walked towards the other alicorn. Ancepanox gave her space, so Agana could exit the bookcase aisle. "But you are still thinking within the context of systems. You haven't reached for the full possibility of personal attainment." She leaned to the bannister over looking the atrium, making it creak with her weight. "You care too much to completely cast away the connections to the creatures that are holding you back. You can't bring yourself to sin against them to elevate yourself higher."
"That's right. It's not because I'm particularly empathetic, but because I need them." Ancepanox said. "I don't have a structural ideology, and really, I've gotten very annoyed with you trying to fit me in one."
Agana fluttered her wings. "It is good to be annoyed, is it not? You are starting to make your ideas more concrete, more capable of insult. That annoyance is existential, as you start to feel opposition press against your state of being."
"Sure, whatever. I'm done arguing."
"Yes. Even I am tiring of it." Agana squawked. She looked around but couldn't see Celestia anywhere. The sun princess must have been moving to an ambush position. "But before we fight again, I have a question. That power you summoned was clearly an 'eye' of a sort..."
She turned fully towards Ancepanox. "It was not very large. Barely bigger than you and I. Yet somehow, you were able to me Celestia, me, and my corrupting eye." She nodded upwards to the dark splotch in the vast skies above the skylight. The eye-shaped splotch blinked.
"That'll be my secret, Agana, and the prize if you can best me in this fight." Ancepanox said. bowing her head, She took a few steps backwards, then fell into her ready pose.
"No Mooneater, you SOUL will be my prize. HEAVEN will be my prize. This is our last bout!"
Agana's helical horns came alight with magenta magic.
Ancepanox's sabre shimmered into existance, for her to snap out of the air and brandish. "Death! Death! Death!"
The entire dream and everything in the cathedral-library seemed to buckled inwards towards them; Glass and stone cracked, the air grew heavier, pages turned and scrolls crumpled. It was a spell specifically designed to cripple a dream.
Ancepanox screamed and charged froward.
Agana cocked her head back and laughed. She flared her wings apart, crouching on her hindlegs, and crossing her forelegs.
Ancpeanox crashed against the larger alicorn, her cuirass impacting on the crossed hooves and her sword impaling into Agana's neck. Snarling, Ancepanox tried to pull the sword across and decapitate Agana, but Agana folded her wings against her back, pinching the sword in place. Agana headbutted Ancepanox, once, twice, beating her back with the third headbutt then putting her whole momentum in a driving kick. Ancepanox was driven into the bannister, all the breath driven from her.
"AGANA!" Ancepanox resummoned her sword and plunged it down, right through Agana's outstretched leg and into the marble floor. The peacock alicorn was trapped like a hair in a snare, and when Ancepanox spun around and bucked her she flopped on her back like a flour sack. Ancepanox accentuated this by stomping with all her might on the pinned leg, bending it far past normal. Agana, howling into the wind, tore her mutilated leg free with a spray of blood.
"MOOONEATER!" AGANA roared, pouring even more energy into her spell.
The walls began to bend and several floors split apart, dropping millions of books all around them in a rain of paper and papyrus. Bookcases exploded into splinters, iron lecterns aged into rust then blew apart, tables and chairs twisted themselves into contorted star-like shapes before imploding. The destruction of Ancepanox’s dream was nothing short of apocalypse.
Ancepanox jumped up, intent on crashing down on Agana again, but the destructive maelstrom caught her and pushed her back to the ground. When she stood up again, she was looking ravaged- patches of her fur were burning holes of dark magic, showing the true damage on dream on her dreaming form. The black alicorn was utterly determined though, and she grabbed her sabre and staggered towards where Agana was laying.
Her sneer damn near split her face, her fangs bared, her eyes wild with hate-consumed fire. Another gust of the dark maelstrom, and most of her face was gone, but the blue steel armor was still there, holding the sabre over Agana, preparing for the kill.
Celestia jumped from the aisle, punching with all her might, connecting against Ancepanox's shoulder. The black alicorn resisted for a second, just long enough to look at the sun princess, then withered into dust that was immediately carried away on the screaming wings circulating in the cathedral-library.
The great skylight at the top of the atrium was the last thing to break, shattering inwards and outwards simultaneously, adding millions of stained shards to the tornado of debris inside around them. The corrupting eye looked in through the new hole, bearing witness to the death of dream and dreamer.
Everything began to calm down. The maelstrom of wind and magic died down.
Agana propped herself up, saving the immense pain she felt in her neck and leg. Celestia was breathing hard, hunched over, refusing to look at anything but the floor.
"Amazing, Celestiaan. Amazing." Agana squawked, rattled how close to death she'd been, but above that was the immense satisfaction she'd just cleared the last obsticle to everything she every wanted. "So, am I to take this dream and use it to ascend to heaven, while you slink off with Twilight Sparkle?"
Celestia sighed deeply, cradling the hoof she'd punched with. "Yes."
Agana grunted contemptuously, waiting for her magic to heal back the damage she's sustained. "And to think I entered into this night believing wholeheartedly that destroying you was my ticket to freedom."
"Stop talking. Just- Just do what needs to be done." Celestia said curtly, her voice wavering, holding back some unquantifiable emotion.
"Naturally, Celestiaan. I don't want to stay longer than I must, even though there is so much to say." Agana stood up to her full height, trying to act as though she had not just had her life saved. "This dream must be used before it withers. Only..." Agana crossed her forelegs cautiously. "I don't detect that this dream is falling apart like it should when the dreamer dies."
Celestia looked up from the floor, fear crossing her features. "Don't look at me. I'm not doing this."
Agana uncrossed her legs, looking around the library urgently. "No. No. I refuse to believe I miscalculated so much two times in a row. No!"
At every corner of the library, there was subtle movement. The utterly disheveled and destroyed state of things, with bookshelves, books, and tables rippled to shreds, was slowly being reversed. Books stitched themselves back together from scraps, bookshelves from splinters, and the oculus skylight from slivers of glass.
"Maybe she wasn't bluffing about being immortal." Celestia muttered. "But I'm sure I killed her. I could feel her soul breaking."
Across the atrium, the library reformed itself back to pristine condition. For a brief moment, the deep shadows at the corners of the room sparkled, as if dozens of eyes were all opening and closing at once.
"We have to leave. We have to leave now." Celestia hissed at Agana. "Use your eye and get us back to Twilight's dream!"
"Wait, I want to see how this plays out." Agana cooed.
"There!" Celestia pointed, voice panicked.
A pinpoint of darkness, the sphere of dark magic Celestia had come to associate with Ancepanox's strange dream magic, bloomed into existance on the opposite side of the atrium.
"How did you do it? I felt you die." Celestia shouted at the sphere.
There was no answer. The sphere of dark just hung in the air, while the rest of the dream pulled itself back into place. The debris around Agana and Celestia gathered and congealed, reforming into the chairs, shelves, and books they once were.
"I think she's taunting you." Agana said. The peacock alicorn was getting nervous too. "The parallel to the Phantom Time is not accidental."
Celestia was struck by a singularly horrifying thought. What if the sun had been kept out of this dream by its own volition?
With Agana still lost in thought, Celestia had to act on her own initiative. She galloped to the stair and took it down to where she had stashed Twilight Sparkle.
Agana mulled over her options. She still didn't know what exactly was going on. The dark sphere churned and swirled within itself, giving up no secrets.
"How does one give a sense of the 'collective' on a dream? Hmm, with the Tower, all came together to build up the hierarchal. With the library..." She rubbed her beak idly, working out the puzzle. "The Tower breaks, the Tower reforms, but it only broke once, across many times and cycles..."
She leaned on the bannister, staring into the dark sphere. "Is the same true of you? Can you break and reform? Yes... Yes... But why?"
Before Agana could pursue her questioning further, the dark sphere trembled and receded back into a pinprick. Ancepanox was left standing there, just the same as always. The two alicorns locked eyes.
"Ahh, I'm grasping it now. It was not you who died. It was another dreamer, linked to you. A proxy." Agana cawed. "I see it! You have hunted so many ponies. They reside within you, collective but distinct, complementary, like books on a shelf."
"I told Celestia she'd have to kill every pony on the planet if she wanted to hurt me." Ancepanox said boldly. "It hurt a lot, but I survived the worst you can throw at me."
Agana growled in building anger. Her feeling of triumph was slipping away. "If I can't break you, I have to bend you."
"We're past the climax. You know I already won." Ancepanox laughed to herself. With a flash of light, she teleported across the atrium, right in front of Agana. "But I'll finish it nevertheless."
Agana would not let it end, not while she could feel victory on her tongue! She launched herself up into the air and plunged down at Ancepanox from above, hooves glowing with energy. Ancepanox disappeared into the depths of another bloom of the cosmic eye, reappearing on a higher floor across the voluminous central atrium of the library.
“I made a dangerous gamble. I didn't know if I would survive.” Ancepanox said. “But the fight is over now. I WILL beat you. Surrender.”
With a lazy flick of her horn, all damage that remained in the library was set right. The stained glass image of the skylight occulous, two snakes eating each others tail, reappeared.
"You were lucky last time! Repeat your victory and I might consider it." Agana shouted back. "I'll destroy you a thousand times if I have to, if it brings me to heaven!"
Celestia listened to the exchange from the ground floor. She felt very cold. It made a disgusting kind of sense now- Ancepanox was using other ponies' dreams like Celestia did her sun, or Agana her eye.
The prospect numbed Celestia's mind. She was revulsed more than she could even articulate. Ancepanox was putting mortals in the place of gods, not just rhetorically, but in a very real sense.
It had gone too far. Ancepanox needed to be stopped. Celestia had to end her student's decedance no matter what it cost.
She looked down at Twilight Sparkle, limp in one of the reading chairs. No matter what it cost... Save one.
Ancepanox let Agana come to her. The peacock alicorn was agitated and aggressive, climbing onto the bannister and launching herself up to her level. But as soon as she was on her hooves, Agana was on the defensive, facing down Ancepanox and her sabre.
The duel was much less dramatic than the previous. Ancepanox sliced down with her sabre, and when Agana blocked with her hooves, she slid the sword to the side, cutting off the limb at the joint. Agana, tried to strike out with her remaining foreleg, grazing against Ancepanox's helm and shearing off her ear. Ancepanox got in even closer, headbutting Agana in the neck and pushing her over.
Agana let out a choked squawk, trying to regain her balance, but Ancepanox was on top of her, speeding her collapse. The peacock alicorn fell ungracefully onto her back, a tangle of wings and vines, with Ancepanox standing on top of her.
"Yeah, I noticed pretty early on how vulnerable your neck is." Ancepanox said, adopting a lecturing tone. "Once I close in your vision is blocked by your own beak. If I had to give the biggest reason you lost, it was because you adapt about as quickly as a brick. You had to literally die to learn there was more to your existance, another way to exist."
Ancpeanox twirled her sabre around and stabbed it down into Agana windpipe. "But I have to hand it to you, that same stubbornness makes you as tough as a brick as well. I've almost become fond of you."
Agana, struggling to breath around the sabre stuck through her windpipe, gapsed an inaudible plea to the looming dark alicorn.
“Just a little more, and your skull will pop right off.” Ancepanox snickered, wiggling the sabre. “Tell me you feel the same. Tell me you've grown too fond of me to fight me anymore. We're good friends now, right?"
Agana reached up and pushed the sabre off her windpipe just enough to wheeze.
"What was that now?" Ancepanox leaned closer.
“p- please! I- I surrender to you!”
“Ha!” Ancepanox yanked out the sabre and wiped the blood off on Agana’s furred torso. “I feel pretty good about myself right now. I'm verging on immortal, beat the crap out of my most dangerous detractor..." She fell silent, her expression becoming clouded. "Well, second most dangerous."
Ancepanox trotted to the baniister, looking up and down the atrium. There was no sign of Celestia. Just to be sure, Ancpeanox glanced behind herself, in case the sun princess was planning another surprise attack."
Agana, panting and whining, rolled onto her stomach. "The Celestiaan is looking for a way out."
"Obviously." Ancpeanox brooded. "Caught your breath yet? No? Well maybe that’s for the best.” She crouched and put her mouth to Agana’s ear. She paused, relishing the feeling of control, of dominating. “Be a good girl for your new mistress, your new Dark Lady. I require a tribute. A sacrifice. Go and kill Celestia for me.”