The cold water is a slap in the face.
And every other body part.
I can only hope that none of the warlike pegasi above noticed me falling. Not immediately rising to the surface, I simply go as quickly as possible towards the nearest shore. A muted splash echoes through the water into my ears. That must be Marks.
I'm halfway to shore before I realize that she's not behind me.
Whipping my head around, if I peer deep enough into the lake, I can see her sinking. I think she's unconscious. Ah well, not too much of a problem, I'll just pull her out with magic...
Oh no.
The inhibitor ring.
My magic is dead.
Instantly, my brain begins to scream. That's too far down for me to swim with her sinking; no way I could make it to her. If I just leave her, though, there's no way she'd be able to live. The murky water is already beginning to cloud over her quickly sinking body. Desperation sets in and even though I know I'll never be able to make it, I try to swim down after her. I'm not even halfway there when I cough bubbles and have to resurface to avoid drowning myself.
I attempt to pull the ring off of my horn with my forehooves, but I know it's a lost cause. If you could do that, what point would there be? It's locked there with an arcane seal that I can't break without access to magic. I can't overload it; the amount of magic these things can bear is impressive indeed.
I would be long, long dead.
Without Marks to save me, I would've died there, on a stone tablet in the center of a cursed forest. Or maybe I would've chosen to end it more quickly, throwing myself to the skeletons that clambered for my magic and soul. A familiar feeling wells up within me: white-hot rage.
This is different, though. It feels wild and unconstrained. This isn't just an emotion, I realize, and at the same time, I smile viciously, no longer in right-minded control of my thoughts.
I no longer have to swim to keep myself afloat. Without even realizing it, I'm suspending myself in the water, and gradually rising above it. The inhibitor ring melts off of my horn, running harmlessly down my face as rivulets of molten metal before dripping into the water, spraying up clouds of acrid-smelling steam. [1]
Stretching out my forelegs, I can see arcs of violet energy violently crackling along them, rapidly expanding into a glowing nova around my entire body. From above, I can hear faint sounds of alarm, though they're muted by the blood pounding within my ears. As flights of pegasi descend upon me, I laugh beatifically.
From my horn blazes an uncontrollable torrent of violet energy that sweeps across the sky, reducing the pegasi to nothing but ash on the hot wind. I sweep my head to the side, bisecting the entire cloud-city that hangs above me, watching in glee as it rolls to the side and crumbles. It feels so good to just let the power flow through me. Nothing could bother me now. I'm perfect. Everything is perfect.
Something is irking me, though...Wasn't there something that I needed to do? A reason I was so angry?
I frown. I don't like things that confuse me. What was it again...?
Unbeknownst to me, my eyes begin to fade from pure, glowing white back to my regular, normal eyes as I gasp. "Marks!" I cry, immediately casting my returned power to the depths. "C'mon, where are you, where are you...?"
There!
Near the bottom in the very center of the lake. I can barely feel a heartbeat. I swallow in nervousness as I wrap my magic gently around her, bringing her quickly back to the surface. We both begin to float through the air, back towards the shore, and as the last of the power fades, We drop the last few inches to dry land.
I press against her chest with my hooves, trying to squeeze some of the water out, but I have nothing. Instead, I swallow and wrap my magic around her again, locating her lungs and ever-so-gently squeezing them. Water bubbles out of her mouth and muzzle in a steady stream, and at the same time, I pour fresh air down through her trachea. Fighting my own urge to pass out, I keep doing this, steadily making her breath in and out until she coughs, sputters and opens her eyes.
I smile and fall over, taking deep breaths. She still can't rise, but she's alive, and that's enough.
A rainbow contrail streaks out of the crumbling cloud citadel, and I frown.
When did the city fall apart like that?
With an earsplitting crash, Dash smashes to the ground next to me, breath coming in ragged gasps and furious tears streaming from her single, furious eye.
"How dare you," she growls viciously. "You killed everybody in that city, you...you monster!"
I stare at her, mouth open, a blank look on my face. In the background, the city finally crashes into the surface of the lake, kicking up an enormous explosion of water that showers down on us. In the rain, the Valkyrie looks even more livid as she stomps over to me and picks my up by my neck. Her eye bores into mine, and in it, I see no mercy, just truth.
Faint flashes of glee run through my mind and I shudder at the alien touch of it all. Dash truly has justification to be angry, then.
"All of my soldiers. All of my guards. All of my friends. Everybody that I know and love. You. Murdered. All of them."
Tears are openly streaming down her face, and they're the last things I see before I'm thrown to the ground. Consciousness fading fast, the last thing I can feel before darkness comes crashing down on my head is a spear pressing slowly and mercilessly into my back.
---
[1]: In case you were wondering, the amount of power needed to melt off a full-strength inhibitor ring is approximately 1,500 thaums, a basic unit of magic which is the average power of one fully-grown, untrained unicorn. Under normal circumstances, I can barely touch 100 thaums. Just sayin'.
---
I wake up several minutes later to the glare of a full moon. Marks is standing off to the side, nursing a rather nasty-looking slice in her left foreleg. I try to get up and find my efforts stymied. I'm simply too weak. I can barely rotate my head lethargically to the side to look out at the lake, which still has a few fragments of the once-great cloud city suspended within it. Wow, I guess I really did kill them...
I would feel regretful, but I just can't muster up the energy to care.
"Marks?"
She starts momentarily, and in that moment, I can see a few tears spill from her eyes before she hastily wipes them off, uncaring of the blood that smears onto her face. A small smile emerges.
"Please, Sparkle, call me Rarity."
A jolt flashes through my mind. Oh my God, Marks just told me her name. The battering rain from the pegasus-induced storm and the swim in the lake has beaten away the dirt that caked her, and now I can see her properly. Her formerly off-white coat is gleaming with the moonlight like liquid silver and her dirt-patina'd, matted tail and mane are a fine indigo-purple, all complimented by her glimmering blue eyes.
Damn. And here I thought she was no more than a six. [1]
"Well," I cough, "it's nice to know that you trust me enough to tell me your name, now that I saved your life. We even?"
She chuckles. Rarity's voice is quite dulcet and smooth, a far cry from the rough voice of Marks, but I can still hear my companion in that slightly guttural chuckle. "Oh, not even close, Sparkle. You still owe me another life saved."
That perks my ears up. Evidently, she notices, because she bares the still-bleeding slash in her foreleg. "Dash was about to stab you when I blasted her off of you. It wasn't quite as strong as I'd hoped, because after a brief moment, she jumped back up and sliced my leg up pretty good. After that I managed to get a shot on her strong enough to get her out of here, but I don't think we're out of the woods just yet. She could be anywhere up there." She motions to the sky, and especially to the clouds that pegasi love sitting on.
She's right. We need to be careful. "Hey, Mar—Rares? Did you see what happened to me?"
She looks at me, sorrow in her face. "I didn't. Dash did say you killed all of them, though, so that puts a damper on things. It's kind of a shame if you look at it. She never had anywhere to call a homeland. Now she doesn't have a home at all."
I paused. Come to think of it, she never did mention a homeland in our limited interactions. Even though I don't know if I was conscious at the time, I'm responsible for destroying an entire city.
A shudder runs through me, and I stare back out at the lake, watching the final fragments of a lost city slip into the liquid void
I wasn't in the right. Not this time, and maybe not quite a few times before.
---
[1]: I'm straight. Mind out of the gutter.