6th: The Abyss Queen
They went down to the shore of the strange, luminescent pond in tense silence, only accompanied by the sound of dripping water. There were cobwebs all over the place, between the dripstones and on the walls. The ashen spiders were there too, now keeping an almost respectful distance to the ponies. And in the back of the cavern close to the rocky and mossy floor was the most gigantic Spider web.
Each of the ponies now was fraught; Valor had again taken the lead; and yet now it was hard for him to keep up his determined façade. It felt like walking to his own execution, which he pretty was doing if the prophecy was right. He hadn’t told them; of course not. The knowledge about his possible hour of death was his burden. He didn't want to encumber his friends with it.
Focusing on the task ahead helped, however.
Did Valor have a plan, one could ask. If things went ugly there was maybe only time to make one turn so he better made it a killing blow.
Did he have a plan?
Well, actually…
“Let me see…!”
Valor pulled out his lighter again and flipped it open. With a click, its common blue flame lightened on top of it. But as Valor held it up in the humid air, the fire suddenly flickered as if a tiny moth had flown into it. Then it turned to an eerie, impossible blueish, radiant black. From the lighter, particles in the same pattern seemed to spread all around them silently swirling about.
“What the hay?” Rainbow Dash gasped.
“Void Particles”, Valor Edge answered as if that would explain everything. Looking at him, his friends noticed that he -as the only of them- had also that kind of black fuzz sticking to his coat and whizzing around him as he moved.
“Harmless, a kind of background radiation”, he quickly and low-voiced added. “But they stick to whatever crosses the void. They slowly drip out of the Void through these rifts. So there actually is one in this magical pond. Interesting… And judging by the lot of particles, this rift must have been open for centuries…”
As the lighter’s lid snapped shut again, the black stuff vanished at once, or at least became invisible again.
“But what does that mean?” Twilight tried to put that in a line with what she had read about the Void earlier. Valor Edge kept silent for a moment, taking one, two, three deeps breaths.
“It means, my smart Twilight, that I now have a plan”, he eventually said. He turned to the others. They were staring at him with eyes wide, wondering, why he suddenly sounded so sad. He then spoke, still low-voiced, but with renascent determination: “When I tell you to run, do so! Run for your lives!”
Valor Edge then frankly walked to the waterline of the pond, his back straightened and his head upright. The other ponies could very well imagine him wearing a knight’s armor, or perhaps a general’s shoulder pouches.
“Alright, no time for hesitation”, he said firmly and then claimed with as much authority as he cut put in his voice: “Stop hiding, we know thou are out there in the dark and we definitely will not fall for any more trap! I am Valor Edge and I demand parlay according to convention fifteen of the Shadow Proclamation!”
His voice echoed through the cavern and eventually faded off. Something started to move in the darkness beyond the reach of the lake’s unnatural light. And out of the shades stepped a slender, black coated alicorn-mare. Her mane seemed to consist of darkness and stars and she bore very unpony sharp fangs. Her eyes had slit pupils.
From behind his back, Valor Edge heard the unbelieving and afraid whisper. “Nightmare Moon?”
“No!” Valor angrily pointed at the alicorn. “No more mind-tricks and perception-filters. We know thou are not Nightmare Moon. So cut it out!”
With the last four words, which he made especially feature of, the black alicorn’s image faded, got wiped away like smoke in a squall. If he had only allowed Nightmare Moon's image to persist! The creature’s true features were actually worse.
At least thirty-five hooves high (which was eight foot in another world). A spider in appearance; the body armored in black, poisonous green and orange patterned chitin plates and covered with black wiry hair. From its abdomen rose five curved, bent-forward spikes, red as spilled blood.
But worst was the creature’s head: No eyes but irregular, cultrate looking scales. Dozens and dozens of long, winding squid-like tentacles, where its jaws should have been, drooling with an inky liquid.
The mares screamed with horror as the abomination rammed its legs like stakes into the water and strode through the pond.
“Me and my big snout”, Valor mumbled as the creature bent down and stretched out his tentacles for him. But he didn’t flinch one bit. This wasn’t the dark presence from the Void he had encountered before. It was similar, yes, but yet it was not. And despite similar abilities, this creature seemed to be far less interested in plotting and controlling. It used its mind-tricks for hunt. And different from the last Void-demon, this thing was unbound and fully in control of its powers.
“Your precious Shadow Proclamation means nothing to me”, the creature’s voice hissed, like glass shards in an ice bucket.
“But I got thine attention, did I not?” Valor replied and put on his most gaining smile.
An angry hiss. Silence. And then:
“What do you want?”
“Thou will return through the rift to wherever you hail from”, Valor demanded. “And never come back again, are we clear?”
This time, the creature let out a different sizzle. It almost sounded like laughter.
“You dare having claims against me? The Abyss Queen has fed on the life-energy of countless beings of countless worlds and I shall feed on yours, too.”
“Thou would probably choke on me and thou know that” Valor returned cynically but fell serious again. “Feeding on life-energy, so? Then tell me one thing: Why has it to be foals? We could find another way for thee to feed. Nopony would have to die anymore!”
Again the Abyss Queen let out its hissing, evil laughter, before it answered:
“The young taste best!”
Now that was the wrong thing to say. Valor grinded his teeth. He had held out his hoof and the demon had spat on it. He had tried to solve this problem without bloodshed, tried to give the creature a second chance. Right at that moment, he decided he would destroy this monster at all cost, even if he was to bite the dust in the process.
But while he remained perfectly calm on the surface, another pony wasn’t.
“Alright, that’s it”, Rainbow Dash shouted. “Negotiation’s over. I’ll buck your ugly spider-butt!” And she launched herself at the Abyss Queen.
“No! Cease it!” Valor screamed, but too late. The demon simply wiped Rainbow of the air with one of its giant legs. The Abyss Queen had no eyes, but apparently its hearing was top-notch. The cyan pegasus smashed against a cavern-wall and tumbled to the ground, while the creature turned towards her.
The situation slipped out of Valor’s control. Twilight, Rainbow and Pinkie were about to launch a death-or-glory-attack at the demon. (Pinkie had even somehow managed to pull a cannon out of nowhere, which Valor noticed with bewilderment.) They didn’t know the last part of the prophecy and thus were unaware not even the magic of friendship (or whatever it was Pinkie had) could harm it.
And while Valor knew this already, Twilight did just begin to suspect they had missed a very important point as her strongest magic blast just dripped of their enemy’s shell like the droplets of a shower. Everything was about to take a turn for the worse. Valor Edge had to get the situation under control again immediately.
Thus, Valor made as much noise, as he could. “I am thy opponent. Not them!” he yelled at the Abyss Queen but was flat-out ignored. The ponies’ attacks weren’t anything more than mosquito bites to the demon. All they achieved was making it angry. And things started to more and more like death and not glory…
Valor had to do something, and fast. He hated to, though, but there was no other option. He had to give a show of force.
“CEASE IT!”
His shout resounded through the cavern like thunder. His friends were literally stunned and the demon staggered on the spot, indecisive what now to do. The Abyss Queen had no eyes but it had very well felt the power behind the voice.
Valor cleared his throat and spoke.
“Do I have thine attention again? Good. Enough ponies have been hurt until now, both physical and emotional, thou hear me? I am ending this. Here and now!”
It was hard to tell any emotion from the voice of a spider demon with tentacles instead of a face, but its mocking answer sounded less confident and disdainful than before, even if only a little.
“Be it you or your puny, little friends, you cannot defeat me.”
“Let that be my concern”, Valor returned leading the demon to give him another threatening hiss. Still it couldn’t decide whether it could risk to turn his back on Valor or not.
“Not steel and not stone, no stake and no bone, no magic and no alchemy shall ever pierce the shell of me!”
“Yes. Yes. Yes.” The stallion nodded three times. “Incredible. So thine hide is invulnerable. Me teeth still hurt from finding that out first-hand.”
He flicked open the lighter, flashed a dark smile then continued.
“And maybe I also know the reason: It is because of THAT!”
Valor ignited the lighter and like before, the black swirling particles became visible, spreading from a black flame. They were all over the place. And while only few of them whizzed around Valor, the Queen was literally covered in them. Void Particles stuck to every inch of its shell; it almost looked like it was bleeding darkness, like a drop of black ink, spreading in a glass of water.
That sight right from hell made the mares yelp and even Valor unwittingly took one step back. Bones of the Black Dragon!
“All the times thou crossed the Void”, he said, his voice as firm as possible. It flickered a bit, though. “Hundreds and hundreds of times. And each time thou brought some of it back with thee. The Void changed thee. Its particles can absorb an incredibly amount of energy and now these particles are melded with thy shell. ”
The Abyss Queen drooled, spat and hissed, and finally it turned towards Valor Edge.
“What have you done?” it screamed. “What’s happening?”
“Scared? Actually, I have just shifted the Void Particles into a visible spectrum.”
Twilight couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The ease, with which Valor (a pony that used kind of medieval terms of speech, for Celestia’s sake) switched to scientific language was quite impressive. She often underestimated Valor’s mind. In her own mind, on the other hand, the gear wheels were turning, too. What was Valor’s plan? What was this mad stallion trying to accomplish with that Void Particles?
“It is easier to enter another world from the Void rather to go back through the rifts, is it not? Ever wondered why?”
“Explain!” the Abyss Queen commanded. It had no scientific knowledge but an evil slyness. And it simply had to find out about anything that could pose a threat to its invincibility. That kept its attention drawn to Valor. The Queen really counted on outsmarting him…
Twilight however, had already figured out the answer to Valor’s last question. He had mentioned these so-called rifts constantly were emitting Void Particles in a small amount. Of course it was easier to swim with the stream than against it. Or to exit the Void with the particle-current rather than to enter it against said current. But how was that supposed to…
The realization hit Twilight Sparkle like a lightning bolt. Reverse the polarity!
Just like Valor had said: All things would make sense, when they needed to. And now, they did. If Valor Edge could somehow reverse the polarity of the rift, it would no longer emit, but suck those particles in! The evil spider-demon was so covered in them, there was possibly no way it’d be able to escape the resulting vortex.
But the Void Particles also stuck to Valor’s own coat. What would happen to HIM if he was successful? Was he even aware of the risk?
“Valor, no!” Twilight cried out. However, that didn’t to stop him. The very same moment, he flashed the creature a smile that would have made even a dragon cringe.
“Time to tip the scales!” he said.
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