//------------------------------//
// Chapter 17 - Loyal to the End 
// Story: My Little Equestroid: Stompin' is Magic 
// by ForeverChasingRainbows 
//------------------------------//


**Rainbow Dash**


"There, spell's down. She should wake up soon."

"Wish I'd gotten to sleep through the first couple of hours. Way too confusing."

Rainbow Dash struggled to put a coherent thought together. Two voices, a stallion and a mare. The stallion sounded like an upper-crust Canterlot native, while the mare sounded as if she made a hobby of gargling gravel. Rainbow thought she recognised them, or at least had heard them before, but she couldn't place either.

"Hope she's smarter than Stratus," the mare added.

"I would assume so," the stallion said in a superior tone, "I've scraped things off my hoof that were smarter than him. She'll certainly be stronger, the effects are multiplicative."

Rainbow thought she should be afraid, but for some reason she wasn't. She felt an almost comforting familiarity with the two voices, almost like they were family somehow. Everything was so confused.

"How strong are we talking, exactly?" the mare asked.

"The first pegasus in generations with enough raw magical potential to perform a sonic rainboom, with one of these?"

There was a faint clink, and Rainbow Dash felt something push against her throat briefly. The warm, comforting feeling intensified as the stallion continued speaking. She tried to remember how to move, or open her eyes.

"Power is useless if you don't know how to use it, but she already knows. The possibilities are endless. And she is a part of our family now."

Happiness swelled in Rainbow's chest as she felt the sense of belonging grow. Family... family was good, right?

"We are still too few. Too many ponies are still apart from us." The mare's already gravelly voice lowered to a hostile growl. "Even... against us."

Rainbow Dash felt a surge of pity. The thought that there were ponies out there who weren't a part of this almost made her want to cry, until the mare's final words caused something even more horrifying to occur to her. Some of them didn't want to be. That summoned a powerful wave of disgust and anger from somewhere within her, at the thought that somepony would deliberately try to ruin everything. Rainbow Dash felt a strong impulse to find one of those ponies and make sure they never interfered with anything, ever again.

"That will change in time," the stallion replied smoothly. "But that's secondary in any case. The so-called Elements of Harmony are broken."

"Elements of Harmony," the mare repeated, voice dripping with hate. Rainbow heard her spit on the ground before she continued. "How can they not see? How dare they name themselves agents of Harmony?"

But I'm... the girls are...

Rainbow Dash felt some sympathy with the mare's obvious hostility, something telling her that the Elements weren't a part of their group, that they were the enemy - but she also felt an enduring connection with them. They were her friends, she wasn't going to just... turn her back on them. She couldn't do that, not ever.

This isn't right.

The stallion cut off his companion's building rage with a firm rebuke. "Control yourself, Spring. Once Rainbow Dash helps us to bring her old friend Princess Sparkle into the fold, then every pony will know the glory of unity. The other false Elements can be safely disposed of if they prove an obstacle. All who oppose us will be crushed, and true harmony will be achieved at last."

Wait. Disposed of?

Conflicting emotions warred in Rainbow's mind, trying to reconcile the towering rage she now felt towards the enemies of Harmony with her loyalty to those same ponies - her friends. They had this Elements thing all wrong, they didn't know... No, they couldn't be her friends - the things that stood in her way, outside of her family, were barely even ponies. But they were family to her, which made them the most important thing in the world. They were loathsome, wrong, and misguided, and they were also the most important thing in the whole world. The contradiction twisted and coiled tighter and tighter, pressure mounting to unbearable levels, until something else occurred to her.

The Element Bearers might be a mind-bending contradiction, but... they weren't standing next to her talking about getting her to turn on the rest of her family. Not like these two. They were just as close, just as dear to her as the rest, but... they were trying to tear her family apart. And they knew exactly what they were doing.

They think I would... these traitors think that I would betray-

Rainbow Dash had thought she had been angry before. When her rage-polluted mind tried to wrap itself around the thought of betraying her friends, she learned that she was wrong.

Treachery.

Infidelity.

DISLOYALTY.

Something just... snapped. All of the confused, conflicted anger that had been bubbling and rolling around her mind condensed into a uniform, white-hot fury. She couldn't speak, couldn't scream, couldn't even think. But she didn't need to do any of that. Everything was so simple, so obvious. She just opened her eyes, and let it all out.

Rainbow Dash didn't see the damp, dilapidated interior of the abandoned house. She didn't hear the scream of tortured metal as she tore out of the steel bands securing her legs, wings and body to the wall; or the dry snapping sounds made by flying rivets as they tore chunks of aged, rotting wood from the ceiling and sent shards of stone flying from the floor. She didn't remember crossing the distance separating her from her target, or feel the air ripping at her coat and feathers as she flew. The irregular pulsating crimson glow of the amulet secured around her own throat was only relevant because it let her see what she was doing to the sub-equine thing in front of her.

All of her was focused on her target. She drank in everything, savouring each minute detail before feeding it to the bottomless rage surging within. The way the mare's ears slowly tracked around towards her, moving agonisingly slowly.

So slow. Too slow. Not fast enough, not good enough.

Tiny ripples crawled across the hair of the earth pony's pale green coat as the bow wave of compressed air broke over her, snapping her yellow mane out behind her like a banner. The glow of the red crystal secured about the other mare's neck intensified as the pupils of her blue eyes twitched, slowly widening in horror as she focused on her coming death.

The thrill that reaction birthed in Rainbow exploded into furious exultation as she felt the first impact. Every strike sent a fresh bolt of joy through her as she relentlessly pounded the object of her hate. With barely a trace of effort she called forth lightning, sending scorching, snapping arcs of raw power into her enemy with each swing of her hooves. The indescribable feeling when the mare collapsed beneath her assault almost overwhelmed her, and she hesitated for a moment as her legs buckled involuntarily. Glancing down at the battered ruin beneath her, she gloried in the destruction. Sickly green-edged black lightning arced across her limbs as she stood over the burned and bloodied body.

A memory flashed across Rainbow's mind. Black lightning. A rushing surge of violence, and a friend screaming in pain. She froze, and the blazing wrath inside her shattered into a storm of confusion and horrible, grasping emptiness. The red glow of the amulet at her throat sputtered and faltered, and the metal holding the gem grew almost unbearably hot.

"Twilight?" she let out in a tiny, broken whisper. "What have I... What's happening to me?"

Then a wave of telekinetic force slammed into her like a freight train, driving Rainbow Dash to the ground and holding her paralysed. The terrible pressure shifted, bearing down on her head, and then pushing its way inside. A feeling of utterly alien wrongness washed over Rainbow as something that wasn't her entered her mind.

Almost as soon as it arrived, Rainbow could feel confused, horrified revulsion coming off the foreign presence. "What are you?" asked a voice in her head that was not her own. "The master's gift has opened your eyes and yet you still do not see... you feel the connection with us, the anger at the discord and perversion in our world, but it is all misdirected!"

She recognised that voice, that superior tone. He was the one who had said those things about her friends, who had made her so angry. This was his fault.

"'m not a traitor," Rainbow Dash ground out venomously, almost too enraged to form words. She fought to raise her head from the ground, but the force restraining her was just too strong. She had expended too much energy too fast - Rainbow could already feel her newfound strength returning, but what she had left right now simply wasn't enough. She felt anger rising in her again, but now she could feel something slightly alien in that too. There was an odd, creeping similarity between the alien presence in her head and the rekindling rage. Rainbow struggled to reject all of it; but she wanted so very much to be angry right now, and to be strong enough to do something about it. The amulet pressed against the floor beneath her thrummed and vibrated.

"Not one of you," she spat, still struggling to rise.

"Too dangerous to leave alive, and too valuable to kill..." the voice in her head went on, "Stampede will deal with you personally."

Suddenly the pressure on the back of her neck increased, and Rainbow Dash felt the chain holding the amulet snap. The gem was jerked out from beneath her body, encased in a crimson aura. As soon as it tore free, Rainbow Dash felt herself go limp, as if all of the strength had been stolen from her limbs. Pain sprang up throughout her body, muscles burning and joints aching as if she had packed weeks of exertion into a few moments. The fire beneath her rage guttered out and died, leaving her shivering and empty as the alien presence in her head withdrew.

In the first second, Rainbow's mind almost collapsed. As the amulet's influence left her, her thoughts recoiled from the memory of the terrifying rage she had felt - and what she had done as a result. She could barely process how she felt about the sticky, lumpy red fluids still staining her outstretched forelegs.

First I hurt Twilight, and now I-I... Exhausted and immobile on the cut stone floor, she felt tears blazing trails down her cheeks. Not a monster. I'm not. Not a monster.

As Rainbow Dash desperately repeated her mantra, trying to force more belief into it, she heard somepony start giving orders. "Bring her to the gateway. And put Spring Breeze in the infirmary until she recovers. It may take some time for her to repair that much damage." Rainbow tried to struggle, but only succeeded in twitching a little as strong hooves looped beneath her forelegs and lifted her up. She hung limply between two other ponies as she was dragged along.

"No, dunwanna..." Rainbow Dash mumbled in protest as she struggled feebly. Her throat burned, summoning a vague memory of furious screaming that she couldn't quite place. "Lemme go!"

The last vestiges of strength fled Rainbow's limbs and she fell still. She didn't understand what was going on. She remembered the camp, the horse, Twilight... she'd gone to clear her head, and then...

Rainbow Dash shivered involuntarily. It was as if somepony had taken a melon baller to her memories. There were whole pieces that were simply gone. She would follow through a chain of events in her mind, and then just hit a blank spot. The chain ended, and there were only little disconnected flashes floating in the gaps. A colour, a whisper, the barest hint of a smell; all of them too faint to grasp.

Soon the slow back-and-forth rocking motion ceased. The hoofsteps, only now reaching the notice of her conscious mind due to their sudden absence, stopped too. Rainbow raised her head with an effort. There was a distressingly familiar matte black oval in the air in front of her. This one was smaller than the other one she had seen, but she still wanted nothing to do with whatever might come out of it. A rush of fear lent new strength to Rainbow Dash's battered body, and she began to thrash and jerk violently against the limbs that held her.

"Get offa me!"

There was none of her usual defiance in the rasping yell. There was only a desperate desire to be somewhere else, for this to not be happening. Punctuating each word with a ferocious buck, Rainbow Dash screamed.

"LET! ME! GO!"

She had just about enough time between her ineffectual attacks to see she was held by a pair of unmoving earth ponies. Each wore a set of familiar armour, gold plate tinted a blood-soaked bronze in the dark thanks to the red glow of the amulets they wore.

Just like the one I... like... why can't I remember? What the hay is going on?!

"Do it," a stallion's voice said from behind her. Rainbow Dash shivered at the sound as another wash of half-remembered emotions rushed through her. "Perhaps Stampede can find a use for her."

Rainbow felt the hooves holding her lurch, and her whole world span. She felt her body strike some sort of disturbance in the air, and suddenly her instincts screamed that she was falling. Purely on reflex she tried to open her wings and pull up, slow down, anything to avoid what was sure to be a horrific crash. As Rainbow's wings spread, magic from some unseen source suffused her entire body. Her eyes reopened to a blank, black void as the force surrounded and filled her. At first the magic was invigorating, like using the Elements or when she was really pushing it in the air. Then it became uncomfortable, and rapidly progressed through painful towards agonising. It just kept pouring in without end, more power than she had ever felt or wanted; pressing, crushing, suffocating.

Just as the sensation became too much, Rainbow Dash felt herself strike another strange disturbance - and then felt all the built-up magic tear its way out of her, taking her awareness with it.




**Celestia**


Celestia didn't even realise she had stumbled until she felt Luna pull her upright. Focusing her attention outward once more, she saw her sister's eyes full of concern.

"Sister, what is wrong?"

Celestia opened her mouth to reply, but the words died in her throat. The connection had faded a little over the centuries, but a flickering glow had always remained. Silent watch-fires, standing sentinel over the world's Harmony. As she had - however briefly - added Loyalty, Laughter and Honesty to Magic, Generosity and Kindness on the day she struck down her own sister, her wielding of all six elements had forged a unique and seemingly permanent bond.

Each fire had waxed and waned as new bearers had emerged, lived, and died; individually or in small groups, holding an Element for anything from a few moments to several years. Then, six very special little ponies had been born to one generation - each inextricably linked to an Element from the moment of their birth, bound together to restore the world to balance. She had felt all of them surge together the day she had sent Twilight to Ponyville, and even as the ascendant Nightmare Moon imprisoned her in the sun her faith had remained unbroken.

Sometimes the fires had burned as brightly as they had the day Luna was returned to her. Sometimes they had been little more than faint embers, as Equestria had struggled through more troubled times.

Never in a thousand years had one gone out. There was no warning. One moment there were six, and then...

Celestia heard herself answer Luna's enquiry as if from a distance, her mind still reeling.

"Loyalty is gone."




**BraveStarr**


No matter how hard he tried, BraveStarr just couldn't sleep. He'd even tried using his bed after failing to drop off in his chair, but all that had accomplished was turning the sheets into a tangled mess.

I should be out there, damnit. My best friend needs my help, and I'm stuck lyin' around just hopin' everything fixes itself!

With a frustrated sigh, BraveStarr rolled over and sat up on the edge of his bed. He knew it was foolish of him, but he just couldn't stop worrying about Thirty-Thirty. The big lug could take care of himself, sure, but it just felt wrong for them to be kept apart. As quietly as he could, BraveStarr pulled his boots back on and retrieved his white Stetson from the bedpost. He couldn't sit still, couldn't relax. Maybe a walk would help.

As he stepped out of his room, it became apparent that he wasn't the only one having trouble sleeping. The faint glow of a console screen illuminated the far wall of the corridor, coming from the monitoring station in the station's main room. BraveStarr's suspicions were at least partly confirmed when he rounded the corner - but it seemed Fuzz had managed to fall asleep after all, even if he had done it lying across the console's keyboard.

BraveStarr couldn't help but smile at the short, furry creature. Fuzz's large hat, with his deputy's star pinned to the front, had seemingly been knocked off when he fell asleep. It lay on the floorboards next to the computer, well below the stool - which Fuzz had cranked all the way up to its maximum height so he could reach the keys. Carefully, BraveStarr retrieved the hat and tucked it under his arm. Then he picked up his slumbering deputy, holding Fuzz cradled in his arms like a child, and carried him to the spare bedroom. As he was lowered onto the bed, Fuzz's eyes fluttered open and he glanced around sleepily.

"Marshal? Is... is ev'thing okay?"

BraveStarr kelt down beside the bed and let out a short sigh. "No, Fuzz. It's not. My big partner's gone. I just... can't keep my mind off it."

"Don' worry Marshal BraveStarr. Thirty-Thirty be okay," Fuzz said, still a little drowsy. "He come home soon."

"I hope so little partner," BraveStarr replied, placing Fuzz's hat back on his head. "You get some rest now, I'm going for a walk. Clear my head."

The only reply from his deputy was a faint snore. Sleep tight little guy. BraveStarr rose quietly to his feet and tiptoed back out of the room.

Walking out onto the dusty, starlit street, the Marshal paused to gaze up at the night sky. New Texas was on the edge of populated space and only played host to a couple of fixed settlements - most of the population lived in individual farmsteads or mining claims. As a result, the night sky was almost unaffected by the light pollution that was the price of civilisation on many a world. The whole galaxy was spread across the star-studded heavens in a faint milky band, billions of suns trailing countless worlds in their wake. New Texas nights were sometimes punishingly cold, with the trinary suns below the horizon and the usual absence of cloud cover to hold in the day's warmth, but those who braved the chill could see things with their unaided eyes or a simple camera that most would only see in pictures taken from orbit.

BraveStarr huffed out a breath, leaving a faint mist in the air that swiftly vanished into the breeze. He watched as it dispersed, then straightened his gun belt.

May as well make a patrol of it if I'm goin' out.

As he considered his route, a strange sensation started to intrude on the Marshal's thoughts. He could feel an odd sort of pressure against his right side, almost like a strong wind or the heat radiating from a fire. The disturbance intensified as he turned to face it, but BraveStarr could see nothing out of the ordinary - just the empty street and, over the roofs of a few buildings and the town's defensive wall, the tops of several moonlit plateaus in the stony desert beyond. Nevertheless, a sense of foreboding crept over him, and he slowly reached a hand toward his gun.

Something's coming.

The thought had barely crossed his mind when the force pushing against him suddenly multiplied in strength. If it had been like standing near a warm fire before, now it was akin to standing a foot away from an open blast furnace. BraveStarr staggered back a step, raising an arm to shield his eyes against the phantom heat - only to find that his arm proved no barrier to whatever this strange effect was. Then, as soon as it had begun, the feeling vanished entirely. As the strange sensation disappeared, a familiar but worryingly faint voice echoed in his head.

"BraveStarr..."

"Shaman?" BraveStarr span in place, searching for the source of his mentor's voice. The elder sounded out of breath, almost pained - and the image that normally accompanied his mental messages was absent. "I felt something, like a great wind or a blast of heat. What's going on?" he asked.

"Stampede has... engineered something I did not even think... one such as he to be capable of," the old man said, pausing to take deep, gasping breaths as if he had run a marathon. "That was a wave of powerful magic, released by what that evil monstrosity has wrought. He has drawn one of the spirits into our world. Not a portion of its power, or an aspect of it as you or I might. The whole of it, its very essence has been pulled into this realm. Forced into a physical form." BraveStarr could clearly discern the worry in his mentor's voice. "It is... vulnerable here, in ways it would not otherwise be. It might even be possible for him to destroy it... or worse."

A series of images - landmarks from the desert east of the town, joined together pointing toward the source of the blast - flashed through BraveStarr's head. Before the sequence had finished, he was already running down the street towards the first of Shaman's mental markers. In a few short moments he was through the main gates and out into the wilderness.

Shaman's image flickered into being in the air beside BraveStarr as he ran, the ageing mystic pulling himself upright with his staff. "Stampede is still in the Hexagon, but this small facility will not be unguarded," he cautioned. "Be careful, my son. I shall do what I can to slow the approach of any reinforcements."

Time to turn on the jets...

"Speed of the Puma!"

BraveStarr's form blurred as he shot forward in a roar of displaced air and dust. His uniform cut a golden streak across the darkened desert as he accelerated, Shaman's voice echoing in his head.

"Hurry, BraveStarr. Loyalty must not fall."