Dark Matter

by moguera


Resignation

Chapter 33: Resignation

"So you mean to end this fight?" asked Arkenstone.
"That's right," replied Swift, "After all, I have your fillyfriend to kill before she can make things even worse. If we don't stop her, Wight will finish his project in no time. If we do, it at least gives us some more time to work with."
"That's all you're doing..." spat Arkenstone, "...buying time? You're going to end Twilight's life over possiblies and maybes."
"More like the strong inkling of a definite something," replied Swift with a cackle and a grin, "But I don't like the way you all showed up just after Wight wiped the floor with Princess Celestia and set up the big...glowy...thingy in the throne room. You're playing right into his hooves."
"That's enough," snarled Arkenstone, advancing, his armored greaves clanking harshly against the stone of the cavern floor, "I am through bandying words with you."
"Good enough," said Swift, "I'm through buying time anyway."
Buying time...? Arkenstone didn't like the sound of that. He paused, silence descending on the cavern, save for the pattering of water across his armor as the vapor released by Swift's mist condensed on the stalactites above and rained back down. The air within the cavern was heavy with moisture, the humidity making the air feel thick syrupy.
"Funny thing about dust," said Swift, "It gets everywhere and sticks to everything. When a breeze blows, it all dances about. But if it's too wet, it can't get off the ground."
Shocked, Arkenstone finally realized Swift's real aim with all the water vapor he'd filled the cavern with. He hadn't simply been throwing off Arkenstone's guard. He'd been aiming to cut Arkenstone off from the most powerful tool in his arsenal, the dust, from which he could forge both armor and blades and mold them freely, depending on his needs. Swift had deliberately led the battle down into the already damp caves and then done everything he could to increase the humidity until it was practically raining.
While the moisture had no effect on the armor that Arkenstone currently wore, or the blades he currently wielded, if they were broken, he wouldn't be able to raise the dust if it was weighed down by water. He'd be left with the blades he could form from the pine needles he carried and whatever he could fashion from the fragments and debris of their battle, most of it too heavy for him to finely control.
"So now what?" asked Swift, "Your most powerful weapon's been sealed and I have complete control of this fight. You should just give up."
"Never," replied Arkenstone. The blades he'd been wielding moved towards him and then seeped back into his armor, dissolving into black streams that flowed through his barding, reinforcing it. The edges it wore were sharper and stronger. Even Swift wouldn't be able to break them with all the strength of the Mountain Root at his disposal. Arkenstone molded the plates into layers, allowing them to completely dissipate any impact without breaking. He would have to forgo using the technique of Reap What you Sow to turn the power of Swift's blows back against him. But, in exchange, he would have the overall strength to go completely hoof to hoof with a master of the Mountain Root.
"So you're abandoning your weapons and focusing on defense...?" Swift's squinty eyes opened a little wider. "No...you're concentrating your offense into one point and turning your whole body into a single weapon. Not a bad way to approach this. Let's see where it gets you."
The two of them went still. Swift had frozen with his right hoof lifted just barely off the ground, poised to probably reach for one of the infernal devices he had secreted within his clothing. Arkenstone was rooted in place, all four of his hooves so firmly set in the ground that it was cracked around them. The only sound was the continued pattering of the water as it rained down from above.
Nearby, a single jutting crystal that had been damaged over the course of the battle cracked. A tiny fragment, barely a sliver, dropped down. It hit the cavern floor with the tiniest, most imperceptible of clicks.
Both their ears heard it. As if by unspoken agreement, the two stallions surged forward simultaneously, charging each other down. Swift's right hoof had already darted into the folds of his sash and pulled out a small, black cylinder, which he thrust out ahead of him as he charged down Arkenstone.
In return, Arkenstone slammed his right forehoof into the ground, along with his hind hooves. His left forehoof, he raised and thrust out at Swift. As he did so, the armor over it flowed forward, becoming a sword that Arkenstone thrust straight at Swift's chest. Swift met Arkenstone's attack head on, slamming the bomb he held in his hoof against Arkenstone's attacking foreleg. The bomb was a real one, not a bluff filled with water or poison. The sound of the explosion filled the cavern as the space between the two stallions filled with fire and smoke. The explosion blossomed out in all directions, but Swift's hoof, reinforced by the power of the Mountain Root, was an indomitable barrier that pushed the explosion's force almost entirely in one direction, straight against the bomb's point of contact with Arkenstone. As such, Swift was almost completely untouched by the explosion, it's force instead driving straight into Arkenstone's arm with a crunching noise as the layered plates of armor shattered. The explosion also forced Arkenstone's thrust to the side. The sword's point scraped just under Swift's eye as it slid past.
Black fragments falling from his armor, Arkenstone retreated. Cracks ran up the length of the sword he'd wielded and it ended up crumbling to pieces. Rather than swirling through the air, those pieces fell to the floor and dissolved into the water running along the ground. The breaking halted a short way up past his fetlock. Arkenstone was glad that the armor over his face hid his grimace as he shifted it to cover what Swift's bomb had broken away.
"Normally I'd be happy to chip away at your armor 'til you've got nothing left," said Swift with a grin, "But I want to finish this fight right away."
Moving almost casually, Swift stepped forward, raising his forehoof once again. This time, there was nothing in it. Arkenstone lunged in, aiming to run his opponent through before Swift could produce another weapon. He shaped another blade, this one over his right forehoof and drove it forward. However, Swift intercepted it with his raised hoof quite easily. To Arkenstone's horror, he felt the weapon jerk and felt that feeling run through the entirety of his armor.
"I certainly didn't get away from this fight unscathed," said Swift as he almost casually curled his fetlock around Arkenstone's armored one, seemingly unbothered by the edge of the blade he was curling it around. In fact, Arkenstone felt the edges crumbling like dried mud. "But what if that's the entire point?"
Behind the plate of his champron, Arkenstone's eyes shot open. He remembered Swift throwing himself through the blades and even blowing himself up to escape Arkenstone's attacks. He'd hurt himself in the process, with his own bombs, no less. But he didn't need to, Arkenstone realized. Swift could have used the Mountain Root to strengthen his body and shrug off those explosions with no difficulty. It was probably the main reason he could be so confident whilst carrying so many dangerous devices. Yet he'd allowed himself to be injured. But why?
"You fight with scent," said Swift, his grin taking on a savage quality, "But I've shown that I can fight with it too. When you absorbed the dust my bombs raised into your armor, it carried more than dust. It had hairs from my coat and mane, bits of clothing I've worn for years, even little tiny bits of my skin and blood. In other words...your armor has countless little pieces of me in it right now...all carrying my scent."
Arkenstone felt the meaning of Swift's words all too clearly. He hadn't noticed them before, but a shivering pulse of Swift's magic moved through his body that was impossible to ignore, if only because it's presence was magnified by the presence of a million tiny impurities that suddenly appeared to Arkenstone's senses. In response to Swift's magic, they began to grow and change, opening cracks, causing chips of his armor to fall away.
Swift Stride thrust down with all three legs he was standing on, channeling the force of the movement up into his body as he leaned towards Arkenstone, forcing it out through the foreleg he used to grip Arkenstone's armor. Every plate of Arkenstone's armor shattered to pieces, scattering across the cavern and dissolving into wet dust on the floor and walls. His beige coat revealed, Arkenstone stepped back...or he should have. Instead, he moved forward. Even before Swift had completed his attack, Arkenstone's tail had already lashed, flicking a single pine needle into the air. As his armor dissolved around him, Arkenstone lunged at Swift, sending a blade moving so fast that it might as well have been invisible.
Something exploded between them and Arkenstone's nose filled with the soothing scent of lavender...


It almost seemed that the ponies of the Royal Guard in the Palace entryway had forgotten their purpose. Though Dawn and Perlin were fully engrossed in their battle, it seemed to have never crossed the minds of the Guards that now might have been the time to make for the Palace interior to help the Element Bearers. Instead, they stood enthralled as pure-white winds clashed against wings of silvery blue.
Perlin's attacks seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once. Feathers disappeared from his wings, only to reappear in another place, moving in different directions. At times, his entire body seemed to vanish as the pegasus performed what should have been an impossible feat and teleported to evade attacks or gain an advantageous position, Perlin having unconsciously realized that he could take advantage of the same quality of his wings that allowed him to send his feathers out.
Dawn moved so quickly and abruptly that he might as well have been teleporting. At times, he even appeared to be in two, or even three, places at once. More than once, their audience saw Perlin's feathers slice into Dawn's body, only for it to vanish as they realized that only his afterimage had been cut. The air around his wings practically blazed with light and Dawn's body seemed more like a shadow between them.
Dawn had never felt this exhilarated before. Everything around him was so chaotic, so tempestuous...and yet...so clear. He felt Perlin through the wind. He could see the damp spots on Perlin's coat, where the young stallion's sweat had left its mark. He could hear each beat of Perlin's wings. He felt Perlin's every breath and breathed with him. The two of them danced through the air, separate beings, each with his own thoughts, feelings and objectives, yet moving in perfect synch with one another, as though the two of them were one.
Dawn's fur was matted with sweat as well. Despite that, he didn't feel tired in the slightest. In fact, the more they fought, the more he felt he could do. It was as if his battle with Perlin was calling him to push harder, move faster, and refine his technique further. It was a world of difference from his terrifying ordeal against Terra Heart, where he'd been scrabbling with everything he had just to survive and strike back. Here, in this razor-thin space between life and death, Dawn had never felt more alive.
Several feathers emerged from rifts all around Dawn, their slashes trying to cut off his path of escape. Dawn's body moved fluidly, slipping between them, his dodge carrying him above Perlin's back. Perlin whirled to intercept Dawn, but was forced to defend instead when Dawn sent a white column hammering down at him, the force of the blow driving Perlin straight down to the floor. The blast slammed into the entryway floor, then through it, driving into the mountain below, punching a hole straight down through the caverns.
However, Perlin was not there. Instead, he emerged from a seam in the air, appearing right behind Dawn, sweeping his wings forward so that they crossed in front of him before sweeping them back in a double slash, like a massive pair of jagged shears. Dawn ducked forward, actually rolling into the air, barely managing to pull his hindquarters out of the way. As it was, Perlin's feathers nicked the very tip of Dawn's tail. As Dawn rolled, he snapped his wings out. He swept them in a small circular pattern, a hum building in the air around him before Dawn swept his wings down past his underbelly, which was actually facing Perlin ending with a jabbing motion that thrust his outermost primaries in Perlin's direction like the blades of a pair of spears. Blazing lances of concentrated plasma shot out from his feathers. Perlin immediately brought his wings back in front of himself, their glow seeming to drain the light from Dawn's own attack as it slammed into him. One of the lances was blocked completely, shattering into a burst of fiery sparks that scattered through the air. The other hit Perlin's damaged wing. Though it too was mostly blocked, sparks and arcs of energy flowed through the broken gaps in Perlin's feathers and spattered against his right side. Electricity jolted Perlin's body and burns blossomed where the plasma landed, its heat scorching away the hairs of his coat and blistering black the flesh beneath.
Perlin screamed in agony, his entire body lurching as he rolled hard, trying to throw off the remnants of the plasma before it did any more damage. The electricity that accompanied it made his muscles spasm and threw off his coordination. As it was, Perlin barely noticed Dawn complete his roll and kick out his hooves, reversing his direction and sending him hurtling a Perlin like a bullet. Perlin barely had the presence of mind to raise his undamaged left wing to block as Dawn slammed a burst of white wind into it like a powerful hammer. Unable to fully control his actions, Perlin hadn't been able to charge his wing with that shimmering quality that turned its nature into something between matter and energy. Before the awesome power of the white wind that Dawn commanded, the Dark Matter feathers cracked, then shattered as the blow hammered through.
The force of the attack drove Perlin to the floor again. He was barely able to get his right wing into position as he hit, letting it take the brunt of the force, which kept him from breaking anything. The force of impact still drove the breath from Perlin's lungs and his body left his control for a second. All Perlin could do was simply lay there, struggling to draw in his next breath.
He heard the click of hooves on the floor next to him and then felt a tiny, but intense heat directly over his neck. Dawn stood over him, his vivid turquoise eyes and their eerie, catlike pupils impassive. Dawn had reached out with one wing, resting his leading primary just over Perlin's throat. At the very tip of Dawn's feather was a tiny spark of plasma, minuscule in size, yet burning with enough intensity to make the hairs of Perlin's coat smoke with its mere proximity.
"It would seem that I won this round," said Dawn calmly. He felt slightly dazed. Coming back from that mysterious state of mind, beyond the reach of rationality, where the barriers between thought and action broke down, was still a disorienting experience for him. He felt as though everything around him was in something of a haze.
"Is that so?" asked Perlin with a smirk. He'd noticed Dawn's addled state himself. Perlin was definitely in worse shape. But he was recovering fairly quickly.
Right now, he wasn't sure if he could pull out the full potential of the Dark Matter his wings were composed of. He'd achieved that in the fight by immersing himself in the flow of battle, feeling his wings, feeling their capabilities and following through with those feelings as he fought. He would have liked more time to explore the strange qualities of his wings, but now was not the time for that. Instead, he called upon the most basic ability they possessed. From the wing he was laying on, he detached a single feather, one of the few undamaged ones he possessed.
Though Dawn was still feeling a bit detached, he felt the seam forming in the air just behind his head. He jerked to the side. His ear was nicked by the feather that flew past it like a dart. The motion pulled Dawn's wing, and the deadly spark it carried, clear of Perlin's throat. Perlin wasted no time in rolling onto his hooves and surging up. He wielded his wings like a pair of massive blades, slashing them straight at Dawn.
Dawn fell back before the sudden onslaught. His surprise was so complete at Perlin's unexpected attack that he was unable to calm his mind and return to the thoughtless state where he could marshal a power that could actually match Perlin's Dark Matter. Instead, he retaliated by drawing a wing in towards his side, pulling as much air as he could towards him before using a forward sweep of the wing to thrust that air at Perlin in a powerful, hammering gust.
Perlin's wings easily deflected and scattered the blast. But the damage they had taken from Dawn's previous attacks left gaps in their otherwise impenetrable defense. Dawn's gust was broken into countless small projectiles of air, several of which found their way through the gaps in Perlin's feathers and punched into his chest and barrel. Perlin felt something snap and a sharp pain shot through him, adding itself to the litany of complaints his body was already lodging with his brain. Perlin ignored it and drove forward, determined to press the attack and see the battle to its ultimate conclusion.
"STOP!"
The unexpected voice cut through Perlin's thoughts of fighting and winning, bringing his very consciousness to a screeching halt as he froze in place, his mind reeling on the fact that he would hear her voice, that she would even be here.
Coco Pommel stepped out from under the protective shroud of Firefly's wing and trotted towards the combatants, tears streaming from her eyes. "You have to stop this," she said, her gaze fixed on Perlin, "You can't end it this way."
"This is battle," said Perlin, his voice flat, "I have no intention of doing things halfway, whether in winning or losing."
"You're just making excuses," said Coco, "That's enough. Please don't do this...don't leave me."
"I can't..." said Perlin, his voice hitching, "I've done too much...there's no way I can turn my back on what I've done, what I've helped...This...this is the ending I deserve."
"N-no it isn't," said Coco, a whimper making its way into her voice.
"You asked me to grow up," said Perlin softly, "to take responsibility for the things I've done, for the things I do." His eyes turned back to Dawn, who had settled and was watching the exchange quietly. "This is how I choose to do it."
With that, he abandoned his conversation with Coco and turned back to Dawn, surging forward to charge at the ebony colt. However, Dawn had not been idle with the opening afforded to him by Coco's sudden interruption. Instead, he had taken the opportunity to even out his breathing, relax his body and mind, and quiet his thoughts. He sank down into that calm, thoughtless state he had spent most of the battle in, letting his consciousness spread all around him. It was even easier now than it had ever been before. He knew, before Perlin had even started moving, that the young stallion was going to shift back to an attack and Dawn was ready for him.
Dawn simply raised up his right wing, sweeping all the air on that side of him into a motion, bringing it up and over his head so that he could drive it down at Perlin as the young stallion charged in. As he did so, his feathers hummed and crackled and the air that Dawn was wielding began to buzz and glow. As he brought his wing around in its arcing motion, it brought with it a white, shining wind that inscribed a crescent above Dawn as he brought it swinging down at his opponent. Perlin, his mind too preoccupied by Coco, her words, and his feelings, was unprepared when he saw Dawn's wing descend.
"NO!" Coco threw herself at Perlin and Dawn. She'd started moving even before the two warriors had. She'd seen in Perlin's eyes what he was about to do and she didn't even pause to think about her own safety as she thrust herself between them.
Dawn had sensed Coco's approach and was trying to divert the force of his blow to the side. However, even with his extended awareness, he'd been too focused on Perlin to react properly. The attack would probably only graze Coco, but that would be enough to rend her flesh and pulverize her bones.
Coco felt a pair of arms wrap around her and something soft and warm rest over her back. Perlin had completely abandoned his attack and had instead turned to catch Coco as she leapt at him, wrapping his wings around her and turning so that they, along with his body, were interposed between her and Dawn's attack.
The shining wind Dawn wielded glanced off Perlin's wings, stripping off even more of his feathers, practically ripping them out of his flesh so that they left trails of blood through the air. The force of the blow, glancing though it was, sent Perlin and Coco flying. They hit the floor hard, at a shallow angle. Perlin's wings, still wrapped around Coco, deflected the impact and sent them skipping off like a stone across the surface of a pond. They hit the wall of the Palace entryway with enough force to make the entire construct shudder, sending dust and debris flying through the air, blocking them completely from view.
Dawn gaped, all thoughts of maintaining his inner peace and continuing the fight vanishing as fear gripped him. "Coco!" The fight forgotten, he bounded towards the cloud of dust, his eyes searching for any sign that Coco was all right. He might have worried about Perlin as well, but, as far as Dawn was concerned, any fate Perlin suffered was the ultimate outcome of their duel and was something he was prepared to accept. Coco, who he'd come to see as something of a sister (whether an older or younger one was up for debate), was his true concern at the moment.
A sweep of his wing drove away the cloud of dust and Dawn saw Perlin there, his body actually embedded in the wall. His left wing seemed to have taken the brunt of the impact, but Dawn could see that Perlin hadn't escaped unscathed. One of his hind legs was bent at an unpleasant looking angle and the burn marks from Dawn's plasma were still clearly visible. However, Dawn's gaze immediately went to the young mare Perlin had wrapped in his arms and wings.
For a moment, Coco was still, her eyes clenched shut, her face pressed to the base of Perlin's neck. Dawn felt his heart skip a beat. Did I kill her? Then he saw her twitch. Her eyes fluttered, then slowly opened and she pulled her face away enough to begin looking up at Perlin. Dawn felt his knees go weak with relief when he saw that she was moving and, apparently, not in any pain.
"A-are you all right?" asked Perlin carefully, tilting his head to look down at Coco. He'd hit it against something. His left eye was glazed and framed by a small stream of blood flowing from a cut above it.
"I'm fine," said Coco.
"Are you crazy?" he asked, a hint of anger finding its way into his voice, "What were you thinking, throwing yourself into the middle of that? You could have been killed."
"You would have been killed," said Coco softly.
"That was my decision," said Perlin, "I wanted to see this fight through to the end..."
"Is that what you really wanted?" asked Coco, gazing up at Perlin with an uncharacteristically serious expression, "You wanted to die...?"
"I..." Perlin seemed to have difficulty expressing himself. He averted his hawklike eyes away from Coco. "It's...I've done a lot of thinking, especially about the things we talked about, about the ponies I've hurt, the problems I've caused. There's no way I can make up for that. I can't just...make things 'right.' Because of that...I'm not the kind of pony who should be with you-ow!" His diatribe was cut off by a pained yelp as Coco thumped a hoof against his chest.
"Stop that!" she said firmly, her eyes tearing up. Despite her tears, Coco's expression was resolute. "Just giving up like that...fighting to the death, just so you don't have to face what you've done...that's just another kind of running away. That's not going to solve anything. It's not going to make up for anything you've done. It's not going to bring back anypony you've killed. It's not growing up and taking responsibility at all.
"If you really want to grow up, you have to live. You have to face the things you've done and accept you can't change them. It's what you do afterwards that matters." Sniffling, Coco pressed her face against Perlin's neck again. "I understand that it's hard. But I don't want you to die. Isn't that reason enough?"
Perlin blinked and looked down at Coco, his eyes wide. His heart was thudding alarmingly, its beat actually sending pangs of pain through his injured ribs. But that didn't matter to him. Coco's words were like the sunlight cutting through fog. Slowly, he began to tighten his hold on her.
Dawn coughed politely, drawing Perlin's attention to him. "In all honesty," he said, "This is probably the most I've ever enjoyed myself, especially in the heat of battle. You've shown me something that I would have never realized otherwise.
"It would be a shame to let it end here. Because of that, I would like it if we could meet and fight again...especially sometime when the fate of the world isn't at stake. Perhaps that might be enough to convince you to continue living as well."
Perlin smiled. It was a softer smile than the one he usually wore, nothing like the slightly manic look of the young stallion who lost himself to the throes of battle. Instead, Perlin's smile was laden with relief and gratitude. "I suppose you two aren't going to give me much of a choice in the matter."
Dawn smiled back. "Take it from a pony who has lived a difficult life, one that has often left me contemplating whether it was worth living on to see the next day. At my lowest, I sometimes pondered the idea of letting everything end, of giving up..."
Perlin swallowed. "And...?"
"And I realized something," said Dawn. He approached Perlin. Firefly joined him and, together, the two of them carefully began to pry Perlin and Coco out of the crater the'd left in the wall so that they could gently lower the pair to the floor.
"I realized that death was easy," continued Dawn, "So very easy...It's so easy that it can happen completely by accident, as simple as getting out of bed the wrong way. Look the wrong direction, go right instead of left, and it's all over. Even if that never happens to you, even if you never end up dying in battle or as a consequence of some horrific disaster, death will still be there at the end of everything. In a sense, it's the one option that never has any conditions or time limits. It's always available and it is never retracted."
"That doesn't sound very encouraging," said Perlin.
"It may not be encouraging, but it is easy," replied Dawn, "Dying is very easy, and the chance will always be there. Knowing that, I realized that it was so easy, I could do it anytime. And if I could do it anytime, would it really hurt all that much to put it off a little longer and to try and see if things might change for the better. After all, if they don't, then death is still there...always. You can die anytime. So, in the meantime, why not live a little longer?"
"And that worked?" asked Perlin, his eyes wide. He still held tightly to Coco, as though he was almost afraid she would disappear if he let her go. For her part, Coco didn't seem to be in any particular hurry to separate herself from the young stallion and probably wouldn't until it was time for his injuries to be seen to.
"For a time," said Dawn, "It's a rather morbid approach to staving off suicide, but it worked for a little while, stalling on the idea of dying to see if things would get better. That train of thought won't last forever."
"What did you do?" asked Perlin.
"I found something better," said Dawn, beaming, "I found things that I never thought I would get to have. I found a home, a family...love..." He blushed and looked away, eliciting giggles from Coco and Firefly. "...I found things worth living for, things that made it so that death didn't have to be something I kept putting off. But those things, the life I have now...all of the that would have disappeared if I'd chosen death, if I'd given up. Once you truly choose it, death is the only option and there is no going back. If you'd ended up dying against me today, all of this..." He waved a hoof to encompass Perlin and Coco. "...would have ended. There would be nothing left after that."
Perlin stared silently at Dawn for a moment. Finally, he let out a morose chuckle and looked away. "How did you get to be so philosophical, kid?"
Dawn smirked. "You tend to do a lot of thinking, living by yourself in the wilderness for a year."
"That makes sense," said Perlin. He let out a sigh that became a pained grunt as the exhalation stung his injured ribs. "You win...I guess. I give up. I'll try to live a little longer." He smiled down at Coco. "I guess I've found something that makes it worthwhile."
"I'm glad to hear that," said Dawn.
The floor beneath their hooves shuddered and then jolted. Startled, Dawn's eyes shot up to the way his mother and her friends had taken further into the Palace. He felt something down there, something alien. He'd been so engrossed in his fight with Perlin, he'd failed to notice the strange pulsing, dislocating feeling that had washed over the battlefield for a brief instant. Now that he recalled it, he realized that the very thing they had come to stop might well have happened. His gut churned and Dawn realized that the day wasn't over yet. Just because he had won his fight, it didn't mean that the threat presented by Wight Shade had vanished. He needed to see this all the way through to the end.
"I need to go," said Dawn, setting off toward the throne room.
"Be careful," said Firefly.
Her words made Dawn pause and turn to look her over. He realized that Firefly had not moved to join him. She gave the colt an apologetic smile. "I'm spent," she said, "I used myself up out there. I'm afraid I'm not going to be much help in a fight. It's one of those things that happens when you get to be my age. I'll stay back and look after these two." She jerked her head at Coco and Perlin. "Honestly, I'm amazed you've still got so much energy left."
Dawn nodded and turned to gallop down the hallway. Behind him, he could hear and feel the Royal Guards moving to take charge of the situation. Firefly turned to address them, apparently dictating instructions for Perlin's treatment. Then they were out of the range of Dawn's wind-sense and he had to focus all of his attention on what lay ahead.


The feathered masses of Wight Shade's wings had completely detached themselves from his back as the feathers swirled about Twilight Sparkle like a cyclone. As they spun through the air, they caught the light coming in through the windows and refracted it into an alien spectrum of colors that no words could possibly describe. The swirling maelstrom of feathers extended upwards and downwards, reaching both the floor and ceiling until it was a massive, whirling column. Then, gradually, the feathers seemed to merge together, their individual shapes melting and melding together until the column was now a single, solid, spinning object. Then, slowly, the spinning halted and Wight looked upon the fruit of his labors.
The column of off-white looked like a cloudy mass of crystal. If one looked closely enough, the texture of the surface was still clearly that of feathers, as though their shapes had been etched into the surface with a tiny pick. Though it was hazy, it wasn't completely opaque. The view of what lay on the other side of the crystal column was blocked. But within it, one could see the dark shadow of what was clearly a unicorn contained within.
Wight took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then he wiped his arm across his forehead.
"It looks like that fight made you sweat," observed Kombu as the chartreuse stallion carefully picked his way over from where he'd been hiding, outside the main entrance of the throne room, "I didn't even know that body of yours could sweat."
"She certainly put me through my paces," said Wight, "Right there, at the end, she very nearly had me. If I hadn't taken that opportunity to stop her, she'd have won. She was on the verge of creating an entirely new magic."
"A spell to counter Dark Matter?" asked Kombu skeptically.
Wight shook his head. "Not a new spell, but an entirely new magic, just as I was forced to redevelop my magic after rebuilding my body from Dark Matter, she would have invented a new magic, beholden to a completely different set of rules from what unicorns know. It would have been to magic itself what my Dark Matter is to physical substance."
"Incredible," breathed Kombu, casting a shocked gaze at the figure of the imprisoned unicorn.
"Fortunately, in order to do so, she'd completely abandoned all attempts at defense and offense and left herself open at a critical moment," said Wight, "which was quite fortunate, as it turned out, as I suspect she might have beaten me without any new magic, the way things were going."
"Really?" inquired Kombu, raising an eyebrow.
Wight nodded. "She understands my Dark Matter and its nature better than anypony, including you. Over the course of our little fight, she accomplished many feats I would have deemed impossible, had she not pulled them off right in front of my face. It's safe to say that Twilight Sparkle most certainly deserves her renown as a mage."
"What have you done with her then?" asked Kombu.
"Now that I've captured her, I'm linking her mind to the control matrix for the array. From there, I will have her work out the final calculations to execute the array's full activation. Once that is completed, I will initiate dimensional separation." He chuckled. "Thanks to Twilight Sparkle, work that I had anticipated taking several more weeks will be complete in less than an hour."
"Are you sure that there will be no risk to her hijacking control of the array's matrix?" asked Kombu, "You've put her in the perfect position to do that."
"I'm monitoring her thought-process," said Wight nonchalantly, "I've built in a compulsion that will drive her mind to work out the calculations. If she consciously tries to take control of that process and use that to circumvent my own control over the array, she could theoretically do that. However, as long as I maintain an active awareness of her thought-process, she won't be able to get away with it."
The expression on his face was positively giddy. "It's amazing," he said breathlessly, "In a few moments, everything I've worked for, all the years I've spent, all the efforts, hiding and misdirection will finally bear fruit. At last...it's time."
Kombu swallowed and shuffled awkwardly. He wished he could share his teacher's enthusiasm. After all, even if he had complete faith in Morning-No!-Wight Shade's brilliance, he couldn't shake the feeling that he had just abetted the end of the world as he knew it. More importantly, after the uproar Wight had caused, Kombu doubted that there was any way he would escape unscathed, even if Wight was completely successful. Odds were that Kombu would not be escaping back to his life of luxury as the pony managing his nominal ward's estates. If he were lucky, he might be able to escape imprisonment, possibly long enough to escape Equestria itself. The Knights, the Element Bearers, even the Princesses would probably have enough on their hooves in the aftermath to not worry about him. However, Kombu knew that they would come after him eventually.
But worrying about that would come later. Right now, what was important was focusing on accomplishing Wight's goals for the present. The array wasn't running just yet. Even if the accomplishment of Wight's goals was minutes away, those were minutes where things could still be derailed if they were careless.
"So..." rumbled a deep voice, trembling with rage, "...does this mean that this was the root of everything I believed?"
Looking over to the throne room doors, Wight and Kombu saw the voice's source, a large, dark brown earth pony, his coat the color of freshly-turned earth. Sprouting from his neck was a ragged mane that, normally, would have been the color of newly grown wheat. However, its color was dulled and streaked with filth. Terra Heart had once had a truly magnificent physique, looking like he had been carved from the side of a mountain. His muscles, smooth and taut, had looked like steel cables beneath his skin. However, now he looked thin an wiry. His skin was folded in spots and his stomach sagged. It almost looked as though he'd gained decades of age in the few months he'd been imprisoned. His gray eyes were shot through with red and dark shadows beneath them suggested sleepless nights. He was a far cry from the almost perfect specimen of an earth pony he'd once been. But his figure was imposing nonetheless and his rage was a palpable force throughout the room.
Wight blinked and rolled his eyes up in thought for a moment before regarding Terra again. "Oh! I'd forgotten all about you. That's curious, I thought you would have been amongst the recruits for my little air force." He tilted his head to one side. "It must have been because you weren't housed with the general prisoners." As usual, there was no taunt in Wight's tone. He spoke as though he were simply having trouble recalling a memory of an unimportant event.
"Are you really him?" demanded Terra, "Are you really our Holy Father, the Supreme Pontiff?”
Wight shrugged indifferently. A second later, patches of pink began to spread across his coat, like new skin suddenly growing over his body. After a few seconds, the familiar form of Morning Star stood before Terra, looking just as he had the last time that Terra had seen him. "In the flesh," he said, "Though there's a bit more to it. I doubt that matters to you, though."
"Everything I did, it was for the good of Equestria, for the good of ponykind," Terra snarled as he advanced. A single step from his hoof made the floor jump. It seemed that, despite his emaciated state, his magic was just as potent as ever. "I fought with the whole of my body and soul because I believed our cause was just, because I believed that Princess Celestia had blessed us, because I believed that Nightmare Moon and her ilk were a poison upon this world.
"Then I came to Ponyville and I found one of Princess Celestia's personal champions there, one who fought me and called everything I had fought for false. When I met Princess Celestia herself, she scorned me and gave me nothing but disgust for all that I had done in her name. I languished in her dungeon whilst her niece tried incessantly to pry knowledge of the Order from me. I refused to answer any of her queries because I still held hope that this was just another test of my faith, that Princess Celestia was testing my resolve..."
Terra waved a hoof, his gesture encompassing the throne room and all it contained. "Are you telling me that it was all a lie?"
Wight stood there, his expression impassive, raising an eyebrow. When he saw that Terra seemed to truly expect an answer from him, Wight spoke. "Yep. Pretty much."
The angry rumble that escaped from Terra's snout set the floor to shaking. Small chunks of stone that littered around the throne room, fragments of the previous battles, danced and bounced about. The palpable feeling of Terra's rage doubled and the entire room became heavy beneath the weight of his killing intent.
Kombu let out a frightened whimper and shrank back from the powerful earth pony warrior, one who was said to have mastered the Mountain Root. Beneath his hooves, he felt the floor tip, as though he were in danger of sliding across the marble and landing right at Terra's hooves. He scrabbled backwards, but that did not lessen the feeling that he was about to plummet to a very nasty demise.
"All of it..." demanded Terra, "Was it all lies?"
Wight blinked in confusion. "What? Are you asking for an actual percentage of lies to truth or something...That's just silly-wait! Hold on." Once again, he turned his eyes upwards in thought. "That's a bit tricky to answer. I tried to use the truth as much as possible, since I wasn't very good a lying when I started this. Naturally, that didn't go very far, because there wasn't much truth to go on to begin with.
"I mean...you could consider the previous works and directives of the Order that I drew upon as truth, sort of...I was building off what they said. That said, I did lie quite a bit. I lied when I couldn't sufficiently stretch the truth to suit my needs. I lied whenever it was convenient for me and I had a reasonable hope of pulling it off without getting it caught. I lied especially hard when it came to justifying the foci for the array as temples. I even went so far as to doctor the 'ancient texts' I 'found' so that I could show anypony who was curious just how I had 'discovered' the array's design. I was actually disappointed that nopony ever asked to see them. I'd put a lot of work into that after all."
The low rumble emanating from Terra reached fever-pitch. The floor beneath his hooves cracked and he abruptly sank a solid inch, as though he'd gained several tons of weight in less than a second. His eyes narrowed and his muscles, thin and atrophied though they were, tensed like springs as he sank into a crouch.
The motion roused Wight from his introspection and his mutterings ceased as he saw that Terra was preparing to attack. "I really wouldn't advise that," said Wight calmly, clearly unbothered by Terra's killing intent, "As skilled as you are in the ways of the Mountain Root, you don't have any hope of doing me any harm. I suggest you be on your way...perhaps find something productive to do with your life. I no longer have any need for your loyalty after all."
If Wight's words were meant to calm Terra's rage, they were severely ill-considered. Instead, it was like trying to douse an open flame with a stream of lamp oil. Terra let out an outraged roar. In an instant, he was within arm's reach of Wight, looking as though he'd crossed the distance between them in a single step. However, the sequence of impacting sounds against the floor and the cratered hoofsteps left in Terra's wake said otherwise. Terra slammed all four of his hooves simultaneously into the floor and leaned forward to strike...
...Only to be cut off by a flash of white that crossed his vision. In an instant, a single white wing sprouted from Wight's left shoulder and slashed across in front of him. The feathers carved through Terra's flesh with frightening ease. Even though it was strengthened with all the power he could muster as a practitioner of the Mountain Root, Terra's flesh parted easily. His hindquarters were sent flying off to the side of the throne room, while his front half went tumbling just past Wight Shade's left side, both halves of his body leaving a bloody trail as they went.
Though he felt the life ebbing from his body, Terra was determined not to let Wight off without landing at least one blow. Terra slammed his forehooves into the floor and pushed off, ignoring pain and his faltering physical strength, fueling his actions purely with his magic and will, pushing himself far beyond the limits of what even the greatest of earth ponies should have been capable of in his current state.
With just his forelegs, Terra was able to launch the remaining half of his body into the air in a leap that carried him over Wight so that he would descend upon Wight's back like a falling boulder, his hooves outstretched to deliver his absolute final blow.
In an instant, five more white wings burst out of Wight's back, all angling upward, their feathers splayed out and piercing through Terra's flesh as though it were paper. For a second, Terra hung suspended from the countless feathers pierced through him, his hooves mere inches away from Wight's spine. Then the wings disappeared into a flurry of blurs, slicing Terra's body to pieces and scattering the dismembered parts across the room so completely that not even a single drop of blood landed on Wight's body.
Wight Shade stood there, one hoof slightly upraised, his mouth hanging open as though he'd been intending to say something else to Terra before he attacked. "Um..." His eyes traced the path of Terra's line of attack, trying to figure out what had just happened. "Uh..." He looked overhead where Terra had been about to crush him only seconds earlier. "Well..." He cast his eyes about the room, taking in the spectacle of the scattered chunks of flesh and globules of blood, as well as the severed set of hindquarters lying off to one side of the room. "...Never mind then. Now that I think about it, I don't think he was ever really one for listening. I always had to work really hard to get through to him when he was in one of his moods. I guess it's a good thing I upgraded the auto-defense function of my wings. I didn't even see what he did."
"You!?"
Wight's eyes snapped back to the main doors of the throne room as yet another visitor arrived. The ebony colt stared at Wight Shade with wide eyes, fully displaying their turquoise color and slit-shaped pupils. Dawn Lightwing stood there, aghast at what he saw.