Reaper generated one last shield, thwarting three dark tendrils for a moment. Another half-dozen pitch-black ribbons shot out of the heart of the Void as Grey Thorn gasped and struggled to maintain consciousness.
Reaper turned to Luna and Twilight: “OK--I’m going to cut around the end of this shield, and engage Grey Thorn as close-in as I can. I’m not affected by the pull of that thing, nor by the cloud it generates. I want to drain him of what little life energy he has left, so he either dies or is sucked inside that Void of his!”
“What should we do?” asked Twilight, “I don’t know how much more energy I have left. I don’t think my attacks will have much effect!”
“No attacks!” He shouted, as he dashed off to the right, “Pump every scrap of power you have into that shield, and hold on for dear life!”
Reaper cleared the end of the shield, and began hurling crimson bolts at Grey Thorn, running directly in the path of the Void’s nimbus, slashing at tendrils with his sword.
“Come on, you warlock!” he shouted as he ran, looking up at Grey Thorn, suspended limply, several feet off the floor, blood running down his front legs.
Grey Thorn’s horn flashed a deep gold, and a blast of magic scored the floor next to Reaper, as two tendrils lashed out, nearly entangling him.
Reaper rolled hard to his left, sending out another wave of magic from his horn, blinding Grey Thorn for a moment.
“What are you so afraid of, old-timer?” Reaper yelled, as he turned in for another pass. “Do you resent me for taking your mother? Or taking your mentor? Your time has come, one way or another, so you need to make your peace, now, before your own creation does the job I should have done a thousand years ago!”
“It is my creation! My servant! Even now, weakened as I am, it still lifts me up, and obeys my will!” Grey Thorn gasped as the Void lunged forward, nearly dropping him.
Reaper dashed behind Grey Thorn and the Void, brushing the back wall of the chamber, stumbling on shattered bones and skulls:
“How’re you two holding up, over there? I can’t see much of the shield!”
Luna shouted back, “I believe we may make it yet! Twilight and I are just holding the shield intact!”
“Hold on another second--I’ll be right there!” Reaper replied, sliding around the left side of the Void, phasing and passing through the swirling nimbus.
“We might just get out of this OK, after all!”
Reaper slid to a sudden stop, and shielded his eyes as a blinding beam of pure white radiance fell across his face. He glanced back at Grey Thorn in alarm, and saw several more pencil-thin beams of searing white light pierce the Void’s outer gloom.
“Oh, shit!” he cried out, and began running back toward Luna and Twilight. He could hear the distant howls of Celestia’s rage.
“It appears my sister may actually succeed in burning through the barrier wall!” Luna said. “Impressive!”
“Not the word I’d use!” Reaper replied, hastily rebuilding the crumbling shield, as the Void swelled, and Grey Thorn roused, his torn and bleeding chest beginning to mend.
Grey Thorn coughed out a mouthful of blood: “It appears everypony thought to bring gifts today!”
The Void rose like a tidal wave, nearly blotting out the ceiling, as more ribbons of Celestia’s energy streamed through fissures in the barrier wall.
Reaper gritted his teeth: “We have to end this now!”
He leaped over the barrier wall, shouting back over his shoulder: “Fight with every ounce of strength you have! When this shield falls, dig in and resist ‘til the bitter end!”
He formed a brilliant blue wedge of shield energy in front of his sword, and rammed straight into the swirling mass of dark cloud at the base of the Void, his horn firing a continual crimson beam at Grey Thorn.
Grey Thorn gasped as Reaper’s magic lanced across his wounded chest: “I agree--let us end this!”
The Void crashed like a falling tower, sweeping aside the shield, sending Reaper tumbling off to one side. It shot out a dozen new tendrils, nearly subsuming Grey Thorn in the process, sucking in air, dust and debris.
Twilight and Luna formed their own protective bubbles, and leaned forward, digging their hooves into the floor, laying their ears flat.
Reaper ran toward them, dodging four new tendrils, slashing and phasing as fast as he could: “Fight!! Dig in! Give everything you have!!”
Bright gashes were now appearing on the barrier wall, making a stark contrast with the Stygian blackness of the Void, backlighting the two alicorns as their protective bubbles tore away. They began to scream.
Reaper phased through two more tendrils as the Void poured in behind him like flood waters.
“This is it!” he cried, “Don’t move! Resist! Put your heads down and pour your power out like your life’s blood!”
Luna and Twilight knelt forward, hooves scraping as they were pulled forward, and touched their horns to the floor, sending out sheets of blue and purple magic in an effort to stay their slide. It was to no avail.
Twilight toppled forward, wings stretched wide, crying out in pain and terror, as Reaper slashed through a tendril with a blue-tinged sweep of his sword.
He landed just behind Twilight, who was struggling to get her back legs under her again, but was losing her balance, and was an instant from rolling forward into three waiting tendrils.
With a single, swift thrust of his magic, Reaper drove his sword down through Twilight’s right hip. It penetrated through the length of her upper leg, and emerged below the back of her knee, driving several inches into the stone floor below.
She shrieked in agony and fainted, collapsing forward. But she was pinned to the floor, and was no longer sliding toward the Void.
Without breaking stride, Reaper finished his sword stroke, and bounded toward Luna, who was also tottering forward, being pulled off her feet, a look of panic in her eyes.
“Point your horn at the floor and give it all you have!” Reaper shouted as he reared back and leaped into the air, hind legs leading.
He landed with full force on the back of Luna’s head, driving her horn into the rock beneath her face, denting her helmet and smashing in her mouth and nose.
Luna gave out a muffled cry of pain and fear, spattering the dust with her blood, but she, too, was stuck fast.
Reaper jumped away from the now-prostrate alicorns, sliding to a stop directly in front of them, tipping forward and pouring all the energy he could muster into repelling the Void.
“You are truly alone, now, Harbinger!” Grey Thorn crowed, “So let me clean up after you, for once!”
The Void began to pull in everything in front of it with an irresistible suction. Even Reaper began to slide slowly forward into the looming darkness.
“Do it!!” he cried “Unleash this abomination on all Equestria! It will be your legacy!”
Whole sections of the barrier, weakened by Celestia’s assault, began to split and peel away, allowing waves of pure solar rage to flow through.
“Yes!” Grey Thorn shrieked, eyes ablaze with naked power, as the Void spread out against the crumbling ceiling like a thunderhead.
Twilight’s pinned body twitched and strained as the Void’s pull started tearing it to pieces, ripping away her wings and forelegs, as blood poured out on the floor, only to be whisked away into the maelstrom. She let out a choked whimper as she drowned in her own blood.
Likewise, at that same moment, Luna’s body lifted partially from the floor and twisted sideways at a grotesque angle around her stationary head. Her neck snapped, and her eyes rolled up in her head.
“STOP!!”
Everything in the chamber froze. The Void towered above Twilight’s shattered remains, and Luna’s twisted, broken body. It spread behind an exultant Grey Thorn like a vast, evil bird of prey, mere inches from his back. It rose in front of Reaper like the very End of Time incarnate.
Then Reaper stepped forward, as though walking out of a picture, and turned back to the two dead Princess’ bodies.
He walked up first to Twilight and leaned forward, touching his horn to her severed head. Then he stepped over to Luna and touched his horn to hers. A faint shimmer arose from both bodies.
He turned around again, and regarded Grey Thorn: “You’re right--everypony did bring a gift today! They brought the gifts of their lives, and you provided the gift of death!”
“I know you can’t hear me now--not in the conventional sense--but your mind can perceive my thoughts,” he continued, taking another step forward, peering closely at the margins of the Void.
Reaper tipped his head sideways and stared into Grey Thorn’s eyes: “And you finally underestimated your opponents one, last time. The power of death and its resolution in Equestria is given to me, and to me alone. At this place, for this moment, my authority is unrivaled: not yours, not Celestia’s, not the Void’s--mine.”
He took several steps back and looked over his shoulder at Luna’s dark, bulging eyes: “The instant those two died, I was put in charge. Their spirits are now beyond your grasp, and in a moment, when I release the suppression field, you too will meet your end.”
He looked up and down the length of the Void: “It’s not possible, but I can actually sense this thing quivering, just beyond the bounds of my perception. All things in this place are frozen in perfect suspense, but still it strains! Amazing! Your old master would have been impressed--horrified, but impressed!”
Reaper took a half-step to his left, gauging his distance to Grey Thorn, noting his exact location within the Void: “He also knew enough never to create such a monstrosity; but again, you overreached.”
“And though it would be just to let you be consumed by your own obscene creation,” he said, focusing his magical energies, again, into the form of a golden phoenix-wing-blade, blooming forth from his horn, “we’re going to trade gifts one last time.”
Reaper squared his shoulders and adjusted his cloak: “I really hope this works…”
Time suddenly resumed, and the chamber was, again, a swirling, cacophonous maelstrom of tendrils, debris, alicorn blood and feathers, and the Void, which was, at that very moment, swallowing a panicked Grey Thorn.
Reaper dove forward into the heart of the Void, driving his golden blade of magic through Grey Thorn’s chest just as both ponies were pulled inside. They screamed in tandem as the Void suddenly contracted, spinning and collapsing in on itself.
The entire chamber became as black as the Pit for an instant as all light and air were sucked into the very center of the Void with a crashing sound as though the ocean had poured all at once through the ceiling.
Then everything fell utterly silent. Celestia ceased her assault on the barrier wall, and the Void, now a perfect sphere the size of a watermelon, drifted slowly to the floor, passing through the stone surface like red-hot iron through snow.
Reaper dropped heavily to the floor and lay there, sprawled on his side and semi-conscious for a moment, until he was roused by Celestia’s howl of anguish.
As Grey Thorn died many of his wards and charms had dissolved, allowing the door to the chamber to swing open as Celestia threw her shoulder against it, and dashed into the room.
She froze in horror as she surveyed the smear that had been Twilight, her leg still staked to the floor by Reaper’s blade, and Luna’s twisted form, partially crushed under a stone block that had fallen from the ceiling.
She screamed at Reaper in rage and grief, “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!”
Reaper staggered to his hooves and turned to face Celestia as she bore down on him, eyes ablaze, pure white radiance jetting forth from her horn in a torrent.
He ducked his head and pulled his cloak across his shoulder and face as the beam coursed over and around him, turning the stone beneath his hooves molten, and scouring out a foot-deep scar all the way to the chamber’s back wall.
Reaper wobbled a few feet to his left and squinted at Celestia: “Damn it to Tartarus, Celestia, stop! I need you to focus for a minute. I’m going to try to fix this, but I need you to get hold of yourself!”
Celestia stopped in her tracks and burst into tears, running back to Luna, lifting the stone from atop her corpse and tossing it aside.
“Wha-what can you do for them now?! They’re gone!” she cried as she knelt next to her sister’s body.
Two earth pony workers and a guard unicorn tentatively stuck their heads through the entrance, and stepped inside, trying to focus as the swirling dust cleared.
“Where’s Princess Twilight?” asked one of the earth ponies, a moment before he saw her shredded leg sticking up from the floor. He furrowed his brow and tracked the smear of blood and shit from that point across the floor to the center of the room, where a pile of gore was all that remained.
The work pony retched and fell back to the doorway, coughing and spewing vomit across his co-worker’s legs as he ran.
Reaper stumbled toward his sword, retrieving it, and shooing away the traumatized guard unicorn, who stood between the Princesses’ remains, shuddering and weeping.
“Celestia! Damn it--focus!” he shouted as he stopped next to her.
Celestia was sitting next to Luna’s still body, weeping and stroking her crumpled left wing: “Oh little sister, what will I do without you?”
“If you help keep everypony out of this space, you might not have to find out!” Reaper interjected sharply.
Celestia’s head snapped up as she glared: “Butcher! What more damage can you do?! There’s nothing left of Twilight, and Luna is shattered! Just leave me here to grieve...”
Reaper closed his eyes and spoke slowly, “If you will please get everypony out of here, I will see if I can’t make Entropy come out on the wrong side for once. I didn’t come into this without a plan, you know!”
He gently helped Celestia up, and guided her a few steps away. He then levitated Luna’s limp, oozing body, and placed it next to the largest remaining piece of Twilight’s torso.
Reaper folded his legs under and knelt down between the two bodies: “I’ll be gone about a minute, and if this doesn’t work, I’ll stand against the wall and let you do your worst!”
He dropped his head, closed his eyes, and faded into translucence.