The remaining 5 Bearers all turned to face Fluttershy as the rainbow engulfed her in a tornado of color. Their Elements all tugged towards Fluttershy, then shot forth beams shaped like their gems. The beams struck the rainbow tornado around Fluttershy. Their power made the tornado grow and spin even faster. The colors in the rainbow got brighter and brighter, until they were a blinding pure white flash of light.
Then everything was still.
“Fluttershy?” Twilight asked tentatively.
Before them stood an immense, proud pegasus. As tall as Celestia, with equivalent wingspan and a similar form of equine perfection. Butter yellow body. Exceedingly long mane and tail; translucent shimmering pink, purple, and teal; all blowing in an ethereal wind. Broad yellow wings with pink and teal highlights. No horn. A large pink butterfly cutie mark, surrounded by a flock of smaller pink and teal butterflies. And great blue eyes that looked down at her friends.
“Uhmm?” Fluttershy said, as she examined her body. It felt perfectly natural, even wonderful. But the perspective of looking down at her friends felt... wrong.
“Fluttershy, your Element,” Rarity whispered. Everyone looked. Her Element had become a broad golden peytral, with a large pink butterfly jewel at the center. Above the butterfly was a medium sized six pointed purple star jewel. Flanking them were smaller jewels of a balloon, diamond, apple, and rainbow lightning bolt. Fluttershy also wore matching golden hoof boots with pink butterfly jewels.
“Her Element? What about our Elements,” Dash said. Everypony checked and saw their crowns and necklace were now empty of jewels. The remaining gold hung heavy. The items no longer held any power.
“You been doing amazing stuff all day Shy; you had to take our Elements too?” Applejack said.
“I didn’t mean to...”
“Hold on.” Twilight thought fast. “I don’t think Fluttershy did anything we haven’t done every other time we used the Elements of Harmony. I think the Elements themselves decided to do something different.”
“Why the switcheroo?” asked Pinkie.
“Maybe because this time, hitting the shadow thing down there with a rainbow wouldn't solve the problem,” Rarity said.
“And maybe Rainbow Shy can?” asked Dash.
Before they could all settle the debate, reality reared its ugly head.
“Incoming!” cried Commander Fairweather. He and the nurses all leapt and rolled to the side.
A giant tentacle of shadow, thicker than the tallest tree in the Everfree Forest, reached up from the valley floor and over the edge of the garden. It slammed down with the force of a falling building. The girls scattered. The gazebo was crushed to splinters and the ground shook.
The geyser of shadows had solidified into a dozen monstrous black tentacles, all reaching toward the castle and its surroundings.
“Them shadows have a powerful mad on about this castle,” said Applejack.
“Here comes it’s big brother!” Pinkie called.
A second shadow tentacle, taller and thicker than the first, hammered down toward the ponies in the garden.
“I’ll handle it; nopony but I can!” Fluttershy made a single powerful beat of her wings, and rocketed up to interposed herself between the shadow and her friends. The tentacle hit her with the force to shatter buildings. There was a rainbow flash. Fluttershy didn’t move an hoof-width; the top of the shadow tentacle shattered instead.
The remains of the tentacle slammed down into the cliff at the edge of the garden. The cliff face fell away. Rarity and Pinkie were knocked off the cliff and began plummeting toward the valley floor.
“I’ve got Pinkie, you get Rarity!” Dash called to Fluttershy. She rocketed into the air, made a sharp turn and headed down.
Fluttershy looked down and saw her falling friends. Dash was making a clean pickup on Pinkie. But Rarity was falling fast. Fluttershy kicked her back hooves in the air to flip around, beat her great wings, and zoomed down as fast as she could after Rarity.
Giant shadow tentacles lashed at Fluttershy as she sped straight down. She ignored them, and they shattered when they hit her.
Somehow in all the excitement, Fluttershy was too busy acting to be scared. And after all she’d been through, she wasn’t so much scared of being hurt, as she was of doing the wrong thing. She could do things nopony could do. So long as she kept doing the first thing that came to mind, she might be okay. Now she just had to catch Rarity.
Fluttershy wrapped all four legs around Rarity to hold her tight. Once Fluttershy got her grip, she glanced down, and realized her error. She was too close to the valley floor, and was moving down so fast, she didn’t see how she could stop in time.
She decided not to stop. She extended her wings to the maximum, and leaned over, converting the downward movement into a high speed left turn. The force of the turn was so great that Rarity let out a loud groan, then blacked out.
As Fluttershy got near the valley floor, still diving at considerable speed, the roiling shadow rose to meet her. She continued her turn, and flew parallel to the ground, weaving between giant bursting bubbles of black shadow. Fluttershy didn’t want to find out would happen to Rarity if the bubbling black goo touched her.
In a flash, Fluttershy emerged from the depths of the hollow and flew past the edge of the roiling shadows. The valley floor rose quickly, and her turn was not tight enough to avoid an impact. The extended primary feathers on her left wing hit the rising ground... and the ground lost.
Her wing tore up great divots, shattered boulders, and threw soil hundreds of feet into the air. Fluttershy’s flight path was undeterred. She quickly completed her turn and climbed to a safe distance.
Rarity recovered consciousness, and grabbed on, chest to chest in Fluttershy's firm grip. She opened her mouth to thank her saviour, when her whole body shuddered. Rarity traced the feeling of revulsion to her treasure finding sense.
“Are you alright?” Fluttershy asked.
“Just repulsed,” Rarity replied. “Not by you, darling. By a veritable underground mountain of hideous black crystals full of the dark magic that Twilight warned us about. So long as the crystals are there to power the tentacles, I don’t see how we can stop them from attacking the castle.”
“What are we going to do?” Fluttershy asked.
“I don’t know,” Rarity replied. “But I do know I am forever grateful for your timely rescue. Rarity put a hoof up to give Fluttershy a friendly pat. Her hoof brusted Fluttershy’s golden peytral, and naturally went to the glittering diamond from Rarity’s Element. The diamond responded to her touch, flaring brightly. Both Rarity and Fluttershy’s eyes opened wide.
“I feel it,” Fluttershy said. “I feel the dark mountain underground.”
“We’re sharing my special talent” Rarity replied. “I didn’t know that was possible.”
Fluttershy didn’t respond. She was using Rarity’s special sense to map out the location of the dark mountain underground. She fixed the perimeter and the depth in her mind. Then she spotted the divot her wing had made, and had an idea.
Dash flew back down after depositing Pinkie back in the garden. “You caught Rarity! Good save, Shy!”
“Dash, can you get Rarity back to the girls? I have an idea I want to try.”
“Got it,” Dash said. “Rarity, it’s your turn for the Rainbow Express!” She grabbed Rarity from Fluttershy and sped back to the castle garden.
“This is crazy,” Fluttershy whispered. “First a train, then a castle, and now this. Nopony can do these things. Well, as Twilight said, today I am that nopony!”
Fluttershy rolled into a dive, then beat her wings to accelerate. Faster and faster, until the air before her started to luminess. She flew round and round, just above the ground, encircling the underground mountain. Her turning speed was so great, she flew perpendicular to the ground.
Then she dipped the primaries of her left wing into the ground, with no more trepidation than Dash skimming her wingtips across a pond. However, the effect was far more dramatic.
In an instant, Fluttershy dug a trench all the way around the roiling black shadows, and the dark underground mountain that powered them. With each revolution she dove deeper, and by the third she had disappeared from view. The mark of her passing was a giant rooster tail of shattered stone and soil.
Above the Canterlot Castle Garden, Twilight had her hooves full, keeping the tentacles from smashing castle. She was holding off some with blasts from her horn, keeping others from impacting with magenta shields, and flying like crazy to keep the rest from swatting her out of the sky. She was quickly using up the power that triggering the Elements of harmony had gifted her. And she had been so busy fighting that she hadn’t been able to find out anything more about their enemy.
Her friends had been heroic as usual. Dash saved Pinkie from falling and moments later brought Rarity back to the garden after she also fell off the cliff. Applejack galloped every corridor in Canterlot Castle, and directed the second evacuation of the day in record time.
The Royal Guard also rose to the occasion. Pegasi saved ponies from falling into the valley after attacks. Unicorns volley fired magic blasts that diverted hammering tentacles. And Earth Ponies saved countless compatriots from falling debris.
“But this is all for nothing if something doesn’t break our way soon,” Twilight thought.
An amazingly loud RRRRRRRR sounded from the valley below. It didn’t stop, but went on and on. The tentacles suddenly stopped attacking and waved in agitation. They receded and criss crossed, ignoring Canterlot Castle and probing the valley floor.
“Something like that!” Twilight called.
A wall of flying rock and dirt encircled the shadows. When a shadow tentacle probed the wall, it swiftly pulled back. Its tip had been shredded.
Fluttershy had to have made the wall. Twilight wasn't sure what she was doing, but it was working!
“Think, Twilight. think. It’s what you’re good at. Fluttershy’s given you your first moment to think since this started. Don’t waste it.
“I need knowledge. I need to know what is going on in order to help. And right now, the action is happening down there with Fluttershy.
“What else is down there with her? Shadows. They’re no help. She’s alone. So there’s nopony else I can contact.”
Twilight got an idea. Ideas made Twilight smile.
“Fluttershy has the all Elements. Including the Element of Magic. I’ll bet it will respond to me, even if it’s being worn by another. I’m sorry you had to take the fall for me to learn that, Sunset Shimmer.”
Twilight closed her eyes and concentrated on her connection to the Element of Magic. She imagined all the times she had triggered it, the many more times she had studied it, and the even more times she had simply worn it. “Friendship is magic,” she thought. “And the Element is magic. So the Element is my friend.”
Twilight’s eyes went white. The connection was made.
Fluttershy was deep in the ground and flying blind, except for the beacon of Rarity’s special talent. She had carved a trench all around the underground mountain of black crystal. Then she tightened up her turn to slice the black crystal above from the clean earth below.
Dirt and boulders battered her body as she flew through the ground, but they shattered on impact and didn’t even slow her down. Her wings and magic powered her through the ground as fast as they had powered her through the air. The problem, was the moment she moved on, any separation she had created with her body was instantly crushed by the huge mass above her.
“Fluttershy?”
She turned her head to find the sound, which was absurd because she was alone, deep underground, and plowing through solid rock at nearly the speed of a rainboom.
“Can you hear me?”
The voice was coming from within her own head, which was a good thing because the continuous sound of shattering stone would have overwhelmed any actual speech. But a voice in her head also seemed like a bad thing. After everything else crazy that had happened today, was she going to start hearing voices?
But she knew this voice.
“Twilight?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Twilight’s voice said. “It works! We’re connected through the Element of Magic.”
“But I’m wearing it, you don’t have your Element.”
“Nothing gets between me and my friends, and the Element of Magic is an old friend of mine!”
“So, what's going on and how can I help?” thought Twilight.
Fluttershy explained her situation. “I’m trying to use my body to separate the black crystals from their surroundings. I cut a trench around the crystals to cut them off from the sides, but everytime I try to cut off the bottom, the ground collapses and closes back up.”
“You’ve got all the Elements of Harmony working for you,” Twilight told her. “I think I can show you how to fix that.”
With a respite from the attacking tentacles, Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie, and Dash helped Commander Fairweather restore order around Canterlot Castle Garden, and make sure everypony was okay.
Applejack swiftly but gently transported wounded ponies over to the nurses. Dash re-formed flights of scattered pegasi guards Pinkie brought the nursing ponies whatever supplies they asked for, even if nopony could say exactly where she got them from. Rarity helped Commander Fairweather direct the rescue operations. The Commander gave military orders and Spike made sure they got to the right ponies in the guard. Rarity gave crisp orders to the castle staff like she had been doing so her entire life.
Dash flew back toward the garden, at the apex of a great V of pegasi guards. She scanned the valley below and saw the walls of flying rock and stone fade away. The black surface of the hollow roiled higher, and the tentacles grew back toward the castle.
“They’re coming back for round two!” Dash called.
“Heavy Armor Earth Ponies to the front. Unicorns assemble behind them,” Commander Fairweather ordered, “Pegasi in reserve in case anypony falls off the cliff.” Squads of Royal Guards followed his orders and rushed into position.
A dozen shadow tentacles reached up over the edge of the garden, and continued to climb into the sky, until their tips were above the tops of Canterlot Castle. En masse the tentacles struck down towards those assembled in the garden. There were so many tentacles attacking simultaneously, there was no where for anypony to run to.
Before the tentacles could impact, the valley filled with multi-colored light. There was a sound, like a massive explosion, except that it went on and on, and seemed like it would never stop.
The tentacles halted their attack, quaked, and again retreated below the edge of the garden cliff. Ponies scrambled over to the edge, shielded their eyes with a hoof, and gazed down.
A circle of shimmering rainbow, miles across, lit the valley and encircled the roiling pool of blackness. The shadow tentacles were disintegrating, pieces falling into and outside of the pool. The explosion sound was clearly coming from the direction of the pool.
Rainbow light flared up, rays shooting out of the encircling glow, and painting the valley walls with color. The explosion roared even louder.
Everything within the rainbow circle started to slowly rise. Only a few pony-lengths in the first few seconds, then faster and faster it climbed into the air. As it passed the level of the Canterlot Castle Garden, everypony could see a literal upside down mountain, miles across and equally tall, was accelerating into the sky. Any remaining bits of shadow tentacle or black goo that fell were explosively vaporized by a great beam of rainbow light that encircled the flat top of the mountain, and shone down into the valley below.
And glowing brighter than everything else was Fluttershy, under the bottom of the mountain, lifting it on her back and into the sky.
The assembled in the garden stopped whatever they were doing and looked on, slack jawed. Then, Dash called out, “Go! Shy Go!” And everypony joined in the cheering.
Discord slithered out from under a pile of rubble that used to be part of the Canterlot Castle outer wall. He watched the rainbow covered mountain rising past the castle. He was especially interested in the glowing yellow pegasus pushing it into the sky. “Better and better!” he said.
Discord grinned. He snapped his claw. Nothing happened. He frowned and brought his claw up in front of one eye to examine it closely. Discord snapped his claw again, and this time he disappeared.