//------------------------------//
// To Shatter 
// Story: Never Broken 
// by Torgaddon 
//------------------------------//


The air shook with the raw, unfettered fury of sanity forsaken. It howled alongside the screams of the dying.It rang in tandem with battle cries of those who, like rats in a trap, too paralyzed to run, had chosen to fight. But no matter how much the air roared it's belicose fury, it never came close to outmatching the bellowed laughter of the primordial beast that had once been Spike.

He charged into the fray like a pack of rabid wolves in the midst of a flock of sheep and tore at them with such savagery and abandon that it would have made even the barskarn of the northern wastes void their stomachs in horror.
Blood and innards flew and sprayed terror whitened daemons as Spike struck out with both the edge and the side of his blade, cutting and pummeling flesh with equal effectiveness, claiming the reaper's toll with brutal ruthlessness.
Some fought, most tried to run, all before him died. Daemons who had withstood the relentless horrors of Ginungagap, who had gazed into the depths of the void itself, who had pledged themselves to the Abyssal Gods, screamed like children facing their nightmares and fell like withered trees under the tender mercies of a woodcutter's ax. All the while, the laughter never stopped, belching out from Spike's throat like the proclamation of a forgotten god.

Far away, at the top of the Onyx Bastion, beyond the sanctuary of the Crystal Ley Shield, ponies watched in stunned silence their savior become their greatest fear. Twilight, Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie, Rarity and even Rainbow had all but given up on trying to break through the shield and had collapsed in crying, broken masses.

"You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the monster" Luna said, tears streaming down her face.

Celestia could only stare in horrified silence, unable to mutter a single word. However, unlike the others, she was not looking at Spike. Instead she was staring impotently at the corpse of Jalaman Hun as the savaged mass of mangled meat putrefied with horrendous speed, her witch-sight catching the virtual torrent of raw energy that flowed from the rotting carcass and arched towards the furthest point of the soon-to-be-broken daemonic army.
There, a tiny, emaciated figure stood, arms outstretched, howling sepulchral syllables to the darkening sky, as mad aetheric laughter from beyond the realm of creation echoed just at the edge of her hearing. 

"No" she croaked as she saw similar pillars of raw energy rise from the Mountains of Grey Crystal and the direction of Equestria. 
The raw stuff of the Abyss arced and fell like torrential rain over the emanciated form, only to run deep into the crust of the world.

For a moment all stood still.

Then, the world screamed. It did not shudder, it did not quake, it simply screamed, a psychic screech from the living core of the world itself that reverberated through the minds of every magic user alive, a harrowing rattle of pain as a shard of the Abyss ran deep into the world's core and launched a flood of corruption through the geomantic lay lines, it's veins.
Mountains cracked, hills toppled and young forests wilted. Celestia fell to her knees and yelled, her skull pounding with the pain shriek of the world, her stomach churning, bile seeping from her cracked lips. Around her, unicorns fell, vomited, tore at their ears, throats and hair, and in the cases of the old or weak, simply died.
Luna thrashed on the ground in grips of a seizure. Cadence and Shining both screamed, holding one another. Twilight and Rarity howled, their friends fighting with them, trying to prevent them from tearing their own throats out.

It was all Celestia could do to scream and beg for it to stop.





An explosion of corrupted, geomantic energy erupted around Kilmaiil the Half Born, ripping into the daemons around him, evaporating flesh and bone.

"Howl, howl, howl you wretches" the Half Born shrieked, his diminutive form slowly being enveloped by the sickly yellow energy, but, contrary to the daemons around him, never hurting him. Instead the energy began siphoning into the small frame.
"Howl and witness me in your final moments. Witness my aphoteosis".
He lifted his head, his hood falling to reveal his malformed face.
"Gods of the Abyss. Your most humble servant, your Prophet, your most devout follower has done your will.
The blood of the abyss spills in three.
The blood of innocence spills in two.
The blood of stone spills in one.
Shed from me this deformed, mortal shell. Oh ye four almighty gods. Grant me your promise and make me fifth".

Power converged and fell upon Kilmaiil. This time, it came with pain so complete, Kilmaiil's cheeks ripped as he screamed. It seeped into his body and flooded his bones, flesh and soul with the raw power of the Abyss.

Kilmaiil's shriek turned to a macabre laugh and he reveled in the pain of his apotheosis. At last. The plan had come to fruition. 
The powers he had gifted Nerg'Cathal, Wilhelmina and Jalaman Hun had been not for their sake, but for his own and the plans of the Abyssal Gods. They had been mere vessels, carrying the power to the places they had to die.
The ritual of Ascension, whispered in his dreams by the Abyssal Gods was the most complex ritual ever performed. To even be attempted required the unanimous will of all four Gods and so much more.
"The blood of the abyss spills in three". Three greater daemons gifted with powers beyond all others, had to die in conflict, their blood to spill upon the three strongest lay lines of this world: Canterlot, The Mountains of Grey Crystal and the Onyx Bastion.
"The blood of innocence spills in two". The innocent blood of countless ponies had to fall upon Canterlot and the Onyx Bastion, weakening
the world's resistance to the blood of the three greater daemons.
"The blood of stone spills in one". Finally, the great catalyst, blood neither abyssal nor innocent, the blood of true neutrality, the blood of dragons had spilled as the Legion of the Damned had fallen upon the Mountains of Grey Crystal. It's raw power was that which would propel the shard of corruption to the world's very core.
But blood was not enough. It could not be offered for the ritual. It had to be taken, permeated with pain, despair and fear, matured in the furnace of hate, conflict and war.
The blood of innocence taken from fear stricken ponies as daemons had slaughtered them.
The blood of the abyss taken from pain tormented daemons as Draka blades had torn through them.
The blood of dragons taken by a despair filled Spike as he had given his Draka Legion the release of death.

It had all come to fruition. A decade of planning. The efforts he had made, the "alliance" with Chrysalis and her minions, the arrogance and insults suffered at the hands of other daemons, but, more importantly, the sheer magical power he had had to expend in order to deviate Celestia's letter from her student, Twilight, to reach Spike.
Spike, Darraor of the Legion of the Damned, Vashanesh of the Draka, had been integral to his plans. The crucial piece. The only creature who had the power and will to kill the three strongest daemons to ever exist. Kilmaiil could only congratulate himself as the sheer enormity of the deception he had perpetrated upon Spike made itself felt.
It had been Kilmaiil who had interfered with the flow of magic within the Mouth of Madness, causing Spike and his Legion to arrive too late to save Ponyville.
It had been Kilmaiil who had convinced Wilhelmina and her Serpent Priestesses to corrupt the Draka Legion, knowing that Spike would be forced to slay his own.
It had been by his doing that the Mountain Eater had targeted Spike, giving Wilhelmina enough time to corrupt his warriors.
But Spike had well and truly surpassed all expectations. To slay three greater daemons, an undead Primordial and countless daemons in such a short time and without rest. Even Kilmaiil could not help but respect such monstrous strength and determination.

All these thoughts passed through Kilmaiil's mind in those eternally long seconds of metamorphosis. Corrupted geomantic energies, the raw power of creation, flowed from the ground and drowned into his blackened soul, a gaping void of abyssal non creation.
Creation and non creation flowed in one another, battling within the daemons tiny frame, endless cycles of birth and destruction taking place in the span of fractions of seconds, as infinity opened deep into his soul and collapsed in on itself to form Chaos.
Energy billowed like an explosion from Kilmaiil and he howled as his flesh, bones and soul became pure chaos and reshaped. He laughed with sadistic glee as all around him fell to the ground screaming, their bodies ripped to shreds or sprouting horrific mutations as chaotic energies punched through the air.

And then, with the same brusqueness it had begun, it stopped. The geomantic lay lines expunged the last of the corruption and the world stopped shrieking as it cleansed itself. It stood quivering, mountains cracked, ground broken and entire ecosystems reduced to withered husks, but it stood nonetheless.

Kilmaiil rose, gazing in awe at his new form. The form of a demigod. His skin was the ivory of pearl, smooth as the finest silk, not a single trace of his previous deformities left. He was tall, easily eleven feet, though he knew if he all but willed it he could grow larger than the greatest giant.
His pristine body cut an almost androgynous figure, tall and lithe, looking almost fragile but pulsating with raw, unrestrained power. His previously deformed skull now bore a face of such simultaneous beauty and monstrosity that it would have made angels weep in both gratitude and horror for seeing it. A mane of golden hair crowned his previously bald pate and shone with a celestial coruscation that seemed to devour light itself. Chaos, contradiction made flesh and bone, was what he had become.
Not some petty daemon, he had been reborn as the closest thing to a living god this world had ever seen. What were the Ten Lords of the Ginun, the Avatar of the Abyss, the Primordials themselves compared to him? 

Nothing.

He could end the Ten Lords with but a word. Shatter the Avatar of the Abyss with a single blow. Even the Primordials united, had they still been alive, could not have hoped to challenge him. 
Immortal. Demigod. Second only to the Gods of the Abyss, Kilmaiil the Half-Born had become a thing of incongruities, the bastard child of the unholy matrimony between creation and non-creation, raw chaos incarnate, as much a force of nature as the gods of the Abyss themselves.

All around him daemons howled in a tumultuous racket of ecstasy and fear at the sight of the newborn demigod, his visage simultaneously so angelically beauteous and monstrously hideous to behold, it shattered the minds of those who gazed upon it. The weaker daemons simply dropped to the ground, their hearts burst by the raw energy exuding from the entity while others fell, either clawing desperately into the meat and bone of their faces trying to physically tear the image of him out if their minds, or holding their insides in shaking, blood stained hands, presenting them as tribute to their nascent god.
The world descended into a cacophony of screams of terror and ecstasy, of howled curses and bellowed oaths, of requests for death and promises of loyalty. 
Chaos.
And Kilmaiil revelled in it. 

A sudden roar stopped it all. It held neither fear nor supplication just madness and defiance. It came as both challenge and proclamation, and  it echoed throughout the area like a church's final bell.

Drawn like a moth to a flame by the living god's energy, drawn to the challenge, the scent of worthy enemy, Spike came like a cannon ball, surging from a curtain of blood as he cut the daemons before him.
His war cry, the laughter of a crazed beast, he sliced and ripped a path towards his target.

"Ah, now comes the Veshanesh." sneered Kilmaiil, raising his hands like a father waiting for an embrace. "Now comes he who has defeated the Three of the the Abyss. The slayer of the Mountain Eater. How grand a lieutenant you would have made. How i would have enjoyed breaking your iron will and corrupting you to the aim of the Abyss. Alas, now look at you..."

The only response came as an animalistic bellow.

"Nothing more than a beast, needing to be put down." he added and leveled a slender finger towards the fast approaching Spike. "Such a shame".

As the words left the ivory lipped mouth a small flame of every color in existence and even some who could not be fathomed sprung into timid life at the tip of his claw and took flight towards Spike. It was such a tiny speck, no more than an ember yet it pulsated with wrongness. 
Spike took no heed of the small ember, nor did the daemons around him. Blood clouded his mind and fear of the Draka clouded the daemon's minds.
The Onyx Bastion shuddered and groaned as the ember contacted the back of a retreating daemon and suddenly expanded. The small ember blew out as a gigantic pillar of multi colored flame, it's shockwave felt even beyond the protection of the Grand Ley Shield.

The unnatural fire billowed like a spear towards the sky, an infinite number of faces shrieking like the damned, half-seen beyond the multi colored curtain of flame. Daemons screamed as their flesh turned to dust, the bones untouched, remaining in their last positions like macabre statues. Spike howled as the flame licked against his body, vaporizing meat and scales, opening old wounds and creating fresh ones. It was as if the fire was slicing, trying to flay him alive, but there was no pain in his roar. Just raw hatred.
He launched himself in a monstrous jump, pivoting out of the column of fire like a dervish and made a rabid charge towards Kilmaiil once more.
Those few daemons in his way fell in heaps as broken meat, Karasuma rending flesh and bone with all the efficacy of a meat cleaver, the howling laughter of insanity, their final eulogy, the blood covered warrior, their final image.
The Draka's legs swelled with muscle and he leaped towards Kilmaill, pivoting through the air and avoiding the many embers of corrupted flame that flew at him. He swooped in like a hawk sensing the closeness of prey and turned in mid flight bringing his blade down in an overhead chop that bore all the speed and fury of a lightning bolt, it's chosen target, the condescendingly calm face of the reborn Kilmaill.

Even Spike's madness addled mind stopped in shock as the blade froze, it's unstoppable trajectory cut short by two upraised fingers. Kilmaiil grinned menacingly, the edge of the sword hovering mere inches from his face, his thumb and finger holding the murderous metal at bay with barely even an ounce of effort.

"Oh... how pitiful" he hummed and snapped the blood iron blade in two.

Faster than it took a heart to beat, he brought the edge back, raking it across Spike's bare stomach and opening a shower of blood. Spike roared and lifted the bladeless hilt, his gruesome wound forgotten in the orchestra of painful wounds that already covered him, angling it to try and crush the disgustingly cherubic face in.

Kilmaiil let out a small breath, no more than a sigh and it all but lopped the Draka's hand at the wrist, a single strand of scale covered flesh holding it connected to his forearm. This time, Spike fell back, howling in pain, like a wolf caught in the steel bite of a forester's trap. He recovered almost immediately and rammed his skull against Kilmaiil's face. Kilmaiil did not move a single millimeter and Spike fell back once more, blood gushing from his cracked forehead. Barely the smallest trickle of black blood slithered from Kilmaiil's nose. He wiped it with his thumb and before Spike could even think, Kilmaiil stole both "Ildezgherdi" and "Tenchi Kaijin" from his sash and thrust them, sheaths and all, into his abdomen with such a force that they pierced out from his back and lifted him off his feet. The Draka shuddered and made to grab the demigod's neck and throttle him but his hand fell limp as his own throat opened in a deep slice, blood gushing bountifully from it. 

Kilmaiil broke into a malicious laugh,  his thumb covered in the crimson lifeblood, effortlessly holding the Draka in the air with a single hand.
"And thus he falls, the mighty Spike, bane of daemons, grand enemy of the Abyss, slayer of the Avatar. 
Ahahahahaha... how pitiful a sight... once a great warlord, the ultimate warrior, the unbreakable Draka... now nothing more than a mad beast, spitted on his own weapons for all the world to bear witness to his weakness...".
His smile fell and voice fell as a gurgling mad laughter escaped Spike's bloodied mouth and the defiant Draka spat a blood flecked gob of phlegm into the demigod's conceited visage.

Blazing anger lit Kilmaiil's eyes and he wiped the crimson with his forearm.
"Defiant to the end... i see" he growled morbidly. The first strike came as a savage backhand that cracked Spike's skull even more and rammed him into the ground, shattering a crater of stone around the prone draconian's body. Spike continued to howl with mad laughter as a naked foot rammed against his elbows, wrists and kneecaps shattering each joint into splinters. It ended with the final strike as Kilmaiil rammed his foot down one last time and snapped the Draka's spine.

No more laughter.

No more howling.

Just the labored breathing of one at death's door. Kilmaiil bent and lifted the Draka by the head. Amazingly Spike was still alive. Beaten, shattered, bleeding from a hundred wounds, but not broken.
Never broken.
His eyes bore pain and madness but more than anything, they bore defiance. Spike would never beg for mercy, even if he still had the mental sanity and capacity to do it, he would never beg. Never surrender. Never break. It chafed on Kilmaiil's pride that this lowly Draka would never recognize him as the god he had become.

Kilmaiil snapped his fingers and two brawny daemons approached him timidly. He snapped again and a rift in reality opened next to them.
"This portal will take you back to the cave base" he began and threw Spike to the two who almost toppled under the unmoving Draka's weight.
"Take him and dump him down the same crevasse we have discarded the deposed queen".
Kilmaiil loomed over the Draka and grabbed a handful of his green mane, turning his head to face him.
"You will not die in combat. It will not be quick. You will be thrown and forgotten into the depths of a mountain and will starve to death. I know better than any what it means to starve. Pray to your impotent ancestors that you will bleed out first or at the very least the deposed queen is still alive down there and will slit your throat to feed on your carcass. That is the price you will pay for not acknowledging my ascension. A moment of defiance brings an eternity of pain". 
With open disdain, Kilmaiil shoved Spike's head down and turned his back on him, sparing the paralyzed Draka not a second thought as the two brawny daemons carried him through the portal. It closed behind them with an audible snap.

Kilmaiil gazed across the battlefield. Barring the moans of the dying and gibbering of those driven mad by his presence, it was as silent as the grave. He walked slowly, elegantly, almost gliding across the ground, his feet always hovering a few inches above the dirt, as if earth itself refused to be touched by the newborn entity. Golden locks too bright to be looked upon flowed around an angelically hideous visage as he looked up at the dumbstruck figures gazing back at him with horror and disbelief. A long black tongue slithered out licking his lips and the demigod smiled.





Celestia was shivering. She was shivering in a wracking tremor that seemed to want nothing more than to rend her entire body.
When the entity spoke, it came in a hushed whisper that could be heard for leagues around and chilled the soul to frozen stillness.

"Kilmaill the Half-Born. Know my name and shatter mortal. I am the Abyss made manifest. I am it's will given voice. I am the bringer of your redemption in the eyes of the Abyssal Gods".
He paused for a moment, relishing in the fear that permeated all around him. The sheer and complete horror that filled the pony ruler's eyes. As he talked, he began walking towards the first step of the Obsidian Stair.
"Within the depths of what you claim as the Crystal Empire's capital lie the remains of what should have been another gateway into this world. It belongs to the Abyss. I come to reclaim what should have been ours long ago. What the weakling Sombra could not do".
Kilmaiil planted his naked foot on the step and extended his arms in the sick parody of an embrace.
"Rejoice insects. Your blood has already served in aiding my apotheosis and you shall be rewarded. You shall be the screaming tributes i shall offer the Abyss when i open the gateway within the bowels of your home. You and your world shall die a thousand deaths and assure my position and recognition as one of the eternal Abyssal Gods themselves. Is there no greater honor?"

Suddenly the Bastion began to shudder and squirm. The titanic bulwark, the unassailable monument that had stood defiant for over a thousand years, unmarred and unstained by neither the passage of time nor by the many sieges it had faced, buckled like a wounded animal at the sheer wrongness of Kilmaiil's being. Cracks flowed like pus filled veins from the spot where Kilmaiil's foot touched the black stone and sped across the length and height of the Bastion. With every passing moment the titanic structure shrieked and growled as parts of it began to shatter to dust and pebbles and the Grand Ley Shield began to flicker ominously.

Celestia's eyes widened in shock and she yelled.
"Twilight, Luna, Cadence, get everypony out of here. The Bastion is going to come apart".
The area around exploded into motion as Luna and Cadence began shouting orders and ponies began hurriedly descending the Bastion on the other side, the Crystal Steps, yet one voice was left unheard.

Twilight.

The Princess of the Sun turned to look for her student but her voice caught in her throat before anything could be said. 
Twilight lay on her knees, an empty look in her eyes, tears streaming down her face and nose as she made not the slightest effort to wipe them.
Her knuckles had been shredded from hitting desperately against the shield and her mane and pelt were both a ragged, muddied mess.
She did not look at Kilmaiil, nor at the fast crumbling Bastion. Indeed she did not even seem to notice the danger. All she did was stare catatonically at the now empty spot where Spike had been defeated and where his shattered body had been taken through the portal.

Twilight had tethered on the breaking point for days and, having witnessed Spike's fate, had been pushed far beyond it. Now it was all she could do to lay there, oblivious to the danger she was in and her friends' attempts to snap her out of it. The other five girls lifted red, tear streaked faces at Celestia as another tumultuous groan shook the Bastion.

"No more time" she whispered and charged at Twilight, scooping the purple alicorn in her arms.
"EVERYONE RUN, NOW" she shrieked and joined the other ponies in the mad dash for the base. She half ran, half flew as bits and pieces of the Crystal Steps began disintegrating beneath her.
Her mane and tail flowed like a nest of snakes as, with a final heave, she launched herself into flight, the other five ponies alongside her, encased in the golden aura of her magic.

They all fell in a heap at the base of the Crystal Steps just as the Bastion sundered and finally fell with a world trembling shriek of stone and steel. The Crystal Ley shield flickered for a few more heartbeats and sputtered out like a candle in a storm. Celestia's perception became a roaring tumultum of stone and dust, the final death cry of the once unbreakable Onyx Bastion. In the distance she could hear the sounds of mountains breaking and did not need to look to know that the Crystal Empire encompassing Bastion was collapsing all around the Empire. She did not need to look, nor did she want to. Slowly the dust began to settle and through the debris filled gloom she called out.

"Is everypony alright?"

"Cough-cough- Princess... where are yah'?"

Celestia choked on the cloud of dust and drew into a coughing fit, squeezing the catatonic Twilight harder to her chest. A quick mental incantation and her horn flared up with the simplest of spells, an incandescent orb of light.

"Here... cough-cough... I am ... cough... here".

Grayish shadows began appearing through the cloud of debris and quickly coalesced into the recognizable forms of ponies. Luna, Cadence, Shining Armor, five of the elements of Harmony and a few Royal Guard were closest to her, many others still obstructed by the gloom.

"Repor... cough-cough... repo... cough-cough..." she attempted to address one of the Royal Guard.

" The majority have escaped unharmed... we had already descended the Onyx Bastion by the time it had begun collapsi... GAAAHH..." the guard began only to collapse in a screaming heap as a serrated spear tip exploded from his chest in a gush of warm blood. A howling daemon emerged from the cloud, it's mouth caked with froth, it's arm still extended from the javelin throw and, drawing a wicked fanged ax from it's belt charged straight at Celestia.
Four blazing bolts of light reduced it to a smoking husk as Celestia, Luna, Cadence and Shining Armor shot it down. More howls, more dying screams and more malformed shapes running through the gloom told Celestia this was not an isolated incident. The daemons were crossing into the Crystal Empire and her ponies were being cut down. She drew magic and amplified her voice.

"All of you, run towards the capital. Soldiers form a rearguard".

The few ponies around her looked at their princess with faces fixed in grimaces of worry. It was all she could do to squeeze Twilight closer to her chest and pray.
"We must at the very least try to save as many as possible. We cannot let his sacrifices up until this point be in vain".





The next few hours had been a confusing amalgam of yelled orders, panicked running and desperately trying to defend and advance in the same time. Celestia collapsed in an exhausted heap upon the cold ground, the sound of the crystal Empire capital's grand portcullis groaning shut behind her. Air hurt as it passed into her lungs and every inch of her body pulsated with aches and pain. Still, she pushed herself and looked around her. Almost two thousand ponies were laying across the courtyard in heaving heaps, soldiers of Equestria, the Crystal Empire and civilians, all equals in the face of adversity. Close to half of those who had been present at the Obsidian Bastion had died at the hands of daemons during the desperate retreat to the capital.

But the day was not over. Not for her at the very least. Cannon fire sang its staccato voice and the sound of armored boots coalesced with that of chanting unicorns as the reserve army of the Crystal Empire defended the walls of their capital and gave terrible sound to the orchestra of war.
Cannon balls and bolts of magic. Arrows and javelins. Spears, chunks of crystal and stones. All these and more fell across the parapets into a bellowing sea of daemonic flesh as the howling masses smashed uselessly against the walls of the capital, all semblance of strategy and siege warfare lost in a maddened frenzy driven on by the lone, pristine, angelic figure in their midst. 
Kilmaiil sat atop a moving throne made by the knitted flesh of his own unwilling subjects and the demigod moved his hands as if he was the maestro guiding a concerto. With every motion daemons screamed and broke their fingers trying to scale the walls, shattered their heads and fists to mulch as they tried to pummel the unyielding stone down and killed one another as they tried to create a corpse mound tall enough to reach the parapets. 

Anyone else would have rightfully wondered why it was that this entity who had obliterated the Onyx Bastion with but a touch did not join the fray. How easy it would have been for it to tear it's way into the depths beneath the capital. How casually it would have annihilated even the staunchest and strongest defenders with mere thoughts and broken any and all who would have attempted to bar it's way. Anyone else would have wondered, but Celestia did not. For the answer still rang into her mind like a thousand dying screams and would not leave her be, endlessly tearing at her will and soul with it's certainty.
"Three days" Kilmaiil had said into her mind, mere hours before "In three days, this world will be at it's zenith, furthest from the domain of creation and closest to that of the Abyss. It is then that i will wrench open the gates of the second portal and this world will be swallowed whole by the Abyss. Until those three days are over, Princess of the Sun ... amuse me."
Kilmaiil simply sat in the middle of his armies for there was nothing more he needed or wanted to do. All he had to do was wait those three days and he had chosen to pass the time by watching the endless legions of the Abyss clash with ponykind determination. And oh, how the daemons died. Carved, shot, charred, burned, speared, cut, pierced and pulverized. And yet, legions more came, emerging from the line of the horizon like a flood of ants, spilling unseen from the faraway Mouth of Madness.

Celestia would have wanted to simply lay there and await the end. Such had been the cold certainty in Kilmaiil's voice. But she could do no such thing, for there was, at the very least, a final oath she had to keep. A final promise to one who had given all for the ponies and for Equestria. The Princess of the Sun rose to her full height and looked to the five girls who even now still tried to rouse Twilight from her catatonic state. 

"Luna, Cadence, go to the Royal Library and fetch the forbidden parchments... then go before me to the High Tower and begin the Mandala inscriptions" she said, her voice hoarse as Luna blanched and Cadence's face distorted into a horrified grimace.

"....Sister... are we truly going to...?..." Luna began, Cadence shaking visibly, not understanding why Celestia would want to invoke such vile magics.

Celestia looked at the trembling Cadence. 
"We will need your help for this. I have given Spike my oath that once we have reached the Crystal Empire, we will perform the Mandala of Forsaken Memories and erase the very existence of Spike from the minds and hearts of the Elements of Harmony".

Cadence shook all the more violently 
"N...No.. you can't ask me to..." she looked at Twilight and her friends "Not to them.., not to... her"

Celestia grabbed Cadence by the shoulders and drew her close, looking the ruler of the Crystal Empire in the eye. 
"We must and we shall... After all Spike has given for us... after all he has sacrificed for us... this will be our final show of gratitude... we will do as he asked and we will make sure that these six girls' final days will be spent in blissful, innocent ignorance, rather than lamenting their loss once again... You must help us do this Cadence... for Spike".

Cadence chewed on her bottom lip and looked from Celestia to the girls and Twilight's prone form. In her eyes, Celestia could see the inner war taking place. Cadence knew as much as she did that there would be no chance of overcoming their present catastrophe and that this world's days were numbered. Finally, with a defeated whimper, Cadence nodded.

"We can't let them know what we plan to do... they'd never allow it... moreover, they'd never forgive us".

"They won't... i will lead them to the High Tower and we will perform the Mandala... I and Luna will personally make sure that until the end comes... they'll never have to worry about anything else... i swear it". Celestia added with finality, her head bowed in shame for her subterfuge towards the Elements of Harmony. 

It had to be done. It WILL  be done.


Music for the next part.



 I fall. I feel myself fall. The beast stands before me freed of it's shackles and i am in it's place, bound by chains that belonged to it. Chains that i had set free myself. Yet the beast no longer roars, no longer howls, no longer rages. All it does is whimper.

But it does not return to it's chains. It can no longer do so. It has been out too long, too frequently and this time... too willingly.

I am... was... Spike. I am... was... sanity, control and discipline. I was everything that made me... myself. I have given it all up and released the beast... the Madness... the disease that plagues my very mind. It has been out too long... i can no longer return... never again... my mind is damaged beyond repair, my bones are shattered and my flesh is motionless.

There is nothing to return to... i am launched into the great crevice, further into the mountain's belly, further into the dark... so i fall.
I have failed... and i fall.

Cold stone embraces me as a forgiving mother and i slip into unconsciousness.

............................................................................................

Water drops caress my skin and i force broken jaws to part if only to sup on but a few droplets. I cannot move but those few drops land between barely parted fangs and i am tankful. They taste as ambrosia.

Above where i feel myself lay upon the cold stone, i smell someone, i hear their shuffling, i sense their hunger. Merciful Ancestors, can this finally be it? Will i finally be granted rest? Has some primordial beast from the mountain's innards come to free me? To finally grant me death?

I feel fragile hands rest against my head and chest and i feel my heart begin to empty as it feeds on my emotions. On the love i have for my precious Six girls. It nibbles only, no more, no less, taking enough to sustain itself, but not enough to make me forget why i fight. I fight for them. The Six beloved treasures. It is why i have always fought and it is why even now, shattered, starved and wounded beyond all measure, my own body will not allow me to give up. Have i gotten so accustomed to challenging adversity that my own body cannot realize the concept of surrendering? Am i doomed to forever border in this purgatory between life and death, entrapped by my own unyielding flesh?

It would be amusing, were it not so pathetic.

I fall into unconsciousness once more.

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I want to scream, i want to scream more than anything i have ever wanted before, but i cannot. My body is paralyzed, my bones are broken and my spine is shattered and i cannot scream. I want to scream as a fresh blossom of unbearable pain wracks my body and reverberates through my entire being. I can feel them. I can feel these things as they burrow into my flesh, into my bones, into my spine. I can feel them as they grab hold of strands of meat and knit them back together. I can feel them as they pull at splinters of bone and add chitinous cartilage and puzzle them back to their semblance. I can feel them in my bone marrow as they stitch my spine back and reattach nerve endings with ganglia.

Why. Why are these things helping me.

Those two slender hands caress my body and where they lay, the things burrow and knit, they burrow and repair, they burrow and heal.

I fall into unconsciousness once more.

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The beast yelps, screams and howls. It froths and thrashes as the chains release me and grab hold of it once more. I fall out of the cage and crawl away, opening the cage to regain it's reluctant guest once more. The beast trashes but the chains hold all the tighter as the things burrow into my brain.

They push blood and oxygen back to the areas the Madness had shut down. The parts dead by lack of oxygen are resurrected by way of base ganglia and impulse driven connections that force them to come alive once more. My sanity is being returned as sure as the beast is being shackled once more. A strand of ganglia forms at the base of my ocular nerve and for the first time in what feels like centuries i can see again.
A blurry image forms above me and i see a slender figure upon whose lap my head lay, green wisps floating around her and green eyes fixing my single one with concentrated scrutiny. 

My brain jolts back to full life and with a final, defiant roar, the beast, the Madness, is caged in the depths of my consciousness once again.

I fall into unconsciousness for a final time.

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"Awaken" she says to me.

"Awaken" she says once more.

I stir and begin to rise. My body obeys and my mind is clear. I rise to my full height and I look around, greeted only by the desolate emptiness of crevice's bottom and a single, small, fragile looking pony, a hundred green wisps floating around her. Her body is slim and lanky, her hair is long and dirty-green and her eyes are two glowing green sits of anger. She looks at me with the interest of an artisan inspecting their work. I follow her gaze and look at my own body. Almost half of it has become devoid of scales, noting more than a deep dark-grey conglomerate of scarred flesh. Innumerable wounds are now innumerable scars. My joints are now masses of scar tissue, devoid of scales. Small pinpricks cover my body around my abdomen, to either side of my spine and around my joints, auguries left by the wisps' tender mercies. 

She looks at me and says not a thing as she lifts herself up. She is so small, barely reaching my lower abdomen, barely wide enough to compare to my arm. Yet she looks at me with the defiance of born nobility.

"Why?" I ask.

"Because in your mind i have seen you challenge he who has betrayed me. Because you alone can defy he who has taken my changelings from me. Because you desire to protect your treasures and i desire my vengeance. Because our goals align. Because i will have vengeance for my children".

She is so slender, small and frail. The deposed queen. But her eyes blaze with determination akin to my own. 

"You stand now, a queen without a without a kingdom, without her children, without claim to rule. Yet you stand as more of a colossus than ever before, Queen Chrysalis".