Dawn and the Baroness were left to find Hornblende by themselves, after Spectra had departed to rejoin the battle. It did not, however, take them very long - no sooner had the pegasus exited out the back window had the doors swung shut, and the window glazed over with an ethereal barrier. The two unicorns soon found themselves sharing the hall with a third.
"Well, well..." a voice called out from behind them, as the pair attempted to leave through the doors, only for them to slam in their faces. Both wheeled round to find Bree sitting on the Priestess' throne, having just uncloaked. "That's just today all over, isn't it? Can't get those gryphons to do a job right at all."
"Why, you little..." Corundum started towards her with a determined walk, only to be stopped just a few paces in front of where she had stood, and with an electric crackling, thrown back to the door. Hornblende chuckled deviously as the Baroness picked herself up.
"Ah-ah-ahhh..." She slouched in the throne, one leg up on one of the armrests. "I think you'll find the time it took you to get here was more than enough to set up more traps than you'll ever find in here." She smirked as Dawn seethed. "Now, as I think you may have noticed, these buzzards have been a little less than effective today. I hadn't counted on you raising hell in defence of this little mountainside village. Or even on surviving the fall from that balloon, but oh well! Let bygones be bygones. Now..."
"You killed the Priestess, tried to kill me, lured the gryphon horde to Canterlot and tried to frame my friend? What is wrong with you?" Dawn screamed.
"Oh? You don't sound to happy about all that. I would have thought not having the Priestess around was a load off your shoulders. Weren't you ever told not to look a gift horse in the mouth?" Bree tittered, watching Dawn fume. "Now if you don't mind I have to pick up some of the gryphons' slack here." Hornblende hopped off the throne and down to the body. She dipped a finger in the blood - not pumping out profusely, but the wound was still open and fresh - and began to trace out shapes on the floor. Dawn started to panic.
"Bl- blood magic? You're insane!"
"Well, desperate times call for desperate measures. You should have thought about that before you got so good at raising armies." Bree chuckled casually as she continued setting up her ritual.
"Why are you even doing this?"
"Ooohh... maybe you're not quite as smart as you seem. The difference between the prospect of slaving away under the Priestess and inviting the friendly neighbourhood gryphons around to instate me as Vicereine of Equestria should be obvious!" she jeered, taking another dip and tracing out some more arcane patterns like it was nothing.
"I... I knew you were a jealous, competitive braggart, but this is just a whole new level!"
"Well, times change and all that. Now please, do be quiet, I'm making... the magics. Or just whine and scream all you like really, there's not a lot you can do back there. I do appreciate this whole not-putting-up-an-effective-resistance thing you're doing right now, it's being most helpfu..." she was cut off in mid-sentence by a firm punch to the mouth from an unexpected direction. Corundum was standing before her as she reeled. Dawn threw over a smirk. She should learn how high the room is before trying to wall it up.
"Sorry to inconvenience then, darling." she chuckled, before throwing another punch. This time, however, Hornblende teleported to the side, causing her to miss and lose balance, before receiving a swift elbow to the back.
"I really do not have time to play!" enchanting her leg with extra force, she kicked the Baroness across the room. She slid into a suit of armour by the wall, which clattered down over the tiled floor. This draw, however, broke her concentration enough to allow Dawn to focus and penetrate her cage. Dawn barrelled towards the centre of the hall, aiming to skid under Hornblende's legs to disrupt the patterns marked out in blood. Her assault was parried when she was tossed overhead with the most meagre of psychic throws, and instead landed face-first on the other side. As she righted herself, she levitated over the fallen suit of armour's sword and caught it with ease. It weighed quite heavily in her hand, but it was not unmanageable - a little concentration helped ease the weight. She returned her charge, putting focus into penetrating any shield that may come up... only to be parried again when another sword crossed her path, bringing her to a halt with her hooves just short of the markings. "But if you insist..." Bree smirked. Another suit of armour was bereft of its sword.
With a light concussive shove, Hornblende pushed her opponent back, and they began to spar. Dawn's first slice removed one sleeve from Bree's robe, and revealed substantial muscle tone in her arms - she hadn't needed to waste focus on telekinetically lifting her sword. Her look at their next crossed-blades stalemate said it all - a haughty smirk that read, there are benefits to taking your nose out of a book now and then, Dawn. Her concentration was free enough that when Corundum went to assault her from behind - a backstab with her own jewel dagger - the blow just bounced off another magical shield. Hornblende lifted her leg to deal a firm, hoofed kick to Dawn's midsection, winding her. Dawn panicked a little as she went down, desperately trying to guide the sword so it didn't land on her own leg. Bree took this moment to pick up the reeling Baroness and hold her aloft. Her captive cloaked, trying to remove all trace of herself from Hornblende's focus, but it was no use - once she was caught, it was as if Bree could feel her, like holding a small animal in her hand. With a little pullback, she tossed the unicorn towards the back window. Corundum panicked, her cloak dissipating instantly.
"No!"
"Save your friend or delay me a few more seconds. What'll it be?" Bree chuckled, grinning maliciously. Dawn was honestly conflicted - attempt to catch Corundum before she landed and let Hornblende finish her ritual, summoning untold evils, or continue duelling, possibly without success on any front? An idea flashed in her mind just then as she tried to find a middle ground. She turned to point her horn at the window, and with a mighty burst, she fired an ethereal, lilac-hued missile through the window, and it exploded in a perfect sphere, the detritus gravitating toward itself as it fell, forming a downward pointing cone - hopefully pointing out the position of the falling unicorn.
Outside, the signal was seen all over the battlefield, but four individuals in particular recognised this signal as important. Spectra's quick eyes immediately spotted Corundum sailing through the air towards the forest below. She broke off her current dogfight with a simple reversal and a knee to the shoulder of the gryphon pursuing her, and immediately darted down to intercept the Baroness' flightpath. Wingscale, fluttering around the dragon and monitoring its progress, made a few mental calculations, before grabbing Calvade - fighting on the ground nearby - and carrying her, kicking and screaming, to the site of the beacon. Diana was immediately drawn to the site, and met Spectra and Corundum upon their landing.
The emission of this beacon, however, was still not quick enough. It still consumed a precious few seconds - seconds Hornblende used to speed through the last components of her ritual, and begin the summoning. Blood magic is an ancient heresy from the teachings of the Sun cult that ruled Canterlot, and its ways forbidden for as many practical reasons as political reasons. It is concerned with calling forth wounded beings from other planes in exchange for blood from a wounded being of this plane, and the inhabitants of other planes are seldom pleasant and almost never good-natured. The nature of the sacrifice depends on the extent of blood shed. A simple pin-prick might summon a mere gnat, while the blood of the freshly deceased can summon beings of immense, sometimes even god-like power. By the time Dawn had recovered to resume the duel, it was already too late - even if she had had the chance to slice Hornblende in half there and then, the blood patterns were already lit on fire, and the summoning had commenced. Bree knew this full-well, and had tossed her sword to the side. All she said to the stunned unicorn was a simple instruction;
"If you know what's good for you, you'll let me concentrate." Dawn reluctantly stayed her hand. If she slew her then, or even distracted her, whatever she called forth would be let loose upon the world with no commander, free to do as it pleased. As bad as a gryphon victory would be, a demon rampant would be so much worse. She let her sword clatter to the ground, and reluctantly conceded bitter defeat.
However, the battle was not over just yet - five ponies arrived through the window, just as Dawn had given up hope. Two pegasi hauled two earth ponies and a unicorn in, and they immediately assumed a battle formation when they saw the scene before them.
Twilight cleared her throat nervously as she continued reading.
"The next few moments were a blur to Dawn, and she could only watch as her clueless comrades charged Hornblende. Bree was forced to parry their assaults, distracting her from the ritual; when it proceeded to completion, the room was bathed in white glow, stunning all seven ponies. The being of pure light was called forth from the circle. Terrified, five of the combatants went to assault it, but were instead plucked from the air like apples and held to struggle. The capture of her friends roused Dawn from her daze and prompted her to attempt attack in desperate retaliation. However..." Twilight gulped again, her voice beginning to waver a little. "... she was met with the same apprehension. Finally, as Hornblende backed into the corner, pinning herself against the wall, she screamed at the beast, 'I summoned you! You answer to me!', but the beast responded in a voice, smooth and silky, 'I think not.', and pulled her in all the same. It whispered upon the seven who dared oppose her a curse; that they all be banished to remain unborn for a thousand years, and with that, they all vanished, each leaving behind but two remnants of their existence. A weapon - a spear, a staff, an axe, a dagger, a rocket, and two swords - and a stone trinket representing the quality they had espoused most in life - loyalty, kindness, honesty, generosity, laughter, and two of magic."
She bit her lip and looked up at her audience. None of them displayed the cheer and fascination they had earlier, though they were still just as gripped. Even the fearless Rainbow Dash trembled in terror. Pinkie Pie's mane had drooped flat. Fluttershy hid her eyes behind her hooves. Nonetheless, she continued the final tract of the story.
"With this done, the beast burst forth from the palace and took hold of all of the kind who had opposed it in its birth into this world. In childish glee, it cursed every last pony of this world to walk on four legs, and for their hands to be replaced with another set of hooves; wiping its new slaves of their memories of life before, it assumed a form they would recognise, and instated itself as their ruler, naming itself upon their previous cult: Princess Celestia. The terrified gryphon horde fled Equestria, never to trouble their borders again; the only one to act again on this matter was Chieftain Aurum. She went on to record this tale in full, using means both mundane and magical to see into the past of the banished seven, so that how Equestria was truly made would never be forgotten, and that one day, upon the return of the banished, they might undo that which, a thousand years previously, they had... set... into motion..."
"Heheh..." Rainbow chuckled nervously. "It is just a story, right? Right?" Twilight flipped to the next page, the last in the book.
"There's... there's a list of caretakers of the book here... and a note. 'I leave this book to the inheritors of my line so that they may one day pass this account on to the Banished - Aurum'... names... names... this... wow..."
"What?"
"You're not gonna believe this... the last name on this list is Gilda." The jaws of all five other ponies hit the floor. "There's another note here too... it says, 'You're welcome, flip-flop'."