Chapter 18: The Brave Little Unicorn
Pure horror chilled Twilight's heart as Princess Celestia slowly descended. Everypony fanned out, making room for her as she landed in the town square. She gazed around dispassionately at the blank-flanked ponies that surrounded her. Twilight felt as though her heart had stopped. She only just barely remembered to breathe.
"…and what is all this?" Princess Celestia finally asked as she shot a piercing gaze towards her sister. "Luna… I thought we had an agreement."
Amidst a crowd of terrified ponies, Twilight and her friends looked on with shock and apprehension: here was their princess, their tyrant, their enemy (whether they willed it or not) standing before them, her wickedness about to be laid out in the open before them for the first time.
"I remember," replied Princess Luna coolly, "and I haven't broken that agreement. The ponies who live in this town are kept far from Equestria—which means nopony there can learn about all the skeletons in your closet."
Celestia surveyed the crowd. As she noticed Twilight, causing the unicorn to flinch, her eyes widened.
"Twilight?" she said, her voice shaking. "So you are here, after all… that is… and your friends, I can't believe"—
"That's right," interrupted Luna fervently, "your prized pupil knows what you've done!"
Celestia still hadn't regained her composure. "Twilight, you have to understand—I mean, somepony as young as you shouldn't be forced to deal with such things"—
"Well, I have," said Twilight. "I saw what happened in Sustria."
Celestia gave her an intense, unbroken stare, looking right through her into her soul. Twilight resisted the nearly overpowering urge to avert her gaze.
"You know," said Celestia, visibly relaxing somewhat, "you and I both have the same problem. We know too much."
"That's right," replied Twilight. "I can hardly believe the atrocities committed in your name, but"—
"That's not what I mean. We know what will happen to us. We know too much." For the briefest instant, Twilight's eyes widened as a flash of understanding passed between them. Just how much did Celestia know about her?
Luna didn't seem to notice the unspoken exchange. "If you didn't want her to know, then maybe you shouldn't have chosen to rule this way in the first place," she spat.
Celestia narrowed her eyes at her sister. "Why have you done this? There was no need for her to know… she could've stayed perfectly content in Equestria…"
Twilight knew exactly why Princess Celestia was so upset, for she herself felt the same way: the deep bond between the two them, which had grown during the childhood years she spent in Canterlot as the princess's personal protégé, had been shattered. Celestia felt just as betrayed by Luna as Twilight did by Celestia.
"Face it, Celestia," said Luna. "You had this coming."
Celestia's expression darkened. "This is unforgivable."
"Oh? And what exactly do you intend to do?"
"The same thing I did last time."
Seconds before it happened, Twilight realized that Celestia was about to launch a magical beam at her sister. There was no time to prepare a shield, so instead, she protected the alicorn in a way so brash and foolish that it was unlikely she'd have done it if she'd had even a second more to think:
She flung herself between Luna and Celestia.
The last thing she saw was Celestia's shocked and horrified expression before her field of vision was enveloped by bright light. She felt her sense of place disappear—though she'd been in midair when the beam had hit her, there was no sensation of falling, nor of being knocked back. It might have been floating, except it didn't even feel like that—she was simply there.
She felt a rushing sensation and heard a rushing sound as the world came back to her—only it wasn't the world. As she fell to the ground more gently than she'd expected and felt a sudden, intense tightness in her chest, the sight of the barren white landscape around her and the black sky above her filled her with cold, overpowering fear.
She was on the moon.
Instinctively, she conjured some air around herself, devoutly grateful that Perseus had taught her such a useful spell. As she took a few labored breaths, her second instinct kicked in, and she resumed panicking. It seemed impossible that anypony might come to her rescue. Her mind raced as she thought of her friends, of Celestia and Luna, of the world she had just left. She desperately pictured it in her mind's eye…
The grass beneath her hooves, just moments ago…
The air all around her, not just a bubble that ended after a few feet…
(Her eyes were shut tight; her horn began to glow…)
If only she could think of some way back…
She surprised herself with the magical rush of light that met her as she tried to reopen her eyes, and she promptly shut them tightly again. She experienced the same placeless sensation as before, and as the brightness faded, the sound of Celestia's furious scream gradually became audible.
"…could have saved her! She'll be dead by now, thanks to you!"
There were gasps all around as Twilight appeared before the crowd.
"Twilight!" exclaimed her friends. As she looked around, dazed and confused, she frantically tried to piece together what had just happened. Celestia was lying awkwardly on the ground, fresh tears on her face, and Luna was standing over her. It appeared as though Celestia had been in the middle of casting a spell when Luna had interrupted her by knocking her over. Both were staring at Twilight, completely dumbstruck by her reappearance.
"How…?" asked Celestia, slowly rising to her hooves.
"You see?" bellowed Luna, darting a glance at her sister. "The young apprentice you lovingly raised in Canterlot is gone, just like her benevolent, kind-hearted mentor! This is the reward you reap for your centuries of cruel injustice! This is what happens when you treat your subjects like dirt beneath your hooves! Before you stands a mere unicorn who accomplished in seconds what took me, an alicorn, a thousand years!"
Twilight felt a great weight descend upon her as she contemplated the significance of her feat. I'm more powerful than Princess Luna, she thought forcefully, as she tried to jog herself into some kind of action. I might even be more powerful than Princess Celestia.
The white alicorn appeared ashen, bitter, desperate. It was just as Luna had declared: her empire, her very world was crumbling around her, and this lesser pony, this young unicorn, who had once adored and idolized her, had in an instant become the first real threat to her position of power in well over a millennium.
"It's over, big sister," stated Princess Luna, speaking more calmly now. "I think you'd better go back home and dispel Equestria's enchantments. We can all deal with the consequences together."
Twilight noticed the rage building in Celestia's features before Luna did, along with the magic building in her horn. This time, the world's most powerful unicorn was ready, and she gave Celestia a telekinetic shove, causing her blast to miss its mark by several feet and teleporting a tree, rather than an alicorn, to the moon. Celestia looked at her, shocked.
"Twilight, you don't know what you're getting into," she seethed. "You may have an unbelievable amount of magical power for a unicorn, but you're no match for me. We don't have to fight—you know that's the last thing I would want. Let's just go back to Canterlot and see if we can't sort this all out."
Twilight had never seen the princess so unsettled—but, on the other hoof, she couldn't remember any moment in her own life when her nerves had felt as afire as they did just then.
"No," she said, just managing to keep her voice from shaking. "Just because you're an alicorn doesn't mean you're stronger than I am." Even as the words passed her lips, she couldn't believe she was saying them. "You're going to remove the enchantments, like Luna said."
She felt a rush of surprise and disgust as she noticed Celestia's horn glowing once again. She prepared to dodge, but of course the princess realized she'd be expecting that and teleported behind her. As a beam shot towards her, Twilight deflected it into the sky.
"We don't need to resort to violence," she urged. "Why don't we just think of some other test to find out who's stronger?"
"Because that wouldn't solve the problem," replied Celestia. "Only one of us is going to get her way, and I think you'll agree we both want it badly enough that we're willing to fight for it."
As soon as she finished speaking, she leapt into the air and flew up above Twilight. As she teleported, so did Twilight, and she reappeared just in time to see the earth give way beneath the spot where she had just stood as Celestia burst out from the soil.
The alicorn spread out her stance, planting her hooves firmly on the ground. As she prepared her next spell, Twilight saw that it was far more powerful than the one that had sent her to the moon, but also much more heavily telegraphed. She's determined to beat me no matter what, Twilight thought. I can't just keep dodging.
As the beam came towards her, she stood her ground and refracted away just before it hit her, sending it harmlessly into the sky.
Twilight realized that all of the ponies around her were in danger of being hit by collateral damage. "We should go someplace where there's more space," she said, and Celestia nodded. Together, they teleported some distance away, to a clearing in the forest. It wasn't a very large clearing though, so they continued to warp around until they reached a large plain at the edge of the forest.
Celestia wasted no time. Instead of launching another ranged attack at Twilight, she set her horn ablaze with magical fire and charged at the unicorn. Twilight responded in kind by focusing energy in her horn, waiting until Celestia was right in front of her, and then releasing a burst of magic that knocked both ponies several yards back.
Twilight was the first to rise, but she hesitated to strike; then, in an instant, Celestia was on her hooves again, and in another instant, in the air. Twilight was wary of another teleportation trick, but as the princess climbed higher and higher into the sky, it became clear that she intended to use gravity to her advantage.
As she folded her wings tight and began her descent from hundreds, maybe more than a thousand feet in the air, she was soon awash with streams of magical light that trickled off behind her, to the point where she resembled a glowing meteor speeding towards the earth.
Twilight wished her heart wouldn't pound so loudly in her ears. She had more time to prepare for this attack than she had for the previous ones, but it would also be much, much stronger. She reached out telekinetically and focused as hard as she could on slowing Celestia's descent. There was a brief, terrifying moment in which she thought she would be struck, but then Celestia's downward force petered out and Twilight easily swept her aside. As she landed, her magic caused the grass around her to burst into flames, which she quickly extinguished.
Twilight teleported over to the tree-line and reached for one of the mammoth trees, yanking it upwards like a weed, creating an avalanche of dirt which she was forced to shield herself from with magic. Celestia flashed out of the way as the tree swung towards her with terrifying force and sound, sending a massive flock of birds flying for dear life.
Twilight turned towards a sound that she recognized from moments ago and saw another tree flying towards her, rushing through the air so quickly that it roared like some great beast.
She flung her own tree up, knocking aside the princess's with a crash that reverberated like a thunderclap.
Twilight felt strangely detached from reality as the two trees collided again and again, each struggling towards its pony target. The immense rushes of wind and deafening blows could have been heard for miles around, signaling to all the forest's inhabitants that the gods were trying to kill each other, and might easily destroy the world while they were at it.
Finally, Twilight brought her tree down to bear upon the middle of Celestia's, smashing it in half. As she thrust towards the alicorn from hundreds of yards away, Celestia surprised her by charging straight ahead.
Twilight's jaw dropped as Celestia immersed herself in flames, meeting the tree at its tip, splitting it down the middle, shooting through it like a fiery bullet. Twilight teleported just before she was struck and the two of them found themselves face to face, less than fifteen yards apart.
In unison, they shot identical beams at one another—by pure chance, the same idea had occurred to each of them at the same time. Each thinking to give the other chase, they hastily synchronized their teleportation spells so that they would reach the same place.
In a few seconds, they were there: floating through unearthly darkness in a shared protective bubble, Celestia floating with an unusually large moon behind her. Then, with another teleportation spell, they were somewhere else in space, perhaps a hundred thousand miles from where they had just been, and then yet another hundred thousand miles. It was impossible to tell who was leading whom. Celestia's intention, Twilight realized, was to take her so far away from the Earth that she would never be able to get back on her own.
Well, two can play at that game, she thought, and as the successive teleportations continued, she focused going further and further, as far from here as possible, she thought, and as white light surrounded her yet again, there was a perceptible difference in the sensation. Twilight felt a jolt of fear, realizing this might mean that neither of them could get home.
The place they reappeared was not outer space—nor was it anywhere Twilight could name. All around them were what might only be described as swirling hints of color and conceptualizations of shapes. It was as though reality and measurable space flowed through and past them as matter might, never quite coalescing into anything that might remotely be described by the word "place".
"What have you done? Where are we?" asked Celestia, magically speaking directly into Twilight's mind. She might have had a mouth to speak aloud with, but at the moment, the question of whether or not this was really the case seemed more philosophical than practical, and by no means answerable.
"I took us far away," replied Twilight in kind. She instinctively struggled to look around for Celestia, but of course that would have required her to define "look" and "around", tasks which immediately defeated her.
"Do you realize what this is?" came Celestia's frantic response. "It's a dimension so young it hasn't even established its own physical laws. You didn't just bring us to this place—you created it!"
Twilight was panicking even more now. It occurred to her that she might not be breathing, and that there was no knowing how much longer they could survive here—if indeed the concept of time was relevant to this dimension at all. She focused her magic as intensely as before, but this time, she thought of home—of the air that floated around her; of up, left, down, right, forwards, backwards; of her friends…
…The rush of light came as it always did, and soon all she could do was pray that this would work…
…and it did. Relief flooded Twilight as she saw the faces of her friends, then the ponies of the hidden town excitedly pointing out her appearance to one another. She experienced a brief but intense bout of dizziness as the sensation of gravity returned. As she stumbled around, she realized she was not only back on Earth, but in the exact place where her battle with Celestia had begun.
As soon as she thought of the princess, she whipped around, prepared for a surprise attack. However, Celestia was in no condition to launch such an attack; she was on her knees, her breathing labored, her eyes wide with shock at what had just transpired. Twilight realized that Celestia had drained most of her magical reserves just keeping herself alive.
"Alright," she said despairingly after several seconds. "You win."
Everypony who heard her began to cheer, and as Twilight looked around at their joyous faces, she felt a more profound sense of triumph than ever before in her life. Not only had she accomplished feats of magic that literally defied reality, but in doing so, she had forced Celestia to surrender. The tyranny, it seemed, was finally going to stop.
Distracted as she was, she sensed that something was wrong. As the ponies suddenly stopped cheering, Twilight instinctively warped to a spot several yards to her right, expecting a devious attack. As she looked around, however, she realized that the princess had completely vanished from sight.
"Well?" shouted Applejack after a few tense seconds. "What're ya waitin' for? Go after her!"
"I can't!" cried Twilight. "I was only able to follow her before because we synchronized our teleportation spells. Right now, she could be anywhere on Earth—or off of it, for that matter."
Her words seemed to deflate the assembly. "It's all right," Luna assured Twilight as they stared, dumbfounded. "You showed her that you're the stronger unicorn, and that's what matters."
"But she could be out there anywhere…" said Twilight, lowering her head with worry and shame.
Still, the townsponies congratulated her for her amazing feat as they took her inside and saw to it that she was well-fed after such an ordeal. The threat of Celestia would hang over Maneheart for some time to come, but it was now known to everypony present that by challenging her rule, Twilight had shaken the very foundations of Equestria.