My Little Balladeer
Chapter 17
Twilight Sparkle felt this to be one of the roughest nights of her life. Aside from having a great certainty of hers shaken – that ponies didn’t walk after death – she followed something that all her learning and studies told her shouldn’t exist. She remembered her teachers telling her again and again that neigh-cromancy was just an old mare’s tale. That no pony, not even Princess Celestia, could restore life to the dead, despite the dozens of letters she got every month ranging from foals wanting a beloved pet back to heartbroken ponies begging her to restore their loved ones, letters that the Princess privately told Twilight broke her heart.
And then just a few hours ago Ruby came up from the woods, looking just as she did when Apple Bloom described her, and showed herself to be quite real. And in an even worse turn Twilight learned that Thorn plotted to turn everypony in Ponyville into shambling undead horrors to give the Sunny Town ponies their lives back.
And now, right on the edge of Sunny Town, a place that felt as close to Tartarus as any she’d ever read of, she faced one more horror, this walking dead thing before her that sounded like it wanted to do nothing but weep forever. At that moment Twilight learned that if she ever wondered about her courage, she’d always know she was brave. Because when Ruby stepped forward with a shocked look on her face, Twilight followed her to stand before it. She felt more than heard Applejack and Pinkie close behind her. She glanced to see John holding Zecora’s staff ready to use.
“Mitta?” Ruby stepped closer still, stretching her neck out like she wanted to nuzzle the corpse-thing before her. She stopped and said, “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to stop you,” Mitta looked from Ruby to Twilight and past her to John and the rest of her friends. “Have you gone mad, Ruby? You know what the others will do to you if they think you’re going to stop us from regaining our lives.”
“She ain’t mad, lady,” Applejack said, only a hint of a tremble in her voice. “But she don’t want ya ta hurt anypony else. ‘Specially not mah little sister an’ her friends.”
“What?” Mitta just glanced at her and looked back at Ruby. “Ruby, you know how angry they’ll be! If they,” she pointed at Twilight and Applejack with one rotted hoof, “don’t bring back Thorn’s spellbook, he won’t help us!”
“Please, Mitta,” Twilight stepped up beside Ruby. She gulped as she felt a chill from her, and a bigger one from Mitta herself. Forcing herself to ignore the smell of decay, Twilight said, “Ruby said you tried to help her once before. Whatever’s happened, you can’t have become so cruel as to want to see innocent ponies suffer for your sake, not little fillies who never hurt you. And who knows if Thorn would really help you if you help him?”
“He’d better,” Mitta said, her voice going from sad to harsh and brittle as the edge of a rusted axe. Her eyes blazed up. It took more nerve than Twilight thought she possessed to not step back from the rage thickening that voice. “He’d better help us like he said when he gets his book. Or else we’ll make him a part of our herd.” She looked back at Twilight and said in her normal sad voice, “But you’re right. I don’t owe you anything, but I do owe Ruby. And if she wants me to, then I’ll lead you to where you need to be.” Twilight wondered about her wording as Ruby spoke up.
“Yes, Mitta, that’s what I want.”
Mitta seemed to sigh. She turned and said, “This way.”
She forced her way between two trees that looked as old as the Everfree itself. Ruby followed her, and Twilight followed Ruby. She felt John stepping alongside her. Twilight slowed to ask him a quick question.
“John, do you trust this?”
“I reckon I should be the one a-asking you that question,” John said to her. She saw that he patted the sack holding the Letters of Cold Fire with one hand where it hung from his belt. In the other, he kept a firm grip on that staff. “I’ve met haunts two-three times in my life, but I’m noways an expert on them. I’d think you’d know more about ponies like Ruby and Mitta than I would.”
Twilight nodded back at him but she wondered. She looked around. She couldn’t see the stars from here, but she felt that they were walking perpendicular to the path Ruby had been following. Why would they be walking in this direction, of all the ways?
“Just a little further,” Mitta said from up before her where she walked alongside Ruby. “Just in this clearing.”
“What clearing?” Ruby asked. Twilight heard confusion in her voice. Then they broke through a screen of bushes, out into a clearing open to the sky above and allowing the moonlight to shine in, picking out trees and ponies alike in a silvery light. “Mitta – this isn’t the way back to Sunny Town!”
“No, it isn’t,” a hatefully familiar voice said. Twilight looked and froze to see a shaven head atop a massive two-legged form still dressed in Rarity’s royal raiment, its cold hard eyes glaring at her. “Hello, Ruby. Greetings, Twilight Sparkle, Silver John. I am Rowley Thorne, and I want my book back. Now.”
He stepped further out into the moonlight. His hands were folded before him and he smiled beatifically, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. They were like knives, she thought, trying to cut her where she stood. More of the Sunny Town ponies stood by him, the moonlight picking over their bones and empty eye sockets. Lyra also stood beside him on all fours, still with her jewel-set breastplate, looking hopelessly at Twilight. Twilight thought she mouthed run before Twilight stepped forward, keeping her own eyes locked on Thorn’s.
“Thorn,” she said, her horn glowing as she called up all the defensive wards she knew. Behind her she heard John getting his guitar ready, heard her friends getting their Elements out and setting them on. Her saddlebag opened and her tiara floated out and set itself on her head. And as it did, she said, “Rowley Thorn, in the name of Princess Celestia, I’m going to give you one last chance to give up peacefully and to return Spike and the Cutie Mark Crusaders. If you don’t, we will hurt you.”
“I’m hoping he says no,” Dash said where she hovered, looking ready to fight. Twilight glanced and saw how the muscles twitched under her blue coat. “I’ve never wanted to buck anypony in the face so hard in my life.”
“And I,” Thorn said, giving them a mocking leer, “Say in my own name, the only authority I must needs respect, that if you bring my book to me right now and declare yourself my apprentice, I will allow your little friends to go away alive and unharmed.” He waited, and his brow furrowed in anger. “I won’t ask again.”
“Good,” John said as he set his guitar down and lifted his fists. Twilight thought he looked a little bit like Dash at that moment. “Then there won’t be the need for more words from you. You meet me whereair you want, this’ll be over right quick.”
“As if I’d lower myself to brawling in the mud with some hillbilly,” Thorn snorted at him. “I have other ways. Mitta!”
Before Twilight could do anything, Mitta turned and charged John. Ruby cried out and tried to grab her. Before she took three steps the zombie ponies were on her. They bore her down beneath them. She cried out Mitta’s name and one of them hoofed her savagely in the face.
“John, look out!” Twilight saw him reaching for his guitar, stunned at this unexpected assault. It was too little too late. Mitta rammed into him and sent him rolling. The staff and his guitar both went flying beyond his reach. Twilight instinctively reached out with her magic and snatched the guitar, yelling as she did, “AJ, Dash, Rarity, stop Mitta! Pinkie and Fluttershy, you help John!” She set the guitar down gently and turned away, wondering if John would rise as a walking corpse from Mitta’s touch. She tried to snatch at their treacherous guide with her magic. Something reached out and batted her grip away. Twilight shot a glare at Lyra. “I don’t believe it, you’re still helping him?”
“I told you, he has Bon Bon!” she yelled back. “I don’t have any choice!” AJ’s lasso whipped out at Mitta’s legs as Dash stooped on her from above, but the lasso shot up and wrapped around Dash’s forelegs before it tightened. Dash yelled as she got pulled back into colliding with Applejack. Both ponies rolled over the ground. Rarity chased after Mitta and reached out with her magic. She gave a victorious yell and snatched the bag away.
“Twilight, I have it!”
Rarity held it open. Twilight reached in with her magic and froze. It was empty.
“Looking for this?”
They all turned and stared, humans and ponies alike. Thorn smiled on them all, holding the spellbook in one massive hand. He held it open before him and began to intone, “By the names of Aamelek, Nahemah, let the power of this tome be restored! By the power of Discord, let my will be done…”
“STOP HIM!”
Twilight didn’t know who yelled it, but she charged him, her horn glowing. She couldn’t let this happen, she just couldn’t…
And Thorn finished with a triumphant cry of, “Let this world be as I will it to be! Let me be its master! In Discord’s name, let it all be mine!” He slammed it shut and gave her a look of triumph, his eyes wide and wild. “As I desire, so mote it be!”
And Twilight screamed as the Everfree turned itself inside out around her.
* * *
And leagues away in Canterlot, Princess Celestia looked away from Discord’s rapidly crumbling statue and prepared to raise the sun when she felt something shudder through the very fabric of Equestria. Cries of panic came from within Canterlot itself as she saw an inverted pitch-black funnel cloud reaching up from the middle of the Everfree Forest to cover the moonlit horizon, with what looked like tentacles made of tar reaching out from it to cover even more of its boiling surface. It looked black, a pure and lifeless black, no sun or stars or moon, like the inside of a closed grave. Flares and flames shot into the sky beneath it, pinpricks of fire that could only be dragons in flight as they abandoned their lairs and hoards in terror. Celestia breathed out a phrase she thought she’d forgotten since her cutie mark came in and all but hurled the sun into the sky.
She heard panicked neighs from the crowded nobles as several of them, with one golden-maned unicorn stallion leading the way, hurried to the terraces overlooking the valley and looked down on the Everfree. Cries of panic arose and they turned to flee, ears flat and eyes rolling. If they stampeded they would trample each other. She saw the realization flash over the faces of Shining Armor and the guards, but before they could do anything, a pink alicorn flew out and over the terrified herd. Cadence dropped down beside Blueblood, talking gently yet strongly to the unicorn stallion. He froze, and slowly, shivering all the while, walked rather than ran away. The rest of the crowd calmed themselves as well. Celestia sighed her gratitude and glanced one last time out over the twisted magical storm engulfing the Everfree.
Twilight, she thought desperately. And then the wasps-nest laughter of Discord came back, echoing inside her mind so hard she thought it wanted to crack her skull open from the inside. Celestia turned back to the statue with a snarl of effort, resealing stone around one entire limb that was breaking free. She saw her sister’s mouth working, knew she was saying something to her, but all she could hear was the laughter of Discord crawling inside of her mind.
* * *
Big Mac trotted stolidly up to the front doors of Ponyville Hospital in the gray light preceding the dawn, bringing along the usual shipment of apples and other foods they bought from Sweet Apple Acres for the staff and patients. He’d wanted to stay at the farm with Granny Smith, only for her to shoo him out the door.
“These vittles ain’t gonna deliver themselves,” she’d told him in her quavering voice. “An y’all ought have more faith in Applejack n’ her friends. They stopped Discord and Nightmare Moon, didn’t they? They’ll bring little Apple Bloom and the rest back safe an’ sound.” When Mac nodded at her, still unwilling to leave, she added, “’Sides, if Equestria does come to an end, it’ll happen whether you’re here ‘r at the Hospital. And if it doesn’t, they’ll be wantin’ their apples. So just git goin’!” So Mac went out, hitched himself to the wagon, and took the food up the doors.
It wasn’t until he got there that things began to start. One of the patients from the cellar mental ward was helping, Screwloose (or so they called her; Big Mac wondered what the poor mare’s real name was). Thankfully she seemed calm today, smiling vacantly at everypony and only barking once in a while. They were unloading the apples, with Big Mac watching Screwloose closely, both to make sure that she didn’t snitch too many apples and that the nastier attendants didn’t pull any pranks on her, when it happened.
Something began howling off in the Everfree to the west. Big Mac thought it sounded like a frightened timber wolf. And then another joined it, and more and more. It sounded like the entire Everfree was going mad with fear, just like a few nights back when that Thorn creature first showed up.
Screwloose tossed her head up and whimpered, doglike. She began to bark and howl, her eyes rolling wildly, before she ran to Big Mac and took hold of a mouthful of his mane and started trying to drag him back inside the hospital.
“What th’ hay?” He pulled free from her. “What’s th’ matter with ya, mare?”
She whimpered and pressed against him as though seeking protection. She stared at the Everfree, shivering. Big Mac’s gaze followed hers and he stared as well. Equine forms in dark armor came racing out from it, heading for the hospital. He recognized them as Princess Luna’s Night Guard, their batlike wings folded tight to their bodies and their heads down as they sought all the speed they could get. A powerful wind howled and hammered over and past them, whipping debris against Mac. He saw that if they tried flying they’d have been torn away by it. Behind them Mac saw rabbits and ferrets and the other animals from Fluttershy’s menagerie. He thought he could see her little rabbit Angel leading the way.
“What’s goin’ on?” He asked one of the Night Guards as they dashed around him and the attendants and Screwball.
“Get inside, fool,” he hissed at Mac in what seemed like the loudest voice they owned, “and bar the doors!” Mac almost asked why. Then he looked past them and saw why.
Long, animal-like forms studded with thorns and branches came racing from the Everfree; timber wolves, ears down and heads outstretched and running as fast as they could. Behind and above them what looked like a pillar of darkness sprang up from the Everfree, tendrils dropping down from it and covering more of the forest, hiding it from sight. One timber wolf headed straight for the hospital and the knot of ponies at the door. Everypony shrieked and tried to force their way inside at once, leaving only poor terrified Screwloose and Big Mac standing between the monster and a hospital full of injured and frightened ponies. She whimpered back against him, and then with a howl turned and ran off into the town.
Big Mac stepped up with a snort, hoping this wouldn’t be his last mistake. Maybe he could distract it long enough for everypony else to get away. The timber wolf ran at him. And past him, uttering high-pitched yelps of panic. Hot on its heels went the rest of its pack, and behind them came more – a massive bear with an owl’s head and claws, a manticore yowling like the world’s biggest alley cat, all of them racing into and through town, frightened so badly that not even the sight of normally delectable ponies made any impression on their minds. And overhead, Big Mac gulped to see the sun in the sky, but higher than it should be, in a position it shouldn’t be in for hours yet.
Big Mac looked into the Everfree where monsters and ponies alike fled from something that terrified them past all thinking and wondered if he’d ever see his sisters or their friends ever again.
* * *
And in Canterlot’s mental hospital, a pink pony with a white-striped purple mane and a screw and ball for a cutie mark began laughing for joy and jumping up and down in her cell.
“It makes sense!” She cheered, “It’s all starting to make sense again!”
* * *
Right after Mitta bowled me over I heard Thorne a-calling some names I nair did like to hear for all the times I’ve heard them. I heard yells from Rarity and Twilight and the rest of the ponies, wild and frightened and scared half to death. And Thorne finished, a-calling out, “By Discord’s power, let this world be as I will it! So mote it be!” And the thickest and heaviest darkness you ever imagined could exist rolled over us all like someone just blew out the sun like a candle. One last laugh from Thorne, what sounded like a cry from Ruby, and no more sounds.
I tried to get my wits back together. I touched where Mitta had run up against me. It felt right cold and nasty there. I reckon I shivered when I rubbed what I found on my hands off against the clean dirt underneath me. I heard no sound from the ponies where they’d been. I bent down to get my guitar back and found it gone. I remember how Twilight had snatched it up with her magic, and wondered where she might could be.
“Twilight?” I called out. I thought maybe I heard some pony yell back to me but she sounded to be miles away. I called louder this time, “Applejack? Rarity? Any of you? Where are you-all at?” No response, just that darkness and silence all about. The only real consolation I can remember me right then was that I must still be alive. Whereair I stood, it wasn’t any kind of a heaven, and I figured hell would be livelier.
“John!” I heard one of the ponies yell, closer than before but still sounding far away. More voices joined the one that called out, saying, “John, girls, where are you?... Hey now, John, where are y’all at?... Where the hay is everypony?... Oh, please, John, don’t you be lost too!... Ooh, if we’re playing hide-and-seek, can I be it?”
Then a sudden spark lit up that darkness, almost white-hot before my eyes. I yelled and saw the ponies again. They stood right about me. Applejack and Fluttershy stood so close I would have tripped on them if I’d taken more than one step. The rest were near as close by me. The light came from Twilight’s horn, and I say no lie when I say I felt relief to see my old guitar laid on the ground against her. I think we all just stared on each other there for a second. I spoke first.
“Why did you all sound like you were miles and miles away?” Twilight looked at me, and when she spoke she sounded as confused as I reckon I felt.
“Us? You were the one who sounded like you were on the other side of the Everfree!” She looked around at her friends. “So did all of you.”
“I thought you’d all been dragged away somehow, darling,” Rarity said to her. She added with a graceful kind of shudder, “I thought I was all alone here, and I just felt this place pressing down on me somehow, like it…”
“Like it wanted you to just lie down and shiver in the dark forever,” Twilight finished for her, sounding afraid. The way Rarity and the others looked at her, I knew she’d spoken true words. She looked around and shuddered. “I know where we are. I’ve been here before.” Her friends gave her looks that wondered. I didn’t, for I could guess what she meant.
“This is the place Thorne’s book sent you to,” I said to her. “Where you were meant to stay in the dark, alone forever.”
“Yes,” she nodded back at me. She looked around again, directing the light from her horn the way you would with a bullseye lantern or a flashlight. “This sure isn’t the Everfree.”
“No, it isn’t,” Thorne, for it was he who spoke, chuckled down at us all. I looked around for him, and if I’d seen him then I reckon I’d have learned how he could take a punch, but he hid himself from us. His voice like to seem to come from air place around us all at once as he said, “This is the world the Letters of Cold Fire came from originally, before I found it on my world, before Discord re-created it for me from my memories. This is going to be my Equestria, little ponies. What do you think of it? Ah, but I forget. We ought to have some light so you can look upon my new kingdom.”
No sooner than he said that it happened. A raw red light shone down over and around us. I felt right sorry to see what it showed. The trees showed more spread out now, but shorter and sickly-looking, soft and nasty like some almighty big fungus, maybe something poisonous to touch. The ground gave a little under your feet and sprang back when you stepped away, like you walked on something alive. And the air felt warm and thick where it blew down on you in steady puffs like you walked inside of some living thing, something that wanted to eat you right up.
We all looked up and saw more still. The light came from a swollen blood-red moon hanging in the sky, looking broken and jagged like a shattered rock. I tell you all, it looked like someone up and murdered the moon and hung its corpse in the sky for air soul to look on. It made me feel the least bit ill just to see. And no stars save maybe things that looked like guttering embers from a fire. And less use to talk of the clouds we saw, great big things that seemed to boil and twist like snakes in a bag made of smoke. I could tell more still but I’d rather not speak of it. Thank you, I won’t even try.
“It suits you, Thorne,” Twilight responded him, “But not anypony else. We’re still going to find you and stop you from doing more damage. And where are Spike and the Cutie Mark Crusaders?”
“I said they would be returned to you if you returned my book to me…”
“An’ we did!” Applejack yelled then. Rarity and Rainbow Dash nodded at her words, both looking right angry then. She stomped up by Twilight and called up into the air like into Thorne’s face, “Ya got your nasty spellbook back! Now where’s mah sister, n’ where’s Sweetie Belle n’ Scootaloo n’ Spike at?”
“You brought it here, but I took it from you,” Thorne’s voice came back to us, from air place and no place all at the once. It seemed like he drew off away from us, up into the sky by those clouds. “I don’t owe you anything. If you want your little friends, come and take them from me.”
“I’ll do just that, you big jerk!”
“Dash, don’t!” Twilight called, but it did no good. Rainbow Dash took off, her wings beating like an angry bee’s as she flew straight up towards those clouds. I half wondered if I saw a rainbow trail along after her as she flew. Twilight and her friends and I all looked after Dash as she became littler and littler against those clouds and that starless sky. She went from the size of your fist to the size of your thumb and then she vanished against those cloud-things.
“Ah hope she ain’t bit off more’n she can chew,” Applejack said. “Dash’s pretty good, but this place looks –“
And from high up there a cry, first of surprise and then a sharper one of pain.
“Dash!” One of the girls called that out, or maybe I did, or all of us. I saw what looked like a blue rag tumbling from the sky, rolling over and over. I think she fell to just a few dozen feet up before she got her wings back under her and started to come down a little slower. She circled once or twice and then set down amidst us all, shaking as she spoke.
“It, it was the cloud! I t-tried to fly over it and it swatted at me with something like a tentacle. It felt wet and runny, and it burned me!” She lifted her wing and showed us where it’d touched on to her. Her blue coat along that side under her wing looked seared away. Not deep enough to show muscle, but enough to show raw red flesh.
“Oh my goodness, Dash!” Fluttershy pressed up close and looked at it the way folks do when they know something about treating injuries. She pressed and checked around it. Dash winced but said nothing. Fluttershy reached into her saddlebag with one wing, using it like a hand and fingers, and took out what I could see were medicines and bandages. She said to us all, “Girls, I have to treat this now. But I’ll make it quick. Rarity, maybe you could help with the bandaging?”
“Of course, dear.” The elegant white unicorn walked up to Dash and Fluttershy. Her horn glowed and the bandages floated up. “But we have to hurry. I will not leave Sweetie Belle in that fiend’s hands any longer than I can possibly help!” I stepped back by Twilight and Applejack to give them room as Dash started a-trying to tell them that she felt right fine.
“Oh, here, John,” Twilight said as she set my guitar back into my hands. “I knew you’d want me to be careful with this.” She and Applejack looked on as Dash got treated and they both winced to see what’d been done to her.
“I did, and I thank you,” I said to her. I checked it and sighed to see my old guitar wasn’t the least bit damaged. I looked around and frowned “Wherever is Pinkie at?”
“Right here!” Pinkie bounced up from behind us all. She looked as happy as ever. Well, maybe the least bit less happy. She said, “I just took a quick look around. Meany-pants Thorne is gone, and so are Lyra and the zombie ponies. But Ruby left us a trail! I knew she was a nice ghostie.”
“What trail?” I asked her. Pinkie turned and pointed off amongst what might could have been bushes back home but looked more like coral here, if coral shivered like a dying man in his sickbed. Dash and Rarity and Fluttershy came up alongside the rest of us as we looked and saw what Pinkie pointed at. It was a trail of glowing hoofmarks in the dirt. When we looked closer, we could see more marks alongside them, one of them from someone wearing boots.
“Looks like that’s the way Thorne an’ his pals went,” Applejack said. She pointed off down the trail they’d used where it vanished under the trees.
“Then that’s the way we’re going.” Twilight set out along it, saying as she did, “I don’t like this, but right now we don’t have any other way to get around. Dash and Fluttershy don’t dare fly, and I am not pushing my way through that.” She indicated off to one side as she spoke. We looked and saw one of those puffy trees all wrapped around with vines set with thorns fit for the world’s meanest set of barbed wire. The vines crawled on it like angry snakes. One of them tried to reach out as she passed, and then of a sudden it flinched back from her. I began to head after Twilight, but stopped when Applejack got in front of me. Twilight looked back as she spoke.
“Tell y’all what, John,” she said. She jerked her head at the vines and trees. “Ah’m pretty sure the Elements’ll keep me n’ mah friends safe, but you I ain’t sure about.”
“I’ll kindly take that chance right now,” I told her, but she shook her head at me.
“Ah know ya got your book an’ your silver strings, but we’ll probably need ya yet,” she said, “So how about you walk along in the middle o’ us? If those things Thorne made try anything, they’ll have ta get by us.”
I shook my head at her. “I thank you kindly, but I’m not about to have you all set yourselves between me and air wicked thing here…”
“It’s not that simple,” Twilight broke in, not very mannerly for her. “John, you’re a source of information, and you’ve been a help since this all started. Thorne probably knows that by now. Losing you now would weaken us against him.” I opened my mouth to speak, but she spoke first. “No complaints, please! We need you in one piece, and these trees will stay away from us. They seem to be afraid of Equestrian magic like the Elements.” While she said all that, she dropped back until she walked before me, what they call the point in the military. Rarity and Rainbow Dash, just this once keeping her hooves on the ground, went up to stand behind and off a little to the sides of her, and Pinkie and Fluttershy went behind them. I looked in back of me and saw Applejack there, a-giving me a smile.
“Ya helped us a lot, John, and ya protected our families” she said to me, “An’ now it’s our turn to be the ones watchin’ over you.”
I might have said more then. I don’t like feeling like I need to be kept safe from airy thing, but what they said were true words. And the more we fussed about this, the more time Thorne had to do whatair he wanted to be doing with Lyra and Spike and Apple Bloom and her friends. So I just bent down and picked up that ash staff of Zecora’s.
“Let’s be going, then,” I said to them all. We all went off under those trees. I do admit, it felt less creepy to be there with friends. Especially when I saw one of those vines make to drop down on me but jerk back when it got close by Fluttershy. I wondered aloud, “If what I had was enough to stop the Sunny Town haunts and Thorne’s magic afore this, why not now?”
“That’s a heck of a good question,” Applejack said behind me. “Ya got any ideas, Twi?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, shaking her head. “I can only imagine that it’s the same reason why Thorne’s been able to accomplish so much more here lately. He’s been drawing on not just Discord’s power, but the wild magic of the Everfree. I think his magic is becoming Equestrian, in some ways. Sure, he’s still using it the way he did back in your world, John, but it’s a familiar power being used with some different skills…” She stopped talking then, and looked thoughtful. If she’d had hands I reckon she would have been rubbing her chin.
“You thought of a thing that might help?” I asked her.
“Maybe,” she said. She spoke slow and careful, spacing her words out to make sure we all heard them there. “I couldn’t fight Thorne’s magic before, but he’s using so much Equestrian magic now. And there’s what you told and showed me, so I have some idea of how this all works. And there’s this.” The light from her horn played over the sickly trees and plants around us. They seemed to try and pull back from it, like her magic pained them. “He’s making Equestria a part of him, but at the same time he’s becoming a part of it, and…” She broke off and stopped dead in the path. I saw that here it widened out some, making something like a clearing.
“Did any of you hear that?”
We all stopped and listened. I strained my ears. I heard Dash snort.
“Aww, it’s just the wind.” Then she perked her ears up, and so did I. I heard noises from down the trail, down the way we were going. A sort of heavy dragging in the dirt, and clumsy footsteps. No, not footsteps. Hoofbeats. But whatair horse or pony made these sounds seemed kindly like one about to fall down dead.
“Guys?” Pinkie said, and she sounded right bad scared to say it. I looked and saw how her tail twitched and she shivered. “This is big. Like in town. But it’s gonna be worse!”
I slung my guitar around over on my back and took that staff up, ready to hit with it. Dash flew up into the air. I heard her hiss a bit at the pain as her bandages pulled over her side where she’d been burned. Twilight’s friends went up by her, looking right ready for trouble. Those noises got louder. I wondered myself what we’d be seeing.
And it showed itself, and I was sorry I’d wondered. Four figures stood there. Well, the three of them stood, and one crawled. The crawling one out in front showed scales and slit-pupil eyes and fangs like a snake, but it also had two short arms or legs it used to pull that long length of its body along behind it. It looked on us and hissed like a steam pipe. And on its head set between its eyes, a crimson jewel that shone and pulsed like a living heart.
And behind it, three things like ponies, as big as the ladies with me, save that they’d been flayed from lips to tail. Their hides showed a wet dull red streaked with white where the fat marbled their muscles. The sockets of their eyes showed empty like the Sunny Town ponies I’d seen, all filled with fiery light. They differed from each other too. One showed a long jagged horn coming from her forehead like a saw-toothed swordblade. One shrieked, showing a thicket of fangs in its mouth, and spread tattered bat wings like I’d seen on those Night Guards in town, but too ripped and torn to ever fly. And the last owned muscles like Applejack’s. All three wore the capes I’d seen Sweetie Belle making for Apple Bloom and Scootaloo and herself.
We stared on Spike and the Cutie Mark Crusaders and they stared back at us just a moment long.
Then they screamed like someone took the lid off of hell and charged.