Shadows' Call

by NPP6

Chapter 16 - Turning Point

Featherdown finally gave in, slumping against the door in defeat. She had tried all six of the lock picking spells she knew on the door to the supply closet – she could only guess that that meant the rest of the foals were still holding the prison room – but none of them were working. If she had to bet, there was probably somepony outside actively holding the door closed.
At least she had managed to get out of the six 2-yard lengths of chain they had wrapped her in before tossing her in here. Still, she was worried about what they might be doing to Page Turner...
What was that?!
She spun at a noise behind her, eyes straining uselessly in the dark. She found herself wishing that she had some kind of light source, reaching out with her magic to see if there was a flashlight in here… and she facehooved.
Lighting up her horn, the filly looked around. The closet was a little larger than she would have expected, but not ridiculously so. It was maybe four hooves wide by seven or eight deep. For a larger pony it might have been a prison cell, but for her, it was just a room. Just another room that she was being held in yet again.
The urge to roll her eyes was interrupted by a repetition of the same sound she had heard before. This time her eyes narrowed. There was definitely something there.
Towards the back of the closet, leaned in a corner, was a large flattish object covered in a sheet. The whispering – that was what she had decided the noise was – was coming from under that sheet.
Gently, Featherdown tugged the sheet until one corner came loose. Then she had to jump backwards to avoid being buried as the rest of the sheet slid down under its own weight. The room seemed to brighten slightly, and she looked up to see that the light from her horn was being reflected around the area by the mirror.
And then she caught sight of what the mirror was reflecting and her hornlight went out as she yelped in surprise.

Discord cackled as he watched the cultists scurry about, trying to flee. But even as they did, walls moved, paths changed, physics bent, and reality warped. And as per the challenge he had set for himself tonight, not a single pony noticed.
Except Pinkie Pie.
She didn’t count.
The draconequus let loose another dark chuckle, allowing himself a few sentences of soliloquy, “There is an extremely short list of ponies who genuinely understand me. You have no idea how hard it is to make friends when that’s the case. Those three are the only hope I have that ponies might one day accept a little chaos in their lives. How dare you hurt my little friends?”

Featherdown took a calming breath, steadying herself as her heart slowed. She opened her eyes to darkness, hesitating before lighting her horn once more. The mirror hadn’t changed, her reflection was still an adult alicorn.
She went through several actions, just to make sure. The mirror waved when she did, made the same funny faces she did, ducked out of and into the picture at the same time she did. Eventually she sighed, deciding that this must be some kind of carnival mirror.
And then promptly jumped backwards again when her reflection broke down laughing of its own accord.
“I’m sorry,” The mare in the mirror finally gasped out after she caught her breath, “You’d think after a thousand years that would either get old or I’d be able to hold my composure, but noo~oo I still crack up every time.”
Featherdown pieced her mental state back together while the mare wiped a tear out of her eye. “Wh-who are you?”
The mare blinked in surprise, then shook her head. “Right, your friend still doesn’t know everything and didn’t even have time to tell you everything she knew. I am Lace Heart, Alicorn of Siblings. Do you remember Black Diamond telling you about Midnight Star?”
Featherdown nodded mutely and the mare continued, “Good, then that makes this simpler. I’m Midnight’s counterpart. The day to his night. He’s Luna’s general, I’m Celestia’s. I also have some debts I’m planning on repaying tonight, but… I need your help first.”
“What can I do?”
“Okay, crash course in alicorn lore. Most of the alicorns – at present ten exceptions exactly – are Elder Alicorns. You don’t need to worry about them right now. Then there’s Twilight Sparkle, Mi Amore Cadenza, and Nyx, the new generation of alicorns. You don’t really need to worry about them either.
“That leaves seven. The Younger Alicorns. Who in all honesty will probably be getting renamed soon. This group includes me, Midnight, Luna, Celestia, and a couple of others. We’re all about a thousand years old. We’re also the generation of alicorns that has to deal with the problem of Nightmares. For Luna, Nightmare Moon. For Midnight Star, Starless Night. For me…
“Tell me, have you ever heard the story of The Ivory Liar?”
Featherdown’s eyes widened in surprise, she had never believed in that particular story, and even if she had, the mare in front of her with the powder green eyes and mint mane bore little resemblance to the legendary Mare in the Mirror. “Ye-yeah, I mean, who hasn’t? But she’s just an old mare’s tale, right?”
“So are Nightmare Moon, Discord, Tirek, and The Pony Who Went to the Stars. A lot of ponies seem to find it easier to pretend away the fairy tales instead of realizing that they had to come from somewhere. My nightmare form is the Alicorn of Dark Reflections, the twisted kind you get out of trick mirrors, but for the soul instead of the body. While we’re trapped in this mirror world, I can keep her in check, bend her will to mine, but I need somepony else to summon her. You know the words?”
Featherdown nodded, licking her lips. “Just call her by name, right?”
“Yes.”
The filly took a deep breath. “Bloody Marely.”
The change began, not as dramatic as Featherdown had been expecting, but more… fluid. “Bloody Marely.”
It was like another mare was behind Lace Heart, and she was slowly turning invisible to reveal the pony behind her. “Bloody Marely.”
Featherdown blinked when the transformation finished. The mare’s soft white coat had turned a different shade of white. A dead one that made Featherdown think of bones and barren wastelands. Her mane had darkened, leaving it a shade of green so deep that it might as well have been black. If Bloody Marely’s coat came from the middle of a desert, then her mane and tail were from the bottom of a swamp. Her eyes and hooves were what held Featherdown’s attention though.
She had been expecting cat like eyes because of Diamond’s descriptions. But Bloody Marely’s eyes were just like anypony else’s, at least at first glance. There was something unnerving about them still, but… For the life of her, Featherdown couldn’t figure out what it was. Maybe it was just the color, that deep, rich red that could only be described as blood. The same red that was running in splotches up from her hooves and across her wings, even spiraling down the groove of her horn.
The mare seemed to be waiting for something, so Featherdown met her gaze, trying and failing to suppress a shudder. “Young filly, listen with care. Do not leave this room until you have heard the screaming move away. Do you understand?” Featherdown nodded weakly. “Good.” The nightmare vanished from the mirror, taking with her an oppressing feeling of darkness that Featherdown hadn’t even realized was there.
And then the screaming started.

“So let me tell you about this filly.” The mare said, twirling the severed horn of the unicorn in front of her as she did. His eyes were locked in horror on the floating piece of bone that used to belong to him. “You see, through a complicated set of circumstances, she was forced to take over Equestria. It was a rather hostile event, I’m sure you remember it. The point is, that her mother was able to save her, and help her save the rest of the country. And then – and this is the important part – she went back to her normal life.
“She opened the door for my kind. For those of us who walked dark paths but wanted to escape from their past sins. Discord, me, a few others, she’s the reason we had a chance, the reason that the ponies who stopped us were willing to believe we could change. I owe that filly everything I have now.” Starlight Glimmer smiled. “Besides, after two months of living with her, I kind of like Nyx.”

Featherdown was curled up on the ground, hugging her rear hooves to her chest. She flinched again as another scream came from the other side of the door. This time it sounded like the pony made it a few yards away. That was good, she wouldn’t have to hear this one die.
Another scream, this one making it even further. For some reason the cultists seemed to keep running towards the terror, probably thinking that their prisoner was escaping…
Oh. Right. She was supposed to be escaping. She stood up… She stood up… She glared at her hooves, telling them to stand up again. She didn’t move.
The filly finally broke, tears flowing freely under the weight of her fears. After a while – she had no idea how long – she remembered the last time she had been in this situation. She had been crying on Diamond’s shoulder that time… Diamond!
Black Diamond was out somewhere out there. Featherdown’s friend was facing down an entire cult on her own, and who knew what would happen if Bloody Marely found her. She had to reach her.
Shakily, Featherdown forced herself to her hooves. Picking the lock was easy as breathing now that there wasn’t somepony holding it shut. The benefits of long practice… she felt a chill go down her spine. Focus on the here and now.
She made her way out and almost lost the contents of her stomach. In a way it was worse than the nightmare she’d had about Diamond. There wasn’t as much blood, but it was real this time. Bloody Marely had torn the cultists apart. Featherdown took a shaky breath, levitating a length of chain out of the closet as she did.
She walked down the tunnel a little, giving the chain an experimental swish. She shifted her magical grip so that she was only holding the end, and then cracked it like a whip. The knowledge that she would be using the things he had taught her brought back the urge to be sick, but she suppressed it. She would do whatever she had to to help her friends.
She heard voices and turned just as a pair of cultists came around the corner. Both parties froze in temporary surprise, Featherdown’s brain turning back on first. Right now, "doing whatever you have to" includes not being here.
She took off running and the chase began anew.

The stallion slammed up against the wall, Button Mash’s Keyblade making an “X” with Pipsqueak’s cutlass across his throat. The bruises littered up and down the cultist’s body evidencing the fact that the weapons were no less formidable for being wooden.
“I am going to ask you exactly once,” Button spoke in the practiced hiss he had memorized from several video games. “Where. Is. Sweetie Bell?”

One of the older fillies was shaking her head. “Kid, it won’t work. Yeah we’ve got ‘em outnumbered four to one, but they’ve got us outgunned. They can just put us to siege here, wait us out. Eventually we’ll just starve.”
“Then we’ll have to take the fight to them.” Sweetie Bell said.
Another one of the older foals shook his head. “No use,” the colt said, “We don’t have any real fighters, it’s been all we could do to keep them out of this room. There’s no hope, we don’t stand a chance. We have to surrender.”
Sweetie’s eyes flashed momentarily, but softened instantly. “Fine. Give in. Give up. But don’t you dare tell me to. I still have something to fight for.”

Featherdown redoubled her speed as she saw the room ahead. Upon entering it however, she was disappointed. Instead of the prison room she had been hoping to stumble across, she found herself in a different one.
Still a prison, with the same machines as the other one, but this one contained only a single filly. The unicorn did a double-take, almost dropping the chain still clutched in her magic as she realized that this filly was an alicorn.
There was no time though. Featherdown hadn’t stopped moving, she couldn’t. The cultists were only a few paces behind her. Still, she had to do something… As she passed by, the filly lashed out with her chain, whipping it through the equipment holding the black filly.
As she vanished down another tunnel with her pursuers, she could only hope that it would be enough.

The stallion was wishing he could shake in terror. As it was, he wasn’t sure what the unicorn mare had paralyzed him with, but it was effective. He couldn’t so much as twitch anything below his neck.
Rarity smiled winningly at her new dressmaker’s doll, even as another long pin stabbed sharply into his side. “Oh, I’m so sorry dearie, but really, you must stop moving! Now then, one of the best parts of these dressmaking sessions is the idle gossip, so tell me; would you happen to possibly know where my dear sister Sweetie Bell is?”
Pin number sixty-three floated up in her magic and the stallion in the dress gave a small whimper.

Sweetie stood in the center of the room. Behind her, the other foals were lining the walls. In the end, they were all going to give up. She stood alone.
The cultists came in through all the entrances at once. It was an impressive display that Sweetie Bell was honestly happy to see. Every cultist here was one that wasn’t chasing Black Diamond.
“So you’re ready to surrender then.”
“Most of us.”
“I’m the exception.” Sweetie’s gaze dropped to the floor. “I’m the one who’s still ready to fight.”
The cultist’s lip twitched. “You realize that there’s no way you can win, right?”
“I know.” When the filly looked up and opened her eyes, there was a white fire in them. “But I have to try anyway.” And then her cutie mark lit up.

The cultist was jumping at the wall, scrambling for a hoofhold, a crack, anything to let him escape the doom coming up behind him. He heard the fillies’ voices approach and collapsed in a corner, sobbing in abject terror.
“We’ll ask once.”
“Where are ya’ll keeping Sweetie Bell?”
The dim alley was suddenly brightened as twin lights came from the fillies’ flanks. They looked first down at them in surprise, and then up at each other in recognition. And then the entire town heard the song echoing on the wind.

The fire in Sweetie’s eyes built until it was the only visible in them. And then she erupted, an ethereal wind blowing back her mane and carving twin ruts of white flame into the stone, a V with her standing at the tip as her usual green eyes returned.
Gasps could be heard all around, and she didn’t have to see them to know why. Sweetie Bell could feel the wings on her back, just like she could feel the new strength in her hooves. And she knew what color they were too. Her wings were orange, her hooves yellow.
And then she felt the song leaving her heart and pouring out.

The filly took a step forward, and as she did, two more fillies sidestepped out of her, an orange pegasus on one side and a yellow earth pony on the other. The ghostly fillies joined in at this point, singing alongside the white unicorn, changing only the pronouns.

She took another step forward, the white flames still trailing in her wake. As she did, the change began to take root. A few of the cultists started to waver, one or two even took a step back. At the same time some of the foals, mostly the younger ones, stepped forward, taking positions in a V-formation with Sweetie and the spirits of her friends.

The tide of the Heartsong had swept up most everypony in the room. A more perfect ambush could not have been planned, with half of the cultists backing themselves into corners avoiding the advancing foals. A few tried to attack, but the white fire was now protecting all of the foals backing Sweetie Bell, and they were launching attacks of their own now that their confidence had returned.

The few cultists still standing were in full retreat. The older foals who had been pushing to surrender now took up positions at the tunnel entrances, ensuring there would be no surprises as the rest of them hooked their new prisoners up to the machines that would keep them out of their manes.

As the last of the flames died and her friend’s ghostly images faded, Sweetie Bell stood triumphant, the focal point of the room.

Featherdown slid to a stop, realizing that she was completely surrounded. A massive pit lay before her, a stallion on the only bridge across. Behind her, every tunnel had a cloaked pony in it.
“So,” The stallion on the bridge spoke, “Another one has made it this far. Tell me, are you ready to die?”