‘How could you?! Traitor!’
The Sun was aglow, a white heat rolling through every inch of her frame, all taught sinews and too tight flesh. Within she burned, a bellowing furnace ignited at her core and consuming all besides in its inferno. Without, this inner chaos erupted violently to the surface, drawing her visage back into a contorted snarl, whilst the rest of her being became an aggressively coiled spring, awaiting release. It hurt; it all hurt so much, blistering her every inch as a mass of scars. Most of all though these fires licked against her heart, scourged, leaving it leaden as if physically ruptured and now a dead weight.
‘I thought of everypony you were the one, the only one, I could trust, and yet you’ve turned your back on your duty, Equestria and me! For what? Pride, ambition, or something darker? Why?!’
The world was dark and fractured, showered in fragments of shattered glass and fallen masonry, a black sun raised in the sky like a gaping hole. Everything was cast into darkness, tinged lustreless in shadows. In this non-light only a maw of bared fangs could glimmer, glinting as they cackled at her. Above these jaws two azure orbs similarly shone out with stolen light, flames dancing behind a nocturnal predator’s slashed pupils. Its eyes were hungry harbingers, in the same way the room’s desolation was, in looking devouring, sucking all brightness from their world. They were cold set against her fire, screaming an intrinsic threat against all of creation; a creation over which she watched and safeguarded, which it was her purpose to protect.
‘Traitor!’
About the Sun six stars whirled in orbit, bleeding their stained lights into their sovereign. Her flames bloomed brighter, stoked by each of these beams, becoming a pure torch of angry energy. Fetterless it broke forth in a single merciless ray, tearing like lightening through the air, instantly poisoned by the thick scent of ozone. It struck hard, whiting out its dark target and all else in a single explosive pulse. When this dissipated only a plume of slowly settling dust was left in its place, deathly quiet replacing the preceding roar.
Princess Celestia awoke in the silence as it swiftly fell all around. She herself was the loudest thing in existence, her body heaving as it recognised its own exhaustion, until then wholly deaf to it. Her frame ached, both joints and muscles overstretched in kind. In a word she felt empty, her all thrown blindly at something veiled by a red mist, from which she was now emerging. Wreckage of one form or another lay all around, the throne room distorted beyond its former glory, every surface given a coating of crystal shards. These glittered in the light of the night sky, shining through a vast hole broken behind the thrones themselves, one toppled whilst the other stood alone. Everywhere else was marred by blackened scorch lines, evidence of the magical melee which had ensued, the floor pockmarked by similar craters.
The solar sovereign’s gaze panned upward, meeting the moon set uncontested in the ether, new darkened patches almost forming a face on its surface. ‘Lulu… I-I’m…’
---
*Thump!*
An exasperated huff followed immediately in the wake of the base note of face hitting open pages. Both noises echoed noticeably, magnified in the emptiness of the library’s stacks. A lone lavender unicorn left her head sunk in the tome on the desk before her, bringing her hooves up to rub her temples, attempting to massage her ailing brain within. Twilight compartmentalised, it was very much her modus operandi, identifying and segregating problems so as to mount a concerted attack against them. At the same time this gave everything in her life its place. In this way she had never met an insurmountable foe, her dependably analytical mind able to best anything thrown at her. Everything that was until now. Having suffered a defeat (though majorly put out by this she was mare enough to admit that she had failed) she had decided to change strategy, for once taking up some of Rainbow’s advice: to ‘just ignore the problem and let it handle itself’. This too however so far had not worked, distraction seeming ever just out of reach, much to her exponentially flaring annoyance.
‘Why the buck can’t I get her out of my head?!’ Her words went to nopony beyond herself, the question having by now become a more than tiresome one. Quite literally countless (or at least lost) days mulling it over had achieved exactly squat, only really managing to make the query seem staled, her mind left inescapably hanging as a result. In this state it took her a minute to notice her own uncharacteristic vulgarity, in spite of her solitude turning pink and catching her mouth with a hoof in response, ever the self-conscious pupil. This quickly departed however, lost to her unrelenting inner aggravation. ‘For buc… goodness' sake!’
Thumping the table before her, she rose abruptly to her hooves in the same instant. Rather than succumbing to pacing (another thing that she had recently fallen into doing far too often) she instead managed to resist this urge and made directly for the nearest bookshelf. She levitated a basket of disordered tomes to her side, the action as much as her definitive strides in reality an act, aiming to trick her mind. Reordering the few removed books, turned to reorganising a whole stack, becoming a whole row and quickly half of Golden Oak Library’s contents was afloat in the air.
What do you think Luna’s doing now?
‘Damn it!’
*Thud!*
As one every single book in flight crashed back to earth, falling in the face of a rank of images which accompanied her inner voice’s innocent question. Foremost as always amongst them was the Princess of the Night resplendent in a corona of residual energy, her mane whipped by the gusts of a dissipating blast, windswept and totally absorbing.
*Thud, thud, thud*
Twilight slammed her head three times in slow succession against the corner of a set of shelves, reduced to trying this blunt approach at exorcism. Unsurprisingly it did not work. The worst parts of this were one: she felt powerless, and two: she felt stupid, neither of which the unicorn was particularly accustomed to, let alone the underlying alien feelings which constituted the greatest distraction.
Well and truly fed up, her gaze departed, drifting outward through the panes of the library’s front windows. The small scene which met her on the other side was one of two walking together in line, an orange earth mare and a cyan pegasus (choosing uncharacteristically to relinquish the use of her much treasured wings), both well known to their unseen viewer. Occasionally it could seem like every second word that either AJ or Rainbow spoke was something about one another, always in constant obsessive competition. They were therefore quick to boast of success, throw down a fresh challenge or crack a joke at their adversary’s expense. Even now the pair of them were obviously trying to push each other’s buttons, in the midst of a rapid verbal dual, but each time they made a successful strike both rather than one of them burst into laughter.
Maybe this is a friendship thing then?
‘Maybe…’
---
‘I banish you!’
A huge blast broke outward in the dust, throwing up a thick wall of greyish debris and cracking open a deep crater, just one more in a landscape already littered with holes. Drowning out any explosive noise though, there was a roar; low, sharp and guttural as it bellowed forth from the depths of the clouds. Wordless the booming voice was only violence and hatred, being cast beyond all else, seeking to force its weight of loathing onto any and all who might hear it. Nopony did however, all its bloody intent falling flat before the mark. As the chaotic veil began to drift away it came to an end, its source emerging through these curtains of floating rock in a hardened silence.
The shadowy figure (almost jet black save for the lone crescent emblazoned on its flank, and therefore next to invisible against the background of the ether) walked in sharp movements, driven, although it was unclear where in the featurelessness it aimed for. Its hoof-falls were consciously heavy, stomping their way across the already jagged surface, leaving imprints in their wake so as to claim something for their own. There was no other target but the ground for its searing rage and so it was forced to pretend, lashing out with armoured hooves as if the rocks it fractured were in fact bone and the dampness painted across its face was blood…
Blood?
It paused at this realisation, cocking its head to one side, intrigued. In stopping its momentum continued, carrying a few drops of water away from the corners of its azure eyes. Its fangs flashed, its face forming drawn back in a growl. No blood, no satisfying crimson spatters to decorate its visage, but only staining weakness and remnants to blemish it. It shook itself, shivering, and then it charged, relentless as if in flight with eyelids screwed tightly shut. Again its roar was long and loud, but again equally the surrounding void simply swallowed it all, bringing it to an abrupt hollow stop.
A sphere met its waking vision, warm and welcoming in a mix of crystal blues and lush greens, striking it within with a needy desire. Silver crackled from its horn, devouring everything in a brilliant flash. Nothing happened; it remained exactly where it was. Its wings extended wide, leaping aloft in a single downward beat, making for its target. All stopped as it slammed headlong into an invisible barrier, reduced to a heavy freefall back to the ground. Landing roughly on its back, hot pain spiking through its frame, it could only stare back at all that was denied it. ‘I banish you!’1