Twilight streaked down from the clouds like a violet thunderbolt as she lashed the ground below her with alternating beams of bright crimson and black dark magic, disintegrating the desiccated, decayed and skeletal pony corpses that had burst out of Las Pegasus’ largest cemetery. The earth was rent by multiple fissures, and dark tendrils could be seen writhing and slithering just below the surface.
She swooped in low over a funeral taking place at a freshly-dug grave: “Everypony run! I’ll clear a path, but you have to go now!”
A dozen ponies scattered and fled ahead of a cluster of tendrils that bore down on the service, knocking over the coffin, spilling out the body of an elderly unicorn.
The withered, pale magenta body rose awkwardly from the ground, and opened its eyes, which glowed a ghostly silver-grey. A young, tangerine-colored unicorn shrieked and pointed: “Grandma’s back! What’s going on?”
Twilight grimaced and pivoted mid-air, intercepting the young unicorn: “Move away, honey! She’s not your grandma anymore! Your grandma’s already passed on, and now I have to take care of the thing that’s controlling her body!”
An older, grey unicorn rushed over and pulled the youngster away as Twilight unsheathed her sword and ran at the animated corpse.
As she reached her target, it suddenly fell to the ground like an unstrung puppet. Twilight stopped short and furrowed her brow: “What the…?”
Suddenly the ground beneath her feet erupted in a geyser of dirt and stones and mud as dozens of corpses in various states of decay burst forth, grabbing and lunging at her and any other nearby pony.
Twilight fanned her wings and phased as she rose into the air, slashing with both sword and magic at the converging bodies. She heard a scream and saw a cemetery attendant trapped under a partially-collapsed monument; a dark cloud was forming around him as a pair of tendrils wrapped around his neck and hindquarters.
Twilight glanced over at the pair of grieving unicorns, and judged them to be clear of any immediate danger. She pivoted toward the trapped worker: “Hold on! I’m coming!”
She threw a protective bubble around the pinned earth pony, and generated a shock wave from her horn, shattering the monument, and driving back the entrapping tendrils.
She landed next to the terrified pony who saw only a grim, cloaked figure, towering above him, framed by falling debris and an ominous black cloud.
Twilight bent down and reached out: “Are you alright?”
The worker averted his eyes as he desperately squirmed and scurried backwards: “D-don’t kill me!”
Twilight bit her lip and stepped aside, allowing the sun, low in the west, to fall across her face, driving back the shadow that encompassed her: “It’s OK--I’m here to help. If you can get up, you should run as far and as fast as you can!”
The terrified, bruised and mud-spattered pony stumbled to his hooves and dashed off toward the main gates. Twilight watched him run and shook her head sadly. She fanned her wings and rose into the air to get a look across the whole cemetery.
She saw that few living ponies were still in harm’s way, but that scores of remains, many fairly recent, were unearthed and either roaming the grounds, tethered by thin, dark strands, or collapsing and crumbling.
Twilight furrowed her brow as she watched an old pegasus’ corpse twist and contort, finally collapsing in like a deflating balloon as a thin black cloud formed around it. The cloud settled like a dark mist and soaked into the ground.
Twilight took to the air again, homing in on a pair of fleeing unicorns, sending out bolts of dark magic to cover their retreat from a cluster of tendrils. The ground directly in front of them suddenly ruptured as some kind of giant, ancient, mummified sea beast burst forth, smashing and swiping with massive, crumbling tentacles.
Large clods of earth and rock were flung in all directions, striking the two unicorns. Black ribbons shot out of the newly-formed fissure, entangling them, pulling them toward the hole.
Twilight phased as she dropped from the sky, passing through the creature, emerging on the other side. She whipped a beam of dark energy across the tendrils and swept up the two stunned ponies in a magenta bubble, as the shambling kraken-like figure flopped forward and began crawling toward a busy shopping center across the road from the cemetery.
Twilight sighed with exasperation as she safely dropped her charges on top of a nearby building: “This is getting out-of-hoof! I need backup!”
She faded out and reemerged in Celestia’s chambers, appearing right in front of a alarmed Royal Guard: “Where’s the Princess?”
The gold-and-white-clad pegasus started and stumbled backwards, knocking over a lamp stand; Twilight arrested its fall before it hit the floor.
“I’m sorry for spooking you, but I’m in a bit of a hurry, Corporal! Where’s Celestia?”
The nervous guard took another step back: “Sh-she got called away to Whinneapolis! It’s an emergency!”
“What kind of emergency?”
“She-she didn’t say! Please, that’s all I know!”
Twilight closed her eyes and nodded: “I understand. Thank you.” She faded away, leaving the sweating pegasus alone. He sat down heavily on a cushion and sighed.
Twilight rematerialized high above Whinneapolis scanning the horizon for clues as to Celestia’s whereabouts. It didn’t take long for her to notice flashes of gold and blue and red in the distance, flickering between columns of smoke and dust.
She raised an eyebrow as she fanned her wings: “Well, that certainly seems to qualify as an emergency!”
Twilight dropped down from the clouds on the north side of the city to a scene of chaos and destruction: buildings smashed and burning, streets caved-in, ruptured water lines spewing geysers of water into the air, ponies yelling, pulling others from the rubble, fighting fires. She looked in vain for Celestia.
As she swept in low, banking around a collapsing structure, she caught a glimpse of a bright white flash of magic cutting through the dust and ash, accompanied by a cry of rage.
Twilight dropped in behind Celestia a moment later and stood stunned: a collection of tendrils had twisted and merged into a single mass that had worked its way into and through an old, abandoned, five-story hospital. The hospital was uprooted, and acted as a kind of framework and armor for the tendril collective.
Twilight rubbed her eyes: “I have now officially seen everything!”
Celestia glanced over her shoulder: “Twilight! I am very glad to see you! My Guard and I have had limited luck in corralling this...this whatever it is!”
“So I see! I was going to ask for your assistance with a problem in Las Pegasus, but I see you have more than enough to keep you here!”
Two pegasi shot overhead with two unicorns running behind, charging the flyers’ lances. They broke contact as the pegasi climbed straight up, then rolled into hard dives, hurtling their lances at the animated structure.
The resulting impacts blasted away large chunks of masonry, but did not appreciably slow the shambling, haunted building as it crushed several carts and street vendors’ stalls.
Celestia rose thirty feet into the air and aimed a brilliant golden pulse of power into the core of the monster/building burning a large hole straight through. But the black ribbon-like material within simply flowed like wax, sealing the gap, pulling in surrounding concrete and stone.
Twilight swung around to the far side and hovered near a group of soldiers: “Unicorns! Come with me! We need to set up some kind of crossfire to cut away big pieces of this thing so it can’t just fill in its wounds!”
The Captain in charge of the squad shifted nervously, but straightened up: “Let’s go, Guardsponies!” She turned to the pegasus next to her: “Give us some cover, Lieutenant!”
The wine-red pegasus saluted: “With me, flyers! Attack pattern ‘Sierra’--lances at the ready!”
Five pegasi lifted off as one and spaced themselves evenly around the top of the building, keeping a respectful distance from the chunks of rubble and lashing tendrils that swirled around it.
Twilight led four unicorns around a crumbled row house for cover, then directly into the monster/building’s path: “Send everything you have at the lower extremities! Try to cut its legs out from under it!”
Twilight took off and phased as the unicorns concentrated their magic at the building’s “foot.” She passed inside the structure and swept her sword through the mass of knotted tendrils, loosening the connection between upper and lower sections.
A large segment of building--what had once been the emergency wing--sheared off and disintegrated, releasing a flood of black cloud and tendril and swirling smoke which gushed across the ground, sending the unicorn troops scattering.
Twilight lifted a few feet off the ground and shot forward as she looked up at the circling pegasi: “NOW!!”
The pegasi readied their lances in unison as Twilight swept across the spreading mass of writhing blackness tossing up bright blue barrier shields with her sword. The haunted structure lurched backwards as the pegasi launched their lances, four of which tore off most of the top two floors in a brilliant, crimson explosion.
The fifth lance became entangled in a web of inky ribbons and fibers as the tendril creature shot out thick bands into adjacent buildings and into the ground.
Celestia ran forward and poured a white-hot jet of energy into the swaying structure: “That’s it! It’s falling apart!”
Suddenly the tendrils heaved and contracted, ripping up a large section of the street, rending steam and sewer lines, scattering bystanders and soldiers alike. Celestia shielded herself and stumbled backwards across the buckling pavement.
As the haunted shell of the hospital broke apart, large chunks fell from the sky like multi-ton hail, mixing with steam and water and mud, obscuring the scene.
Twilight swept through the mess, phasing in and out, shielding and pushing back guards and bystanders as the disintegrating tendrils lashed out. Suddenly a crimson bolt shot out from the wreck as the fifth lance snapped free from its restraining tendril. It headed straight toward Celestia, who had turned aside and was focused on defending a pair of earth ponies whose protective cover had been torn away.
Twilight’s head whipped around as the lance flashed by, and a motion caught her eye as the cherry-red tip closed in on Celestia. A young, platinum-grey unicorn Guard named Argent Hoof lunged in from Celestia’s blind side, shoving her aside as the lance struck a collapsed wall a few feet behind her, detonating with a deafening, high-pitched blast.
Celestia shook her head and stumbled to her hooves as the dust cleared, and Twilight teleported to her side: “Wha--what was that?”
Twilight glanced at the smoking remains of the nearby wall: “It looks like one of the lances didn’t find its mark, and ended up--oh, no!”
A breeze pushed aside the smoke and dust for a moment as Argent stumbled forward, his genitals and lower belly torn away by shrapnel. He staggered another step then fell, his hind legs entangled in his intestines. He died with a raspy sigh in a gout of blood.
Twilight rushed to the blood-soaked Guardspony’s side: “Dammit! We have to get this thing underground or out of town or something--it’s too close-quartered in here!”
She leaned down and touched her horn to Argent’s as a thin mist formed above his body. Celestia stepped beside Twilight and looked down at her fallen Guard sadly: “I agree. I don’t want to see anypony else hurt--especially not on my account!”
Twilight stood and straightened her cloak as she spotted the Guard Commander in the distance, directing fire on a mass of tendrils: “Captain! Come over--we need a plan!”
As the Captain hurried over, and Celestia turned away from Argent’s body, Twilight’s sword suddenly flickered with crimson flames, and her eyes went wide: “Oh, no! I know where they all are! I know where the Void is! Somepony’s dying right now at the heart of the Void! I have to go!”
Celestia furrowed her brow and glanced back and forth between Twilight and the heaving mass of crumbled building, sewage, pavement and sprawling tendrils: “Alright--I understand! We’ll do what we can here until you return!”
Twilight looked back at Argent’s body, still bleeding-out on the cobblestones, then at the Guardsponies doing battle. She bit her lip and rose into the air as a thin band of magic encircled her throat.
She spread her wings wide and looked down at the devastation. Her voice boomed across the city: “Everypony leave this area immediately! I am going to end this now! Flee as far as you can!”
Celestia rose into the air beside Twilight: “What are you going to do?”
“I need you to open yourself up, Princess, pour out your maximum power! Release your full magic!”
Celestia raised an eyebrow: “Why?”
Twilight took a deep breath: “I’m going to absorb as much of it as I can and blast that thing into oblivion with dark magic and Death’s power! I’m in a hurry and we don’t have time for finesse!”
Celestia trembled, but nodded, then turned away, and landed on the street next to Argent’s body. She was suffused with a blinding white glow.
Twilight turned back to her target and rose directly above it, centering herself above an ever-widening rift in the ground. She spread her wings to their maximum and held her sword aloft as the air around her began to dim and darken. Streamers of light radiating from Celestia began to converge, and the darkness spread.
Twilight threw her head back and her eyes went blank, as Celestia moaned in shock, feeling her essence being drained at an alarming rate.
Suddenly, an impenetrably-black sphere of dark magic formed in front of Twilight, expanding rapidly, sucking hungrily at everything around it. Celestia cried out in anguish and dropped to her knees.
Twilight rose another thirty feet and slashed her sword downward as the sphere, now flickering with crimson and gold flames, ruptured, sending forth a torrent of dark energy at the heart of the tendril mass.
The ground below seethed for an instant as the mix of dark and cosmic energies scoured everything in a 150-yard radius, dissolving stone, wood, earth, steel and tendril alike, negating their very existence. A vortex formed at the heart of the maelstrom, pulling in water, air, debris, the very light, turning dusk to midnight.
Twilight hovered above it all, crying out in power and terror and ecstasy, pouring down her own brilliant violet magic, which danced like lightning in the stygian darkness below.
Celestia pulled her power back to herself and generated a weak shield in an attempt to avoid destruction, but it flickered and failed: “Twilight! Stop! You’re killing me! Killing everypony!”
Twilight blinked and shook her head. The dance of darkness and death and crackling energies below her died away. She rushed to Celestia’s side.
“Princess! I’m so sorry! I got carried away--I just couldn’t help myself!”
Celestia lifted her head weakly: “It’s OK, Twilight--I understand. Is it done? Is everypony safe?”
Twilight glanced at the empty street, swept clean now of even dust or smoke: “Yes. It can’t come back from that--nothing could! And now I have to go!”
She stepped back and began to fade: “Send somepony to Las Pegasus and just down the coast from Vanhoover--something awful’s happening there now, too!”
Celestia nodded: “I will! Good luck, Twilight!”
Twilight froze for a moment, looking like a washed-out photo negative: “Oh--oh, no! Zecora! Celestia, if there’s anypony or anything you pray to, pray now! Pray for all of us!”
Twilight disappeared, and Celestia stared at the bloodstain beside her that was all that remained of Argent Hoof as a glittering tear rolled down her cheek.