A Mad Dash Through Time and Space

by Joseph Raszagal

Chapter Four - Challenging a God

A Mad Dash Through Time and Space
Chapter Four – Challenging a God
A commission for an anonymous brony
As written by Joseph Raszagal

~ ~ ~

“I've got this burning
Like my veins
Are filled with nothing
But gasoline
And with a spark
It's gonna be the biggest fire
They've ever seen”

- “Light Up the Night” by The Protomen

~ ~ ~

“Well, well, well, you came,” mused Raszagal as the four questing ponies entered the throne room. “You heroic types are all so predictable.”

“That's a lot coming from the villain in the dark and creepy castle in the middle of the dark and creepy forest,” spat Spitfire.

The Doctor grinned.

“Well played, child,” growled the Eternal as he stood from his seat.

“Child?” sneered the stuntpony in return. “Watch it, God-Complex, I'm a grown mare.”

With a jagged smile, Raszagal laughed, “You're all children to me.”

“Really?” questioned the Doctor, tempting the Eternal alicorn. “Could a child do the things that I've done? By the day's end, this child will have banished you to the Deep Darkness along with the Hervoken and Carrionites of old. Do be a good sport and say hello to them for me.”

“You think you can defeat me?” smirked Raszagal. “You think you can outsmart me? If you would be so kind as to remember, dear Doctor, it was the Eternals who exiled those fools from time and space, not your meddlesome ilk!”

Straightening his bow tie, the Time Pony replied, “Please, I've outsmarted far worse than you. The Celestial Toymaker, revered as a god among your people, once tried to outwit me. What do you think happened to him? Or better yet, what do you know happened to him?”

Raszagal's jagged smile withered and died.

“I don't know about everypony else, but I didn't come here to talk,” said Rainbow Dash, her sharp and seething tone capturing the Eternal's attention. “I'm impatient on a good day and today is definitely not a good day. Now where's Pinkie Pie?”

“Where else do you keep a prisoner?” answered Raszagal, rolling his eyes. “In the dungeon.”

“I swear, if you've done anything to her, I'll~

The Eternal's smile returned.

“Ever so irritating, that pink one,” chuckled Raszagal with a shrug. “Even in my clutches, even in her cell, silence seemed a completely alien concept to her. I was forced to quiet her on my own. I could have killed her, and indeed, that would have brought me peace and quiet far easier. However, I ask you, where is the fun in that? Instead, I tried my hand at magic again.”

Rainbow rushed forward, but the Doctor stepped between her and their enemy. She looked into the Stallion Lord's eyes and saw that something was very wrong. With gritted teeth, she backed down.

“But wouldn't that require,” asked the Doctor, wary and careful, “imagination?”

“The one thing we Eternals lack.”

“Precisely, you do lack imagination. Wouldn't working magic that you've never seen or heard of before require that?”

“Yes.”

“Then how?”

With a deep, throaty laugh, Raszagal replied, “Oh, Doctor, your infinite curiosity never ceases to amuse me. Is it not obvious? This is a different world, a different realm. The universal laws binding us have changed along with our forms.”

“I already know that!” shouted the Time Pony angrily.

“Then why is it that you cannot see what is directly in front of you?” mused the Eternal, his tone already victorious. “I may have lost my powers as an Eternal, yes, but what I've gained more than makes up for that paltry loss. My people once sought the gift of Enlightenment, clarity of mind and the ability to... imagine. In coming here, I have reached that Enlightenment.”

Wide-eyed, the Doctor muttered, “The ultimate weapon.”

Laughing, Raszagal continued to explain, “While the powers I now possess pale in comparison to those that I once had, this insight... this imagination... trillions of possibilities exploding in the forefront of my mind! Before, I had the strength to do anything. Now, I have the creativity and the ingenuity to do anything,” with a sickening gleam in his eyes, he concluded, “and doesn't that just terrify you?”

Before the Doctor could respond, the stamping of a blue hoof sent cracks running through the ancient stone floor and immediately demanded the attention of everypony in the room.

“What have you done to her?” interrogated Rainbow, the words coming out slow and steady and icily furious.

Raszagal's sinister grin stretched crookedly from ear to ear.

“I put her to sleep,” he stated, dark humor in his tone, “a very, very deep sleep. I suspect her dreams are tearing her apart even as we speak. She seemed like such a happy girl, I simply thought that crushing that happiness like an insect beneath the heel of my boot might make for an entertaining evening.”

It happened in an instant, as soon as Raszagal had concluded his cruel spiel. Dash reached into her saddlebag and launched from it one of the many poison joke potions that Zecora had prepared for them. The throw happened in one fluid motion; the reach in, the grasp, and the toss all happening in a span of less than a second. A thick cloud of blue smoke erupted where the Eternal stood, but like a fleeting ray of light, Raszagal had already moved to the other side of the room before ever even coming into contact with it.

“Some kind of tincture?” mused the alicorn, raising an eyebrow. “A poison, perhaps?”

Dash's only reply was yet another potion, the blue explosion of enchanted vapors obscuring her target for several long seconds before they began to thin and disperse.

But again, Raszagal wasn't there.

“So it seems the time for words has come to an end,” said the Eternal, hovering close to the ceiling with his massive wings spread wide. “Very well.”

Narrowing her eyes, Twilight stamped at the ground as her horn began to glow and shouted, “Volley fire!”

The four ponies then began their attack, each of them launching a poison joke potion of their own. Bursts of blue gas filled every corner of the room as they not only focused their assault on wherever Raszagal appeared before them at the moment, but wherever they felt he might dodge or retreat to. Predicting the movements of something so blindingly fast was difficult, perhaps even impossible, but they did their best with what they had. Forming a ring in the center of the room, each pony facing a different direction outward, they orchestrated their assault both defensively and offensively at the same time.

“The throne!” yelled Spitfire, hurling a potion.

“No, the window!” shouted the Doctor, throwing another.

Launching two potions at a time with her magic, attempting to flank the Eternal from two separate sides, Twilight growled, “He's so fast.”

“Then we'll just have to throw faster!” replied Rainbow Dash, her eyes aflame with fury and determination.

And throw them faster they did.

Dozens of glass vials were sent sailing through the air, shattering against the throne room's ancient stone surfaces and exploding into magical mist. With so many potions being thrown, the amount of blue smoke in the room began to overflow, the many enchanted clouds merging and combining and threatening to engulf the four ponies that were creating them.

This was, however, something that Twilight Sparkle had been anticipating.

“Tighten the defensive perimeter!” commanded the unicorn as her horn again began to glow.

The four ponies then backed up against each other as a sphere of lavender light quickly encircled them. The magical bubble, a barrier, held the blue smoke at bay while the stallion and three mares protected within it caught their breath.

“Supply check!” called Twilight, making sure to keep her sights set on her section of the room.

“I'm down to one saddlebag!”

“Half a saddlebag over here!”

“A little more than half a bag!”

Twilight then used her magic to check the contents of her bags as well.

The unicorn winced.

Having been using her magic to throw multiple potions at a time, hopefully making it more difficult for the Eternal alicorn to dodge, she'd burned through a majority of her supplies. She was down to less than a quarter of one saddlebag.

With a grimace, Twilight then announced, “Alright, everypony, resupply me! We're going to retreat to the room's entrance and switch to Plan B!”

In perfectly timed unison, all four ponies began slowly pacing back towards the open doorway, each maintaining their watchful gaze on their designated corner of the room. All the while, Twilight held her barrier in place, very carefully keeping the mystical mist from touching them. Their greatest weapon was at the same time a very real threat to them. Having been condensed down to a far more potent form, the very essence of the flower's magic purified and concentrated ten times over, any victim unlucky enough to be touched by the blue smoke would be placed under its spell instantaneously. Where Twilight and her friends had found themselves enchanted by the poison joke's strange magic an entire day after encountering it, the smoke spewed by the thrown potions would take effect immediately. It was for that precise reason that the purple unicorn refused to take any chances, erring on the side of extreme caution. While the results of coming into contact with the joke mist wouldn't be fatal, they would still be disastrous; Spitfire and Rainbow Dash losing their ability to fly, Twilight losing her magic, and the Doctor losing... well, whatever it was that the odd stallion couldn't afford to lose. The last thing that the four ponies needed was to be made even more vulnerable whilst facing off against what was already an absurdly powerful opponent.

“Alright, is everypony ready?” questioned Twilight as the others began stuffing her saddlebags with their remaining potion vials. “Take your positions!”

With a stamp of her hoof, Twilight dropped her spherical shield and levitated five poison joke potions from her bags. Narrowing her eyes, she launched all five forward in a shotgun-spray cluster. 30 feet ahead of them, the projectiles shattered as they smashed into the floor, ceiling, and walls. A huge plume of blue vapors exploded from each, adding to the massive cloud that still remained on the other side of the room.

Twilight then repeated the attack again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Stationed just behind her, Rainbow Dash, Spitfire, and the Doctor flapped their wings fiercely. Despite Twilight's continuous cannonade adding to the magical cloud's size, the wind generated by the three pegasi forced the growing fog bank of blue smoke to stay at the opposite end of the throne room. Vial after vial flew through the air as the unicorn hastily chewed through her ammunition, each detonating upon impact and increasing the azure cloud's foggy mass.

As Twilight magically fired off her final potion, she turned to the others and commanded, “That's the last one, now let's get outside and regroup!”

In a rush of hooves, Twilight set the pace and beat a hasty retreat. Quick to escape the fog-filled throne room as well, the three pegasi ceased their wind-making and zoomed right after her. Like bottle rockets, the four ponies shot down the castle's main hall and out into the rubble-littered courtyard. An enormous blue plume trailed after them, uninhibited as there was no longer a unicorn shield or barrier in place to block its progress, but fortunately the ponies were faster. Some 20 to 30 yards away from the eons-old structure and they were safely clear of the enchanted smoke.

“What now?” asked Spitfire as she turned back to look at the old castle. Huge banks of blue vapors billowed from every doorway and window, truly a sight to behold.

“Now?” echoed Twilight, gulping nervously. “Now... we hope.”

“Hope?” thought Rainbow Dash fervently. “Pfft, hope's got nothing to do with it. Crazy god powers or not, as soon as he shows his ugly face I'm gonna shove my hoof right down his throa~

Dash's mind trailed off as her eyes widened with fear. Hovering high above the castle, with a magical shield of his own encircling him, was Raszagal.

The haughty smirk stretched across his muzzle practically oozed triumph.

“A valiant attempt, I must say, even if the execution itself was a tad sloppy,” laughed the Eternal, still hovering high in the sky. “After all, did you really think that after witnessing your admittedly impressive defensive strategy that I wouldn't adopt a part of it as my own?”

“Why can't it ever be simple?” growled the Doctor.

Stepping forward, Rainbow Dash spread her wings and replied, “Because that'd just be too convenient.”

Dash's three compatriots all locked eyes nervously.

“So, Plan C then?” asked Twilight, gulping for what felt like the bazillionth time that day.

“Plan C,” confirmed her prismatic friend, stamping at the dirt.

“This isn't going to go well,” thought the Doctor, his expression growing grim. ”If we take this fight to the air, on his terms, someone's going to die... but who?”

Flicking his tail nervously, the Time Stallion had a terrible hunch what the answer to that question was.

“No.”

The Doctor shook his head, cleared his mind, and narrowed his focus keenly on the present. Yes, his galactic chase had been what brought Raszagal to this land, but it would be a pleasant day on the surface of Midnight if another world would fall to ashes because of his mistakes. Many, many terrible things could indeed happen in this world's future, but by the red forests of Gallifrey, that future would have to go through both of his hearts and the rest of his regenerations if it wanted to happen.

Reassured, if only by his brazen readiness to throw himself under the wheels of the proverbial bus, the Doctor then spread his wings as well.

“Take off!” shouted Twilight, her horn glowing bright.

At that command, the three pegasi shoot up into the air as if jet engines had secretly been attached to their backs at some point in the past few seconds. With his sonic screwdriver clenched tightly between his teeth, the Doctor bit down on the device's button and accelerated faster, his all-purpose wand increasing his speed to levels that most pegasi could only ever dream of. Down on the ground, Twilight's horn sparked violently, her magic granting Spitfire a whole new range of gears to use and abuse as well. With her allies zooming off ahead of her, Rainbow Dash was left behind, the slowest of the three.

Momentarily the slowest.

Narrowing her eyes, Dash flapped her wings like a madpony.

“I've needed you before so I could win a race!” thought Dash as she steadily approached her old friend, the sound barrier. As always, it fought hard to hold her back. “I've needed you so I could save Rarity!” A narrow cone began to appear in front of her, her velocity making the air itself visible as it pressed against her. “Now I need you so I can save all of my friends and maybe even all of Equestria!” The laws of physics struggled to keep her at bay. “This isn't like all of the other times, this is different! I don't have a choice! I don't just want to go faster, I need to go faster; I need to go faster than anypony's ever gone before! I need speed and YOU'RE IN MY WAY!”

The following Sonic Rainboom felt as natural to her as a lazy midday glide, it was as if she simply shifted from one gear to the next. The prismatic explosion rattled each and every stone in the old castle, one of its many leaning towers finally giving up the ghost and toppling down to the ground as a result. A bright and vibrant ring of color spread out in every direction, across every horizon, as Rainbow Dash surged up into the sky from its center. Catching up to her two pegasus partners as though they'd been hovering in place the entire time and hadn't even moved an inch, she then proceeded to blast past them without a single word, leaving them in her kaleidoscopic dust. With gritted teeth, she squared her sights on Raszagal and flipped herself around in mid-flight, prepared to buck him with her rear legs at something far-exceeding the speed of sound.

Unlike back in Ponyville or during the potion assault in the ruined castle's throne room, Rainbow could actually see him dodge her attack this time. He was fast, way too fast, but with her Sonic Rainboom now empowering her, so was she.

Altering her trajectory by a mere fraction of a fraction of an inch, the azure pegasus streamlined her body at the last moment for that tiny, additional burst of speed; ready and willing and more than happy to break every bone in her legs so long as it meant putting her hooves straight through the front of the alicorn's skull. However, almost as if to mock her, Raszagal slipped to the side of the attack at the last moment, narrowly avoiding her rear hooves as she cannonballed past him like a feathered, furious, multi-colored bullet. As Rainbow flipped herself around, preparing to try again and make another pass, she glimpsed the Eternal's right cheek and the long gash she'd left across it. A small stream of crimson flowed from the wound, dripping off like a tiny waterfall at his chin.

The prismatic pegasus grinned from one ear to the other.

“Well, he can bleed, that's good,” cheered a brazen voice inside Rainbow's head. “That means all I gotta do is make him bleed some more!”

Reaching up to his cheek with one hoof, Raszagal winced in pain as the fresh wound stung to the touch. When he pulled his hoof away, he noted the wet smear staining his fetlocks a bright and vibrant red. In a flash, his eyes darted to the rainbow pegasus responsible, a hurricane of rage and anger swirling behind the inky darkness of his pupils.

He, an Eternal, had just been wounded by a lowly Ephemeral.

But before he could act upon that surging storm of rage bellowing within him, a premonition of pain-yet-to-come hit him like a prophesy and he banked hard to the right, fast enough to seemingly vanish into the thin of the air. Upon reappearing, the alicorn Eternal watched from out of the corner of his eye as Spitfire and the Doctor intersected in a deadly-looking “x” formation, cleaving in twain the empty patch of air that he had only milliseconds ago been occupying.

“Oh, how very clever,” he growled inwardly, although a smile still managed to creep across his face, “using the prismatic one to spark my temper, distracting me, and then attempting a quick and quiet assassination while my back is turned. You're more deceiving than I have ever given you credit for.”

“I will say this, little ponies,” Raszagal laughed. “You play this game surprisingly well. Sadly, it will not last. Very soon now, the games will come to an end and you shall all see for yourselves the consequences that befall those who attempt to stand against a god.”

With deeply pondering, unreadable eyes, the Doctor glowered back at the alicorn and said, “Oh, a god's wrath will indeed be invoked today, but only after the game has been played to completion.”

For an eerily everlasting moment, the Stallion Lord's cryptic words hung ominously in the air. The silence was palpable to everypony involved and its taste was more bitter than words could ever hope to describe.

Five sets of eyes narrowed. Four sets of wings flared.

And then the silence was broken.

Two loud explosions then thundered throughout the castle ruins, sending massive flocks of birds fleeing in all directions from the surrounding trees. Rainbow Dash and Raszagal had both broken the sound barrier again and within seconds were already in the middle of a heated dogfight, their complex twists and turns barely visible to the others watching. Down on the ground, Twilight shut her eyes tight and focused all of her strength onto the tip of her horn, reaching up into the sky with her magic and enchanting both Spitfire and the Doctor this time. With a gleam in his eyes, the Doctor then proceeded to do the same with his all-purpose sonic screwdriver, the metal wand seemingly capable of performing any and all tasks asked of it.

ZAP!

Almost immediately, Spitfire felt the effects of both the magic and the unexplainable technology empowering her, a cold chill momentarily shooting down her spine as this newfound strength flooded her every muscle. Dazed by the shocking sensation, it took a second or two for the Wonderbolt to acclimate herself to this rush of power. The Doctor, however, having over the years become fairly accustomed to strange, odd, and otherwise random energies empowering him, simply smiled knowingly. A wink from the Time Stallion snapped Spitfire out of her reverie and the two grinned in unison before blasting off into the heavens to join the fight anew.

Two more explosions roared as the sound barrier found itself at the mercy of yet another pair of ponies. Truly, the laws of physics had become a total mockery over the course of the past 24 hours. In mid-flight, as Rainbow Dash barrel-rolled away from a bolt of Raszagal's magical lightning, she stole a quick glance back behind her and watched as two vibrant rings spread out across the sky. One flickered with an array of reds, yellows, and oranges, much like a dancing flame, while the other ring shimmered colorlessly, distorting time and space in the open air behind it as it expanded. Rainbow only had the span of a single heartbeat to take in the spectacular sight, but within that tiny window of time, those short, sweet microseconds, she did.

“We can do this!” trumpeted her inner self, the echoing imaginary words brimming with hope and determination. “We can really do this!”

The Doctor and Spitfire were at her side in what seemed like an instant and, just as quickly as they had regrouped, all three ponies shot off into different directions. With his focus now split between not one, not two, but three blindingly fast pegasi, beads of sweat began manifesting themselves upon Raszagal's brow for the first time since the aerial battle had begun. Banking to his left with the grace and speed of a wisp of wind, he dodged another of Dash's flying kicks. Moments later, after taking off in pursuit of the multicolored mare, the Eternal was forced to make a sudden 90 degree climb while still flying at top speed. He hit the angle flawlessly, going from horizontal to vertical in one fluid motion, and avoided another tag-team maneuver from the Doctor and Spitfire. They intersected like two flying knives where their target had just been, slicing an errant cloud in two, then u-turned and followed close behind the alicorn as he rapidly gained altitude. As the Stallion Lord and the Wonderbolt trailed Raszagal into the upper atmosphere, a bright metallic glow erupted from his horn and sent yet another volley of silvery lightning bolts lancing back towards his pursuers. However, this attack hadn't taken them by surprise at all; they had long-since been expecting it. By synchronizing their flight pattern into a crisscrossing helix, similar in appearance to a strand of DNA, the two pegasi easily managed to dodge the magical assault whilst still maintaining their course.

“Is that the best you've got?” mocked Spitfire, her thundercloud trail crackling louder than ever now that it had a Sonic Rainboom fueling it.

With a wary expression, the Doctor scolded her, “I would greatly appreciate it if you would save the ridicules for when he's incapacitated and no longer capable of killing us!”

“Lighten up, Doc, we've got him on the run!” laughed the Captain of the Wonderbolts. “There's three of us and only one of hi~

A blinding flash of light interrupted the fiery mare's train of thought as the target of their chase vanished from sight in a brilliant explosion of gold and silver sparks.

With wide eyes, the Doctor muttered, “Actually, Spitfire, you had better make that none of him.”

“And why does that sound somehow worse?” he cringed to himself.

Far up ahead of them, Rainbow Dash came to a sudden stop and turned around, her athletic and competitive nature making her instinctively aware of the fact that she was no longer being pursued. Spotting her airborne comrades, she saw the confusion etched across their faces as they scanned the skies in search of the foe that had only moments ago been flying directly in front of them.

Chancing a quick look down at the ground, at Twilight, to see if the lilac unicorn's expression would reveal any clues, a different and yet still-related thought popped into Dash's mind that sent an icy shiver down her spine.

Meanwhile, with worry gradually returning to her facial features, a baffled Spitfire questioned, “What? No, that's not right, I thought we were fast enough to keep up with him now! Even with him pulling off Rainbooms left and right, we've still been able to keep track of his movements! What's the deal, did he pull off something even faster that a Sonic Rainboom or something?”

“HE TELEPORTED!” came Rainbow Dash's voice, her scream somehow louder than the shock wave that echoed behind her as she propelled herself towards her friends like a ballistic missile.

Sadly, with the great, seemingly-endless distance set between them, Dash may as well have been over a decade too late. Horrified, she was forced to watch as the scene unfolded, the two hovering ponies still hundreds of yards away despite the reckless kaleidoscopic trail that Rainbow was blazing. Raszagal materialized behind them in a flourish of sparks and wasted no time in bombarding both pegasi with a deadly shower of silver lightning. Without hesitation, Spitfire threw herself, shoulder first, hard into the Doctor's side and knocked him clear of the arcane attack. As the Time Stallion struggled to right himself and pull out of the spinning dive that Spitfire's rough rescue had sent him tumbling into, he caught an upside-down glimpse of the Wonderbolt's fate. Several cruel streaks of lightning crashed into her, leaving behind blackened, burnt feathers and fur everywhere that they struck. Spitfire's face bore an expression of twisted agony as she fell from the sky, her descent highlighted by a thin trail of smoke emanating from her charred wing and its exposed flesh. Aghast with wide, terrified eyes, Twilight immediately dropped her speed-enhancing spell and took off at a galloping sprint to the spot that the injured mare was plummeting towards. However, with the exhaustion of several minutes of continuous magic usage catching up with her all at once, it quickly became apparent to the lavender unicorn that she wouldn't be able to make it in time.

Spitfire would hit the ground first.

“Over my dead body she will!” exclaimed a mighty and determined voice in Twilight's head. “I'll banish myself to the moon before I let one of my friends down!”

With those words crystal-clear in her mind, as well as a sheet of sweat pouring down her face, Twilight gritted her teeth, spat in her exhaustion's eyes, and ran faster anyway.

The lilac unicorn's muscles, unaccustomed to this kind of abuse, screamed in protest as she pushed her body to the limit and reached the thin boarder of brush overgrowth nestled between the castle ruins and the forest proper. Like a stone, Spitfire broke through the dense treetops and caught dozens of nasty hits and scrapes from the canopy's surrounding sea of branches, the mare now less than a hundred feet from the ground. With the very last of her strength, Twilight reached out with her magic and dove forward, landing in a ragged heap upon the Everfree's rough forest floor.

Before the unicorn could even open her eyes, the presence of something heavy weighing down against her magic caught her attention.

Immediately, Twilight's eyes then snapped open. Suspended mere inches above her in the air, engulfed in the soft lavender glow of her trusty levitation spell, was Spitfire's battered and broken body. The Wonderbolt's chest, while a mess of thorn scrapes and scars, still managed to rise and fall with the telltale signs of life.

“She's breathing,” said Twilight in a rush of relief as she very carefully lowered the pegasus to the ground. “Oh, thank Celestia, she's still breathing!”

A low, pained groan escaped Spitfire's throat upon touching down, the hard and rocky surface hardly a comforting mattress for the multitude of injuries she'd sustained. Breathing hoarsely from her impromptu marathon run, Twilight knelt down beside the fiery stuntpony, partially out of concern and partially because her knees had simply given out on her. Miraculously, only seconds after having been set down, Spitfire was already writhing and struggling, attempting to force herself up onto her knees to join her purple savior. With a steadying hoof, Twilight gingerly held the Wonderbolt down amongst the leaves and grass she laid in, carefully holding her there by a spot between her shoulders that luckily wasn't too wounded to be handled.

“You just fell out of the sky, Spitfire! You can't seriously thi~

“TWILIGHT, RUN!” trumpeted Rainbow Dash's faraway scream, promptly cutting the unicorn off. “TELEPORT, ANYTHING, JUST GET OUT OF THERE!”

From high up in the clouds, another supersonic dogfight came to an abrupt end in an all-too-familiar flash of light and sparks. Short-lived though it may have been, it had resulted from Raszagal's magical attack against Spitfire. While Rainbow hadn't managed to make it in time to stop the assault from happening, she was fortunate enough to see Twilight rushing to Spitfire's aid down on the ground below. With Twilight galloping to the Wonderbolt's rescue, Dash seized the opportunity to try and confront the Eternal before he could teleport again and ambush another member of her team. Sadly, even with Rainbow compensating by flying faster than she had ever done before, the fight only lasted a short smattering of seconds. The Doctor had not only lost the additional speed granted to him via Twilight's spell, but his aerial partner as well, effectively making him more of a mild distraction than an actual combatant. As a result, Rainbow Dash had only herself to rely on and was left with but one real, viable option; attempt to stage a relentless assault of such ferocious magnitude that her enemy could not run the risk of focusing on anypony other than her and her alone.

Doomed though her plan may have been, that blood-chilling truth did little to stop her from trying as she wracked her body for yet more speed.

Every joint and tendon in the cyan-coated mare's wings howled a cacophony of angry protests as she dashed, ducked, twisted, and darted about at speeds never before reached by any other pegasus in all of recorded Equestrian history. Suddenly, Raszagal found himself surrounded from all sides by the same pony. Rainbow's ridiculously fast pace and hairpin-turn agility made her nearly impossible for the Eternal to evade. Every sharp turn and every complex maneuver that he attempted was met with the same prismatic blur crossing his field of vision, seemingly bound to him by a chain and never more than a hair's breadth behind him. This was, however, not a pace that Rainbow could maintain indefinitely. She'd gone into this stage of the fight knowing that. Cramps shot throughout her body like cracks across a ruined window pane as the weight of an entire week's worth of stunt flying crammed into a single half hour hit her like a freight train.

She had reached “the wall”.

Raszagal laughed victoriously as his pursuer finally fell behind. Wasting no time, he teleported down to Twilight just as Rainbow's bellowed warning reached her ears.

With one last surge of adrenaline, Twilight pushed herself up off of the ground and turned in time to see Raszagal materialize before her.

“The bell tolls for thee, my dear,” chuckled the Eternal, the low rumble of his voice akin to the rolling of a distant thunderhead.

Scowling, Twilight spat at the ground in front of Raszagal's hooves and said, “I'm out of strength. I'm out of magic. I know what comes next. Don't mock me by being dramatic, just get it over with.”

The Eternal heaved a sigh, rolling his eyes.

“First the yellow one martyrs herself for the sake of that insufferable Doctor, now this. Are you ponies trying to spoil all of my fun with your ironclad resolve?”

“I wasn't before, but now that you've given me the idea I am.”

“Oh? A pity you didn't notice, but the key word there was trying. Killing the courageous can hardly compare to killing the cowardly, but so long as you still bleed red in the end I doubt I'll encounter much difficulty in enjoying myself.”

“Again with the drama.”

“Very well, my brave little pony,” said Raszagal with a shrug, his horn alighting with a silver shimmer, “any last words before the rainbow one arrives too late to intervene yet again?”

“I did my duty for Sun, Moon, and Kingdom,” replied Twilight as she closed her eyes and stood her ground. “I did my duty for my friends.”

“And I am certain that their corpses will appreciate the gesture,” hissed Raszagal giddily.

Solemnly, she repeated, “I did my duty.”

A severe pain and a sudden, strange feeling of weightlessness snapped Twilight's eyes back open instantly. In a state of speechless terror, she looked down through wide eyes to see the alicorn's horn impaling her chest and suspending her in midair. What began as a thin trail of blood soon became a cascading river as it poured out through the hole in her coat and down-and-around the twisted smile plastered across Raszagal's face. Twilight tried with all of her might to scream for help, but in her current state of shock the complex array of muscle movements required to vocalize her horrible pain seemed as impossible to orchestrate as raising the sun and the moon in the Princesses' stead. All that managed to escape her lips was a pitiful moan.

With a flick of his neck, the Eternal dislodged the small mare from his horn and chuckled, “And then there were two.”

Twilight's body landed with a dull thump in a pile of fallen twigs and leaves.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hundreds of miles away, still trapped behind the howling curtain of the Stormwall, Princess Celestia felt an icy chill race from her hooves to the tip of her horn. With her heart weighing heavily in her chest, the goddess turned to face the distant hamlet of Ponyville.

“Luna?” called Celestia softly.

The Princess of the Moon trotted softly over to her sister's side and replied, “Yes, Sister?”

“Something terrible has happened,” stated Celestia, a single tear sliding down her cheek. “I feel it, somehow, something that I could have prevented.”

With a wing draped over her grieving sister's back, Luna inquired, “Are you certain, Sister? Could you perhaps be mistaken?”

“No,” answered Celestia, her voice hollow as yet more tears came, “and what is worse is that I feel Twilight might somehow be involved.”

Luna's eyes opened wide as her gaze too was stolen towards the direction of Ponyville. The raging winds of the Stormwall, dark and black, obscured any view that might have otherwise been offered as the two sisters sat in strained silence. Celestia feared for her student. Luna feared for her savior.

And little did they know that their fears were all too justified.

Comments

[Steben]

I was looking for some sort of creative backup plan on Twilight's part. (Saving one last poison joke bomb, dousing them both in it) Or perhaps Celestia somehow noticing the disturbance. (You would think several rainbooms would not go unnoticed by Canterlot)

Maybe it was just wishful thinking. Tough audience, your fic deserves a better rating than this.

[Joseph Raszagal]

234622
Heh, yeah, Twilight's first backup plan wasn't really that much of a backup, it was pretty much just the first plan with some minor editing.

As for Celestia, were she as nearby as Canterlot then those Rainbooms would indeed have caught her attention (not to mention resulted in her opening a big ol' can of whoop-ass all over Raszagal), however, both her and Luna were much, much further away. I hope that helps .

Also, thanks for the compliment . Still, everypony has their own tastes and Doctor Whooves stories do have a pretty specific audience, so I'm honestly more than happy to have anypony reading it at all .

[Swokk]

[Joseph Raszagal]

254168
All shall be explained soon .

[CaptainAwesome]

"I did my duty."
Those words are some of the most haunting words ever from Doctor Who.

[CaptainAwesome]

BTW,is Twilight going to end up like Jack Harkness? You know, not being able to die? Because that would be awesome!

[Joseph Raszagal]

389864

I can't believe I didn't respond to these sooner!

Comment #1 - Who knows? Only time will tell!
Comment #2 - Yeah, she was a bit of a jerk and unwittingly assisted in the Cyber invasion, but I can't for the life of me blame her enough to wish her ultimate fate upon her .
Comment #3 - Spoilers~