• Published 30th Aug 2014
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Sunset Rekindled - EldritchNexus



Sequel to "Sunset Eclipsed". Sunset Shimmer and her friends go on a new adventure that takes them to Las Pegasus, Saddle Arabia, and beyond..

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Battling the Ancients, Part 2

Radiant Dawn and Scarlet Blaze fired spell after spell at the stone barrier; incendiary spells, concussive blasts, and more. They even try pushing and pummeling it with their hooves, but to no avail.

"Well, one thing's for sure: we can't go back that way." said Radiant.

"Then we'll have to find another way around, son." said Scarlet.

The two turned away and continued down the corridor, their horns glowing to illuminate the darkness.

"It feels kinda weird, don't ya think?" said Radiant. "Being in the lair of the original ruler of our ancestral home?"

"I doubt King Nelphyn was ever much of a ruler." said Scarlet, disgusted. "Did you see what he did to Mareusalem? Despicable! What kind of a leader would do that?"

"Yeah! I know, right?" said Radiant. "And if that's what he did to Mareusalem, I'd hate to see what he'd do to the rest of Saddle Arabia...or even Equestria. For that matter, what he'd do to us--"

"Don't say things like that, boy." Scarlet turned to her son, narrowing her eyes intensely as her gaze pierced Radiant's with the ferocity of a harpoon. "At least we're doing something to stop his evil. Would you rather run away and hide until he comes knocking down your door and snuffed out everypony else that could possibly save you? Is that really what you'd rather do, Captain Radiant Dawn Daystar?!"

"Geez, mom." Radiant said, nervously looking into his mother's unblinking eyes. "I get the point. I wanna stop him as much as you do, and we all came here knowing the risk we'd be taking."

Scarlet blinked, sighed, then put a hoof around Radiant's neck, and leaned over to soothe him.

"I'm sorry, son." she said, softly. "I'm worried about what might happen, too. But that doesn't mean we should dwell on our fears."

"Of course not, mom." Radiant nodded his head.

Scarlet ran her hoof through Radiant Dawn's wild mane.

"Son, you really need a haircut." she muttered under her breath.

"I just hope Sunny's okay." Radiant said, ignoring his mother's comment. "That's all."

"Me too, son." said Scarlet. "But we just have to hope for the--Oops!"

She stumbled on a stone tile on the floor, which sank beneath her hoof. They heard a scraping noise from ahead and behind. They looked back, expecting the stone barrier to re-open. Instead, they saw it advancing towards them!

"Run!" she shouted.

The two bolted down the corridor, with the advancing wall in pursuit. As they ran along, the pedestals of the statues that lined the corridor rose into holes in the ceiling, while the gaps were filled by walls that were either closing in or dropping down from above. The two went on, panting heavily until they saw an oblong doorway to the side. They could also see another wall advancing on them from the opposite end of the corridor. Radiant Dawn dove sideways through the doorway and rolled a half dozen yards down the connected hallway, but Scarlet stumbled on her outfit and fell right in front of the doorway.

"Mom! Nooooo!" Radiant cried out in desperation, laying in the hall as the walls closed in on Scarlet.

Scarlet tried to get up, but her robe was caught on a crack in the floor. She calmly closed her eyes, bracing herself for the inevitable impact...

But the impact never came; the walls stopped moving right before they would've crushed her, leaving enough space for a walk-in closet.

Scarlet opened her eyes, and looked around confused. Radiant, whose heart was beating non-stop, sighed in relief and nearly fainted.

"Oh, mom!" Radiant panted, frantically. "I thought you were a goner!"

"It's okay, Radiant." said Scarlet, comforting her son. "I'm still here."

"I know, but..." said Radiant. "I thought I was...you know, gonna lose you again."

"Imagine if we were in each other's positions." said Scarlet. "You and Sunset mean the whole world to me, son."

"I know..."

"Which is why we can't let this place get the best of us." said Scarlet. "We need to get going if we want to find Sunset and Trixie."

Scarlet continued on, when she noticed that she had ripped her robes during the previous fall.

"Aw, mom." said Radiant. "Your priestess gown's ruined!"

"Ah...it was bound to happen sooner or later." said Scarlet, shaking her head. "Such a beautiful thing, too. Well, this isn't exactly the time to look pretty or formal, anyway."

Her horn glowed, telekinetically unbuttoning the torn outfit and stripping it from her body and placing it in her saddle-bag. Underneath the robe, she was wearing a suit of kevlar armor that was painted green-and-brown in a camouflage pattern.

"Whoa, mom!" Radiant chuckled. "You are just so amazing!"

"Who do you think you got it all from?" Scarlet replied flatly.

She levitated a green-and-brown military cap out of her saddle-bag, and put it on her head.

"Now let's get moving." said Scarlet, moving forward.

"Yes, ma'am!" said Radiant, with a salute.


King Nelphyn advanced on Trixie, his eye-sockets exhuming trails of red vapors, as Trixie's horn continued to glow. King Nelphyn's gnarled teeth began to grind together as twin beams of energy shot forth from his eyes. Trixie shot a counter-spell from her own horn, deflecting the eye-beams so that they went knocked upwards, rupturing the ceiling. King Nelphyn looked up, annoyed.

"Think fast!" shouted Trixie.

She then shot a concussive spell from her horn, that hit Nelphyn in the torso. And again, and again, and again. He groaned angrily, hunched over, but then stood upright again. He stared Trixie down intensely, his eye-vapors becoming thicker and thicker. Trixie's own eyes widened and dilated, and she took a smoke-bomb out from under her cloak. She dropped it, forming a smokescreen for her to flee. But King Nelphyn teleported in front of her the moment she turned around.

"Perhaps you ought to think fast now." King Nelphyn said.

"Huh?" Trixie said, confused.

Then with swifter-than-sight speed, he grabbed Trixie by the neck, and tossed her into the air through the hole created by the previous blast. She was sent spiraling out the roof of the pyramid, when a flash of red light filled the darkness and there was King Nelphyn, suspended in mid-air. He smashed down on her back with his hooves, sending her back down the same hole into King Nelphyn's throne room. Nelphyn teleported back down, just in time to catch Trixie in his front hooves.

"Maybe I shouldn't kill you after all." said Nelphyn.

"Please don't." said Trixie, breathlessly.

"All these so-called champions and masters that claim to be all-powerful." said Nelphyn, grinning sinisterly at the unicorn mare he cradled. "But in fact, they're all flash and no substance. I used to hate that so, but with you? You take it to a unique level. I've been so bored of the human world's entertainment that I've almost forgotten what you lesser equines are capable of. That's why you're going to be the first mare in my harem when I re-claim Saddle Arabia for myself. Would you like that...showpony?"

"On second though, I'd prefer you just kill me right now." said Trixie, disgusted.

"Very well." said King Nelphyn.

Then he raised his front hooves, intending to break Trixie in half, when Lightning Dust rushed towards them, and swiped Trixie from Nelphyn's grasp.

"Pegasi, always flying everywhere." Nelphyn said quietly.

The Alicorn Amulet glowed, and he teleported again, grabbing Lightning Dust in mid-air and then dropping to the ground.

"Valiant, but pathetic." Nelphyn told Lightning. "But a gnat is still a gnat."

He seized her wings, clearly intending to rip them off, but Trixie blasted spells at King Nelphyn, blind-siding him.

"You were fighting Trixie, remember?" she reminded him.

"How could I ever forget about you?"

Trixie galloped up to him, and made a leap, grappling with him by the neck. King Nelphyn reared back on his hind-legs, as he attempted to wrestle her off, but the tight grip this small unicorn had, combined with his own long legs, simply made it awkward to get her off of him.

The Alicorn Amulet started to rapidly flash, bathing the two in doses of its red light.

Sunset Shimmer slowly got up and saw this.

"What's going on?" she muttered, confused.

Then she realized who was fighting Nelphyn.

"Trixie, what're you doing?!" she gasped. "Don't you understand that he's out of your league."

"Nopony is out of the Great and Powerful Trixie's league!" Trixie shouted back, angrily. "Not you, not the Changelings, not the princesses, not even this oversized brute!"

The Alicorn Amulet flashed brighter and brighter. Trixie started to glare at Nelphyn with a feral rage.

"The Great and Powerful Trixie is second to none!" Trixie shouted at Nelphyn.

"Then prove it!" Nelphyn growled back.

"With pleasure."

Her horn started to glow purple, then mauve, then red, as did her eyes.

She blasted a very powerful spell point-blank into Nelphyn's face. His entire head was consumed in Trixie's aura, and he fell over. Trixie let go just before she would be crushed under Nelphyn's body. For a moment, She was puffing and growling angrily. But then the redness of her aura and eyes dissipated, and she started breathing normally with a puzzled and frightened look on her sweating face.

"What ...have...I...done?!" she whispered in shock.

She looked at King Nelphyn's face, and shrieked in horror at what she saw: Most of the flesh and hair on King Nelphyn's head had been blasted away, exposing a massive portion of his skull. A few sinews of muscle tissue spread across the bones were the only thing keeping the skin from falling off altogether, and the eye sockets were perfectly pitch-black, with no signs of eyeballs. or anything at all. His now-lipless jaws and teeth were fixed in a manic grin.

"I didn't know...I had it in me." Trixie quivered.

Her eyes started to water.

"Trixie, it's okay!" Sunset went up to comfort her, putting a hoof around her neck. "He was pure evil, anyway."

"But that power...I can't believe I had it."

"I don't think that was your power." said Sunset. "I think it came from the Alicorn Amulet."

"But I wasn't even wearing it."

"Maybe it remembered you." said Sunset. "It knew that you also wore it, so it surrendered a fraction of its power to you. That was how King Nelphyn was able to take it off of me back in the human world."

"Bah!" Trixie spat in disgust. "The Alicorn Amulet. I can't I ever considered using that thing. That thing made me do and say things I never thought I would. Now that I've seen what It can really do, I'm officially done with it. I'm going to destroy that thing once and for all. Even if it kills me."

"But Trixie..." Lightning Dust said. "You don't have to do that."

"Trixie does what Trixie must." said Trixie.

She approached King Nelphyn's immobile body, her horn glowing as she aimed at the Amulet. Just as she was charging her most powerful spell, the Alicorn Amulet glowed...

And then King Nelphyn got back up!

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