Sunset Rekindled

by EldritchNexus

The Power of the Ram King

Scarlet Blaze and Radiant Dawn continued on down the hallway with their horns glowing, being as careful as possible not to step on any more suspicious tiles.

---

Daring Do and Crimson Blade found themselves cornered against a stone wall by two Maul-Ras, one of which apparently had lost a claw.

"So, do you know exactly how to fight them?" asked Daring.

"I was hoping to ask you the same thing." said Crimson, warily.

"I've fought a lot of weird creatures on my adventures..." said Daring. "But these guys really take the cake."

The two-handed Maul-Ra let out a roar as it held up its blaster-like weapons. The one-handed Maul-Ra let out a similar roar, when suddenly...

"Run!" hollered Nose Nip, as he and Golden Sun rushed by.

Crimson Blade, Daring Do, and the two Maul-Ras watched the two stallions gallop past them, then looked in the direction they were running from when they heard the sound of rushing water. To their alarm, a rising wave of water was racing towards them, flooding the empty streets. The Maul-Ras darted away, and started climbing a tall building.

"We better do the same!" shouted Daring Do over the noise.

Daring Do flew on down the street, and Crimson Blade galloped after Nose Nip and Golden Sun.

"What happened?!" Crimson shouted to them.

"It seems there was a natural resevoir of some sort in a higher cave, and something released it!" said Golden Sun.

They looked back even as they galloped. Some of the buildings in the city were being ruptured by the oncoming tide, and some even started to collapse beneath the waves. They managed to ascend to a tall flight of stairs where they would be safe from the flood.

"To think, thousands of years of history are being swept away in a matter of minutes!" Golden Sun commented.

"We should be grateful it wasn't us." Crimson panted.

"You don't need to tell me." said Nose Nip.

But the roars of the Maul-Ras announced that they too had evaded the oncoming tide, and were circling the group.

---

"But...what...how?!" Sunset Shimmer gasped.

"That blast should've killed you!" said Trixie.

King Nelphyn approached the three mares, the sinews and muscle started to regrow themselves across his face.

"Perhaps it would have..." he said. "Except I'm not exactly a normal equine! How do you think I was able to live for so long in the human world?"

"So...you're l-like a...z-z-zombie?" asked Lightning Dust, nervously.

"I sold my soul to my master long ago." said Nelphyn. "His power runs through my body, even now. You'll find I'm much harder to kill than I appear. The Chrysalis Syndicate with their automatic weapons couldn't kill me, so what makes you think you could do any better?"

"We'll find a way, Nelphyn." said Sunset. "You can count on it!"

"Perhaps, but you'd better prepare yourself." said Nelphyn. "I'm only beginning."

King Nelphyn removed his tattered raiment, revealing his cutie mark to the three mares.

"What's that, a black sideways eight?" said Lightning Dust. "So we have to kill you eight times?"

But Nelphyn let out a hard, but cold laugh.

"No, Lightning." said Sunset. "That's the infinity symbol."

"Correct, Sunset Shimmer." said Nelphyn. "My strength has unlimited potential. I can never become too powerful."

Sunset, Trixie, and Lightning backed away, and reared their heads as Nelphyn approached them. Suddenly, there was a high-pitched wail that echoed throughout the chamber. Sunset, Trixie, and Lightning covered their ears, while King Nelphyn hunched his head forward, his face tensed up. Once the wail died away, a deep, menacing voice was heard.

"Your game...ends here, King Nelphyn." said the voice.

"Master, why do you interfere?!" King Nelphyn growled.

"Because the time has come for you to carry out my plans!" said the voice. "And you will do so, even if I have to hold your hoof all the way!"

"O Saegmuntitus, that is...most unnecessary." King Nelphyn argued back. "Why, I was only seconds from finishing off these vagabonds when you--"

"Silence!" bellowed Saegmuntitus. "You have tested my paitience for the last time, and you must pay the price!"

"That voice...sounds very familiar." Sunset muttered.

"Correct, Sunset Shimmer." said the voice of Saegmuntitus. "I've kept an eye on you and your so-called cohorts for some time now, as I have done for all of your kind."

"So...that dream I had on the Summerstar." said Sunset Shimmer. "And that creature I saw..."

Suddenly, the ceiling of the chamber was shrouded in darkness. To the mares' mutual shock, a massive, shadowy, horned head of a ram emerged from it, with two glowing red eyes. Though the face was mostly shrouded in darkness, Sunset could see that it had pale gray flesh, black wool, and a corroded gold nose-ring.

"Yesssss..." said the head, slowly. "That was me. I shall take the liberty of formally introducing myself to you, my little ponies: Saegmuntitus, the Ram King. Master of the Nether Darkness and the Void."

"A sheep?" Trixie said, unamused. "King Nelphyn's been working for...a sheep?!"

"You're the one behind this whole thing, aren't you?" said Sunset.

"Naturally." said Saegmuntitus. "King Nelphyn may be stronger than any other pony that lived, but his ambitions have always hindered his potential. But in the end, he is expendable like the rest."

"'Like the rest'?" asked Sunset. "You've got others working for you?"

"Of course." said Saegmuntitus. "I have consistently lived for eons from the security of my realm, scrutinizing everything that occurs in your pitiful world, and the world of the humans, putting my plots into effect throughout those long ages."

"Your plots are gonna be stopped!" said Lightning Dust. "Once the Princesses--"

"The Alicorns mean nothing to me." said Saegmuntitus. "They have grown docile and weak, as I have grown stronger and stronger."

"Why don't you come down and prove it then?" Trixie demanded.

"Ha...in due time." said Saegmuntitus. "I'm afraid the time hasn't arrived for me to do that...but I can assure the Great and Powerful Trixie...that it will happen soon. But I didn't want to deny King Nelphyn the chance to fight you three once more. So I'm giving him that chance, effective immediately."

"Master, what--" King Nelphyn began, before howling with pain.

Suddenly, King Nelphyn started flailing his head around, as the shadowy apparition of Saegmuntitus vanished. He lifted his front hooves into the air, and his eyes blasted forth twin beams of energy, that ruptured the ceiling of the chamber, and blasted a massive hole in the plateau above. The Alicorn Amulet glowed, and dark clouds appeared in the sky above. Lightning sprang from the clouds, and struck the Alicorn Amulet. The resulting aura enveloped King Nelphyn's body, transforming him into his armored form.

"Now, to make one last addition to your form." said Saegmuntitus's voice.

King Nelphyn's armored body began to glow, and two metallic wings appeared from the sides of his body, and a long horn appeared from the brow of his head.

"Did he just turn into a..." said Trixie, breathlessly.

Sunset remembered her encounter with King Nelphyn in the human world, when he transformed into his armored form. When he confronted the Chrysalis Syndicate, he had grown pegasus wings and a unicorn's horn. However, they didn't seem to function as well, since Nelphyn had detached the wings and used them as shields.

But the Alicorn Amulet glowed around King Nelphyn's necks, and its aura encompassed the metallic wings, which started to flap up and down rapidly and slowly ascended into the air.

---

Golden Sun, Nose Nip, and the others were still surrounded by the Maul-Ras, when suddenly King Nelphyn rose out of the top of the pyramid, his body glowing red like an evil star.

"Oh, boy." said Golden Sun, looking up. "That can't be good...not one bit."

King Nelphyn crossed his front hooves, and then intensely swung them apart. The earth started to shake.

"Definitely not good!" agreed Crimson Blade.

---

Frosty, Pressure Point, Teddy, and Sunflower were galloping towards the plateau, when they felt a rumbling.

"Hey, what's goin' on?!" Frosty exclaimed.

In a matter of seconds, the entire plateau tore itself away, gradually exposing the flooded, subterranean city to the surrounding desert.

"Holy cheese puffs!" Pressure Point shouted, once the resulting dust and ash cleared away.

"Look!" said Teddy, pointing at the sky where the top of the plateau used to be.

It was King Nelphyn, hovering menacingly in the air.

---

Scarlet Blaze and Radiant Dawn rushed into the chamber where Sunset Shimmer, Trixie, and Lightning Dust were.

"Mom! Red!" Sunset exclaimed when she saw them.

"Sunny! Lightning!" said Radiant, rushing towards his sister and girlfriend and wrapping them in his front hooves.

"Thank Celestia you're all okay." Scarlet panted.

"We won't be for long." said Sunset, pointing up at the destroyed ceiling. "Look!"

They saw King Nelphyn hovering in the sky...

"Wait, what happened to the plateau?" Radiant noticed.

"Forget the plateau, how did he get those wings?" said Scarlet. "I thought he was supposed to be an earth pony!"

"I don't know." said Sunset. "But I've gotta stop him before he does something."

"Sunset, wait!"

But Sunset already teleported out of the chamber and onto the pinnacle of the pyramid.

---

King Nelphyn scanned the surrounding landscape, and saw the Summerstar stationed on a stretch of sand near the city. He blasted his eye-beams at the zeppelin, when something deflected the projectiles: A vast, winged red-and-gold form.

"Hey, isn't that the bird that we saw before?" said Teddy. "On the way here?"

"I think it might be." said Pressure Point. "It certainly doesn't look anything like those birds that attacked us just a while ago."

---

Sunset looked at the giant bird, and at King Nelphyn, who were staring each other down in mid-air. The more that Sunset looked at the bird, the more she realized how much it looked like a phoenix. But it was far too big to be one.

The giant bird sped towards King Nelphyn, firing a beam of energy from its mouth at him. But Nelphyn deflected it, and fired his own eye-beams, which the bird dodged. Then after a few more similar exchanges, they blasted each other again at the same time, resulting in an explosion that knocked them both back through the air. The bird staggered. but Nelphyn recuperated instantly and unleashed another blast of his eye-beams.

"No!" Sunset shouted, blasting a powerful spell of her own at Nelphyn.

But the eye-beams smote the bird in the chest, and sent it crashing down into a building. Sunset teleported down beside the injured bird.

"Are you okay?" she said to it, since she figured it out that it was on her side.

The bird nodded its head at Sunset. Its right wing was horribly battered from the blast and crash.

"Don't worry." said Sunset. "You don't need to get yourself in danger. I'll take it from here."

"No." said a female voice Sunset never heard before. "You must not fight this tyrant on your own."

Sunset looked around, confused.

"I am the one speaking to you." said the voice again.

Sunset looked at the bird.

"You're...speaking to me?"

"I am." said the bird, speaking telepathically. "We haven't much time to discuss this, but you may call me the Phoenix Matron. My little pony, there is a greater evil at work here than you would expect. King Nelphyn of Megalon is a mere puppet under the control of an all-powerful menace. One that I have known and fought for eons."

"Saegmuntitus." deduced Sunset.

"Yes." nodded the Phoenix Matron, nodding her head. "I had felt his evil before, when he entered your dreams when you were aboard your airship. But he had split his connection to this physical plane before I could intervene. Fortunately, I was able to drive away the evil of his creatures before any of your friends met their demise."

"So that was you that drove those shadow-ponies away?" said Sunset. "Thank you."

"But it seems that now, I alone cannot fight the evils of Saegmuntitus, especially not when the power of the Alicorn Amulet is at his minion's disposal."

"But you're too injured to keep fighting." argued Sunset.

"I'm not too injured to help you." said the Phoenix. "With our combined abilities, we may yet be victorious."

"Combine our abilities?" asked Sunset, puzzled. "What did you have in mind?"

Comments

[GB108]

Next chapter is gonna be epic

[Lord Nopony]

6290226 Agreed! I AM LOVING THIS!!!

[00RaiserGundam]

If you're going with what I think you're going to go with, next chapter is going to be all kinds of awesome.

[Admiral Q Ponyform]

Come on Infinity symbol. Treading very dangerous grounds here.

[EldritchNexus]

6293295 The Infinity cutie mark simply emphasizes how durable and powerful Nelphyn is physically. However, he originally had a different one before he gained those demigod-like abilities.

Also, it goes with a theme I have in mind where the Megaponies have cutie marks based on numerical symbols.

[JimmyHook19]

Oh Man. OH MAN!!! just two chapters to go and I will at last finish reading Sunset Rekindled! just going to take one last weekend break for Saturday and Sunday, then on Monday and Tuesday of next week...... the final two chapters of this story!!! I can hardly wait!