49. Coming to a Sunset - Part 4
Midnight raised a brow condescendingly, “A magic duel?”
“That’s right, you and me! Winner stays, loser leaves Canterlot forever,” Sunset challenged.
“I’m not interested in wagers, Sunset,” Midnight amended. “I’ll tell you what I am interested in… I can see you are a talented mage, I sense your power and wonder your potential… But what concerns me is your goals, your ambitions. Celestia advocates your desire to become a mage that can protect everypony, a mage who uses her powers for good. However, you have shown me none of that, that nothing benevolent motivates you, and believe you me that same ambition led Catrina to ruin. Because she allowed a futile lust for power to blind her to her teacher’s love and attempts to help. Celestia has great plans for you but unless you show me who you are and not what you can do I fear those plans are doomed to failure.”
“Who I am…?” Sunset at first seemed serene before she inflamed! “I am the most skilled and powerful unicorn since Star Swirl, and even he will pale in comparison to what I will become! No more will I be that same frightened filly whose raw power hurt others because she had no control! I will prove my right to command this nation, Midnight Blaze, by defeating you in a duel!!!”
Midnight regarded the angry teenaged filly before him and sighed, his eyes closed in pity.
“So be it… I wanted to know you, Sunset Shimmer, not your skills. But if you are so prideful that you value them over your own identity then you have already lost. Thus I am forced to show Celestia her folly.”
Before Sunset could knew it, Midnight’s horn flared.
*FLASH/FLASH/FLASH/FLASH/FLASH/FLASH*
Sunset shook off the dizziness of being teleported by somepony and saw she was in the front courtyard, Midnight facing her, and at the doorway was Celestia, Captain Ignitus, and a royal guard.
“What on earth?” Celestia took in the surroundings, noticing Midnight and Sunset in the courtyard.
“What is going on here?”
“Do you wanna explain, sunset or shall I?” Midnight offered.
Growling at him, Sunset turned away from Midnight and called to her teacher, “Princess Celestia! I don’t know what’s so special about this stranger you call your friend, he doesn’t even have a cutie-mark! But I can tell you this, I am going to defeat in a magic duel and prove to you that he’s a nopony unworthy of your time!“
“Sunset Shimmer!” Celestia was shocked at Sunset’s words but the young unicorn ignored her teacher and focused on Midnight.
“Let’s duel!” Sunset began by uprooting a tree set at the corner wall of the courtyard and throwing it at Midnight.
Midnight responded by drawing upon the sunlight to heat up on the tree, making it burst into flames and fall to the ground in ashes.
Sunset tried gathering the berries from the hedge-shaped berry bush nearby before launching them at Midnight. He responded by conjuring a parasprite that made a quick snack of the berries. Once its job was done, Midnight sent it back before it had a chance to multiply.
Sunset growled and conjured a thundercloud over Midnight, a crack of lightning almost getting Midnight. Thankfully, he was quick enough to dodge it, and conjured a miniature windmill and made it blow the thundercloud away.
“Hmph! I’m bored, Midnight,” Sunset boasted, “I mean, Princess Celestia holds you in such high esteem, yet all you’re doing is countering my parlor tricks.”
Midnight was stone-faced aside from a raised brow, his stoic demeanor irking Sunset.
“Let’s get a little serious, shall we?! My special talent is drawing upon the sun to fuel my magic!” Sunset boasted.
“With the sun on my side how can you possibly hope to defeat me?!”
“I hear a lot of boasting, Sunset Shimmer,” Midnight shrugged indifferently, “but I’m not seeing what it is that’s so boast-worthy! Y’know what they say about big-talkers…”
Growling and grinding her teeth, Sunset yelled, “I’ll show you something boast-worthy!!”
Sunset focused, taking in the sunlight, fueling the power within, accumulating it towards her horn, and conjuring above the tip of her horn a tiny ball of fire. It flared and blistered as it grew, and everypony gasped to see what looked like a miniature sun floating above Sunset’s horn.
“Sunset, stop!” Celestia shouted, but her student was lost in her sun-enraged power-build.
The miniature sun slowly swelled like a balloon, its flames blistering louder and louder till it sounded like a wildfire, snapping, crackling, fluming. Midnight was impressed but then he saw a whip of flame lash out before ringing around the sun and quickly re-assimilating with it. He shifted his attention from the sun to its actual source and saw Sunset sweating, twitching, struggling to stay on her hooves as the magical strain was getting to her.
She might draw strength from the sun but she can’t handle it, Midnight surmised to himself and simply did nothing.
Sunset however was struggling as she soon realized, I’m losing control!
The solar flares of her conjured sun whipped out like ribbons, setting anything they touched on fire, the searing sphere fluctuating as it began to lose stability. Midnight noticed it too and realized, It’s gonna blow!
And blow it did, though Midnight quickly cast a barrier around the sphere to contain it. However he had not been quick enough to completely enclose the supernova as bits of it managed to explode out. Midnight could do nothing to stop the bits that escaped as he put all of his focus into containing the explosion and cut it off from the air to choke it. The parts of the explosion that escaped shot out like explosive arrows, striking a nearby tower, another scorching the area near Celestia, Ignitus, and the two guards. Ignitus quickly cast his own barrier to shield the princess and his gaurds, but they all gasped to see the nearby tower lose structure before it toppled over and fell to the city below. The sound of the crushing fall was bone-chilling and the immediate following of terrorized screams were even worse.
Enraged, Midnight willed his barrier to compress, suffocating the explosion and snuffing it out. Sunset was panting heavily and gaping at Midnight, shocked that he had been able to not only contain her spell gone awry but extinguish it!
“You stupid selfish girl!” Midnight yelled, “Are you so self-absorbed and reckless you don’t care of the innocents you might have hurt?! The innocents you claimed to wish to protect?! This nation is about the ponies who make it up, not the pony who leads it! If you ever expect to be a leader, you have to realize that your ego has no place in such authority, that even Princess Celestia is a servant of her people!”
“SHUT UP!!!” Sunset exploded as she cast fireballs at Midnight, who teleported behind Sunset to avoid them. Sensing him behind her, Sunset quickly whirled about in a panic and cast a wall of energy wreathed in flame.
Midnight jumped away from the heat and released a powerful scream that shattered the energy wall like glass, and knocked Sunset back for a loop. Getting back her bearings, she growled as she reared up, her energy focused into her front hooves, and brought them down, creating a shockwave-like tremor, releasing enough force to rattle the whole castle.
Midnight willed his own gravity to weaken and leapt up to avoid the tremor, to Sunset’s shock, before he restored his gravity, bringing him down in front of her, a fierce look in his eyes. Sunset was so surprised by his moves that she didn’t see the telekinetic pulse coming until she was sent hurtling through the air. Thankfully, she landed on a soft berry bush but she growled angrily as she scrambled to her hooves, throwing an angry look at her opponent.
Then, to Midnight’s surprise, he felt a telekinetic pull reeling him in towards Sunset, his hooves clasped together as Sunset’s horn ignited with such intensity Celestia gasped!
“Sunset, stop!”
When they were face-to-face, Sunset glared in such a way that it told Midnight she was teetering the edge, as she whispered in a tone of blame and warning, “You pushed me…”
She pointed her horn right at Midnight’s face, Celestia screaming, “DON’T!!!”
A powerful flaming pulse of heat and energy blinded the spectators and when it stopped, they all gaped to see smoke surrounding Midnight’s face while Sunset’s was pulled into a disturbing smile of victory.
“Sunset…!” Celestia was horrified at what she had just witnessed, devastated that her student had killed her friend, and just before she was about to order Ignitus and the guards to seize Sunset…!
A black velvety tendril whipped out of nowhere, ensnaring Sunset’s horn, a second wrangling her legs, making her yelp as she fell over onto her side, and she yelled, “What the-?!”
“You underestimated me…”
All eyes turned to Midnight as the smoke cleared from around his face to reveal it was shielded by a black solid-looking circle with a tendril extending towards his horn. Then they saw the black circle unravel like an uncoiling serpent, fading as it retreated towards Midnight’s horn, or rather the shadow of Midnight’s horn, and Celestia felt her heart soar to see her friend was alright.
Sunset gaped up in shock as she realized aloud, “…You’re a lunar pony!”
“And you just tried to kill me,” Midnight responded with a face devoid of emotion. “That conjured sun of yours, powerful but obviously beyond your ability to control. In other words, it was dangerous. Believe it or not I don’t care in the slightest that you tried to use it against me… but the fact that you endangered Princess Celestia, Captain Ignitus, the guards, and most importantly the ponies of this city! There is no telling how many innocent lives you’ve hurt or, Faust forbid, killed! You allowed your rage to overrule your very common sense and abused your talents in all the wrong ways… I simply thought that you lacked the traits necessary for Celestia’s hopes but now I see you are far worse!”
Now Midnight wasn’t so stone-faced, he was getting verbal and showing his contempt as he lowered his face right toward Sunset’s.
“You have no appreciation or respect for friendship or harmony! You are an emotionally-unstable filly, perhaps even worse than that poor child that lost control out of fear rather than anger and you have set yourself on a pedestal so high you’ve become so self-entitled and self-absorbed that it’s disgusting!”
All the while Midnight talked, Celestia look on, in shock, in horror, in realization while Sunset stared defiantly yet her eyes wavered nervously as Midnight continued his tirade.
“You have power, you have potential, neither an excuse to squander your gifts or think yourself above others! I have no doubts you could ever hope to live up to Celestia’s and be as she, a shining example of benevolence, guidance, and compassion, and unless you take a good look at yourself and see just how flawed you’ve allowed yourself to become I shudder at what awaits you at the end of the path you’ve taken!”
Midnight stepped away, sighing deeply as his rage softened, his eyes expressing sorrowful hope, “But as bad as you’ve shown yourself to be, Sunset, you can still make a change. In the course of my journey I have met individuals far worse than you, and I don’t mean just Catrina. Carry on with your studies but not just in magic. Take a look inside and start asking yourself the big questions: Who are you, and what do you want? Let go of your fear, your anger, your pride. Don’t strive to be the best in all the world. That path is a lonely one, fraught with pain and the unknown. Instead, strive to be the best that you can be, for that is a path that will guide you towards a world of elation and content that will surprise you. Accept friendship and allow others in, open yourself to them just as I did. Life is so much more than control and power; it’s about the magic of friendship, finding a purpose that fills you with joy and fulfillment. Because if you put your heart into it, there is nothing you can’t do!”
Celestia and Ignitus were dazed, at the entire duel they had witnessed, the horrifying behavior of an emotionally-unstable unicorn mage, at the ranting lecture of one most mysterious, and his wise counsel, and watched as he turned towards them.
“Princess Celestia, don’t give up hope on Sunset. She isn’t the pony you hoped for, but I promise you that pony will one day make herself known to you. Just have a little faith.”
Sunset meanwhile felt her heart pump madly, her eyes twitched behind her disheveled mane, as she shook at Midnight’s words towards her teacher. He had disgraced her in the eyes of Princess Celestia, had the gall to lecture her, paint a picture most unflattering and humiliate her, and the nerve to speak encouragement so spurious and condescending after he had ruined her life!
“Thank you for opening my eyes, Midnight…” Celestia sighed sadly, “Though your words are encouraging. I was so blindsided by Sunset’s skills and potential I forgot what really matters in wielding-”
“I know why, Your Highness,” Midnight interrupted, bowing his head politely, “and I understand. But as I said, simply have faith that in the end everything will be alright.”
The two friends smiled and bowed to each other before Midnight stepped back a bit and waved farewell, his Time Stone invoked as the magic began.
“AAAAAUUUGGGHHHH!!!!”
All eyes turned towards the screaming Sunset, her eyes flaring miasma as a bolt of darkness flew from her horn and struck Midnight over his heart!
Midnight gasped in shock, blood spilled, and in Wink of Light he vanished, leaving Celestia horrified as she looked from the spilled blood on the ground to her fallen student.
“Sunset… what have you done?!” Celestia’s voice was heart-rending.
Sunset’s eyes cleared at the sorrow of her teacher’s voice, widening as she realized she had fallen onto her own sword.
“Guards! Seize her!” Ignitus and his two guards charged Sunset Shimmer, who backed away in fright and confusion.
When they were almost upon her, Sunset screamed, waves of heat barring Ignitus and the guards and shying them away before Sunset vanished in a burst of flame.
She didn’t know where she wound up. She didn’t care. She could only fall to her side as her world came crashing down on her.
She’d had it all, a life of privilege and education, the ruler of the nation as her teacher, the promise of power and prestige.
And he came along and ruined everything!!
Sunset stood back up and screamed again, conjuring burst of fire and setting the woods around her ablaze, animals running in fear from this encroacher’s warpath as she screamed, “MIIDNIGHT BLAZE!!! I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU!!! I HOPE YOU SURVIVED MY SPELL BECAUSE I WANT YOU TO SUFFER!!! YOU’VE RUINED ME, YOU’VE DESTROYED MY FUTURE, AND WHEREVER YOU ARE, IF YOU YET LIVE, I WILL FIND YOU, AND I WILL DESTROY YOU!!!!!!”
Having blown off her steam, Sunset seethed and shook as she regarded the firestorm around her. She knew she could no longer remain in Equestria. Her attempt on Midnight’s life, with dark magic no less, would drive Celestia and her guards to hunt her down. She wouldn’t be safe unless she ran and ran far enough to be out of Celestia’s domain.
Deciding upon her next course of action, she vanished in a flurry of flames, leaving the forest around her to burn.
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CHEAP SHOT!!!
Hope midnight's alright
Holy crap that was epic!
Seriously?! Did Sunset Shimmer actually kill Midnight? Wait ... no, this probably has something to do with Midnight's ascension to alicorn-ship. Great chapter though, I'm looking forward to the next one, and the end of the story. Don't get me wrong, I love the story but I want to see how Midnight's experience's in the past effect his personality and therefore, his relationship with his friends.
5763718
Cheap just about sums Sunset up.
That chapter was intense. I'm glad about this ending for Sunset. Sorry for my suspicions about the mirror, this is better. I do hope Sunset still learns her lesson, like she did in Equestria girls. I guess the final chapter is going to answer two questions. How did Midnight ascend, and how is his Mom. Thanks for a great story. It was so much fun to read.
Dam. Sunset is one hellova bitch
That means that you are not going to make chapters about the human world and Equestria girls?
5764185
Nnope