• Published 12th Nov 2015
  • 915 Views, 40 Comments

Death Be Not Proud - ShinigamiDad



Death's Agent in Equestria must regain his lost powers with Luna and Twilight's help.

  • ...
17
 40
 915

Shadow Battles

Twilight appeared on the edge of Canterlot moments later and was immediately taken aback by what she saw. A crude, dragon-shaped phantasm had erupted from the walls of the old Canterlot sports stadium, and was lashing about, flattening nearby cottages and shops.

Several unicorns were fleeing the attack, while others fired bolts of magic at the figure, and a pegasus lay nearby, broken and bleeding as the dark shape fanned its wings and lumbered forward, crushing a cart and its owner.

Twilight charged forward, sword drawn: “Dammit! Everypony get clear! There’s nothing you can do! Fall back!”

She leapt into the air and sped straight at the phantasm’s head, firing bolts of bright violet magic and slashing with her blade as she passed by.

The sword passed effortlessly through the various black bands and tendrils that appeared to hold the shape together, though her strongest magic attacks tore holes through the denser chunks and pieces that comprised the bulk of the figure.

Twilight pivoted as the “dragon” vomited out a stream of black, oily sludge which doused a nearby shop, dissolving it almost at once.

She swung back around for a second pass as Celestia materialized nearby in a bright flash: “What is this thing, Twilight?”

“I don’t know! It’s kind of like the mass of decayed, semi-animated corpses Zecora and I encountered in Baltimare yesterday, but stronger!”

The slouching shape took another swipe at Twilight, and a series of dark tendrils shot out at her, forcing her to phase in order to avoid being entrapped.

Twilight hurled a blast of magic at the figure’s head, then dropped to the ground beside Celestia, sweeping out a series of bright blue barriers from her sword as she went.

Celestia surveyed the carnage and pointed at the fallen pegasus: “Oh, no! That pony, is she…?”

“Yeah, she’s dead--that one, too.”

Twilight pointed at the earth pony who had been pulling the trampled cart. She was now crushed beneath it, her intestines spilled out, her skull flattened.

Celestia put a hoof to her mouth and shuddered.

“I’ll deal with that in a minute, Princess--right now we need to defeat this thing. But my sword just passes through the bands that control it, and you don’t dare try to sever them, either!”

Celestia shook her head: “No, the attack in Appleloosa showed what happens then!”

Twilight nodded: “Right--I heard.”

The figure turned aside from the barriers and began lumbering toward the center of the city. Its trailing ribbons of black power poked at the fallen ponies nearby, causing their bodies to twitch and rise stiffly from the ground.

Celestia furrowed her brow: “Then how do we stop it?”

Twilight chewed her lip for a moment: “If I can hit the physical pieces with my magic, then you should be able to as well. Just aim carefully! I’ll see if I can’t get close and figure out how to contain the tendrils that are controlling and binding it.”

Celestia nodded and squinted at the massive shape, looking for boundaries and gaps. She noticed its left haunch was especially large and well-defined. She focused a blast of golden energy at it, tearing away a large chunk, causing the shadowy form to stumble sideways and stop.

Twilight sprang into the air, diving at the crumbling hindquarters, slashing with her sword and sweeping her horn back and forth, dissolving swathes of mummified tissue.

She looked back over her shoulder at Celestia, who was now concentrating her fire on a kind of tentacle-claw, jutting from the front of the shape: “Nice job, Princess! I just wish I knew how to--”

Another burst of inky tendrils caused her to swerve and phase, darting in and out, tearing holes through ragged wings, ripping away part of a misshapen head.

The dark ribbons passed through Twilight, and fell across a partially-collapsed house. They burrowed beneath and a pair of unicorns suddenly jerked out of the rubble, writhing and crying out in agony, their blank eyes staring blindly at the dark form looming above them.

Twilight twisted around and looked down in panic: “Oh, no, no, no!"

She dove for the ground and landed in front of the two unicorns, now lurching forward like rag dolls, their spirits visible to Twilight as they were being ripped from their bodies.

She looked back and forth at the dying ponies and the mass of black ribbons, bit her lip and charged her horn with a sudden burst of dark magic.

The tendrils shriveled and fell back immediately, releasing their victims who staggered back and collapsed, sobbing and retching.

Twilight sent out another surge of dark magic, and glanced sideways at Celestia, some fifty yards away: “Princess! Please come get these two out of harm’s way! I think I know how to drive this thing back!”

She rushed headlong beneath the belly of the phantasm, scoring long, deep-violet gashes with her dark, pulsing horn.

As strip after strip of desiccated flesh and bone fell away, Twilight dug deeper and deeper into the shambling shadow-beast, bathing it with beams of glittering black power, turning the collapsing mass to grey dust with her sword and wings.

A few minutes later Celestia looked on in dismay as a grey, cloaked form, swathed in a dark nimbus, rose from the sprawling grey and brown wreckage and stepped forth.

Twilight shook and fanned her wings, sending up a cloud of dust, as the dark magic faded from her horn, and the nearby shadows returned to normal.

Celestia sighed with relief: “Thank goodness, Twilight! For a moment it looked like you were rising up from Grey Thorn’s Void!”

Twilight re-sheathed her sword and stepped over to the broken body of the dead pegasus. She bent down and gently touched her horn to the battered, pale-orange corpse.

“In a way I was. Those tendrils are coming from the Void, and only by exerting even greater dark power was I able to suppress and drive them back.”

“Will they return?”

Twilight walked over toward the shattered, dripping remains of the crushed earth pony; the body still twitched and twisted a little. Twilight drew her sword and raised an eyebrow.

“This one’s still carrying some of the Void’s essence or imprint or whatever it is.”

Celestia joined Twilight and looked at the mutilated pony with disgust and pity: “Like the one Zecora trapped.”

Twilight drove her blade into the corpse’s chest, then stopped and tipped her head sideways as if listening: “This pony’s spirit is missing…”

Celestia’s eyes widened: “Like Grey Thorn’s victims!”

“Maybe. Hold on.”

Twilight turned and retraced her steps back toward the final spot where the haunted dragon form had fallen. She swept the area with dark magic, and began slowly walking back toward the breached stadium.

Celestia took to the air and followed closely from above: “Can you track the spirit?”

“I think it followed the path the black tendrils laid down.”

She picked and phased her way through the ruined wall of the stadium, stopping at last at a fissure, deep beneath an inner wall.

“I found the source of the rupture or breakout or whatever you call it! I’m going to go down deeper for a look.”

Twilight phased and dropped down beneath the ground, following the fissure deeper, passing through several shallow gaps and chambers, until she suddenly came across a disembodied spirit, entangled in a web of thin, inky-black strands.

She moved forward and swept away the strands with her horn, then leaned forward and touched the pale, glimmering fog that had settled on the floor of the small cave. There was a faint golden flash, and the fog was gone.

Twilight stood up and peered at the narrow crack at the back of the cave where the Void’s tendrils had retreated. She stuck her head into the opening and threw a beam of light as far down as she could.

“I’ll be here all day chasing down this damn fissure to its source, and that’s Zecora’s job anyway!”

She stepped back into the small cave and chewed her lip: “If only I could seal this off, block it up, melt it--something…”

She stood silently for several moments, then her eyes suddenly widened: “Blocked! Melted! That’s it!”

Celestia was helping organize rubble-clearing efforts, and had covered the bodies of the two dead ponies with cloaks. She was talking to a group of medical unicorns when Twilight appeared next to her, alarming the ponies who had gathered around the Princess.

Celestia shied sideways slightly: “Twilight! Wh-what did you discover?”

“I found Hearty Bloom’s spirit and sent her to join Eiderdown in the Waiting Room. I’ll get to them in a bit, but first I need to head back beneath the castle, down to Starswirl’s secret library.”

“Why?”

“Something bothered me when Reaper found the blocked stairway leading down into the catacombs, and it’s bugging me again.”

“The one that was melted and had wards against him.”

“Right, but I don’t think the wards were only against death, and I don’t think the blockage was just to hide the room. I think somepony was trying to seal in, out--I can’t really tell--the Void.”

Celestia furrowed her brow: “‘Somepony?’ Surely it must have been Grey Thorn!”

Twilight frowned and bit her lip as she faded out: “I’m less sure of that all the time, Princess…”


Twilight faded back in, surrounded by the silent, stale dark of Starswirl’s ransacked, secret library. She illuminated her horn, filling the space with a bright bluish-white glow.

She dropped a small notebook and quill on the table in the middle of the room and walked to the back wall. She phased, sticking her head through the stonework: “There you are--well, at least some of you.”

Twilight worked her way deeper through the fallen and melted stones and rubble, until she couldn’t penetrate any further. She intensified her horn's glow to its maximum and spent several minutes studying the various faded glyphs and symbols, shifting the glow from her horn through the full spectrum, and down into dark magic.

She reemerged from the wall and jotted down her findings in the notebook, taking care to match the spacing and orientation of the various symbols.

She sat down heavily in the old, worn chair next to the table, overcome by fatigue and stress. Her eyes drifted shut and she slumped forward onto the table, her head resting on her crossed forelegs. She dozed uneasily for several minutes.

“Usurper…”

Twilight snorted loudly as she jolted upright, almost falling over backwards: “What? Who’s there?”

She shook her head vigorously, and ran the back of a hoof across her mouth: “What in Tartarus? I’m hearing things, now! I need to get this done and head back to the stadium!”

She stood up, gathered her writing materials, and oriented herself toward the back wall, pointing her head down, concentrating on the unseen chambers below her. She disappeared with a flash.

Twilight reappeared many feet below, in the antechamber outside Grey Thorn’s old lair. She walked to the right, finding the old partial stairway in a corner. She set her notebook and quill down, and proceeded up the stairs, phasing as she went, until she could go no further.

As before she came back from the blocked passage several minutes later, and jotted down notes and symbols, going back once to double-check an especially-faded glyph.

Twilight sat on the bottom step and studied the four pages of notes she had taken: “Yeah, a lot of this looks like the anti-death wards up top, at ground-level. OK, let’s see if I can cobble something together!”

She stood up, stretched her wings and back legs, then faded away like a shadow suddenly flooded with sunlight.


Twilight reappeared just inside the breach in the stadium wall, startling a clean-up crew. She looked back to see Celestia some hundred yards away, consulting with several police and emergency service ponies.

She turned away and started back into the damaged foundations: “I’ll talk with her once I get this done.”

She sighed as she phased into the floor: “If I get this done!”

She emerged in the small cave and found the dark filaments and ribbons working their way back toward the surface.

Twilight shook her head as her horn started to glow a deep, glossy purple-black: “You’re persistent, I’ll give you that!”

She drove the tendrils back, then used her most powerful magic to collapse the crack as far back as she could, shifting from a violet beam to a crimson one, slagging the interior of the fissure until molten rock oozed back into the cave.

“That should do it! Now to seal it with a kiss…”

She sighed and yet again pierced her wrist, drawing a large bead of blood: “I swear I’m gonna have a scar after all this!”

She inscribed a series of glyphs and symbols across the still-hot rock, infusing them with dark magic as she completed each one.

After tracing out a ninth symbol, she stepped back: “If that doesn’t do it, I don’t know what will!”

She stood silently in the cave for several minutes, watching for signs of returning tendrils. She turned away at last and phased back up through the rock to the surface above.

She flew over to Celestia, catching her mentor’s eye, and landing nearby: “That should do it--I think.”

Celestia raised an eyebrow.

Twilight shrugged apologetically: “There’s still a lot I don’t know about this. I think the wards and seals are right, but we won’t really know for a bit.”

Celestia nodded: “And even then, there are undoubtedly other ways for the Void to “leak” to the surface.”

“Oh, I’m sure--and I’m going to be busy for some time plugging those leaks. I just hope Zecora and her team find and cordon off that thing soon!”

“As we all do, Twilight. As we all do…”