Phantasmare

by Emperor

Castle: Shadows

“But you, my little ponies...you can call me Deinos.”

It took the six ponies gathered around the stage a few seconds to break out of their stunned state. In Equestria, ponies generally worshipped alicorns, even as the number had increased from one, to two, to three, and finally to four alicorns in the last few decades. Each of them had been immersed in that culture. Even if they were ponies with irregular backgrounds that prevented them from obseiant worship, they still generally respected the alicorns.

Now here was a fifth alicorn. Unlike the quality of noblesse oblige that ponies imagined alicorns to radiate, this Deinos had just attempted to attack them, with the obvious intent of killing them. Ten Little Ponies was a nursery rhyme that had endured in popular culture for many centuries, old enough that even Iceheart knew it. The malice the purple alicorn had mentioned wishing to recite it with made her intention obvious.

Windspeaker sucked in a deep breath of air. “An alicorn?” he asked aloud, stunned. Still, it was only the second-most surprising thing in the last few minutes for him. The most surprising thing was that the Living Wind had not detected the so-called Pony of Shadows. That does make sense why Trixie knew she was there before I did. The Living Wind cannot detect alicorns!

To Windspeaker, it spoke of another issue. But where did she come from? I thought there were only four alicorns in Equestria! The Living Wind was similarly agitated. It vibrated with what passed for surprise.

This alicorn obviously wasn’t a princess, however. Princesses didn’t attempt casual murder to start a conversation.

The unicorn was abruptly taken out of his thoughts as his warning sense went off. Looking down, Windspeaker saw the shadowy silhouettes at Deinos’ hooves suddenly coalesce and gather into one large mass, before swinging like a bludgeon at them across the floor. Yelping, Windspeaker jumped off the stairs to the side, keeping one eye on the shadow and one eye on the ground. There were still too many chunks of stone and mortar laying around, remnants of the battle that had occurred here a thousand years ago, and Windspeaker silently wished they really had cleaned up earlier. The stallion was lucky that he had not been hit by the shadow taken corporeal form.

The railing of the stairwell where Windspeaker had just been standing was not so fortunate. The shadow smacked the stone railing, breaking off an entire section and sending small splinters of rock flying. Windspeaker quickly used his magic to conjure a shield, protecting both himself and Red Wings, who stood next to him, from the shrapnel. With a quick peripheral glance, he was comforted to see the other four were also safe, having dodged or blocked the shadow and the follow-up storm of stones with their own methods.

No wonder she is the Pony of ‘Shadows’. That’s dangerous. I’ve never ever seen magic capable of manipulating shadows like that!

Well, it was true Windspeaker had never seen anypony capable of such. Through the Wind, he had at least heard of a rare few. Typically, they used a weak form of elemental manipulation, controlling shadows like they might fire or water. But what those other beings did, ponies and gryphons and zebras alike, was mainly used for parlour tricks, such as causing someone’s shadow to move around and grow and shrink.

In just the brief, fleeting moment that Deinos’ silhouettes had moved, Windspeaker knew her shadow magic was far more advanced than the elementalists he had heard about. Windspeaker himself was a precedent for how much control of an element a pony could possess. Unlike her, however, Windspeaker had never contemplated killing another pony like Deinos had just now attempted.

“Oh-hohohoho, at least you all survived this much!” Deinos cackled. Hers was a disturbing laugh: it was a deep one, her chest visibly shaking in mad glee. That the purple-furred alicorn had just attempted equicide made it even worse. “It’s good you stayed with that changeling witch for six months. I would have been disappointed if the show ended before it even had begun. I want to have some fun tonight!”

Suddenly, one of Deinos’ shadows moved right in front of her, just in time for a blue bolt of magic to strike it, dying out in an instant against the corporeal shield. Deinos blinked. As they spun around in their sockets, her golden eyes shone with malice. “Ooooh, my. So you actually did learn how to manifest magic like that? Yes, yes, I’m so glad you stayed that six months. The future where you came here immediately would have been so boring. Here, let me show you how it’s done.”

Noire grit her teeth. With her opponent’s warning, Noire instantly kicked off her hooves and swept through the air, just in time to avoid another silhouette strike. Though she had learned how to cast spells like a unicorn, she still required too much focus for the more powerful stuff. If Noire had to focus, it meant she wasn’t moving. Deinos had only acted a few times so far, but those moments she had was proof of the new pony’s potential lethality.

Suddenly, the batpony had a premonition of danger. Ignoring her earlier instincts to always be moving, she sat down and cast. Quickly, Noire put up a shield in front of her. The magic was nearly transparent in form, merely distorting the air like a fire giving off heat would create a haze-like effect. It came up just in time to block the Pony of Shadow’s own electric javelin strike. The ethereal shield shattered near instantly, the electricity continuing on. Fortunately, Noire had moved out of the way in the tenth of a second her magic had given her.

A sizzling smell of ozone permeated the air. It terrified Noire. She knew that if she had only attempted to dodge Deinos’ counterattack, she would have been a freshly-skewered batpony. The javelin had slowed down enough thanks only to her sudden use of magic. Noire felt her stomach doing flip-flops at the sudden brush with death. That nauseating stench of electricity and ozone in the air reminded Noire of too many bad memories in training and on patrol, and only those same experiences kept her focused on the impromptu fight and not on gagging.

Deinos would have surely taken advantage of Noire’s brief disorientation. However, the purple alicorn suddenly jumped in the air and spun with a flicker of her wings, and the shadows that surrounded her split into three separate tendrils. The tendrils intercepted a two-coloured bolt of magic and a large rock. The third tendril seemed to have done nothing at first, only for a high-pitched whistle to screech throughout the great chamber.

“Using your wings to shape the air and send an invisible razor-sharp slash at supersonic speeds, impressive,” Deinos said. As she appraised Red Wings, her golden eyes started to rotate even faster. The red pegasus growled. While Deinos had attacked Noire, Trixie and Windspeaker had combined their magic to send a joint magical beam at the Pony of Shadows. Stonehenge had settled for brute force, and picked up a large rock to throw at Deinos. Red Wings had snuck in his own attack behind the other three. Being both invisible and moving faster than sound, he had hoped it would get past the apparently formidable barrier of shadows.

Either Deinos had somehow seen the slight flicker of his wing out of the corner of his eye, or the shadows themselves moved on their own to protect their master. Either possibility spoke more and more of how terrifying she was. Despite instinct and experience developed from years of roughing it, Red Wings still hadn’t fully actualised that there was an alicorn right now trying to kill them. He snorted and shook his head. The changelings had trained him for six months so that he would be in a better position to help Trixie, his marefriend, become an alicorn. Red Wings had expected to use his new fighting skills against fellow Equestrians who would view her potential apotheosis as heresy. He hadn’t expected this.

Deinos clicked her tongue, and sighed. Her golden eyes danced with a feral glee. “Well, it’s impressive, but it still won’t be enough. Come now, foals, show me what you’re capab—”

There was a bang! sound, then none could see as an intense white light flooded the room, as if the heavens had just called down a lightning strike into the decrepit insides of the Castle of the Two Pony Sisters. Deinos stumbled, her rear hooves taking a step back to stabilise her. “Urgh!” she cried, as she was hit hard by a feeling not quite like pain but an intense discomfort verging on pain. Vaguely, she could feel tears welling up at her eyes.

Trixie tried to breathe in relief, only for the breath to get caught in her throat. As the one who had first noticed Deinos, she was ever slightly mentally ahead of all her friends. Even if Trixie had been stunned by Deinos’ revelation of being an alicorn, Trixie still had to pull the weight when it came to the mortal danger they had all been suddenly thrust into. Under pressure, she had remembered the flash bombs she still carried. It had been years since Trixie had performed as a showmare, instead refining her talents in her actual magic, but one could not take the showmare out of the pony. To this day, she still carried her flash bombs around, as a secular alternative in a pinch to using magic.

Just seconds earlier, Trixie had made a signal to Windspeaker and Noire, the other two ponies in the room capable of using magic. With coordination borne from rehearsing fights for six months, the two unicorns and one magic-wielding batpony cast a thick protective film over their own eyes and those of Red Wings, Stonehenge, and Iceheart in the split-second before the flash bang went off. To Trixie’s relief, Deinos’ protective shadows didn’t appear able to protect her from a sudden light show. However, she was uncertain if it was a trick that would work twice.

The six didn’t waste time, as they regrouped back towards the door leading into the throne room, facing towards Deinos who still stood at the foot of the stairs. Their hearts were harmonised as one. Once again, each of them launched their own separate long-range attack against the mad pony, who had her head down towards the floor, rubbing her eyes with a hoof.

As their hearts were as one in that moment, so did their hearts sink as one as the shadows suddenly moved around again to block the six separate strikes.

“So your shadows are able to act independently,” Stonehenge said, gritting his teeth. Twice now he had picked up a large rock and tossed it at Deinos. Twice now, a part of her shadow had split off to intercept the rock, grinding it into fine dust as the entities collided. Stonehenge found himself at a loss. He had once led a group of ponies to defend the walls of Manehatten against roving bands of monsters, and commanded a core group of five other ponies to strike back and raid the nearby forest. As the undoubted leader of The Wall, Stonehenge had accumulated much practical experience in skirmishes against beings with esoteric talents. Though he was working with a different group of five ponies, he had quickly acclimated to their own abilities after six months in Colt Springs. Yet he was already feeling overwhelmed by a single pony. Stonehenge grimaced. He coiled his back legs, ready to make a move at a moment’s notice.

“Oh? I was found out so quick? Hohohoho,” Deinos cackled as she looked up, once more able to see. It was clear that her alicorn biology wasn’t for show. An intense flash of light that would have taken normal ponies minutes to recover from had only fazed her for a few seconds. Those few seconds were enough for a single solid hit, only for Deinos’ shadows to get in the way once more. “I was not called the Pony of Shadows for nothing, you know!”

“Why are you doing this?” Iceheart suddenly spoke up. They had asked Deinos questions earlier, before she had tossed her cloak aside and engaged in a brief-but-intense skirmish. However, Iceheart was not asking the question in hopes of finding a common ground with the mad alicorn. She could feel Deinos’ intent to kill. Instead, she was attempting to sound out the other pony and get a greater feel of her capabilities.

“Hohohoho,” Deinos laughed again. Her laughs were never pleasant. They erupted from the belly instead of the throat, and were full of mocking. “Why, you ask?” Suddenly, some of the shadows that guarded Deinos retreated and converged around her, forming a solid congealed mass once more. The mass moved under Deinos’ hooves, then suddenly sprouted out of the ground like a geyser. It lifted the purple-coated alicorn up until solidifying into a cylinder-shaped pillar several dozens of hooflengths in height, leaving Deinos physically towering above all others.

Deinos flared her wings out, revealing a wide wingspan with taut muscle. For the first time in the fight, she was finally standing still long enough to really take a good look at, and the moonlight made her looks clearer. Her coat was a darker purple, resembling the shade of lighter-coloured eggplants, with a vibrant violet mane. Deinos was tall. She wasn’t as tall as Princess Celestia was, let alone Stonehenge, but most other ponies would have to look up to meet her haunting golden eyes. Where Princess Celestia was lanky, with long legs and a thin torso, Deinos was more well-built, with a large barrel. Obvious muscles poked out of her body. Even if she were to somehow lose her shadows, her horn, and her wings, Deinos would still have been a physical threat.

“Surely not all ponies are so innocent that none of you squished the ants under your hooves when you were foals? Like bugs caught in a spider’s web, it’s the same principle.”

Trixie immediately felt her throat lurch. There were fictional books written for adult ponies that were far darker than what life was like in Equestria. In those books, there were immoral characters who would hurt and maim and murder with little care. The most lacking in compassion even had the attitude that life was cheap. It was a sickening ideology, and those characters were always clearly the bad guy.

To hear a pony express those sentiments in the real world made Trixie feel ill.

But Trixie braved her way past it. Deinos’ sudden appearance had taken them by surprise, along with her initial attack. Trixie had clued in before anypony else that Deinos was there, however. She was the fleetest of hoof in adjusting to the flow of the battle, and now that Deinos had her shadows tied up in the pillar supporting her, Trixie saw an opportunity. She didn’t think it likely to work, but it was one she had to take.

“Sitting so far below me, you ponies are mu—” Deinos continued to monologue, only to be interrupted as a part of the pillar suddenly disintegrated, gaseous shadow suddenly rising up and solidifying in front of her.

Ping! Trixie’s attack had just hit the newly-reformed shadow shield. The female unicorn had sent a shot of concentrated air, so delicately forged that it was completely invisible. Trixie had even cast the spell while suppressing the luminescent glow of her horn so Deinos could not see her using magic.

Deinos snarled at the interruption. “How rude. That do—”

Suddenly, the alicorn jumped. The pillar vaporised as she did, and the shadows curled around her body once more. Long tendrils shot out again, and started wrapping across the columns and beams of the throne room. More shadows split into tiny tendrils that swayed back and forth. To the horrified awe of the six, Deinos began to swing around the room, using the strands of shadows like tree vines from a pulp novel to maneuver her way around the room at such high speeds that they would be unable to attack her with any accuracy.

But just as soon as Deinos was swinging around, she came to a stop. The alicorn wasn’t any less terrifying, however. The shadows that connected Deinos to every part of the room had once more come together and coalesced into a mass, then began to subdivide into smaller sections. This time, the shadows created a web between two large pillars strung up across the stairs leading up to the thrones. To add to the effect, Deinos had sprouted four extra limbs from her barrel. With a menacing hiss, she quickly used all eight of her limbs to crawl across the spider’s web to the centre. Then she turned around, hanging upside down with a final shadow tendril connecting from her belly to the web. Deinos gave off the sinister image of an arachnid pony, ready to devour her prey.

It was clear that Deinos knew how to strike fear into the hearts of ponies. And she was succeeding.

“The Living Wind, was it?” Deinos said, focusing on Windspeaker. She was obviously furious earlier, but it seemed she had calmed down in the last several seconds. “It is an odd gift that you have. The ability to manipulate the wind to its most primal level. If I were not an alicorn, I might have to actually fear such techniques you used on me.”

Windspeaker bit his tongue. The Living Wind was in a chaotic howl. If he had to describe it, he would say it was actually angry. Windspeaker had never felt the Living Wind like this before, and it was an unpleasant sensation. He was frantically trying to calm it down. The white-furred unicorn needed to be fully in sync with the Living Wind if he wanted to continue the fight against Deinos. Truth be told, however, Windspeaker knew that Deinos was mocking him. What he had just attempted was a variation on Red Wings’ earlier razor-sharp air blade, only Windspeaker had broken it up into multiple smaller shots, each cut of air perhaps the width of a tooth. He knew Deinos could have blocked every strike with her shadows. Instead, the purple equine had chosen to swing around the great chamber with her shadows and then play the role of a spider. Windspeaker hated it, but he had felt cowed by her intimidation. It didn’t look good for him and his friends.

“Still, it is certainly interesting,” Deinos continued. “There was nothing like it, or at least no pony who could tap into it, when I was born a thousand years ago.”

There was a mass intake of breath. The six ponies who were ready to move out again into a new formation suddenly paused. Iceheart was the first to speak. “You are over a thousand years old?” she asked, surprised.

Deinos clicked her front four limbs together, deepening the disturbing image of a spider. One could almost expect her to show off fangs next. “Of course, of course!” said Deinos, clearly enthusiastic about having suddenly dropped such a startling revelation. Her golden eyes were rotating in glee. “Haven’t you heard the legend of the Pony of Shadows? I am said to be a part of Nightmare Moon’s magic, so of course I am that old. But dark magic alone cannot create life, and I am a living, breathing, pony. My birth wasn’t that far from here. A thousand years ago, Princess Luna became Nightmare Moon, and then Nightmare Moon gave unto me true life.”

“Nightmare Moon was your mother?!” Noire asked, her voice almost lowering into a screech at the end. As a batpony, she was fond of the Matriarch of the Night. To find that Luna had given birth to such a monstrosity as Deinos, even if it was when she had turned evil, was like a slap to the face. “But no, wait. Nightmare Moon was only around for a matter of days. How could she have given birth to you in that time period?”

“Oh, no. Nightmare Moon was my father. Discord was my mother.”

“Are you screwing with us?” Stonehenge suddenly asked. He had tired of being ridiculed and mocked by the Pony of Shadows through the entire battle. The giant Earth pony could tell Deinos was once more belittling them by telling such a preposterous story. “Nightmare Moon did not appear until well after Discord was sealed, and she was a mare. How could she have sired you?”

Deinos threw her head back again, and laughed. “Ohohohoho! Very interesting. True enough, Nightmare Moon was a mare. But I never said I was made like you ponies were.”

Suddenly, Deinos flipped back around, hooves towards the floor. The shadows that made up her four extra limbs and the string attaching her to the spider web all flowed back into a small mass around the top of her withers, and the alicorn opened up her wings, gliding to the floor. Deinos shook her head, throwing her mane around, and the spider web itself disappeared, the rest of the shadows joining its brethren at her back. “A mere few years ago, your beloved Princesses were captured by an overgrowth of plants that originated from the Everfree Forest. It turned out those plants were plunderseeds, a life form capable of leeching energy from anything it touched, even the Tree of Harmony itself. A thousand years ago, before Discord was sealed into stone by the Princesses wielding the Elements of Harmony, he spread the plunderseeds across this land. They were in dormancy, to stay inactive until the Tree of Harmony had weakened after enough time.”

Deinos looked up at the ceiling, where small holes allowed glimpses of moonlight through. There was sheer, unbridled joy on her face. For the first time, there was no malice in her voice, which made the madmare even scarier. “Those plunderseeds are my siblings. I first came into this world as a plunderseed.” Deinos looked back down at the six ponies who had fought her in the last several minutes, coming off the worse for it. She sneered at them. To a one, they had their mouths open, enraptured in horror and awe.

“When Princess Luna became the Nightmare, she became a caster of such dark and foul magic that it was even capable of contaminating the land. Princess Celestia thought the Elements of Harmony had been able to purify all of the evil spread into the air and water and soil. But she was wrong, oh so wrong. Some of Nightmare Moon’s magic touched even me, and so I became thus, this body given to me by my mother, and this magic given to me by my father. The shadows have been my protector since I was truly reborn. It took me several centuries before I was able to assume this as my true form. I slipped up in my early years, and so ponies came to spread the story of the Pony of Shadows. But I am more than a story.”

Trixie trembled under Deinos’ gaze. To her, the alicorn’s story sounded ridiculous. And yet, it felt like there was some truth to it. Hadn’t so many beings awoken from deep slumber all at once in the last few years? Nightmare Moon had returned from her imprisonment on the moon. Discord had broken free from a statue. King Sombra had returned along with the Crystal Empire. The aforementioned plunderseeds had taken over the Everfree Forest. Lord Tirek had escaped Tartarus and rampaged across the land. Begrudgingly, though she could not think of the changelings as villains, Trixie admitted that Queen Chrysalis had suddenly become active, after more than a century of staying low. What was one more tyrant?

What scared Trixie was that it was her and her friends that were the ones to face off against this monster, this Deinos, the Pony of Shadows of old maids’ tales past.

“My siblings may have been purged by the Tree of Harmony, yet I still live. Hmm, speaking of the Tree of Harmony, I suppose I need to get my revenge on it. Harmony is what defeated my mother and father, so I cannot allow it to live. Once I have killed you mongrels, I will lure the six ponies who once wielded the Elements of Harmony into this castle. With their deaths, the Tree of Harmony shall be weakened by proxy, and I can destroy it with ease. From there, I can finally walk out of this castle and purge this world. Oh...I will have to create some doppelgangers of the six of you. It may be easier to trick them into this castle using your forms.”

Those words suddenly made something snap in Trixie. She remembered what Anfang had said so many months ago.

“You must somehow get an alicorn to fight you...It will take you coming to blows with an alicorn merely once...no, maybe two times, to become one yourself.”

Trixie looked back up at Deinos. The unicorn inhaled, then exhaled. In came the cool calm of the night air, before it had been disrupted by their fight. Out went all the worries that had accumulated in Trixie, not just over the battle thus far, but from the last six months. She knew what she had to do. With another signal of her hoof and eyes to her friends, they suddenly started switching around and pairing off.

The move was obvious to Deinos, who smirked. “Oh? Are you going to try again? Hah! Give it your best shot. Harmony is the only force in this world possible capable of defeating me, and you, my little ponies, are not Harmony!”

The other ponies paid her no attention, quickly getting together with their partner. Using self-levitation, Trixie flew over several rocks and stones, the debris added to from chunks of the floor and ceiling damaged and broken apart from their skirmish thus far. She found herself next to Red Wings. Opposite Trixie and Red Wings, at equal angles apart to form a perfect triangle, were Noire and Stonehenge, and Windspeaker and Iceheart. From this angle, they could adjust their attacks if Deinos attempted to dodge, and the six would also avoid accidental friendly fire against one another.

Deinos’ shadows rotated around her, staying on the defensive instead of moving out to strike again. Unbidden, the shadows suddenly began to slow down, before coming to a stop. For the first time the six friends had seen them, the shadows were completely passive and motionless. “Well well, give it your best. I’ll give you a single shot without my shadows. You still won’t be able to do anything, but at least I’ll get some more entertainment!” Deinos boasted.

Trixie clenched her teeth together. Thus far through the fight, they had been constantly put on the back hoof. For once, she wanted to get a strike in on Deinos, something that would more than just stun her for a few seconds like the flash bomb did. For the first time in many years, since the death of her father, Trixie wanted to hurt somepony. Trixie recognised she was falling out of the desirable state that Anfang had spoken of, but she was beginning to not care. She traded looks with Red Wings, violet eyes meeting red, and then cast her magic.

Red Wings hopped off his back legs and used his wings to sweep around to Trixie’s back side. The avian pony summoned his own internal pegasus magic he had learned how to manipulate after many months with the changelings, and guided it to his wings. Red Wings took a deep breath, and as he exhaled, the red stallion flapped his wings as hard as he could, sending out an enormous gust of air. Its strength was so great that Red Wings fell to the floor, his wings unable to stabilise under the recoil. The gust of air quickly took shape as it moved along the arc of travel Red Wings had sent it. With the Living Wind to guide it, a horizontal, spiralling wind tunnel formed.

Then Trixie added fire to the wind tunnel.

The wind tunnel suddenly roared as it lit with cackling flames, and both ponies could feel it pulling in the surrounding air to fuel itself and grow larger and larger. In turn, it spit out heat, causing the area to increase several degrees in seconds. The flamestorm was like a monster that had broken free from its restraints, with little care for who or what it injured. It was only from months of gruelling practice that Trixie and Red Wings felt capable to aim it at something, without getting caught in the backlash. And it was aimed directly at Deinos.

“Oh my...this truly is interesting,” Deinos said as the flamestorm quickly came upon her. To the other side of her was a second attack, a pile of rocks grinded down by Stonehenge into sharp pebbles and launched into a tornado by Noire. Behind her was an incoming enormous spear of ice, forged by Windspeaker using the Living Wind to concentrate moisture in the air and remove heat, and thrown by Iceheart, able to tolerate the extreme cold of the lance. All three attacks were timed perfectly to strike Deinos at the same time. The alicorn had no time left to dodge.

Ka-boom!

A heat wave suddenly rippled out from the epicentre of the combined attacks. Trixie had already started to move away as soon as she saw all three attacks would be true, grabbing Red Wings and teleporting a skip away to the end of the chamber. Despite the distance she had gained, the heat was still oppressing, with the air sizzling to the point that it hurt to even breathe.

Sssss~

A split-second later, there was a loud hiss as the ice lance vaporised under the heat wave. The ice sublimated straight into water vapour, clouding up even a chamber as great as the throne room. Trixie immediately threw up a magical shield, as she knew what was coming next. Even as the room fogged up, blocking all visibility, tiny granular matter sprayed all over, pelting her shield. It was the remnants of the rocks Stonehenge and Noire had launched in a tornado attack at Deinos.

Though Trixie and Red Wings’ flamestorm might be expected to neutralise the lance forged of ice, each strike was intended to hit its target before contacting each other. From her sides, Deinos would have been hit by a tornado of rocks and a storm of flames. From behind, she would have been cut down by a lance that would have caused an ice burn due to its extremely cold temperature. Once all three attacks converged, the heat wave would turn outwards, completely freed from any control. The heat would turn the ice into vapour, clouding the room, and hiding the rocks that would be broken down even further into tiny shrapnel. Despite the contradictory nature of the attacks, the magic infused into each salvo was able to create a truly devastating combination attack. Even if Deinos had used her shadows at the last moment, they would have had to guard her in an impenetrable sphere to stop any injury.

“Is she done for?” Trixie asked as she felt the tiny impacts on her shield finally die down. Waiting a few more seconds, she lowered the translucent purple-tinted dome.

“I doubt it,” Red Wings said. “She’s an alicorn. I’ve heard from the changelings that even Princess Cadance can take a punishment, even though she’s barely ever fought a battle. Even if Deinos thought she was in danger, I’m certain she would use those freaky shadows of hers.” Red Wings inhaled, then let out a long breath. “Those shadows are a weird ability. I’ve heard about a lot of strange techniques wandering around or from my contacts in the changeling hive, but this is something far away from anything I know. It’s like you or Windspeaker, but those shadows...it’s like they are a part of her. The way they respond to her and guard her, I think she has even finer control of them than Windspeaker does of the wind.”

A breeze suddenly swept in through the windows as well as the holes in the walls and ceiling, flushing out the fog. A pleasant chill washed through Trixie. Even if Deinos as an alicorn was somehow above the Living Wind, the mystical force that permeated all the world’s air was still on their side. With the fog went away the intolerable humidity and heat. As the fog continued to be pushed outdoors, clearing Trixie’s line of sight towards the epicentre of their attacks, she could see her and Red Wings’ joint flamestorm had gouged a clear trench in the stone floor. Even now, there were glowing red hot spots. Slowly, the fog dispersed.

In the centre of the room, a pair of golden eyes suddenly appeared, spinning wildly.

“You—what?” Trixie cried out in surprise. Deinos was clearly there, right where she had been standing prior to the combination attack, standing on top of a single section of floor that was intact, with a large circular section of floor around her gone. But the golden eyes that had originally been the only part of the Pony of Shadows that could be seen before she threw off her cloak earlier were once more the only visible body part. Rotating ever swiftly, Deinos’ golden eyes were set into a spherical mass of shadows.

“Surprised? Hohohoho.” Noise came out of the black ball, before wispy vapours of the shadows broke off, coming together and reforming around the golden eyes. Within seconds, the shadows solidified and gained colour, turning into the alicorn Deinos. “You must have practiced that attack. I can see how much damage it would do against any other alicorn,” Deinos said, rotating her shoulder cuffs as she looked around. She let out a whinny and a snort. “But, well...unlike any other alicorn, I can avoid attacks like that by turning into shadows. Neigh, I AM the shadows!”

Trixie staggered back. A tiny part of her was skeptical of Deinos’ proclamation. It was possible that Deinos had indeed dodged the attacks while Trixie and her friends were unable to see her, and then bluffed them by hiding herself in the shadows afterwards. However, the rest of Trixie doubted that Deinos was bluffing her. That Deinos herself could turn into shadows, not just wield them, and dodge both physical and magical attacks, appeared to be the utter truth.

In that event, how are we supposed to hit her at all?

Trixie felt like she had come a long way from the lowest point in her life, ever since that fateful day in Whinnychester when she had learned of her father’s death. She didn’t want her road to end here, perishing at the hands of this megalomaniacal madmare that spoke of destroying Equestria, but Trixie was now fumbling in the literal shadows, grasping out desperately for a way to win.

Suddenly, a thought popped up in her head.

Deinos has her shadows. Why...why can’t I do what I’m good at?

“That’s...huff...ridiculous!” Windspeaker cried out, on the other end of the chamber, close to the stairs that would lead up to the giant organ. He was panting hard, having to summon the Living Wind as well as using his own magic to forge the lance of ice, then teleporting himself and Iceheart away thereafter before finally casting a shield. Even after six months of training, Windspeaker was still lacking in stamina after years of staying in the hospital. The effort had greatly fatigued him. “Why are...huff...you like this? A plunderseed born from...huff...dark magic? I don’t believe that!”

“Hmmm? Says the pony who is able to commune with the very wind itself,” Deinos said, turning her gaze on him. “Such an ability is wasted on a mongrel like you. I would seize it myself if I could, but the Fates Three didn’t see fit to give me the capability to do that. Perhaps they were afraid I would slip out of their web if I could. Oh well.” Deinos snorted again, flapping her large wings out several times, kicking up dust and tiny pebbles from around her. “Well, I suppose that was a warm-up. It could have been worse, I suppose. Only one of you might have come here. It’s certainly been better than those few who have been lured into here in the past. I never did figure out why I was supposed to let that one pony go to spread the tale of the Pony of Shadows.”

Deinos’ words were weird. She was saying things that made no sense to Trixie. However, Trixie had little attention to decipher them, as she was busy pulling Red Wings around the chamber, maneuvering over to Windspeaker and Iceheart. Opposite Trixie was Noire and Stonehenge, also moving to converge in the same location. Unlike the flamestorm and the rock tornado, the ice lance had done little damage to the floor as it was let loose on Deinos, leaving it the most stable part remaining of the hall.

“Ah?” Deinos raised her eyebrows, golden eyes once more spinning in obvious anticipation. “You foals still have some fight left in you? Good, good. Make it count. I may have been waiting one thousand years, but waiting several months more for those other foals to show will be so boring.”

I’m tired of her, Trixie thought. I’m tired of her babbling. Tired of her shadows. Tired of her mocking us. Just once, I want to knock her off haughty throne. Will it be different this time? It must be. I’ll show her the might of The Great and Powerful Trixie!

The six ponies who had journeyed to the castle together assembled at last. It had only been a few minutes since they were split apart, but those few minutes had felt like a lifetime in front of the relentless onslaught of the tyrannical alicorn that stood before them. Trixie’s friends had come with her intending to fight a kingdom. Instead, they had stumbled upon a far more visceral threat than Princesses intending to shut down a potential ascension. Already, they were tired. Trixie could see splatters of blood on each of them, sans Red Wings, whose coat hid the blood. Some of it was from Deinos’ attacks, and some from the backlash of their own. Each pony was still gasping for air after the last attack. Trixie felt sweat matting her own forehead, threatening to sting her eyes.

Trixie’s protective instincts flared. There may have been no escaping Deinos, but Trixie would not have signalled the next attack to attempt if she hadn’t seem a potential way to hit Deinos.

Each of them quickly fell into formation. Trixie took the centre of the formation, while Noire and Red Wings flanked her at either side. Iceheart stood in front, forming the arrowpoint, while Stonehenge and Windspeaker stood at the rear. Trixie felt Windspeaker may have fit better in her position in this formation, thanks to the Living Wind, but it had been designed to be the team’s ultimate attack. If it was to be deployed against a foe who warranted such a powerful attack, she was the only with the magic and the stamina to execute it. As the heart of the six, it was her duty as well. It was Trixie, after all, who was the one seeking apotheosis.

Trixie had hoped to never deploy this against any of the Equestria Princesses, or whatever other imposing allies they may have been able to call upon. Trixie still didn’t. At least if they had to, it would get a trial run in a real fight first.

“Hmmm? How interesting. I wish I could know the little details, but alas. Come now, show me what you’ve got! Just don’t be surprised when you fail. After all, nothing can pierce through my shadows!” Deinos boasted, flapping her wings to achieve lift, hovering over the single remaining section of floor in the damaged area of the throne room around her. The shadows that had guarded her through the entire battle sprouted out of her back once more, with four extra limbs appearing to once more make the alicorn a spider-pony hybrid. Deinos’ eyes were spinning with so much verve that to look at them was as if to stare into a kaleidoscope, the gold of her glowing pupils still so haunting in its vividness.

“Everypony, listen to me,” Trixie spoke to her friends, trying to muster up their courage. She could taste bits and pieces of despair in the air on her tongue. It was a horrible feeling, and she knew if they didn’t succeed with this next strike, everypony’s morale would plummet. Trixie had to rally their spirits. “Deinos is tough, yes. She’s an alicorn, yes. But we knew we might have to fight alicorns before. We didn’t expect to fight this alicorn, but an alicorn Deinos is nonetheless. We planned on how to fight and defeat the Princesses if we had to, so she can be beaten as well. Notice how she’s been saying how her shadows are invincible, and she turned into shadows herself when we attacked her before? It’s because Deinos herself is vulnerable. Between the six of us together, I know we can beat her shadows this time and expose her for what she is!”

The speech worked. Trixie could feel the wariness and despair diminish. It was still there, under the surface, but it was much repressed. Trixie exhaled, relieved. Truth be told, she knew this was likely their last chance. If this failed, Trixie had a few more ideas, but they were all unlikely to succeed.

Deinos reared up on her hind legs while in mid-air, kicking her front legs out, and threw her head back. She laughed. It was slow at first, a soft chuckle, but then it built up into a crescendo. “Hohohoho!” She cackled, letting out that same belly-deep laugh that had rattled the six before. “Amusing, amusing. You ponies are all so amusing! If only you weren’t destined to die here today, I would have kept you around as my jesters! Very well,” said Deinos, bringing her front legs down, but still hovering in the air. “Show me what you have got. Make it count.”

Trixie didn’t need the tyrannical alicorn to tell her what to do. Slowly, she started to cast her magic. Behind her, she felt Windspeaker’s magic activate as well, and beside her, Noire’s own magic began to be unleashed as well. The cool, gentle caress of the Living Wind brushed Trixie’s horn, and she felt it give her control of the immediate surroundings.

Suddenly, the world became more vibrant. The colours became richer in the moonlight, with every grey, blue, and purple suddenly coming in a thousand shades, helping to differentiate the shade of Deinos’ coat ever slightly more from Princess Twilight Sparkle’s. Trixie could feel every little current of air, from the breezes coming in through the holes of the castle, to the lift and drafts created by the subtle beats of Deinos’ wings, to each pony’s wispy inhalation and exhalation. Her sense of sound, too, was magnified a hundredfold, as she could still hear the faintest echoes of Deinos’ earlier mad laughter through the castle. Even the magic glow on Trixie’s horn generated sound, a pleasant buzz that always chased away any doldrums Trixie had.

Trixie swallowed, unused to this sensation, having only felt it a few times before in practice. This is what Windspeaker could feel all the time, if he were to give himself over completely to the Living Wind. As the pony who had helped heal Windspeaker of the Gordian knot that bound his life force to the Living Wind, Trixie was the only other one who was capable of being in touch with the Living Wind to this degree, yet she still had less than a thousandth of the control Windspeaker did. Iceheart was the only other pony who could even utilise the Living Wind.

She shook her head, chasing away those errant thoughts. Instead, Trixie paid more attention to Deinos. To Trixie’s disturbance, Deinos’ shadows generated absolutely no noise. Even the alicorn’s body seemed to be faint to the Living Wind. That was unsurprising, given that alicorns were supposedly a higher existence than the Living Wind. Somehow, only Deinos’ ever-present golden eyes made more noise than the rest of her body. It took a great deal of willpower for Trixie not to look up and get trapped staring at that hypnotic gaze. Trixie had never met Discord, but she had heard he had golden pupils. She wondered if Deinos had inherited this from him.

Trixie felt to her side and her rear, and quickly, Noire’s magic and Windspeaker’s magic joined together with her own, guided by the Living Wind. Quickly, it subsumed the magic that Stonehenge had gathered beneath his hooves, channeling his own more subtle Earth pony magic. Finally, Red Wings’ internal pegasus magic easily joined, his wings giving him an easy connection with the Living Wind. The magic of four other ponies joined Trixie’s, and the pink glow of her horn grew ever brighter, threatening to illuminate every last dim corner of the castle.

“Oh? How interesting. Perhaps they’ll make a good impression,” Trixie heard Deinos murmur, but the azure unicorn paid it no heed. Instead, Trixie continued to build up more magic. In any other fight, Trixie would have executed this technique right away, but because Deinos was cockily allowing her the time to build up more magic, Trixie would take the opportunity. She strained, calling up more and more magic still. With a delicate hoof, Trixie balanced the magic out, making it equal parts unicorn magic and pegasus magic, and calculated exactly how much of a deficit of Earth pony magic she should have.

Trixie suddenly reared up on her hooves, and let out a whinny. It was a wild, primal whinny, one she hadn’t let out since the days she had wandered freely among Equestria as a travelling showmare. It was the whimsical cry of freedom, a call to hooves to all adventurers possessed with wanderlust. It was the epitome of what Trixie was.

Then Trixie slammed down on her front hooves, her horn pointed forward. A large pink ball of magic leapt from her horn, shooting straight into Iceheart. The former commander was stoic even as her body convulsed with concentrated magic, the spell working its way from dock to chest. The magic transformed, absorbing Iceheart’s own power, before a bluish-white mass of energy suddenly leapt out of her. Under Trixie’s enhanced eyes, it was beautiful enough to bring tears to her eyes, as the beam suddenly descended upon Deinos.

Deinos floated in mid-air there, watching the beam as it encroached upon her. Shadows suddenly moved in front of her, forming a solid black wall that completely blocked vision of the madmare from in front. It was the strongest barrier Deinos had created with her shadows thus far, and all present held their breath, waiting to see which was stronger — the energy beam cast from the magic of six friends, or the mass of shadows.

Then the beam struck the shield, and Deinos screamed.

A purple blur flew backwards from Deinos’ position, instantly slamming into a pillar, only to smash the pillar in half, as Deinos continued her trajectory away from the centre of the throne room, and breaking out a wall into the outdoors. More moonlight trickled in through the hole that had been created by Deinos’ unceremonious exit. Even though the alicorn had already gone outdoors, a piercing screech could still be heard, cutting through the still outdoor air.

Trixie let out a large gasp of air, then quickly breathed in again, unaware she had been holding her breath. That wasn’t a cry of surprise Trixie heard. It was obvious Deinos was hurt.

“We...we got her,” Stonehenge said, echoing everypony’s thoughts. He, too, sagged in relief.

“No,” Iceheart said, standing up even as Deinos’ voice became fainter. She didn’t allow her body to falter, even though the other five knew she was exhausted, having channeled the magical power of five other ponies. The Crystal Earth pony once more showed why she had been chosen as a commander of a fort in the Frozen North, as Iceheart was the picture of poise. “She was hurt, but I can tell. That wasn’t enough to put her down. She’ll be back. Quickly, everypony. We need to intercept her.”

A wave of exhaustion swept through Trixie’s body. She desperately wanted to just flop to the ground, and roll over onto her back and fall asleep to the sight of the stars through the holes in the castle roof. Trixie knew that Iceheart was correct, however. With legs made of lead, she quickly reassembled herself, moving into another formation that could counterattack against both a magical attack or a close-quarters melee strike.

Deinos’ voice stopped getting fainter, and suddenly began to get louder and louder. Within seconds, the equine blew back through the wall she had just been hurled through. It was clear Deinos was out-of-sorts, as she charged straight through the brick masonry, sending more stones flying. The wall didn’t slow her down in the slightest as she charged through. The six quickly stood on guard, ready to turn Deinos’ next attack back upon her.

Suddenly, Deinos stopped, floating right above the small patch of ground that she had been standing on before, a single pillar of floor left with a circular trench around it. The alicorn lowered herself down, letting her hooves touch the stone. Deinos’ sudden stop allowed Trixie to observe the other pony’s state. Dust and plaster coated Deinos, giving her a layer of grey colouring. Her mane was frazzled, with many strands of hair standing up. Blood matted her fur in a dozen spots, though they were all practically nicks. The body of an alicorn was truly a formidable one, taking only small cuts from such a large impact.

What was more important was the changes in Deinos’ temperament. Trixie could see her wings tremoring. Most tellingly, the shadows around Deinos’ were agitated, moving randomly in every which way. Whether the shadows were moving around on their own or if Deinos’ mood was affecting them, Trixie couldn’t tell. She wondered if it was a good thing that they were moving like that. The shadows might be more chaotic now, but that could make them more dangerous than before. Oddly, Deinos’ golden eyes, which always seemed to be rotating to some degree, had slowed down, almost at a complete stop.

“How? H-how did yo—” Deinos stammered angrily before she stopped. Her voice had cracked after having been hit by the magical beam, potentially from when she had screeched out in pain. She let out a ‘urgh-hem’ to clear her throat, before speaking again. “No. I get it. You took advantage of how my shadows work. They can act on its own, or I can control them. I forgot you were able to cast illusions, you sneaky little bitch. You never once used one since you came in. You used one to make me think my shadows already had formed a shield around me, so I kept the rest of my shadows on reserve. But that was just it, wasn’t it? You tricked me. None of my shadows were protecting me yet, so all of my shadows were under control, and I kept them to the side. If I had let them do its own thing from the start, it would have instinctively known the shadows up there were not real and gone up to actually defend me. Clever, clever.”

Trixie felt herself become disoriented. She had hoped Deinos hadn’t seen through the illusion, but she had. It meant Trixie wouldn’t be able to use it again. All she could hope for was that their attack could even pierce through a real shadow shield and injure Deinos again.

Deinos flapped her wings, shaking off the layer of dust that had settled into her coat. She let out a brief cough, then spat out a dollop of blood onto the ground. “But what was that attack? It felt so...oh. I see.” For once, Deinos focused her gaze on Trixie, and Trixie stood her ground. She had just injured an alicorn, a metaphorical goddess among ponies. She would not be cowed. “You balanced each aspect of your magic, unicorn, earth pony, and pegasus, attempting to harmonise it to perfection. The magic you inherited as a changeling-pony hybrid could be used to offset it if any part got too powerful. You could have cast the magic directly, but instead, you sent it through her as a focus point,” Deinos said, motioning at Iceheart. “As a pony who lived in the Crystal Empire for so many years, her body has taken on some qualities of the Crystal Heart, like being able to refract magic sent through her body as a medium. Then, combined with her ability to tolerate the cold, using the Living Wind as a guide, you bent it towards an ice magic aspect. You were incorrect in calculating how to balance how much Earth pony magic she would contribute to the spell, leaving it unbalanced. But every touch closer you got, the stronger the spell would get. Perhaps you were hoping even if my shadows had intercepted the spell, it would be antithetical to my powers, since I had said before only Harmony could defeat me. It may be a faux-Harmony, but it was close enough. Now.” Deinos smirked, having laid out exactly how the magic spell worked. “Did I make any mistakes there?”

This time, Trixie’s heart truly shook. Deinos had perfectly analysed the spell. When Trixie and her friends had been developing this unnamed spell, they had indeed found that Iceheart made the perfect vessel to focus the spell through. The core of the spell was also modelled after the Harmony that had bound Equestria for over a thousand years. It wasn’t a spell that could be replicated by any other. Only six ponies such as them who had come together and travelled could pool their bonds together and unleash such a devastating attack. Yet the wretched madmare had a preternatural talent at shrugging off every attempt they had made tonight.

Still, Deinos had been totally correct in her observations, and that included that the spell that had been cast was indeed imperfect. Trixie had been off in her calculations on balancing out the magical powers before it was sent through Iceheart. She had never once gotten it perfect in practice, either, but she had come close. From her trial runs, Trixie knew something Deinos did not: though the balance of Earth pony magic may have only been marginally off, correcting it did not lead to a linear increase in the spell. Instead, it became exponentially more powerful.

Trixie resolved her will. There was a chance. Even if Deinos couldn’t be fooled by Trixie’s illusions anymore and would always have her shadows up, Trixie felt the rondo of six friends would be able to overpower the shadows. Under a perfect application of the spell, would even the Pony of Shadows be able to get back up?

Her reverie was interrupted by Deinos again laughing. For once, it didn’t sound menacing. It actually sounded pleasant, the sort of soft laughter Trixie thought Deinos could have made if she was a normal pony and not a bloodthirsty predator. “You truly impress me, my little ponies. You have achieved the limits of what your destiny has allowed you. I hope you have a better go of it the next time around.”

Suddenly, Trixie was struck with a thought. Throughout the entire fight, Deinos had said strange things that made little sense. But just a minute ago, the alicorn had deduced something using knowledge she couldn’t possibly have had.

She made to speak, only for Red Wings to beat her to the punch. “What are you talking about?” the red pegasus asked, frustration evident in his voice. “You’ve been babbling nonsense all night. You’ve mentioned a ‘they’ or a ‘them’ several times. Who is this other pony or ponies you’re talking about? And what’s this about destiny?”

Deinos chuckled. Her golden eyes, which had been rotating slowly ever since she had flown back into the throne room, began to speed up. “Ah, you ignorant, naive foals. I’ve been waiting to hear that question for—”

“How did you know I can use illusions?” Trixie asked.

Deinos stopped talking.

“I’ve thought about what we said when we came in earlier. Maybe you could have pieced together what the Living Wind was from what we said earlier, since you somehow knew what it was. And you could have figured out that I was able to use illusions, but only after I actually used one. But no. You said you forgot that I could use illusions. Yet you have never left this castle since you were born. You said it yourself,” said Trixie, at last trapping Deinos in her own words. “Maybe your shadows could act like the Living Wind, and eavesdrop from afar, but then there were little things that you should have known about us but didn’t.”

“Finally. Finally!” Deinos yelled. “Finally you ask the right questions!” She started to paw at the small spot of floor in front of her, then started pacing back and forth on the little pillar that remained. Deinos seemed agitated. As quickly as she started pacing, Deinos stopped, facing Trixie and her friends again. “Where to start…? Ah, I know. I said that I was born a plunderseed, and Nightmare Moon’s magic made me more.” She looked up at the ceiling, looking out a particularly large hole to the starscape above, mirroring the same action Deinos had done when she had earlier talked about her birth. “That is the story the world will know about my origins, as the offspring of two earlier menaces that had returned after a thousand-year imprisonment. It is the legend they will tell in yet another thousand years, when I have etched my place in history. In truth, like your little wind user was saying, that story...is a lie.”

“Wait, wh—” Trixie, and indeed everypony else started, only to be cut off by Deinos, who continued to speak.

“Haven’t you ever wondered how it is that this planet was at peace for so long, for nearly a thousand years, only for so much to happen in a mere few years?” Deinos asked, looking back down at the six friends. “Nightmare Moon returned from the moon. Discord broke free from petrification. The changelings, secluded away for so long, attempted a daring invasion and occupation of Canterlot. The Crystal Empire returned from its enforced stasis, with King Sombra in tow. The plunderseeds grew to life, leeching away at the Tree of Harmony. Lord Tirek escaped from Tartarus and ravaged Equestria. Threats have popped up in other lands, with some spilling over into this realm.”

Trixie was startled. She had just been thinking mere minutes ago about the same things Deinos was now voicing. The unicorn felt a chill down her spine. Trixie was suddenly wary of Deinos’ next words. Deinos had seized control of the conversation, and Trixie was unable to slip the reins she was being led by.

Deinos looked back up again, but this time, her gaze didn’t seem to linger upon the stars. Instead, it seemed to pierce the stars, finding something beyond. “In this world, there are gods. Not like your feeble pony princesses, but actual gods, as far above your princesses as they are above, say, ants. Entities the likes of which the concept of omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience were created for us mere mortals to be able to fathom their existence. Hehehe,” Deinos laughed, looking back down. Her muzzle was wide open. To Trixie’s horror, she could see the Pony of Shadows really had fangs. “It is the job of the gods to watch over the cosmos until the end of existence, in order that they may eventually sort the souls of those in the lower domain.”

Deinos’ words hit the six like a sledgehammer. At first, they were slow in comprehending what she was speaking of, as it was so unexpected. Once they did, the implications floored them.

“In that pantheon of immortal deities there exist three sisters known as the Mœræ siblings. Together, by hoof, claw, and paw, they spin the very essence of the universe onto their spinning wheel, measuring out the individual threads, and cutting them off. It is they who determine the machinations of common equines such as you. Why, you could even call this destiny,” Deinos cackled, before letting out a wild neigh.

Her neigh quickly died down, but utter silence greeted it. Deinos surveyed her opponents. All she found were slack-jawed expressions with muzzles hanging open. She had truly delivered a stunning revelation. Deinos’ golden eyes began to spin even faster. What expression could be read from those accursed eyes showed a giddy glee, as she continued. “I am an agent of the Mœræ, sent back to this world to plunge it into fire and brimstone and start history all over again. A thousand years ago, they placed me here in the aftermath of the battle between the two sisters that tore this castle asunder. Intruders have come and gone over the years. Many are those that I did not interfere with. Some I killed for my own ends. Under the order of the Fates Three, there were a rare few I let escape my hooves so that they could spread the legend of the Pony of Shadows living in the Castle of the Two Sisters. I never understood why I was supposed to do that. Maybe they desire for every great threat to this world to have been seen ahead of time, if not understood? Perhaps that is why they allow a select few the gift of prophecy.”

At last, Deinos stopped talking.

Trixie struggled to even understand what Deinos was saying. The alicorn had just dumped cold water on them with information that fundamentally redefined how they were to view the world, absolutely obliterating their current theological understanding. What was more, Deinos was saying everything in a cryptic manner, and coupled with the alicorn’s somewhat archaic speech patterns, Trixie had no idea what she said was true and what was false. Her story of being an agent of gods sounded even more absurd than being birthed from a plunderseed. An immortal pantheon of deities? That was in the realm of possible, but what she said about destiny was...

“This is insanity!” Stonehenge roared, stomping his hoof on the floor. “Gods above us? OK, I am no disbeliever in an even higher power, but for our lives to be preordained, for them to control our every action? No, I cannot believe that! We are our own ponies!” The large stallion was unknowingly echoing Trixie’s own thoughts.

Red Wings took over right as soon as Stonehenge finished. He was similarly agitated. “You’re saying that gods exist, and that they want to destroy this world? That makes no sense! Why would they want to do that? What is more, what just god or goddess would employ a pony such as you? You have attempted to kill us ever since you showed yourself!” The questions spilled out like mad, as the red pegasus was in a frenzy. He had recalled a conversation he had once long ago with Trixie, about hating the notion of destiny if it meant losing his wing had been foretold.

“Ohohohohoho!” Deinos reared up on her back hooves for a few seconds, cackling uncontrollably, before slamming her hooves back into the ground. What was more, Deinos no longer looked frazzled, nor were her shadows pulsating and moving at random. The injuries she had received from before had since regenerated. “Just? Just?! Whoever said the gods were just! All of creation is a model to sort out souls by how exemplary their actions and morals are in life! They would have me plunge this world into a fiery cataclysm, and bring all of society back to its prehistoric days, just so they could see how our frayed threads would perform under harsher circumstances! The gods do not want us to advance into a utopia of everlasting peace, for they could never determine our strength of will then! Well...I suppose you are right, in a sense. If they were just and righteous, then they could have chosen any pony, but instead they chose me and my sisters!”

“Your sisters?” Noire unwittingly asked, before her eyes widened. Noire knew she was letting Deinos continue to control the conversation. Her mislip of the tongue would be costly.

“Yes,” said Deinos, before she did something strange. She let out a wistful sigh. From the bloodthirsty alicorn who had attacked and mocked them ever since her appearance, it was an odd sound. How could they juxtapose Deinos, the Pony of Shadows, with Deinos, the pony who suddenly appeared melancholic? Following the mood, even Deinos’ golden eyes began to decelerate, coming to a slow crawl. “Me and my sisters were born many, many years ago, in the city-state of Thrace. You would not know of it. Thrace is a land long since forgotten by history. It is a tale that is no longer relevant, but we became soldiers in the army of Thrace, serving under our lord-commander Diomedes. Under him, the four of us became the fearless Mares of Diomedes.”

Like she had several times before, Deinos once more looked up at the sky. This time, with the knowledge of true gods that the madmare served, the action became far more meaningful to the six opposite her. “We sisters even each gained our own individual epithets. Podargos the Swift, the eldest. Xanthos the Yellow, the second-youngest. Lampon the Bright, the youngest. And I, Deinos the Wondrous, the second-eldest.” Deinos looked back down again, smirking. “You know, our language pre-dated even old Equestrian. My appellation the Wondrous can be translated two different ways. I’m quite smitten with the second option: I, Deinos the Terrible.”

A soft tinge of malice had infiltrated Deinos’ tone of voice at the end, as she once more cut a sinister figure. Deinos’ implication was all too obvious. Still, she continued talking to a captive audience. “We were the best. With our many successes, us sisters held our heads up higher and higher with pride. Then one day, in our pride and folly, we committed a sin so great that even the gods, normally passive in their realm of Phantasia, were compelled to act. The souls of us mortals are supposed to live and live again, being returned to the great spinning wheel of the Mœræ until the end of creation, so that they can judge us from many lifetimes instead of a mere one. Instead, they plucked our four threads out of the cycle of reincarnation as punishment.”

Deinos sniffed, her voice breaking up for the second time in the evening. Trixie was startled to see a more equine side of the Pony of Shadows. However, she had no empathy for Deinos. The alicorn had not done a single thing to afford her any pity, especially not after Deinos mentioned committing a great sin. “Over thousands and thousands of years, each of us had to serve many penaces. My sisters sinned in a lesser severity than I did, and have already been released, passing on to the great pastures beyond. For them, there is no further chance. At least they have finally been freed from their serfhood. As for me, here I sit, bored, waiting a thousand monotonous years before finally I am allowed to act.”

“What—” Windspeaker swallowed the question on his lips. He wasn’t even sure what to do anymore, still staggered and trying to absorb everything Deinos had just said. Windspeaker was no fool, and he knew that Deinos was taking far too much pleasure in her storytelling. She wanted them to ask questions, so that she could lay on even more truths of how the world worked, and again overturn their beliefs. Deinos had been since the very first time she had off-hoofedly mentioned she was born over a thousand years ago. However, Deinos had completely figured out their spell from earlier, and they had no trump cards left. While he was already beginning to feel his perception slip from Deinos’ mind-boggling words, at least when she was speaking, Deinos wasn’t trying to kill them. So Windspeaker made the decision to ask. “What was the sin your sisters committed? What could have been so terrible that these gods would punish you?”

Deinos grinned. This time, it wasn’t a mere twist of the lips. Instead, she curled her lips back, showing off her entire row of her teeth. Windspeaker had seen it once already, but he shuddered at the look of the several fangs in her row of teeth. Normal ponies didn’t have those. “The Mœræ found some sort of cruel irony to grant me these fangs of mine with my alicorn body. Our sin was eating meat.”

“Eating meat?!” Noire squawked out in a wild surprise. “What god would condemn you to an eternal punishment for eating meat?!” While eating meat was taboo to most ponies, excepting fish, Noire could not fathom how it was such a blasphemous sin as Deinos was describing.

“Oh, that,” Deinos said with a mischievous glint in her golden eyes. The alicorn smacked her lips, a disturbing noise not unlike the sound of metal screeching against metal. “Equine flesh is so, so good. Nothing stimulates the sense when their heartsblood still pumps and gives it that fresh, juicy flavour.”

It took Noire a few seconds to understand Deinos’ words. Then, Noire stumbled, feeling nauseous. “Oh,” she whimpered, her stomach suddenly doing flip-flops.

“You—you ate other ponies?” Trixie asked, horrified. She felt light-headed, barely able to stay on her hooves. Trixie found it difficult to breathe, as there was an enormous lump in her throat that she could not swallow away. A violent storm churned her stomach as Trixie felt the urge to vomit.

“We did. Interrogations went very quickly. Nothing quite scares a war-stallion like feeling his enemy take a bite out of his flesh.” Deinos said. To everypony else’s continued disturbance, she licked her teeth and lips in what could have passed for a sultry motion, if only they could get rid of the mental image of blood soaking her muzzle. “Or of course, when you slice part of his flesh away, and cook it. Mmmm, the sizzle it makes when you drop it into a hot pan and fry it in oil, or the tenderness when you boil it for hours, or the smell when you cook it over a fire, fresh blood dripping out, or—”

“Stop! Just stop!” Windspeaker shouted. The unicorn was the first to finally lose control of his stomach, as he stumbled a few steps away, and retched out onto the floor. He thanked providence that they had not eaten around the fire earlier, or Windspeaker would have deposited more than a few small chunks of food and stomach acid.

“So soft-hearted you ponies are. Peace has addled your senses,” Deinos said scornfully. “Several thousand years has turned great equinity into a weak breed. Really, the same goes for all species.”

“Even the Witch King Sombra didn’t eat other ponies, and he was every inch a monster!” Iceheart said. Her purple fur had paled. Even Iceheart was affected by Deinos’ words.

“Hmm, lucky him. Cannibalism, or even the devouring of other sapient species, is rare, at least to the extent we four did to be punished. But the rot goes deep for the weakness. You ponies are weak. Your society is weak. This world is weak. Regular ponies are no longer capable of fighting, and rely instead on mystical forces they know little of to save them. No more. Hohohohoho. The gods may have considered this a punishment for my meat-eating ways, but I wonder. After all, destiny brought you all into this castle.”

The six ponies opposite Deinos all took a step back. The implication of what she meant by that could not be missed, not after talking at length about eating the flesh of others.

Unbidden, Trixie remembered a conversation from a long time ago.

"Of course, if destiny does exist, I suppose I'd like it in a physical form in front of me right now so I could buck it in the face."

"You wouldn't like being able to blame your actions against Pri—uh, her on destiny?"

"Absolutely I would, but it'd also mean that my bad luck throughout my life was also a result of destiny. More specifically, destiny deciding that every time I get a good thing going, that I would need something disastrous to set me back a few more years. The same would go for the loss of your wing."

"Oh. Oh. Yeah, that would do it. I'd be angry at destiny too in that event."

Just a few seconds ago, Trixie had stepped back, intimidated by Deinos. Now she took a step forward. “You speak of destiny like it’s the be-all end-all. I refuse to believe that the edict of gods above is responsible for our entire lives. I...I struggled, I fought tooth-and-hoof for so many days, months, years, to get where I am. I am my own mare. My accomplishments are my own! I will not let you take that away from me!”

“It’s interesting you say that, actually,” Deinos said, turning on Trixie. “For even though you do not realise it, today is your finest hour.”

“My what?” Trixie asked, confused.

Deinos swept a hoof out, taking in all six ponies that were lined up at the base of the stairs leading up to the organ Deinos herself had been playing earlier. “Take a look around you. There are six of you. I said it before, did I not? You were destined to come here. Your friends, on the other hoof, only had the possibility. You foals are thinking of destiny as ‘the Mœræ control your every action’, but then what would the point of creation be if our every action were already decided? The gods would rather languish in Phantasia if that were the case. Neigh. Certain things are set in stone, such as your appearance here today, but only yours and yours alone. In between these hard points, your actions and decisions are yours. You could have failed to break your sister out of her morass in Whinnychester, and left without her.”

“Perhaps you would have adventured to the frozen north next, where you would attempt and be unsuccessful at destroying the remains of the Windigos, dashing the hopes of the local fortress commander. Then you would have travelled to southern Equestria, visiting the changeling hive your father hailed from. There, you would have met a one-winged pegasus, and the two of you would depart ways after. Maybe at least one of those times, you would have succeeded, in which case the Living Wind would have guided you to Manechester, and then potentially thereafter you would have gone to Canterlot. But if after visiting the hive, you hadn’t once advanced in your magic or gained any new friends, you would have gone directly to Colt Springs. You would eventually surpass that old husk’s trials, and then you would come to this castle as a broken mare, with little to show for your talent with illusions. Perhaps you wouldn’t even know how to teleport. There, well, then I would appear.”

“But that didn’t happen. You improved your magic and made a new friend every step of the way. You could perhaps consider that your ‘soft’ destiny, the parts of your life that you had your own control over, and you did the absolute best that was possible. It is these in-between moments that truly count. Each thread, each soul, will be forever reincarnated. At the very end of creation, every soul will finally be sorted for its accomplishments through all its lives. The worst souls, even the truly damned like me and my sisters, will not be punished, but the best will be rewarded, perhaps even given a chance to step into Phantasia. Good job. To come as far as you did, you have uplifted yourself and your friends. It isn’t enough to come out on top, of course. But maybe in your next life, and the life thereafter, you will continue to perform enough deeds that your soul will separate itself and rise to the top.”

It was an overwhelming deluge of information that slammed into Trixie like the Friendship Express. I could have come here without ever meeting anypony except for Noire and Red Wings, and failing to even connect with them? Trixie thought, looking around at her five greatest friends. I could have been a broken mare? Deinos’ words were suspicious, but Trixie had to give them credence. She could easily see it happening. After the break-up with the Alicorn Amulet, Trixie had often gone through the motions of day-to-day living on autopilot. Finding out about the death of her father compounded Trixie’s woe. It had taken Trixie years to rebuild herself into something approaching normalcy. If not for her own strength of will, she may truly have done as Deinos said, and walked into this castle one day by herself, with fool notions of becoming something more.

Trixie had come such a long way. She had turned a happenstance powerful talent in conjuring illusions into something that defied the imaginations. Trixie had healed some ponies of their ills, and broken others of toxic bonds to family, duty, or magic that would eventually have subsumed them. Trixie wanted to continue to feel that joy she experienced every time her illusions helped a pony. Trixie wished to fulfill the pledge she had made to Anfang, progenitor of changelings, to bring together the pony and changeling race.

And so Trixie could not be stopped here by a mere mad alicorn. At last, Trixie had achieve complete self-absolution of all her earlier sins in life. That encounter with Altrix in the Pool of Reflections below the Colt Springs hive had helped heal her, but in this moment, Trixie finally felt her past and present were as one. Trixie felt a keen serenity, a self-actualisation. This moment in time was one where she could face Deinos and use her status as an alicorn to fool Trixie herself into ascension.

“That is relieving to know,” Trixie admitted, glad that at least destiny was not all-pervasive, and she had some control. “But I will not, cannot stop there. I, we, will defeat you, Deinos.”

There was an eerie silence. Then Deinos snorted. “You truly do not get it, do you, you utter foal?”

“Get what?” Trixie demanded. “So what if you’re supported by the gods? So what if you’re an alicorn? I’ve said before that if destiny appears in front of me, I’ll buck destiny in the face. I once travelled as the Great and Powerful Trixie. It would be Trixie’s greatest ever show to do just that!” Deinos’ speech may have been meant to break Trixie, but Trixie had trudged on through ice and sand, and struggled against stone and wind. Trixie had the power of her illusions, sharpened and then refined through the course of most of a year. Anfang’s words once more rung through Trixie’s head. To become an alicorn, Trixie had to fight one.

Deinos shook her head. Her golden eyes suddenly spun faster than ever. “‘Great and Powerful’? Discard that title. It doesn’t suit you anymore. I said it before. After today, I shall lure the six ponies who once held the Elements of Harmony into this castle and devour them. With their deaths, I will go out into the world, and cause a cataclysm that shall set everything back ten thousand years. They will know me as being the bastard spawn of Discord and Nightmare Moon, a force of anti-Harmony. Why would I have told you everything about the gods above and my true story if you had a chance to win?”

There it was. The thing Trixie had been ignoring this entire time. Deinos had spoken at great lengths of destiny and her own role as an agent of the goddesses that controlled it, but she was supposed to have a different background. There was only one reason why she would have broken away from the masquerade. Time slowed to a crawl as Trixie watched Deinos open her mouth again, ready to deliver the denouement.

“You were destined to come here today. My little pony, you were destined to die here today.”

Suddenly, Deinos moved.

There was almost no time to react. Even if Trixie was able to move, she would have never been able to dodge. Deinos hadn’t leapt, or jumped, or flown like a normal pony or even an alicorn may have. It was the pounce of a predator, with a smooth, ethereal grace only a mortal touched by a goddess could possibly possess. But that wasn’t why Trixie would never have been able to dodge. It was because this wasn’t a physical attack, or a magical one. It was an empyreal assault. At that moment, Trixie finally internalised and truly believed Deinos’ words, for the essence of the empyrean force that locked her down didn’t paralyse her body or her magic, but her very soul.

Out of the corner of her eye, a flash of red could be seen moving towards her, trying to intercept the impending attack. “Trixie!”

Then Deinos reached Trixie. There was no pain. There was no blood. Indeed, Trixie didn’t feel anything but for a deep cold, as Deinos melded through her body, like a ghost, before exiting her out the other side.

“Oh.”

Trixie collapsed to the floor.

“Trixie! TRIXIE!”

“And then there were five.”

With that, Trixie died.

---

‘Hello, Trixie.’

Comments

[Pause]

Happy too see this alive.

Sad to see it right before I have to leave for work.

[Wubtavia]

Phantasmare is one of my favorite fics, and to see it update again fills me sith great joy!

A truly action-packed chapter, I look forward to more :D

[Quantum_Shift]

Awesome, it updated at last!
...
[Reading]
...
A cliffhanger?! Motherf-[censored]!

Also, nice nods to Grecian mythology, I love it.

[Panem et Circenses]

This is one of those rare gem stories that it doesn't matter how long you wait, it's just good enough you'll stick it out until the end

[Kevin shough]

Oh a updated

[KaPe]

Getting an update is great, but leaving such a cliffhanger here... Hopefully it won't take two years to resolve that one, it's even bigger than the one before.

It does put the first chapter in a new light, with Trixie almost copying Elements of Harmony even before confronting Twilight. I guess the off-screen fights between "true companions" on both sides must have been quite something if they didn't take a part in the main show. Ah well, we'll see. Hopefully.

[JMP]

I...kinda remember these characters? Even so, the story hasn't quite reached the prologue yet, so even if Trixie's dead, she'll get better. And then there's this bit

“It wasn’t you,” Trixie said, cutting her off. “You were a challenge, yes, and you outwitted me at my own trade, but you never truly had the aggression to really win. She, on the other hoof, was a menace to all of ponykind, neigh, all living things, and it was only luck that I vanquished her even as I was beaten. In turn, she gave unto me the name of Phantasmare.”

I think Trixie's talking about Deinos here. Whenever we get the next chapter, I believe Trixie will defeat her and earn the name "Phantasmare".

[duckmagee]

i hope trixie get to buck destiny in the face here since Deinos volunteered for the role

[EternityFlame]

Good to see you're still at it, Emperor
Haven't talked to you since 2017, but I sent you a discord message so we'll see how that goes i guess.

[Silentwoodfire]

Damn, I finally catch up and now I am left wanting for more

[Emperor]

9786231

2 years? Eh, give it 5 years maybe.

9784982

Thanks. Always like to hear it's somebody's favorite

9785236

If I'm to be honest, I was kind of expecting someone to realise what Deinos' name was a reference to, since she namedrops herself in the first chapter of this arc, and that chapter has been up for two years. At the same time, I also realise there's a number of different ways to transliterate Greek names, so it may not have been obvious at all.

9786231
9786395
9786430

When I finish this story, I'll publish my original outline as a separate chapter. Though some parts changed here and there (the Stonehenge arc changed a lot), this arc was pretty vivid in my head. Each chapter of this arc should continue to play out things that were hinted at in the first chapter or foreshadowed throughout the story.

9795053

I've made this gag several times already but it bears me making it again. Did you know that I'll Have Another is the name of a racing horse? Soooo, I'll Have Another

[Jatheus]

I cannot even begin to express how totally excited and thrilled I was when I realized THIS was the story that had been updated! I only regret not having noticed sooner, or I'd have read it by now!

I have to say, I'm impressed how interesting you keep a battle that has so much dialogue in it. I'm not 100% sure I believe even half of what The Pony of Shadows is saying... I prefer to believe everything she says is half-truths at best designed to confuse her opponents and put them off balance.

Also... NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

I'm so glad there is another chapter so I don't have to wait!

I'm thinking something has to go sideways for The Pony of Shadows... I have not forgotten that this story began at its ending, and it was Twilight facing off with Trixie back then... coming up... whenever that will be. In any case, I am super excited to see how we get there! Did I mention how excited I am that there are updates for this story?