Tales of a Wizard: Flesh Masks

by Applechip

Chapter 27

Rage is not discriminatory. Fury and pain do not care about your race or social status. When worked into a frenzy, they only lash out against their catalyst and do what they do best. They destroy anything and anyone they want with as much violence as they can possibly bring to bear.

With the same level of raw power and ruthless abandon the vampires on the previous room received, the self-proclaimed Legion jabbed my horn forward at the catalyst of their pain and did what came natural. In the space of a heartbeat, power enough to rival even the most dangerous of entities I’ve encountered, welled up in my horn and was released in a focused blast. A massive lance of fire, several times more potent than any flame I’d ever created, howled as it tore across the room.

My hooves actually slid backward across the stone floor several inches by the simple force of the attack. The light and heat coming off of the blast could only be compared to several miles of wildfire being compressed into a foot wide orb. Out of the corner of my eye, I dimly noted that the fire from my mane and tail died down significantly; presumably having been redirected into the attack. The focused beam of fire and force reached the center of the room, and abruptly changed course.

A large dark semitransparent pane of energy popped into existence just before the attack, spanning from the ceiling to the floor and several feet from side to side. The lance hit the shield dead center, followed quickly by a resounding boom. A webwork of cracks spread throughout the shield as it tried to weather the miniature supernova. Unable to endure the raw power, the shield seemed to somehow turn fluid in nature as it flowed into a slight partial dome. As the shield flowed into its new shape, it shifted to a much shallower angle on my right side.

The blast that had been attempting to drill its way through the shield subsequently shifted with the shield and glanced off it. However, as energy ran through the half dome to change shape mid-bombardment, that same energy fed into Legion’s attack. The framework compressing and holding together the immense amount of power behind that strike, deteriorated in an instant. Just as the battering ram of the fiery gods turned to follow the shield’s new angle, it lost all structure and all of that energy rapidly expanded outward. Before anypony knew what was happening, the entirety of the right half of the room in front of me became an inferno.

For a brief instant there was only the crackling of fire as my eyes adjusted to the sudden change in light and swept over those dancing flames in search for the intended target. I was not left waiting for long. My eyes tracked some subtle shifting as the flames bent and twisted unnaturally, and Legion began drawing together energy for another similarly sized strike. Before much, if any, energy could be gathered, the wall of fire nearest me bulged outward and parted.

The former shield, now turned into a large dark sphere covered in a webwork of red cracks, shot out of the fire at me. Interestingly enough, in mid-transit the gigantic black orb seemed to dissolve; the entire surface of the thing melted away and flowed through the air like running water to a single point. As the liquefied magic shifted away, the visage of the Red King came into view again. His dark fur was only slightly singed by Legion’s attack, but the expression on his face was nothing less than murderous. The remaining energy from his shield swiftly condensed into a miniature, albeit insanely more powerful, copy of the original sphere positioned just above the Red King’s horn. With a quick lunge, the basketball sized orb of pure black energy shot at me like a cannonball, and struck me squarely in the chest.

Something in-between a loud snarl and soft whump escaped my throat as I was thrown backwards, and a resounding crunch echoed throughout the room shortly after. My back slammed against the stone wall beside the splintered remains of door I came through, the hardened stone cracked and caved slightly behind me. Pain washed across my senses, but nowhere near the level I would’ve expected. Filtered somewhat through my possession or transformation, I only felt as though I had maybe pulled a muscle, not create an indent in a stone wall. Whatever pain the spirits driving me felt was ignored completely as Legion swiftly worked to get my hooves planted, and was almost immediately flung back against the wall by dark hooves.

The Red King pressed me back against the same stone I had cratered in, with one foreleg against my sternum and the other at my throat. The muscles around my body immediately strained against the Red King’s grip in an effort to either throw him off or reverse the situation. He held me well and had an enormous amount of leverage on me, but even still I was very slowly pushing him off me. Sensing the shift, the Red King leaned in against me and pressed against me for all he was worth. His snarling muzzle and pointed teeth were dripping with barely controlled hunger and were mere inches from my face.

“Dresden, maintain control! You must not let your power loose!” he shouted at me, apparently under the assumption that I even had a direct say in what my body or my power did or didn’t do. His cold eyes focused intently upon me and tried to stare me down without making direct eye contact. “You will kill us all if you do not MAINTAIN CONTROL!”

At those words, Legion ceased trying to throw off the Red King and instead returned his stare. The spirits’ intense hatred surged and caused my flaming mane and tail to flare out against the wall behind me, adding to my intimidation factor by several degrees.

“Already… Because of YOU!” Legion bellowed through me. “ALREADY DEAD!”

The Red King only growled back at me and my apparent defiance. Evidently willing to risk whatever massive release of power might happen at my death, the Red King reared back, opened his fanged maw wide, and dove to fasten them around my throat.

The exact possibilities of what would happen at my death were something I didn’t really want to think about while trapped within the confines of my own head. It was something I was forced to consider though once I got a real good look at the Red King’s pearly whites. The furious spirits within me could gather together and throw the mother of all death curses and put a permanent crater the size of Canterlot in this forsaken place; or I could simply bleed out into the floor like common prey, and everything in-between. Considering the circumstances, I was guessing the more violent of the extremes would be more likely. That is all, of course, assuming I’d be allowed to die.

Legion didn’t move my body to try to shove away the Red King as he descended upon me; no, they did the exact opposite. My forelegs ceased pushing against the Red King’s barrel and instead moved around his sides, almost as though I were drawing him into a hug. Along with my forelegs, my flaming mane, tail, and wings all surged forward and around him as well. Legion intended to envelop the monster king in as much agony inducing fire as my bonfire of a mane and quasi wings would allow.

Just as his pointed fangs began to pierce the sides of my throat, the Red King noticed the red and orange light dancing around him. Before my wings could completely close around the source of Legion’s rage, the Red King bucked and thrashed wildly, effectively dislodging himself from me. Slipping under my forelegs and out from in-between my outstretched wings, he backpedaled away from me several feet. He did not escape unscathed though. Many patches of the Red King’s dark navy coat were left blackened and scorched where my mane or wings had managed to make contact; a sizeable patch of the fur on his left foreleg was even set alight in his escape.

The Red King ignored these comparatively minor annoyances entirely and devoted all of his attention onto me. His eyes narrowed at me and swiftly began darting around the room. I could practically see the cogs whirring in his head as he processed the situation and how he might overcome it.

Legion felt no such compulsions.

The moment the Red King backed away from the burning grip of my wings, the hooves of my forelegs hit the ground and I was on the move. With an almighty shove, I leapt into the air after the Red King. My wings flared out beside me and new energy coursed through my spiraled horn. I could sense that the energy forming seemed to be abandoning the wild energies of uncontrolled fire, at least for the time being, and leaned towards something a little more up close and personal.

A leonine bellow tore from my throat as a massive hammer of raw power materialized out of thin air, similar in form to Pinkie’s weapon of choice. The semisolid red blur descended and impacted with the stone floor in front of me, the creature previously occupying that space having again just barely dodged out of the way. On top of the pure physical force being applied by the hammer, I could feel much more energy pouring out of the hammer’s head into the ground, amplifying the resulting effect several times over. The stone where the Red King had previously stood caved in an almost perfect dome shape several feet across, with many cracks branching out for several more feet. My eyes tracked the Red King’s every movement as he repositioned himself a little to my right.

“Damn it, Dresden! Listen to me, you lunatic!” he shouted over the crunch of the stone under my power. The Red King’s horn ignited in dark energy and a wave of cold wrongness washed over my senses.

“Murderer!” Legion shouted back.

My conjured hammer wrenched itself from the ground and whipped itself around at the Red King, bits of shattered stone trailed through the air as it flew. Barely half a breath later, the hammer struck home against the Red King’s hide. A sickening crunch met my highly sensitive ears, followed closely by a loud almost feral snarl. I could sense it as my power held in the construct funneled itself through the physical contact. My magic, the product of mine and Legion’s rage, spread throughout the flesh and bone beyond the construct like wild fire, wreaking far more damage than mere physical force could ever hope to do. The immediate result of this damage was lost to my sight however, because the instant Legion’s hammer made contact, the Red King let loose whatever magic he was building.

Before I knew what was happening, complete and utter blackness enveloped my head. It was as though I had been struck deaf and blind by the Almighty himself. No light whatsoever could pierce the fog and grant me sight, and the only sounds I could discern were vague shuffles at best. The spirits piloting me inwardly howled as my forelegs reflexively went up to wipe at my face, their frustration echoing around in my head and managed to dislodge my own thought processes.

Damn it… I can’t… No, they can’t…

While I was still reeling from the shock and Legion was trying to physically free my senses, what felt like a battering ram made of tiny needles hit my chest. Countless pinpricks stabbed into me as an immense force pushed me backwards, the hooves of my hind legs scraping across the ground as I went. The thousands of tiny little needles, while not terribly painful or debilitating, was immensely distracting to both myself and Legion.

Unable to wipe away the shadows or concentrate long enough to create a specific magical response, Legion raised my forelegs high in the air and collected a sizeable amount of energy in my horn. With a thundering bellow escaping my throat, my forelegs slammed into the ground and disrupting magic radiated from my horn in all directions. As soon as Legion’s hastily made counterspell hit the air, all the shadows around my head dissipated and the battering ram at my chest abruptly vanished.

I stood more or less where I did back when I first entered the chamber. My hind legs were planted just in the splintered doorframe with my tail actually fanning out as though trying to prevent my moving backward. Not five feet away the Red King stood, glaring daggers of pure hate at me. He rested a little more heavily on his left side than he normally would; owing to the fact that his right foreleg was held up against the massive wound Legion had created.

From the right side of his neck down to his bottom most rib, the Red King’s hide was blackened, twisted, and burned horribly. It was as though he had decided to take a rest on an active stovetop. Several of the ribs beneath had very clearly been broken, creating odd indentations across the Red King’s side and, in all likelihood, severe organ damage. Just over his uppermost ribs I saw the clear circular indentation left behind by Legion’s conjured weapon.

All of those marks however, were swiftly vanishing from his form. The Red King’s horn glowed as he directed his stolen energy over his damaged body. The blackened char that was his hide receded back to the initial point of impact, leaving behind fresh, healthy fur. The surface of his navy coat writhed as his bones reset themselves in a manner that would normally have me emptying my stomach. While the energy necessary to accomplish such a feat would be titanic, in the time it took me to steady myself, the Red King had almost completely healed a substantial if not normally fatal wound.

All of that however, fell to the wayside, at least as far as I personally was concerned. For, within the confusion and rage that was Legion, I struggled to separate my mind and bring calm and order to my own little corner. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but my own personal rage with the Red King resonated well with the spirits within Legion, and they welcomed me as one of their own. For a brief time I was merely one more spirit within Legion, seeking to eradicate the Red King as violently as possible. Thankfully the Red King unwittingly shook me free with his debilitating spell.

Damn it, Harry! You’re smarter than this! I berated myself once I reestablished the mental shield I didn’t even notice fall. But wait… What did he say?

Able to think for myself again and freely process data, my mind went into hyper drive trying to process every detail that had slipped past me.

Listen to me? Control yourself? I thought while my body very carefully advanced forward towards the Red King. Legion advanced slowly, much like a predator advancing on its mark. I’ve heard vampires shout a lot of things during a fight, but I’ve never had them try to reason with me.

“Impudent,” the Red King growled under his breath at me. “Idiotic.”

That’s more like it.

Baring his last retort the bulk of the Red King’s words made little sense to me, at least at face value, but made a significant amount more sense when I broadened my mental radar a bit. The Red King’s body language and strategic positioning melded with his words to give me a far better understanding of the situation, his intentions, and just how much I had screwed up.

Legion’s prey matched my carefully placed hoofsteps and circled around me, drawing my attention further right. Beyond the Red King the result of Legion’s initial attack continued to rage on. From the far right wall to around the room’s central dividing line, flames engulfed everything. They were perhaps not as tall as they were immediately after my magic exploded, but they were no less potent, and the Red King seemed to be deliberately sidestepping in front of it.

Now vampires, especially Red Court vampires, are highly adept hunters and are far too smart to just allow themselves to be cornered so easily. Even Legion, distracted as they were by their boundless rage, noticed the strange behavior and hesitated, if only for a moment. With a quick glance beyond the vampire and flames, the exact reasoning for all of this was rather easy to unravel.

Because of how the Red King angled his shield, the entirety of the left half of the room remained relatively unscathed after Legion’s initial attack. Only the occasional piece of cracked stone or splintered wood marred the otherwise clean floor. At the far wall opposite the door behind me, the bound form of Celestia continued staring at me with wide eyes.

The Red King’s conjured tendrils still held her so she couldn’t move a muscle other than her neck; even the smaller one on her horn sapping her magic hadn’t dislodged. Unfortunately, Celestia’s unusually long form proved to be slightly detrimental. Because she lay near the central dividing line of the room, most of her lower half had vanished into the glowing orange and red of my fire. However, Celestia gave the flames about as much attention as she would give to a strong breeze. Celestia’s calculating eyes never left me for an instant, her mind quite clearly processing what my presence meant and apparently blocking out other not-as-important data.

Maybe her link to a giant ball of burning gas provided Celestia with a passive ability to shrug off her hind legs being on fire, or maybe she was just extremely strong-willed, I’m not sure. Either way, the fire apparently wasn’t a cause for worry to the celestial alicorn.

A sudden burst of fear gripped my heart and I reached out to assert some modicum of control to alleviate it. To my astonishment, my simple-minded fear actually managed to gain some ground and I could move a small part of myself against the control of my possessors. With an enormous amount of effort, I moved my eyes away from the Red King and ran them along the left wall.

There was Twilight, still lying unconscious on her side and still thoroughly bound by the same conjuration around Celestia. I was very briefly elated to see that the rare exposed patches of her body remained relatively unscathed, at least no more scathed than after she was knocked out. The only cause for worry I could see, apart from her mere presence in the situation, was her continued deeply labored breathing; no doubt courtesy of the Red King.

As soon as I’d made that observation the multitude of spirits within me howled and directed their fury at me. I relinquished what little control I had at once and fled from their sight. Their simple attention on my thoughts was almost enough to disintegrate my best mental shield outright. It was a sobering reminder that complete submission or insanity were my only real options. Fully back in control, Legion snapped my eyes back to the Red King who, during my relatively feeble struggle for information, advanced on me several steps and rammed a substantial amount of power through his horn.

“GET OUT!” the Red King bellowed and unleashed his power at me in another battering ram of black energy.

Actually able to see it coming this time, Legion responded to the attack with what appeared to be the instinctual responses of all three of the pony races. My quasi wings reached forward and folded out in front of me, creating a simple shield of energy infused feathers. Power ran down from my horn, over my body, and spread itself out over the same constructs that had moved to shield my body. It was difficult to see the warding energy over the already glowing ember wings, but it was definitely there, bolstering whatever defenses the wings offered. Beneath me, my hooves braced themselves a little further apart and actually seemed to sink into the stone floor a bit, anchoring me in place.

The Red King’s magic hit my wings dead center and carried with it the full force he could bring to bear. Much like his previous spell, it had little in the way of pure destructive power like fire or raw energy, and instead it just pushed at me with simple force. Although given the energy involved, that may be like saying I avoided burning in a raging forest fire only to get hit by a bullet train. That’s when playing host to a bunch of vengeful spirits tends to pay off.

My wings shifted forward of their own accord under the continuing pressure. Without actually parting, the ends of each wing reached out in front of me, creating something of a point in the center of river of force pouring over me. Then with an almighty bellow and a flash of light, my wings cupped like hands trying to hold water and snapped outward to flare at my either side, somehow parting the Red King’s spell. The river of raw force he was concentrating on me was actively torn apart by Legion’s will. The remnants of the spell rushed back with my wings to slam into the wall behind me, creating a massive webwork of cracks across the entire stone wall and, if the echoing was anything to judge by, a good portion of the hallway I originally came through.

While formidable, and plenty powerful enough to break every single bone I had on a normal day, that attack was still restrained compared to what destructive forces I knew the Red King was capable of. The exact reasoning for his restraint wasn’t even hard to figure out either.

He put himself at a disadvantage by putting his back to the flames, he kept drawing my attention to one side, and he only wanted to use magic that pushed me away rather than cause outright destruction. As crazy as it sounds, the Red King was trying to protect Celestia and Twilight from his own potentially devastating magic, but more importantly, from me.

While I wasn’t entirely sure if my fire would have much of an effect on the sun goddess, my mere presence, coupled with my lack of input in the situation, introduced a major risk factor for Celestia. The Red King was trying to hedge against that risk, by doing his best to try and force me to move the fight away from his hard won capture and the tool he needed to unlock his prize.

The most frightening part was that the Red King was one hundred percent right. I couldn’t make out the exact thoughts and plans my possessing spirits were thinking, there were far too many of them for that, but I could get the general feel from them. They were not concerned in the slightest for Twilight’s, or even Celestia’s safety. Their only concern was exacting vengeance on the Red King, and if somepony fell to collateral damage, then so be it.

I inwardly shuddered as one detail in particular surfaced in my mind. If the Red King had chosen to angle his shield in the opposite direction, then the fire from Legion’s initial attack would have consumed Twilight! This fight needs a change of venue, now!

Such actions were the furthest thing from Legion’s desires however, quite the opposite in fact. Sensing some of the same desperation I picked up on, the multitude of spirits within me decided that right then was a good time to put an end to their conflict.

Legion made quick use of the Red King’s attempts to push me through the room’s entry way, and spread my form to block off that same exit. My hooves moved a little further apart to widen my stance even further, dragging along the few pieces of stone they were still anchored in. My wings likewise fanned out as far as they could manage, and then ever so slightly tilted themselves backwards; whatever parts of the entryway that weren’t blocked by my considerable size, were quickly obstructed by the solidified flames of my wings.

Satisfied that the only means of escape was blocked off, Legion lowered my horn to point, not at the Red King, but at the center of the room. Then, as though a simple switch was flipped, my body became a magical black hole. Power poured into me and into the matrix for whatever spell Legion was weaving; and not just power from my new reserves, but also from the environment for as far around as my senses could reach. The light in the room dimmed as the remaining fire coating the right half of the room dropped to about half its original height. Somehow a moderate breeze began blowing through the room towards me as well, causing the dimming flames and the Red King’s mane and tail to lean towards me.

In the corner of my mind, I tried to study where all of that power was going, what it was being made into. The matrix Legion was pouring all of that power into was in fact extremely simple to figure out, even through all the different minds shaping it; and the potential consequences were terrifying. It was one simple fire spell, without any kind of control or directional aiming to it, and a truly titanic amount of power as an energy source.

Legion wanted to guarantee the Red King’s death and intended to fill the entire room, from floor to ceiling, with as much flesh peeling flame as was possible. Such a spell would certainly be the demise of the Red King, but it would also mean the end of Twilight, possibly even Celestia.

If I had a moment to spare I would’ve probably stopped to appreciate the irony that I was a bigger threat to Twilight than the Red King was.

No! No, stop! I shouted within my mind, desperate to get the spirits to see that they were endangering one of their own and their princess. The Red King’s not the only one here!

Their only response to my desperation was a seething dismissal of my worries and the continued buildup of energy. How much energy they would deem “enough” to take care of their problem, would probably be an interesting measure of the limits of their control, assuming such a limit even existed.

The Red King, true to any predators nature, took full advantage of my apparent distraction and charged at me. His horn pointed directly at my chest as he again aimed to drive the length of bone through my heart. Once he got close enough however, Legion reacted to the Red King’s proximity and fed some of the building energy back into my body rather than their spell. My flaming mane grew several sizes as the Red King drew near and swept forward to cover me completely.

The Red King skidded to a halt and backpedaled away several feet, unwilling to risk the severe burns my mane offered. Once he was safely out of my reach, his eyes surveyed me thoroughly and I could feel his power as he probed me with his mind, trying to discern my intentions. Maybe a fraction of a second later, the Red King’s eyes opened wide and immediately whipped around the room looking for an escape.

Seeing no such escape, he brought his glaring eyes back to me and shouted, “What do you think you’re doing, Dresden!?”

The same question rang around in my mind with no answers readily popping up. I was quickly falling into the throes of desperation and contemplating taking back my body by force, but a stray look gave me a better idea. Despite his hostile expression, the Red King’s eyes were slightly wider than a glare would normally be, and his pupils had shrunk to pinpricks. The Red King was afraid.

Wait wait wait, it’ll be too quick! I pleaded with my captors. Look at him; he’s afraid of us, of what he’s created. What kind of satisfying vengeance could we get if we end it too quick? Several of the vengeful spirits comprising Legion paused at that thought. The efficiency of their energy gathering dwindled severely with their shifting attention. Doesn’t he deserve more than a quick, almost painless death? He deserves to endure all the suffering that he’s forced on others.

Many feelings of encouragement, even a depraved sense of joy emanated from the vengeful spirits. The massive power they were holding in check immediately began to deconstruct and ready itself for repurposing. While ready to be reused, no real creative ideas sprang forth from Legion with which to use that power. I on the other hoof, had one thought that would serve Legion’s desire to cause pain, and my goal to move our conflict to where Twilight wasn’t in the crossfire.

How about we use that nice solid roof? I bet that stone would feel like agony against his delicate little spine, I offered while projecting several corresponding mental images to try and nudge Legion in the right direction. Lost amongst their complete lack of consensus with how to use their accumulated power, the vengeful spirits saw my proffered ideas and greedily latched onto them.

In an instant, the power Legion held was reshaped to something far simpler than massive amounts of flame. My legs bent underneath me, and then pushed out against the ground with as much force as they could muster. I rocketed forward faster than I had ever moved before. My horn lowered to point directly at the Red King and was glowing like a lighthouse.

The Red King’s eyes shot wide open, completely taken aback by my sudden charge. The rest of his body abruptly froze in place while his brain tried to formulate the correct response. That lack of action was, in itself, the wrong response. While fire takes a significant amount of power and presence of mind to create and shape to your will, simple force is much easier to create and direct.

A massive sheet of ruby energy erupted from my horn, easily spanning from the ceiling to the floor and at least ten feet across. A soft wumpf of air escaped the Red King’s maw as the sheet hit him, and hit him hard. After impact, the plane of power abruptly twisted in midair and angled itself upward, following Legion’s instruction.

A thundering crunch resounded throughout the room as the Red King was slammed spread-eagled against the roof. A massive system of cracks and crevices spread across the entirety of the stone ceiling, with the densest collection just behind the Red King’s back. A very brief expression of mixed pain and surprise crossed the head vampire’s face as the undoubtedly jagged stones cut into his back.

Then, similar to how you might shove a cart to get it over a bump in the road, Legion pulsed a quick, but intense, surge of energy through the spell. The river of pure force instantaneously doubled and then redoubled while continually pouring over the Red King, who could barely twitch a hoof, much less mount a substantial resistance.

For a brief moment I thought that the Red King had actually met his end under all that pure energy. From my vantage point below him, it appeared that his chest was yielding to Legion’s will and collapsing in on itself; a mortal wound even a Red Court vampire couldn’t survive. What I mistook as the Red King’s breaking ribcage, was in fact sinking into the swiftly collapsing ceiling behind him.

With a final thundering crack of shattering stone, and a pained grunt from a vampire, the roof caved upward. The Red King, along with several large pieces of the ceiling, was shot into the open air above the subterranean structure, leaving a sizeable hole in his wake.

“NO!” Legion bellowed through me, furious at seeing their quarry making an apparent escape. I quietly slunk back into the darkest corner of my mind and desperately tried to hide the fact that I manipulated them to move their fight. Any potential repercussions were cast aside however, as Legion made to give chase.

In a series of motions I was not at all familiar with, my legs folded underneath me, tensed up, and then pushed directly upwards as though I were trying to hop over a small fence. As soon as my hooves left the ground, my wings fanned out and brought themselves down in a mighty beat that cycled the air around the entire room and gained me several more inches of height. On the next wing beat, my legs automatically folded to press against my barrel, and I was reoriented to line up with the hole the Red King had left behind. On the beat after that, I tore through that same hole and out into the night sky like a jet leaving its runway.

Now I’ve never really had a debilitating fear of heights, at least no more than the next guy, but there are some things that no amount of iron will can prepare you for. I was born and raised as a human and then changed into a unicorn stallion; one of the things that both of those species have in common, is that they are creatures most comfortable with their feet on hard ground.

HELLS FREAKING BELLS! I inwardly screamed as the distance between my hooves and the grass below me grew to nauseating heights.

My wings beat faster and faster in their struggle against gravity, and my velocity likewise increased more and more. I could feel the wind whipping across my face; the fur covering my muzzle shifted along with the wind’s currents, eliciting a mildly pleasant sensation. As my line of sight broke over the tops of the impossibly tall Everfree Forest trees, my field of vision became almost limitless. I was suspended over a sea of green going around in all directions and stretching on forever. If it weren’t for the fact that the only thing preventing my becoming a red blotch in that sea was the strength of my conjured wings, it actually would’ve been quite a pleasant experience.

My instinctual whimpering went unheard as Legion scanned every bit of the surrounding landscape through my eyes for their opponent. Much like a hawk honing in on its prey, Legion spotted their target and already began moving toward it almost immediately after we scaled over the treetops.

The Red King, already recovered from his own unexpected flight, calmly stood just below me, partway between our improvised exit and the battle still raging on somewhere in the background. His horn shone with his dark energy and a small smile played across his muzzle. While Legion was more than happy to focus entirely on their reacquired target, to the exclusion of all else, I had the presence of mind to notice a few odd details. First was that he appeared to be significantly closer than logic would allow, considering that Legion and I were at least a hundred feet in the air and the Red King only appeared to be thirty or so feet away. Second was that, while he clearly had enough time to right himself and prepare some form of magic, he wasn’t immediately attacking. I, eventually, managed to put two and two together and focused more of my attention on his body and not merely his position. Where I had a pair of conjured wings crafted from solidified flame supporting my weight in the air, the Red King stood atop of sizeable disk of energy colored to match the glow around his horn.

That slimy little…

“RAAGGHH!” Legion bellowed as my body shot forward to dive-bomb the vampire, any thought of what he was doing or what he may be planning were thrown to the wayside.

Wind lashed past my snarling muzzle much more violently as I picked up speed. Almost as an afterthought, Legion quickly amassed a moderate amount of burning energy behind my horn, and just as quickly released it. A lance of fire extended from my horn and positioned itself about three feet in front of me. The tip of the lance trailed embers in a cone around us as we flew, giving us the appearance of a small comet heading straight for the Red King. The large vampire hardly reacted to my oncoming charge, if anything his smirk got wider as we closed the distance between us.

Just as the tip of Legion’s fiery charge would’ve met with its target, the Red King shifted violently on his levitating platform. Faster than I could blink an eye, the Red King simply vanished from directly in front of me, to a few feet right of his initial position. My forward momentum did the rest of the work and moved me right next to the creature. Time seemed to slow as Legion and I drew even with the Red King and our combined thoughts scrambled to figure out what had just happened.

In that brief moment, the Red King leaned his muzzle closer to me and whispered into my ear, “Foal.”

Feelings of death and decay surged against my senses, pain shot through my chest, and I suddenly found it next to impossible to breathe. All sensation except for that intense pain left me for several seconds, even the multitude of vengeful spirits within me fell quiet under that power. When I returned to my senses I realized that my wings had ceased to beat, and that the ground was rushing up rather fast to meet me.

With that particular piece of stimulus, Legion finished their mental reboot and reasserted control. In one smooth motion, my wings spread out as far as their structure would allow and stabilized my body’s flight path. Legion managed to stop our descent about fifty feet from the ground below.

With each beat of my wings, tightness and pain surged through my chest. On reflex my foreleg moved to rest over the pain, and came away dripping red. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that the Red King’s magic had torn a hole the size of my hoof from the left side of my chest. Hide, bone, and lung tissue were simply absent from their proper place in my body. Blood flowed freely from the wound and dropped to the grass below. Even as I watched, Legion’s innate healing magic was already hard at work repairing the damage; the sides of the gaping wound regrew their missing pieces as it very slowly closed shut.

Hells bells, I whispered to myself, my thoughts becoming slightly muddled from the pain of my lung reflating. If-If that had been just a little deeper, he could’ve taken my heart!

While extremely useful, there are some things magic just can’t heal. I may have taken on Celestia’s demi-godhood appearance, but I was still just mortal, insanely overpowered, but mortal. Remove enough blood or the right piece of critical flesh, and my body would cease to function like any other pony.

Above me, the Red King watched with a wicked grin plastered across his muzzle as I coughed and struggled below. He made no move to deal a stronger blow while I was weakened, preferring instead to watch me die slowly. I saw his expression of smug pride, turn to surprise, and then carefully controlled anger as he watched me recover from what would normally be a fatal wound.

“Again and again you test my patience, Dresden.” His horn ignited with more malevolent energy. “I guess I’ll just have to tear out something you can’t so easily repair.”

Legion’s only response was to bellow in challenge and move to fly back towards the Red King, only this time we were moving from a position of weakness. While Legion was almost entirely fueled by seething rage and the general loss of control associated with such, they also housed countless intelligent minds that were dedicated to achieving their goal, and they were far from stupid. With the memory of their last charge fresh on all of our minds, Legion switched tactics and fell back on one that had already landed a solid blow on the monster.

Countless consciousness once again probed against my consciousness, seeking information for their plan; I of course offered no resistance. Their search was completed at the speed of thought, and certain images were copied from me. I saw weapons of all kinds flash across my mind, swords, spears, maces, everything I knew about them and how to use them; but there was a particular set that stood out from the others.

Magic surged forth from my horn like water shooting from a hydrant and collected in the air all around me, and slowly began forming shapes. Directly in front of my muzzle, Legion’s conjuration of Pinkie’s hammer made a reappearance, in all its blunt and shimmering glory. To my right my magic slithered and coiled until it formed Applejack’s scythed chain lasso, followed closely by a long dagger I recognized as Rainbow’s desperation weapon. To my left a long double edged blade materialized and finalized its shape as Amoracchius. To top it all off, the remaining magic coalesced to various points all around me, and I was suddenly surrounded by countless copies of Rarity’s diamond throwing knives.

With their new arsenal in tow, Legion bellowed in challenge again and flew up to meet the Red King, although at a much more cautious pace.

The Red King scowled at us as Legion and I charged; a deep furrow, almost imperceptible against his dark coat, formed between his eyes. The oversized vampire turned his glowing horn down to point at us, and then released a potent burst of dark energy. The Red King’s attack, while a little smaller than the battering ram he used earlier, was so compacted it almost looked solid, and came to a wicked point at the tip. Sensations of decay, entropy, and slimy Red Court magic surrounded the spell, marking it as the same thing that had put a hole in me earlier.

Without taking my eyes off of the Red King, Legion directed their copy of Amoracchius up to intercept the oncoming missile. The red-tinted edge of the blade swept up, struck the Red King’s spell, and cleaved the thing apart. The structure holding the spell together evaporated and any energy within it dissipated harmlessly into the environment.

My body barreled through the dark cloud left behind by the Red King’s attack, and very nearly teleported the remaining ten feet to come face to face with his very wide and very surprised eyes. Without missing a beat, Legion’s hammer, multitude of daggers, and scythe all zipped forward to deliver their respective blows to the Red King’s vulnerable flesh. The weapons, unfortunately, met nothing but air.

With another sudden shift of energies, the Red King shifted violently backward in the air, narrowly avoiding Legion’s attack. He came to a stop roughly ten feet away, his hooves still planted firmly on his conjured platform and his breath ragged from the exertion of expending so much energy. The Red King’s control over his defiant rage began to crack as his face contorted with unbridled hate for the entity that defied him during what was supposed to be his moment of triumph. His horn flashed with dark energy as he undoubtedly readied more of his disintegrating magic.

Legion recovered from the sudden shift faster than any combat trained Warden could ever hope to manage. With a whispered thought from several conjoined minds, the cloud of Rarity’s throwing knives and Rainbow’s dervish flew off after the Red King. A soft whistling echoed from the weapons as they flew through the air after their target.

The Red King growled through pointed teeth and poured more power into the platform at his hooves. The conjured surface immediately moved its master in a strafing circle around me; its speed, while not as fast as the short bursts he had managed earlier, was enough to keep him just ahead of Legion’s weapons. That didn’t stop the many conjured knives from slashing and gouging for all they were worth at the retreating dark red tail.

The Red King wasted little time and quickly fired two more of his dark missiles at me; my senses, and by extension Legion’s, warned me that they were just as lethal as any single one before. In the process however, the energy necessary to throw his spell drained some of the energy available to his flying platform, resulting in a much slower flight speed.

Before his spells got more than even a foot from his horn, the entirety of his hind legs were blanketed in a webwork of crisscrossing gouges, each dribbled slightly with his black blood. Almost immediately after this, the Red King diverted power back to his platform and sped forward, putting some distance between him and the bloodied flying knives that were still slashing at him frantically.

Legion brought to bear both Amoracchius and Pinkie’s hammer against the Red King’s oncoming attacks. The instant they came within easy striking distance of the weapons, they each lashed out and chopped or smashed the offending magic out of the air, leaving only more of the dark fog behind. As a follow up to the attack, the conjuration of Applejack’s scythe shot towards the Red King in a downward arching motion; considering the empty end of the chain was left near my rump, the whole movement looked disturbingly similar to a scorpion’s strike with the scythe as the stinger.

The Red King saw the strike coming a mile away and temporarily poured more energy into his transport. He unceremoniously lurched forward several feet in the air, completely avoiding the scythe and putting more distance between him and Legion’s cloud of knives in hot pursuit. As soon as he reached normal strafing speed again, he turned livid eyes and snarling teeth onto me.

“Damn you, Dresden!” he bellowed, foam forming at the corners of his mouth. “You’ve already played your part, just lie down and die!”

His outburst was punctuated with yet another blast from his horn, and subsequent interception by the conjured Amoracchius. The Red King’s pattern of strike, flee, and strike again continued on for what felt like an hour; although the murkiness of battle meant it could have only lasted a few minutes or seconds for all I knew. After each attack, Legion’s knives would gain some ground, and occasionally carve his hindquarters a bit, but the Red King always sped off before they could do any real damage. After each successful block, the Red King’s scowl grew ever more ferocious and determined in his attacks.

Neither the Red King with his newfound freedom of mobility, nor Legion and their bottomless hate, were gaining or losing ground in their aerial battle. The Red King was too close to his end game to stop and regroup, and Legion was too determined to even think about not fighting. I had the distinct impression that, if allowed, we would likely be locked in combat until the end of time.

We’re never going to be able to out maneuver him, I thought to myself as the Red King evaded another scorpion strike from Legion’s conjured scythe. We need to close the distance, but he’s too fast. We need… An odd mixture of bliss and ingenuity washed over me as an idea swam to the surface of my mind. We need to lure him in.

With Legion’s thoughts almost entirely focused on guiding the knives flying after the Red King, I very carefully extended my will outside of my mental barrier. Almost immediately I was faced with passive resistance from their mere presence, but thankfully wasn’t drawing any of Legion’s actual attention. Not wishing to overstay my welcome in my own head, I quickly reached for the magic controlling the conjured hammer and scythe.

During our mid-air bout, the conjured Amoracchius and hammer repositioned themselves on my left and right sides respectively; so as to more effectively cover my body. With a whispered thought, the hammer hovering next to my right ribs, floated downward to place itself below my hooves. At the same time that was happening, the length of chain restraining Legion’s scythe coiled itself like a snake right above my tail.

As the Red King made his pass around, he saw my exposed flank, and jumped at the opportunity. Somehow actually managing to skid on open air, the Red King abruptly stopped in his strafing run, twisted around to face me directly, and flew forward as fast as his conjured platform would allow. His viciously pointed horn lowered to point at my ribs, and ignited with more power than he had yet thrown at me. His eyes opened wide in excitement and a demented smile stretched across his features, through which hissed a soft, “Yeesss.”

Legion, only just realizing that my entire right side was left open, leapt to reclaim control over what I had removed. I immediately released control of the conjured weapons back over to Legion, but the collective of spirits knew that it was a futile effort. The Red King was moving in too fast and he was only feet away when Legion realized their lapse in control. However, as Legion fully took back what I had manipulated, they caught on to my plan real fast.

As the Red King’s glowing horn closed to under a foot of my ribs, Legion twisted my entire body around like a cat. Faster than I would’ve thought possible, I flipped upside down in the air, and my wings beat powerfully to drop me below the attacking vampire. The Red King could only watch with confused eyes as his prey abruptly dropped out of the sky and completely avoided his finishing attack. Avoidance was only the first part of our plan though. As we fell back to the ground, my fiery tail flicked upward, and with it the conjuration of Applejack’s scythe.

The semi-transparent blade shot upward like a bullet, sunk almost entirely under the vampire’s topmost rib on his right side, and then hooked onto it. A very brief look of complete and utter surprise flashed across his face as the sensations of Legion’s viciousness began to register. Almost immediately after the chained scythe found purchase in his chest, the Red King was ripped from his flying platform by an almighty tug against his very bones. With the business end of the chained scythe tucked firmly under his ribs, and the other end held in Legion’s magical grip, the Red King had no choice but to join Legion and I in a free fall.

The Red King’s already wide eyes grew ever wider as pain, shock, and confusion ran rampant through his mind. Legion cried in joy as we watched the distraught vampire struggle to comprehend what was happening and how to free himself. I even allowed myself a moment of self-congratulation as I watched the Red King place his forelegs on the scythe in his chest, and fail to remove it. Any further self-satisfaction was cut short however, by Legion’s still unfulfilled lust for vengeance, and by the means with which they sought to get it.

Not wanting to give their prey time to recover, Legion sprung back into action as we neared fifty feet from the ground in our free fall. My wings fanned out to either side of me, nearly halting my downward plummet. As soon as I gained some flight stability, Legion pumped my wings and flipped my body forward in a complete circle. Legion twisted me forward to put the ground below my hooves, then above my skull, and then back again. The sudden shifts of gravity and winds speeds probably would’ve had me using my previous meal as a projectile weapon under normal circumstances.

Aside from potentially making Rainbow Dash proud, that movement served two purposes. One, I was once again right side up and better able to deal with threats, two and more importantly, Legion’s flipping motion pulled the Red King downward even harder as I gained altitude. As a result, I got a real nice view of the Red King’s confused and furious mug as he plummeted past me, and literally reached the end of his chain.

Burn in the deepest pits of Tartarus, you blood-sucking monster.

With the additional force provided by the slingshot, the chain between us grew taught in the air, and then relaxed. A shrieking cry pierced the night sky as Legion’s scythe cut cleanly through the hide, flesh, and bone along the Red King’s entire right side. He fell to the ground far below, a mess of blood and ruined flesh. The gaping wound over his right side granted an unobstructed view to internal structures that would leave the most hardened battlefield surgeon retching.

And so he fell, beaten and broken, the Red King fell from the sky and collapsed onto the hard ground below. Demented joy radiated from Legion at the sight of the pretender King sprawled across the grass, his forelimbs still desperately pressed against his wound. So focused we were on enjoying their hard won vengeance, we completely failed to notice more black bodies swarming towards the fallen King.

I hadn’t realized it but during our mid-air showdown, the Red King and I had managed to drift over to the fringes of the ongoing war scene. Before we knew what was happening, a small flood of black hide and claws swarmed towards and over their wounded king, completely obstructing him from our view. As swift as the tide came, it receded just as fast. The countless Red Court vampires retreated back from where the Red King had landed, but with one less broken body left behind.

“No! NO!” Legion roared at the retreating forms, my voice augmented several times what should normally be possible.

My horn flared with energy and launched a large orb of fire at those nearest to where the Red King had fallen. The small forms saw the stallion sized comet of flame hurtling toward them, and scuttled away from the light like ants. The blast hit empty ground and splashed fire in every direction for several feet, scaring but not injuring any vampires or vampire kings.

Immediately after that failed attempt, Legion extended my arcane senses out into the throng, desperate to pinpoint their quarry. They shouldn’t have bothered. The Red King’s presence was still as ever present as it was, but trying to follow it to his exact location among all the other vampires’ essences would be next to impossible. Attempting such an act would be akin to solving a Where’s Waldo on the deck of a pitching ship, and in the middle of a thunderstorm.

“WHERE IS HE?!” My eyes panned over the multitude of identical vampires, and everything beyond. “WHERE IS HE?!”

Now that Legion was actively using me to scan through the rest of the fighting in its entirety, instead of phasing it out as unnecessary background noise, I could once again accurately assess the ongoing warzone; and the view was a nightmare gifted only to fallen kings and leaders guiding their troops from afar. The Red Court vampires had turned the tide from uncomfortable stalemate, to slow domination over the ponies. They were winning.

Before I had left, the Equestrian pegasi had been in a more or less random mid-air scuttle with the vampires. They flew from target to target as fast as they could fly and picked targets whenever they could pause without being swarmed. It lacked any kind of military organization, but it was the best the situation allowed and forced the enemy pegasi to focus on the air rather than vulnerable ground units. During my absence however, the overwhelming majority of our pegasi forces had simply, disappeared.

Little to no pegasi flew through the air to combat the dominating vampires, giving the Red Court near total air superiority. Any remaining pegasi had presumably been forced to land and stand amongst the unicorns and earth ponies some time ago. I could see one brave group of four pegasi, bearing Celestia’s symbol on their armor, attempt to take to the air just over the medic tents at the center of our forces. The moment they cleared the top of their brethren’s’ spears, they were swarmed by countless black forms. Whatever remained of the pegasi team disappeared into the amorphous black cloud above our forces.

Without the spirited efforts of the pegasi keeping the vampire flyers distracted, the Red Court had unimpeded access to the ponies below. With a soft flutter of leathery bat-like wings and swipes of black talons, vampires descended on the soldiers and guardsponies holding back the earthbound predators. The spear wielding ponies held their weapons at the ready high above them, and tried to ward off the attackers. Some of the unicorns had shifted their attention to the skies as well and fired volley after volley of simple bolts at the vampires in an attempt to drive back what the pegasi no longer could.

Time and time again black forms dipped from the sky and swept their claws across the armored ponies below, looking to hook their talons into something that could feasibly be carried away. Usually they were driven back by a combination of thrusting spears and spells, but they just weren’t as effective as the pegasi buffer they had before. At any given moment, I could see at least a dozen guards or soldiers being lifted from the dirt and hauled kicking and screaming into the air. Whatever happened after that point was hidden from view as other vampires swarm in to enjoy their catch.

The only solace that could be found was that the vampiric pegasi seemed to be focusing on the ponies that posed a threat to the rest of the Red Court forces, and left the medical tents at the center of our army relatively untouched. Thank goodness for small miracles I guess.

While the rest of our pegasi were forced to land on pain of mauling, there was one flyer still holding her own in the sky. Princess Luna, no longer enveloped in her personal cloud, flew alone and dead center in the mass of vampires polluting the sky. From the occasional glimpses I could see of her between the vampires, I could see that the princess was clearly being pushed to the limits of her abilities. Luna was constantly twisting around in the sky, and her horn never dimmed for a second as she fended off attacks from every conceivable angle.

Vampires dove and lunged at the Princess of the Night, their claws ready to cause all manner of bodily harm, but met only open air or a sudden layer of frost. Sheets of frost and force exploded outwards from both Luna’s horn and body in all directions and in constant waves. As a result, any vampire that got within ten feet of Luna very nearly dropped out of the sky; their wings were too frosted to beat properly and the raw force blew the vampires around like Ping-Pong balls in a storm.

On the rare occasion that Luna managed to push away enough of the vampires to gain herself some breathing room, she went on the offensive. Like I’d seen earlier in the night, icicles the size of my foreleg shot from her at her nearest attackers. One vampire in particular was forced to experience such an icicle disappearing entirely into its body through a hole the icicle forced in its sternum, much to Legion’s amusement.

While spirited and incredibly powerful, Luna’s power was not unlimited. Even with the Elements of Harmony lending her some of their magic, Luna was beginning to weaken. Her chest rose and fell with her deep ragged breathing. The fur not covered by her rather unique enchanted ice armor, was matted with sweat. Her icicle counterattacks came less and less and were taking more and more time to fire off. The constant waves of magic holding the vampires back were proving to be just too taxing. Slowly but surely, she was being overwhelmed.

Hells freaking bells! What the hell happened?! I whispered to myself as full blown desperate panic began to set in. Wh-where are they?

I struggled to refocus my eyes on the individual ponies below me, as opposed to the vampires. If the rest of my friends were still down there, I couldn’t find them. Pinkie, Applejack, Rainbow, Rarity, and Fluttershy blended in amongst the countless armor-sporting ponies. Even Michael and his usual beacon of light were hidden from my eyes. I could only hope against hope that I had not just left my friends to the mercy of the Red Court.

Interestingly enough, I did find that the vast majority of both the vampires and ponies nearest me had simply stopped fighting, and fixated on me instead. I could almost feel the countless eyes of mere mortals and monsters alike bore into the new presence on their battlefield, the new alicorn born of flame and fury. If they had known what Legion was willing to sacrifice to get their prey, I was willing to bet both parties would probably be running, or else join forces to attack me.

Legion saw all of this, all of the destruction and death, and they didn’t care. I could see it in their conjoined minds; Legion didn’t feel one pang of sorrow for the lives of their fellow ponies being lost on the ground or the impending doom their princess faced in the skies. If anything, their anger grew. Every vampire they saw was a miniature version of the Red King they sought to end. Every one of them was an heir to the creature that had caused so much pain, and was a reminder that their lives were lost to fuel the Red King’s regime. Legion’s rage was rapidly reaching a point of absolute loss of control again, and they were getting close to just attacking everything they saw, and sort out the details later.

There! Kill them to draw him out! I mentally shouted, focusing on a specific group of vampires in an attempt to guide Legion’s wrath. I projected a mental image of those causing the most damage, and hopefully, would involve the least amount of collateral damage. The Red Court Pegasi will cover his escape. Focus on the flyers to draw out the Red King. Make them-

“BURN!” Legion shouted, cutting me short and potentially tearing my vocal chords at the same. “ALL OF YOU, BURN!”

My wings beat furiously and heaved me forward, putting Legion and I on a direct course for the dark cloud of vampires preying on my friends. My wings tilted and angled themselves to bring my flight path directly over the center of the cloud, and consequently, over the densest concentration of the Red Court. Most of the vampire pegasi, preoccupied as they were with swarming over Luna or cherry picking our soldiers, failed to notice my approach.

Once again, both my blazing mane and tail shrunk in size as Legion gathered together enough energy to put even Celestia to shame. The multitude of conjured weapons that were still following me disintegrated and feed their energy back into Legion. The entire world around me became several degrees cooler while the power in my horn and mind grew exponentially. I saw frost form on the ground far below me as the heat was leached from the surface. My horn shone like a red beacon in the night, but did not in fact lower to point at the vampires; instead, my muzzle led the way.

Legion screamed an echoing howl of pain and fury, my maw opening wide to better reverberate out. Immediately after, the massive build of energy behind my horn broke, and then descended. Instead of exploding outward in a brilliant show of might and magic, all of that energy ran down through my skull and towards my mouth. Then, like a furious and territorial dragon from ancient legends, fire poured out from my snarling muzzle in unyielding torrents like water from a broken fire hydrant.

The vampire pegasi closest to me paused in their murdering to get a good look at whatever it was that was shouting loud enough and producing enough light to be distracting in a warzone. Any cries of surprise or warning by the vampires were swiftly drowned out as roaring fire spread over and consumed every Red Court vampire that dared to exist in Legion’s presence.

My wings carried me along over the top cloud of vampires at speeds only Rainbow could match. Countless black blurs shot by me as I flew over them, and then simply burst into flames and subsequently fell from the sky. Any actual details I might have caught from the vampires, such as level of individual surprise and flammability, were unfortunately lost to the sheer speed with which I flew.

The dragon’s fire escaping from me spread itself across the sky below me. The fire reached out at least ten feet from my muzzle, and made a cone almost as wide across at the end; beyond that reach, only small embers fell from my breath.

Hells crumbling bells and pony feathered books! This crosses off everything on my bucket list! I inwardly cheered, the insanity of the moment momentarily making me euphoric. Bow down before your angry new god! Dragon Dresden is displeased!

As I drew nearer to the center of the cloud, leaving a trail of burning corpses in my wake, my senses were suddenly met with an almost biting frost. From at least fifty feet away, I could feel in piercing clarity Princess Luna still emitting her constant waves of ice and energy. A quick glance allowed me to see that the sphere around the dark alicorn had shrunk immensely, and was surrounded by even more vampires eager to get at the weakening princess.

Almost immediately Legion manipulated my wings to tilt ever so slightly and put me on a beeline for the mass of bodies. Not, I suspected, out of a desire to protect Luna, but to get at the denser concentration of vampires. With a roar and a powerful beat of my wings, Legion and I surged forward towards the group, a river of flame leading our way.

The black skinned vampires surrounding Luna either heard nothing over the roar of combat, or else chose to actively ignore our approach. Either way, it did not end well for them.

As soon as we were within a few feet of the mass of bodies, Legion flapped my wings upward only once, very briefly sending me directly over the center of the crowd. My jaws clamped shut, stemming the flow of fire while my wings gracefully flipped me in the air. At the apex of the maneuver, gravity took over and I began falling back down, with my head pointing directly at the center of the cloud. My jaws opened wide once again and the restrained dragon’s breath burst forth in a massive wave of heat; and shortly afterwards, the fiery comet I had become crashed into the top of the black forms swarming over Luna.

Red Court vampires went everywhere.

Through my connection to the spell, I could feel it as body after body slammed into the comet around me. Some of the creatures screamed in agony as fire ate away their flesh and then fell to the soldiers far below. Others managed to avoid the all-consuming flame, and were merely knocked around like a leaf in a storm. Only a precious few within the initial blast radius managed to see me coming and aerial dodge away. Anything further than that was clouded behind the sheet of fire around me.

As quickly as the bodies came, they vanished as I crossed an invisible line. The constant thumps and subsequent howls were replaced with a sensation of supreme cold. For a brief moment, our descent came to an abrupt halt as an immense aura of magic imbued frost came into direct contact with Legion’s makeshift comet. The frost pressed against the dragon’s breath still escaping me and slowly began spreading patches of frost over my coat, threatening to turn me into an ice sculpture like the vampires that fell to Luna before me.

“Get out of our WAY!” Legion roared through me and channeled even more energy through their ongoing spell, somehow managing to shout through the fire breath.

My power redoubled on itself and focused all of its energy to a point directly in front of my muzzle. Luna’s aura reacted to the sudden surge of heat by pouring on more of its own energy, but ultimately just couldn’t compete with Legion’s reserves. Luna’s magic struggled to hold us in check, but quickly buckled.

An ear-splitting crack pierced through the chaos of the warzone and echoed around in my ears at the exact same time I felt Luna’s working unravel. Any and all magic hold Legion and I in place vanished, even the ice forming over my coat evaporated instantly. The very air around me seemed to shriek and explode with static electricity as the remnants of Luna’s safety blanket disintegrated under my magic. The combination of the smoke still emanating from me, and the lingering lights from Luna’s shattered spell left behind a moderately thick haze all around.

Freed from the frost holding us, Legion flapped my wings once to bring my body right side up, and then set into a stable hover. My jaw clamped shut again, shutting off the supply of fire only adding to the haze. For several moments, Legion and I just hovered there. I was desperately trying to make out any details as to what exactly we had just done, while Legion just enjoyed the destruction. The first thing to become visible through the haze was a tall dark form that everypony in my head immediately recognized.

Princess Luna fluttered in the air about twenty feet away from me, and she looked like Tartarus frozen over. There wasn’t a piece of fur on Luna’s body that wasn’t standing out at some weird angle. Large cracks ran through every plate of black ice she wore as armor. Even her midnight mane and tail both somehow seemed frazzled; the edges of both ended in jagged angles as opposed to their usual flowing nature. Yet, despite it all, her eyes were glued on me.

Luna stared at me in wide eyed wonder, as though she were trying to process something she couldn’t quite accept. Her mouth worked furiously to try and say anything while she studied every part of my quasi-alicorn body.

Legion studied Luna right back, although it was less of a wonder fueled investigation and more of an assessment of her capabilities. My senses extended out over Luna and began to gather as much information as they could. The multitude of minds within me immediately took this information and processed it, matching it to what they already knew of the princess.

“It can’t be,” Luna muttered, finally finding at least part of her voice. “You-you left, so long ago.”

Memories of old mare’s tales swam to the forefront of Legion’s minds. Stories of the midnight colored alicorn mare that sought to cover the word in eternal shadow. Stories of the mare that attacked and tried to overthrow her sister, to play tyrant over Equestria. Nightmare Moon, the original monster dressed in pony hide.

Anger repurposed towards Luna began to rise within Legion. My horn ignited a deep red as Legion drew more destructive power into it and shaped it.

No! I shouted at Legion, panic rising again in my heart. No, that’s not her! That’s not Nightmare Moon!

A loud battle cry rang up from somewhere below us, followed swiftly by the clanging of several pairs of armored ponies moving about. Legion couldn’t care less about the movement of armies or the possible breaking of our line, but lucky for everypony, Luna did.

As soon as the sound reached her ears, Luna’s eyes finally broke away from me and down towards the warzone. Luna’s ears fell and clamped to the side of her head as she studied whatever the commotion was. She fidgeted in place and cast her eyes between myself and the combat. With one last glance at me, Luna turned tail and flew down towards the ground. The final fleeting look on her face as she regarded me was an interesting combination of curiosity and genuine fear.

Legion tracked Luna’s retreating form, like a sniper trying to figure out how much to lead a moving shot. The power in my horn built and Legion lowered it to point slightly ahead of Luna. Just before Legion would have let loose their power, despite my frantic screaming to the contrary, a few other dark shapes dipped out of the sky and into my field of vision.

Legion’s attention shifted to the appearance of the vampires that seemed to be pursuing after Luna, and the energy slowly died from my horn. Their hatred for the ancient legend of fear given form diminished in indirect proportion to their vendetta against the Red Court.

“Later,” Legion muttered aloud, and within the echoing confines of our shared mind. My head craned around and tried to peer through the soup of residual magic Luna and I had created. “First the monsters, then the Nightmare.”

Not exactly what I had in mind, but I’ll take it.

Unable to see anything but the odd flying blob through the haze, Legion flared my wings and launched us high above the warzone. Once we cleared the top of the magical haze and could again see the entirety of the battlefield, Legion halted our flight and hovered in place like a buzzard watching a potential meal.

It was only then that I realized the detonation from when Legion’s magic met Luna’s was a great deal more powerful than I initially thought. The cloud of residual magic I escaped from spanned over the entire entrenched circle that was the Canterlot Military. It looked as though a large sparkling blue fog had simply come in and placed itself in the air over our troops. Though the surprises didn’t stop there; along with the discovery of a new cloud formation, the entire mass of the vampire pegasi were thrown into complete disarray.

Where there had previously been a single large cloud of countless black forms preying on the ponies below, now there were several small little groups trying desperately to reorganize. Those flying over the edge of our entrenched forces were hit the least and were retreating to behind their own lines. I could see several of the winged vampires flee beyond the reach of the crossbow-armed ponies or the unicorns on the ground. Those nearer to the center of the cloud, where Luna and I clashed, were just gone.

There was a massive hole in the center of the vampire controlled air, a hole that spanned over the majority of our forces. Without the vampires in the way, and our residual magic beginning to clear up, I could see where the majority of those vampires went. Far below us, steel clad hooves and countless spears dove down and into the numerous charred bodies of vampires that had fallen among Canterlot’s finest. Little pieces and whole other bodies still dropped from the sky on their heads from time to time.

Suddenly I had to wonder if Luna’s haggard appearance was from enduring the vampires’ attacks for so long, or from being at the center of such a massive explosion. Legion’s wandering eyes trailed back to Luna right as she touched down near the middle of her army, forcing the few vampires pursuing her to break off and regroup. Legion gave a short sense of contentment at the destruction they and Luna had caused, and continued on searching for the next largest collection of vampires to show their dragon impression to.

Hells bells. I know magic can react violently with other magic, but dang, I thought to myself, making a mental note never to pit raw magic against raw magic if I could help it, like I really needed a reason.

Then, as if on cue, an immense wave of greasy wrongness washed over my senses. My skin crawled, static clouded my ears, and the taste of rancid meat filled my mouth as Red Court magic coalesced all around me. Legion frantically tossed my head around to find the source of the new disturbance, as well as to attempt to clear themselves of the unsettling sensations.

As far as my eyes were concerned, I was surrounded by nothing but empty air, but everything else screamed that Legion and I had just flown into the eye of a magical storm. Legion slammed power into my horn in tandem with the increasing frenzy of the Red Court magic. Crimson light shone down over my muzzle and eyes, searching for a target to let that power loose upon.

In short order, the swirling nauseating Red Court magic ceased its movement, and then rushed together to a single point. The most curious part was that point wasn’t on me, but about a foot behind my back. Legion sensed the change in flow as well, and craned my head around to see where it was all going to.

Directly behind me, the very air seemed to bend and warp against what the laws of reality and physics would deem appropriate. It was as though I was looking through a sheet of liquid glass, glass that was warping and bending to an invisible crafter’s hands. At the center of the pane, a large circular puddle of very familiar obsidian energy rapidly grew outward to cover the rest of the warping air. The exact nature of the power radiating from it sparked something in my recent memory, and it only took me a few frantic heartbeats to figure out exactly what it was.

Oh, buck me.

The energy at the center of the pane surged forward, and tore open the sheet of malleable glass. Shadows poured out of the hole in reality towards me, and solidified into the forms I’d seen capturing Celestia. Before I could even begin to form an idea on how to react, dozens of long dark tendrils reached out to ensnare me.

Legion reacted to the sudden appearance with the same single-minded intensity they offered to the vampires before. The energy Legion held in my primed horn shot forth in a great gout of flame over the entirety of the conjuration, but did next to nothing to stop them. As the fire washed over them, the many tendrils creaked heavily under the pressure, but they just kept on coming. Legion switched tactics on the spot and condensed the fire into a single powerful lance of pure energy, and directed it towards the closest offender.

The beam impacted with, and drilled through the first tendril to solidify itself. The black tentacle twitched violently as raw magic sliced through its quasi-flesh. A rather curious, and disgusting, stench of spoiled milk and rancid eggs met my nostrils while the conjured flesh was blasted away. The three meters or so of twisting meat that fell from the resulting stump, quickly disintegrated in a puff of smoke, as well as the short burst of energy that had done the deed.

The remaining tendrils shot past Legion and I, surrounding us from every conceivable angle, and then curved back around to put us in the middle of a large living cage. For the first time, a short pang of fear shot through the collective Legion as the tendrils closed in. My wings flared and beat down desperately, my entire upper body twisting as Legion aimed me for the largest gap they could find. It was a futile effort.

Before I could fly more than a few feet, my left hind leg was nearly ripped from my body as a long tendril wrapped around it and clamped down with the strength of a steel vice. My body thrashed wildly around, bucking ferociously at the thing that prevented my freedom, but to no avail. In short order, a horrible constricting cold sensation spread over me as more and more strong tendrils found me and constricted around me. My very bones creaked and the air was forced from my lungs as what felt like massive anacondas began crushing the life from me.

“No!” Legion snarled through my clenched teeth. My limbs struggled futilely against their binds and more power pumped its way through my horn. “Release us, now!”

Yell some more, I’m sure we can shout it into submission.

As more and more power was channeled into my permanently attached focus, one last tendril made itself known. From the corner of my eyes, a particularly long and thin strand of darkness made flesh extended out in front of my muzzle, curved around to point directly at me, and coiled itself like a snake preparing to strike.

Huh, almost forgot about you…

Legion’s thoughts exploded into complete disarray at the sight. Through my memories, they knew that this same tendril stole Celestia’s ability to perform magic and would render us similarly defenseless. Having multiple minds work together as one does grant you immense amounts of power, but it makes snap decisions a bitch. Countless possible solutions presented themselves for voting at the speed of thought, but few of them were likely to do anything, and we only had time for one play. So, I did what I always do, I drew myself together, reached into the mess I had made, and demanded my hastily made idea be heard.

The thin tendril struck at the exact same time the collected power in my horn broke. One moment, I felt energy leaving me in a mad rush, not outwards to wreak havoc, but down. A small wave of energy washed down from my horn and over my hide, starting off a chain reaction. The next moment, there was nothing. Every single magical sense I had was silenced as that, thing, wrapped itself around my spiraled horn. Every single ounce of magic that Legion tried to move into my horn, immediately vanished from all sensation and was funneled down the length of the tendril into oblivion. Although, my spell was already cast.

Once freed from my horn, magic raced along the entirety of my hide, granted energy to every single piece of fur it encountered, and then set it aflame. In less than two seconds, I went from a trapped and bound alicorn, to a living inferno. Every part of my body, except for the short fur around my face, burned bright red flames that expelled heat and energy in all possible directions. For me, it offered a pleasantly soothing warmth for my aching muscles, for my binds, not so much.

The tendrils wrapped around me twitched severely as the thing they held suddenly burst into flame, but they didn’t let go. If anything, the black lengths constricted me even more, as though trying to smoother Legion’s fire. While the thin tendril around my horn prevented Legion or I from supplying more energy to the spell, they couldn’t erase the well of energy we gave it to draw from. Though, for all that ingenuity, we received little immediate results. An increasingly bright webwork of red light started appearing across the flesh in direct contact with me, but their hold on me didn’t waver for an instant.

There are many ways I thought I’d die, I thought to myself as the binds around my ribs tightened a little further, but none of them involved freaking tentacles.

Just as a few audible cracks and several stabs of pain shot from my lower ribs, the air in front of me began to shimmer and distort. What I could only describe as a sheet of light bending fabric threw itself up into the air, whereupon it disintegrated into a cloud of unused energy. Just below that dispelled veil, stood an extremely ragged Red King atop another conjured plane of energy.

“You…” he growled at me, his voice quivering with uncontrolled rage and pure malice. “You arrogant, stubborn, thorn in my side.”

The Red King was very clearly on the razors edge of going feral. His eyes had turned jet black, the true eyes of a Red Court vampire, and fixated on me in an unblinking stare. Every single one of his teeth were fully exposed and turned to pointed canines. Though the most disturbing by far, was what was happening to his hide. Almost every patch of fur the Red King possessed was writhing like snakes under a tarp. The gaping wound along his side, not quite healed yet even with his stolen power, quite clearly showed the black flesh of the Red King’s true form trying to break free of its flesh mask. Whether his heavy breathing was a result of the effort necessary to maintain so many spells at the same time, or of his degrading sanity was anypony’s guess.

Oh crap.

“Nothing… You’ve changed nothing!” he spat at my bound form and drifted closer to me, a significant amount of foam streamed from the corner of his mouth. “You’ve killed so many of my children, but I am still the Red King! I will still be a god!”

How about you back the hell away from me! I thought desperately, the fear of being trapped within my own body and staring down the world’s biggest predator temporarily making me forget I couldn’t actually talk.

The Red King dipped his horn down to point directly between my eyes, hovered close enough that I had to go cross-eyed to see the tip, and then ignited the length with pure malicious intent. The energy radiating from it touched on my hide at random intervals, and wherever it touched became as cold as death. The short flames around my muzzle and eyes flickered out and returned to ashen fur under upon contact with his power.

“You’ve already played you part, Dresden, and then some.” The muscles in the Red King’s neck visibly tensed at the same time a demented and blood thirsty smile stretched across his features. “You should have been killed long ago.”

I love fire, it’s so useful in so many situations. Its warmth can sooth an injured muscle, it can bring light to the darkest of places, it can even set a mood for a romantic meal. More than any of that though, I love fire because it’s a universal cleansing force. Fire can consume and destroy most any physical material, true, but it can do the same to most any structured spell, given enough time. Fire can purify any magic it comes across and scatter the construct holding a spell together. It can create a useless cloud of random energy out of protective wards, a complex ritual spell, or a mass of conjured tentacles, given a little time anyway.

Just before the last word slithered through the Red King’s teeth, the mess of tendrils holding me captive reached a breaking point against my flame imbued hide. From the moment they came in contact with my burning hide, red light slowly spread across my binds like neon poison flooding through their veins. Unseen by the Red King, due most likely to his unblinking glare on my face, this poison spread until the entirety of the tendrils around me were glowing a dull red. By the time the Red King leaned in to press his horn between my eyes, my binds were already ripping themselves apart.

In one swift burst, the tendrils exploded into a cloud of red and black lights that shot out in all directions. The Red King, having just received a face full of blinding light and released force, reared back on his platform and shook himself wildly to clear his sight, howling like a raged beast as he did so.

Legion however, had slightly more focus than the nearly feral Red King. The instant the Red King’s spell fell, Legion belted out a loud joyous cry, flared my wings out, and then brought them down as hard as they could. I shot forward like a bullet train leaving its station, and brought every ounce of that force to bear on the Red King.

The hooves of my forelegs reached out and impacted squarely against the vampire lord’s sternum, eliciting a loud humph from his throat as his lungs were forcefully compacted. Immediately afterwards, the momentum of our charge forced the Red King from his platform and carried us across the sky, my flaming tail leaving a faint red trail behind us. Legion, apparently forgetting that our magic was restored after the tendrils burned, chose to use this opportunity to viciously beat their captured prey.

The barrel of my chest pressed against his as all four of my legs gripped tight around the Red King’s flailing form, and pummeled every piece of him they could reach. Due to our extreme proximity, using my horn to stab him would be impractical if not next to impossible, so Legion improvised. My head and neck whipped around violently to smash the thickest part of my skull into the Red King’s muzzle. Even my hide, still flame imbued from Legion’s earlier spell, reacted to Legion’s boundless rage by flaring up against the Red King’s flesh.

Bones cracked beneath Legion’s hammering blows. Black blood and broken teeth rebounded off my muzzle with every strike my skull made. The already dark navy coat around his chest turned several degrees darker as my burning hide pressed harder against him. Through all this torture and pain, the only sound the Red King made were rattling gasps for air as my hooves repeatedly forced all oxygen from his lungs. All the while, my wings never stopped beating and we never stopped flying.

Vast expanses of the plains speed by under us, the combat of the Red Court against Luna’s army dwindling off into the distance. As we flew further away though, a familiar sight caught the corner of mine, and more importantly, Legion’s eye. During Legion’s savage pummeling of their helpless prey, we had managed to drift back to directly over the gaping hole we had originally forced the Red King through. We could, in fact, see directly through it to the stone floor far beneath us.

Acting off a sudden influx of ideas from Legion, my flame made wings folded shut against my sides, and we plummeted out of the sky. All four of my legs ceased their clumsy, though devastating, pummeling of the Red King, and instead wrapped around him as though I were giving him a massive bear hug. While lacking the standard comfort a hug usually offers, Legion’s embrace ensured that the Red King couldn’t move and inch. The vampire’s limbs were all safely folded between us, and held there by Legion’s bone crushing strength.

With my legs repurposed to bind rather than assault, the captive vampire gasped down several pained breaths and very quickly returned to his senses. I watched as the Red King’s eyes nearly bulged out of head as he took in his surroundings. Upside-down, plummeting towards a stone floor head first, and being held in a death grip by an alicorn shaped inferno, the Red King was not very happy.

“No!” he gasped, struggling futilely against the strength of my limbs. “Get off! No!”

After failing to free himself physically, the Red King’s horn ignited with his dark aura as he began throwing together a spell to free himself. In response to this, Legion stretched my neck forward to bring my muzzle to his horn, and then clamped my teeth down on the base of his horn. My mouth felt cold as the vampire’s energy radiated into it, but Legion paid it no mind. With wrenching motion, similar to when Legion used my skull as a weapon, my head swept from side to side, forcing the Red King’s skull along for the ride. Almost immediately, the energy in his horn died away, leaving behind only the cold taste of bone. The Red King panted heavily and tried to focus more energy, but to no avail; the violent shifting of his skull destroyed any concentration before it could become a threat.

“NO!” he howled, only just then realizing the helplessness of his situation, and just how fast the ground was rushing up to meet us.

Legion, still thrashing around the Red King’s skull like a party favor, kept an eye on the hole they were aiming for. Occasionally, usually in response to the vampire’s movements, my wings flapped about to correct my course and ensure my beeline for the subterranean structure. The wind whipped my fiery mane about my head and roared in my ears as we neared the very hard ground at breakneck speeds.

Just as we reached the improvised exit Legion had made earlier, my wings flared wide open, my jaw released the Red King’s horn, and my legs snapped open to point straight outward from my barrel. I could feel my conjured wings strain to support my weight. The combined flight instincts of the pegasi within Legion kicked in and my wings angled themselves into a curve. In a maneuver I knew I would never have been able to pull off on my own, even if I had been a natural born pegasus, all of my downward momentum was thrown on the horizontal by the expert manipulation of my wings. I leveled out and flew around in a massive circle that began and ended at the hole leading to Nightmare Moon’s ancient underground shrine. The Red King was nowhere near as lucky.

Whereas I broke off at the mouth of the hole to go and lazily trail my hooves through the grass on the surface, the Red King sped right on through the center like a screaming bullet. The moment he left my hooves, and for maybe half a second afterwards, the Red King shrieked at the top of his lungs as he traveled the short distance from the ruined ceiling to the stone floor below. It was an unearthly thing that sounded like it should be coming from a slaughter house, not a predator, much less the king of predators.

That scream was cut abruptly short as a sickening crunch and a particularly loud snap met my ears. I couldn’t dwell on the stomach churning sound too long though, because following immediately after that sound was a massive release of pent up magic. Before I knew what was happening, static washed over my every single one of my senses. My sight was gone, my ears heard only random incoherent sounds, and my magical senses could see only the chaos of a destroyed spell. Then, as sudden as it came, it was gone. I could see again and everything in my body registered as functioning, but there was something off.

It’s difficult to describe, but the world somehow felt… different. It was as though the natural flow of magic that permeated Equestria had been altered slightly. Legion cared little for my troubled thoughts and flew back over to the hole they had driven the Red King into. My wings carried me beyond the lip of the hole and slowly drifted us downwards. My horn flashed once during my descent, dispelling the spell that turned my coat to flame and returning it to its usual ashen fur.

The underground room hadn’t changed much during our absence. It was significantly less well lit owing to the fire Legion had started had died down at some point. In my peripheral I could still see the alabaster white and purple forms of Celestia and Twilight, but Legion chose to focus on the crumpled form dead center in the room.

The Red King was, simply put, broken. As I glided to stand over him, I got a good look at the carnage I had unleashed upon him through Legion. The Red King lay in the middle of a large indentation in the stone floor. I could clearly see that almost every bone the vampire possessed was broken. His barrel was caved in in some places and both of his hind legs were bent at impossible angles. Even his spine was bent backward to bring his hindquarters at a very painful looking angle with the rest of his body, assuming that part of his body could even feel pain anymore. To top it all off, third degree burns covered the vast majority of his now blackened coat.

Yet, through it all, he still drew breath. The Red King’s chest rose and fell in time with his rattling wheezing breath. Without daring to raise his head from the floor, he place the hooves of his ruined forelegs on the stone floor and desperately tried to drag himself away.

Damn, that is one hardy bug.

“No… so close,” he wheezed. “So close…”

With an audible grunt of effort, the Red King pushed and flipped himself on his back. His eyes almost immediately tracked to me, although they clearly took a moment or two to properly focus. It was then that I noticed another important detail about his figure: his horn was gone. Where his dark pointed horn should have been was just a broken stump of bone and seared flesh. His one and only apparatus for channeling his stolen magic was destroyed, leaving him completely and totally at Legion’s mercy.

The Red King seemed to realize this and immediately resumed his frantic backpedal with his forelegs, dragging his useless hind legs behind him. His efforts were short lived though. After only a few paces, his back thumped against two white pillars. The Red King head craned around and then slowly panned up to look into the face of the pony he’d bumped into.

Celestia, freed from binds that presumably broke along with the Red King’s horn, loomed over the broken vampire. The gaze she offered the Red King was nothing short of murderous. In the admittedly short time I’d known her, I’d seen Celestia calm, worried, joyous, angry, and even frightened, but never outright furious. Her lips were peeled back to bare her teeth at the Red King, her eyes were narrowed and her brow furrowed. Her horn ignited with her golden light to illuminate every corner of the room. Looking at her then gave me the distinct impression of a grieving mother that had just tracked down and cornered her children’s murderer. Given the immense power behind that grief, I was very glad I wasn’t the recipient for her fury.

Then, quite suddenly, she seemed to regain some sense of her self-control and calm demeanor. She straightened her neck back to stand as tall as her figure allowed, and then looked intently at me. In a completely wordless gesture, she shifted her attention from me, to the Red King, then back, and then nodded solemnly.

Legion needed no such permission, not even from Celestia herself, but they still nodded back out of respect for their princess. With that daunting wordless conversation over with, Legion advanced on the trapped Red King, the business end of my horn lowering towards the vampire.

The Red King’s eyes widened as he looked back and forth between Celestia and Legion. With neither party even willing to speak on a possible stay of execution, hope very quickly drained from his face. For the very first time, the Red King looked up at one of the ponies he’d tried to conquer with genuine fear. He began sputtering and spitting, frantically trying to find the words he needed to worm his way out of punishment, or at least gain some form of leverage.

“N-no, no wait!” the Red King pretender begged and raised his forelegs out in a vain attempt to stop my approach. “I-I have information! The R-Red King, the real one, I know where he moves his forces! I know who’s trying to work against him! I’ll tell you everything, Dresden, anything you want to know!” He tried to press himself back into Celestia’s forelegs and make himself appear smaller. “Just-just take me to the White Council, please!”

I found myself inwardly smirking at his pleas. Foal, he still doesn’t get it does he?

Legion lowered my head down so that I was looking directly into the eyes of their tormentor, but then did something I never expected of them. For the first time since entering my body and mind, I felt a glimmer of hope from within the minds that made up Legion. It was a faint little candle in a sea of despair and rage, but it was there.

“Can you heal us?” Legion almost whispered to the Red King. “Can you repair the damage you have caused? Fix the lives you have ruined, the families you have destroyed?” By the time final word left my throat, my voice quivered with the combined sorrow of hundreds and a few tears escaped my eyes into the surrounding fur.

The fake Red King looked back up at me, completely silent and lost at Legion’s request. His mouth opened and closed several times as he struggled to think of the answer that would spare his life. Seeing this reaction, and sensing that the Red King couldn’t offer the spirits the salvation they were looking for, Legion backed away from him. With that little speck of hope extinguished, Legion reared me back on my hind legs, and lowered my horn to point directly at the Red King’s head.

“Then your life is worthless to us,” Legion snarled through clenched teeth.

In a single fluid motion, my entire upper body slammed back down, my hooves impacted with the stone floor, and my head thrust forward. The tip of my spiraled horn touched just under the remnants of the Red King’s, and punched through. My eyes, only an inch away from the vampire’s own, studied the Red King’s face for every possible detail, including the thin stream of black blood that ran down and over his muzzle.

The Red King’s eyes briefly widened in surprise, their pupils had shrunk to the size of pinpricks. He stared right back at me, as though silently pleading for mercy. For a very brief moment, I thought I could feel the telltale tugging that signals an impending soulgaze, but it slipped away before it could begin. Slowly, very slowly, the Red King’s eyes slid out of focus; they drifted off until each one pointed in some random direction, and then glazed over. Suddenly, the Red King was no longer in front of me, just his remains.

Vengeance, unfortunately, is not so easily sated.

Legion whipped my head back from the dead vampire and extended my neck to stand at my full and considerable height. The moment my horn was extricated from his skull, the Red King’s body fell limply to the ground. Legion focused my eyes upon the unmoving heap that had been their tormentor, and began to growl. A sound like grindstones rubbing against each other reverberated from me as my breathing picked up to a frantic pace and lips peeled back in a snarl.

“No. Not enough,” Legion growled through my clenched jaw. “More. More vampires. More punishment! MORE!” My voice steadily rose in volume in direct proportion to Legion’s unfulfilled bloodlust.

Before Legions could act on that building fury however, something hard touched on my head just below my horn, and began radiating calming warmth into my mind.

“Rest, my little ponies,” whispered Celestia’s kind motherly voice into my ear. “Rest now. You have won. Be at ease my bravest of ponies.”

Their fury derailed, Legion turned my eyes away from the fallen Red King and towards the white alicorn pressing her horn against mine. “P-Princess?”

Celestia smiled warmly at me and poured more of her soothing energy through her horn. “Yes. Rest now my little ponies, you have earned it.”

“Princess…” Legion muttered through me, my voice faltering as though I were losing consciousness.

Over the next several moments, I underwent an insanely strange process. My eyes closed shut and the rest of my senses seemed to just shut down, leaving me totally and completely in the dark alongside Legion. The only sensation I could feel in the darkness was Celestia’s power still flowing freely into my mind, turning anger and fury into quiet contentment wherever it went.

One by one, the spirits that made up Legion embraced Celestia’s calming magic and fell into stasis like slumber. With the source of their power and unity being swept away, Legion swiftly broke apart and dissolved back into individual spirits. Over the course of what felt like minutes, each and every spirit was touched by Celestia’s warmth and fell asleep. My body instinctively locked my legs to prevent me from falling as those that had been controlling me released control.

Suddenly, I was the only one awake in a body that held hundreds, the only one that had any mind or will to exercise. Tentatively, I reached out beyond the barrier I had thrown around myself. I immediately came into contact with the multitude of spirits still housed inside me, but they made absolutely no effort to move against me or even register my presence. I immediately extended myself back across all corners of my mind and body, like a driver hoping back behind the wheel. My eyes snapped open and I took several gasping breaths as my mind reconnected with my body and the various senses therein.

“Hells bells!” I gasped out into the stone room, only after filling my lungs with a couple helpings of life sustaining oxygen.

My vision was swiftly obscured by Celestia’s worried face and billowing rainbow mane. “Mr. Dresden, are you alright?”

“Y-yeah,” I muttered after a few seconds of getting reacquainted with the minor muscles necessary for proper speech. I closed my eyes and raised a foreleg to rub against my aching temple. “Oh, my head is killing me. No more ‘Hail Mary’s’, never.” My eyes reopened and tracked over to Celestia. “How did you do that? How did you know what to do?”

Celestia gave a relieved smile and turned to investigate my quasi-alicorn form. “I can sense all of my subjects, and I could sense many of them within you.” She shakily stepped around me and turned curious eyes on the flame crafted wings that were folded against my side. “I don’t know how you did it, but I could feel their distress in you. So I calmed them.”

I only caught around half of her words, with my ears still readjusting. As Celestia shifted and drew my line of sight to my left, and after my eyes finished calibrating, I spotted the reason I had come down here alone in the first place.

“Twilight!” I shouted and shuffled over to the still form of a lavender unicorn.

I stumbled several times in my mad shuffle to get to Twilight, due to my accustomed method of trotting no longer in sync with my tallerlegs. But, after a few seconds of relearning how to walk, I found myself crouching over Twilight. With her bonds dispelled as well, Twilight lay in a crumpled heap against the wall. A couple of patches of fur along her body were clearly distorted and a darker shade of purple than they should have been. Her sides rose and fell in time with hoarse breaths, and her face contorted in pain each time she was forced to inhale.

All this stupid power, and I don’t know how to even begin to heal this!

I hopelessly reached out and nudged at one of her forelegs with my muzzle to get a response. After I received nothing more than another pained grunt, I turned my attention back around to Celestia.

“Help her!” I demanded of the white alicorn, my voice taking on an air of supreme authority.

Celestia paid no mind to my tone and bent down to touch her muzzle alongside her student’s. The alicorn’s horn ignited with more of her golden energy, but quickly flickered out. Celestia’s eyes turned wide and fearful as she looked over Twilight. Her horn light again, and again died away.

“I cannot,” Celestia whispered, straightening her neck back to stand at her full height.

“What do you mean you can’t?!” I shouted and jumped back up to my hooves. “She got hurt trying to protect you! Help her!”

Celestia turned solemn eyes onto me. “I am too weak. Whatever spell the Red King cast to hold me, has caused my power to atrophy. I gave everything I had to just calm you down.” She cast her sorrowful eyes back down over her weakening student. “I’m afraid I’d be useless even if I wasn’t drained. Proper healing is precise magic, for that we’d need-”

“SISTER!” shouted a familiar voice from just overhead, the high-pitched joyous tone reverberated around the stone walls.

Princess Luna flew down through the massive hole in the subterranean structure, and made a beeline for her lost family. The rest of the room’s inhabitants apparently fell to the wayside while dark blue blur shot across the room. Luna very nearly tackled her sister as she wrapped her armored forelegs around her and pulled her in for a strangling hug.

Deep within me, I felt several of the spirits stir in Luna’s presence. Their hatred of Nightmare Moon threatening to flare up again, before settling back down in their slumber.

“Sister, you’re safe!” Luna released Celestia to hold her at forelegs length, her face was a mix of supreme worry and joy. “Celestia, did you see him?! Did you see…” Her voice trailed off and her eyes went wide with surprise once she spotted me behind Celestia.

Celestia placed a hoof across her sister’s back and motioned at me with her free foreleg. “Luna, this isn’t him, this is Dresden. Look at his cutie mark. He performed some manner of ritual to get this form.”

Luna’s eyes turned from wide-eyed wonderment to curiosity as she began to investigate the finer details of my body. “Dresden? Is that really you?”

Confusion and frustration plagued my mind as I tried to make sense of the royal sisters’ conversation, but ultimately discarded the whole mess for a later time. There were far more pressing matters.

“Yes, but forget about me!” I frantically jabbed a hoof at Twilight, my wings automatically flared out for emphasis. “Her, focus on her!”

Luna, distracted somewhat by my wings movements, followed my limb to the unconscious unicorn and immediately shifted gears. She released Celestia and moved to lie next to Twilight. Luna’s horn ignited with her dark blue energy as she enveloped Twilight with more of the same. At once Twilight’s expression shifted from that of intense pain to a blissful sleep. Above her Luna frowned in concentration as she poured more and more energy into Twilight.

While Luna worked, Celestia and I could only wait nervously near her. Celestia nestled down beside Twilight and her sister to offer them what little comfort she could. Meanwhile I, with all the pent up energy my spell had granted, was forced to pace continually behind them. After several long moments, Luna’s energy vanished from around Twilight and she growled a curse under her breath.

“What is it?” I immediately asked.

Luna got back to her hooves and shook her head angrily. “She’s bleeding internally. I have dulled her pain to the wounds, but not much else. I can fix her, but I need some specialized tools to pinpoint the bleed.” She looked intently over at me. “Tools that are back in my quarters in Canterlot.”

I gestured to Twilight with my hoof, “Well then grab her and let’s go!”

Luna and glanced between her sister and me. “I’m not leaving my sister, Dresden!”

“Luna, please,” Celestia pleaded with her sister. “Twilight needs your help.”

Luna turned her gaze back to Celestia and adopted a steely mask. “Sister, no. The Red Court line is broken and they are retreating into the forest, but this place is still not safe.” Luna peered around the room until her eyes fell upon the broken form of the Red King. “You’re too weak to defend yourself right now. If we left you unprotected and you got captured again, then this all will have been for nothing.”

“Fine,” I growled through clenched teeth. I tapped into the massive well of power I had, and directed energy out of my horn and over Twilight. As gently as I could manage, I enveloped her in my power and lifted her into the air. “I’ll go ahead with her. The second reinforcements get here, I expect you to be on your way to her hospital bed.”

Luna’s mouth worked to try and respond to my authoritative tone. It’s quite possible that she had never been talked to like that, except by her sister. What was even more curious was her body language. The way Luna crouched slightly under my gaze and averted her eyes, it was almost submissive. Which was a first since I’d known her.

“Alright,” she offered, “I’ll leave as soon as Celestia is safe.”

I didn’t like being so aggressive to her. She was a powerful ally, royalty, and more important than all that, a good friend. There was a distinct possibility that I would be paying for my abruptness later, but I didn’t care. She was putting Twilight at risk, for perfectly legitimate reasons sure, but that just added to my frustration.

I stepped past Luna to stand directly under the hole in the ceiling. Twilight floated over to me, wreathed in my telekinetic grip. With a combination of magic and my foreleg, I scooped up and pressed her against my chest. I experimentally flexed my magically crafted wings until they were fully extended to my either side.

Then, with an almighty heave and without looking back around, I brought my wings down and launched myself straight up into the sky above Nightmare Moon’s ancient shrine. Without Legion’s immediate memories at the ready, I wobbled several times and almost fell out of the sky once; though, with a little digging into the sleeping spirits’ memories and some experimentation, I quickly found a stable flying pace.

With Twilight pressed firmly against my chest, I flew as fast as I could into the distance towards the one place I knew could help her. All the while, I could feel Twilight’s faint heartbeat against mine.

Hold on, Twilight. Just a little bit longer.

Comments

[Bookish_Devil]

Finally, you update but dam you for this cliff you left us over.

[blastdragon]

Hells Bells! That was amazing. Just...WOW! Can't wait for the next chapter.

[That Strange Mint Pony]

I don't care that didn't update since Halloween!
This is quite possibly the best pony battle sequence I have read!
Applechip you have gone above and beyond in this chapter managing to both make the climax and still have a feasible conflict.

In short.
3.bp.blogspot.com/-lSdqOQOQpmI/T2ZRwdUJePI/AAAAAAAABpE/cy_bqsjCuEc/s1600/YouRockWooHoo.gif

[Balewood]

Woot! and Hot Damn! SO EPIC really thanks for this fic.

[kyubbiman]

That was f***ing awesome. Such ab awesome battle sequence. Please write some more very very soon if at all possible

[MC BR0N3]

If Twilight dies, Dresden exterminates the Red Court A SECOND TIME

[Brave Stomp]

welcome back and WOW!!! excellent chapter. I look forwards to seeing the aftermath of this battle and Dresdens reaction when he realizes hes become an Alicorn. I wonder what hes the Alicorn of, the Prince of War? as aways your tone and writing syle is spot on with a good blend of classic dresden snark. Best of luck with all your future writings.

[NaughtSought]

Wheres the wild mass guessing? Where's the outrage? Where's all the constructive criticism? There was a site blog post about some of these things and nothing in the comments? For shame readers. For shame.

[DiscordDraconequus]

Hell's holy stars and freaking stones shit bells this updated. Stars and stones, this actually updated!

Bow before your angry new god! Dragon Dresden is displeased!

Dresden you dork.

[Applechip]

4321101 4321052 4321254 Thank you guys I'm glad I finally got out of whatever funk it was I was in. I'll start pumping out the next bit after my finals in a few days.

[Mad Maudlin]

While the likelihood of Dresden staying in Equestria is soooooo low, I do hope he manages to put a bun in Twilight's oven before he goes.

Good story. Rough in places, but very nice work over all.

[Marshal Twilight]

Damn! I haven't read an epic clash of titans like that in quite a while, and I must say it was one of the best I have ever read.

I did notice a bit of a plothole though. Why can't Harry stay behind and lay a smackdown on all the Red Court vampires still fighting while Luna teleports herself, Celestia, and Twilight back to Canterlot? That way Celestia is safe, Luna can heal Twilight, and the battle is still accounted for. He's got plenty of juice for it, and now that the spirits are calmed down he wouldn't even have to worry about friendly fire.

I wonder if Dresden's new job as a homeless shelter for spirits is going to be permanent? Seems like he's on a path to become the new God of Wrath, unless Celestia is always around to calm him down. That would be an interesting power dynamic; Harry being a new great power in the world, and extremely powerful, but prone to go out of control without Celestia to calm him. That would be quite interesting, quite interesting indeed.

Of course, all those spirits floating around in there would have some interesting uses. I imagine that when you have hundreds of spirits to call on, you can get all kinds of useful advice for virtually any situation. Anything from fixing the bathroom sink to how to make Twilight a very happy mare in private.

Though I have to say, I do hope he stays in Equestria. Just...Come on, you can't give us a Dresden/Twilight romance and leave it hanging! You wouldn't do that, would you?

[Applechip]

4326437 You're correct that Harry has plenty of reserves to pull from to continue the smack down, but Luna doesn't. Remember what was happening to Luna in the air? She had spent the vast majority of her energy keeping the vampire pegasi at bay, and even then she was starting to crumble under their sheer numbers. At the end, Luna still had enough energy to defend herself if need be; but I highly doubt she'd have the energy necessary to teleport herself and two passengers all the way to Canterlot from the heart of the forest. I really should have given that information better at the end of the chapter. I'm sorry.

Now as to what the end holds, I honestly don't know. The characters in this story have forced me to change from my original design so much, that I have no idea what they'll do. I'm just the instrument writing what the voices in my head tell me to.

[Skydrake]

4326573

Regarding the surgeon tools: shouldn't the medics of the army have some with them though? It makes perfect sense for Luna not to have a set on her person, but I imagine you could fine one or a couple of dozen at the camp the army has set up to treat the wounded - It's not like Luna owns the only set of surgical tools in Equestria, is it :P

Or failing that, shouldn't there be plenty of doctors in Canterlot capable of treating Twilight, even in Luna's absence? Luna might be the best choice depending on how much experience she has, but now that things have moved past attempting healing magic and on to poking and prodding Twilight with tools, I imagine there should be a royal surgeon or two at the castle who can assist.

[Applechip]

4327785 From what I know of military procedure (which isn't that much) basic triage camps like the one Canterlot military set up, aren't usually equipped for in depth surgery. Their main goal is to throw a patch over injuries and get wounded soldiers mobile again, or at least stable. You'd still need a proper medical facility for an internal hemorrhage. As for the doctors at Canterlot, you are 100% correct. They're not just gonna sit around and wait for Luna to get there. They're gonna go ahead and do whatever prep work they can to help stabilize Twilight. Though Luna is probably the most adept at delicate magic and therefore the most qualified to heal Twilight. With that in mind, I can totally see the ever protective Dresden standing over Twilight's bed to prevent "hack job" doctors he doesn't know from performing invasive surgery while he believes Luna's on her way, unless it was absolutely necessary.

[Skydrake]

4328029

I'd certainly expect much of the triage camp focus to be on quick patchwork jobs, true, though I don't think they would be completely lacking in surgical equipment. Granted, it's not going to be a substitute to a proper hospital environment at all, but at least you could get Luna herself working on Twilight right away ... though granted, that might be tricky if she is placing priority on the military operations.

Regarding the Canterlot doctors though - I might be missing something, but I got the impression that Luna did all she could (or was willing to spare) with magic at the moment, and the rest has to be done the old fashioned way via surgery? In which case, Luna being better with delicate healing magic has ceased to be of importance, because the plan at this point is to operate on Twilight, not heal her via magic, no?

Though granted, Luna might be the best surgeon around as well ... but like you said, waiting on her is risky when one doesn't know how long she will take to get back, or if she is even going to be up to the task (she might be too tired to focus properly) right away.

Hm ... thinking on it, if Dresden can still tap in to the collective of spirits occupying his mind, what are the chances that he might have a few surgeons in there to draw from, worst comes to worst?

[Applechip]

4328129 In order to clarify this, I think I'd have to start to reveal stuff that's going to be in the next chapter. So I'll just say this: the instruments Luna's referring to that allow her to "pinpoint" where the damage is, are specialized tools she's been working on in that workshop she calls a bedroom. Beyond that I don't really want to say. That, and the mental image of alicorn Dresden bursting through Canterlot Castle's doors and carrying Twilight against his chest was just too good of an image to pass up.

[Skydrake]

4328196

Ah, got it. If it's the specialized tools she wants, then I can see things going down the way they did.

Should be some impressive tools though, since in general Equestrian medical science should be in a pretty good shape, even without accounting for Luna's tinker-tech. (Even a backwater town like Ponyville has reasonably modern looking heart monitors in its clinic, which should be 1960+ tech or so, so I imagine treating internal bleeding to be well within their capabilities ... though it's obviously better to go with a demi-deity if one is on hand, yeah :P)

[AJ]

forum-s3.pinside.com/201306/936325/109204.jpg

[FeyakGorale]

Very well done, can't wait for the next installment!!!

[Kenny]

Finally! We get to see Legion profoundly beat the living hell outta the Red King! It was worth the wait.

I hope Luna's tenure as Nightmare causes Legion to wake back up... Though poweful, that collective of crazed spirits is a desperate weapon needing to be stored where it can't harm anyone after its use.

[DiscordDraconequus]

Update?

[Applechip]

4633809 Underway. I know it's an excuse I've used before, but I've hit some pretty bad IRL family tragedy issues lately (I think my family may be cursed). I should have something for my editor late tonight or tomorrow.

[Seeking Dusk]

4322455 Prince Dresden, Alicorn of Justice and Retribution.

[Draco Dei]

4325873
Twilight having sex outside of marriage?
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