The bells from beyond reality

by Kuroneko

Cosmic dance

Up above us, or was it down bellow? It was hard to tell, standing on a strangely shaped stone structure we saw the source of the light in which we barely recognized princess Celestia. She had nothing in common with the gentle ruler we all knew and loved, her mane that was usually like the dancing lights of the northern sky had turned into a blazing inferno, each strand of hair looking like a burning torch but it was no ordinary fire, it had something ethereal, eldritch, like it could've devoured the entire world if it ever left her body. Her normally snow white body was shining brightly under her own light and looked like it was made out of gold. Her hooves were now glittering rubies and each times they touched the ground it instantly melted leaving shining footprints behind her.

Standing not too far from her was princess Luna who underwent the same metamorphosis as her sister, and the sweet night guardian who protect ponies during their most vulnerable moments left her place to a fearsome night creature. Her beautiful mane usually shining like the night sky flowed like it was made of water or more exactly of liquid silver, as it had the color of the pale metal and shone brightly under her sister’s light. Her sapphire body was almost transparent and studded with thousands of tiny specks of light that moved and shifted places with each of her movement, like a living milky way. Everytime she came into contact with the ground, streams of water as pure as crystal sprung out of it, bringing life to the desolated earth of this lifeless city.

On the opposed side, clad in darkness, king Sombra was trying to stay as far as possible of the light coming from Celestia. He somehow was even more terrifying than the last time we saw him, his face horribly distorted by rage, it was made even worse by the eerie scarlet light of his horn. His whole body was shrouded in shadows as black as a starless sky and could not be seen. It seemed like he had made his the darkness of this place and now looked like a storm cloud, as black as the empty void of space.

The three of them were constantly moving but kept the same distance from each other like three little planets orbiting around a bigger heavenly body, a black star of monstrous proportions, waiting for any lapse in their concentration to pull them in and devour them all. We finally saw our enemy, the cause of all our torments, yes it was him, the fear that radiated from him, even worse than king Sombra’s, that feeling of otherworldly strangeness, it could only be him, Grogar.

He was a tall creature with curled horns like a ram but that’s where the similarity ended, as he was clearly not like any being of our world. His eyes were red like these animals that live deep underground and never see the light of the day but unlike them who flee the sun, he was not bothered by the living star in front of him. His fur was of a bluish color like these fearsome mushrooms that feed on corpses. But worst of all was the bell he carried around his neck, even more than the rest of his city it’s shape was so strange and so unnatural that we felt sick just by looking at it.

He was standing in the middle of the Sun, moon and empty dark sky, completely unmoving despite the attacks raining on him. This is when we finally realised how foolish we were to come to this accursed place, all we wanted was to assist our princesses in their fight but now we could see how futile it was. What was happening here was beyond the competence and understanding of mere soldiers like us, trying to step in this fight would have been like trying to stop the course of a planet with your bare hands, we would have been crushed, utterly destroyed and reduced to star dust without any of the fighters noticing we were even here. Unable to act, we could only watch silently the cosmic dance that unfolded before us.

We were too far to understand what they were saying but sometime the wind brought to our ears some hints on what was happening, sometime it was some encouraging words from princess Celestia or a threat from princess Luna, another time it was a bone chilling warcry from king Sombra that made us glad he was not fighting against us, but sometime it was something much worse, a fragment of word or some musical notes from Grogar, so disgusting in their nature that it could have driven insane anyone who would not have experienced the horrors we did beforehand.

I don't know how long we stayed like that, hypnotized by the movements of these stars, we felt like we were dreaming and it’s the deep and eerie sound of a bell that woken us from our daydreaming. Immediately after the first sound the bell made, the air became heavy, almost solid and it became hard to breath, purple lightning bolts could be seen in the sky. We thought it was another of Grogar’s schemes but to our surprise he looked furious to hear that sound. We then felt an extremely cold wind coming down from the sky, as the bell continued it’s sinister melody, light started to pierce the shadows and the strangely shaped black tower became translucent, letting us see through them the vague shape of the shining houses of the crystal empire. Our world was coming back, or more exactly, it was this alien world that was sent back to where it belonged.

I later learned that it was princess Twilight Sparkle who rung a bell that was buried deep under the crystal empire, the very same bell that brought Grogar out of his exile between the worlds and which was now sending him back from where he came.

But Grogar wasn't planning to go away that easily, he clung to our plane like dragon lord brimstone clung to the mountain containing his greatest treasure to the point he became one with it. As he tried to prevent the inevitable, an awful transformation occurred in him, as if all life was sucked out of his body as the same time his city was sucked out of this dimension, his body started to deteriorate quickly, releasing an abominable smell that poisoned the air. At this moment the bells rang furiously as if they were trying to cover the sound of the other one, this is when we heard his voice, not in a whisper carried by the wind like before but loud and clear, in all its horrifying glory, prophesying about his inevitable return and the terrible days to come. And then, the final horror happened, this terrible event that plunged me into the depths of despair for the rest of my life.