Castle Ponyvania

by Truro

Symphony of Colour

Chapter 8

Fallen Angel was leafing his way through a book, perched on a music sheet holder.

"What 'cha reading?" Apple Bloom asked him.

"A book of incantations." Said Fallen, "I'm looking for the right one to use for the ritual."

"Don't 'cha already know it?"

"Well, yes but…"

"So why do you need to look it up?"

Eclipse removed his head from the hair mould he used to reshape his pompadour.

"That's a good point, Fallen. It's just a simple matter of slitting the girl's throat and pouring her blood over the ashes. Why do you need to revise it?"

"What are you doing back here? You were supposed to be fighting off those girls!"

Eclipse's eyes looked all around the room, hoping to see something that would give him the inspiration he needed to think of an excuse.

"Well, I, um…"

"Get back out there and fight, you coward! We can't be interrupted!"

Eclipse stood firm.

"Shant!"

With a grunt, Fallen reached into the coffin and scooped up a handful of Ponyvania soil. He held it in his hoof and pulled his foreleg back. Eclipse gasped in utter horror.

"Get down there or I'll grind this dirt into that substitute for masculinity that you call a hair-do!"

Eclipse turned and shot out the door. Nothing must mess with the do.

Fallen grinned. He was still saddles sore over his humiliating confrontation with Rainbow Dash, but he had to admit, that blue Pegasus knew some pretty offensive insults. He returned to his book.

"Um…" came a small voice.

Fallen looked down to see a nervous looking Apple Bloom.

"Are you really gonna cut my neck open…?"

He didn't know what to say. He just looked at those huge, sad, timid, orange eyes.

Damn it. He thought. This would be so much easier if that zebra hadn't given me my soul back.

•·•·•·•·•·•·•·•

Okay! Boring bit's over! Now it's back to our six heroes. The story of Rainbow Dash's departure from the party had been explained to Spike, who was completely lost for words. Even if he could think of anything to say, Apple Jack still looked as though anything mentioned that could even be connected to Rainbow Dash, would drive her into giant green berserker mode. Third person speak and all. So they couldn't talk about hurrying up. Hurrying, speed, dashing, dash. They couldn't talk about their favourite colours. Colours, rainbows. Or even fruit. Fruit, oranges, orange, colour, rainbow.

So the group just walked down the hallway. The only sound was their hoof steps echoing down the empty stone hall. It was driving Pinkie insane. Of course she was usually half way there already so nobody noticed any difference. It was times like this, when a naturally extroverted filly like Pinkie gets bored.

She slowed her pace, so that she was slightly behind the others and decided to walk on just her hind legs.

She was still bored.

She decided to walk on just her forelegs. Well, it was a little more challenging at least.

"Pinkie, what are you doing?" Rarity finally asked.

"Walking on my forelegs."

A blank stare from Rarity.

"What for?"

"It gives me something to do."

This, I'm sorry to say, is the reason it is so hard to write stories based on video games. When you're actually playing one of those games where you have to run the gauntlet through a castle, nobody says anything but you don't mind that because you're too busy whipping at candles and mincing zombies into burger meat to care. And even when there are no enemies to fight, you don't mind, because by the time the game gives you a lull you're actually thankful for a quick breather. This is the very reason why movies based video games are so hard to pull off.

Our heroes reached the top floor of the castle's main structure. Once they got to the other end of the room, there was just the long climb to the highest tower.

As the doors opened, they gasped. There at the other end of the corridor stood a horse wrapped in a black cowl. His eyes were covered by the black cloth and between his teeth; he brandished a long, sinister looking scythe.

"No…" Twilight gasped, "It can't be..."

The sinister horse slowly stepped towards them.

"One of the four horses of the apocalypse…"

His hoof steps echoed around the empty stone walls.

"The horse of Death…"

He stopped. Twilight trembled. The cowl. The scythe. They were both elements of the one horse who appears before a unicorn who is about to die. She gulped.

"…Binky…?"

The roar of a bell echoed in the distance.

"No my dear."

The clocked figure dropped the scythe to the floor and threw his cowl off. No, it wasn't Binky, the stallion of death. It was something much worse.

"Oh great, it's that jackass Eclipse."

Well, to a girl it was much worse; the pretentiousness, the pick-up lines, the lack of fashion sense (as Eclipse was still wearing his sequins), the ego and the overpowering smell of cheep hairspray were all enough to drive any filly to jump out of the window rather than be within smelling distance.

"Under normal circumstances my dears, I would congratulate your prowess in getting past Punch Spike. However, before he became a vampire, he was weak for an Earth Pony. Apparently, he was even weak by Unicorn standards. So, my dear ladies…"

"And gent." Spike added as he popped out from behind Twilight.

Eclipse jumped back in horror.

"The purple dragon!" he screamed like a little girl.

"Dude, what is it with you and dragons anyway? Not even Fluttershy gets that jumpy around me and she's a total draknophobe."

Trembling to regain his composure, Eclipse looked up to the sky.

"It all began when I was a boy in Canterlot…"

"Oh really nice going Spike!" Twilight snapped bonking him on the head, "Now he's going to tell us his life story!"

It is to this day, a fact that's sad but true. Mary-Sues always tell you their life story.

"If this is going to take a while, I might as well pretty myself up." Said Rarity, as she pulled a portable hair-styling kit out of her saddlebag."

"If it's not too much trouble, could please you do mine afterwards, Rarity? If we have time that is."

"Why of course Fluttershy!"

"If you don't mind, I'm bearing my soul here!"

"We're listening!" Twilight yelled, "Get on with it!"

"Thank you! Now, when I was a poor youth, the other unicorns used to bully me mercilessly. They would laugh at my hair. Nobody would befriend me because of my awkwardness and clumsiness. It had nothing at all to do with the fact that I ignored and neglected everyone…"

"Ooooh boy," Apple Jack moaned, "This is really gonna take a while..."

Pinkie broke open another wall and picked up a bag of popcorn.

"Want some?" she offered the bag to Apple Jack.

"Aw Sure. Why not? Thanks Pinkie. Munch, Munch, Munch."

•·•·•·•·•·•·•·•

And now for a very brief summery of the boring and self-indulgent origin story of Twilight Eclipse-

Eclipse is a big doofus. He tried to get into Princess Celestia's school for gifted unicorns but made a complete balls of his entrance exams, which, as with Twilight Sparkle, involved hatching a dragon egg, so in a desperate attempt to get into the school, he went to the mountain where the eggs were laid, tried to steal one from the mother dragon but was caught and smashed into a bloody pulp by the big purple father dragon and then found by a kindly passing vegetarian vampony who bit him, to ease the painful death. Eclipse then started hanging out with other vamponies; he mixed with the wrong crowd and joined team Dracallion in order to pull chicks.

•·•·•·•·•·•·•·•

"Are you done yet?" Twilight popped the question, hoping that he really was finished this time, instead of just stopping for air. After all, it was a pretty long story.

"Yes. That's the story of my whole life up until today."

"Good." She said with a smile. "Okay Spike, you can to trash him now."

"Alright! I'll teach you to steal my lines!"

Eclipse's horn sparkled and the scythe snapped up violently.

"Not this time! I have prepared in advance!"

Bones began to circle around. Large bones. They formed the skeleton of a huge serpent. It gave a frightening screech and coiled menacingly. It pounced, smashing Spike through the wall.

Apple Jack ran after the bone snake. Twilight shot a bolt of magic light at Eclipse who sliced through it with his scythe. Rarity spotted a rapier on the wall (it's a castle. They've always got swords on the wall) and grabbed it with her magic. The sword clanged against the scythe's pole. Both unicorns's swung their weapons so fast that it sounded like a crazy drum solo. Rarity's horn crackled and swung her blade in a whirlwind of steel.

The bone snake lashed at Spike. The dragon grabbed the top of the serpent's mouth to stop it from closing on him. He began straining to stop the jaws from crushing him. Apple Jack and Pinkie kicked the snake everywhere possible. It reeled with a frightening cry and Spike jumped down.

Twilight seized the other rapier from the wall and went for Eclipse. The only way to stop the skeleton serpent was to cut off the source of the magic controlling the bones. Twilight and Rarity's swords flew against Eclipse's scythe in a rapid flurry of swings. Finally, Eclipse slammed his scythe downwards, pinning the girls' swords to the floor. He laughed triumphantly.

Then Rarity hopped up and punched him in the face.

The snake began to collapse. His focus was gone!

Then his horn flashed red. The serpent came back to life. It slammed right past Spike and the others. It made a bee-line for the unicorns. It opened its jaw and pulled its head back. Rarity screamed in horror. Twilight was frozen on the spot. The snake was about to strike!

All of a sudden the crash of a breaking window drew everyone's attention. There, hovering above broken glass fragments was Rainbow Dash. On the end of her hoof, she held a plain, uninteresting and really pissed off pony.

"Sulky!" Eclipse cried.

"That's right, dweeb! The only pony in the world that's actually desperate enough to give your ego the stroking that it's so desperate for!"

"If you don't let me go I'll…!"

"You'll do what? Scream at me? It didn't work on the way back here!"

Rainbow's eyes locked with Eclipse's. His mouth opened and closed rapidly. The words just wouldn't come out. Rainbow grinned at him.

"This is why bad guys never have girlfriends. Because you never know when some lunatic anti-hero is going to turn the tables and force you to make the sadistic choice for once. Now leave my friends alone and maybe I'll let this idiot live."

"You wouldn't dare! You're supposed to be the good guy! Heroes don't take hostages!"

Rainbow just laughed. She lowered her head.

"You're right. Heroes don't take hostages. They always play fair and never use dirty tricks to win. But, there's one problem teeny weenie little problem with that theory."

She looked up at him again. Her smile was one of complete malevolence.

"I don't remember ever calling myself a hero".

She let go. Sulky vanished from sight with a blood curdling scream.

"Okay, I did introduce myself as an anti-hero, but that's different from a clean cut hero, so it doesn't exactly couunt."

Eclipse dropped his weapons and ran towards the window. As he jumped out, he screamed a "no" so loud and long that to show it in text would take a thousand capital "O"s.

His horn made him more aerodynamic, so he caught up to sulky and wrapped as much of his body around her as possible. He crashed through tree branch after tree branch and landed in the mud with a very heavy splat.

Without Eclipse's magic, the bones clunked down, completely lifeless.

The seven heroes looked down out the window. Sulky was frantically trying to slap Eclipse back to consciousness. Rainbow in particular was feeling very smug. She turned to face the others.

"See guys! I can be smart too, when I have to be!"

Pinkie broke the silence by jumping at Rainbow with a loud squeal and giving her a hug so tight that she almost pulled a muscle.

"Dashie! You came back!"

""Duh! Is the sky blue? Is water wet?"

Twilight, equally happy that Rainbow was back, spoke next.

"But you said…!"

"All I said was that your plan wasn't going to work! Apple Bloom needs our help and I'm sure not gonna leave her hanging. The bad guys aren't going to fight fair, so there's no reason we should!"

With that said, the seven comrades prepared to resume the rescue mission. But before they went on their way there was one thing that need to be said.

"Hey, um, Rainbow."

The blue Pegasus turned in the direction of the voice. Apple Jack's cheeks had a rosy glow about them.

"Rainbow, I…I'm sorry."

"Meh. It's cool."

"So it's not. I jumped to the wrong conclusion and called you a coward. Even though you're probably the bravest pony I've ever known…"

"Ah come on! Now you're starting to sound like one of Twilight's homework assignments! Dear Princess Celestia. Today, I learned an important lesion about trust, friendship and jumping to conclusions!"

They both had a good laugh about that.

Finally reconciled, the seven stood at the base of a long stairway. At the top, was the chamber where the ceremony was to take place. Time was running out. The seven made their way up to the tower and the final battle.