Aegis Shield's Scrap File

by Aegis Shield

My Own Worst Enemy

My Own Worst Enemy
Part 1: Prologue

The ceiling was beginning to give, and the mountain of Canterlot was shaking on her foundations. The blinding evil had finally broken through the barriers, and her first stop had been the castle itself. “C’mon! Hurry up, let’s go!” Dusk Shine shouted, galloping down the narrow stairs into Princess Luna’s hidden laboratory. His hooves sent little rivulets of old stone this way and that. “The castle’s been compromised!” Dirtied and covered with soot from recent battle, the hardened stallion turned and yanked his companion along with him.

“What about the others?! W-we can’t leave them behind!” The mare following him whimpered, the speed of their fleeing bannering her mane wildly. She staggered down the winding path as he roughly tugged her along, shrieking now and then when she stumbled. An old injury was slowing her, but Dusk Shine was not about to leave his love behind.

“They’re dead!” He shouted over the rumbling off the passage. Tossing his multi-hue mane to look back at her. “It’s just us now, we have to go while we still can!”

“But the others! All the citizens of Canterlot!” she begged him, tears sprouting from her eyes even as they emerged into the great room. She held her bleeding shoulder as Dusk Shine rushed about the room. “We were all that’s left!” The ground shuddered hard, and both of them knew a great many ponies had just died. The enemy knew nothing of tact, it was all massive explosions with that unstoppable force. Blood and death and explosions.

He threw a sheet off of a strange, cobbled together sort of machine. It was ugly, misshapen, and had no rhyme or reason to its design. Only it’s function. Little knots stuck out on long iron poles this way and that, arcing electricity back and forth as soon as Dusk Shine charged it with magic. There was a platform to stand on, levers to throw, and a strange spot for a potion to be put in. The purple stallion rushed to a rusty, sorry-looking locker and wrenched it open. Grabbing a blood-red potion in a phial as tall as his legs were long, he rushed back and shoved it into the slot, securing it with two screws as best he could. Using a turn crank, he slowly turned it upside down and watched the syrupy liquid begin to glug its way slowwwwwly down into the more sensitive parts of the mechanism. Gears began to turn. Sparks and cracks began to shake the machine. It was barely holding itself together.

Dusk Shine chanced a smile, hoping the machine wouldn’t shake itself apart. “The red matter is going in. C’mon…. c’mon! Faster!” he said, watching a kettle begin to shriek with green smoke as it turned another series of gears and diodes. A long string of hearth-swarming eve lights began to explode one after the other like firecrackers, unable to take the power surge. “C’mon… c’mon dammit!” he would’ve kicked the machine, but it may have broken into a thousand pieces.

“She’s coming! I can feel her!” the mare whimpered, fidgeting back and forth while the machine powered up. “How long?!” There was a warmth radiating down the passage, and she looked over her shoulder fretfully. The beast wasn’t far now, it had obviously found their secret passage.

“Thirty seconds, tops!” Dusk Shine said, busily adjusting dials that looked like kitchen timers and stove temperature readers. Leaning up, he watched a golden sort of liquid pour into a waiting globe of hollow glass. It collided with some of the green smoke and ignited into a contained fireball, which began to swirl animatedly in its cage. A star, perhaps? It was beautiful. “We’ve got critical mass!” he said over his shoulder, turning left so he could see her with his one eye (the other was covered with a patch, hidden behind a scraggly mane). “Just a few more seconds!” He leapt from the console up onto the platform. “C’mon! Now’s our chance!” he reached with a hoof as his beloved began to smile, hope dawning in her eyes.

“It’s all so beautiful, Dusky.” She whispered, wiping her eyes briefly. “It really does work. We can go?” She approached slowly, watching her stallion’s genius invention finally come to fruition.

“Yes! We can go! Come on!” Dusk Shine waggled his hoof at her and she came forward, entranced by the whining, hissing, moaning machine. Behind him on a wall of pure, polished lunar steel, a portal was beginning to form. A portal to another world untouched by the ravages of the beast that had destroyed theirs. They could live peacefully there. “We don’t have much ti--!”

Just then, Daymare Sun exploded into the room, tackling Dusk Shine’s love to the ground with a feral roar. Her massive, spiraling horn blasted through her withers, spraying blood across the floor as it blossomed from the base of her neck in the front. “Uck?!” was all the poor mare managed to get out, her eyes going wide.

“NOOO!” Dusk Shine shouted, mouth wide in horror.

In the throes of her death, the poor mare shifted her weight and clamped onto the monster’s body with all her might. The golden armor on her enemy dug into her wounded body as the massive horn that had gored her was wrenched free. She felt ice in her spine. She didn’t have long to live. Daymare Sun shrieked, massive shark-like teeth digging into her shoulder. She began to tear the pony limb from limb, sprays of blood going back and forth. “G-gooo!” she shrieked in agony. She gave a throat-tearing cry as her saddle-bag fell open. A glass mana bomb tumbled out. One need merely break it and--!

“No!” Dusk Shine began to rush down the stairs and off the platform as the portal ripped open behind him. Tiktiktiktiktik, his hooves danced down the rusty, cobbled-together stairs. He would NOT leave her to such a gruesome fate!

“Dus-*gargle*-Shi*glack*!” she said, tears going down her face. Daymare Sun savagely tore off one of her legs with a roar of frustration. The splintering of bone and flesh was heart-wrenching. The monster didn’t want her! She wanted Dusk Shine! The splatter of blood was like a fountain, for it touched the low-hanging ceiling. “Uck! Auuh-HAUUUGH!” The poor mare still clung to the golden-armored beast that used to be Princess Celestia. “*garrrgle* I lugghghgh you!” she said as blood splattered from her mouth. She grabbed the mana bomb by the long stem of its glass container and, with the last of her strength, broke it on Daymare Sun’s face.

It seemed to happen in slow motion. The tinkling bits of glass came away from the whole, and white light streamed forth in little beams. The world turned into stark black and white, no greys. The light was too much for mortal eyes. Daymare Sun shrieked as her armored helm blew off of her head into a million little golden shards. Her fur burned off. The muscles of her cheek came undone like so many little strands of spaghetti. The blood from the mare under her exploded and her body was reduced to red and ash.

The implosion of air, magic, and fire sent Dusk Shine flying like a rag doll across the room. He tumbled with a doggish yelp as his world filled with flame and pain and whiteness. The stallion tumbled end over end, up the stairs, and through the portal. Just as the tip of his tail vanished through it, the explosion hit the machine and it shook apart like a set of precariously stacked books. The portal snapped shut with a crack of parted air.

There was dark… and quiet…

Daymare Sun stood mere minutes later, half of her face missing and one eyeball dangling out by its stalk. Snarling in pain and lighting her horn, she repaired herself with primitive healing magic. She sniffed animatedly, like a great dog. Dusk Shine was gone. She looked to one side, at the red smear of blood and ash on the floor. Hmph. All of them were gone now. Every last one. She threw her head back in a great and feral shriek of victory. The world was hers.

It was a good thing Dusk Shine had been thrown into another world entirely.

End of Part 1

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This project got aborted because I very suddenly realized it was just a bloodier, more hardcore version of Twilight and the Spartan Stallion. I don't want to write the same "fish out of water" story over and over. Dusk Shine was just going to end up being a soldier that distrusted Celestia, wanted to seduce five of the mane six to rebuild his herd, and would come to grips with his female counterpart, Twilight Sparkle. So... I'd already written about 90% of this story before. Sorry folks.

Comments

[Malefic Scholar]

was wondering what happened to this story, i had a feeling it would be scrapped. tis unfortunate though your reasoning is perfectly valid