The Meeting Time Unwound

by Hail King Sombra

2. The Jokes on You, Tirek

“What is this?!?” Tirek demanded, staring agape at the male alicorn being protected by his unicorn mother. “How can there be yet another alicorn???”

Ignoring the power demon’s ranting, the TimeWitch turned to Shadow. “I trust your lesson in pinpointing exact points in alternate universe dimensional time travel went well, my darling colt?”

The stallion’s wings folded down slowly, the lacy, rune-encrusted edges shifting the arcane, current and futuristic time-travel symbolism in soft, fluttering patterns that came and went like the ethereal sparkle in a princess’s mane and tail. “Obviously, mother,” he said with a strange, aloof touch of gentle sarcasm.

The two ponies casual discussion helped the power demon refocus his thoughts until the shock and confusion banished in the light of revelation. “An Alicorn of Time!” he said softly, causing Nyx and her son Shadow to look up at him. The massive horned head loomed down again, peering hard at the dark ponies. “How is this possible when the father and mother are mere unicorns?”

Shadow took this objective observation as an insult. He stepped forward, placing himself slightly ahead of Nyx as if shielding her from the evil Tirek. “‘Mere unicorns? My father is an Umbrum...their King!” he snapped.

“Hrumph, King in absentia,” Tirek was not impressed by Shadow’s bluster. “But you maychance be correct about one thing, young one. When he filled your mother’s womb, the shadow-powered seed he left, combined with her time travel capability was indeed a most powerful mix!” His expression turned and neither dark pony liked its implication, but before either could do anything, Tirek’s magic unexpectedly shot out and ensnared Nyx, modulating its frequencies so the TimeWitch could not slip out of their reality to escape him.

Carried aloft in Tirek’s bubble-shaped magical grip, she was brought up close to his face. He leered at her. “I have never been one for courtship, but I will eventually consider leaving an heir to my desolate kingdom - and what better power to bestow upon him than the power of time?”

Tirek could easily see her distaste in the implication in his threat. Her black, normally expressionless eyes again glowed with magic, taking on a sudden blaze of intense hatred worthy of an Umbrum demon. She spit at him even though she could not hope to penetrate the magical bubble surrounding her. “I would never consent to lying with such as you!”

Tirek’s leer grew amused, making Nyx’s hide crawl. “Who said anything about consenting to it, TimeWitch?” His expression changed as a blur of white hot energy shot up from the ground, then a bolt of magic impacted the side of his face. Forgetting his captor for the moment, Tirek’s hand went to the impact point on his cheek, his eyes focusing on the alicorn that hovered above the ground in front of his mother. Shadow’s eyes were filled with pure hatred for the demon, as well as a steadily glowing furnace of light and time-fueled magic. The Umbrum hybrid stood upon a magically-infused circle of time runes glowing white-hot red, looking as if they were powered by pure lava from the very heart of Equus itself.

“Is this meant to impress me, child?” he admonished. “Your blast had less impact of a fly upon my - ” Tirek’s gloating died off as Shadow’s horn lit and a single rune made of ice cold blue fire shot forth, landing upon the demon’s cheek.

“You forget my child’s mastery over time,” Nyx muttered, baring her fangs in a wicked grin.

“AhhhARGHHH!!!!” Tirek screamed as the Rune of Future dug into his flesh, igniting the impact point of Shadow’s horn’s blast. His body’s very cells aged centuries in seconds, withering skin, then flesh, digging their way to the bone, spreading until a horrid, gaping wound spread like a flesh-eating plague.

Tirek dropped the spell holding Nyx captive. The mare screamed in surprise as she dropped towards the ground a hundred feet below. Time Shadow was already diving after her seconds before she began falling and soon had her draped safely across his back. Recasting the rune circle before them, he landed upon it rather hard, tumbling them both.

“Sorry, mother,” her grown colt apologized as he found his hooves again, standing.

“Yes, you do need to work on your landings, darling,” Nyx groaned, her legs flailing out, nearly kicking him as she struggled to right herself enough to regain her footing. Once she was safely up, Shadow teleported them back to the cliff overlooking the agonized power demon’s writhing body. He was dangerously close to crashing into their perch, making them both tense up and prepare to flee, just in case.

The mare watched the screaming Tirek a moment, then glanced down to read the time streams as if the sight before her was of no concern. She frowned. “A point of nexus, child. I would have thought it a foregone - “ Nyx looked up at her son, raising an eyebrow in surprise.

The expression upon the alicorn’s face concerned her. Her own dispassion at the sadist way the creature was dying was to be expected, however, she cocked her head in puzzlement, having never seen this side of her colt’s temperament before.

“Shadow, that’s enough,” Nyx said evenly, cutting through her son’s pleasure in seeing Tirek in agony. “His death will do worse damage to the time streams, my foal.”

Just as quickly as it had appeared, Shadow came down quickly from his mirth. As if coming back to reality, he judged the red beast had suffered enough for the threat to his beloved mother. Concentrating, his magic reached out and pulled the time worms from Tirek’s flesh, taking a last satisfaction from the fact the demon screamed at their extrication as badly as he had at their feasting upon his flesh.

After a moment of recovering, Tirek focused on his twin tormentors with newly borne hatred. “You will pay for that, whelp!” he raged at Shadow and grabbed Nyx yet again in retaliation. He acted swiftly, opening his maw as if to eat the mare held helpless before him.

Shadow ascended yet again, hovering eye level with the creature. Nothing would give him more pleasure than to refocus the worms into Tirek’s heart this time...

A large sharp-nailed finger waved at him. “Ah ah, young one. Do that again and I suck the very breath from your mother’s body, along with her powers.”

Shadow’s rage subsided. He and Nyx traded looks, but instead of fear or anger, they merely waited for the inevitable. Of course the demon would suck power from the TimeWitch whether the alicorn attacked or not - they both knew that as a foregone conclusion. And they knew exactly what would happen if he did.

They both looked forward to it, in fact.

True to his duplicitous nature, Tirek activated his power-stealing breath, focusing it not on the TimeWitch, but upon her alicorn son, planning on stealing his power so quickly he would not have time to defend himself. The irony of such a strategy from the time-bound beast was not lost on either of his victims and both smirked as soon as their attacker made his intentions clear to them.

Something was wrong - he knew it instantly as their combined, hungered-after powers entered his body. The incoming force of time magic was nothing like had Tirek expected. There was no thought of trying to cut off the spell, because time had ceased to move in a linear, straight line for him. It existed all at once and nowhere at once. He couldn’t scream, couldn’t move, yet its force froze every cell of his body and tore it to atoms at the same time repeatedly. It aged him to dust and rebirthed him in an endless cycle of physical agony untempered by Nyx’s lifetime of learned disciplines over the temporal arts and Shadow’s natural-born mastery.

Shadow made certain to be by his mother’s side as the suspension bubble collapsed this time, carrying her safely out of the temporal field their combined, stolen powers had trapped the power demon within. The two watched silently as Tirek’s gigantic body aged to dust and rebirthed continuously.

The TimeWitch watched the creature burn in the fires of her power’s time-curse and her son’s more advanced, natural-borne gifts. The energies Tirek had consumed from her body had been the match to a flamethrower of chronoparticles in Shadow’s alicorn magic and were thusly unstoppable by her even at her strongest, most controlled magicks. Her lip twitched, finally sneering in annoyance. “Well, now the dumb brute has done it. I cannot stop this,” she announced. When there was no reply, she glanced at her stallion-child. He was watching the hideous impending death with a cold, expressionless dispassion she once again found oddly distasteful on the face of her otherwise handsome child.

A gentle hoof on his withers broke his concentration from the never-ending death taking place again and again and again before them. “Shadow? Shadow, my foal. We were merely to slow him down so time could resynch back into its proper place. This cannot happen.”

“I know mother,” he said levelly, without a hint of revulsion or remorse. “I don’t care.”

Nyx smiled, ignoring the hideously graphic scene before them and leaned in to kiss Shadow’s cheek. “I remember your father saying those words to me over and over until I convinced him one day he did care.” She softly nuzzled her colt under the chin. “You are so like him!” her breath blew into his dark coat, nickering softly, warm and maternal.

He leaned in to his mother’s neck in turn, even laughing when she blew raspberries against his fur as she had done when he was a foal. Her affectionate gestures broke Shadow out of his trance of detached malice. Blinking, he slowly nodded ascent, reaching through the temporal bubble, reversing time around the trapped creature so the field safely collapsed and he was freed.

The demon cantered backwards through all the motions in his interaction with himself and Nyx, trapped in a new field of reversed time. They watched him as destructive magic was sucked back into his horn as he stomped over the land backwards to a point before Nyx had appeared to him on the cliff side. Shadow looked to his mother, who nodded, then leaned in to whisper something to him. The alicorn nodded and ceased the flow of reverse time, waiting a few extra seconds as the rest of the world around them resumed life and breath. Only then did the time alicorn banish the bubble and teleport him and his mother away as Tirek resumed forward motion. The beast carved a path of destruction through the land of Equestria as if nothing had happened - which now with the flow of time back on its proper course, he carved a wide swath of destruction for as far as the eye could see and in the end saw that it was good.