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Monument

Starshine pulled herself out of the rubble. She literally willed herself out of it, moving like a puppet pulled by strings rather than the way any normal creature would have moved. She decided she didn't particularly like moving like that as her hooves touched the ground again, and she stared at the remaining creatures in front of her.

Her armour was pristine. Spotless even after she'd been sent through a building, without a scratch or a dent. Her own body wasn't doing worse either, aside from a slightly messy mane everything else was undamaged. But she'd still gotten hurt. It was weird. New. It made her understand some of the things that had been in her head.

She could feel her hooves against the ground. The cold, but not too cold crystal below her, smooth, very slightly slippery. She could feel the breeze against her coat, and the Sun's warmth against her skin. She could feel the air on the inside of her lungs, and she wondered if ponies ever noticed and felt that, or if they were too used to it.

She felt her heart beat. The blood rushing through her arteries and back through her veins. It didn't move as much as she'd imagined it would. But another heartbeat came to keep it going, then another, then another. Little by little, it faded into the background of her attention. She brought a wing to her eyes to shield herself from the light and the way it bounced against the buildings around her.

Then she focused on the creatures. They were staring at her, pacing from side to side, waiting for something. They'd been ponies at one point. They weren't anymore, and she was. But Twilight still had said she preferred incapacitating over killing, and Starshine thought she could work with that. She tilted her head left and right, worked out the kinks in her neck with a few pops, then aimed her horn at one of the two. Slightly lower than that, actually.

They were rather resistant to magic. That didn't mean magic couldn't be used to stop them, if one was creative enough. A single flash of energy darted from the tip of her horn and landed at the foot of the creature in a shower of sparks. Before the former pony had a chance to react properly, magic crystal-like formations began to sprout out of nothing and envelope it. It tried to drag itself away once its legs had been encased, but failed to move much before the rest of its body was fully captured too.

The second creature's first instinct was to move to the first and bash with its limbs against the crystals. Much to Starshine's displeasure, that single blow was enough to send cracks through her creation. But before the monster could deliver a second one, a wave of power from her horn sent it careening backwards through another house. She then took off, pushing herself into a flown sprint, reinforced and repaired the crystal around the first creature as she passed by it and landed in front of the second, ready to face it down properly.

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