Equestria's Ray of Hope

by The_Darker_Fonts

Intervention

The Matriarch opened her eyes, staring into Ray’s own two pupils. How had this boy become such a powerful presence in so short a time? It had taken thousands of years for her to finally accept her intellectual capacities, and in the matter of a year and a half, he had become something so formidable that even the most ethereal threats feared his might. The power, confidence, admiration, and trust she felt for him were reflected in his stoic gaze. They were prepared to take this fight, long before she had expected they would be able to and easily before the Spectre could ever have dreamed of the danger.

He reminded her, in that moment, of every hero of the past and present, the threatening courage and stoic righteousness they fought for. He was that exemplary character that mortals would come to canonize and praise for millenia. He was exactly what the Aspects had ever told her he’d be, the might of another universe combined with the perfection of this one, a strange unilateral force for sheer goodness. Against him, all evil would wither and all enemies would fall. Of that, she was confident now. Just as confident as he was in her.

Without a word, Ray jumped up between her two frontmost eyes and pulled himself onto her head. Their minds were connected, somehow, the same knowledge and purpose connecting them as if they were simply one soul. She understood his profound struggle now, the enemy within he had been facing alone for so long, the terribly dangerous predicament he was in. She knew she could help now, that together, with their combined lethality as weapons of the very Creators themselves, they could defeat this disparaging threat. Then it would be on to the next one, and the next and the next, like a pair of daggers, sure and sharp as the song they made while slicing through the air.

She moved quickly, stepping over gaping soldiers as they watched the first battle of the campaign prepare to be fought, the Matriarch running faster than she had in centuries. They would go beyond the rise, dozens of miles out, and face it in one of the many valleys far from the Fallen and her children. They would overcome this obstacle and leave it broken in a place where it could forever be forgotten and never challenge a mortal again. A surge of hope burned through her body, compelling the speed as the heat of the sun was forgotten in the face of their incredible mission and fateful destination.

After what felt like only a minute of running, Ray suddenly patted the top of her head with a hand, signaling her to stop. They were here.

The spot was the perfect one, a small divet between a ridge of hills as desolate and nondescript as every other one had been. She had no clue of how far they were from the camps, but that was certainly for the better. Their opposition was out here, a terrible haunting creature of darkness that did not deserve to be remembered even in its defeat. Its dark presence in this mortal world would be forgotten and its weak grip on the ethereal plain would be crushed, the very idea that it could ever have been victorious laughable to the Aspects.

It would suffer for challenging her spirit brother.

---

Ray felt the high wind as he knelt atop the Matriarch’s head, the rush of vengeance in his chest begging to be released. He kept one hand on her carapace, a physical connection to strengthen their spiritual one. This was the place.

“I know you are there, Spectre,” he shouted to the empty hills and valleys, his eyes slowly glancing around. It was in his head, but every other time it had appeared, it had come from the landscape surrounding him. “It’s time for you to stop being a coward. Show yourself. Let us finish the war you started.”

“Foolish mortals,” the response came almost instantly, booming over the hills and valleys. “Incapable of the least intelligence, worthy only of dust, and weak as the bones that support you.”

“We are not the ones who infect the mind and prey on the weary,” the Matriarch answered harshly. Ray let out a breath of relief. She heard it too. She fought with Ray against the Spectre now too.

“Show yourself and let us be finished,” Ray roared, pressing both hands against the Matriarch as he scanned the landscape.

Suddenly, the sky darkened as the sun itself became the abyssal darkness of the Spectre’s nightmarish realm. It dripped like ink from the sky as the land became black without the light, and the Spectre’s glowing, slitted eyes appeared in it. It did not say a word as it rose from a hill into the massive, humanoid being it had threatened him with before. The hills on either side of them became massive blades, a wave of sharp death that rushed towards them. Before they could slice through the pair, the Matriarch had spun her silk, swiftly taking a single string of it and using it like a whip to disperse the threat. It dissipated like smoke, but in an instant, the Spectre was attacking itself, its massive arms like sword blades swinging towards them.

Without a word, the World Weaver had produced more silk, a strand of it twice the height of Ray appearing in his hands as he ran up one of her feelers to meet the Spectre head on. It hesitated pausing in its attack as suddenly it was faced with the human and spider bother presenting her opalescent silk, the powers of the cosmos somehow warding it off. For a silent second, they remained like that, Ray on the tip of the Matriarch’s feeler, facing off with the Spectre not thirty feet from his face.

The World Weaver suddenly flicked him forward, Ray roaring with fury as he held up the silk to the Spectre. It flinched back in surprise, but the action was too late, Ray landing on its shoulder, broad as the crest of a hill. He rolled through the landing, the silk intertwining around him as he messily stood up. The Spectre slammed a hand down on him, but much like the waves of attack, it dissipated on contact with the Matriarch’s silk. It let out a gasp of surprise as Ray leapt across its shoulder, unwinding the silk.

The Matriarch had used Ray’s distraction to produce even more silk, hundreds of feet of the glowing string lighting the darkness in a rainbow of colors as it floated all about. The Spectre only realized this too late, the Matriarch rearing up and pouncing, landing against its mass and wrapping it in a deathgrip with her entire body. The ethereal silk wrapped around it as commanded, capturing the Spectre in a net of light. It began to disappear in a matter of seconds as the silk net tightened and dispersed the Spectre’s corrupted mists. Ray leapt and wrapped his own strain of silk around the Spectre’s neck, drawing its divided attention just moments before drawing the silk ring close, beheading it.

The entire body began to dissipate in an instant, Ray falling through the fading mists and into the Matriarch’s waiting grasp. He rolled through the landing and was tossed back onto the World Weaver’s back in one motion, strand of silk still tightly in hand as he glanced around warily. Indeed, as suspected, the simply act of destroying the Spectre’s massive body hadn’t done anything to truly damage it, as another, smaller, body formed distantly. Ray’s brow furrowed as he glared at the distant figure who to a defensive stance.

“You’ve chosen poorly, Ray,” the Spectre stated coldly. “You’ve aligned yourself with the most flawed creature in the cosmos and consider yourself akin to her. Do you not realize your worth? Have you demeaned yourself to such a point that you’d willingly be a pawn?”

“I’m not a pawn to anyone, Spectre,” he growled dangerously, tightening his grip on the silk. He felt a violent urge to use the string, but refrained, to shout, “You’re a fool to think I would be anything but the weapon I was designed to be, a weapon to defeat the likes of you.”

“A sword can be used to kill any soldier no matter who forged it,” the Spectre spat, though it remained still even as the Matriarch continued to produce more silk. It floated dozens of feet into the air and now spread hundreds of feet outwards like the branches of a wonderful, bright tree. “Even if you were designed to do the mundane and imperfect work of a mortal, you can still be used to fight the absolution you so terribly fear. I would not be so quick to judge me as evil if I were you. You know the promises I’ve made, the truth I’ve spoken. You cannot deny your desire for the power and mercy I can offer, the lives we can save.”

“And you can’t deny the lives you’ll take, the lies you’ve told, and the dangers you pose,” Ray replied gravely. “I’ve learned some profound and powerful truths as well, about myself, my purpose, and the Aspects. I know I belong now. That’s a truth you kept from me. You may have told me the truth, but it isn’t the reality of the situation.”

“You tempt death, boy,” the Spectre warned, looking panicked even from a distance. “You wish to disperse me, to rid me from your mind? It is not so easy as attacking me with the World Weaver’s strange magic.”

“You will never win against me, Spectre,” Ray spat confidently, lowering his silk to sneer at the Spectre. “Y’know, it’s strange how convinced I were that you were a threat. Alone, you are, but I was right. Whenever I’m with anyone I care about, your power is diminished to nothing. The Matriarch’s silk, it might be able to physically disperse you, but I’ve always been able to get rid of you when I have my friends and compatriots by my side. It was never about how strong you were. It was about how weak I was letting myself be. Your time with me is over, Spectre. You’ve lost.”

“Enough of this,” it growled, and suddenly the Matriarch was mist as well. Ray yelled in surprise as he fell through the black tendrils, reaching out for them before landing harshly on something solid. The air was knocked out of his and he felt his left shoulder break. Shouting painfully, he tried to pull himself up, only to be slammed down by an unseen wave of deep, dark presence. He wheezed, his lungs feeling flattened by the abuse, and the sharp pain from his damage blurred his mind. A single thought, however, cleared it all away.

The Matriarch was no longer with him, and neither was her silk. He was alone in this.

Before he could move, though, he was completely enveloped with the deep mist, everything but his face vanishing into the blackness. He felt a sting of panic as he remained immobile, in spite of his best efforts to move anything. He was held firmly, harshly by the Spectre as it materialized a body over him, looming with slitted, glowing purple eyes. It said nothing, simply staring angrily at the trapped human as if considering what his fate should be. Despite knowing he was a dead man for it, Ray grinned up at the Spectre. He had broken its patience long before it had broken him.

Narrowing its eyes wordlessly, Ray suddenly screamed in pain, unable to resist the sudden, indescribable agony that suddenly pierced his entire body. He felt millions of tendrils suddenly dig into him and begin pulsing through him, pumping pain into his veins. He screamed so loudly and in such pain that after only a few seconds, his voice died and he was left with his mouth agape, soundlessly screaming as sheer agony overtook his every sense. He tasted blood in his mouth, he heard his very cells being split, and saw nothing but the slitted eyes of the Spectre. He couldn’t think, his brain being consumed in this torturous state with nothing but pain.

He was blinded. Suddenly, there was nothing but brightness, and the sensation of falling took the place of his agony. So that was how he died, then. Ripped apart completely by the Spectre in its terrible, evil world. Not killed by the blade of a minotaur on a battlefield defending the Equestria, his friends, and their future. He had been torn to shreds fighting a being immeasurably powerful, beyond anything the two most powerful mortals could have ever taken on. How stupid of him. What had he even died for, he wondered.

To prevent a greater evil. The answer had somehow come from within, a resilient truth that Ray knew in his heart to be why he died. Well, heart may not be the right term if his body was no longer with him. Then again, perhaps it was the emotions trapped in his heart as a vessel that truly represented the organ. Either way, it was the right thing to die for. The minotaurs were his first enemy and threat, but the Spectre had been his foe to defeat, his Gordian knot he had attempted to unravel. Unfortunate that he hadn’t tried to cut it until it was wrapped around his neck.

“You will intervene in these matters no longer, idrasta,” a booming feminine voice suddenly commanded. A surge of incredibly powerful warmth filled him even as the light began to diminish a little. He was no longer falling, he noted, but rather lying down on something soft, but steady. He squinted slightly, realizing he could, in fact, see.

Tendrils of the Spectre lingered in the air, but they seemed thin and weak in the overwhelming white light. He felt a pair of hands, soft skin, on his bare arms, lifting him to his feet. Perplexed, he glanced to either side, and while saw the figures that carried him, he couldn’t understand what he saw. The lingering pain and fear from the Spectre’s torture, however, vanished in an instant, his arms, legs, chest, stomach, head, and even hands warmly… normal. He gasped, realizing that, perhaps, he had completely lost those to the Spectre.

“Sister, you should know better than to think I won’t fight you here and now as well for intervening with my work,” the Spectre drawled dangerously, his voice rippling with hatred.

“You are not our sibling, sykan,” the same voice answered angrily.

“You are not akin to us,” another suddenly added, also feminine.

“And you do not deserve to measured as such,” a third and final woman spat.

“We will banish you again,” the one to his right continued.

“And there won’t be more of this work of yours,” the one still holding him finished.

“Begone,” the voices of all five commanded, a pulse of power from the word a simple prelude compared to the immense tidal wave of bright, benevolence that followed. There was no noise, there was no scream. Ray finally understood what he was seeing right as the Spectre’s body disintegrated, the tendrils in the air becoming stiff like twigs before shattering into a million, miniscule pieces, all consumed in brightness. Something in him, the leeching presence of the Spectre in the back of his mind, suddenly vanished. The darkness left with the Spectre’s remaining tendrils, and for the first time in a very, very long time, he felt free.

Still, he didn’t know if he could relish this feeling.

“What is this,” he demanded, tearing himself away from the figures that held him. “Where am I? Who are you? Why are you fighting the Spectre?”

“Hm, yes, I see why he likes him,” one of the woman, the first speaker, noted. Her features finally made sense, his brain pieced back together completely. She was tall, like him, but much more slim and slender. Her skin was dark but glowing radiantly, giving it the strange look of being light. She wore a dress as loose as the wind that left her shoulders bare but fell past her feet. Suddenly, he understood very well who he was staring at.

“Oh my…” he began trailing off as a swirl of worry, awe, and fear filled him. “You’re the Aspects, aren’t you? You- you- you-”

The one to his left, a small woman who wore something very much similar to the other one reached out and touched his arm. In an instant, all of his fears and worries vanished.

“Thank you,” he breathed out with smile to the pretty woman. Then, realizing, he flinched back again and exclaimed, “What the hell was that?”

“Oh yes, very much a strangely inept one,” the woman agreed kindly, still smiling at him despite his distrustful questioning. “He would indeed love this one. Perhaps that's why he’s waited so long.”

“What the hell is all of this,” Ray demanded, composing himself enough to not crouch away like a scared rat. Still, he couldn’t keep his eyes from darting around, questioning what he saw. There was nothing but brightness in this place, like in a wayport or…

“You’re the Aspect of light, Celestia’s Aspect,” he quickly guessed, pointing at the first woman.

“Indeed, she is my mortal representative,” the woman agreed, taking a careful step forward. “And yes, wayports- or any sort of transportation through my light- is just a brief second of sight into my presence, as you suspect.”

Ray wanted to collapse back to the ground, to ask a million questions to himself and them, to think through what was going on, but he somehow managed to stay standing. He needed to do something, though, to take some charge of the situation in whatever little way possible, to collect at least a little more information. Starting as the small woman reached out to touch him again, he slowly extended his arm to allow her to touch it. Unexpectedly, she took it and intertwined her fingers with his. He would have found the move quite disturbingly intimate, but the pulses of mental comfort didn’t seem to cloud his judgment, but clear it a bit.

Staring at the woman for a second, he finally stated, “That makes you Friendship.”

She nodded the confirmation, squeezing his arm slightly. Taking a breath, he finished looking around at the five Aspects that surrounded him. “You’re Love,” he said to the other one that had helped lift him up. Then, to one that stood particularly far from the group with her arms crossed, her dress void blackness, he guessed with a raised brow, “Darkness, right? Not very discreet.”

“The shadows never are,” she responded with expected coldness.

“Pleasant, and you,” he asked, turning towards the only unnamed woman of the group. She was just as small as Friendship, but there was something… different about her. She was neither bright nor dark, loving or friendly. She was… nothing he could identify yet. “I can’t figure you out.”

“Of course not, and you won’t for a very, very long time,” she answered with strange apologeticness.

“You’re mortal. That means our purposes must be even more discreet and hidden than they are to each other,” Darkness explained simply. She then stared around at the brightness that enveloped them all. “There are untold numbers of us watching these events as there are participating in them. This might mitigate the vision of some of them… but there could also be those strictly negligent as well.”

“So I’ll be just as confused as if you hadn’t explained at all,” he guessed bluntly. “At least I know you actually do exist. And, apparently, are very much intrigued by my actions, to the point of saving me from the Spectre...”

He trailed off uncertainly, looking around at the other Aspects that stood around him. “I’m still alive, correct?”

“Yes,” Light answered with a strange smile. The Aspects only seemed to have strange iterations of mortal emotions. It was surprising to see them, certainly, but after the praise the Matriarch had rained down on them for so long, he honestly felt just as underwhelmed as overwhelmed. They were mysterious in what they were and what they planned to do, but already he was able to read into each of them simply from the way they were.

Light was bright and firm, Darkness was dark and mistrusting, Friendship friendly, Love kindly, and the other one… otherly. He didn’t know exactly what she was supposed to be, but given the strange way it kept acting, he knew it was normal for it. Her. Them? He couldn’t tell if the genders presented were truly inflections of the Aspects’ actual genders, or rather some elaborate ploy to familiarize him to them. Or tempt him, he realized with pursed lips. They were taking the shape of humans anyways.

“Well, if there’s nothing more you won’t tell me, I’ll be going,” Ray grumbled, slowly glancing around him. There was nothing but the Aspects to disturb the whiteness. He had hoped there was something simple to break him out of their grasp on his mind.

“You’re right, he would want him,” Darkness muttered, her blunt eyes staring at him deductively. “He’d be the only one as well. I vote to let the child go.”

“Very well, but I do enjoy his unique company,” Friendship sighed, stepping away from the human, looking halfway ashamed. “Mortals do have a strange habit of pulling on heartstrings.”

“Indeed, I agree very much with the sentiment,” Love added, though she already had her back to the human. She glanced over her shoulder, though, as she sleekly teased, “These strings are wire, though. Play them right and they’ll sound beautiful. The wrong amount of harshness, however, and they’ll cut your fingers.”

“Hell on earth,” Ray mumbled under his breath at the uncomfortable rate his heartbeat picked up.

“Hell on earth,” Light boldly repeated with a calm stare. “Such an accurate statement of self. That is what you are, isn’t it? Hell on solid ground, reaping souls and inflicting suffering on those deserving of it. Perhaps that should be your title, instead of lordling. As respectable as it is, it does not have that striking effect on the enemy you would want it, and it certainly seems more like a pet name to those you entrust with the moniker.”

“I won’t be taking advice from you, unfortunately,” Ray starkly rebuked. “While I do owe you my life, I’ve got a feeling that it’s thanks to you all that it was in danger to start. The Matriarch and Spectre have both gone on and on about this strange cosmetic, spiritual power I have somewhere inside me. I believe them, or at least, I know everything the Matriarch has told me is true, but there’s no way I’m going to blindly throw myself into religious fanaticism or whatever it means to follow you devoutly. I’m just trying to win this damn war and keep as many people as I love alive.”

“It would certainly help to have divine intervention,” the unnamed Aspect meekly pointed out.

“Yeah, that certainly helps clear up things,” he grumbled, giving the Aspect a sidelong glance. “I just barely got over one ethereal-yet-corporeal godlike being. I’m not looking to blindly falter to another one. The Spectre’s gone, right?”

“Banished, yes, but not killed,” Darkness suddenly confirmed, and based on the reaction of her sisters, she was not meant to divulge such information. She glared at the unnamed one, who scowled at her. “The child has every right to know after the torture he suffered at the beast’s might. The Spectre, as he likes to call himself, is an enigma of a creature that we have bound many times. His nature is corrosive, however, and his strength is on a constant upward trajectory. Even in this act, I doubt he was truly weakened, simply thrown out into the waves again. He’s been washing ashore quicker and quicker, and has become harder and harder to be rid of even in banishment. It used to be that I could confound him in darkness for decades on end, but he has grown beyond such simplistic traps.”

“I see,” Ray suddenly realized. Letting his anger and impatience ebb, he muttered, “This meeting, it wasn’t just to save my life and show off. It was for me to actually see some of the things the Matriarch has been telling me about. My purpose.”

“And how it can- and most likely will- wait,” Darkness concluded. “We have waited centuries for this day, knowing it may come about. Now that it has, we know the day we must utilize your unique skills can wait a few more years. It seems you are not tarnished by war and fatigue, but rather strengthened immeasurably by its many facets. I’ll be letting him go now.”

“Wha-” Ray began to ask, but in an instant, all was black.

Author's Note:

"This is not the the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

As always, questions, comments, and concerns are welcome and wanted!

Comments

[Bronyshot2020]

Wooo specter has been dealt with (tho by the sound of it temporarily but eh a win is a win) and these 5 seem a lot nicer.

[The_Darker_Fonts]

11552103
Yeah, not-enemies! Woo!

[jasha3558021]

Espero que se quede con la araña
Soy raro 🙃👍
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[The_Darker_Fonts]

11556015
Well, their love isn't romantic, if that's what you meant, but I think we'll be seeing a lot of them working together.