And I Hope You Die

by Aquaman

Dark Forever

Cozy Glow fought with animalistic rage, slashing and stabbing with all her strength and trying to make every move a killing blow. A normal pony would have tired out quickly, especially after Flurry kept ducking around wayward swipes and parrying closer ones with magical shields spawned only for the milliseconds she needed them. But even before being supercharged with stolen magic, Cozy Glow hadn’t been a normal pony. And now, with who knew how much power coursing through her, she only got faster, stronger, and more furious with each unsuccessful attack.

“Come on!” she spat during a brief lull between chains of attempted blows. “Even for you, this is pathetic!”

Flurry didn’t react, except to sidestep Cozy’s next swing and send her flying past her with an extra push of magical force—only enough to trip her up, nowhere near enough to hurt her. When Cozy whirled around again, her face was cherry-red, and her sweat-sodden hair hung stringy and low over her eyes.

“You fucking coward,” she seethed, summoning two more shards from the frozen space above her head. “Unlimited power, wasted on a shallow, snivelling, useless piece of shit like you!”

With a roar, Cozy sent all three shards flashing across the room, one after the other. Flurry rolled away from the first, cocked her head so the second just passed by her ear, and split the third in two when it was just inches in front of her eyes, each piece glowing red-hot from the arcane force that had sliced through it. With the same tendril of magic, she pulled a fresh shard down from above and brought it crashing against the one Cozy had thrust towards her throat, sending both clattering harmlessly away.

“I used to think you’d be different,” Cozy hissed. “I thought you’d be anything other than a figurehead hoarding magic she was too terrified to use. Well, congratulations, Princess. You’re just like your mother, and every other feckless waste of wings and horns before her. Short-sighted. Impotent. Worthless!”

With every successive insult, Cozy swung at Flurry harder, first with more shards and then her bare hooves. Each time, Flurry took another step back, keeping herself just out of Cozy’s reach. Finally, her tail touched solid crystal, and Cozy’s pupils vanished beneath a white magical haze. Flurry flared her wings and shot up off the ground, and Cozy’s glowing hooves crashed into the wall, leaving twin craters six inches deep.

Flurry twisted in midair and landed on all fours facing Cozy, bracing for another attack that, for a moment at least, didn’t come. Cozy still faced the wall, crumbling chunks of crystal showering off her forelegs, her wings and shoulders shuddering from recently expended effort.

“I wanted you to be different,” Cozy said, her voice shaking with fury. She pulled herself free of the wall and turned around, deep furrows of loathing etched across her face. “I did everything I could to make you different, but you just wouldn’t listen. I could do anything to you, to everyone you care about, and it wouldn’t matter. You wouldn’t fight it. Not in a way that matters.”

Cozy took a step forward. The floor shook as her hoof made contact with it, vibrating with the sheer amount of energy pulsing through it in increasingly bright flares. “I could kill everypony in this city, cut their throats and pull out their hearts and rip them limb from limb, and you wouldn’t stop me. You’d lock me up, you’d throw away the key, but you wouldn’t stop me. I’d find a way out, and I’d do it all over again.”

Every step was a bit faster than the one before—a bit brighter. “Millions of lives in your hooves, and you’d waste every one of them for an ideal you can’t even explain. You’d let a pony like me into your life, into your home, just to watch her destroy everything you love through depths of cruelty you can’t even imagine. All because you won’t do what a real leader would’ve done years ago.”

Cozy was a few yards—a few feet—inches away. Her hooves were barely touching the ground anymore.

“All because you won’t–”

Comments

[Cerulean Blue]

Cozy is Pure fury.