Dominant Species

by DarkPhoenix

The Beginning of the End

Chapter 2: The Beginning of the End

Twilight Sparkle stood on a hill between Ponyville and Canterlot. Next to her were her friends, each wearing their respective Element necklace. She blinked as the wind blew her mane into her face. She knew without looking that behind her were the two princesses, Luna and Celestia.

None of that was of any particular consequence, or really even worth mentioning. What made this gathering special was the fact that in front of her stood the combined ranks of the Equestrian Royal Guard and the Lunar Guard. Hundreds of ponies, resplendent in their armor, formed ranks in a show of military force that had not been seen in the peaceful country in over a thousand years.

It was night, but the entire scene was lit by an eerie glow, like that from a fire. But there was no fire to be seen. The countryside was fine, neither of the cities had flames leaping up from them, even the Everfree forest was calm for once. It was as if the world held a collective breath.

The cause behind the military presence, the glow across the land and her presence, hung in the sky. One month ago, Princess Luna had spotted a light in the sky. Over the course of that time, the light had grown closer to Equus with each passing day Now that light was hovering just overhead. and the sole reason for Equestria’s near panic.

At first glance, it looked like a large ball of fire, almost like the sun. But unlike the sun, this could be directly stared at, something that Twilight had done a lot of. At first with a telescope, then with her naked eye as it grew closer. Details could be made out, things like how it wasn’t quite solid. It was a series of interlocking pieces, similar to a puzzle. The glow was coming from gaps between those pieces. What was hidden inside this giant ball, nopony knew. But it was the size of Canterlot itself. Occasionally a tongue of flame would pierce the gaps.

The surface was studded with towers. They reminded her of the swords that some of the guard carried. They stuck out from the ball with no discernable pattern. Yet unlike the rest of the ball, they glowed with an inner blue light.

The “thing,” Twilight could honestly not come up with a better word, in any language, to describe it, had been hovering in the same spot for a day now. And for a day, the Guard had camped out beneath it, ready for anything. For a day, she and her friends had stood, prepared to unleash the Elements themselves, should the need arise.

All of Equestria was watching. Indeed, eyes from all over Equus itself were watching, waiting to see what would happen. As the thing had hung there, small pieces, not large enough to be the puzzle pieces, but a piece of a piece, would fall off. Leaving a flaming trail behind it, it would fall to the ground. So far the damage had been minimal, with Guard unicorns deployed all around to erect shields when a piece should fall.

“Is it going to do anything?” came the exasperated voice of Rainbow Dash. It was the forty-sixth time she had asked that, each one coming in quicker succession than the last. The pegasus had never been one to sit still for long, so spending an entire day standing on a hill was getting to her.

“Indeed. All this dust is clinging to my coat. And I haven’t washed my mane or tail in...” Rarity thought for a moment before gasping. “Why it’s been over a day. Twilight, darling, you simply must let me remedy that.”

“Maybe the thing only wants cupcakes? Or cake? Ooh, I should throw it a ‘Welcome to Equestria’ party! I wonder what it eats? Does it even eat? What if it opens up and yummy things fall out.” Pinkie drew in a breath. “Is it a pinata? Or a giant oven with all the fire inside?” She was hopping up and down in place as she spoke.

“Pinkie, calm down. You can’t just offer it something to eat before we’ve even met it,” Applejack, ever the voice of reason, said. Her thick country accent doing well to hide any fear. But Twilight could tell that even she was afraid. They all were.

“Oh dear, I do hope that the animals are okay. I worry that Angel won’t be able to handle them all by himself. Maybe... maybe I should go and check on them?” Fluttershy pawed the ground with a hoof, her face hiding behind her mane.

They all started talking at once, each of them trying to come up with some reason as to why they should leave. Twilight ground her teeth together in frustration. She didn’t want to be here any more than they did, but the Princesses had called them together.

She turned her head, looking behind her at the two tall, regal figures standing just shy of the lone tree at the top of the hill. Both of them wore matching frowns, staring up at the intruder into their sky. To see her mentor and friend without her usual serene smile was more unnerving to Twilight than anything else. No matter what, Celestia had always had a smile.

“Girls,” she said, loud enough that her friends stopped arguing and turning a few heads of the closest soldiers.. “The Princesses called us out here for a reason. I know that you don’t want to be here, but we have to trust in them.” Her gaze returned to the object in the sky. “I’m sure that something will happen soon which will answer our questions.”

They quieted down at that, each of them removing themselves to their own thoughts. But it wouldn’t last long. Twilight knew that soon, each of them would be asking to leave again.

Just as the mental timer in her head reached zero, meaning that Rainbow would ask her question for the forty-seventh time, something happened. The pieces of the ball, which had been falling randomly, or at least at a rate which she could not predict, broke off. Suddenly, it went from one piece, to dozens. The scattered clouds in the sky were lit orange as they flew away from the thing. Twilight watched them as they screamed through the air, leaving trails of smoke in their wake.

The rest of the assembled ponies watched as well, heads turning to follow the pieces as they scattered. Twilight could hear the officers trying to get their charges to focus, but she was absorbed in watching the spectacle.

As the pieces neared the ground, she saw brief flashes of light as they impacted shields. Most of the pieces were caught by unicorns, though some of them fell on places that did not have protection. Several explosions, mushroom clouds of flame and smoke leaping into the air, came from the Everfree Forest. A few more from the open spaces between cities. Once this was over, Cloudsdale would be busy putting out fires.

A gasp from somepony drew Twilight’s eye back to the ball. One of the spikes, the one on the bottommost point of the ball, was glowing an even fiercer blue, drowning out the orange of the flames around it. It looked almost like a unicorn’s horn as it gathered magic for a spell.

The glow got brighter and brighter until the spike shot out from the ball, far faster than any of the pieces that had fallen so far. It descended, slicing through the clouds and air without any effort. A coruscating blue trail was left in its wake.

Twilight tracked it, her mind quickly calculating. She gasped when she realized that not even the combined might of all the unicorns arrayed in front of her would be able to stop the thing. And it was going to impact in the field just beyond the Guard.

The object hit the ground, a plume of dirt spreading around it. The ground shook and the blast of displaced air knocked everyone off of their hooves, flinging soldiers, elements, and princesses about like leaves in a storm. The sound was louder than any thunderbolt, rolling across the hills and valleys, leaving ponies ears’ ringing as far away as Appaloosa and Las Pegasus. To Twilight, it sounded like some giant had clapped its hands over her ears, leaving her temporarily deaf.

She let out a groan that she was unable to hear, her eyes closed from when she had been picked up and thrown. She slitted her eyes, seeing the she was lying in the grass, no longer at the top of the hill but just behind it, part way down. A splash of color next to her let her know that Dash was there.

She looked around, seeing her friends scattered around her, the Princesses had somehow managed to stay at the top of the hill. She got to her hooves, her legs shaking.

“Is everypony all right?” she asked, but she could barely hear herself over the ringing in her ears, so there was no chance that her friends heard her. Instead, she got their attention, each of them slowly getting up. She nodded her head, holding a hoof facing up, the universal sign for agreement.

Getting hooves up in return from everypony, they made their way back up the hill, cresting the rise to see what lay beyond. What met their eyes was a shock.

Sticking up out of the ground was indeed what looked like a large sword, glowing blue. It had dug itself into the earth, sticking straight up. Little bolts of energy or magic ghosted across it, like miniature lightning bolts.

The Guard had suffered worse than the elements as they had been closer to the impact site. Twilight could see the ones who were on their hooves milling about in confusion. She could see some of them shouting, but it was unlikely that anyone could hear them. She spotted her brother, Shining Armor, picking himself out of a bush that he had been tossed into. The branches had cut him and he was bleeding from a dozen minor wounds, the red contrasting with his pristine white coat.

She stopped next to Princess Celestia, watching the scene in front of her. The ringing was fading, bringing with it the absent sounds of the world. The cries of ponies who had been wounded in the blast, the barking orders of leaders.

Feeling something gently caress her side, she looked over to see an alabaster wing draped over her. Following the curve of the appendage, she beheld her mentor glancing down at her. “Ready yourself, Twilight,” Princess Celestia said in a calm voice.

Twilight nodded. “For what?”

“For what will happen next,” she replied cryptically, not taking her eyes off the glowing object.

Twilight swallowed, her mentor’s words echoing in her mind, before she tore her eyes away from the Alicorn and back to the sky. Where the sword-spike had once been, now there was a hole in the ball, a hole that was leaking fire. The flames dripped through, more like molten steel than fire.

A great cracking sound, audible even over everything else, rang out. Rents formed between the pieces of the ball, separating and moving them. They shifted and ground together, moving about as two distinct lines began to form.

From inside the ball, all that could be seen was fire, burning bright and hot. Roiling and rolling around, a living inferno. The pieces on the outside had been muting the light, but now it was spilling out, illuminating the tableau in front of her.

The grating, cracking noise continued as the ball changed. From the two lines, shapes emerged. At first it was hard to tell what they were, but as they forced their way from beneath the flames, they became more distinct. Twilight felt her mouth drop open as she beheld the single largest pair of wings she had ever seen.

The wings came out of the ball, expanding fully open for but a brief moment. They looked nothing like the wings of a pegasus or griffon for there were no feathers. Instead it was closer to those of a dragon’s, with leathery skin stretched over a frame of bones. But they were impossible; they were much too large. A quick calculation and she realized that the wings themselves, from tip to tip, were larger than the entire city of Canterlot. There had never been a dragon that big.

The wings extended up and over the ball. The flames visible inside burned brighter, as if whatever was attached to those wings was gathering energy. Twilight stared intently at the object, holding her breath. The whole world was silent, even the cries of the wounded had ceased.

As the ball grew brighter and brighter, a thought struck Twilight. This thing, it’s like an... egg. Or a cage...

No sooner had the implications of such a thing taken root did the ball explode. Huge pieces of it hurtled outward in all directions. They trailed smoke and fire, screaming towards the ground.

The first one to impact struck the mountain above Canterlot. The ground trembled and in a flash of light the entire mountain grew shorter. Boulders and pieces of the mountain rained down on the city as several more bits of the ball hit both the mountain and the city. Explosions lit up the once pristine city as whole buildings vanished in the flames. One piece struck a tower of the castle, plowing through it and continuing on to strike the gardens. The tower wobbled for a moment before gravity took hold and it careened down to crash into the main building, punching a hole in the roof of the throne room.

More pieces of the ball struck the ground all around them. Some drove deep into the earth, dust and smoke and fire pluming out, choking the air. Others hit and then skipped, leaving a flaming trail for upwards of a mile. Buildings, trees, nothing could stand in the way of the destruction. The pieces broke through them all and kept going until finally stopping somewhere.

The world around them was burning from a multitude of fires. Great craters and trenches marred the ground. Canterlot and Ponyville were on fire. Twilight was too far away to see clearly, but she was sure that already ponies would be trying to put out the flames, help the wounded, and, a distant part of her mind told her, clear the dead. She hoped that Spike was all right.

The dead. That thought stopped her. Given the destruction that had just happened, it was inevitable that ponies had just died. She even knew some of them since she knew most everypony in Ponyville. No matter what happened from here on out, already her life had been changed. The revelation struck her like a buck to the face.

Her home was in flames, ponies she knew were injured or dead. Her mind worked to comprehend what had just happened. She had seen death before, it was a natural part of the pony lifecycle, but it had always been peaceful, never so abhorrently violent like this. She just couldn’t comprehend what had happened, or why.

She tore her eyes from her burning home back to the sky. Where the ball had once been, now there was twinkling, fluttering remnants of the once contained flames. It reminded her of a firework, how the little pieces struggled to stay lit as their fuel was consumed. If it wasn’t so hellish looking, it would be pretty.

Inside the twinkles was the thing attached to the wings. Her initial guess of a dragon was indeed correct. A huge dragon hovered there. It even looked similar to some of the dragon breeds on Equus: a long neck with a sharp angular head, short arms ending in clawed digits, a large body, two longer, thicker back legs, and a lengthy tail ending in spikes. But the difference between this dragon and the ones she had seen pictures of in her books was the size. This dragon alone was the size of Canterlot.

The dragon looked down at them, its eyes glowing orange, seeming like they contained fire instead of actual eyes. It opened its mouth and roared at the assembled ponies. It was a wordless roar, a primal scream of fury. The noise it made was near deafening and caused more than one soldier to drop to the ground, hooves pressed tightly to their ears. Twilight folded her ears to her head, but she could not tear her eyes from the spectacle in the sky.

No sooner had the roar ended did the dragon move. With a single, swift wing beat that propelled it forward, it flew over their heads, Twilight straining her neck to follow it. It circled the field once.

When it made it back to its original position, it did a quick barrel roll. Hundreds of little balls of fire burst into existence around it, following it as it headed straight for Canterlot. It moved far too fast for anypony to do anything but watch. It flew across the city, crossing the entirety of Canterlot in a few seconds. What happened next, Twilight knew she would see it every time she closed her eyes.

When the balls of fire crossed over the city, they peeled off, weaving through the air to impact the city itself. Where each one struck, another explosion sprung forth. The whole city vanished behind a wall of flames and smoke.

Twilight could only watch as the city she was born in, the place where she grew up, where her parents still lived, was consumed by fire. The entire city burned, whole districts had been leveled in the span of a few seconds. Her mind tried to calculate how many ponies were affected, how many she had just watched die, but she squelched that quickly.

Canterlot, the seat of power for Equestria, and arguably, for all of Equus, was a feat of combined engineering and magic. Great foundation stones, carved by pony masons in a past age and placed by Celestia herself, held up the various platforms the city rested on, allowing for it to be constructed on the side of a mountain. Those stones had lasted for over a thousand years. Now, one of them cracked and gave out, sending what looked like the market district tumbling down the mountain, chunks of buildings breaking off from each other.

Twilight’s mane was blown across her face as the great dragon once more flew overhead. She forced herself to look at it, tearing her eyes from the spectacle that was Canterlot falling. It now made great circles of the field.

“Twilight!” Celestia’s voice rang out over the sound of enormous wings slicing through the night air. “Use the Elements Twilight!”

A blue blur streaked past her. “I shall keep the creature busy,” Luna said. Twilight saw that she was carrying twin blades made of what seemed like pure moonlight.

Hearing Princess Celestia’s voice snapped Twilight out of her reverie. She shook her head. They could deal with what had just happened once the threat was gone. Now was the time to unleash everything they could to stop this dragon before it could harm anypony else.

“Girls,” she shouted. “Form up!” She looked around, seeing that they were all in shock. Fluttershy was crying while everypony else had their mouths hanging open, staring at the flaming wreckage that used to be Canterlot.

“Girls, we have to stop this thing before it can hurt anypony else.” She used her magic to give each of her friends a short shove. She would apologize later, but for now she needed them focused. “Come on, we need to use the elements against it.”

They each snapped back, transferring their gaze to her. They all nodded, taking up their positions around her. This was a time for action, mourning could come later.

The great dragon summoned more fireballs, this time unleashing them upon the soldiers below. Twilight watched in horror as each fireball weaved around, seeming to track its target.

Ponies scattered, running in all directions. The fireballs curved through the air, following them. Where each one hit, a pony vanished into an explosion. Some unicorns stood their ground, putting up shields. But even a single fireball was too powerful, breaking through the shields and exploding on the shocked unicorns huddling inside. Detonations rocked the field as the Royal Guard was decimated.

Twilight saw her brother turn and put up a shield. Shield spells were his special talent, nopony other than perhaps the Princesses could match him. He alone had held off the entire Changeling army for over an hour before they broke through.

But it seemed that even he was no match to the power of this dragon. First one fireball exploded on his shield, then another. He held out for a moment, but the third one proved too much and his purple shield shattered. His horn lit up as a fourth fireball flew straight at him, but before he could unleash whatever it was he was planning, Twilight’s view of him was hidden as the fireball detonated.

Twilight gasped at seeing that. She hoped, prayed that he had teleported away somewhere. He had to be okay, he was her BBBFF. Her mind refused to accept even the possibility of his death. She felt her eyes burn as tears flowed forth. Shining Armor could not be dead, he just couldn’t. As the explosions faded, not a single body could be seen, as if the ponies had been vaporized.

The dragon roared once more just as Princess Luna reached it. Twilight snapped her gaze back to it, an unfamiliar feeling welling up inside her: rage. She had been annoyed before, she had even been angry, but never before had she felt the all-consuming passion of rage. How dare this creature, this thing, arrive on her world and attack them without warning. She wanted nothing more than to charge the thing and tear it apart with her bare hooves.

As she gathered magic in her horn, preparing to teleport to the creature’s back, she felt a nudge on her side. She looked over to see Fluttershy, her eyes swimming in tears, tear streaks smudging her coat. Her shy, demure friend simply shook her head.

That snapped Twilight back to reality. Engaging the dragon like that would only end in her death. And without her, the Elements wouldn’t work. Right now, she had one thing that she needed to do. She had to believe in Shining Armor, that he wouldn’t simply let himself die like that, that he had gotten away somewhere. For now, she needed to concentrate on the Elements. In the back of her mind, she made a mental note to find the biggest hammer she could and take it to the dragon when all was said and done.

Several fireballs streaked towards them, but a blue shield sprung up, blocking them. Twilight turned around to see Princess Celestia, her horn alight with power. “Hurry Twilight,” she said through gritted teeth. Already a dozen fireballs had expended their power against the shield. Cracks started forming in the shield and a section of it gave way. Princess Celestia’s horn glowed brighter and the shield sealed itself once more, protecting everypony inside.

Twilight closed her eyes, concentrating on the power of Magic that resided in her. She could feel it flowing through her, granting her strength. She could do this. She had to do this. She grasped that power and tried to draw it forth. At first it resisted, but one by one she could feel the strength of her friends helping her. She could tell who each power belonged to based on how it felt. Loyalty felt cool, like jumping in Ponyville Lake on a warm summer day. Laughter came next, a feeling of boundless energy coursing through her, leaving a slight taste of sugar in her mouth. Generosity and Kindness came almost at the same time, Generosity was refined in nature while Kindness counteracted Loyalty, warming her up. Last to arrive was Honesty, which was always the hardest as it felt like she got bucked in the side.

With the combined power of her friends, she was able to grasp Magic, pulling it to the surface. Magic felt like pure energy, it made her coat stand on end, her mane blow about in a breeze that only she could feel.

She opened her eyes, the world suddenly being thrown into clarity. She could see Princess Luna as she darted about the creature, hurling bolts of magic at it and striking with her swords, always flitting away before it could retaliate. With the clarity provided by Magic, Twilight could sense that Luna was only annoying the creature, that there was no way she alone could hope to kill it, much less damage it.

Twilight felt her hooves leave the ground as the elements continued to course through her. The sensations and experiences provided by each one conflicted and contrasted. She always felt odd for a while afterwards every time she used them.

With the power provided her by Magic, she gathered up the other elements, corralling them and focusing their power into one single, solid force. She directed the energy, getting it ready. Her eyes glowed white with barely contained power.

As soon as she felt that they were ready, she made to unleash the power of the elements. Her crown glowed, briefly outshining even the fires burning around them. Her eyes focused in on the dragon. The fireball storm had abated just as the shield surrounding them faded, Princess Celestia having used almost all of her power.

Just as she released all the power of the Elements, a cry rang out over the field. Princess Luna had been caught in a forepaw of the dragon and she was struggling to free herself. But each of its claws was the size of a building, there must’ve been an enormous amount of strength behind each one. The dragon raised its other paw, a single digit extended. The digit glowed and a long line of solid flame formed at the end. Before the Princess could react, the dragon speared her with the flame.

Unfortunately, due to the power of Magic, Twilight could see everything. The flame pierced Princess Luna’s chest, extruding out her back. She looked surprised, like she hadn’t been expecting that. The flame spike was just marginally thinner than the Alicorn. With a puff the flame was extinguished.

A brief moment passed where nothing happened. Then, with a gush, blood poured out of the wound. Bits of silver tinged the fluid. The dragon dropped her. Princess Luna fell from the sky, not moving, her lifeblood flowing with her.

Twilight was horrified, but it was too late to do anything. Already the familiar rainbow of power streaked towards the dragon. It turned its head, regarding the bolt of magic and energy.

The Elements struck true, impacting the chest of the dragon. It roared in fury as the power surrounded it. It tried to brush it off, but there was nothing it could do.

Twilight expected the dragon to be transformed into stone, the same as Discord had been. Instead, something different happened. As the dragon roared once more, rainbow colored pieces began to form, to appear. Soon a ball was forming, just like the one that had held the thing but minutes before.

The dragon folded its wings around itself as the ball closed in on itself, each piece a different color of the rainbow. No sooner had the ball closed did rainbow glyphs appear in the air; six glyphs, each one a color of one of the elements. What the glyphs meant or stood for, Twilight didn’t know. She had never seen them before and in all her research into the Elements, nothing like this had even been mentioned.

The glyphs started being parallel to the ground, then together rose up. Yet as they were nearly standing straight up, an orange light started leaking out of the ball. Just before the glyphs were ready, the ball exploded. The dragon hovered in the air, wings standing straight up, forepaws raised, mouth open.

Twilight was dropped back to the ground. The Elements had failed. The dragon was too powerful, it had broken free of the strongest attack they had, the strongest attack in all of Equus. Even now it was gathering more energy, a flaming ball gathering above it, like a miniature sun.

The dragon gathered more and more energy, the sphere quickly growing in size. In a matter of moments it would reach them, and there was nothing they could do. They had failed, and now they were going to die. Just like Canterlot, just like the Royal Guard, just like Princess Luna. And just like her brother.

As the hellfire expanded, Twilight felt the familiar tingle of magic surround her. She looked around, seeing each of her friends trapped inside a white column of magic. The looks on their faces were ones of shock. First Fluttershy, then Pinkie, then the rest vanished.

Twilight recognized the spell as a teleport spell, and that color of magic could only belong to one pony. She turned around, seeing Princess Celestia’s horn alight once more, the same white glow surrounding it. She also noticed that the ceremonial neckpiece that she always wore was lying smashed on the ground. Held in one outstretched hoof was the large purple gem that was inset into the jewelry.

Princess Celestia tossed the jewel towards Twilight, whose horn lit up as she caught it, bringing it close to her. Before she could open her mouth to ask what was going on, the tingle increased and Twilight vanished as well. The last thing she saw was her mentor, staring at the approaching flames, a small smile playing across her lips.

Author's Note:

Proofread by:
Sasha Nein
Nadake

Comments

[Sasha Nein]

OH YEA! This is amazing... Obviously you have some sneaky plans for the future with characters and I can't wait to see what happens!

[DarkPhoenix]

2313760 I will neither confirm nor deny having sneaky plans, only that I have plans.

[roflknief]

Hmm... I must say that I'm not really sure where you plan to go from here. Pretty much everyone is dead. Will fav and keep reading but not really sure where you could go with this start that would have any hope. Any idea of what kind of time updates to the story will be made?

[DarkPhoenix]

2317451 I've already started work on chapter 3, though I won't give out any sort of updating schedule because there's no way I'll stick to it. I'll try my best to get out new chapters without long periods of downtime.

[LoyalLiar]

Well, what have we here? A story by DarkPhoenix? I look forward to seeing where this goes.

[DarkPhoenix]

2322303 I was wondering who the first person that I edit for would be to find my fic. Congrats!

[LoyalLiar]

2324907

Roflknief was kind enough to inform me.

[TheAspiringWriter93]

Well then...
Shit just got real, yo.

Felt kind of rushed, to be completely honest, but I'm still liking the idea of the story.

[The Good Boy]

i was picturing the ball of fire to be like the one in halo 4 that holds the didact

[Alira]

The first chapter was interesting, but I have to say, this one really disappoints me. Either you're a fan of FFXIV or you've watched their End of an Era/A Realm Reborn video for the game. This chapter was pretty much an exact copy of the first part of that video with the Mane Six and the Princesses being substituted in place of the video's characters. This really killed my interest in the fic considering the whole cosmic anomaly falling towards the earth and the events of this chapter was ripped from them.

[Widow Peak]

Well...

Bloody hell.

[ColonelBSacquet]

Canterlot, Shining Armor, Princess Luna ... plus much of the Royal Guard ...
Now, Celestia ...

How many died??

What is Discord, doing, dammit?