Darklight

by snoninja7

Chapter Three: I Love You... Goodbye

The sudden transition from a bright sunny morning to total darkness left Twilight momentarily disoriented, and it was a full minute before her eyes could adjust to the new surroundings. It was a moonless night, but there were no clouds and the stars were bright enough that Twilight could make out the details of the nearby mountain ridge, as well as the forested valley in which she stood. The species of trees and shrubs that she saw were all unfamiliar to her, nor could she identify the animals that occasionally called out into the darkness.

This doesn't make any sense! The spell is only supposed to take me to places I've already been to! I don't even think I'm in Equestria!

Twilight located a few key constellations and made some mental calculations. By their position, she estimated that she was now in the middle of the Western Mist Continent, most likely in the remote and unincorporated central highland region.

A cold chill of fear swept over her body. She tried to reassure herself: Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I’m in the Dragon Spear Empire to the north of the highlands, or the Poison Lotus Empire to the south. Twilight was fluent in both of their major languages, and could speak without an accent if she concentrated. She could blend in, lay low, and look for a way to get back home. Both empires were oppressive military dictatorships, but at least they were to some degree civilized. At least they were not the Ghost Ponies.

Her line of reasoning was flawed though, because the climate was too warm for the Dragon Spear Empire, and too mountainous for the Poison Lotus Empire. She was back at her original conclusion, that she had stumbled on the lands of the Barbaroi. There would be no way for her to blend in or hide, she could only wait. Wait to be spotted, tracked, surrounded, and then...

Calm down, Twilight. They aren't expecting a pony to pop out of nowhere in the middle of their territory. You got time. Plenty of time. Now focus, focus on the spell. All you have to do is reverse it, you’ll be back in Ponyville in no time.

Twilight charged her horn and began reversing the teleportation spell for the return trip back to Ponyville. Light beams again shot out of the ground and partially illuminated the dark forest in an ethereal glow. Just as the beams were about to form a full circle, the spell stopped abruptly and Twilight received a jolt from mana flowing back into her body.

Why isn't it working? I read and reread the instructions several times, I know I did it right! Did I miss something? She consulted the spell book under the light of an illumination spell, calmed herself, and again tried again. She concentrated extra hard to visualize every detail of the test site that she could remember. The mana backflow was even more powerful this time, and the jolt made her fall to the ground in pain.

Twilight was trapped. She was thousands of miles and an ocean away from home in the most dangerous place in the world. She again cast an illumination spell, but this did not calm her growing fear. Stories about the Ghost ponies that had kept her up at night as a foal now raced through her head. Then came images of Barbaroi costumes that ponies wore for Nightmare Night, soaked in copious amounts of fake blood and carefully crafted to maximize their terrifying appearance. She imagined that every sound she heard around her was from one of the many Ghost ponies who were now watching her and biding their time. She moved her light in every direction she heard a noise, as if the light were a weapon that would dispel the threat along with the darkness.

Try your mage sight, she told herself. She cast the simple spell while maintaining her illumination spell and looked around. The spell would allow her to see the mana that ponies and all living things gave off naturally, and track its flow if a spell were cast. To her great relief, there was nothing to see. There were no ponies anywhere nearby.

Knowing that she was not in any immediate danger, Twilight's fear was replaced by perplexity. Even the natural glow of mana that any healthy forest should have was almost completely absent—it was as if the whole valley had been drained of magic. In the pale violet glow of her illumination spell, the trees looked sickly, with very few leaves despite it being late spring. Many of them were cracked and splintered, with large branches littering the ground.

Stranded, and with nothing else to do, Twilight decided to look for shelter for the night and to investigate her surroundings a little more closely. As she walked through the forest, other details came to her attention that initially made no sense at all. There were dark patches all over the place, which on further inspection proved to be scorch marks. Twilight's first thought was that there had been a forest fire, but this wouldn't explain the intense, focused nature of the burn marks. She also noticed, from how the shadows were created by her light spell, that there were enormous flat depressions that varied in depth depending on the softness of the ground. The regularity of their spacing suggested footprints, but Twilight thought that was absurd. After all, they were each almost twenty feet across.

There was a low rumble outside the range of her hearing, and the ground began to shake violently. An earthquake? But there are no fault lines in this region. She was relieved when the quake stopped abruptly after a minute.

Then the aftershocks began. These were much more puzzling, as they were evenly spaced, as Twilight estimated, four seconds apart. Plus, they were growing in intensity. She started to get more worried as their intensity became greater than the original quake.

When the aftershocks were accompanied by the sounds of splintering wood, her mind began to connect everything she had seen up to this point: the ruined forest, the scorch marks, the depressions in the ground, the aftershocks, and she made a startling realization. Something very large was walking towards her. A red glow became visible as the quakes reached a terrifying intensity, and the sounds of both the earthquakes and splintering tree trunks became deafening. Twilight extinguished her illumination spell and hid behind an enormous felled tree, watching as the whole forest became bathed in the unearthly red light.

Then she saw it. An enormous dark shape appeared over the tree-line and obscured the stars. Two red lights appeared, so bright that Twilight had to shield her eyes with her hoof. With difficulty, she could make out details in the outline of the giant shape: a squat head, huge torso, two arms with clubs for hands, a pair of legs. It looked like it had been carved out of the mountains surrounding her. It was an earth golem. She estimated that it was over one hundred feet high, and it was still coming towards her. The red lights for eyes were mesmerizing, and she found that she couldn't look away. She could read neither intelligence nor emotion in it's eyes, only a feeling of cold malevolence. Her instincts did tell her one thing though, that the monster had known where she was all along.

Run. Now.

The tree trunk that had hidden Twilight just moments before exploded into flame. Splinters of burning wood rained down on her back as she retreated at full gallop. A blinding beam of light swept across her field of view, and a wall of fire erupted right in front of her. She skidded to a stop and reversed direction before she hit the flames. The monster was trying to herd her. She had to keep it guessing about her path if she was going to survive. Twilight swerved and zigzagged through the forest, changing her direction before the light beam could cut her off. The golem continued to step towards her, crushing burning trees with every step.

Twilight began to fire pulsed horn blasts at the monster to try and find a weak point. The purple flares hit the monster in the arms, legs, and torso, but did little more than knock off a few loose chunks of rock.

What about the eyes? She continued her evasive maneuvers a few seconds longer, charging her horn for a mid-strength horn blast, and fired straight at the lights. Her aim was dead on, but the purple flare was stopped by a hidden force before it could reach it's target. Twilight could see the vague outline of a magic shield protecting the golem's face. She waited for the golem to fire it's beam, then she skidded into a dead stop and charged her horn with mana for the most powerful horn blast she could do and hoped it would be enough to destroy the shield. Right before she could fire, the ground right in front of her erupted into flame. She flung herself backwards before the beam could hit her, and the horn blast flew uselessly off into the sky. It was too strong for her to defeat alone, she had to get away.

The forest ahead gave way to a grassy plain scattered with low rocky ledges. Twilight was getting better at avoiding the beams, confusing the earth golem with her random escape routes. She was beginning to put some real distance between herself and the monster, and she took heart. Scanning the plain, she looked for a place to hide: a cave, a valley, anywhere she could disappear from the golem's view and wait for it to pass by.

That was when Twilight made her big mistake. A light beam struck a rocky ledge that she had foolishly got too close to and rocks pelted her body. Her saddlebag protected her from some of them, but it did nothing to stop the baseball sized rock that slammed into her head.

She felt like a bomb had gone off in her skull, and she fell limply to the ground. She couldn't move, she couldn't focus. Her eyes became blurry, and she struggled to stay conscious. The red light began to brighten again, and the quakes became stronger.

Twilight knew that she was going to die. She thought about her mother and father. She thought about her big brother Shining Armor, about her sister-in-law Princess Cadence, and about Spike. Then thought about her Ponyville friends: Applejack and Rarity, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie. Finally, she thought about Princess Luna, and her teacher Princess Celestia. What would they be doing right then: working in their jobs, visiting friends, having fun, doing what they did everyday? Tears filled Twilight's eyes and blurred her already impaired vision, so she could see little more than the brightening red light. Would any of them ever know where she had gone, what had happened to her, and how she had died? She felt angry at herself for causing the grief and uncertainty they would feel. With all her heart, she wished she could have just a few more moments so she could tell them all how much she loved them, and say goodbye.

The last thing Twilight could see were several pulses of red light moving towards the golem behind her, and a dark shape moving towards her. She had the feeling of being lifted into the air and set to rest on something soft and warm, and her mind drifted to the distant past when her brother used to carry her on his back for fun. She felt the soft, downy texture of a pair of wings, a cool wind rushing past her body, and finally, nothing at all.

Author's Note:

Don't worry, the story isn't over! The complete story has twenty-two chapters, plus the prologue.

I think that part of the appeal of MLP-FIM is the complex personalities of the characters. Twilight is more than just a smart pony who loves books, and I spent a lot of time watching all of the shows multiple times so that I can better understand the core personalities of the canon characters. You may have noticed that the artwork for this story was based on this chapter. Twilight is not a damsel-in-distress, she is a tough pony who is intelligent, resourceful, and brave, but there are challenges that she has to face that are too big for one pony. Nightmare Moon, Discord, Chrysalis, King Sombra, and Sunset Shimmer were all defeated through a team effort, and she is going to need a lot of help in this story.

There will be more about the Barbaroi/Ghost ponies later on, but I wanted to make it clear that they are not 'ghosts' per se. The name has more to do with how they are perceived. Physically, they are pretty much the same as Equestrian ponies; they have unicorns, pegassi, and earth ponies (though alicorns are very rare to non-existent among them).

Comments

[Greninken]

well kids what did we learn today
it is that you should never trust anything that seems too perfect