> An Icy Existence
>  by Dee Bee Doo-wop Cooper
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter One: Live by the Steel, Die by the Sword
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

An Icy Existence

Chapter 1: Live by the Steel, Die by the Sword

By: DigitDaemon

Edited (and much much more) By: Bloodlord





Twilight shivered again. 

It wasn’t because of the inches of ice she was trapped in. No, she had encased herself. Possessing the inherit magics of all three races, alicorns were surprisingly durable. 

What she trembled at, was her mistake. The thing locked deep within her metaphysical energy matrix that controlled her magic. It was the thing that had to be stopped. She had to be stopped.

"Why do you resist so?"

Twilight fought back, suppressing that thing and focusing on the ice around her. Her mind wandered for a moment, back when she was first crowned as a princess. Euphoria, bliss, excitement, all those things could have described that moment. But there was one dark though, a final fear that didn't approach her until the celebrations had died down; eternal life would grant her the ability to withstand time, but watch her friends die around her. 

"You could just accept the inevitable."

Twilight shivered as the cruel, sweet voice of temptation slithered through her mind.

"No, I am perfectly happy here." Twilight reasoned back.

"Ha. You’re already bored out of your mind, and not a day has gone by. I do have to commend you, problem solving as a means to stay sane, quite clever."

"Thank you, its simple psychology, I…" Twilight would have scowled if she could. "I know what you are doing."

"It is a shame you waste your talents frozen in ice." With that final comment there was no further response from the voice in her mind, but Twilight knew that it was right. She wouldn’t stay frozen for long.





One day before:





Arrested Thesis gazed at the small town in the distance. His eyes were full of hate and ambition that was only slightly warmer than the ice clinging to the black cloak that covered his pale body. The only other notable feature, was the silver gleam of the hilt of a sword poking out from the side of his clothing. 

He may have been betrayed by his crew simply because they had been hungry and cold. He had promised them that they would be forever remembered by history. As soon as things got tough though, they had mutinied, but it was time for him to make a kingdom of loyal ponies. No one would disobey his new power.

He couldn’t help but grin at the sight of his first conquest, so peaceful and so utterly naive to the reckoning he would soon deliver. Yes, they will be perfect for your new army master, one that will wipe the living scourge of this land. Arrested Thesis looked down at the sword by his side and smiled grimly as the echoing words faded from his mind. How loyal, he thought to himself.

Far off a great beast shifted and let out a small chuckle.

Arrested These looked back out over the surrounding countryside, “I will finally have my day. The power of the sword I wield now will grant me what should have been mine in the first place. I will rule all that-”

“Excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt your monologue, but I think that I should probably stop you before you get any further down that track.”

Arrested Thesis spun violently towards the speaker and drew his sword, making a hasty slashing motion in the hope of quickly putting an end to the life of the fool that dared to interrupt him. Whether or not he was talking to himself out loud, no one would disrespect their future king like that. 

Much to his disappointment, the speaker was actually hovering about ten feet away from him. It was a lavender pegasus mare, with a navy blue mane and tail. At least he thought so until he saw her horn light up, and a bright light filled his vision.

He quickly jumped to the side and began running around the alicorn in an attempt to flank her and keep out of the path of her magic. Arrested Thesis quickly found out however, that the newly crowned princess, Twilight Sparkle, was far more gifted with magic than he had hoped and instead of a few lucky shots on her part, every spell was a near miss of him and they were getting closer each time.

Thinking quickly, he caught the next bolt on his blade and used the ancient magic inside to throw it back at his opponent, who had to spend her next spell deflecting her own attack.

Arrested Thesis used the distraction to charge at the alicorn princess and leap into the air, but as he brought his sword down, Twilight twisted her wings and threw herself out of the path of the sword. But she wasn’t fast enough. Twilight cried out in pain as the tip of the blade cut into her foreleg, and jerked back. She felt emptier somehow, like the sword had taken part of her.
 
Arrested Thesis landed on all fours and spun around to once again face his opponent, but he only caught a glance of her figure before it was gone in a flash of light. He quickly spun again, trying to catch sight of her again, but every time he had her in view, she would teleport again. 

Getting tired of the alicorn’s rabbit hole strategy, Arrested Thesis slammed his blade into the ground, the runes along the blade flaring with power as they inhibited Twilight’s ability to teleport.

As Twilight came to a halt in front of the forsaken swordpony he made a full body lunge at her that she only narrowly avoided. Without teleportation, the princess was slow and vulnerable. Weak. 

Or so he assumed. As Arrested Thesis swung at her again, a blade of magenta magical energy hissed into existence to deflect it. The second strike was more powerful and shattered Twilight’s defense without trouble.

The Princess jumped backwards as her assailant continued his advance. Deciding that she had no choice but to play the madpony’s game for the time being, Twilight once again focused on her conjurations, this time a perfect replica of a knights longsword appeared before her. 

Power thundered as the blades meet. Sparks flying as Death’s steel met the force of a Goddess of Magic. Neither side seemed able to yield as they danced between parries and strikes, counter attacks and magic. Arrested Thesis for all his skill and experience, could not overcome the raw magical power of Twilight Sparkle. She in turn could not overpower his barrage of attacks.

The two circled each other warily now, each waiting for the other to let their guard down. Arrested Thesis made a jab at Twilight, only to have it counter attacked. He may have underestimated her.

“You have potential, Princess Twilight Sparkle, but no skill” shouted Arrested. “You’d make a worthy Lieutenant in my new Empire.”

“I don’t think you’ll have the pleasure,” she called out, and pointed to the ground at his hooves.

Arrested Thesis’ eyes went wide as rune beneath him activated.

She had played him like a violin; while he was wasting time fighting her, she had placed a sleeping glyph on the ground where they were fighting and had been biding her time while the glyph charged to full power, and unfortunately for him, it just had.

Arrested Thesis mouthed a silent curse as he lost consciousness and tumbled to the ground, his dreadful blade, still glowing with power, clattering to a stop next to him. 

Twilight sighed in relief as her magic dissipated. As she looked around to survey the damage however, she realized something wasn’t right.

Arrested Thesis had been knocked out as Twilight had intended. But as he lay there, the ground beneath him quickly turned black as everything around died and rapidly decayed. The air became thick with the smell of rot and heavy with an aura of powerful death magic. A nearby tree went from a healthy brown with branches covered in green to grey and deathly as it shed its leaves. Finally, after extending for another thirty feet, the circle of death finally faded and the rest of the land was left untouched.

“What in the world? I’ve never seen magic behave like this,” Twilight mumbled as she pawed the decayed ground. It didn't look right, it didn't feel right to her. She carefully stood along the edge of the decay and closed her eyes. Twilight reached out and examined the area with her magic, looking for more detail. But as she laid out her own magical field, she was shocked by what she saw.

Her would be assailant’s energy was flowing freely into the wicked sword that he had carried, now resting beside him. It was as if the sword had been reaching out for energy in the area around it, taking from the plants and trees, before locking on to him. Her observation was in vain though because before she could even think of a way to act, she saw the last of his soul consumed by the sword leaving him dead and covered in sharp ice crystals. 

“Is this… Is this soul magic? What the hay is this thing?” Twilight asked out loud, wishing she was back at the Royal Archives. Maybe the answers to her questions were there. Twilight didn’t know much about this type of magic herself, she had only come across it in references, mostly legal ones, and a few manuals that her brother had brought back on how to detect it and what it felt like to be attacked using soul magic. All she did know is that it was highly illegal, one of the worst magical crimes that a pony could commit.

The sword was horrific in appearance, certainly something from the frozen depths of Tartarus. It was made of polished steel, the grip bound in leather and adorned with metal rings. A strange skull sat on the blade above the hilt, its horns reaching up and wrapping itself along the guard. The blade itself was uniquely designed with a pair of almost scythe like projections protruding from the base of the skull, and then an asymmetrically designed blade with wicked serrations reaching up a third of one side before tapering off to point. Ancient, cryptic runes, in some language that Twilight couldn’t make out, ran down the middle of the blade.

“After I had stunned him, the sword must have… been triggered to drain the life energy from him, some sort of fail safe maybe?” Twilight frowned as she studied the blade from a distance. She was certainly afraid. She knew that great power and great darkness dwelt beneath its surface, but nothing about what to do with it. 

Twilight carefully picked it up in her telekinetic grasp with the intent of disposing of it, but she immediately lost her equilibrium in a massive wave of cold and nausea and fell to the ground. A quick glance around confirmed that she hadn’t started the same mechanism that had killed the stallion, and the sword was still in her grasp.

But something had awoken.

Her magical grip had instantly frozen to the handle of the sword. Panicking, Twilight tried her hardest to shake the blade out of her grip, but no matter how much she pried, and shook the blade around, she couldn’t drop it.

What was just as bad was something from it was pushing its way through the magic link. No matter how much she fought back, no matter how many layers of defense she threw up, it pressed on. As it drew closer to the front of her conscious thought, she felt icy tendrils wrap around her from the inside. 

"Do not fear me Princess of Magic. I am the key to your future, our future. Together, we will soon rule this land."

Twilight struggled to stay in control. Every chilling, sweet word of seduction felt like the breath of a winter’s storm across her mind and every moment she fought it, she felt her mind freeze over a little more.  

“But I don’t want to rule Equestria…” Twilight sank to the ground as her defenses began to fail. “Well… I guess I kind of already do in part, but I don’t need you…” Twilight’s eyes slowly drifted closed as her final thought of resistance faded.

"Then you will serve me, won’t you dear?"

Twilight’s eyes snapped back open and were radiating a bright purple glow. In a reflexive reaction, the magic around her gathered up and exploded into a huge beam of brilliant violet light into the sky. Her magic now bolstered by the magic of the planet itself began to break the sword down into simply the information that was once matter, swallowing it up and absorbing it into the vast ethereal body of magic that Twilight governed.

Darkness was the last thing she remembered, That and a laugh, but she couldn’t tell if it was the voice, or her. 





Twilight groaned as feeling began to return to her, and wished it hadn’t. She felt like she was literally on death’s door, but something kept her back. Every joint ached, every muscle burned, but the worst was the chill coming from deep within her. It was as if she had swallowed a giant ice cube, and then fell asleep outside in a snowstorm. The chill permeated every space of her being, it felt like ice water was dumped into her head. 

Slowly, she opened her eyes and struggled to get into a sitting position, clutching her head at the same time, begging under her breath for the throbbing to stop.  

Then she remembered where she was. 

Twilight’s eyes flared opened and she leaped to her hooves as the adrenaline surged through her body. A bright flare from her horn, and a shield was in place. But nothing was there. 

Twilight carefully deactivated the shield and looked around, memories of what just happened came flooding back into her mind. The pony she had… fought against, still laid in his own heap of ice, the tree was dead, and the sword… 

Twilight spun around, even taking to the air to look for the sword that the pony had, but she couldn’t find it anywhere. Still in the air, she closed her eyes and tried to focus her magic, but found it to be fuzzy. Frowning, she returned to ground and tried looking again.  

As Twilight slowly regained control over her magic, she thought it was over, that she had destroyed the cursed sword once and for all.  As she continued to observe herself however, she realized that she was actually much colder than she should have been. She had thought that it had just been a reaction to the recent events at first because she wasn’t uncomfortable at all, but her internal temperature was deathly low. 

Twilight didn’t like the implications of this, she was responsible for the innate magic that flowed through the land of Equestria as well as the arcane magic that was used to make everyday life for the ponies of Equestria easier. Her magic had become almost sort of symbiotic with the latent magic of Equestria. So, how would her magic effect Equestria if it was changed permanently?

Obviously, she didn’t need to worry about legal repercussions for the stallion’s death. After all, who would question a princess when she said she had been assaulted? That didn’t help her conscience though. There was also the problem of what actually had happened to the sword, Twilight could feel its aura of hate, but it was part of her own magic now.

“Hey, you alright?”

Twilight leapt up and spun around in surprise and found a very familiar pegasus hovering behind her.

“Rainbow Dash! How many times have I told you not to sneak up on me?”

“I dunno, but probably around thirty four times now.”

“What the hay happened here Twi?” asked Rainbow Dash as she landed. “First there was the light show display, and then there is all this dead… stuff. 

Twilight had a moment of panic as Rainbow Dash peeked around her in the hope of discovering what was going on, realizing that she had more pressing matters than her friend’s constant teasing and trickery.

“Um...yeah, he’s dead.” she said reluctantly.

Rainbow Dash instinctively backed up a bit, “You didn’t, you know...murder him?”

“Yes, Dash. I, the Princess of Magic, Bearer of an Element of Harmony and Celestia’s personal protege, randomly murdered somepony,” Twilight deadpanned as she levitated a rock over to herself and touched it because a unicorn or alicorn could not directly feel their own magic. She immediately frowned when she made contact, finding it freezing instead of being warmed by her magic.  

Rainbow Dash, realizing the stupidity of her assumption, looked away shamefully. “Sorry Twi, I wasn’t thinking when I asked that.”

Twilight simply nodded and placed the rock back down. “I know, sorry. I’m a little… distracted here.”

Rainbow looked over again as morbid curiosity and a need for reassurance of personal safety took over. “So… what did happen here?”

“I… I’m not sure how to say,” struggled Twilight as she tried to find the words. 

"You could just kill her and save yourself the trouble," spoke the voice in her head. Except it was different this time, cold, disinterested and not exactly as evil. "Also, is that mane natural or does she dye it? In my village, she would have been quite the looker. I suppose it is good she is not in my village though, she would also be dead."

“Um, Twi? Are you okay?” Rainbow Dash asked. “You look like you saw a ghost.”

Twilight slowly shook her head. “Not exactly…”

“Oh, well that’s-”

“But I am pretty sure I just heard one.”

Rainbow Dash studied her friend for a moment, hoping that Twilight was just joking with her. She doubted very much that that was the case though; Twilight was not one to start joking about a serious matter and certainly not if there was somepony dead.

“Can I help you somehow?” The pegasus asked wearily, not wanting to upset Twilight further. 

“I need you to get the Princesses,” replied Twilight. “I need to talk with them, ask them to come to the library as soon as you can. Then, please tell the local sergeant that this body needs to be collected for further examination.”

“Right,” said Rainbow Dash with a nod. She started to fly off but circled back around to Twilight, who had started to slowly walk back towards town.

“Um, Twilight, couldn’t you use your magic to contact them a lot faster?”

Twilight looked up at her flying friend, her face was serious and emotionless, but Rainbow Dash could read the fear in her eyes.

“It’s too dangerous to use my magic right now. Hurry please.”

And with that, she turned and continued her slow walk back to her house, leaving Rainbow Dash confused and more than a little disturbed.





When the two princess teleported into the library, Twilight had almost vaporized them, or attempted to. She was already jumpy and it seemed that after absorbing the sword, her reactions had become far more violent. She had been able to catch herself though and snuff out her magic before the princesses had completely re-coalesced.

“Twilight, your house smells thickly of magic,” Luna said as she looked around the dark room, sensing the energy of a failed or aborted spell. “And appears to be a war zone. Tell me, dear sister, is this typical of a small town library?”

“Oh,” Twilight quickly looked around for a cover. “I was just...re-shelving books,” Twilight smiled in hopes of subverting suspicion.

Luna countered with a confused look of her own.

“Because it helps calm my nerves?”

Luna continued to just stare at her.

“After I knocked them over...to calm my nerves?”

Celestia, wanting to halt any budding conflict, found her opportunity to cut in, “And what is it that is grating on your nerves, my faithful student?”

“Well…” Twilight hesitated, trying to think of a good way to summarize the recent event of that day. “I, uh, swallowed a crazy sword.”

Both monarchs gave Twilight a worried and confused look. 

“I… didn’t know thou wast into the circus arts,” said Luna apprehensively. “Perhaps you should seek medical attention instead of us or book arrangement?”.

Twilight shook her head vigorously, “Not physically swallowed.”

“Then how?” Celestia asked, raising an eyebrow of her own.

Twilight let out a sigh and began explaining the previous events of the day as they made their way upstairs.





“And then I ask Spike to leave and I have been sitting here waiting for you since then.” Twilight finished.

“Sorting books.” Celestia interjected.

Twilight gave her a confused look but quickly got her meaning, “Yeah...sorting books.”

“And knocking over bookcases.”

“Yeah,” said Twilight as she watched the Sister’s exchange glances.

“We know of the sword you speak of,” said Luna with care. “We are responsible for its creation.”

“I don’t understand,” said Twilight, looking eyes with Princess Luna, “Why?”

“Twilight, many years ago, during the Lunar Rebellions, my sister formed an army,” said Celestia as she gently placed a wing around Luna. “Her army was formed from the outcasts of society, the poor, those that didn’t quite fit in. “

“But one of our soldiers distinguished himself with loyalty and brutality,” continued Luna. “We rewarded him by forging a sword that could match his cunning, his resolve, and his wrath.”

The room remained silent for almost a minute before the Princess of the Night spoke again.

“The magic that I felt upon entering t’was not a levitation spell, was it Twilight?”

Twilight was taken aback by the question. “What do you mean? You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”

“Correct, we would not. However, the sword that is now a part of you is poisoning your thoughts.” The expression on Twilights face, one of painful regret, confirmed Luna’s suspicions.  “Your first instinct, upon the apparent invasion of your home would normally push you to run or hide. You instead prepared to attack the invaders.”

The Princess of Magic looked down at her hooves. “I’m sorry.” Twilight whispered, only barely audible.

Luna shook her head, “Please, do not be. You recognized what you were doing and stopped yourself. It is my place to be sorry for I hath placed you in this terrible situation, but thou hath been able to control thyself remarkable well.”

Twilight spoke up again, “What your saying is that besides the voice in my head, I will naturally be more aggressive and violent.”

“We would expect so, but-”

“And that, if I wasn’t careful, I might hurt somepony?”

“Yes, but you must-”

Twilight stood up and began charging energy through her horn, “Thank you Celestia for all your teaching, and Luna, for your friendship and counseling. Please tell my friends and family that I love them very much.”

With a flash, Twilight Sparkle was gone, leaving the two rulers staring at empty space.

Luna looked to Celestia with deep concern in her eyes, “We must find her. Might she not hurt herself?”

Celestia let out a sigh, “No. Not badly at least, she doesn’t know how. I taught her that there are ways that alicorns can die, but she does not know any of them. She will just lock herself up where she thinks no one will look.”

Luna nodded, much more relieved but still sad. “So, we should start looking for her then!”

“Not yet. Give her some time to cool off, then I will go get her.”

Luna gave her sister a puzzled look.

“My faithful student is not that imaginative when it comes to hiding places.”





Twilight reappeared inside of a dark room. She quickly walked over into one of the corners, and in a swift motion with her horn brought a great slab of ice up and completely encased herself within.

Now the only pony that will have to get hurt is me. Twilight thought to herself as she beckoned for the eternal hibernation that she hoped would consume her.

> Chapter Two: Bring Me to Life
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

An Icy Existence

Chapter 2: Bring Me To Life

By DigitDaemon

~~~~~
Twilight felt like she was drifting in an endless sea. She had found solace in the emptiness, the silence. Bitterness over her decision still clung to her, but she knew this was for the best. If Equestria, her friends, family, all the ponies she cared about, if they were to remain safe, then she must remain safely locked away.

The Goddess of Magic brought herself out of her tireless slump and turned her senses to her environment. Her memory of this place was so vivid, it was as if she could feel the rough stone of the building, the charred remains of the structure that was once her family's vacation home. Memories, both happy and sad flooded into her mind at the touch of the old home. It was here that she discovered the raw power of fire and its dangers. It seemed like a fitting place for her to be now.

The other presence in Twilight’s mind stirred at this, but thankfully remained silent. Twilight brushed her thoughts aside and went about checking the wards she had placed around the area. She feared that somepony, someday might find her and release her from her prison, but deep down, she also knew the in the end, hiding was fruitless. A weapon will always be a weapon, whether it is locked up for an eon or exposed to the world.

The sound of hoof steps broke Twilight out of her contemplation as the large white form of Celestia came to view in front of the frozen purple alicorn.

“I have to give you credit Twilight, I was expecting to find you underneath your bed,” Celestia gave a sad smile, “But, you're hiding place is still too personal if you don’t want to be found.” Celestia continued to walk around the block of ice. “Your family’s vacation house? It was clever, seeing the apparent change in your magic, that you would choose someplace with such burning history for you.”

Twilight was aware she was bad at hiding, but she had hoped that she would at least be able to go for a few years without discovery. Twenty-seven hours was still a personal best, but disappointing regardless.

"Why hide your power? She should be begging at your knees for forgiveness."

Twilight mentally glared at the voice in her head. "Why would she apologize? I am the only one who has done anything wrong."

"She failed to recognize your power and superiority!"

Twilight's internal voice transitioned from annoyed to angry. "My superiority?! She has spent countless lifetimes learning and building her wisdom. What do I have, an angry sword stuck in my metaphysical stomach?!"

"Her knowledge is meaningless without the power or conviction to use it. You can be so much more than her."

"No!"

Twilight's rage incandesced into a bright blue glow before shooting outwards, shattering her self created prison.

Celestia was caught off guard and only able to throw her wing up as the sheet of razor sharp ice hit her. She bit her lip as the shards bounced off and clipped her. After it was over, Celestia took a quick look at her damaged feathers, which were now torn and stick at odd angles, nothing to worry her. What did worry her though, was the lavender princess in front of her. Twilight was standing on the remains of the ice block with her eyes glowing and her legs braced, as if casting a spell.

With a quick test of the magical flow in the air, Celestia confirmed her fear that Twilight was generating a cyclical magic build up by charging magic and then recycling it back into itself. If she continued much longer, the build up would become unstable and detonate. 

Celestia carefully approached the tense form of her student, while resisting the painful, icy, tingling sensation that surrounded Twilight. As gentle as she could, she placed her wing over Twilight’s back and whispered gently into her ear.

“Starswirl’s First Law states that all magic is derived from finite energy. Starswirl’s Second Law states that all magic is recycled into the environment…”

Celestia paused as she heard Twilight began to mumble along with her. Seeing that it was working, she continued.

“Starswirl’s Third Law states that all magical energy cannot be destroyed nor created.”

Twilight was now following each word coherently, but her channeling loop continued.

“Starswirl’s Fourth Law states that ducks do not know how to eat peanut butter.”

Twilight's concentration snapped, and there was a rather large bang as the built up energy was dispersed rapidly into the air around the two princesses. 

“No it isn't, Starswirl’s fourth law clearly states that…” Twilight realized that she was about to start lecturing her mentor on low level magical properties. “Oh...Sorry.”

Celestia gave a chuckle and brushed some of the ice chips off of Twilight's nose, “It’s okay my faithful student, I’m just glad that you are okay.” 

“But I’m not okay,” Twilight pulled away and began pacing back and forth through the dark room.

Celestia sighed, visible worried about the events that have transpired. “Twilight, there is something I need to tell you.”

Twilight stopped and turned back to her mentor, confused at what Celestia could possible have been hiding from her.

“Do you know what makes me the Princess of the Sun, or Luna the Princess of the Moon?”

“Yes, your magic was strong enough to collect ambient energy until your’s became heat and Luna’s became gravity.”

Celestia shook her head, “That's the most truthful explanation we could give without threatening the balance of Earth.”

Twilight looked even more confused, but she waited for Celestia to continue.

“There are many different forces that affect this planet. Each and every one of them has an anchor or aspect if you will.”

Twilight nodded.

“Now, most of these aspects are objects, long forgotten artifacts.”

“Like the Tree of Harmony!” Twilight exclaimed, happy that she was beginning to understand.

Celestia in turn gave her a proud smile, “Exactly, but a few of them are not held inside objects.”

“Then where are they?”

“In us.”

Twilight gave her teacher a skeptical look, “They are shared among ponies?”

“No, they are each held by specific individuals.”

Twilight’s mouth formed an ‘O’ in understanding, “So, I have the Aspect of Magic?”

“Indeed you do, as I hold the Aspect of Light and my sister of Shadows.”

“So, why would it be dangerous if others knew about this?” Twilight asked.

“Because, just like physical objects, the Aspects can be stolen and traded and given away. And indeed there was a time, a time before ponies or griffons or dragons, that just that happened, but this is history the predate even this old maid.” Celestia said and chuckled a bit at her self teasing.

Twilight adopted a more serious look, “So you are afraid that someone might abuse the ability for these Aspects to be moved from one being to another?”

Celestia shook her head, a grim shadow falling over her features, “I am not afraid that someone might, I am afraid someone has already begun.”

The realization struck Twilight, her eyes widening in comprehension, “The sword? You think that Luna put an Aspect inside of it?” 

“Yes, and I believe that what you have encountered are the after effects of just such an act. Long ago, before the Endless Night that took my sister from me, My sister also held the Aspect of Death, as I still hold the Aspect of Life. When she returned from her prison several years ago, she held it no more.”

Twilight sat down and stared worriedly at Celestia, unsure of what to think of the information she was receiving.

“I am sure if you asked, Luna would tell you what happened, but she has seen fit to lock herself in the grand archives, claiming to be doing research. So, I will tell you what I think happened.”

Twilight shivered involuntarily before getting up and sitting back down next to Celestia. Celestia replaced her wing on Twilight's shoulder, pulling her close in order to comfort both her purple pupil and herself.

“One thousand years ago, my sister was being consumed by jealousy. She knew that she needed to expel her frustrations or the consequences would be terrible.”

“I suppose she failed then and started a war?”

Celestia shook her head, “No, she succeeded. By going to war with Equestria, she was able to blow off enough of her power that she could be imprisoned in the Moon and her emotions could settle. The Nightmare Moon you fought upon her return was born of a lack of social contact. It is regrettable that it had to be done, but it really was for the best”

Twilight raised her right eyebrow. “But so many died in that war, what could be worse?”

“Like myself, my sister holds two Aspects, though she did once hold three. The other Aspect she posses is that of cosmic power, the massive gravitational force that binds the universe around us together. Had she not went to war, she may have destroyed much more.”

Twilight shivered again and Celestia pressed up against her in an effort to keep her student warm.

“I see…” Twilight started to feel very tired, though she had been completely comfortable inside an iceberg, she was starting to feel far too cold to function.

“I...I can’t feel my…”

“Twilight?” Celestia asked with great concern.

She lifted up her wing and found that Twilight was unconscious and turning pale.

“Twilight!”

Celestia gathered her magic with haste and teleported straight into the Canterlot Royal Archive.





Luna had spent the last eight hours reading through the final entries in an old research journal that had lost the name of its author long ago; Luna vaguely recalled calling the being Mr. Dusty, but she figured it was probably long before she had matured into an adult. The journal itself was only really a collection of pages from the original book, rebound in a modern hardcover binding. Additionally, it was written in a script that was almost as old as creation itself, forcing Luna to take great pains in her reading to ensure the accuracy of her translation.

In fact, it irked the Princess of the Moon that she had to do research at all. She had been quite fond of her vast and almost limitless knowledge of magic, but once again, circumstances seemed to have proved her wrong. There was a time that Luna thought that she could control the forces of existence, a time she believed to have transcended the limits imposed by nature on her. Yet, even after a thousand years, she was still paying for her hubris.

Luna shut the book delicately as to not damage the ancient pages, her desire for information still unsated though. It seems that nothing like what Twilight has been experiencing had ever been recorded before.

“Damn thee, why must you stick in my flank as a thorn, dear General?” Luna sat silently, almost hoping for an answer to her question. Instead She heard the pop of a teleportation spell and the urgent cry of her sister.

“Luna!”

The princess of the night jumped into the air and quickly flew down the wide halls of the archive, ducking through passages that had gone centuries without visit, and stirring up waves of dust as she rushed towards the sound of her sisters voice.

When she arrived at Celestia's side her heart almost stopped in fear. Twilight lay motionless on the floor in front of the Sun princess, and despite the fact that the humidity in the archives was almost zero, icicles had started to form on her body. 

Celestia turned and Luna could see the panic on her sister’s face as tears silently ran down her cheeks. “I tried, but I can’t warm her up…” 

Luna sat down next to the deathly cold alicorn and scanned her mind for any signs of life. She had a feeling of what she would find, an empty skull, but was ecstatic to discover that Twilight’s mind was still fully functional.

“Fear not sister, she is only asleep.”

Celestia gave her sister a look that was equal parts relief and confusion, “But her heart is stopped?”

Luna gave the Princess of Magic another contemplative glance, “It seems as if she has gone into some sort of forced hibernation. Normally, I would not suggest such an approach, but I think that perhaps I should join her in her dreams and perchance discover the cause of this behavior.”

Celestia joined her sister in contemplating the icy form before her, “Indeed it would be a breach of privacy, but I think that in the interest of Twilight’s personal safety, we must do everything we can.”

Luna nodded and she lowered herself into a sleeping position next to Twilight's frozen body as her horn lit up and her eyes closed.





Twilight was standing in a field of snow. The wind around her was laced with the powder substance that covered the ground and gave everything a softer look. For a moment, perhaps the first in several days, Twilight was almost calm. The white landscape reminded her of the trips her and her family would take during the holidays to visit her grandparents in the mountains. She would follow her brother around and try to hit him with snowballs, but he was always the better tactician. The moment faded quickly though; with nothing but white, the purple pony found it hard to to tell distance or form around her, and she began to feel as if the calm was just a veil hiding something far more sinister. Even though there was nothing around, the featureless landscape was starting to make her claustrophobic.

“Well isn't this a lovely surprise?”

Twilight turned in circles to try and identify the speaker, but it seemed like every word came from a different direction.

“You know, I was like you once,” came the voice. It sounded so close that Twilight jumped a little. It was soft, strong, and something twisted about it.

“How?” Twilight replied, picking a direction to address.

“Righteous, naive, believing that I could change the world.” The voice added a grim chuckle to the end of its sentence.

“But I can change the world, everypony...everyone has that power!” Twilight shouted back.

“No!" Twilight fell to the ground from the sudden intensity of the voice, the hate and anger overwhelming her. She felt as if she was on the brink of destruction as evil powers closed around her, and just when she thought the end was near, it stopped. She felt a sudden warmth from inside, and gentle whisper at her ears. 

"My dear, those are but lies fed to you by your beloved teacher and her treacherous sister. Trust me, I know. I use to think I could trust them, even care for one. But in the end, I was betrayed - left to die at the hooves of the Sun."

“Enough!”

Twilight uncovered her eyes and looked beside her. Standing tall was the dark blue form of Princess Luna.

“Show thyself, so that we may settle this with civility.”

The cloak of falling snow seemed to vanish and a single figure emerged. It was clearly the form of a large stallion. He was completely white and ice clung to his coat. To Twilight, his eyes seemed to penetrate her as her leveled his icy blue gaze on the two of them.

“Hello again mistress,” the pony hissed, his voice dripping with venom. “How may I serve you today? You have taken my body, trapped my soul; perchance I can give you my eyes, that way you can see my agony? Or maybe my ears, and you can hear my screams!”

Much to Twilight's surprise, instead of meeting the challenge, Luna dropped to one knee and bowed before the imposing figure. 

The Princess of Dreams spoke softly, “Frostmourne, my dear general-”

“Please, spare me the pleasantries.”

“I will not pretend I did not hurt you, abandon you and curse you, all because I thought I could control nature. I betrayed you in a way far too great to receive forgiveness, and I will have to live with the consequence of yours and a thousand other lost souls.”

Frostmourne eyed Luna suspiciously.

“But those actions were my fault. It was I that led thee astray, not my sister and certainly not the noble Twilight Sparkle.”

“Look at you, so bold and arrogant.” Frostmourne gave a snort of contempt, “You think you can apologize and suddenly I am at your beck and call again. Unfortunately for you, I have a new master.”

Luna nodded and stood up again. She locked eyes with Frostmourne, intent on getting her own message across, “You do have a new master. That is plain to see, but who will that new master be?”

Frostmourne broke his deadpan for only a moment, but long enough to give away his own curiosity at where Luna was going with this.

“One that uses you as a toy, something to be thrown around as is pleased or the one pony that I think still has a chance of becoming your friend…”

The icy figure laughed, “You would presume to know what my struggles are? You think you have me all figured out, is that it?” Frostmourne spit at the ground and then dug his right hoof into the built up snow. “Well, I have news for you. Twilight’s mind is my home now,” He pulled his hoof and a out from the snow came a perfect replica of the wicked blade from which he had come, except carved from ice. “And you aren’t welcome.” 

Twilight was too shocked to react as Frostmourne charged the Princess of Dreams and slid the shard of ice into her torso. Luna however stood resolute, even as her image faded from the fields of snow.

Frostmourne turned to Twilight, giving her an almost concerned scowl, “We have a lot to discuss, but I don’t think you can handle what I have to say at the moment.” With that, Frostmourne rushed forward and buried the shard of ice into Twilight’s chest before she had a chance to react. Twilight tried to call out, but as she faded from the dreamscape, so did her ability to speak. Soon Twilight was adrift in a dark, dreamless sleep.

> Chapter Three: Behind Those Eyes (You Lie)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Any Icy Existence

Chapter 3: Behind Those Eyes

By DigitDaemon

Edited by: Blood Lord

~~~~~

Twilight gave a content sigh as the void of sleep slowly left her mind and she squeezed her pillow tighter, which she was now hugging to her chest. She reveled in its plush softness and seemingly almost molten temperature. Her pillow gave a small chuckle and wrapped a hoof around her.

Twilight’s heart skipped a beat and the drowsiness cleared from her mind instantly. Pillows do not have hooves; and I don’t even own a plush pillow!

Carefully, Twilight opened her eyes, afraid of what she would find only to have light blue fur fill her vision. She quickly pushed and scrambled away from the thing out of panic, only for another surprise to greet her. The edge of the bed. 

Twilight hit the floor with a dull thud and groaned as she worked her hoof out from underneath her. A snickering from above caused the alicorn to glance back up and see a very familiar pegasus with a multi-colored mane.

“Rainbow Dash!”

Rainbow chuckled again, and flashed a lazy smile. “Hey, Twilight.”

Twilight gave the blue speedster a withering glare. “Why are you in my bed?”

“Oh, thats easy,” Rainbow Dash said, seemingly relieved at what Twilight thought was a pretty hard question to answer. “The princesses came by and said you were suffering from hypopotimis or something-”

“Hypothermia,” Twilight corrected. 

“Yeah, hypodermic shock and until your body got use to not producing heat anymore, that you had to be kept warm. They said something about an Ember Stone or something like that, but I figured that it was probably just like when one of the high altitude team members gets hypothermia.” 

Twilight started to slowly rub her forehead while giving Rainbow an annoyed look.

Rainbow Dash winked in response, “It is too easy to mess with you Twilight. So anyways, I volunteered to stay and help warm you up overnight.”

“Well that was very...kind of you’ Twilight tried to suppress a shiver “But I think I will be fine.”Just as she finished, a wave of dizziness swept over the alicorn and she was forced to lay back down.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I guess I am just a little dizzy is all.” Twilight said quickly. In truth however, she wasn’t fine. The news that Rainbow Dash had delivered added to the already great mental burden the Twilight was bearing. To find out that she was drifting further and further from being a pony was becoming too taxing on her.

“You know, being Captain of the Weather Patrol means that I see every injury that happens on the job, including all the hypothermia cases. Last time I checked, shivering and collapsing were not signs that somepony is fine.”

Twilight just groaned in response, fighting hard to not lose consciousness again. She climbed back into her bed as Rainbow Dash laid back down. The blue pegasus pulled her drowsy friend up to her chest and patted her back.

“Don’t worry Twi, just go back to sleep, I’ve got you.”

Twilight slowly wrapped her forelegs around her light blue friend, clinging to the only source of warmth she could find. 

Rainbow, like all pegasi, had an extremely fine coat that was almost like the down of a newborn chick. This was in order to give her better aerodynamics, and although Twilight was embarrassed to admit it, her friend was also extremely comfortable to cuddle with. The lavender mare subconsciously pulled herself up a little tighter against the pegasus. She shed a single tear, that was quick to ice over, as she drifted off. 

Rainbow Dash watched as Twilight fell peacefully into dreamland, incredibly grateful that the bookworm couldn’t see the huge grin of victory on her face as she too began to doze.

~~~~~

Twilight stretched in her bed and gave a wide yawn. She clumsily grasped around, feeling like something was missing. The purple mare sat up and looked around for he new soft pillow, but didn't see the pegasus anywhere. The spot next to her was still warm though, which meant Rainbow must have just gotten up.

The lavender alicorn got up out of bed and yawned again as she cleared the ice from around her eyes. I must have been crying in my sleep, I suppose it is good I don’t remember my dreams.

Twilight got out of bed and stretched her legs a bit more before trotted over to the vanity in the corner of her room. She was afraid to look in the mirror, expecting to see a hideous monster in her reflection. Twilight took a few deep breaths before looking up and giving a sigh of relief. she still looked normal, and there was no ice clinging to her coat either. With the exception of her breath being visible whenever she exhaled, she looked normal. Twilight picked up the brush in her magic and then froze, her magical aura was a snowy blue.

“But my magic has always been the same color as my eyes,” she whimpered to nopony in particular.

"It still is…"

Twilight shivered at the sound of Frostmourne’s voice but took a closer examination of herself in the mirror. Her eyes were in fact now also light blue in color. She swallow hard and sat down, feeling as though she might collapse. The purple mare took deliberate, slow breaths in an attempt to keep the tears at bay. Confusion, grief, and panic worked through the young alicorn's body as she looked at the change. In the end, she failed and couldn't stop the tears from rolling down her face.

“Hey Twi?” Rainbow Dash’s voice came from downstairs.

Twilight tried to pull herself together to answer, but she could only manage to say “yes,” horsley in between sniffles.

“Hey Twilight?” This time Rainbow’s voice was much closer and Twilight could see her friend out of the corner of her eye; she was standing at the bedroom door with a concerned look on her face. 

The pegasus speedster swiftly stepped through the bedroom towards the lavender mare that she had been charged with taking care of. When she reached Twilight she placed a hoof on her friends shoulder. “Is everything okay Twi?” she asked apprehensively.

Twilight spun around and flung herself into her friends arms, her tears coming back to her.

The pegasus slowly wrapped her hooves around the purple princess and began to gently rock her her back and forth. After a few minutes Twilight finally regained control of her emotions and pulled away from Rainbow.

“Shh, It’ll be okay,” she whispered as stroked the back of Twilight's head. It was an action her mother did for her when she was a filly, and frustrated with flight school. It had a calming effect on her and it was something Rainbow was hoping would help ease her friend as well. 

“Sorry...I just was overwhelmed I guess,” Twilight said as she conjured up a tissue to wipe her nose on.

Rainbow Dash gave the alicorn a confused look. “Sorry for what? You have been through so much, at least I assume you have since you haven’t actually told me anything that is happening yet, but anyways, you have obviously been through a lot and you can’t just keep these things bottled up inside of you.” Rainbow Dash walked over to where Twilight’s brush had fallen to the ground unnoticed and retrieved it. “But the important thing is that you don’t have to face it alone.”

“But how can I go to my friends when I am the biggest danger to them?” Twilight retorted, a hint of bitterness in her voice.

Rainbow didn’t answer at first, she just sat down behind Twilight and began to brush the alicorn’s mane. When she did speak, it wasn’t in her normally carefree manner or even in her fallback friendly voice; her voice was wise, mature sounding. “Now, I’m not really the best pony to ask, but my dad once told me, after a fight I had with Gilda in flight school, that friends hurt each other sometimes. I guess it makes sense. I mean who else could hurt somepony’s friends more than those they are friends with? I mean, our friends are the things we hold closest. So, when we hold everything else at hoof’s length away how could our friends not be the biggest danger to us?” Rainbow Dash rubbed the back of her head, feeling a bit awkward. “I guess that doesn’t make much sense does it?”

Twilight sat in silence as she mulled those words over in her head. “I think I understand, but what if it isn’t really me though? What if it is something that wants to hurt you all and is trying to use me to get to you?”

Rainbow Dash did almost flinch but she managed to suppress it and just keep brushing. “And who might that be?”

“I did promise I would tell you what happened, and I guess now is as good a time as any, but I think we should probably eat first.” Twilight said with some confidence returning to her voice. Maybe if I can just handle this one step at a time, I can get past it without any problems...just one step at a time

Frostmourne’s presence flared in Twilight's mind and she felt his chilling words, "What a noble goal, I suppose I shall keep count of the hoof falls then..." His presence left as abruptly as it had come and served to only steel the alicorn’s mind.

One step at a time.

“Uh, Twilight?” Rainbow asked cautiously.

Twilight snapped out of her thoughts and gave a poor imitation of her normal chuckle, “Sorry, I must have just gotten overwhelmed by... the thought of food.”

Rainbow Dash couldn’t help but chuckle .“You’re so weird sometime,” she said with a smile and pulled Twilight to her hooves. 

They then proceeded down the stairs to the dining room, Twilight quickly taking her own spot at the small wooden table. Only moments later, the small green and purple form of Spike walked in carrying a plate of food in either claw and one balanced on his head.

“Good morning, Twilight,” Spike said with a caring smile. “It’s good to see you are feeling better.”

“Thanks Spike,” Twilight replied, patting the dragon on the head as he delivered a plate in front of her. When she looked over at the plate and say the delicate, golden brown squares with rivers of brown sugary sap running down the side, her smile broke into a full on grin. “Waffles!”

By the time the young dragon took his own place at the table Twilight had already cleaned half of her plate. 

“Woah, easy there Twi, you might give yourself a stomach ache,” Rainbow Dash said with slight concern. 

Twilight froze and slowly turned to her prismatic friend. Dash almost flinched as they locked eye, Twilight’s seemed to boil with the intensity and rage of the sun. “I don’t care.” she replied through gritted teeth and then immediately returned to wolfing down her breakfast. About a minute later Twilight paused again and looked up from her plate with a sad expression. “Sorry, I… I don’t know what came over me.”

Rainbow Dash gave Spike a questioning glance but he just shrugged in response. The rest of breakfast passed in silence and once all the plates had been cleaned, including Twilight’s second plate, the purple alicorn cleared her throat.

“So, I guess now is as good a time as any to explain what happened?” Twilight said quietly, hoping that either Spike or Rainbow Dash would give a good reason not to explain what had happened.

Rainbow Dash nodded and Spike just kept his eyes locked on Twilight.

“Well, it all started with a mad pony and... a sword.”

~~~~~

“And that’s how Equestria was made!” Pinkie finished as she set down the puppet and the ice cream cone she had been using in her story.

She frowned though as the three fillies she had been entertaining were staring down the street and not at the ending of her production. “Hey, what gives? You guess just totally missed the super-duper awesome part! What are you looking at anyways?”

Pinkie Pie couldn’t wait to see what was cool enough to top even one of her own stories. So she hopped off the bench and followed the Cutie Mark Crusader line of sight down the road until she ran right into the coldest stallion she had ever crashed into.

“Sorry there, I didn’t see you, I must have been too busy tracking the lines of sight from my friends back there,” Pinkie pointed back at the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and then let out a sudden gasp and began hopping with excitement. “Are you new to Ponyville? Are you visiting someone?”

The stallion groaned in response, to which the hyperactive pony took as a yes. “That’s so cool! I’m Pinkie Pie, what's your name?”

The stallion moaned this time in response. 

“Auhhhhhhhhhhhh?” questioned Pinkie as she placed a hoof thoughtfully to her chin. “Hmm, I’ve never heard of that name before. Are you from Saddle Arabia? You must be a really important person! You should totally go meet my friend Twilight, she’s a Princess. And I’ll go get a party together for you so you can meet eveypony else!”

Pinkie Pie hopped away from the slightly confused corpse and it returned to shambling back towards the library treehouse. 

It’s master calls. 

~~~~~

“And now here we are.” Twilight finished and she then laid her head on the table, emotionally exhausted.

“Well,” Rainbow started, but she really couldn’t think of anything to say. Spike, for the first time today, also seemed to be without a response of any kind. Luckily, the silence was soon broken by a knock at the door.

“I’ll get that,” Spike volunteered and hopped off his chair, making his way out of the dining room.

The two mares sat in continued silence while they waited for Spike to finish dealing with the visitor. That plan was quickly destroyed however by a scream coming from the front door. Twilight jumped up in shock before sprinting out of the room towards the front door. She jumped over a hysterical Spike and continued towards the source of the disruption. Rounding the corner, she looked down the hall leading to the entryway and she couldn’t believe what she saw. It was the body of the colt that had died just a few days ago from her stun spell, standing up right on all fours. His coat was completely pale and frozen over, just like she had left him after their first and last encounter.

“Who are you?” she demanded. 

“Arr,” the animated corpse stopped its slow shambling for a moment as if trying to think. “This.”

Twilight backed up about half a pace as the corpse continued its slow progression forward. “This what?” she asked, confused as to what the icy body was saying.

“Arr...Thes”

Twilight shivered, the voice of the thing was saturated with death, but more so it had almost the same haunting echo that the voice of Frostmourne had.

The shambling corpse suddenly locked eyes with Twilight as if had finally found what it was looking for.

“Arth thus!” the cadaver exclaimed before lunging at Twilight with amazing agility and accuracy.

Twilight ducked and sidestepped the attack as some unknown instinct seemed to take over. She continued to give ground as the corpse pushed forward, trying to slash at her with its now rotting hooves. Eventually, It had backed Twilight into a corner and reared up on its hind legs to deal a devastating blow. But in that moment that exposed its torso, Twilight lunged forward, the icy steel shape of the cursed sword appearing in her hooves.

The wicked blade tore through the corpse’s stomach and with a swift upward slice, ending the abomination’s undeath.

As Twilight's senses returned to her, Spike and Rainbow Dash emerged from the other room to assess the outcome.

“Umm, Twilight…” the light blue pegasus said nervously. “How did you do that?”

Twilight’s eyes were fixed on the sword she now held in her right hoof and her voice was shaky with fear. “I don’t know, Dash, I don’t know...”

> Chapter Four: Give me the Night
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

An Icy Existence

Chapter 4: Give Me the Night

By DigitDaemon

Edited (and much much more) by Blood Lord





far north in a land plagued by the moaning wind and driving snow was a barren desert of ice and in the center of that desert, stood a single tower. The tower rose up from the snow around it like a snaggled, rotting tooth with wreckage and debris sticking out of it. The high winds of the chilled wasteland had long ago given up on toppling the grim obstacle and instead swirled around it singing its mournful dirge.

Atop the tower there was a throne made completely out of ice and far to big for anything but a dragon. Around the empty seat gathered a group of four figures, waiting patiently for their Master. One of them was a massive beetle with short wings and a spiky carapace. Another was the ghost of a female deer wearing physical clothing. The third was a minotaur, or what was left of one, most of the flesh had rotted away and the skeleton was left bear. The last figure was a griffon whose exposed body was covered in crimson runes.

The four of them stood in silence, none of them particularly liking each other. However, their cooperation was not up to them to decide and so they stood in an uncomfortable peace.

Waiting for him.





Twilight sat at the small table in Fluttershy’s cottage and watched as the butter yellow pegasus busily zipped around the room to attend to her animals. About an hour after the local guard had arrived, a contingency of arcane investigators from the royal archive in Canterlot had shown up and sealed off the library, effectively displacing a disgruntled Twilight Sparkle and Spike.

Being separated from her books was hard enough, but she also had further tests and studies on herself she wanted to run, research to do and needed her tree house. Rainbow Dash had to leave for her own work with the weather team, leaving Twilight bored as she watched Fluttershy take care of her chores with Spike’s help. Twilight had offered to help, but under the circumstances, Fluttershy was afraid that she might be too rough with the animals, and Twilight had to grudgingly agreed.

With a deep sigh, Twilight put her head down on her hooves and looked out on the table. A old animal care magazine, some pencils, the morning mail, her glass of water… 

Twilight bolted up, a sudden idea forming in her head. She picked up her glass of water with both of her hooves, because her magic would have frozen it instantly, and poured the contents onto the table, afterwards, she used a pinprick of telekinetic energy to slowly form a cube shape out of the water. She then cut the cube into twenty seven smaller cubes of equal size and reassembled them into a larger cube. She added her friends and her own cutie mark to each side to differentiate them, and then with a few last touches, her puzzle cube was complete. She immediately began running through different permutations and their solutions.

“Twelve seconds…” she mumbled to herself. “Slower than average, by three percent.”

As Twilight sat the cube down to ponder the meaning of her self observations she realised that the usual noise of Fluttershy’s cottage was gone. She looked up and found Fluttershy, Spike, and all of the animals looking at her with amazement on their faces.

“Wow Twilight,” Fluttershy praised, “that was really good. I’ve never seen someone solve one of those things so quickly.”

Twilight blushed a bit. “Well, I’ve done better…”

"Yes, it was quite amazing, actually, whispered the voice in her head. That would be an invaluable skill to have as a warrior."

Twilight wrinkled her muzzle in annoyance. "It’s just permutations and memorization, combat is too chaotic to use the the same principle."

"I wasn’t referring to that, you took one look at that cube thing, and you were able plan out every move you would have to make to solve it. That is an important part of fighting, knowing how to read your enemy."

Twilight shook her head, "Well, I guess it is to bad I am not a warrior then."

"If you want to survive the coming storm, you will need to learn to be one. and since we seem to share a body now, I would also appreciate your continued survival."

“What storm?”

Fluttershy gave her  a confused look, “Um, Twilight? The weather’s is only a little cloudy, are you feeling alright?”

Twilight was confused for a second, being interrupted reminded her that she wasn’t alone. “Sorry Fluttershy, I was just discussing something with…” She hesitated, not sure she should tell her friend the truth or not. While she trusted the yellow pegasus, she also knew that her friend was easily frightened, and while maybe she had a reason to be so, Twilight didn’t want to frighten her friend. Eventually, her conscience got the better of her though. “Fluttershy, we need to talk.”





Twilight marched past the line of investigators still hanging around the tree. Her conversation had gone as well as could be expected. Fluttershy was obviously nervous at the revelation but had managed to stay brave for her friends sake. While Twilight was thankful that the pegasus cared enough to not run or hide, She really didn’t do a good job at hiding her fear. Walking on eggshells around her friend was not something Twilight had any interest in doing and decided instead to cut her visit short and see if the guard was done at her library.

Twilight reached the end of the hallway and found the pony she was looking for standing over a chalk outline that had replaced the form of her attacker.
 
“So... was it him?” Twilight asked the detective.
 
“If you mean the body we picked up on the outskirts of town, yes.” He paused to jot something down in his notebook. “We are still waiting for an expert’s opinion but it seems that he was reanimated with some class of necromancy.”

Twilight nodded. “Is there any way to find out who reanimated him?”
 
The detective shrugged in response. “That’s for the expert to determine.”
 
“Right…” Twilight looked back outside at the other guardsponies standing outside. “So, when will you be done here?”
 
“In about an hour, hopefully. Princess Celestia asked that there be a guard detail post twenty four seven around the library though.”
 
“Of course she did…” Twilight rolled her eyes at the idea of needing a security detail. Although events provide it was a good idea, she could take care of herself. Not to mention that Celestia did it without even asking her. Twilight felt her temper flare at that last thought, and threw one more comment back at the detective before leaving. “Just... make sure they stay out of my way.”
 
The sergeant looked up from his notebook, slightly put off from the sudden change in attitude, “Yes, your Highness. I’ll speak with them before I leave.”
 
Twilight flicked her tail in a half hearted gesture of thanks and walked off towards the kitchen. 

"What are you so upset about? At least they make an effort to protect you"

Twilight checked that she was out of earshot of the Sergeant. “What do you mean by that?”

"Did Luna ever tell you what happened a thousand years ago?"

“Are we really going to talk about that now?” asked Twilight as she summoned a journal from her desk. “Weren’t you there when she talked about it?” 

"It has relevance, Princess. Just answer the question."

“Yeah, she built an army to try and overthrow Princess Celestia,” Twilight said as if reciting from a history book.

"Correct, but did she tell you how she built that army? How she convinced tens of thousands of ponies to fight and die for her?"

“No,” Twilight replied slowly, not liking where this conversation was going.

"Of course not!"The general’s voice changed from mild disinterest to thinly veiled anger. "Well, let me tell you a story then…"

Twilight involuntarily swallowed at the generals words, knowing she did not want to hear them and also that she had no choice.

"One thousand years ago Luna  decided that she wanted to control all the day as well as the night and knew that she would have to overthrow her sister to do it." 

“I know,” said Twilight. “It’s a old pony’s tale about Nightmare Moon. She was beaten by Celestia by using the Elements of Harmony to banish her to the moon.”

"That would be the candy coated version," whispered the voice. "Luna needed power, an army and officers to command it. More importantly, she needed the public to believe that Celestia was a monster."

“Hmm, Mhm. Fascinating,” said Twilight as she began to doodle in the top corner of the journal. 

"So, in order to convince towns to join her, she dressed her followers up as castle guards and disguised herself as her sister. Then, she destroyed burned and pillaged her way across the country side until she had drawn enough enemies towards her sister so that she was evenly matched."

“That...But she… What?”Twilight had to stop herself for a moment and collect her thought, “But that was the Nightmare wasn’t it? Nightmare Moon, right?”

Frostmourne snorted in contempt "Not at first. Luna sought power she needed to overthrow her sister, so she searched far and wide, tapping into her own powers of the night and the dark magics of King Sombra. Nightmare Moon emerged far later as a result. the “princess” that destroyed my village and killed my wife and unborn child was cold and calculating. Who knows, maybe Nightmare Moon was a fractured part of her psyche or something that she created herself, but she had always seemed sane to me."  

Twilight slumped down onto the floor, trying to process what she had just been told. Luna was a tyrant and a murderer? Celestia lied and even erased some of the history of Equestria to protect her sister?.

“No!” Twilight shouted pulling herself back up and slamming the journal close. “I don’t believe you. Why should I?”

"Oh I don’t know, maybe because I was there" deadpanned the voice. "I have only been truthful to you, my dear Princess, what would I have against you to believe otherwise?"

“You  tried to kill me.”

"The circumstance were more complicated than you could understand."

“Try me,” Twilight spat.

"That’s a story for later. Perhaps you should asked your esteemed mentor and her treacherous sister about this instead."

Twilight stood there seething for a moment before finally teleporting a blank scroll and writing utensils to herself. She quickly jotted down a message copied it to another scroll and teleported both copies away.

“I will ask them and once they tell me the truth, I will find a way to burn you from my mind,” promised Twilight as she sat down to wait..





The winds of the far north tremble and died at the throes of an even greater force. The four hooded figures looked up to the sky as the sound of pounding wings grew louder. From the cloud covered sky, descended the undead titian. He was most likely the largest dragon in all of the lands, but he had died many ages ago. It was difficult to tell where the dried, rotten flesh remained and the cold ice began. Pure magic pounded in his body and wings, casting an eerie glow and illuminating his skeleton. He was a dracolich, the ancient undead of the dragons.

The dracolich circled the tower once before landing on his throne, and letting out a commanding roar. The force shaking the entire tower so badly that its thunder was echoed by the sound of ice and other thing breaking free and crashing to the icy desert below.

The Four Figures quickly bowed before the dracolich as he studied them with glowing blue eyes that reflected a wicked intelligence.

“Where there were once five, there stands four,” his voice rumbled softly. “Why has your brother failed to return to me? Do my summons mean nothing to him?”

The ghost pony spoke, still bowing, “Lord, Malganis has taken Kelzad and his forces to Equestria in search of you blade.”

The dracolich snorted, sending a small tremor through the tower. “He presumes to know my will? Rash and arrogant as ever. They will fall as will those that oppose me.”

The dracolich looked over the commanders of his army. “Stand, I did not spare you so that you may entertain my ego.”

The massive beast looked carefully at each of them as he spoke. “ When your Master needs something of you, it will be commanded. As for my blade, it is right where it needs to be, in the possession of the one who will use it most effectively. Understood?”

The four commanders nodded.

“Now, Sylvana…“Take your forces and guard the coast, take your time in preparing your defence. If Kelzad is going to play his hand, we can expect Equestria to respond in kind. Let them fall where they land..” The Dragon watched as the ghost bowed and took a step back, then he rested his eyes on the monstrous beetle that stood before him

“Anubrak…Inevitably, some of their forces will break through. Set up a labyrinth of tunnels to draw them into. Kill all who enter.”

“I’ll see to it,” replied the Crypt Lord.

“Cerabyss.”The rotting minotaur stepped forward.

“You will divide your force between Sylvana's and Anubrak's. You shall funnel the living to our maws and our spears. Do not allow them to wander around.”

“Of course,” Cerabyss return turned and shuffled back into line with the other commanders.

“And you Talous,” The deathly monstrosity smiled cruelly.

“Yes, sir?” The griffin shuddered under the dead Elder Dragon’s gaze.

“Since you and your armies are still living, you will serve me two fold. You will take your army to Equestria and die there for me in battle. Then see to it that you lead their armies back here.”

When the griffin general failed to answer, the dragon lord eyed him with amusement before leaning down so that his head rest just feet away from the griffin’s face. “Talous. Did you hear your Master? Are you shrinking back from your promise to me? Shall I seek out a different soul more worthy of my gifts of immortality? ” the dracolich said softly.

“Y-your will is mine.” Talous said quickly, and with a slight stutter.

“Good,” the dragon sat back up right and made a dismissive gesture with his left wing. “Go forth, my commanders. Lead the living to their deaths.”





Twilight paced back and forth nervously as she awaited the princesses to arrive. She was sure that her fears would be dismissed by them. After all what reason did she have to trust the soul of a pony who was there to witness it first hoof?

“Okay, so maybe my fears are a little more rational than I’d like, but I still doubt that its the exact truth.” Twilight said aloud to herself. She knew that waiting wasn’t exactly the best thing to do for her. It made her anxious and the result of that was never good; Ponyville actually had its own incident log for those occasions that Twilight Sparkle was forced to wait and descended into the madness of anxiety. Luckily, for both Twilight and Ponyville, her pacing was soon interrupted by a crash in library’s main room.

Twilight trotted into the next room still muttering to herself. She plucked the blue pegasus from the pile of books and stacked them back into the bookshelf. Rainbow Dash’s ungraceful entrances were actually so common now that this was all accomplished by a single spell Twilight had created a spell specific for situations like this

“Thanks Twi.” Rainbow responded, mostly out of habit, the nuance of crashing through the window having worn off on her as well.

“No problem,” Twilight said in between hushed whispers to herself.

“Yo, Twilight, you alright?”

“No.” 

Rainbow Dash finally walked around to the front of her spaced out friend and waved her hoof in front of the mare’s muzzle. Twilight shook her head back and forth several times and finally focused her attention on Rainbow.

“Sorry, I was just...thinking,” Twilight said with a sigh.

Rainbow Dash snorted, “Yeah, when are you not? What are you thinking, or should I say worrying about?”

“Its nothi…” Rainbow Dash interrupted her answer with a shake of the head, communicating that nothing was not an acceptable answer. “The princesses might not be who we think they are.”

“What, are they aliens?”

“No, they might not be as innocent as we think they are.”

“Well duh!” Rainbow Dash said in exasperation, “You think anyone could live as long as they have without banging?”

Twilights cheeks turned a slight shade of red and her sad expression turned to horror.

“What?” Rainbow Dash responded with confusion.

Twilight shook her head. “That's not what I meant at all.”

“Oh.”

“I meant, they might have more blood on their hooves than we thought.”

This time it was Rainbow Dash who looked mildly horrified, “Oooooh.”

The two stood in silence for a few more seconds before Rainbow Dash’s face returned to its normal chipper look. “Well, I guess that kind of makes sense though, doesn’t it? I mean they lived during the times of Discord and King Sombra. They must have gotten there hooves dirty at some point.”

Twilight nodded, “Yeah, that is true, and I am also willing to accept that they have to capacity to make mistakes, but that's still not exactly what I am talking about.”

The blue weather pony shrugged in defeat. “If you're not going to tell me what it is that has you so worried,” she said in an uncharacteristically sullen voice. “Then how am I supposed to help you as a friend? I mean, that's why I came here in the first place.”

“I-I know, Rainbow,” said Twilight as she sat down. It’s just… I’m pretty sure this is wrong, something silly, and there is no sense in spreading rumors without cause.”

Rainbow Dash shrugged and walked over to one of the shelves pretending to suddenly be interested in the subject of pre-classical literature.

“Rainbow,” Twilight said with a sigh, “You don’t have to pretend to read as an excuse to hang around.”

“Oh thank Celestia,” the blue speedster replied with obvious relief as she returned the book to the wrong shelf. The fact that it was an improvement over her usual discarding of books on the floor brought a smile to Twilight’s face.

“You are quite welcome, my little pony.” 

Both Twilight and Dash spun to face the door, finding both Princess Celestia and Luna walking in.

“SorryIdefinitlydidnotthinkyouwouldhearthatgottogobye” The prism haired pegasus shouted as she fled out the same window she had crashed through minutes before.

Twilight on the other hoof diverted her gaze to the floor.

“Hello, Twilight Sparkle,” greeted Celestia as a pair of cushions levitated over for the three to sit on. “You seem troubled, more so than usual. Is there a problem?” 

“I have a... question,” Twilight said cautiously, as if the intention itself might hurt her.

Luna walked up to the new princess and hunched down, putting her face in between Twilight and the ground. “I assume that this question is about the past, my past, and you are afraid that we will be upset by your asking.”

“No,” said Twilight as she looked up. “I am afraid that I will be angry at your answer, both your answers.”

Celestia gently took a seat on one of the floor cushions and motioned for both Twilight and Luna to do the same.

“We also assume that you and our former general have been speaking then?” Luna asked once they had settled.

Twilight nodded.

“Well, then, the knowledge will be no less to bear the longer we wait, what is it thou would ask of us?”

Twilight gulped, trying to overcome the lump in her throat, “Did you kill them?”

Luna locked eyes with the quivering young alicorn. “I have killed many in the past, young Twilight. So you’re going to have to be more specific about ‘them’.”

"Stalling, typical. You will die before you get a straight answer from her. Or, on occasion, right afterwards."

“The villagers, when you were building your army,” Twilight’s words became a bit more forceful, “Did you kill them?”

“We—” Luna was silenced by Celestia’s raised hoof.

“Twilight, why is the past, this past such a fascination to you right now?” asked the Sun Princess.

“Because there is a voice in my head who I am inclined to not believe,” replied Twilight, no longer nervous but determined to find the truth as she looked back at her former teacher. “But I can only disagree if I have evidence that he is wrong and I trust you two enough to give me the truth.”

“Yes,” quietly said Luna. “I killed them, all of them. I choose to embrace something dark, and I made up a persona to hide behind when I could no longer face what I had done. Nightmare Moon. With her… with it, I could pretend I was detached from everything that it wasn’t me. Does that satisfy you, Twilight Sparkle?”

The youngest of the three alicorns looked at her in horror. “W-why?”

“Why? You have yet to understand the addictions of power, true power,” said Luna as she stood up. “I hold no excuse for myself, and I will not justify what I did. I had one thousand years to come to terms with myself. I imagine it will also take time for you too.”

With a flash of deep blue light, the Princess of the Night was gone.

Twilight slumped down onto her belly, her eyes unfocused. “And you,” she whispered. “You knew didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Celestia started to approach her former student, but before she could touch a hoof to Twilight to comfort her, but she didn’t get that chance. There was another flash of magic, this time magenta as Twilight reappeared a few feet away.

“How could you cover for her?” Twilight screamed at her old mentor. “She committed murder, hundreds of times. She killed her own soldiers, innocent families so they would hate you more and you just swept it under the rug!”

“Twilight, please calm down.”

“Calm? How can I be calm knowing that the biggest criminal and tyrant ever to exist in this nation escaped justice because of you?!”

“She faced justice Twilight, the Elements saw to it. Celestia replied, still calm and tempered. “She faced a thousand years on the moon, alone, trapped. Only able to think about what she had done.”

“Oh, timeout then. Go sit on the moon and think about what you did young lady!”” Twilight gave a sarcastic chuckle. “Good to know that each ponies life is worth one year in the eyes of the great Elements of Harmony. Donut Joe still owes me for poker last month, guess I’ll just stab him while he sleeps, it’s only a years punishment. And hell! I’m immortal, why should I care about a year here and there, right?”

“Twilight, enough,” commanded the alicorn as the sharp glint of anger crossed her eyes. 

“Enough? Enough?!” Twilight screamed. “Enough of what? facing the past? Answering for what yo—”

“Twilight Sparkle!” boomed Princess Celestia. “You weren’t there! You have no idea what decisions I had to face that night against Luna, against my only blood. Could you swing the executioner's axe against Shining Armor if he became like Sombra? Could you strike him down?”

“D-don’t—” stammered Twilight as she took a step back, ears folding back and her eyes squeezed shut. But it wasn’t from cowering down, it was from trying to control the boiling anger within. She wanted to lash out, she wanted to… she wanted to...

“Some day, Twilight, you’ll have to make hard decisions,” said Celestia with sadness as she stood up. “You’ll have to live with not only what you choose to do, but what you could have done.”

Twilight looked up at her former mentor, this time the glint of anger was clear in her own eyes. Celestia responded with a eyebrow raised in amusement. “Don’t do it, Twilight.”

“Don’t what?”

“Please—”

“Please what?!” Twilight Screamed hysterically.

“Please help!” shrieked a familiar voice from outside followed seconds later by the shattering of glass as a blooded Rainbow Dash plowed through one of the closed windows. She didn’t even acknowledge the wounds however as she looked at Twilight and Celestia, her eyes wide with fear.

“Zombies are attacking Ponyville!”
> Chapter 5: Blow Me Away
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

An Icy Existence

Chapter 5: Blow Me Away

By DigitDaemon

Edited (and much much more) by Lord Commander





Rainbow Dash gently flapped her wings, gliding around Ponyville as she waited for the Princesses to finish their meeting with Twilight. A side wind caught her just under her left wing, causing her to flutter about for a moment before regaining control and leveling herself back out. Normally, she wouldn’t be flying on such a dismal day. The entire sky was covered in light grey clouds, and a rogue wind current plagued the skies which was preventing the clouds from gathering into thicker, heavier storm clouds. Rainbow had half a mind to break up the clouds herself, weather schedule be darned, but... she couldn’t just leave Twilight after she was done with the Princesses.

Originally, she had flown off because she was just embarrassed to have been caught swearing with Celestia’s name. In hindsight, it was pretty apparent that the Princess hadn’t taken any offence from it. Now however, she was waiting because she figured that whatever Twilight had wanted to talk about with them, she would want to do so in private.

It was pretty funny to her actually, in an ironic sense. Before meeting Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash had had a pretty ‘devil may care’ attitude. Basically, she had never stressed over anything, just relaxed and enjoyed whatever life decided to give her. However, after making friends with Twilight, Rainbow had picked up on some of her habits. Reading was a big one, but the one that she tried to hide the most was worrying. Sometimes she just sat on a cloud and worried about Twilight. Other times, it was about what Twilight was stressing about, and that was what was happening right now.

Rainbow Dash let out a sigh as she cut up into the cloud layer, her wings slicing out a good chunk of the grey clouds, and she went to work on making a small cloud to lay on. Her thoughts drifted as she made the cloud, a frown began creasing her face as she thought of Twilight. With any luck, maybe Princess Celestia had some solution to her icy problem, some sort of spell or magic thing that could just turn Twilight back into her usual egghead self and not this… other pony. 

“I hope you know what you are doing, Twilight,” said Rainbow Dash as she laid down on the cloud and fluffed up the extra bit into a pillow. 

“I hope so too, but Dashie, you know Twilight isn’t here, right?”

Rainbow looked around for a moment, tilting over the edge of the cloud to find Pinkie Pie bouncing back up from a trampoline set underneath. “Hi Pinkie.”

“Hiya, want to come see the parade with me?”

Rainbow Dash rolled over the edge of the cloud and dropped like a rock, her wings flared open and bleed her speed off until she landed gently on the ground. She watched as Pinkie bounced a couple of more times, wondering if she was going to have to go in and stop it or something, until Pinkie bounced off and did a few somersaults. 

“Tada!” said Pinkie as she threw her hooves into the air, before falling prey to a few giggles.“Hi Dashie!” 

“Hi Pinkie Pie,” Rainbow Dash trailed off with a half chuckle. “Again.”

“So want to go see the parade with me?”

“There is a parade today?” Rainbow replied with some confusion.

“Totally,” said Pinkie, as she collapsed the trampoline and hide it behind a nearby bush. “I was upstairs in my room, putting together this big surprise anniversary party for the Cakes, even though they threatened me last year not to do it in their room again during ‘snuggle time’ or else I’d lose my key to the sugar cupboard, and probably the house. So I figured I’d just do it in the front like all my normal parties, and then my tail gets all twitchy-twitch! Pinkie Pie paused just long enough to press her face up against Rainbow Dash’s. “Which means we were having a parade!... or a big fight. So I looked out my window, and I saw a huge group of ponies moving this way.”

“Huge group of ponies? Weird, I didn’t see anything scheduled for today,” Rainbow looked up at the sky. “Wonder why they would want to hold a parade on a day like this? Maybe it’s a circus?”

Pinkie started giggling again as she started going down the road with a bounce. “Well let's find out, silly. Wait, that made sense, so they are silly. Let's go find out why they are being silly, makes sense!”

To her credit, Rainbow Dash only spent a few seconds trying to figure out what Pinkie was trying to say before dropping it, and following her skipping friend down the street towards the outskirts of town. “Better not be something like Flim and Flam showing up again.”

As they got to the edge of town it became increasingly apparent that something was off. The massive group of ponies were all stumbling around, disorganized. It looked like they were just wandering around, but towards Ponyville. As Rainbow Dash got closer, she noticed that there was something off about their coat colors. They were all faded, greyed slightly too as if light hadn’t been on them in a long time, and they hadn’t eaten right in years. 

“Oh my gosh, is it nightmare night again already!” Pinkie Pie squealed. “I totally don’t have a costume.

“Uh, Pinkie, it's the middle of November,” said Rainbow Dash.

“Oh, well. I better tell them before they get weird looks in town.” Before Rainbow Dash could stop her, Pinkie bounced off into the mob in the distance.

“Pinkie!” Rainbow Dash zoomed towards the group in close pursuit. As she got closer she involuntarily shuddered at the smell of decay that permeated the space around the group. She could easily see a pink blob bounce up and down inside the grey mob as the ghoulish ponies jumped after her with surprising agility. Rainbow Dash was so focused on catching her friend however that she only had a split second to react as one of the shuffling grey ponies jumped up at her. 

Rainbow Dash pushed backwards, getting most of her body out of range of the head on attack. The assailant still managed catch the very tip of Dash’s right wing’s largest primary feather though, giving the her a good up close look at the creature. 

The skin on its face was pulled so tight that it failed to cover the pony’s gums and the muscles around its eyes. Its teeth were sharp, pointed and set in rows like a shark. Most immediately relevant though, its front hooves had a massive pointed bony protrusions that looked like a twisted perversion of a dragon’s claws, which were sharp enough that as one of them caught her primary feather it cleanly sliced off the tip.

Zombies!

Rainbow Dash’s sudden stop gave the other ghouls around her the opportunity to also jump at her. Despite their un-pony speed, Rainbow Dash was still faster, and she was gone before a single one was two feet off the ground. As she flew forward with renewed energy, Rainbow used the air pocket forming around her as a makeshift shield, pushing the ghouls back as she plowed towards Pinkie Pie. Any other unfortunate ghoul that got in her way was caught in the subsonic pressure wave and thrown back into the ground.

As Pinkie came within range Dash adjusted her speed just a bit, slowing so that she could catch the pink mare at the top of her jump. As soon as Pinkie was right in front of of the blue speedster, Rainbow’s hooves shot forward and grabbed hold of her. A single reversal of her wings, and a hard flap launched the two straight into the sky. Rainbow Dash banked hard and flew as fast as possible while safely carrying Pinkie Pie back to Ponyville. 

Just as Dash passed above the roofs’ of the first few houses in town, signalling her arrival in Ponyville proper, she glanced back over her shoulder and blanched at what she saw. The group of undead heading towards the city was even larger than she had thought, numbering well into the hundreds. 

In a few short seconds later, Rainbow Dash came to a stop in front of Sugarcube Corner, dropping her energetic cargo.

“Dashie!” Pinkie Pie pouted. “What did you do that for?”

“Did what for?” Dash shot back. “Save our life? Gee, I wonder why I’d do that.”

Pinkie blinked twice and then looked away. “Well who the hay is going to lead them away from Ponyville now!?”

Rainbow Dash jumped back up into the air in sudden panic. “I need to find Twilight. Pinkie, get everypony out of here!”





“Please help!” Rainbow Dash shrieked as she approached the library.

She saw the window as she came up on it, normally it was open. Today however, it was latched shut. At first, Rainbow did a mental check on if she had time to slow down before berating herself, This is too important!

The impact was less severe than she thought it would be, the panel shattered easily beneath her outstretched hooves. As she passed through the window however, she felt the shards of glass still in the pane cut into her skin, leaving lines of red all along her body.

Despite the injuries however, she still managed to stick the landing, coming to a stop on all four hooves in front of a flustered looking Princess Celestia and a very, very angry Twilight Sparkle. 

“Zombies are attacking Ponyville”

Twilight let out a furious snort. “Rainbow Dash, I don’t have the bucking patience to deal with your paranoia right now.”

Rainbow Dash for her part only flinched a little. “My paranoia?” she shrieked. “Okay, maybe they aren’t zombies, but there are like, thousands of them right outside town and they tried to kill me and Pinkie Pie!”

Seeing the genuine fear in Rainbows eyes and hearing the panic in her voice seemed to break the veil of rage surrounding Twilight. Her muscles unclenched, her snarl turned into a frown and her eyes seemed to brighten, if only a little.

After a few deep breaths, the princess of magic finally spoke, “Right, I… I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.” She looked Rainbow Dash in the eyes and gave her a pleading look. “I… how far away are they?.”

“At best? Maybe five minutes out,” replied Rainbow Dash.

“I’ll get the guard,” said Celestia as she stood up.

Rainbow Dash let out a sigh of relief. “Oh good, and we ca—”

“No!”

Celestia and Rainbow Dash both turned to Twilight and gave her a questioning look.

“It is too late for that. It takes the closest Royal Guard garrison twenty-two minutes to rally and fifteen and minutes to reach Ponyville,” stated Twilight as she levitated a map of Ponyville and the surrounding area over and looked at Rainbow Dash. “You said they were five minutes away?”

“About, I told Pinkie to start evacuating everypony though.”

“Where are they coming from?” asked Twilight. Rainbow shifted over to the map and looked at it, quickly tapping a clearing in the North. “Here, Pinkie Pie noticed them earlier from her window, that’s the way it faces and where we were attacked.”

“There is no way everypony will be clear by the time they get there. I have to stop them.” 

“Twilight wait!” Celestia begged, but with a flash of icy-blue magic Twilight Sparkle was gone.





When Twilight reappeared in the market she could already hear screams coming from the direction of the north end of town.

“Hey, sword jerk!” she shouted in her mind. “Are you awake?”

“As if I could sleep.”

Twilight turned and began galloping towards the sounds of fear and destruction. The mob of ponies running away instinctively parted for her, making her journey easy. “I need you to teach me how to fight.”

Frostmourne let out an amused snort. “Impossible, fighting is something that takes even the most basic of warriors a few weeks. There isn’t enough time for you.”

“I thought you said if I died you would too.”

“Well,” replied Frostmourne, his voice full of amusement. “There is another way…”

Twilight shook her head. “No.”

“I promise I won’t hurt you or anypony else. It is the only way, unless you would rather wait for the guards.”

Twilight skidded to a halt, by now she was at the edge of the residential district and only a block or so from where the screams had come from. It seemed like the entire area had evacuated by then. At least, that’s what she hope since anyone left had stopped screaming.

“They will be on us soon,” Frostmourne interjected impatiently. “Will you fight, or run?”

As the ancient general finished, the ground erupted in a shower of earth. Without thinking, the wicked blade appeared before Twilight, manifested out of ice, and speared the spider creature before it had even finished emerging from the ground.

Twilight Sparkle scowled at the freshly re-killed beast. “Looks like we fight.”

A feeling of cold swelled inside her chest. It wasn’t an uncomfortable chill, reminding Twilight more of a cool blanket being pressed to her skin. She took a deep breath, allowing the general more access to her body, feeling his power and being mesh with her own. Upon exhaling, she felt a strange sense of peace and calmness: Determination. The earth shook again and Twilight quickly jumped backwards, placing her sword in the path of the emerging insect and allowed it to impale itself.

As the second creature fell to the ground the icy blade shattered and left cold steel in its place. 

“Your conjuration is exquisite,” Frostmourne complimented. “The blade is nearly perfect.”

“Thanks, your reflex aren’t lacking either,” Twilight replied, the sword floating up and slicing deeply into a third spider creature, driving it back.”Even after a thousand years of sleep.”

There was a blood curdling moan immediately followed by an animalistic pony corpse racing around the corner. Twilight grimaced as soon as she saw it. Before, even though it was dead, it was still a pony. Hesitation filled her movements and she heard Frostmourne snarl as control was cut from him. The sword jerked in mid air, aiming too low for a clean kill, and instead lopped the pony’s hind legs off. Despite the somewhat jagged shape of the sword’s blade, and it’s messed up strike, it cut like a hot knife through butter.

“Twilight, these are not the ponies they used to be. They are but corpses enslaved by dark magic,” the general said coldly. “You must put aside regret if you want to save the living.”

Twilight bit her bottom lip and looked over at the ghoul. It was still trying to come after her, the nightmarish thing dug it’s forehooves into the ground and crawled towards her. Twilight brought the sword around and held it before her in defense. As it furiously inched closer to her, Twilight could see more details about the former pony. It had very little skin covering its rotting muscle, and its skull had been damaged enough to leave the tissue exposed. What she at first thought had been pointed teeth, she then realized were fragments of bone that must  lodged into its jaw while it had been chewing on other dead.

“Your right, and even if they were,” a single tear fell from the princess’s eye, “it's no way to live.”

Without hesitation she charged forward, and swung the sword.





Celestia stared at the spot Twilight had been standing in silence.

“Um, princess?” Rainbow asked hesitantly.

Celestia shook her head to clear her thoughts, “Sorry Rainbow Dash, I was just struck with an old memory.”

“Yeah, no problem I guess,” The pegasus replied, “What do we do now?”

“I’m sorry Rainbow Dash but there is something I must do and I alone. Maybe this time I will get it right.” With a blinding light and radiating warmth that filled the room, the princess vanished.





The sea of animated corpses were steadily becoming a mountain of bodies as Twilight made short work of the mindless opponents. As she fought her way out of the residential district and back into the outskirts of town, new horrors began making their way through the ranks of the undead. These skeleton warriors were fragile, and not just limited to ponies any more. griffins and few bipedal horrors made up their rank and were armed with rusted swords and spears. This forced Twilight to give more attention to them as she quickly learned that they well trained.  But there was more to this undead advance as even more of the spider creatures began to burst from the ground and attack her from behind. 

Twilight leaped to the sky and tried to fly towards a clear spot but sudden thump had some sort of sticky residue on her wings, causing her to crash into the dead army below. Twilight scrambled off the dead that had broken her fall, resorting to instinctive kicking, and blindly swinging her sword until she better grasped the situation and instantly threw up a shield, pushing all of the creatures away from her. It was then that she collapsed onto her knees, breathing harshly, and feeling a sticky warmth from her side.

“Are you okay?” asked Frostmourne calmly. 

Twilight rolled from her back onto her hooves and stood up.

“I think I’m—” Twilight stopped and brought her sword back up just in time to deflect the oncoming ghoul and dispatch him, “—fine.”

“I have an idea,” replied Frostmourne. “Why don’t you allow me to handle the sword and you can focus on using magic.”

Twilight continued to deflect and take out the attacking undead but her ear twitched in place of her question.

“We can cover twice as much ground and I don’t need your magic to fight.”

Twilight dropped the sword from her telekinetic grasp and instinctively grabbed the hilt in her jaw. The feeling of her body moving without her input was startling at first, but after shaking it off she began to focus on her spellwork. She started with the basic homing magic projectile, but with her head moving to swing the sword, it was impossible to lock a target so she switched to a quick and dirty lightning spell instead. It turned out that lightning made quick work of the brittle bone and starved flesh, turning the hordes of undead into splinters and burnt flesh. 

Twilight’s body came to a stop during a momentary lull in the fight and Twilight assumed control again. “Well, that worked.”

“Indeed.”

Just as Twilight reassumed a fighting stance, the ground burst open again and two more spider jumped out. With heightened reflexes she hit them with a bolt of lightning but this one went straight through them and into the ground without causing anything more than a fraction of a seconds pause. 

“Guess it doesn’t work for everything.”

Three more spiders emerged from behind, cutting off Twilight's escape and  advanced on her. Twilight vanished from the group and appeared on the top of a roof of a nearby building. Focusing as much magic into her horn as she could, she cast a very charged version of a candle light spell, igniting the spiders into a roaring inferno. Just as she began search for a new target, a bolt of green energy hit her squarely in the back knocking her down into a nearby building.

“Come on, get up!” Frostmourne yelled internally as a group of skeletons charged towards the downed alicorn.

Twilight however was too slow in recovering and skeletal soldier were already upon her. Just as their swords were raised, a beam of blindingly bright light shot out, burning a hole through each of them. 

Twilight turned her head, mouth falling open at what was looming behind her.

Celestia’s crown was replaced by an ornamental helmet made of bronze with a golden sunburst.  She wore golden, plated armor, decorated with stylized sun imagery and rubies. Her wings even had golden frames attached to them, and her feathers had blades tucked into them so that she could use them as additional weapons. But hefted in her magical glow was a giant warhammer that looked more fitting for a minotaur than the royal head of Equestria. Celestia looked like the vengeful avatar of the Sun. 

“Princess Celestia,” Twilight said half in awe and half in confusion.

“Hello, Twilight,” replied Celestia with a serene smile. “It just occurred to me that we never covered very much of war in any of our lessons. While I do prefer to end disagreements with kindness and not fighting, that is clearly not an option at this point.”
> Chapter Six: My Masquerade
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

An Icy Existence

Chapter 6: My Masquerade

Written by DigitDaemon

Edited and partially Authored by Lord-Commander




Rainbow Dash took a deep breath and slowly let it out, taking in the calming, cool, and somewhat peaceful smell of the library. “One, two, three, four…”

She continued to count her paces as she walked away from the window she had destroyed only a few minutes ago. Despite what other ponies thought, flying was a fairly complicated process, and although Rainbow Dash would never admit it, it took a fairly complex knowledge of both the practical and theoretical to get things right. Everything from the awesome aerial manoeuvres of the Wonderbolts, to simple banking and landing. You had to factor in weight, wind resistance, size, aerodynamics, distance, and speed in order to get things right. And, well, Rainbow Dash let out another breath as she stretched her wings, she couldn’t afford to screw this up. 

There was something important she had to do. Ponies she cared about were in trouble and some of them were actually fighting. Ponies needed her and she had to help. For Ponyville, her friends… Twilight. 

The thought of the alicorn made Dash grin. “If only you could see this, Twilight.” 

A single flap, a gathering of as much pegasus magic as she could gather, and Rainbow Dash shot forward. Books, papers, everything in the library flew across the other side as she cleared the room in less than a second, and right through the broken window. 

By the time she hit the roof lines of Ponyville, she had broken the sound barrier. The sudden boom rocked and echoed throughout Ponyville. But Dash wasn’t paying attention to that. Her attention was on the cloud house on the other side of Ponyville. 





Twilight had heard the stories of Celestia’s battles. They had spoken of her grace and beauty on the fields of war, and also of her terrible majesty and power. To hear the stories about her, and then have lessons on math that afternoon with her. Well, Twilight could never quite link the two; the princess and the Dawnbringer. 

But to actually see it. The stories did not do Celestia justice. 

It was awe-inspiring. 

It was terrifying. 

The singing sound of a blade cutting through the air snapped Twilight back to reality, and into a very real danger. She parried a couple of strikes from a ghoul, and then thrust her own sword into it. She yanked the blade out and threw it as hard as she could at the next row of her attackers. As the blade sailed through the air, Twilight disappeared and ended up next to Celestia, firing any spell she could think of into the advancing undead. 

“What now?”

Celestia countered by tossing her hammer in a boomeranging arc and crushed several of the spider creatures that had been creeping up behind them. “As long as they are focused on us and not Ponyville, then we are doing what is needed.”

Twilight nodded and fired another beam into a ghoul. This time, the ghoul still stumbled a few steps before exploding, washing the street corner around it with magical flames. As if summoned, her sword came flying back to her, and once again fell into the comfortable grip of her magic. “I can’t do this much longer!”

Celestia nodded and closed her eyes. The sun above them responded, the light becoming brighter, and the air hotter until a faint boom was heard. The undead around them erupted into flames and ashes. Twilight cried out too until she was swept up by Celestia’s great wing. After what seemed like an eternity, she was carefully placed back onto the ground. 

Twilight blinked, her mouth hanging open slightly as she looked at the street head still throbbing somewhat from the brief exposure and pain. All the undead around them were gone, but the cries and moans of others closing in was not lost on the alicorn. She turned around to ask the princess about it, but any words of wonderment instantly disappeared. Celestia’s disapproving frown, and hard eyes silenced her, and Twilight couldn’t help but feel like she was under a microscope. “P-princess?”

Celestia finally shook her head, bringing around her great hammer and setting it next to her. “That light should not have affected you, but it’s a mystery for another time, Twilight. Tell me, what do we have here?” Celestia asked, sweeping her hoof across the street turned battleground.

“Definitely strong necromancy, but at this level the caster, or more likely, casters would have to be nearby,” Twilight replied.

Celestia nodded, a smile replacing her frown. “Indeed, Twilight. Now the most likely case is that the source of the necromancy is what is keeping these beings held in existence. Like broken pipes spraying water. What are we doing right now?” 

“We’re just mopping up the water,” Twilight hesitantly replied, but at the nodding of her teacher, she continued. “It’s not going to stop until the pipes are fixed, or the water is shut off.”

Celestia nodded again. “Correct, we’re just dealing with the symptoms, not addressing the cause.” Her hammer flew once more down the street with such force and speed that it nailed a ghoul into a wall. “We need to split up.”

Twilight rolled to the side as an arrow glided just overhead. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Very,” replied Celestia as golden light wrapped a small shield around her. “Now I need you to go out and stop the necromancer. I can hold back the assault on Ponyville, and Luna should be here soon with reinforcements from the Royal Guard.” 


“Wait, why me?” asked Twilight.

“With your connection to magic, Twilight, you’ll be able to find the source much faster,” replied Celestia as she turned and faced the next wave of undead. “I am also better capable of withstanding an overwhelming assault, and will provide backup for you, should something go wrong.”

Twilight took one more look around the now crumbling street they had been fighting on, even most of the building were starting to show signs of the battle. she let out a sigh and nodded in agreement. “Alright, for Ponyville then?”

Celestia gave a simple nod, “For Ponyville.”

With a single thrust of her wings, Twilight shot back up into the skies.





Rainbow Dash snapped her wings shut and let herself arc the rest of the way to the house, spreading her wings wide at the last second to slow her decent enough to tumble through her bedroom window and right on the cloud bed. Immediately, she rolled up to her hooves and bolted down the stairs to the sitting room below, and smiled as soon she laid eyes on the old wing blades mounted on wall. 

Rainbow Dash’s great grandfather had been a soldier, a Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force and a member of the one-eight-one, the Stormbreakers. He had fought a hard war against the Griffins attempting to take Northern Equestria in what had become known as the Incursion War. The wingblades were a family heirloom passed down through Dash’s family as a symbol of pride and loyalty to Equestria. 

Dash couldn’t help but grin as she pulled them off the wall and set to strapping them on. Pegasi trained for years to get use to them, but luckily for Dash, these were simple. Old, slightly rusted and tarnished to a dull grey. But the edges were still sharp, and she could feel the enchantments in the blade begin to power up off of her own magic. She made sure to carefully match up the blades and the metal joints with the ones in her wings. The fit wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be close enough to count. 

Strapping in had taken a lot longer than she wanted, but as soon as Dash was done, she stood up and gave an experimental flap. The blade joints creaked with each motion, and they were a little heavier than she thought. She tried to close her wings and stopped once she saw how close the blades came to her side. Dash frowned, but there wasn’t anything to do about it now. 

She looked back out her window and down at Ponyville. She couldn’t quite see Twilight or Celestia, but judging from the slow clustering of undead in the front of town with occasional flashes of brilliant light, it seemed pretty obvious to her where they were making their stand. But it wasn’t enough.

The teeming mass of undead, despite the slight hold up, was pushing relentlessly and very much unopposed throughout the town. The faint cries of ponies running out across the bridges heading out of Ponyville carried faintly on the wind. 

It was then that Dash knew what she had to do. 
 




Twilight twisted and dropped a few feet to avoid the mucus like web that the arachnid undead fired at her. A feat that was much easier with Frostmourne’s instincts.

“I am a pegasus you know, or was.”

“I suppose that’s why you remind me a little of Rainbow Dash then.” Twilight thought back, off handed, as she focused on the trail of necrotic energy. She could almost see it, as if it was a great spider’s web stretching out through the meadows and fields around Ponyville. Necromancy worked differently than most spells, even dark magic spells. From what little Twilight knew about it, a link was forged between the caster and the dead. This link bent the will of the dead, or undead, to the caster, allowing them to direct it, and be traced with it. 

For this case, the origin point seemed to have been coming from somewhere within the Everfree. 

“I wish I had had half as much loyalty as that mare has. She’s stuck to you like honey through all this,” replied Frostmourne after a while.

“Yeah, she is the Element of Loyalty after all,” replied Twilight. The thoughts of waking up this morning drifted through her head, for a moment before Twilight managed to regain a hold on her mind. “So, if you weren’t stuck in my head, you would have abandoned me?”

“That’s an odd question. This isn’t my fight after all. If anything I’m on the wrong side and would be attacking Ponyville.”

“So why do I feel like I am the one that was betrayed by the princesses? I mean, sure, they lied to me, but I have no right to judge them when they were doing what they thought they had to respectively, especially now that judgment has been served.”

Twilight considered what she had thought in silence for a while as she continued to scan for signs of the necromancer. She was now flying inside of the dense cloud cover and relatively safe from the webs of the spiders down below.

“Frostmourne?”

“What?” came the usual gruff reply.

“Are you trying to use me?”

“Shut up and focus.” Frostmourne shushed her in her head, the irritation in his voice made it clear he didn’t want to talk about it. 

Twilight let out an irritated huff and closed her eyes, focusing on finding the spell’s thread work again.. After a few more minutes she finally was able to home in on the center of the necrotic energy, to her magical sixth sense it was like a bubbling, frothing swamp of decay.

“Gotcha,” Twilight whispered to herself as she banked towards the source and began descending quickly.

“Twilight, wait!” Frostmourne commanded urgently. “You can’t just storm in on the necromancer, even if you catch him by surprise, he is sure to have some sort of trap waiting.”

Twilight grunted in acknowledgement and with a swift motion of her horn, winked out of existence and appeared on the ground, within a small copse of trees. Slowly, and with a careful eye, she began to walk slowly towards the hill and the source of the necromantic energy. “Now lets see what kind of traps we might be dealing with.”

Twilight reached out with her magic and scanned the area around her target, finding that Frostmourne had certainly been right. There were pressure sensors, chrono fields, attack barriers, even flat out death wards. The amount of spell work had made her pause. “This is crazy.”

“Necromancers and their ilk are cautious to a fault, and often paranoid,” said Frostmourne. “Their works are taboo at best and condemning to death at worst. It’s not surprising to see a caster this cautious around their own sanctuaries, but out here?” 

Frostmourne trailed off as Twilight carefully picked her way around it all. None of the wards were  enchantments that a being specializing in necromancy would be adept at which meant they had to be some sort of pre-made glyph or rune stone network, which just made things harder. All of the parts would have to be neutralized at once or the system could collapse independently and alert the necromancer of her presence.

As she crept closer to the circle of enchantments, Twilight felt into the ground with her magic, and  began probing the underside of the rune network looking for vulnerabilities.

Thats dumb… He goes through all this trouble to protect himself but it’s just a simple ring around him. A much better system would cover the entire ground he is commanding from and exclude him as a target. That could all be built into a portable rune system to! Amature...

Twilight found the small weak spot within the circle, and after a carefully timed overload and a few teleports later, she appeared about half-way up the hill, looking up at the one responsible for the undead army. But what she saw gave her some pause. 

She had half expected a unicorn, but this being was a scruffy looking goat with glowing eyes, standing within a circle and chanting. He was clad in shredded, decayed looking robes, and what matted, grey fur held old black and brown stains. Twilight figured that at one point, his horns must have been a magnificent set. But now they looked decayed, worn and chipped. All sorts of gold rinks and odd trinkets hung from them, and around his neck was some sort of amulet with a purple stone, flanked by several dead animal skulls. 

I should have brought Fluttershy, she would have roasted this goat herself.

Twilight started advancing on her prey, carefully watching for any reaction. Her sword held by her magic at her side. At about three pony lengths away the goats ear twitched and he ceased his chanting.

“Now!”

Twilight leapt at him, and swung the blade as hard as she could. The force of her strike sent the goat tumbling toward a ring of traps but he managed to recover and throw himself into the air to land on his hooves.

Twilight frowned and sent a pulse of magic into the air. Everything flashed in a aura of purple, especially a domed circle around the goat; a magical shield.

“So, you’re the one,” said the goat, stroking his wispy beard with a hoof. Twilight shuddered slightly as he spoke. There was something eerie about his voice. It was calm, but otherworldly at the same time, and for some reason, his eyes were still glowing. “How interesting, Princess Twilight Sparkle, how interesting indeed. I’m sorry, child, but you stole something very important that belongs to my master, and I will be taking it back.” The goat lifted his hoof and a caustic bolt of acid shot forward towards Twilight.

“I don’t steal.”

Twilight crushed the spell in mid transit.

“I also don’t appreciate it when an undead horde tries to kill my friends and then destroy my town.”

Twilight almost lost the fight as the necromancer shoved his hoof into the dirt and skeletal hooves erupted from under Twilight reaching and grabbing for her. Startled, she kicked her own hooves up and gave a single, mighty flap of her wings, sending her into the air and well out of reach. Slowly, all sort of skeletons came pushing out of the ground.

“Stop it,” said Twilight. “Another pulse of magic came from her horn, scattering the bones all around the clearing. “If you stop this insanity now, surrender peacefully, then I will be sure that it reflects well at your trial.”

The goat swiped his hoof through the air, materializing a demonic claw. Twilight tried to roll away but the tip of the claw caught her and sent her plummeting to the ground.

“My dear Princess, the penalty for necromancy in Equestria has always been death,” chided the old goat as he hobbled forward “I doubt even your good word could save me from your beloved teacher. And it seems like I’ve won regardless.”

The goat casually stepped over to where Twilight had fallen, examining the injured alicorn. To his surprise, where a gaping wound should have been there was instead a thin coat of ice. “What!”

Twilight leapt forward, her eyes glowing a bright light blue, and plunged her blade into the goat’s shoulder. He cried out, more from pain or shock, she couldn’t tell. But with the blade still in his shoulder, and using it as leverage, she flipped him over her and slammed him into ground. He writhed on the ground just for a bit until Twilight’s frozen hoof pressed down on his chest.

“Some deaths are more merciful than others,” Twilight sneered, her voice mixed with another, both sounding cruel and otherworldly. “And I know so many ways to kill you... Kel.”

The necromancer stopped struggling and looked at Twilight with a terrified expression. “Master!?”

“I’m not your master, now am I?” replied Twilight, her voice holding both confusion and sinister mirth. “I am a Princess of Equestria,  and by my authority, I sentence you to death.”

“M-master,” he sputtered. “Master, please. Spare me. I’ll do wha—”

“I am not your master!” The ghostly, vindictive voice cried out from Twilight as the necromancer’s head was cleaved in two.

As the light faded from Twilight’s eyes she had to catch herself, Her legs buckling out from under her from the sudden withdraw of power. Her sword slipped out of her grasp and clinked against the rocky floor.

“That… that felt terrible” Twilight muttered to herself. She raised her hooves up and looked at them, tears forming in her eyes as she realized what she had just done. She had killed another living being. Not an undead, and perhaps someone who certainly deserved it. But another being. The worse part of it was how easy it was. How—

“You did what was necessary. No sense in beating on yourself about it,” whispered Frostmourne. 

Something within Twilight snapped as she pushed herself back onto her hooves. “You! You did that, all of this didn’t, you!?” Twilight didn’t give the spectre another a chance to explain and rounded on him again. “I will not be a tool for you to use, do you hear me! I will not be a monster, not for you or anypony for that matter! I will destroy you if you ever do that again.” 

Frostmourne was quiet for a while, long enough for Twilight to gain control of her ragged breathing. “I can’t force you to do anything,” he replied, as if saying so through gritted teeth. 

“Why is he dead? Kel, was it? Why did he have to die?” 

“He was an old fool, bitter and senile, but also dangerous,” sneered Frostmourne, his entire demeanor changed instantly. “The harm he could of caused, the destruction and death! Besides, what is there to gain from imprisoning him, from sparing his life?”

“He would have been tried properly,” countered Twilight. “In a court of law, and his sentencing carried out legally.”

“And when he escaped? When he comes after your loved ones; friends and family? What then, oh noble princess? Would you be an avenger to a lost soul, a punisher for those who suffered?”

“You don’t know that he would do that.”

Frostmourne snorted. “Your naivety is amusing, though sickening at times. Clearly, I knew the goat that Kel was. I even know who you are, Twilight Sparkle. Tell me, what would you do for those you care for the most?”

“Anything,” she replied, automatically. “Anything within reason.”

“Would you kill?” Twilight was silent, causing Frostmourne to let out a irritating chuckle. “I thought so,” purred Frostmourne. “Careful, Princess. That sort of thinking is a very slippery slope.”

Twilight gritted her teeth. “Shut up. You know nothing about me!”

“I do know one thing about you,” he hissed back at her once again angry and bitter. “I certainly can’t turn you into a monster, only you can do that.”

Twilight ignored him. Opting instead to pick the sword up in her magic and fling it at a nearby tree, watching it as it sunk almost to the hilt. She raised her mental shields, blocking off Frostmourne, and closed her eyes to think. Frostmourne might be correct, but there was still too much uncertainty with him. Too much anger and hate. She had absorbed that sword, which she was guessing had acted as some sort of prison for Frostmourne. If that was the cause, perhaps it was the artifact, the sword, that was messing with her. She opened her eyes and looked down at her frozen hooves. 

She spared a glance over at the old goat before turning and walking away. “Well, it’s over now, anyways,” Twilight said in a mixture of relief and disgust. She was going to find a way to fix this, to end this nightmare once and for all. 

But unfortunately for her, as she looked back towards Ponyville, the undead did not end the moment Kel was struck down. Where once was an army, an army still was, very much animated and still just as deadly. The one difference was that they had now turned and were descending on Twilight, and she was surrounded.