“Stand down this instant or you will be considered a terrorist in Equestria,” Celestia warned. “Don't doom yourself. You know you can't touch me.”
Twilight slowly trotted toward her ruler. “Don't be so sure. There are three of us in here. Luna and Salvator are with me. With all of our power, we're easily on the same level as you.”
Celestia sneered. “I can't believe this. The very last pony I'd ever expect to betray me – trying to tell me I'm the one to blame. You're no better than Sunset Shimmer. At least she realized that the world isn't black and white. You're not being noble here, Twilight. You're not 'doing the right thing.' You're acting stupid.”
Twilight took flight and zoomed toward the princess. She was faster than before. Much faster. “I don't care! If I don't stop you, nothing will ever change!”
They loosed blasts of magic at each other. The two shots struck midair and exploded. Twilight burst through the smoke and dove into Celestia like a meteorite. They both braced for impact and just before the crash, Celestia coated her hoof in magic and walloped Twilight. The punch canceled out her entire momentum and sent her careening backwards as if she were flung from a catapult. She face-planted and rolled to a halt but didn't feel much pain. Her resistance to damage was extremely amplified. Not even her back hurt.
“So that's it! You've made your choice!” said Celestia. “You make me sick! I've practically raised you all these years and you still choose corruption!”
“You've raised me to be a puppet! To never question you!” Twilight shot back. “So yes, I was corrupted! But not anymore!”
A rune appeared under Twilight's feet. She quickly scrambled out of it just as a pillar of black fire erupted forth. The spiral of flames reached all the way up to the ceiling. Celestia's eyes radiated with a purple aura and her horn glowed black.
Twilight gasped as she avoided another fire column. The heat was so intense that she had to squint. “That magic! Back when you first told me about Sombra! You showed me what he did – that wasn't his magic! It was yours!”
“Black magic doesn't belong to anypony. It's just here. It's innate. Yes, I used black magic. We've already established that,” said Celestia impatiently. “Not that it matters now. I'll have to find a cure without you.”
Twilight felt an uncontrollable urge to smash something. She screamed and thudded her hoof onto the floor, cracking large pieces of marble out. She picked up a chunk and tossed it in her hoof like a baseball.
This must be Salvator's muscle memory!
She put the chunk up to her head and charged it with a layer of magic.
Celestia laughed almost madly. “Are you genuinely attempting to kill me? What in this whole wide world makes you think you can succeed where two others far beyond your power have already failed? I made you Twilight, but I didn't make you with power!”
“That's why I took your siblings' power! I have twice the magic and three times the strength of a normal alicorn!”
Celestia created more pillars of black fire until the whole room was nearly volcanic.
“Come down here and fight me by yourself!” Twilight challenged.
“Is that really what you want?” asked Celestia in a sarcastic tone reminiscent of Chrysalis. “I don't necessarily prefer to kill you. Brutally, anyway. If you back down now I'll simply banish you to the moon. At least you'd be alive.”
“Fight me! Quit running your mouth!” snapped Twilight.
Celestia created a rune roughly about the size of a door and opened up a portal inside it. “If you truly want to fight to the death, enter this portal. I'll not have you wrecking my castle any more than it already is. Just be warned that if you step through here, your life will end just the same as Luna's and Salvator's. Before you decide to martyr yourself, think about your parents. Think about your brother. I teleported him home while you were talking with Salvator. What will he think when I tell him that his little sister sided with the terrorist and tried to murder her monarch?”
Twilight forced an icy beam into the black flames, turning each one into a frozen statue of obsidian crystal. “You can't dissuade me! I don't know if you've been consumed by black magic or if you're just a heartless witch. Either way, I will cleanse your evil! Even if that means killing you! Salvator was right all along. You're a deceiver!”
Celestia smiled darkly. Her purple aura had turned to black. “Then step through the threshold. We'll settle this once and for all.”
Twilight hesitated. “How do I know that portal doesn't lead straight into a pit of lava or something?”
“Because,” said Celestia nonchalantly, “I'll go first.” She brazenly turned her back to Twilight and stepped through the shimmering rune.
A chilly haze now covered the floor of the room from the dark towers of ice. Twilight dropped her magically supercharged piece of rubble and walked up to the throne where the portal hovered. The dimensional doorway rippled lightly as she gave it a poke.
Her mind was free of regret. There was no time for pain, only energy for anger. She took a deep breath and stepped though to the other side. The plane she appeared in was empty and immeasurable. The portal vanished as soon as she was out. The new arena was a starry dimension with nothing but ambient clouds of blue drifting hazily among the spatial infinity. Princess Celestia walked around calmly and observed the realm.
“Are we in the atmosphere?” asked Twilight.
“No,” replied Celestia. “This place should be very familiar to you. It's such a shame that your second trip here is for this reason.”
Twilight couldn't pin it down in her memory. “When have I been here before?”
Celestia nodded her head, and like a scene from a memory, colossal moving pictures phased into existence. In each one, a younger Twilight Sparkle toiled to accomplish a task. In some of them she struggled alone, but in others she was accompanied by her Ponyville friends. The pictures ran laterally in a slow unending reel. It was like watching her life on a screen.
“Oh,” was all Twilight had to offer.
“Yes. I brought you here when you passed the right of passage and earned your wings,” Celestia said.
Twilight thoughtfully eyed some of the silent slides. “It feels like years have passed since that happened.”
In a heartbeat, the reels were gone. Celestia stood before Twilight. “Yes well, that's enough of that.” She took a moment to pool her thoughts. “You will be my last student, Twilight. I will never offer my tutelage to another. You've made it quite clear that placing my trust in others is a grave mistake. First Sunset Shimmer and now you. I won't let myself fall victim to a third pupil turned evil.”
“I don't even understand you,” Twilight spat venomously. “You preach equality and peace and claim you want the world to be a better place, but only if it conveniences you. You want nopony else to flourish but yourself. You're willing to murder and lie to force the world into your own twisted idea of perfect. You go on and on about corruption. You want to see a living example of corruption? Look in a mirror.”
Celestia mindlessly ignored her pointed words. “Enough talk. You've had your chance. I'm going to kill you. Our power is unlimited here. There are no constraints on our magic like in the physical realm.” She focused and readied her magic.
Twilight did the same, unafraid and ready. Much to her surprise, Celestia didn't shoot any magic at her. She didn't even attack. She looked beside her and let out a yell as her powerful magic took effect. A huge life-form materialized to her right. The beast was a whole head taller than Celestia. It was an ancient looking owl with tattered feathers and a jagged beak. Its huge black eyes stared soullessly at Twilight. The thing's head was huge. It's body looked almost puny in comparison, and its legs were impossibly long. That's what Twilight found the most outlandish of all – its wire thin legs that stretched twice the length of a pony's. To top it all off, a golden crown sat comfortably on its head.
Twilight stopped herself from crying out in sheer surprise. “Conjuring living things goes against nature! W-what is that thing!?”
Celestia smiled. “This is Stolas. He's here simply as insurance.”
The giant owl twisted its head all the way around and spoke in an ancient language. It strutted about on its stilt-like legs while its tongue danced with dark incantations.
“Ah yes! I can already feel my power growing!” Celestia exclaimed gleefully. “I can see you're not trying to defend yourself, Twilight. Thank you for making this easy!”
Twilight didn't exactly know what to do. She couldn't bring herself to make any moves. When the owl had finished buffing Celestia up, it hooted loudly and flapped its wings.
“No, stay here,” said Celestia. “Just in case something goes awry.” She then took about ten seconds to create a rune on the ground that was so large that Twilight couldn't tell what it was at first. As it slowly started to glow, she caught on to the act.
“Stop it!” Twilight yelled. She charged at Celestia to stop her from any more summons. The owl strutted around in front of her before she could reach Celestia. It blinked twice and hooted. Twilight stopped in midair and felt a rude pressure bearing down on her wings. She looked behind her but obviously saw nothing. The owl hooted once more, loudly this time, and Twilight felt the vicious torture of her wing bones fracturing. She howled in misery and dropped awkwardly down to her hooves. Despite her ironclad defense, the creature was able to break her apart like a twig.
Not right now... don't have time for broken bones right now...
She lifted her head back and let her restorative magic caress her broken wings. With Luna's added potency, the bones realigned in no time. “I don't have time for you!” she screamed at Stolas.
Alas, she was too late. Celestia's rune grew brighter and revealed a portal. The center swirled in a mesmerizing black cyclone. Had any of them been standing on it, they would have been sent spinning into worlds unseen.
Out of the churning void spilled a low rumbling noise.
“Glorious!” shouted Celestia. They're here!” She took flight along with Stolas and admired her work from above. Since she had no way to cancel the magic now, Twilight could only do the same. She rose and looked into the ugly gateway with a whimper of futility.
Long before anything came into sight, a tremendous voice boomed up to meet them. The spectral words were so deep that Twilight's entire body quaked.
“Una Infinitas! Hic est tuum temptamen quod temptat tuam potentiam voluntas!
Viginti tres gradus ad summam potestatem!”
Something vile crawled up and out of the portal like a wretched birth. A wyrm. Its body was comprised of loose chunks of volcanic rock and lava flowed freely between cracks in its plating. There was no frame of reference for size in the starry realm, but Twilight theorized that the fiery snake was as big as a house and as long as ten. The thing had no eyes. It flicked its superheated tongue in and out as it coiled around the edge of the portal. Its runny body dribbled pools of molten lava everywhere it went.
Another form followed the first. A second leviathan serpent slithered up into the plane. Contrary to the first, this conjured reptile ruled over the cold. Its body looked less like a snake and more like a collection of serrated icebergs all strung together. Blades of dry ice jutted out from its body on all sides to act as a natural shield. Hazy mist drifted off of it just like the ice in the throne room.
Just when Twilight thought the situation couldn't possibly be more dire, a third serpent reared its ugly head. The body was purple and black and it was three times as large as the other two. It could have eaten them whole.
Celestia lowered down to the purple snake. She created a throne on its head and sat down, joined by her owl not soon after. “You shouldn't have betrayed me, Twilight!” she called. “We would have ruled together for eternity!”
The great beast of a snake coiled up behind its smaller two counterparts. As it opened its gaping mouth, the mighty voice returned. “Mors exspectat nos, minima mannis. Nos vehementer suscipiat eum!”
“Now the final condition!” shouted Celestia with perverted joy.
Stolas chanted again. Within moments, Twilight felt as if her body was slowly turning to stone. She flapped hard to keep herself aloft but started to sink nonetheless. She felt like she was trying to reach the surface of a pool in a suit of lead armor. The two lesser snakes uncoiled themselves and slithered over to where Twilight was about to land. Panic shot through her as she thrashed about in the air. She flapped as hard as she possibly could but to no avail. The gravity continued to intensify until she was no less than falling out of the air. The fire serpent stopped right under her and opened its jaw to reveal feet-long fangs covering a pool of bubbling lava. Its tongue splashed around in its mouth, spraying the glowing liquid all over the place. Twilight gulped and shut her eyes tightly. There was no way she could correct her trajectory at this point. She could already feel the lethal heat from the creature's eager mouth. Celestia and her shadow wyrm remained at a safe distance and vicariously observed the almost sacrificial event.
I only have one shot at this! Twilight desperately thought.
She ignited her magic and teleported away just as the snake lifted its head and slammed shut its jaw. Lava spewed from it like saliva as it fell back down, creating an eerie explosion of bright orange. Twilight appeared on the back of the ice serpent, near the tail, in one of the few spots not covered by needle-sharp blades. The creature's body was so cold that Twilight's hooves were numbed within seconds. There was only a small window of time before she was noticed by either of the snakes, so she rationed about half of her magic into throwing up a bubble shield. Unfortunately for her, the intense gravity coupled with the severe cold crippled her movement almost entirely.
I can't do this alone... There's no way I can kill all three of these snakes by myself...
Her frantic musings were interrupted by a tidal wave of lava swallowing her shield. She flinched and crouched down under the surprise regurgitation. The fire wyrm hurled up another wave of molten rock. Twilight's shield held just barely. The magic faded in places, creating pebble sized holes. One more expulsion of lava and Twilight would be incinerated.
The ice wyrm writhed furiously from the attack. The lava melted straight through several of its blocky body segments. It sped away from its partner in a pained frenzy, obviously not anticipating accidental friendly fire.
Twilight seized her brief window of opportunity to cast a spell. She pooled her remaining magic and dug deep inside herself, reaching for her spiritual passengers. She didn't know exactly what she was doing, but she pictured what she wanted and poured her magic into creating two familiars. Her efforts came to fruition in the forms of golden spectral allies. The ghostly bodies of Luna and Salvator beamed into the battlefield. Their gold forms twitched slightly as if they were nothing more than a visual hallucination. The brother and sister looked around wildly. They couldn't speak, but their eyes were wide with terror.
“I need your help!” Twilight hastily explained. “Hang on, I'll channel some of your power back into you!” She turned to Luna and zapped her with a transfer of magical constitution. “Princess, I need you to take out that owl up there by Celestia. It's hexing me and I can barely move.” She turned to Salvator. In his new form he was portrayed as his pure essence. He was his true form that never was – an alicorn. “Help me fight off these snakes until Luna takes care of Stolas!” Twilight ordered as she funneled some of his strength back.
Luna pushed through the fading shield and flew up high toward the great purple wyrm. Salvator and Twilight swiveled around as a disgusting hiss sounded behind them. The fire wyrm was right on the tail of the ice. Its stony cheeks puffed and it spat out another curtain of lava.
“Oh no!” Twilight screamed. As the lethal substance fell inches from the shield, Salvator threw himself onto Twilight and pressed her onto the back of the snake. The shield vaporized almost instantly and the two were bathed in the burning rain. Tears welled in Twilight's eyes as she felt small parts of her hooves and tail burn away. Luckily her protector absorbed the brunt of the damage. Another great hiss came from the ice wyrm's body as it withered away from the lava. Twilight and Salvator sank down into the cold wet slush. Salvator climbed off of her, lava dripping off his back. Twilight gently put a hoof on his flickering golden cheek. “You saved my life. Y-you can't die can you? You're already dead, so you can't die...”
Salvator nodded mutely and pulled her up to her hooves. He carefully stepped over the serpent's icy spears and jumped onto the its next less melted body segment.
“Wait!” said Twilight. She clumsily lifted a hoof and took a step forward. “I can hardly move! I'm still hexed!”
Salvator leaped back and started to help her just as the fire wyrm sped up beside them, tongue flitting and cheeks beginning to puff.
Way up high, Luna approached the abominable monstrosity that held her sister on its head. The super wyrm didn't move. It preferred instead to passively observe the battle of the ponies. Celestia on the other hand, was outraged at the arrival.
“Luna!?” she shouted. She got up from her throne and pointed a hoof at her sister's ghost. “Stolas! Take care of her!”
The owl split his focus and chanted in Luna's direction. When she kept approaching, Celestia shrieked in anger. “It's not working!” She left her throne to deal with Luna herself. She sprang off of the wyrm's head and fired a series orbs at Luna. The orbs slowed automatically in the air until they stopped altogether. Luna continued to approach. As she passed into the proximity of the orbs, they flashed white and exploded in a myriad of different elements. A mixture of lightning, fire, ice, darkness, violent winds, and razor sharp vines ensnared Luna in a maelstrom of turbulent forces. Celestia smiled victoriously to herself when it appeared that the orbs had fulfilled their purpose. Yet Luna emerged from the smoke. Her golden body was untouched.
“That's impossible!” Celestia screamed out loud. Black aura streamed out of her eyes and whipped around her body. “Nopony could have survived that!”
Luna forced past her awestruck sister and headed straight for Stolas. The owl yelped as she swooped down upon it. There was a flurry of feathers on the great snake's head. Luna stabbed her horn into Stolas much like Celestia had done to Salvator. The owl stumbled back and fell off the wyrm. It flapped to keep itself afloat, but quickly succumbed to its wound. Its crown caught fire, followed by its head. Soon its whole body was reduced to ash as it was sent back to wherever it came from.
“Why won't you stay dead!?” growled Celestia as she grabbed her sister and forced them toward the ground in a seismic toss. The great snake lowered his head and extended his forked tongue expectantly. It wanted a sacrifice and Celestia had the perfect offering.
The pressure lifted away from Twilight. She jumped up and down just to verify her weight was normalized. Salvator quit helping her and continued on his way up to the head of the serpent. Twilight took flight off the icy platform and flew up to Salvator. She tapped on his shoulder and pointed to the fire wyrm. “Keep distracting these two! This one will be gone soon if it keeps melting, and I'm going to find some way to get rid of spit-fire over there!”
Salvator nodded and continued trekking up the dangerous terrain. Twilight stalled away from the two serpents.
I need water... a lot of water...
She looked around the dimension. Nothing new caught her eye.
Think, Twilight!
She looked down in thought. The dimensional rift was still swirling inside Celestia's castle sized rune.
That's it!
She flew down and landed at the glowing cusp of the magic circle. Each entity was still busy fighting the others. The coast was clear for the time being. She looked at the yellowish magic at her hooves. Runic mastery was extremely advanced. Even as a princess, she hadn't yet studied it. The whole process involved structuring magic into balanced principles and assigning a predetermined functions.
Her eyes darted over the thousands of lines of moving symbols making up the rune. None of it made sense. There were so many rules and variables to getting something like this right. An uncertain idea came to her. The syntax of the magic didn't make sense, but perhaps it didn't have to. She dipped her horn down and touched the rim of the rune. She didn't have to understand it. She just had to hijack it.
The black magic holding the portal together was overwhelming. She felt like she'd just dove head first into freezing rapids and had to swim upstream. The dark force tried to push her out. There was no room for her tampering inside the carefully placed rules of the rune's mechanism. Her horn backfired with a black spark. She flinched and gritted her teeth. Her head stung from the buzzing black magic. Far away, the fire wyrm sensed its target was no longer beside it. It stopped following its partner and probed with its tongue in effort to locate Twilight.
Twilight was getting more desperate by the second. She glanced up and saw the fire wyrm heading her way. There was no need to remind herself of what would happen if it found her.
Time to try again.
This time, she used different tactic. Instead of re-writing the code, she simply tried to break it. There was no possible way she could override the black magic and turn the rune pure. Rather, she opted to short-circuit it by inserting her own mess of junk magic. Random bits of errant energy surged into the perfect circle. All the while, the volcanic snake slithered ever closer. It was beginning to lock onto her location.
At long last, the sheer amount of useless power caused the rune to go haywire. Its glow dimmed significantly, and in a heartbeat the rift inside was closed. Nothing was coming in or out.
Great! Great great! Twilight thought. Now I have to make it work again...
She mentally selected all of the magic that had something to do with water and moisture in general. Lowering her horn to the circle once more, she injected spell after spell of aqua-based affinity.
A glob of lava splattered approximately ten feet away from her. The fire wyrm had passed into the circle on the other side. Its last shot had almost reached her even at that distance. If she was going to live, she had to act fast.
“Come on!” she mumbled furiously as she tried to coax the rune. Nothing was working. For all she knew, it could have been utterly ruined already. The space between her and her stalker was closing rapidly.
Come on... come on!
Still nothing. The snake opened its mouth, ready for a free meal. Only about fifty feet remained. Twilight strained her magic to work faster. The rune just wasn't accepting her input. She tried force, she tried being as delicate as possible, nothing. The wyrm was almost upon her. She could feel its superheated mouth lusting for her flesh. At less than twenty feet away, something amazing happened. The entire rune switched colors. A pale blue color grew at the spot below Twilight's horn and seeped around both sides until eventually the whole rune shared the hue. A deep rumbling began that was so intense that Twilight lost her balance. Landing on her flank, she could only watch as the wyrm slithered perilously close. She winced and prepared for the end.
Then she watched what looked like an ocean itself punching out of the rune. Massive volumes of water pumped dozens of feet straight up. The solid wall of dark sea swept the wyrm up in its violent undertow. Twilight grinned in utter disbelief as the molten creature steamed in the waters. It thrashed about, steaming and screaming in pain. It sank down into the depths of the spout. The glow of its body slowly faded until all that was left of it was a petrified glassy stone.
The purple serpent decided to join the action. It uncoiled and made its way over to the unplugged spring. Twilight scooted back on her flank as it approached. Its pupil was as big as she was. Her heart smashed against her ribcage as the otherworldly creature eyed her curiously. She could smell its repugnant breath. It exuded the stench of decay. Without breaking eye contact, the wyrm reached its tail high up into the rapturous fountain. It thrust downward, shattering the petrified fire wyrm and thoroughly destroying the rune at the base of the water. With nothing to override the laws of physics, all the water that reached up to the heavens fell back to the ground. The temporary monsoon continued for minutes on end. As Twilight sat shivering in the rain, the great snake finally looked away. It briefly glanced to its left toward the destroyed rune. Of course, Twilight was still much too afraid to move. The beast lifted its head away and reared back up into a coiled position.
“You're not going to kill me?” Twilight whispered in confusion. She shivered again. The air had suddenly become much colder. Out of nowhere, the ice wyrm blew past her with just inches between them. Its blades ripped into Twilight's side and spun her around like a ballerina. She fell face down with her hoof over her side. The fresh cuts on her abdomen were long and deep. The rainwater mixed with her blood and turned her coat into a matted mess.
“Damn it,” she sputtered between shallow pants.
The ice serpent returned and slithered around her in a circle. It slowly closed in as it spiraled around her. Twilight crawled forward in hopes of escape but the snake stopped right in front of her. It coiled right up and sandwiched her between its hyper-cold segments. Salvator was on the beast's head. He pounded it with its fists but it wouldn't let Twilight go. Salvator realized his efforts were futile and made the decision to rescue Twilight manually. He hopped down to where Twilight was stuck in the ice and tried to find a way to pull her up.
“It's no use,” Twilight said. “I'm going to die unless I take you and Luna's power again. I'm too cold to teleport and I don't have enough magic to heal.”
Salvator nodded and lowered his head down to Twilight's level. She touched her horn to his and reabsorbed his spirit.
That's one. Now where's the other?
Luna was still tightly locked in an aerial struggle with her sister. The two bit and kicked at each other just like before. It was anything but a clean fight. Twilight watched her from afar. The only thing she could do was offer a weak signal flare. Before long her body would be too numb to use any magic at all.
Luna caught glimpse of a flashing light far down on the ground. She took a break from beating Celestia and saw Twilight struggling in the clutches of the ice wyrm. She zoomed down to offer her assistance while Celestia stayed behind and watched with smug amusement.
Twilight's teeth were chattering and her eyes were heavy. “L-lower your horn,” she said.
Luna obeyed and Twilight reabsorbed her. She then set about healing herself. Feeling crept back into place along her frozen body. She almost sighed in relief when at last her insides weren't about to shut down. The next item on her agenda was breaking free of her arctic prison. Fire itself wouldn't be hot enough. She needed something more extreme to do the trick.
An idea came to her and she gasped in delight. With her horn aglow, she carefully altered the air around her. The wyrm swiveled around to see if she had froze to death yet. When it saw her tampering with magic, it opened its mouth and lowered its head over her. Twilight screamed and flailed about uselessly when she noticed the looming mouth full of needle-like fangs. The wyrm delicately scooped her up with its tongue and tugged her into its mouth. Twilight thrust her hooves up to the roof of the wyrm's mouth and desperately tried to hold its jaw open. To her horror, its icy tongue inched around her waist and yanked her forcefully. She slipped at the sudden jerk and lost all of her traction. The wyrm tilted its head up and swallowed. The tube of its esophagus was narrow and slippery. She gasped for air as she slid down the dark wet tunnel. Luckily her magic had been charging through the whole ordeal. As she splashed into a pool of supercooled water, her magic came through. She forced unimaginable numbers of ions into the sick air of the wyrm's stomach. The ions sped up the particles in the air so extremely that they in turn morphed into the wyrm's weakness. Ionized gasses – plasma. Twilight buried her head underwater and held her breath as a cloud of plasma exploded inside the serpent and vaporized it entirely.
She emerged out of a steaming shell of mush. The wyrm was obviously dead, if it was ever alive in the first place. She shook herself off of the excess water and dried her coat with magic.
I'm so damn sick of being cold... she thought.
Princess Celestia landed right in front of her. Her aura was getting darker and darker. Even her coat looked more gray than white. “I didn't expect you to get this far. You've done well, I'll give you that. I'm growing tired of dealing with you though. I don't know how you forced my siblings' souls to fight for you, but I don't really care anymore. After you're dead, I'm going back to the castle and snoozing this whole thing off.”
Twilight snarled menacingly. “Come at me!”
Celestia looked over her shoulder to the mountain sized serpent. “Destroy her!”
The beast moved between the two and looked at each of them. It spoke for a third time, this time in their language. “I grow weary of watching your meaningless squabble. To my home I return.”
“What!?” Celestia cried. She couldn't believe her ears. “I summoned you! You are here to do my bidding! I command you to destroy Twilight Sparkle!” She breathed heavily and shifted her ruffled wings about.
The wyrm hissed lightly and flicked his tongue out. “You're lucky I did not eat you, little white pony.” It left them with that ominous threat. It slithered away and opened up it's own portal back to its home territory. Celestia flung herself about and hollered angrily as the colossal snake slithered into the rune. The portal closed right after it.
“Damn it!” Celestia continued. “Damn it all! Nothing is going my way today! I have to do everything myself!” She glared daggers at Twilight. “This is all your fault! You stupid prawn!” The black aura swirling around her picked up speed.
Twilight's eyes pulsed white and a light purple aura emanated from her horn. “I'm right here!”
Celestia dashed at her erratically. Her tactfulness was gone. She zigzagged crazily and tried to plow straight into Twilight. Twilight easily avoided the tackle by jumping. Celestia flipped over and blasted her with a bolt of energy. Twilight crossed her hooves in an X and took the brunt of the magic without damage.
“You can't touch me!” said Celestia. “I'm too strong! Just give up!” Her coat was now almost black. She had morphed into the opposite of her true essence. Dark Celestia.
“I'll kill you or die trying!” spat Twilight.
Celestia only cackled hysterically. “You'll be here forever! You're just not getting it! I'm invincible! There's no way I'd bring you here if I ever thought you could really win! I've been toying with you this whole time! But now I'm tired, and it's time for you to die.”
Twilight sent magic shock waves into the ground, causing immense white spears to rip up out. Celestia evaded them.
“Your magic won't hurt me either!” Twilight pointed out. “I'm just as strong as you!”
“Yeah right! The only way you could even scratch me is if you used black magic, and we both know you're too 'pure-of-heart' for that!”
Twilight's aura grew brighter. She hunched down and held her hoof behind her back. “You know what Celestia, you're right. If that's what it takes to remove you from this earth, then so be it.” Her horn glowed black, and a nasty purple scimitar materialized in her back hoof. Its dark power glinted in the blade. Twilight held the scimitar in front of her. “We're different, Celestia. You revel in your darkness. You sing your own praise. I refuse to let myself become a monster like you.”
Celestia conjured a short morningstar. With no words left to say, she swung low and tried to bash Twilight's legs out. Twilight jumped up, but Celestia anticipated this and thrust her weapon upwards, delivering a crushing blow to Twilight's ribs. Twilight screamed in agony but managed to clip Celestia on the wing before she fell to the ground. She then summoned her magic and cast a spell, but nothing obvious happened.
“Looks like you're magic isn't so powerful after all!” mocked Celestia. She approached Twilight with a fake look of pity. “Aww, does your chest hurt? Here, let me put you out of your misery!” She pivoted her hoof high and swung hard at Twilight's neck. There was nothing Twilight could do. The vicious spiked ball tore through the air and ripped straight into – nothing. Twilight's illusion faded.
Celestia didn't quite realize what had happened. She simply stood there, dumbfounded. Then, the sound of a single wing flap made it all clear. Twilight swooped down from the air and plunged her dark scimitar deep into Celestia's back.
The ruler's eyes went wide. Instead of screaming, she knelt down and fell onto her side. Twilight grasped the handle of her scimitar and put her hind hoof on Celestia's back. With a grunt and a lurch, she extracted the bloody weapon. Celestia wheezed with a panicked expression.
“You're lucky,” growled Twilight. “All I did was pierce a lung at worst. I was aiming for your spine.”
Celestia's mood had changed drastically. She looked fearfully at Twilight as if genuinely concerned. “S-stop! You don't know what you're doing!” She hacked up a mouthful of blood.
“So now you want to beg for your life, huh? Don't shame yourself any more than you already have, Princess...”
Celestia held up a hoof in defense. “No! You don't understand! P-please don't kill me! There are forces at work that you can't possibly understand! Killing me will bring about unforeseen consequences!”
Twilight leaned on her scimitar to catch her breath. “You're just lying through your teeth now,” she said. She stood back up and lifted her weapon. Celestia was totally vulnerable. Twilight crouched above her. “Any last words?”
“Yes! Don't kill me!” sputtered Celestia. “I'm serious!”
Twilight positioned the scimitar over her heart. Celestia slowly reached up and softly grabbed Twilight's horn.
“What are you doing? Get off of me!” said Twilight in disgust. She pressed the tip of the blade into Celestia's blackened chest, drawing blood.
Celestia suddenly roared with intense rage and squeezed Twilight's horn as hard as she could, trying to force it upward. Twilight howled in pain and drove the scimitar in hard. There was a sickening crunch as it cracked Celestia's ribcage and slid into her heart. Celestia ignored her mortal wound and continued to roar over and over again. As her body turned to light, she summoned her last remaining pocket of magic and re-routed it up to her hoof. Twilight was paralyzed with pain. She felt something give. There was a nasty tearing sound inside her head, and she saw Celestia draw her hoof away with a horn in it. Her horn. Celestia threw the horn behind her as her body was consumed by the blinding light.
Twilight's body locked up. Blood poured down her forehead like a waterfall. As Celestia disappeared, the dimension around started behaving oddly. There was no noise, but the distant blue particles flickered and distorted. Twilight felt a swishing tingle all throughout her body. The very realm itself bulged and bent like tar starting to boil. She shivered violently as the blood kept coming. Her body shook with such a magnitude that she nearly blacked out. The swishing tingle intensified until she couldn't tell if she was shaking naturally or from the unraveling dimension. Faint blue-green streaks appeared at the edges of her vision. Some sort of astral magic surged through her without letup. The streaks in her eyes grew more prominent until her vision was blurred beyond comprehension. There was a jumble of white noise and a cacophony of random sounds until a white light blotted out her vision.
Suddenly she was standing in a distant northern forest with radiant auroras blazing in the sky. She squinted and was barely able to make out the scenery.
What the...!?
Another flash of light and she was standing in some kind of small office. A hideous creature she'd never seen before looked up from its desk. “What's the meaning of this? What are you? How did you get in here!?”
In an instant she was gone. This time she appeared at Fluttershy's funeral. She saw herself standing with Luna, staring forlornly at the grave. This scared her. She started hyperventilating. Apparently no one could see her. She tried to call out to her past self but the flash took her away again.
She saw Salvator kneel down and jam his flag in the ground, claiming the land as Halcyon. She saw things so profound that words couldn't portray them. At long last her frightening voyage came to an end. She dropped into a soft field of lilacs and blacked out immediately.
---
A small voice forced her to pry open her eyes. She lay on her side in a bed of flowers. There was a gentle breeze that ruffled her coat, reminding her of numerous past summers. She lifted a hoof to her throbbing head and felt a wet scab that was probably infected. Groaning and sitting up, she took in her scenery fully. Endless rolling fields of flowers led down into a sunny valley with distant mountains ranging left and right. The sun beamed high in the sky, granting her a warmth she never thought she'd feel again. Two fillies nervously eyed her at a small distance. The first was solid pink and looked to be about Sweetie Belle's age, albeit noticeably larger. The other was a light brown, almost caramel color. She was still quite young.
“I said, are you okay, lady?” the pink one asked curiously.
Her counterpart looked at her and said, “She looks like she hurt her head real bad...”
“W-where am I?” Twilight croaked.
The fillies looked at each other.
“You don't know where you are?” the pink filly asked as if the answer was stupidly apparent.
Twilight was certainly not in the mood to deal with the child's attitude. “No. Just tell me...” She blinked blearily. Her vision was still skewed.
“We're inside the Crystal Empire. Did you lose your memory?”
Twilight groggily looked behind her. Sure enough, the familiar spire stretched up through the clouds.
“Who are you?” continued the caramel filly.
“I'm...” she began. “I'm – I need a doctor...”
Again, the two friends looked at each other with concerned expressions. This was by far the most bizarre scene that they had ever encountered.
“C'mon, Skyla,” said the caramel filly. “Let's go find my parents...”
Twilight watched the ponies scamper off through the fields. She lay her head back down and let the sun lull her to sleep.
---
Her eyes fluttered open inside a lavish crystalline bedchamber. There was a large machine near the bed with several tubes stuck into her arms.
“She's awake!” cried an accented voice. “Get in here!”
Twilight looked into the slightly wrinkled face of a handsome white stallion with a golden mane. “Cian?”
“Aye, Twilight!” He whistled, not quite sure he wasn't dreaming himself. “This is... I can't believe it...”
“What are you doing in the Crystal Empire?” she asked.
“Foalsittin',” was his response.
“What?” She shrugged it off as an auditory hallucination. “What happened to your face? You look older...”
Cian smiled and hugged her delicately. “Oh, Twilight...” When he pulled away, he had tears in his eyes.
“Sweet salvation...” came a hushed whisper from the doorway. Twilight looked over to see Applejack standing there. She took off her stetson and walked over to the bed. She looked different too. “Twilight Sparkle, as I live and breathe...”
“You're here too Applejack? I'm glad to see you...”
“Me too, sugarcube,” said AJ with the same sad smile as Cian.
Twilight shifted under her covers and tried not to itch her bandaged forehead. “What's with those looks, you two? How come you both look older?”
Cian got up and moved over to AJ. He kissed her and put his hoof around her shoulder. “Ya died that day, Twilight. Or at least we thought ya did. You, Luna, Salvator and Celestia all vanished. After the fightin' finally stopped, the castle just... crumbled, I guess. Imploded. For no reason. Nopony knew what happened. Nopony found any of your remains in the rubble. I hope you'll fill us in on the story, but that can wait. Here's the part I'm still struggling to comprehend. That was nine years ago, Twilight. It's been nine years...”
The caramel filly from before tiptoed into the room and hid behind AJ's leg. She clung tightly and peered at Twilight curiously.
“W-what?” stuttered Twilight.
“Mommy, who's that pony?” asked the child. “She hurt her head real bad.”
AJ looked down and rubbed her daughter's head. “Go play with Skyla, sweetie. Let the grown-ups talk.”
The filly bounded out of the room. Twilight began to cry. “What do you mean nine years?”
“Exactly that,” said Cian. “We mourned for weeks. We made statues for you, Luna, and Salvator. Y'all became heroes in Equestria.”
The sound of the heart monitor next to the bed was the only thing breaking the silence in the room. Twilight's tears streamed down her face. “At what cost?” she blubbered. “The black magic... Celestia... My horn... At what cost am I a hero?”
“Ya did much more than ya thought,” AJ explained softly. “Celestia's influence was much larger than anypony knew. The Halcyonites helped us rebuild after y'all disappeared. It was through them that we learned just how much Celestia was really controllin' the world. Did ya know that unicorns and pegasi were almost extinct in Halcyon? They made up less than two percent of the population. Thanks to you, they had a drastic rebound. Not only that, but a lot more little baby boys started bein' born right after the battle. Turns out Celestia was behind the jacked-up gender ratio here in Equestria. By takin' her out, y'all changed pretty much the entire world.”
“Wow...” was the only response Twilight could muster. Her head was positively throbbing.
“Everypony else is on the way,” Cian said. “Cadance and Shining Armor were away this weekend on business. We were foalsittin' Skyla for them since she and Summer Orchard are such good friends. They're comin' home now. So are all your Ponyville friends. They were just as shocked as we were when we told 'em who we found sleepin' in the fields!”
“My friends are coming...” Twilight repeated. “I need to go back... I shouldn't be here... This isn't my time... I need to get back to the past...”
AJ scratched her head and nervously looked at Twilight. “Well, that ain't exactly-”
“That's not possible,” said Cian. “Nopony can travel through time. It just doesn't happen. Just like nopony can come back to life. Some things are still out of reach.”
“But we can try, right?” pleaded Twilight tearfully. “The Crystal Empire is renowned for its scientific prowess. Surely there must be something... H-have they at least discovered a cure for black magic poisoning? Is my brother alright?”
Applejack softly stroked Twilight's matted mane. “They're workin' on it, sugarcube. We'll help ya as much as we can. There's been some research into that kinda stuff, but it hasn't gone anywhere yet. That don't mean it won't, though. I'm sure that in time we'll be able to cure ya completely and send ya back.”
“There's another thing I have to do,” said Twilight. “There are a couple of my friends who still need my help. I need to help get them home. Somehow...”
Both Cian and AJ smiled. “Very noble of ya,” said Cian. “For now, how about we bring ya some food and let ya relax for a while? We can talk about all that researchin' stuff when everypony gets here tomorrow. Ya shouldn't stress yourself out too much.”
“I'd love some food,” said Twilight. She wiped her eyes. “But, can you guys do me a favor?”
“Absolutely,” said Applejack.
“Keep me company,” Twilight requested. “Just talk to me. I-I don't want to feel alone anymore. Especially now. Right now I feel more alone than I ever have before. I just want to go home...”
Cian and Applejack both hugged her lovingly.
“You're not alone,” Cian promised.
“Yeah. Not now and not ever,” said AJ. “We'll be right here for ya all the way, and soon so will everypony else.”
Twilight basked in the warmth of her friends. In spite of her turmoil, she felt a thankfulness too deep to express in words. In the safety of her loved ones, all her worries and objections lost their weight. It was like lifting shadows off a dream.
“As long as I'm not alone,” she repeated to herself.
The late afternoon sun warmed their faces with its golden rays. The whole room glowed with a soft amber hue.
“No Twilight,” AJ whispered with complete faith in her words. “You're not alone.”
Skyla and Summer Orchard shot past the door, giggling and chasing each other. In the wake of their jubilant laughter, Twilight fought to settle the squalls of unease still roiling inside her.
“As long as I'm not alone.”