Special Illumination

by ponichaeism

CHAPTER XLII: Starlight, Starbright, Starswirl

Nightshade's head buzzed with the sweet taste of the departed filly's fear. Magic surged in him and through him so forcefully he thought he would burst wide open. He was a star come down from the night sky, burning and blazing in the mist that fed him his power. But when he lay eyes on the startled, crippled colt before him, he felt a momentary pang of regret and sympathy. But he pushed it aside. Emotions like those would only make him weak, he knew, weak and soft. It would undo him. He had to stay strong.

"W-who are you?!" the colt asked.

"Your worst nightmare," Nightshade said, his cool voice betraying none of his inner doubt.

A strong, steady voice called out, "And I am yours."

Nightshade smiled inwardly as he faced the meddlesome wizard who was just now topping the tor, obscured by the mist.

"What an unexpected surprise," Nightshade said.

"I doubt that very much, considering you made enough noise galloping here to wake the dead." The wizard casually walked towards Nightshade and he resolved himself from out of the fog. "Intentionally, I presume."

So sure of himself, this Starswirl is outwardly. Yet on the inside he struggles to even conquer himself, so how does he expect to best me?

"They're such boring conversationalists otherwise, aren't they?" Nightshade replied. "The dead, I mean, those lay-abouts."

"It's the mist, isn't it?" the wizard asked, tilting his head. "It carries the fear from the forest out here, just enough to staunch your magic loss and sustain yourself this far from the village."

"Very clever," Nightshade sneered.

"Yet it won't last forever, will it?"

He's trying to goad me, and draw an answer from me. Can't allow him to manipulate me with words.

"The real question is, will you be alive to see whether or not that happens?" Nightshade asked, sneering. "So shall we stop sparring with words and get down to business?"

"Gladly."

The wizard's horn lit up with magic, and he spread his hooves and readied himself. Nightshade cracked his neck and bared his teeth as he prepared to charge. He whinnied, then took off across the hardscrabble surface of the tor. The wizard did likewise, his hooves kicking up dust behind him as he powered his legs and ran at Nightshade.

The Enchanter gathered his magic within himself and unleashed a beam of it straight ahead. Right before it impacted with the wizard, Starswirl skittered aside and skirted around it, then continue running at Nightshade and let loose with an energy blast of his own.

Nightshade tilted his head and shot another, smaller energy beam to stop it, and the two energy discharges scattered in the air. When he returned his eyes to the wizard charging at him, he realized the wizard had put on a burst of speed and was much closer than Nightshade had anticipated.

Very clever, wizard, he thought.

They collided with one another, and Starswirl, prepared for the impact, reared back and kicked at the stallion with his forelimbs. One hoof took Nightshade in the chest, making him gasp and stumble back. The wizard pressed the attack and charged at him again, but Nightshade dived sideways aside and rolled over his back until he was on his knees again. He pushed himself up and they resumed staring each other down.

"At least you didn't feint at the last moment like yesterday," the wizard said.

Lightly, Nightshade responded, "Well, I had to, otherwise surely you would've fainted from fright."

"Very droll," the wizard said as he narrowed his eyes.

"I know how much you enjoy good puns, wizard. Always ready to spout one off. In fact, you could say....they're always a stone's throw away from your tongue."

Nightshade whipped his head to the side, laid eyes on a good-sized rock, and sent it shooting up into the air towards Starswirl's head. But the wizard reached out with his own magic and caught it easily. Nightshade pumped more magic into his spell and tried to force the rock to continue on, but the wizard was powerful enough to slow it to a snail's pace. Nightshade kept it up as a pretense while he thought what to do next. He noticed the wizard digging his hooves into the ground and grinned to himself.

Lightning quick, he let go of the rock and blasted the ground with his magic, sending a wave of dust off the ground and into Starswirl's eyes. The wizard blinked, blinded, and stumbled around unsteadily. Nightshade ran at him and headbutted him. The wizard fell backwards, but conjured a tornado and set it to sweep the Enchanter up. Nightshade skittered back as the wizard, blinking his red-rimmed eyes ferociously, conjured up a roaring flame and sent it into the tornado so it became a maelstrom of fire winding up into the air.

As Nightshade craned his head back at the looming pillar of flame and hurried back, he was oblivious to Starswirl until the wizard broad-sided him. With a grunt of pain, he swung his head around, letting his body follow, until he got the wizard in his sights. He froze the mist around him until it became a lance of ice and threw it at the wizard, but Starswirl just casually commanded the flaming whirlwind to rush in front of him and melt it, then let it dissipate into nothingness.

"Fire versus ice," the wizard mused.

Nightshade charged at the wizard again.

"Oh, no, wait," Starswirl said jovially. "I can use ice as well."

To prove his point, he aimed his horn at the ground between them and fired an icy spell that froze the top of the tor. Nightshade lost his footing and slid across the ice. Starswirl nimbly stepped aside as Nightshade slid past, trying in vain to fire one good spell off at the wizard.

Nightshade skidded to a halt at the far end of the ice field and swung around to face the other pony. He reared back, then stomped down on the ground as he sent his magic power out and willed it to crack. The rock ground split open, and the jagged crack shot towards Starswirl, who prepared to dive aside again. But then Nightshade thought of something much more interesting. He flicked his head aside and directed the cracking earth at the colt laying immobile. As predicted, Starswirl turned away and used his magic to rein in the cracking earth and grind it to a halt. Perhaps he also predicted Nightshade would use the opportunity to rush him, but if he did, he didn't have the time to react.

The Enchanter rammed Starswirl, who stumbled backwards as he tried to twist around and bring his horn to bear, but Nightshade rammed him again to push him off the top of the tor. Starswirl's hooves scraped on the loose layer of dust over the hard rock, inexorably being inched closer to the yawning drop-off. The mist concealed the depth, but Nightshade was confident it was steep enough to daze the wizard.

Starswirl turned his head just enough to unleash a bolt of cerulean light at Nightshade, but the Enchanter lifted his foreleg and batted Starswirl's head away enough to send the energy bolt off-course and shooting up into the night sky.

Starswirl kicked at the ground to stop himself from going over the edge. Dislodged pebbles dropped down the side of the tor.

Then something hit Nightshade in the back of the head, breaking his concentration. He gave Starswirl one final sharp shove to send him off-balance, then spun to face this new spellslinger.

But it was only the colt throwing pebbles from the cracked rock ground next to him.

Nightshade swung back around to finish off the wizard, only for Starswirl to twist around and kick him in the face with his powerful hind legs. Stars exploded all across Nigthshade's vision.

"You're powerful, I'll give you that," Starswirl said, "even out here. I can see I really must stop coddling you."

With that, he exploded with cerulean light and charged at Nigthshade, who siphoned off his own dark magic from the mist and leapt into the air to meet the wizard. They collided in mid-air, and the piercing horn of light on Starswirl's head made contact with the hammerblow of raw magic Nightshade unleashed. They hung in mid-air, the wizard consumed by light and Nightshade by shadow, each one struggling to overpower the other.

Sweat dripped down the Enchanter's shadow-clad face as he gritted his teeth and tried to keep the torrent of energy up. But the wizard was winning, Nightshade saw. The wizard's magic was pinpoint accurate, while the Enchanter already felt himself start to drain. The mist couldn't support him for long, whereas Starswirl's power flowed from the cosmos themselves. As Nightshade sucked the fog dry of its fear-tainted magic to fuel his side of the duel, it began to thin, until the stars and the moon broke through and shone down overhead, not even so much as blinking or wavering.

"Losing your cool?" the wizard asked mockingly. "You can't beat me out here, Nightshade. You're too far from the source of your power. There's not enough fear out here to sustain you."

As Nightshade tried to lean forward and get his magic past Starswirl's horn of light, he gritted his teeth so hard he thought they would shatter from the sheer force and fly off in every direction.

But the more effort he put into it, the more his magic burned away. There wasn't enough fear yet to sustain him in the open country, and the wizard knew it.

He kicked away from Starswirl and dropped to the ground. "You may have won this small victory, wizard, but this isn't over yet. You may have power, but you've still lost your connection to that....Harmony, as you call it. So challenge me in the forest, if you dare."

"One day, Enchanter. One day."

Nightshade sent one last blast of energy at the wizard, then turned and ran. He leapt off the tor and floated down until he landed on the treacherous stone hillside. He could feel the last of his magic burning away into the nothingness. He cast a glance over his shoulder, up at the top of the tor, and saw Starswirl standing at the edge to watch him go. The wizard stood tall and proud against the starfield at his back. Lingering sparks of the aura that had consumed him still clung to him. If the wizard saw the last of Nightshade's power fade, then the game would be over. Nightshade put on an extra burst of speed to carry him across the threshold of the mist and made his way back towards the forest before he was forced to don his mask again.

But it was no use. The magic in the mist and the fear of the distant townsponies who were at that very moment rushing towards the tor wasn't enough to staunch his ebbing power. It left him like a weary sigh, rendering him magicless and trapped in the facade that chained him to the realm of the mundane once more.