Spritelight

Light shot up from the room below as soon as the iris was pulled open and mana from the mausoleum below poured into the room we were in. The crystal in the center of the room lit up brightly, then emitted eight distinctly differently coloured beams from each of its facets towards the ponies around it.

I felt myself grasped by a green beam which held onto me with a vise grip of similar ferocity as the pressure of mana which I had felt within the mausoleum below.

The bright light flooding my vision kept me from seeing much of the room around me, yet I knew a similar beam had been emitted to those ponies closest to me, each a different colour from the others.

I felt a sudden hard tug forward, but my body remained suspended in mid-air by the magic surrounding it; it was my consciousness, not my body, now falling into the crystal and the ocean of energy swirling in its center.

I felt myself quickly getting submerged by it until I was enveloped by it completely, the mana washing over me like I was being hugged from all sides by a warm living blanket.

And then my whole world upended itself...

Without forewarning I was April, the poor girl who had found joy in the embrace of another only to be punished by parents who could not comprehend and had found hatred instead of love for what their daughter had become.

Parents who had sent her away to a faraway school to be 'corrected' rather than accept and rejoice in the budding romance between the two girls.

The heartache from being parted, the new swath of rules to abide by, it had kept her from growing as a person, until a set of ponies landed on the roof she had been on and gave her a new future to consider.

No, I was Turkey now; a man caught in a web of lies, a romance which had turned into betrayal and had become a string of legal paperwork and monthly payments, with a daughter kept out of reach.

He was passed up for promotion at work no less than three times, making him realise there was no growth in the company he had slaved for all these years.

With rising rent and his only friend at the bottom of a bottle, there was no hope left for him until he fell over a pastel pony in the streets.

As far as she was concerned, it was a lucky lottery number giving her a new chance at life.

Yet, I was Rainbow Dash; the daring do who pressured herself to do the best in the hope she could pull herself up out of her insecurities from being pestered at a young age.

A pony who detested bullies and held justice at such a high degree she fell over herself trying to secure it for others.

A loyal friend who would move mountains and clouds for anyone, yet was not beyond pulling pranks when you weren't paying attention.

Somepony who had flown to another world in the hopes of saving it and the innocents living there, with a lingering thought in the back of her mind being that her name might be remembered for doing so.

And also Cadance; who had risen from humble beginnings to become a princess, a wife, and a parent.

Who had become the ruler of a land once thought to be lost to the darkness of the banished king Sombra.

Somepony who cared so much for her subjects that her heart pained if they were feeling unwell.

Who had been learning about the Crystal Ponies' customs in an effort to make them her own to better serve as their leader.

Who had been thrust into a fight for a world which had been similarily threatened by a darkness, and had embraced this task just as how she had embraced every other thing thrown on her path through life before it.

I was Rhonda, the one who wanted to hide away, to be unseen by those wanting to take advantage of her in school and private life.

Who had found love in the strangest of places and melted into the arms of her Josey, yet always feared losing that relationship again.

One who constantly thought she couldn't truly be loved and that it was surely a long-running joke which would at some point reveal itself, but leaned into it for as long as it would last.

One who had found a way to turn her frown upside down after turning into a pony, and had decided to give it her all for the good of those friends and 'her' princess Josey.

Now I was Spritelight, who was worried about the insanity of worlds which once were one and then split apart because ponies and humans were being stupid and couldn't learn to live together for some reason.

She who needed to give every pony and every human the chance to find one another, to come together in unison, for her own sanity as much as anything else.

How did nopony learn from the Hearth's Warming Eve story and the existence of her teacher Discord living among them under an uneasy truce?

It was high time to correct this mistake, yet... then everything fell apart. The idea was sound, the execution misguided.

But for Pinkie Pie, who sat upon a rock on her parents' rock farm and dreamt of there being more to life, dreamt of parties, dreamt of making ponies smile.

That desperate need for everypony to have a good time, forget about their woes, and live to their fullest potential.

Everypony was her friend, friends could be friendly with other friends, and there was an array of tricks in her book to get them to see this way of living.

And here was a world in dire need of some lighthearted fun to help it deal with the horrors unleashed upon it.

And I was Josey as well; the strong one who had taken in a lost girl who really needed protection in school and outside of it.

Who had a strong urge to protect others, to fight injustice at every level, and was, now, the right princess for the job.

Josey, who was trying so hard to not falter in her new role as a princess, to show how she could lead by example, to right this wrong that was taking over the world.

It was a melding of minds, with each facet having its own reason for being part of the whole, for being there as one and as all at the same time.

Eight pairs of eyes blinked in unison, eight pairs of ears rose to attention, eight mouths pronounced the same words in chorus;

"Let's do this."

We were the crystal, the mana, the hopes and dreams of the ponies stored in the mausoleum, the ones who had lived here and were lost to time, those in Equestria, the humans on Earth.

We were the pyramid now lifted up from the depths underneath Yellowstone to stand out as a strange amalgamation of every pyramid style found on Earth; Egyptian tippy top, yet ornamental sides like Hindu or Buddhist temples, yet also a stairway leading up to the doorway which once had a tunnel connected to it in a similar fashion as the Mesoamerican temples of old.

The pyramid stood tall, stood proud upon the landscape as a newly erected mountainous structure, visible for miles around.

The focus now moved to a particular section near the top, an exit route further up above the crystal chamber through narrow passageways laid out between the stones in all four directions.

The mana seeped out of it, played around the pyramid's top as four lightning bolts arcing in chaotic patterns before stabilising and forming into the ghostly image of a towering alicorn bigger than even the largest dragon.

It turned to face Southwest in the direction of the horror from beyond the realm of men or equine; a large wall of flesh moving slowly but surely in the direction of Yellowstone.

The sky of demonic eyes bled its blood rain onto the world as the many eyes in the wall crawling forward focused upon this new world wonder in its path. The energy from within was what it hungered for, what had drawn it to this place, and now it was being used by others.

It stretched out its many limbs, stolen from the people it had absorbed within itself, toward the pyramid in a vain attempt to call the energy toward itself. To claim the mana for itself.

The wall cried out from its many mouths, awkwardly speckled over its surface, but there was no intelligence behind it. It was the primal howl of something which should not be, wishing for something it should not have hold of.

The alicorn made of this mana this unholy wall coveted so much grew and stood tall over the pyramid it manifested from.

We spread our wings and focused with grim determination upon the horror.

"You do not belong here," We decided, our voice rolling over the hillsides around us like a loud thunderclap.

Our energy poured into our horn as we focused on our deep desire to wipe the world clean of this unholiest of unholy. To fix the damages it had done, to restore those who were lost to it, and fix the walls between worlds.

A beam of energy the size of the full wingspan of a passenger plane erupted from our ghostly visage and lit up the sky like a huge fluorescent lamp being flicked on.

It impacted with the wall moments later, tearing into its flesh like a serrated blade, yet finding its forward motion stopped almost instantly as the wall blocked it.

The wall patched up the hole which was forming from the mana blast almost as fast as the flesh was rendered asunder, and even increased the speed at which it was pushing forward toward us as it now realised the mana well was protected.

It howled in pain, in anger, in sheer hatred for those who dared try to hold it back with the energy it had wanted to absorb itself.

We doubled our efforts, putting all our strength into the continued beam of energy forced into the horrendous thing in front of us.

The hole grew larger, new flesh barely managing to keep up with the old getting incinerated by the energy tearing into it, but the wall continued forward, ever forward.

The sides of the wall moved inward as it started to compact itself in an effort to weather the onslaught, the howling becoming more desperate.

We flattened our ears against the unholy screeching, but felt anger well up inside us at its attempts to persist.

"Begone, you monster! There is no place for you in this, or any other realm!" we decried with renewed vigor as we saw signs of our efforts having a clear result, however slow the progress was.

The wall pulled its sides in further, tried to compact itself where the beam struck it, so we changed where we struck it.

The energy punctured a hole through the flesh again, yet it recovered by layering itself on that spot as well. And still it was pushing toward us as it did.

We changed to a different spot again and ripped through the thinning skin there before it managed to thicken and patch itself up there again.

We resorted to short pulses of energy sent into multiple directions, hitting the wall at multiple spots at once, attempting to find a weakness in its defense.

Seven out of ten spots tore apart, three patched themselves almost instantly. This was obviously a better tactic than just one sustained beam.

We continued in this fashion; changing where we sent the mana flying as it flowed up through us from the mana well and tried to pattern it in a way to rip away at the wall's structural integrity. Our beams punctured a few rows of holes through it horizontally, vertically, and diagonally.

The wall of flesh had more and more trouble patching up the new holes, shrinking into itself to use the flesh at its farther sides in order to maintain cohesion near the center.

The howling became ever so much more desperate as it started to realise it was losing the fight, but we did not let up.

The continued barrage from the pyramid it was trying to reach finally caused a large part of the wall on the left side to get ripped apart and it folded over onto itself with a sickening squelching sound, the limp flap dangling for a moment before it was re-absorbed into the whole.

It was a nasty thing to behold but it also meant we were getting somewhere and our confidence in our ability to deter this monstrosity grew.

Another pattern change as it lurched forward in desperation, and another flap tore off the main part of it, now falling to the ground like a separate part of the main horror. A well-aimed blast evaporated it into nothing before it could rejoin with the main body of the wall.

The approaching horror shrunk from each consecutive assault tearing into it, and finally the whole thing split in two along one of the horizontal lines of perforation; one of its sections dangling from the fleshy firmament, the other collapsing into a writhing heap on the ground.

The anguished howl coming from the mouths in both separated parts had no equal in the history of Earth or Equestria. It was the pain of a thousand absorbed souls crying in pain across dimensions.

We recovered a second later and focused on blasting away the separate bits of the thing before it could aim to restore itself somehow, noting that the mass of flesh was reaching for its twin while remaining in place as if the motion forward had only been possible while they had been in connection with one another.

We didn't stop until the very last of the horrific entity had been thoroughly burnt away.

However, our job was not yet done...