Teros

by Scampy

Rating: teen
Tags: Adventure
Length: 6602

Cadance searches for the origin of the Crystal Heart.

Cadance searches for the origin of the Crystal Heart.

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2013-10-24 05:10:11 UTC

Starry Night

She felt her way through the inky blackness of the night, her magic weaving and wandering through vines and branches as it guided her forward.  The distinct crunching of twigs and dead leaves beneath her was a welcome percussion to the otherwise eerie silence that permeated the forest.  Undaunted, she pressed onward, her soft magical aura the only shimmer of lighting.

Princess Cadance shivered as a cold breeze cut its way through the trees, fluttering its way through her mane.  Flexing the feathery limbs, she took a glance upward at where a broad canopy of varying green hues had stretched above her the day before.  The thickness of the cover did well to keep out any light from the moon or stars.  She snickered to herself at the memory of an argument between her self and her aunt Luna about the effectiveness of lunar illumination, and how the pale body of the night just simply wasn't the equal of the sun in radiance.

The chuckling fell into a low sigh as Cadance telekinetically shifted the spreading leaves of a fern apart so that they wouldn't catch on her rosy pink saddle bag.  It took little effort, but the princess still felt a familiar burning at the base of her horn.  Wincing slightly, she lightly lifted the dark fronds back into place, leaving the nightly scene looking as if she had never been there at all.

As she pushed her way through a tiny gap between two particularly thick bushes, she felt the earthly carpet of decaying leaves and sticks give way to a soft blanket of grass.  The baby blue tendrils of Cadance's magic cast a warm glow over the place as the princess glanced around, marveling at the sudden silence.

It was much brighter.  Cadance turned her gaze to the skies, and let out a joyous gasp.  For the first time in days, she was greeted with the beautiful, tranquil view of the night sky.  The moon shone with a pale glow, shedding its cold light across what the princess saw was a wide valley.  The shimmering stars were painted expertly across the roof of the world, dancing and twinkling in a thick, dotted band of light that stretched across the horizon.

The illumination from the heavenly lights revealed a wondrous landscape.  From where Cadance stood on the edge of the forest, a sloping hill ran down into the depths of the valley.  The land was dotted with vegetation ranging from small clusters of blue-green bushes along the hillsides to high reaching conifers that stretched to the sky, as if their branches and needles yearned for nothing more than to escape into the lands beyond.  A winding river flowed through the valley, weaving its way between the grass-covered hills like a liquid serpent.

In several places along the basin, Cadence saw what she believed to be large chunks of marble piercing their way out of the ground.  The smooth stones were immaculate, their white surfaces unmarked by the lichens and mosses that pervaded every rock the princess had seen during her trek through the forest.  Their surfaces sparkled and shone like crystals beneath the stars, as if the sleek boulders were longingly imitating the glittering jewels of the night, with dreams of becoming one with the sky that passed above them.

Cadance sighed and lay down in the cool grass.  She stretched her limbs out, relishing in the cool blanket of dew that reflected the heavenly glow from above, as if each tiny bead of water were and earth-born star.

The wind blew over her prone form.  The gust wasn't chilling as it was before, and the princess turned into the wind, undoing the bands behind her head with magic and allowing her mane to fall from its ponytail, letting the hair ripple and dance in the passing breeze.

She closed her eyes and smiled, her pink and purple wings folding comfortably to her sides.  Cadance thought of the canvas bag on her back, and of the warm embrace of a patchwork blanket packed within.  Her mind quickly disregarded the thought, and the princess allowed herself to find slumber on the mattress of the earth, her cover being a blanket of her aunt Luna's stars.

As the veil of dreams began to take her, Cadance felt the cold embrace of a phantom hoof running through her mane.  She gasped, lurching upright, and spun around—only to find that there was nothing behind her but a thick bastion of trees and vines.  She let out a deep breath, her ears drooping.  Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, the princess wished she had turned to discover a white coat and a warm embrace.

Cadance made no sound as she resigned herself to the grass once more, curling herself inward for warmth.  She raised her head to telekinetically lift the saddle bag from her back and place it beneath her as a makeshift pillow.  Laying back down, the princess found herself resting her head on a carved, solid object.

A searing pain shot through her horn like a flaming arrow.  Cadance hissed, recoiling immediately, and felt along her horn with a bare, tender hoof.  It was hot to the touch, and when she brought her hoof back in front of her face, it looked almost as if it were stained with ink.

She briefly considered turning the bag over and resting her head on the other side, where she knew the soft folds of the blanket would offer her a better rest.  Cadance blinked, the cover of her eyelids flashing green for the briefest of moments.

Forcing her gaze away from the sky, the princess dutifully lay her head down on the crystalline contents of the saddle bag.  The burning in her horn returned, but this time she was prepared for it.  She lay down slowly, all the while clenching her teeth to hold back a groan from the fire spreading up her horn.

If somepony else had been there to see her, they would have seen Cadance's determination desolve into a melancholy whimper.  They may have also seen her hug the bag and its contents closer, squeezing her eyes shut.  There, above the lush valley and beneath the shining stars, Cadance fell into a fitful, dreamless sleep.

Valley

The sun rose into the sky slowly, like a great amber torch casting its flame across the horizon.  Its warm rays tickled Cadance's eyelids, causing the princess to twitch and stir.  Stretching her jaw with a gaping yawn, she flexed her limbs and rose up from the grass.

She suddenly shivered.  Her body was damp from the thin blanket of dew she had slept on, most of the nightly moisture clinging to her thin pink fur like a cool coat of honey.  Cadance blinked, looked around the immediate area, and shook herself like a dog.  While she wasn't entirely soaked and the act did little to rid her coat of its watery sheen, the exercise was enough to jolt her awake.  She breathed deep the sweet morning air, letting it all out with a content sigh.

With the sunlight brought by the dawn, Cadance could now get a clear view of the valley before her.  Stepping forward to the steep green slope of the hill she stood on, the princess gazed in awe at the grand expanse before her.  On either side of her, mountainous granite walls rose imposingly into the sky, capped with drifts of snow and ice that formed miniature glaciers in the tiny pockets of the range's peaks.  The rocky cliffs grew more gentle and moderate as Cadance's eyes drew lower, to where smooth piles of rubble and debris were carved from the immaculate surfaces of the mountain faces.  The princess could trace each landslide and avalanche from hundreds or even thousands of years ago, the steep earthy slides acting like gargantuan history books.

The forest from which Cadance had escaped from the previous night grew in earnest on and around the hill upon which the princess stood, but shriveled and died upon the ragged cliffs beyond.  Further into the valley, Cadance saw many shades of green, from the wild grasses that painted the basin to the shrubs and bushes that dotted the crags.  From where Cadance stood, the vegetation appeared to be no more than moss on a rock, save for the few proud pines that reached like desperate hooves for the peaks of the snowy ridges.

Cadance finished gathering her few belongings into her saddle bag.  Though she was lightly packed, the rosy canvas of the thing was starting to sag, its stitches tearing as if they bore some deceptively heavy weight.  The princess felt something solid and smooth in the large pocket beneath her bandaged wing, hissing under her breath as the joint heated up as if it were being heated over a campfire.  Shaking her head, she rose a dirty pink hoof with several colored hairbands wrapped around it.  Each was wet, ragged, and worn, save for a thick violet one above all the others.  With a low sigh, she levitated a frayed orange band from her hoof and, using her magic, tied it into her mane to form a long ponytail.  The princess reached behind her head and swatted the bundle of her mane for good measure, then trotted swiftly to the edge of the hill and began her descent.

The sun finally crested fully above the snow-capped giants to her left.  Cadance mentally checked off the long, slender shadow to her right, confirming that she was indeed still headed in the correct direction after relying solely on her compass and the twisted paths in the forest.  She took careful, measured steps down the steep inclination, each hoof planted firmly as to not slip on the dew that coated both the grass and her hooves.  As the slope began to taper and her cautious tread grew into a more casual trot, Cadance gave a lethargic glance back at her wings.  Her half-lidded eyes filled with tempered disdain as she lifted her left wing to look at her saddle bag.

She reached the bottom of the hill easily enough.  The land stretched before her like a green and grey canvas, perturbed only by the towering chunks of white marble that stabbed through the surface of the earth like immaculate stone swords.  Cadance had counted easily fifteen during her descent, but now that she too stood at the base of the valley, she could barely see them over the gently rising hills that rolled along the length of the place like grassy waves.

The trek through the valley was a slow one.  Seconds turned to minutes turned to hours as Cadance kept her eyes trained on her shadow, as if she expected it to escape.  The weight of her saddle bag had her constantly readjusting herself, and the princess felt the familiar burning sensation under her left wing with every step.  Even so, she pressed her feathery limb tightly over the smooth object at her side, clutching closely it like a child would a stuffed doll.

Cadance began to feel the scale of the basin as she passed a line of chest-high bushes, which she had previously thought were tiny shrubs when viewing them from the top of the hill.  The grand expanse reminded her of the flat, stretching plains that surrounded her home, and she wondered if anypony else had ever settled here, or even set hoof here.  The wide walls of mountains were certainly nothing like anypony from the singular spire of Canterlot had ever seen before, and Cadance suspected few ponies would expect to find such a hidden paradise in what many would consider a rugged, unforgiving scar upon the earth.

The thought of paradise in a frozen wasteland made her snicker to herself.  The giggles bled into a sigh, and she swallowed a lump in her throat as her ears filled with the sound of flowing water.  Cadance pushed herself through a thick wall of bushes to reveal a river.  A beach of tan and brown pebbles stretched to each side, but the water itself was a chalky white.

The princess sighed gratefully, kneeling down and stripping herself of her saddle bag.  Immediately, a cool relief spread through her wing, filling Cadance with the urge to leap into the skies and fly loops around the beach.

One look at the tattered rosy bag and her ever-shrinking shadow killed that desire.  Cadance groaned, struggling to also dispel the wish to abandon her bags here and take wing in the opposite direction.

Instead, she levitated her saddle bag closer and slowly set it down.  The spell was simple enough, though the princess felt a familiar heat settling itself in her horn.  She put her hooves around the flap of the pocket filled with something soft, and reached inside with her magic.  The baby blue glow retrieved several things: a small patchwork blanket, a glossy brass compass, a crystalline jar, and a few flowers gathered in the forest.  Several things remained in the pocket, which Cadance hastily closed as she expertly lay out the blanket and brought the flowers to her lips simultaneously.

She relished in the taste of something—anything—that wasn't grass.  What few flowers she'd found in the forest were inedible for the most part, and the ones that she'd gathered for later consumption were few and far between.  If she'd been any other pony, literally living off the land wouldn't be a problem, but royal habits died hard.

Cadance chewed and savored each petal and stem.  She stood up and walked towards the river, her crystal canteen hovering alongside her in a haze of blue magic.  The princess peered into the river, wondering what was in it that would leave it looking like a stream of watered down milk.  She shrugged, popped the top off of the jar and filled it to the brim with the chalky water.

As soon as the cap was on again, she shook the jar vigorously in the air, until it glowed with a deep red hue.  In a brief flicker, the color was gone, and Cadance uncapped the canteen again and took a long drink of clear water.  With a smirk, the princess capped it again and walked back across the pebbles to where her blanket lay spread out.

Cadance lay down on the thin fabric and picked up her compass.  It was a large instrument, with a brass cover similar to a pocket watch.  The princess flipped it open, and watched—mesmerized—as the silver needle spun wildly between the ends of a six-pointed star.

The compass itself was the bottom half of the device, but Cadance's attention quickly turned to the top.  A perfect reflection of herself stared back, just beyond the barrier of a crystal clear mirror.  A blink, and she let out a long sigh.

The pony in the mirror was plagued with baggy violet eyes.  Cadance ran a hoof through her dirty mane, feeling the twigs and grass that she could plainly see in her reflection.  Her entire face was drooping, as if she hadn't slept for days.

But it was the princess's horn that dismayed her the most.  Normally vibrant and pink, it was now a lackluster white.  Its usually defined spiral was hidden beneath a thin layer of dust that clung to her like ivy.  And worst of all, Cadance realized, were the inky blotches growing like mold at the base of her horn.  The black dots had tiny tendrils extending from within, connecting them and giving each one the appearance of a miniature hole punched violently through Cadance's horn.

The princess grimaced and tilted the mirror down, so that she could only see the bottom half of her compass.  The needle still swung back and forth over the points of the star.

Cadance's eyes shifted focus from the spinning needle to the star it spun upon.  Around the image, a thick green circle was drawn, placed so that the bottom and top points of the star were poking far through the surface of it like massive spires.  The other four points protruded through the circle as well, and all six had an image tiny blue heart just past the tip.  The entire design resembled a mutated compass rose.

She tilted the entire compass slightly, her gaze making sure not to find herself in the mirror.  Instead, Cadance saw a reflection of the compass.  The entire image was the same, save for a single detail.  Within the mirror, Cadance saw that the heart tied to the bottom point—now the top point—was a bright white, and its twin on the opposite end of the star was a pitch black.

Her eyes caught something.  The needle had finally stopped moving, its red half pointing straight at the shining white heart.  Cadance smiled and closed the compass with a click.

Within minutes, her bag was packed again.  Her stomach no longer rumbling and her canteen full of clean water, Cadance set forth on hoof once more, a burning weight beneath her wing.

Impurities

The sunrise brought with it an alien warmth as the golden rays shone upon Cadance's fluttering eyelids.  The princess awoke to a morning symphony of trickling water, birds singing, and an all too familiar hissing—

"Eeyaaah!" Cadance shrieked, her wings flaring, as she leapt up and away from her saddle bag like a foal would from a hairy spider.  Panting, she took a brave step forward, directing her ears to the rosy canvas sack.

Cadance's brow furrowed, the princess fighting the overwhelming urge to cast the bag and its contents over the hillside.  A few short breaths, and she closed her lilac eyes in concentration.  The short task that followed, she knew, was never an easy one.

She knelt down to the dew-coated grass and let out a deep breath.  Folding in her pink and purple wings, Cadance erased the present from her mind, the warm kiss of the dawn and the cheerful chorus of the birds fading away.  In their place, several silhouettes of ponies rose from nothing, and a shimmering tower rose like a crystal lighthouse.  The princess didn't feel the smile tugging on her lips as the ponies took form as a tall, alabaster stallion and a tiny unicorn foal swaddled in velvet.  She heard their voices, distant and muted, as if she were under leagues of water.  Nevertheless, she reveled in the deep, confident tones of her husband and the joyous squeals of her one and only—

Thrallsssss...

A sudden sting shot through her bandaged wing and her horn, and her bloodshot eyes opened as she lurched forward.  Cadance's breathing slowed as the sting slowly faded and was replaced by a soft warmth that spread from her chest outward.  She'd only had a few seconds, but it would have to do.

Reaching forth with her magic, she slowly, slowly lifted the saddle bag from the ground, struggling to ignore the pockets of fire that spread up her horn.  Keeping it suspended, she felt around the folds of the thing and expertly lifted the flap of one side.  Her magic grasped the object inside the large pocket, and then the princess immediately released the satchel, letting it fall to the ground in a heap.

She opened her eyes—wincing—and allowed herself to trace her gaze longingly around the deep blue artifact before her.  It's immaculate surface shining in the long light of the dawn, the Crystal Heart was suspended above the ground by Cadance's magic.

The princess's gaze hardened.  She leaned her horn forward with precision, keeping a breath's distance between herself and the shimmering stone before her.  With a single, pensive breath, Cadance pushed her magic through the surface of the crystal.

Immediately, she shrunk back.  She grimaced, her bandaged wing twitching as she struggled against a sudden urge to smash the great jewel to pieces against the ground below.  Her eyelids were forced shut by the strain, just as wisps of cloudy violet mist bled from the corners of her eyes.  Cadance bit back a scream as her magic focused to a fine azure beam that pierced to the center of the Crystal Heart, which remained motionless in the air.

Her magic sparked something at the core of the gem.  The same vile hissing from earlier slithered its way to her ears.

The princess's eyes shot open, her vision flashing a vibrant green.  The otherworldly sound from the stone had risen from its low hissing to something innocent, something pure, something Cadance recognized.

"L-Luxanna...?"

She heard a foal scream.  Cadance's magic faltered, causing the Crystal Heart to dip a few inches in its suspension.  She gasped, tears and violet mist leaking slowly from the corners of her eyes.  The thin blue beam between her horn and the core of the artifact pulsed once, and then inky tendrils surfaced from the crystal and began slowly, tauntingly inching their way toward the princess.

She shook herself and, with a scream that echoed across the lengths of the valley, blasted the shadowy coils into nothing as the tether of mana between her horn and the jewel intensified.  The Crystal Heart pulsed, and the shrieking from within grew to a fever pitched shriek.  Cadance howled as hideous waves of purple vapor swirled around her horn.  Her vision flashed green once more, and then the world was gone.

Despair

It's cold.  Freezing, even.  My eyes flutter open and I groan, feeling the icy embrace of the cave's floor beneath me.  I can feel my skull throbbing as I cast a simple light spell across the pitch-black cavern.  As I blink to clear the murky edges of unconsciousness from my vision, the entirety of this nightmarish place comes into view.

I am in a tiny, claustrophobic chamber.  The only light source is attached firmly to my head, and whenever I move the slightest bit, shadows dance tauntingly from behind the jagged crystalline shards that stab their way out of the floor.  The air is dank, and the only sound heard is the occasional dripping of water and the echoes of my own shallow, panicked breaths.

"Shining?!"  I call out desperately for my fiance.  The only answer is my own voice, distant and muted, bouncing off the walls of this awful dungeon and taunting me with my own isolation.

"Shining Armor!  P-Please, where are you?!"

"Mmmm...  Hmmhmmmmm...  Nopony can hear you, princess."

The last word is dragged out, stretched thin like a wet tissue.  That voice.  I know that voice.

"Y-You!  Where are you, I-I know you're down here!"

"Oh, Mi Amore Cadenza, you don't know anything about me."

Her face appears behind—or maybe within—the smooth rock wall before me.  I feel my muscles tense up.  I grit my teeth, and with a scream, fire a condensed beam of magic into her smug, chitin-encrusted face.

My attack is met with a chorus of hideous laughs and my own spell rebounding wildly around the chamber.  I dive to the floor, covering my head with my hooves as the reflective walls around me bounce the stream of deadly mana across the room.  I see it flying towards me, and on instinct, a blue bubble coalesces around my body, absorbing my own lethal blow.

"Look at you, Cadenza.  Cowering like a rodent from your own power.  Honestly, I'm doing your country a service by leaving you to rot in these caves."  The voice comes from behind me, and I spin around in a haste, my horn glowing with violent energy.  My eyes flick around the room, but I find nothing but soulless walls of crystals.

"Oh please, Princess.  Do try to maintain whatever dignity I've allowed you to keep," she says, her voice echoing within itself as if her very speech was coated in deceit.  She breaks into cackling laughter as I spin around again, flaring my wings.  "Heh heh heh...  Mmmm.  Yes, it will make this all much more painful for you, and far more amusing for me."

"What do you want from me?!" I scream.

"I want what you've so selfishly hoarded," she snaps.  "I want what all things living beyond Equestria's borders want."

My head is spinning as I turn around once more, my horn searching desperately for a target.  "I don't understand!  I don't have whatever you're looking for, so let me go!"

"Hmmmhmmmhmmmmmm...  Cadenza, you silly girl.  One of the greatest powers in this world is yours to manipulate like clay, and yet you refuse to act."  I look up, and find her gaze—my gaze—staring back.  "And so, I will take it from you."

The white-hot energy leaves my horn, dimming the room.  I stare at this menacing copy of myself, and fall to my knees.

"What...  Wh-What are you...?"

She giggles in my voice.  "I am the beginning of your end, my dear."

I don't reply.  I can't think of a reply.  What was once some hideous beast of an equine now wears my skin, taunts me with my own voice, and stares me down with my own eyes.   Auntie Celestia never prepared me for anything like this.  I've never even heard of anything like this.

I curl into a ball on the cold, hard floor, squeezing my eyes shut.  Her voice echoes from all directions at once, like a deadly bolt of mana streaking across the room.  "I will take from you everything that you love, Cadenza.  I will bring your kingdom to its knees.  I will destroy everything and everypony you hold dear."  I squint my eyes open just in time to see my own lips delighting in every syllable of what she says next.  "I will drain your precious groom-to-be until he is nothing but a dried husk of a stallion."

Tears build up behind my eyes, forcing them shut again.  I lie there, shivering, as the room becomes black as night.  Any energy I had devoted to my light spell is gone, and as all my hopes and dreams and desires for the future drain out of me, her voice—her horrible, echoing voice—tells me one more thing.

"And then I will kill you."

I can't breathe anymore.  I can't think anymore.  As her cackling fades into hollow echoes against the chamber's walls, I roll limply to my side and lie like a discarded doll on the cavern's floor.

"Sh-Shining...  P-Please..." I whimper, but there is no reply.  There is nothing here but myself and the darkness, nothing but the empty sound of my own pitiful gasps.

"Auntie Celestia...  L-Luna...  Tw-Twilight..."

My cries are met with only the echoes of my cries.  The dull chorus of pleading desperation is my only company as I close my eyes to the blackness and break down into sobs.

Night Flight

Her lilac eyes shot open.  Cadance gasped, lurching with a sudden fit of nausea, and stumbled to her hooves.  She panted, her breaths labored and long, as she more or less tripped her way towards the Crystal Heart, which lay motionless on the ground.  The late afternoon air was chilling—frigid even—but she didn't pay it any notice.

The princess collapsed in a heap next to the stone, landing flat on her bandaged wing.  Her breath came with a stutter for an instant, but she was far too exhausted to register the pain.  Instead, she lifted a hoof and gracelessly pawed at the Crystal Heart like a cat would a ball of yarn.  She batted its edges so that it spun slowly around, and Cadance let out a joyous whimper when she realized that all of its faces were a perfect shade of blue.

She reached out and held the crystal to her chest, curling her body around it like a stuffed animal.  Moisture built up in the corners of her eyes as she hugged the Crystal Heart tighter, sniffling.  A tiny smile pulled on the edges of her cheeks.

The princess lay there for hours.  As the afternoon sun faded from yellow to orange to red, bands of pink clouds stretched across the sky like grand atmospheric strokes of paint.  Cadance rolled over, still hugging the stone, and gazed up lazily into the heavens as they danced across the ceiling of the valley.  Stars twinkled bravely into existence as the orange sky grew darker, darker, and was eventually extinguished like a dying candle.  Just as the sun dropped over the edge of the world, Cadance noticed a front of bulbous clouds rolling their way over the valley.

The entirety of the area was growing colder by the minute, but Cadance remained motionless on the grass.  The trickle of water from a nearby stream was the only percussion to the night.  The princess scanned the sky with her eyes, finding nothing but a black expanse in the base of the storm front.  With a sigh, she stretched, let loose a gaping yawn, and pushed herself up from the ground with a single beat of her wings.

Still holding the Crystal Heart in her forelimbs, Cadance glided silently up the slope of the grassy hill, staying no more than a meter above the ground.  She quickly found her rosy saddle bag lying in at the top, and she surmised that she must have rolled down the hill soon after falling unconscious.  She landed, gave the Crystal Heart one last glance, and packed it carefully into the empty pocket in her bag.

She placed the bag on her back, faced forwards once more, and—flapping her wings once for good measure—shot into the air like a pink and purple arrow.

Her ponytail whipped around behind her, tickling the base of her neck.  Cadance relished at the sensation, at the wind whistling in her ears, at the sight of the valley's basin stretching out before her like an open page.  Her gaze caught the giant marble spires as she flew over them, and she marveled at how they seemed to glow even with such little light.

The princess gave an annoyed glance skyward.  The clouds drifted lethargically above, their outlines barely illuminated by the glow of the moon and stars beyond.  Cadance turned her head to look at her saddlebag, and she reached back with a hoof to nudge it.  Nodding at its security, she steadily rose in altitude as her wing beats grew stronger and longer.  The princess ascended high above the valley until the once giant stones penetrating the earth were nothing but minuscule pebbles in her eyes.

With a final thrust, she broke through the base of the clouds and into a damp abyss.

Ups and Downs

The air is filled with a cacophony of shrieks and roars.  Flailing crystal hooves reach and grab at my hind legs.  As the ink-black cloud before me dissipates into nothing once again, I spare a glance at the crystal corpses of the ponies that cover the floor, moving and groaning and leaping as if they were one amorphous beast.  Their eyes drip with a thick, crimson fluid that nearly floors me with its stench.  I know it isn't blood.  It's something much worse.

A shock wave pulsates from behind me, and I stretch my wings and accelerate upwards.  Suddenly, the world is spinning, and I feel myself being pulled faster and faster upwards.  I can feel my forelimbs buckle as I smash into the ceiling unceremoniously.  Before I can move, a pile of thrashing bodies crashes down on my spine.

With a scream, I lurch and kick beneath the ponies above me—below me.  My horn alights with magic, but before I can cast a single spell, I feel myself falling again.  Scarlet eyes flicker past my view as I tumble back to the floor, and his voice echoes through the room.

"Cadenza, you could have surpassed me," he growls.  I land on top of the crystal ponies this time, but in an instant they are grabbing at me, pulling me down.

"You are everything I longed for, my princess, and yet you are weaker than I ever was, even before my...  Hmmmhmmmhmmmmmm...  Ascendance..."

Gravity inverts once more, and I feel the bones in my right wing shatter under the weight of crystalline bodies smashing into it.

"Hnnngh—Eeeyaaah!" I scream, coiling my body over my wing to try and hold any more weight off of it.  I know I heard similar cracks coming from the crystal ponies when they landed, but many of them stand in an instant on broken legs, lurching towards me to bite and thrash at my prone, whimpering form.

"To think, that I waited all this time, for you?  I am... disappointed, Cadenza."

Viscous crimson liquid oozes from the moaning things that smother me, its smell making me want to vomit.  I struggle to focus as the room flips around me and I tumble another ten meters back to the floor.  I manage to strike the landing, biting back a scream at the stabbing pain in my wing.

Without thinking, I blast the crystal ponies away in a violent explosion of blue energy.  Their battered corpses disappear into the black ether surrounding me on all sides.

"This city and its ponies are mine to protect, Sombra!" I shout into the abyss.  "Crawl b-back to whatever black pit you came from!"

"My dear princess, please..."  He steps out of the shadow, his eyes blazing with purple mana.  His armor clinks as he comes to a halt no more than a meter from where I stand, panting.  With a razor sharp grin, he leans forward, his horn crackling.  "This city... this empire... these ponies...  Their secrets are mine, and mine alone."

"You will not touch these ponies!"

"Oh, but I already have..."  He laughs a low, echoing laugh.  "Your dear sweet prince just doesn't know it yet."

In a blink, I fire a streaking bolt of mana at his chest.  His body dissolves away from it, the beam traveling straight through him.  In a puff of smoke, I feel him behind me—and I freeze at the feeling of a blade against my neck.

I feel him move, and then everything is gone.

Blinded

When Cadance finally burst though the top surface of the clouds, it was with a tortured scream.  Her eyes were clenched shut and she thrashed wildly in the air, kicking and spinning as she tumbled through the air like a crumpled paper airplane.  She finally fell back down to the cloud surface, shrieking as she bounced harmlessly off its fluffy surface.

As soon as her wings splayed out against the cloud, she gasped.  Cadance's eyes opened in an instant, and she immediately swiveled her head around to check her right wing.  It was intact, healthy, and yet wrapped in a familiar bandage.  Cadance blinked in confusion, before finally shaking her head and—with a whimper—standing and beginning to wander in a random direction.

Her lilac gaze stuck on her hooves, she trekked across the seemingly endless surface of the clouds.  The horizon was hidden, the black sky merging seamlessly with the dark edges of the clouds to form an indistinct haze of nothing that Cadance walked slowly towards.  Her slouching pink form was lit by pale beams of moonlight stretching down like celestial spotlights.

Cadance did little to give attention to anything.  Her mind limped between growling shadowy beasts and groaning zombified ponies as her nostrils filled with the phantom stench of a hideous crimson liquid.  She winced with every hoofstep, her right wing dangling uselessly from an injury that wasn't there.

For hours she continued forward, forward, on a path into an unseen abyss.  Whenever she braved a glance at the horizon, her tired gaze was met with only blackness.  Eventually, she felt herself stumbling, tripping over her own hooves as exhaustion began to take hold.

Cadance fell to her knees.  Her head lifted, and she stared unblinking at the blackness.  It was there, in the darkness, she knew they were waiting for her.  In the darkness is where they would be reunited, where Cadance would see her face once more.

The princess began crawling.  Had anypony been watching, it would have been a pathetic sight to see Cadance lurch forward, grasp the cloud's surface in the crook of her hooves, and struggle to pull herself ahead.  The entirety of the sky stretched on forever, into empty horizons on all sides.

The night wore on, and Cadance limped, wandered and crawled her way across the black surface of the sky, until she finally collapsed without a sound.

Crash and Burn

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Fear

Something tugged at my tail, and a foal's voice squeaked something.

"P-Princess?  Are you awake?"

A groan and a twitch, and I sat up, stretching my limbs.  Stifling a yawn, I lean over the bed to find a tiny violet filly staring up at me with wide, teary eyes.

"I am now, Twilight.  And please, you know you can call me Cadance."

She sniffles, and says, "I know, but I figured since I'm sleeping over at your room in the castle, I oughta be all polite.  I read that Princess Celestia is really big on stuff like that."

I can't help but giggle at that, a few memories of my auntie insisting I didn't need to dress so needlessly formal every day.  "Maybe she is, maybe she isn't," I tell Twilight, "but right now you're with me, and I'd love it if you'd call me Cadance."

"Uhm... O-okay, Cadance," she whimpers.  Twilight is holding her Smarty Pants doll so tight that it may burst a seam.  I can feel something wrong with her, something I feel hidden in every stuck up noble pony I meet.

"So what's wrong, Twilight?" I ask, patting my bed so that she'll climb up.  "Had a bad dream or something?"

"Y-yeah, I did..."

I smile at her and stretch my left wing over her tiny body.  "Why don't you tell me about it?"

As she recounts to me a tale of monstrous scaly hydras somehow clambering out of her closet, I can feel the room grow colder.  Twilight shudders with each sentence, whimpering out more and more gruesome details than any filly should be able to speak of.  All the while, the tips of my hooves turn to ice, and with every blink, the world grows darker.

My head grows heavy, and I realize I'm shuddering along with Twilight—only she's no longer there.  I'm alone, naked in a black void that stretches and hisses, the chill spreading like a poison through my body.  I hear each beat of my heart as time appears to slow down, until something soft squeezes my neck.

Twilight is holding me, tears leaking from her closed eyes and leaving wet trails on her cheeks.  She whimpers, terrified and comforted all the same.  I stare down at her, blinking, and ultimately lay my head down next to her, as if nothing had happened at all.

Rage

I stumble to my hooves, scowling.  The room is silent now, save for my own shallow, labored breaths.  I feel a chill blowing from the darkness before me.

Each step I take is measured, calculated.  As my pink hooves step over dull, crystalline corpses, my sharp gaze never once leaves the abyssal space before me.  There will be time for grieving later.  Right now, my steps are meant for war.

Something snaps in the darkness.  On instinct, I shout and fire a streaking bolt of magical energy in the direction of the sound.  The only response is a sort of growling laugh that reverberates around the room.

"Mmmmmm...  Hmmmm, heh heh heh..."

My horn crackles with volatile blue energy.  "Show yourself!" I cry out.  "Face me, coward!"

"You...  You aren't like the others..."  The Black King's voice sends a cold shudder down my spine.  "No, my dear...  You feed on them, not so unlike myself.  Hmmmmhmmhmm...  Yes, so very much alike, we are."

"I am nothing like you!" I scream in all directions.

A stabbing jolt runs through my skull as he materializes out of the black vapor.  "Both of us, parasites as we are avatars, yes?  Only—"

"Enough!"  With a scream, I usher forth wave after wave of burning, pulsating mana.  The force of my attacks send him flying like an armored ragdoll across the chamber, where he crashes with a rattling thud.

"Ohhhhh, my crystal princess..." he says, appearing behind me, before me, everywhere in this cursed black place that I can see.  "You..."

The illusions explode into vaporous clouds of blood.  The crimson streaks swirl and spiral around the inky ones that climb like monstrous tendrils towards the ceiling.  I stumble backwards, gaping, as those hideous scarlet eyes manifest themselves in the center.  All around me, the shattered, skeletal remains of crystal ponies rise up—moaning and crying—as their empty eye sockets fill with the bloody ether.  In a flash, they are staring at me, lurching towards me like starving, carnivorous monsters.

A deep growling fills the room, and King Sombra's once regal voice devolves into a feral scream.

"You will not leave this chamber alive!"

With that, the room lights up with fire.  I pump my wings madly, bursting up from the floor to escape the shrieking mass of ponies clambering towards me.  I feel my blood boil as I lock eyes with his scarlet gaze.

I scream, he roars, and the chamber explodes with our magical fury.