The Alliance of Blood: End.
Suddenly there was a crash.
"Oh??!" Cooed Discord, swivelling round to examine his prey.
"It seems we have an audience."
A unified snigger shot through the evil gathering like an electric shock as the pony vestige of The Doctor hobbled into the room, cowering at their violent laughing.
He coughed nervously, holding out a shaky fore-hoof.
"Now I can't... I can't pretend to understand, not for a second, but I want you to know that I'm innocent in all this. He made me John Foal. It's not like I had any control over it."
The ground shook as Queen Chrysalis took flight and landed next to John,
“Looks like he’s all but given up.” She rasped, attentively brushing a hoof through his brown mane.
Somehow, John managed to continue, backing toward the rift-clock.
“I don't care about this Doctor or your alliance; I just want you to go. So, I've made my choice.”
John Foal took held out the fob watch and every eye followed it. Sombra let out a chuckle of greedy satisfaction.
“You can have him. Just take it, please! Take him away.”
Nightmare Moon grabbed the watch with her magical aura and fondled it with sadistic pleasure. The other demons drew close to her side.
"Don't think that saved your life."
Discord tail-whipped John into the glittering metal of the rift clock, sending him bouncing off a control panel and onto the floor.
"Kindred spirits,..." She chuckled "...Now we shall have the lives of a Time Lord."
The watch lid clicked open, and the mismatched hoard of horrors braced themselves for their final reward.
But nothing happened.
"Em...pty..!!" Yelled Sombra.
They all turned toward the pony.
"Well where's it gone." John gibbered.
"You tell me!" Erupted Chrysalis, snatching up the watch and hurling it towards him.
The Doctor, for that was the true identity of the brown pony in front of them, caught the watch chain between his teeth and swung it round his neck.
"Oh, I think the explanation might be you've been fooled by a bit of psyche-bonding. John Foal is still quite close to the surface for the next few minutes, or maybe I'm just that good an actor."
"But it has got to be said..."
The Doctor cooed, putting on his thick rim glasses.
" I don't like the looks of that artefacts' energy readings."
Nightmare Moon and Queen Chrysalis started to advance of the unarmed Time Lord, but stopped short as they heard a high-pitched whining coming from the rift clock.
The Doctor tutted.
"It seems to be indicating you've got energy feedback all the way through the retro-stabilisers feeding back into the primary heat converter. Well... In the magical equivalent anyway."
The four villains stared in disbelief at The Doctor, then at the rift clock, the arcane engine of destruction that was even now turning against them.
The Doctor blew through his teeth, and sauntered over to the main door.
"Cause if there's one thing you shouldn't have done, you shouldn't have let me press all those buttons."
The whole of the marble room began to shake, great clumps of arch-stone detaching themselves from the ceiling and shattering on the tile in chalky explosions.
"You...upstart!!" Discord screamed, backing away from spitting machine. His counter parts did likewise.
The Doctor opened the door of Canterlot castle.
"But, in fairness, I will give you one word of advice.. Run!"
And The Doctor disappeared through the gate.
"Get...out..." Sombra rasped, taking to his heels, leaving Discord and Nightmare Moon to phase through the cobblestone walls...
The resulting explosion, which was later discovered to have destroyed most of the structures west wing, was enough to blast Sombra, Nightmare Moon, Discord, and Chrysalis into a temporary stupor, sprawled out on the front-lawn of Canterlot castle.
Fire burned within, fuelled by some unseen source in the entry passage, and from somewhere within the acrid black smoke, The Doctor strode up toward the pseudo-Gods and looked down on them in quiet fury.
Immobilised from the magical shock wave, the four fallen could only watch in silence.
The Doctor looked on with the expressionless face of final judgement.
Fire and ice and rage, like the night, and the storm at the heart of the sun. Ancient and forever. Burning at the centre of time and able to see the turn of the universe.
Only Discord, through his semi-omniscient vision, observed the sentence that was to follow.
“He never raised his voice. That was the worst thing. The fury of the Time Lord. And then we discovered why. Why this ‘Doctor Pony’, who had fought with gods and demons, why he'd run away from us and hidden.”
“He was being kind.”
‘Utilising a psychograph he took hold of the dark entity Nightmare moon and stripped her from the benevolent vestige of Princess Luna. Without a physical body to manifest her power she tumbled helpless through the ethereal space until she reached the fearful gates of obsidian on the darkest and furthest reaches of this reality. The same place where all lost souls are inexorably drawn.’
‘It is said that, for her, the loss of Luna was so unbearable, Nightmare Moon screamed for the whole of her slow voyage, every second of every day. But when she finally drew close to that archaic structure, stretching cyclopean mile after mile, and saw it open to reveal the perpetual, inky void on the other side, she fell silent. It didn't take long for Nightmare Moon to join with the eternal darkness, and as the years passed, and the blackness enveloped her identity, she began to loose track of what this 'dark' thing really was, as there was no light to contrast with it.’
‘The Doctor tricked The Dark Lord Sombra into following him to the heart of the Everfree forest, where upon he trapped him in the forbidden mirror pool of the old legends. At first Sombra grew confident, since by chance, he knew the words neccerssary to create near infinite copies of his own evil self. However, realizing that The Doctor had quantum locked the surface of the water, and that escape to the outside world was now impossible, Sombra was forever trapped with his menagerie of duplicates.’
‘Floating there, in an unhallowed body of water that was neither up nor down, Sombra’s clones soon took to the idea of devoting themselves to their original, granting Sombra the slaves he had always yearned for. Although without the backdrop of a kingdom, his full arcane powers, or his precious gems, it gradually dawned on Sombra that his followers were meaningless.’
‘Four millennia passed. Sombra’s will lasted only a few more, until at last his spirit broke. His tears were hidden by the crystal clear waters, reminding him every day of the innocent ponies he had wrongly tired to conquer.’
‘Queen Chrysalis fell next. To this day she can be found in the Crystal Empire, on the topmost spires of the Citadel, staring directly into the kaleidoscopic patterns of the crystal heart, the centre piece of all the 'love and light' in whole Kingdom. There she is, still as rock, can you see? The Doctor froze her in suspended animation, forcing those bloodshot eyes to drink in all the love her tainted soul could handle.’
‘In the end, she was satisfied all to quickly. After a single week her lust to feed had completely vanished, in a month, she had all but lost her mind.’
‘Now, in the days of future past, she dies a thousand deaths every day. Yet her preserved body will not let her cross to the other side, poisoned as it is by the positive energy that racks through every inch of her mottled frame.’
‘And one day soon, since she never bequeathed an heir to her throne, her royal blood will dry up once and for all, leaving no trace of the monarchy that once ravaged Equestria's mothers and fathers so very long ago.’
‘As for me, the self-proclaimed master of madness and incorruptible chaos, The Doctor reserved the most devastating penance for last. A single touch was all it took, a psychic transference from his mind to mine.’
‘And then the war, that endless looping war that had destroyed whole planets and suns, that had turned a trillion life forms to ash and atoms, that had erased age-old solar cycles out of existence, and had shaped the subtle miseries of the world (You can see them if you search hard enough) came flooding into my minds-eye. There are still dark caverns in my mind that echo the cries of The Nightmare child, and the armies of Meanwhiles and Neverweres led by the Could've-been King.’
‘But The Doctor wasn't all that merciless. I have neglected to mention that only three seconds of those memories were passed onto me, but with devastating results. I shall never reach that miasmic platform of untainted disharmony, and in comparison, my purpose on this earth has been rendered utterly meaningless.’
‘He offered me a choice on the rolling hills that boarder Ponyville, either continue my mind’s torture as flesh and blood, or ease my pain in the cool confines of stone within the royal Canterlot gardens.’
‘So that is what I chose. ‘
‘Our so-called ‘Alliance of Blood.’
‘We each tried to attain the fullest of our vices, so The Doctor made sure that we did.’
The Doctor’s cold face looked up at the granite draconequus with empty, unwavering eyes, it’s features frozen in a look of sad acceptance, then slowly, turned toward the Canterlot train station and walked away.
***********************************************************************************************
Ditzy Doo hadn’t been waiting long before she saw the familiar shape of The Doctor walking up the streets of Ponyville.
“Hey !!” She smiled, all bubbles and sunshine, rushing up to meet him.
The ancient stallion in front of her spotted her advances and gave a warm smile.
“Hello again” he beamed, taking the little mare up in his hooves and pressing her head to his chest. Ditzy had thrown herself on The Doctor with such feeling that they spun round together in their embrace.
“Awww, heh heh heh, you miss me!?” He looked down at her velvet grey face, which appeared pained by the question.
“Uh huh.” She mumbled, clearly troubled.
“I…I thought that was it this time. I didn’t think you were coming back.”
The Doctor rubbed her head fondly.
“Naww, what, and leave you all on your lonesome. As if. Oh, and I never said.”
He raised Ditzy’s eyes to his.
“Thank you for looking after me.”
They hugged once more, and then walked together in silence toward the conspicuous blue box opposite Sugar cube corner.
