The Magic of Animosity

Trixie was becoming impatient.  Where on Earth did that unicorn go off to?  Trixie wanted to go and look for Twilight, but not only was it a bad idea to wander when you’ve said you’d stay put, Trixie really didn’t want to get any closer to that behemoth in the other cave.  About five minutes had passed without a word, and Trixie’s began to feel a little weary.  Crap!  My magic is beginning to get low!  Both she and Twilight had been coating themselves with invisibility for the past hour or two, and Trixie knew that she wasn’t going to be able to last much longer.  Since entrance into the underground spring was sparse, Trixie took any opportunity she could to give herself a moment’s peace and become visible—whether or not the Odium could even see her or Twilight in the dark, they didn’t know, but didn’t want to take the chance.

Trixie was mulling over her life choices when there was a sudden, rumbling groan, emanating throughout the cave.  She didn’t have to think twice to know where it came from.  The azure unicorn quickly coated herself in her invisibility spell again, and she bolted for the tunnel on the far left of the shore, where Twilight had entered.

What did you do, Twilight Sparkle?! Trixie thought as she charged up the slippery slope of the tunnel, making sure to dodge any Odium in her way.  They seemed to take notice of the sounds of hooves clicking and clopping against the hard stone floor, but after seeing nothing, they stopped paying it any mind.

When Trixie reached the ditch in the main cave, she could just barely see the massive black ball shuffle in its place, looking disturbed by something.  Trixie’s head darted around as she looked for something to use as steps up the damp, ninety-degree-angle of the ditch.  In her quick look around, she saw several large boulders still un-cleared from the ditch, and noticed a pile of cobblestones placed a little too close to the edge of the ditch.  She knew it was a big risk to take, but she also knew that Twilight was in some kind of danger.  She grabbed onto the cobblestone pile and threw it into the ditch, filling the hole a third its height.  Next Trixie grabbed hold of one of the boulders and, with a fair amount of effort, pushed it to the top of the cobblestone pile.  The Odium nearby looked sorely confused, and Trixie took the opportunity to leap up the pile, struggle up onto the top of the boulder.

There was still another seven feet between her hooves and the ground above, and the increasing movements of the massive white-eyed Odium in the background wasn’t comforting Trixie at all.  Then the magician remembered a rope she had stored in her bag; taking it out and quickly tying a loop, she flung the rope up to the top, the short rope just barely reaching over the edge of the ditch.  The rope didn’t grab anything, and it fell back down, but that didn’t dispel Trixie; she flung the rope up again, and this time it grabbed a sizable rock.  Quickly pulling the rope to test its strength, Trixie proceeded to bite down on the end of it and lift the rope up with her magic.  With every action she performed with her horn, she became that much more drained, but Trixie reached the top and sprinted towards the bottom of the giant Odium ahead of her.

Trixie’s ears perked up; she heard noises coming from another hole, and upon closer inspection, the unicorn saw a very small opening right beneath the giant Odium, where its smoky tail continued down into.  Trixie listened in again next to the hole, and she heard the muffled grunts of Twilight.  Twilight Sparkle, you moron!  Getting yourself into something like this! Trixie could have taken the spiral staircase surrounding the hole, but she decided instead to simply take the quick way and she jumped down what she guessed was a fifteen-foot-deep pit.

Unfortunately for Trixie, the pit was more around the lines of thirty-five feet deep.  Luckily for her, the fall was cushioned by two ponies who were encased in a familiar black shadow.

Trixie got to her hooves and brushed herself off, and then she saw Twilight, half covered with the bubbling, shadowy goo that had tried to take the mare Trixie had met only a few hours ago.  Trixie stood in shock for a moment, but regained her composure and she focused her magic into her horn.  She realized then that she didn’t have very much magic left to give; as her attack gained power, she could feel the invisibility spell and even the night-vision spell wear off, but Trixie didn’t need to see to be able to aim at the motionless lump of black and purple on the floor.

With a burst of azure flame, Trixie ignited the goo on Twilight; the darkness burned away into the air, leaving a dazed Twilight completely unharmed.

Darkness.  Pure, utter darkness.  She couldn’t see or hear a thing—it had covered her eyes and ears.  She could feel her body losing mobility, but not because it was paralyzing her.  The darkness was sapping her of her willpower, her strive to get up and move, to fight back.  Her last sentient thought before falling into a lackadaisical lump-on-the-ground was I’ve failed…

…

Suddenly, movement.  Light, and sound, too.  There was a warm sensation throughout Twilight’s body as the darkness covering her burned away, and she felt motivation once again.  She scrambled to her hooves and used her magic to give herself night-vision again; what she saw was Trixie standing in front of her, and squinting so hard you couldn’t even see her eyes.

“Trixie!” Twilight exclaimed as she leapt at the blind unicorn and embraced her to the ground.  “You just saved my life!”

Trixie pushed the joyful purple pony off of her.  “Twilight Sparkle, now is NOT the time for that!  There’s still two of those Odium things here, aren’t there?  I wouldn’t know, since I can’t see anything anymore!”

“What!?  Oh no, you ran out of magic, didn’t you?” Twilight asked, extremely concerned for Trixie’s sake.

“Don’t patronize me!” Trixie exclaimed.  “They all know we’re here now!  We have to get out as soon as possible, before reinforcements come!”

Twilight turned around, and she saw PaulaRed and Silverstar get back up.  Their expressionless white eyes were searing with anger.  Twilight crouched low to the ground, ready to strike or be struck.

“What are you doing?” Trixie questioned hastily.  “Oh no, you’re going to fight them, aren’t you?  We don’t have the time for that!  We need to make a run for it!”

“Braeburn’s sister and the Sheriff are underneath those black veils!” Twilight exclaimed, “I can’t just leave them here like this!”

“I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to!”  Trixie didn’t want to take any chances; she had seen how many of those ‘Odium’ were moving about in the cave, and if they were to all attack at once, Trixie knew she’d never see the light of day again.  “We can always come back for them, but right now we have to worry about ourselves!”

“That’s selfish, Trixie!” Twilight yelled as she prepared to blast her opponents with a magic attack.  Trixie’s pupils struggled to adjust to the sudden bright light that was coming off Twilight’s horn as the purple unicorn readied her attack.  There was a flash of bright lavender that nearly blinded Trixie as Twilight circled purple streams of magic around the two black ponies, encasing them completely in the light.  Twilight didn’t hear it because of how hard she was concentrating, but Trixie did hear the loud wailing groan all too well, and it sounded like it was coming right out of the ceiling.

Stepping back to see her handiwork, Twilight was now standing in front of Paula and Sheriff Silverstar, both of whom looked completely unharmed, but very dazed and confused.

“Ah…wah, Twilight…?” Paula asked in a very lax tone.

“Told you I could do it!” Twilight replied to Trixie, half happy, half smug.

“Yeah sure great, now let’s get THE HECK OUT OF HERE!” Trixie took a blind leap and grabbed onto Twilight’s backside.  “You now have to lead THREE BLIND PONIES out of this massive cave, Twilight Sparkle.  Good luck.”

Twilight grabbed a rope out of her backpack and handed a section of it to the other three ponies.  “Here, grab onto this, and I’ll lead you all out!” the unicorn yelled back to Trixie and the two earth-ponies, of which looked like they were half-asleep.  Twilight headed the rope line as she ran back up the spiral staircase, but not before first grabbing the all-important black box that had fallen on the floor.

It was getting harder and harder to keep level footing, because the entire cave was rumbling so hard.  It was like a constant shockwave emanating throughout the dark stone hole, or perhaps if a twenty-foot subwoofer were turned up to eleven and simply left on next to your feet.  When Twilight reached the top of the staircase and looked out from the stone dais beneath the giant black beast above her, it took only a single glance towards the exit far up on the other side of the cave to know that the traditional exit wasn’t going to work here.  “Oh, crap,” she said out loud.

Trixie didn’t need to be able to see to know that they were royally screwed.  They stood right beneath the Odious Maximus, who thankfully wasn’t moving—most likely because it too knew that its hundreds of thousands of minions below were going to make quick work of the two unicorns.

“Hey Twi…whai can’t I see athing…” Paula sounded like a drunk, the way she was slurring her words.  “…Thers so many white dots everywhere…”

Twilight couldn’t have put it any better.  Nearly filling up the floor of the cave, the Odium were all standing, waiting, for the four ponies to make their way down; the white light from their eyes was very concentrated and didn’t shine out very far, but with that many next to each other, there was enough light to illuminate the floor.

Trixie was just about to give what she expected to be her very last insult to Twilight Sparkle, before the purple unicorn took a step back and began to focus her magic.

“Are you nuts, Twilight Sparkle!?” Trixie yelled over the loud sounds coming from the Maximus above, “We don’t stand a chance against so many of them!  I doubt you have any spell to counter what they have in store?”

“I don’t,” Twilight replied.  Something came into Trixie’s vision; there were two glittering blue strands of magic slowly swirling around and enveloping Trixie.  Looking over to Twilight, the magician could see that the same was happening to her.  The spell continued to cover her body, and eventually Trixie’s eyes became obscured by the glowing blue.  She had no idea what Twilight had in mind, but she trusted the unicorn enough to allow the spell to continue.

“That’s why we’re making a bolt for it.”

A bright flash made Trixie have to cover her eyes.  Slowly opening them again, Trixie could feel that she had some magic flowing in her again.  She was confused as to why, but she nonetheless used it to give herself night vision again, her horn glowing purple as she activated it.  After everything came into view, Trixie was confused again when she saw her view slowly bob up and down.  Then she became aware of the light breeze fluttering against the back of her neck.

Turning her head around, Trixie saw that she had a giant pair of beautiful butterfly wings connected to her back.  She raised an eyebrow at her newfound appendages, but Twilight’s yelling snapped her out of her little world.

“Trixie, what the heck are you doing?!” Twilight yelled.  Trixie turned around and saw Twilight with a similar pair, and the unicorn was struggling to keep up the rope that was now tied around a still-dazed Paula and Silverstar.  “Help me out here, these two are heavy!”

Trixie rushed to aid, grabbing the other end of the rope; the two unicorns made their way to the other side of the cave as fast as they could, to the tunnel at the top that led out from where they had come.

But the Odium weren’t going to let them leave that easily.

The Maximus nearly broke the unicorns’ eardrums with a screech that caused some stalactites to fall from the ceilings.  The other black ponies on the ground scrambled to try and jump fruitlessly to the two winged ponies, who were thirty feet off the ground and quickly making their way to the other end of the tunnel.  With another loud cry, the Maximus shot one of its giant claws at the ponies, extending its arm beyond its original length.

“TWILIGHT SPARKLE, LOOK OUT!”

Twilight barely had time to look behind her.  She just barely moved out of the way of the house-sized black claw rushing towards her.  Missing, the claw continued on its trajectory and collided with the cave’s ceiling, causing even more large rocks to fall to the ground, the Odium standing at where they landed just barely making it out of the way.  In her effort to quickly dive out of the way of the claw, Twilight had lost her grip of the rope.

All the weight suddenly put on her, Trixie almost dropped her side of the rope as well; held her grip.  “Augh!  I can’t keep hold of this for very long!”

Twilight swooped under the Maximus’s arm and grabbed her side of the rope again.  “Sorry!”

The Maximus was struggling, trying to get its arm out of the rock.  Giving up, it instead used its other arm to try and bring the ponies down.  This time, though, it was craftier; rather than wildly shooting off its hand, the Maximus crept its hand up the arm that was stuck, masking its claw as it snaked up its other arm.

The two unicorns didn’t even see it coming.

The four-fingered claw struck like a python at its prey.  In a split second, Twilight and Trixie suddenly found themselves deep inside the giant grip of the Maximus, squeezing them hard enough to not allow them to move, but just light enough to keep them alive.

Trixie wasn’t going to allow them to get eaten, or crushed, or turned to slaves, or whatever the heck this thing had in store for them.  The azure unicorn collected all she had into her horn, making it glow a bright purple again, and then she unleashed a brilliant silver pulse of magic that entered the Maximus’s claw and reverberated down its arm and finally into its body.  The shockwave left it seizing for a few moments, and the claw let go of the four ponies.  Twilight was left dazed for a second, unsure of what just happened.

“Trixie!” Twilight suddenly exclaimed, “Where’s Paula and Silverstar?!”

Then they both heard the thud twenty feet below them.

The unicorns looked down, and saw the two earth-ponies on the ground being swarmed by the Odium, their bodies once again becoming surrounded by the familiar black goo.

“NO!” Twilight screamed as she began to dive for the two, but she found herself being held back by Trixie, who was grabbing onto her leg.

“LET GO OF ME!” Twilight screamed.  “WE HAVE TO SAVE THEM!”

“There’s nothing we can do, Twilight Sparkle!” Trixie yelled back.  “Do you want to get us killed?!”

Twilight didn’t listen to Trixie.  Instead, she growled and flailed the leg Trixie was holding, kicking the azure unicorn in the nose.  When Trixie let Twilight go to hold her bleeding snout, Twilight continued down to the save the two earth-ponies, only to see that they were nowhere to be found—they had been re-assimilated into the massive crowd of Odium that were still trying to jump up and grab her.

Twilight looked on helplessly at the Odium swarm before Trixie swooped down and grabbed ahold of the back of her mane and dragged her through the air, to the tunnel entrance at the top of the cave.  Twilight noticed the wooden planks they had used earlier were still at the tunnel’s entrance as they passed over it and entered the hole.  Behind them, another loud, angry rumble filled the cave.

By the time they reached the four-way intersection again, Twilight was flying on her own, though she still wished she could go back, go back and save those two ponies…she’d let Braeburn down…

Her thoughts were cut short when they got to the small space of the four-way intersection, though, when both the unicorns suddenly found themselves surrounded by Odium that had been waiting for them from the other tunnels.  Trixie, having gone first, was also first to be smacked down to the ground when they jumped and grabbed onto her legs.  Within seconds, they were already beginning to surround Trixie with the black goo.

Twilight had had enough of this nonsense.  The unicorn faced the large crowd of Odium squished into the small cave, and she brought into her horn her magic, anger and adrenaline.  The light she gave off was blinding, and with a flash of light and a shockwave of sound Twilight sent a rapidly-expanding ball of pure-white magic into their enemies, disintegrating all traces of the malevolent slime.

But what Twilight and Trixie saw after that, they hadn’t prepared for.

For every Odium that had just been flown back by Twilight’s spell, there was now a pony sitting there, confused and dizzy.  They all were simple-looking earth-ponies, all of whom matched the silhouettes of the Odium that had just been attacking the two unicorns.  There were tired groans and the sound of ponies struggling to their hooves as the scene continued, looking like the morning after a very heavy drinking party.

As Twilight helped Trixie back up, the two unicorns continued to simply stare at the ponies, then to each other, then back to the ponies.

“All these Odium are…actual ponies?” Trixie said under her breath to Twilight.

“I…suppose so…?” Twilight replied.

Both the unicorns took a fighting stance when a rushing sound was heard coming from the tunnel they had just exited.  The only thing they had time to do was take a leap backwards as a massive claw swarmed out from the tiny tunnel and engulfed everything around it in a black sludge.  In moments, the ponies were turned back into the familiar Odium, their piercing white eyes looking over to Twilight and Trixie.

“Oh crap…” Twilight said, as she and Trixie got back into the air with their damaged wings, and began to fly down the tunnel that led to the Sheriff’s office.  “Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap…”

Both unicorns continued up the tunnel, every so often shooting a bolt of magic behind them to slow the mass of Odium slowly gaining speed, and the massive claw slithering closer, only twenty feet away.

“Twilight, I think I see the end!” Trixie said hopefully.  “Yes, it is!”

They got a second wind as Twilight and Trixie gave it their all, and their last bit of strength, to get up and out the tunnel, flying over the lip of the entrance and finally flying through the open door and into the bright light of Appleloosa, which was still enclosed in the black walls.  Everyone stopped what they were doing to immediately rush to the two unicorns’ aid.

Trixie and Twilight coughed and strained for breath through their dry throats, and their butterfly wings turned to dust.  They finally had a chance to rest for a second, and they became aware of just how tired and beat up they were.

Braeburn pushed aside the crowd to get to the center.  “Twilight!  Oh my, are th’ two of you alright?”

Twilight coughed again before uttering, “We brought company…”

The ground shook, and everyone flew into a panic as several dozen Odium and a giant black claw shot out of the hole in the Sheriff’s office, tearing the wooden building into a shower of splinters and lumber.