The sponge

It was late afternoon when Twilight Sparkle reached Canterlot castle. Reluctantly, she made her way through the mighty corridors, swaddled in the gilded glitter of the evening sun, into the royal hall, where Celestia and Luna were pacing restlessly, apparently eagerly waiting for her.

“What is thy bidding, my master?” begged Twilight, bowing down and hunching.

“Oh Twilight!” Celestia tittered. “I know you dote on classics, but please don’t be so formal! Yet – it is true – I heard there is a great disturbance in Ponyville. Apparently, we have to deal with a new enemy.”

“Yes, master,” answered Twilight miserably. “That freak organism is now threatening all Equestria. And it’s all my fault. Will you ever forgive my blunders?” She crouched and collapsed, blubbering.

“Brace up, my dear student. Nopony would have fared better than you did. We will find a way to send this monster back from whence it came. You will. You never failed me!” said Celestria in a mellow tone. “Go with my sister and show her that fiend: she knows a lot of powerful magic that might prove helpful. I await your report.”

Luna padded towards Twilight, stooped and hugged her. “Rise, child, and fret no more, for we shall find a way out of thy anguish.”

“How can you be so sure, princess?” asked Twilight, visibly not comforted.

“No being I wot of is invulnerable. But strike with posthaste we must, afore it wreaketh our beloved land.”

“Do you have a blueprint?” inquired Twilight, standing up.

“Not yet. First, I must wont myself with our foe, ere we can wile it,” explains Luna. “Prithee, show me thither I can behold this… ye…” – she falters – “monster.”

“If you so desire, princess”, said Twilight, bowing once more. “Follow me.”

Both trotted off the throne hall towards the entrance of the castle where a cart propelled by four Pegasus guards, awaited them. Stepping into it, they immediately set out to the edge of the Everfree forest.

⁂

“I swear I never saw aught such!” Luna confessed, visibly baffled, as she stood nigh Twilight on the top of a cliff towering high above the Bubbling Lake. Indeed, the bedlam was spectacular: the sponge, grown more than a hundred meters wide, had become a squat, dull and scaly knoll in the midst of the lake; its harsh landing had visibly caused the large pond to overflow and form new inlets, scorching the vegetation now drenched in its simmering waters. The whole place, shrouded in misty curling vapors, ablaze with the sunset, was moreover plagued by the sizzle made by the myriad of bubbles that were surfacing each second from the depths of the mere.

“Hearken me well!” Luna declared to Twilight, cocking to her side. “As thou wost, magic is wrought from ye raw power of ye grand pool that orbs our universe and all the existing multiverses; thy will work it into might, that thou then throwest upon thy quarry. Now, I will cast a spell that acteth ye other way: it borroweth energy from its recipient, that it returneth to ye pool. If this organism feedeth upon power and heat, then it ought to wizen when bereaved from its fodder.”

The princess shut her eyes; as her horn began to glow faintly, an almost invisible blue halo appeared around the sponge. One minute passed, then another one, and nothing much was transpiring, as if time itself had halted. After a seemingly endless period, Twilight noticed that the ambiant noise was slightly less perceptible. Then the hush became unmistakable, but everything else was apparently unchanged. Twilight was about to snooze, lulled by the surrounding silence, when a detail suddenly caught her eye.

“Princess, look!” she shouted.

Luna opened her eyes as the glow around her horn faded away. Down below, around the sponge, the surface of the lake seemed amazingly lustrous, and, further away, strangely curdled.

“The lake is icing! The bubbling has ceased! The temperature of the lake has slumped!”

“By ye waxing Moon!” mutters Luna. “That thing hath somehow bent ye shaft into ye pool, causing ye water to freeze. It is more subtle than I expected.” She mused awhile. “I am at a loss presently. Night awaits my rising of the Moon. Go back to Canterlot I must ere darkness deepenth. We shall confer with my sister.”

⁂

“Now what?” Celestia stamped around, somewhat cranky. “We cannot let this thing gobble up the land until nothing’s left!”

“If we try to use magic,” Luna answered, “we wist it will feed on it. It can also bow energy drain channels and cast them aside. Maybe if it were enclosed in ye void…”

“Or we could try to freeze everything around it to drastically reduce the amount of environmental energy available to it?” wondered Celestia.

“I don’t think so, princess: It would just move to someplace else. Besides, we cannot transform all Equestria in an icy waste just for the sake of getting rid of this… sponge!” observed Twilight.

“In aught that I may guess, we’ve overlooked something so far. But what is it?” exclaimed Luna.

“What if…” Celestia begins. She breaks off as a guard unexpectedly rushed in.

“Your highnesses,” he began, bowing low, “I beg forgiveness for this inconvenience, but something of the utmost importance has happened.”

“Speak!” ordered Celestia.

“The… hum… living ball you are chasing has left the Everfree forest. It has moved and landed into the Fyrjaberg!”

“The volcano?” blurted Twilight, bewildered.

“Indeed,” replied the guard. “And it was reported that it has already consumed half of the crater. It seems to drill down into the vent.”

“Apparently the heat of the Boiling lake did not slake its hunger anymore,” growled Celestia. “Thanks for keeping us informed, sir. You’re dismissed!”

The guard bobbed a curtsy, turned around and left the room.

“Right now, dat unforesheen nevent sheemsh to indicate dat our … guest … morf … ish eking out ish living from ye shoil and badly … munch … needsh more powerful shourshes off enerchy” remarked Luna, gulping a few cupcakes. “Chorry, dat remark upon unger…”

“But we must stop it before it seeps into the depths of Equestria!” muttered Twilight. “Otherwise, all is lost.”

“Something is dawning on me… Well, it craves energy, then let’s give it energy!” Celestia suddenly roared. “Listen to me and let’s get this over with!”

⁂

The sponge, now fully conscious, had been wallowing for a while in the hot waters, enjoying its roborant bath, when a force field of unusual wavelength had been focused on its inner guts, in an attempt to smuggle away the energy it had so uneasily pumped from the outside matter. It could not allow this to happen, so it set up a shunt that fed the field with the thermal energy available nearby. But so powerful was the assault that the water quickly became chilly, thereby threatening to drain its own energy away by mere heat transfer. This was not acceptable either. The sponge thus awoke its long range sensors and started to sweep around for a more confortable place.

Not that far away it detected a zone of intense heat, much more powerful than the lukewarm liquid it had been bathing in for a while. Satisfied with this discovery, it rose and glided through the air. While approaching though, it realized the source was located way underground. So, as it landed, it gnawed away slowly a lot of cold matter – frittering away a lot of precious energy – before it could actually reach its promised victual. Again, it was deeply disappointed: the area, a chamber filled with molten rock, turned out to be measly. More lava was available, but so much deeper that it would have to expend a large amount of its inner resources to reach it; it even doubted that, after such a tough drill, it would still be powerful enough to tame the flow of thermal energy: its survival, at this stage, was problematic.

It was still pondering on this predicament when something unexpected happened: its energy sensing system locked on remote, but incredibly effulgent tiny objects, like points of infinite radiance. Incredulous, the sponge double-checked its feelings, but found nothing amiss: there were indeed enormous amount of energy within close range, in stark contrast with the paltry resources it was currently feeding on. Right away, it left its unsatisfactory place, and soared after what appeared to be the most yummy meal since it had eaten the last sun of its ancient galaxy.

But as it closed on its prey, the energy-packed dots began to drift away. Following them, the sponge veered and boosted its velocity; however its targets sped up too, remaining out of reach. Three times the sponge tried to catch up, and thrice the tiny objects slipped away from its grasp; what was supposed at first to be a simple catch was becoming a wild chase where both parties were now madly swirling around at an incredible pace when… four new shiny jewels popped up. The sponge skidded to a halt, now hesitating between the two equally tempting lunches. Its mad flight, involving both levitation and furious motion, had put a severe strain on its reserves, and it felt immensely hungry.

⁂

Twilight was a bit exhausted and peckish too. Flying with Rainbow Dash was never a cinch in the first place – except for the Wonderbolts, who could help but feeling crippled when winging with one of the most talented flyers Equestria had ever known? –, and having to hurtle through the skies had proven not only very risky but also physically hurting: she was experiencing twinges in all her body. Now, hopefully, the decoy had worked. As Celestia had predicted, the sponge had been lured by the formidable amount of magical power stored in the elemental stones. Now it was probably guzzling tons of fuel each second just to fend gravity off and maintain its huge mass floating above the ground; with each passing moment, it was becoming slightly weaker.

Carefully, she insured that her crown was still firmly standing on her forelock, while Rainbow Dash was checking her own harmony necklace. Facing her at about two hundred meters was that darn “thing”, now visibly smaller, but still impressive, like a giant bloated sphere, dark and rough, sometimes shaken by strange vibrations, as if it throbbed from inside. On the far side of it, Twilight’s balloon was carrying all the other wielders in its basket: Pinkie, Applejack, Rarity and Fluttershy – who had declined taking part in the aerial race because of her purported weak flying abilities.

All awaited a signal. The stillness was tense.

Ten seconds, twenty seconds had elapsed in a total immobility, when, in a bright flash, Celestia and Luna appeared above the sponge. “Now!” shouted Celestia. The two sisters crossed their horns and pure white rays descended from the joined apices down to each jewel which, in response to the signal, started to emit intense shafts of colored light aimed directly at the floating freak, whose shape disappeared under a dazzling glow.

Under the pressure, the sponge seemed to shrink. It began to pulse violently for a few seconds. All of a sudden, there was a roaring explosion and a fierce blow of scorching air blustered, shoving everypony out of place. The light beams immediately vanished.

Fighting a strong dizziness, Twilight reluctantly opened her eyes that she had reflexly shut when the hot air had blasted her. Nothing was to be seen anymore: the sponge had been destroyed, wiped into nothingness, as if it has never existed; nothing remained of that threatening being. A deep quietness reinforced strangeness of the scene. Then Celestia shouted merrily “I know we could do it. We’ve smashed it! Hurray!”.

With a profound relief, everypony started to chortle.

“Now I want everypony back to Canterlot to celebrate our victory!” Celestia cheerfully ordered.

And in a wink of an eye, they were all gone.

⁂

The sponge was still poising to decide on which appetizer it should pounce first, when it was thrashed by a enormous downpour of energy, unexpected and far beyond its ability to control. At first, it attempted to withstand the mighty influx, but it soon realized this was impossible either. So it carried out its only remaining option.

It was a matter of milliseconds to prepare its cells for the inevitable doom. When it knew its body was ready, it gave up fighting the overload. The rushing flow of power rived the molecular bonds that were gluing its cells together, releasing in turn more energy, building up a chain reaction, until all that remained were millions of microscopic motes, too tiny to be visible, that were blasted away by the resulting burst.

As they hurtled by, each of these innumerable smuts retracted and encrusted to form spores.

Spores that flitted blithely in the morning breeze, hankering after food.