An Icy Existence

by Dee Bee Doo-wop Cooper

Chapters

Chapter Two: Bring Me to Life
Chapter Three: Behind Those Eyes (You Lie)
Chapter Four: Give me the Night
Chapter 5: Blow Me Away
Chapter Six: My Masquerade
Chapter One: Live by the Steel, Die by the Sword

Chapter Two: Bring Me to Life

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Chapter Three: Behind Those Eyes (You Lie)

Any Icy Existence

Chapter 3: Behind Those Eyes

By DigitDaemon

Edited by: Blood Lord

~~~~~

Twilight gave a content sigh as the void of sleep slowly left her mind and she squeezed her pillow tighter, which she was now hugging to her chest. She reveled in its plush softness and seemingly almost molten temperature. Her pillow gave a small chuckle and wrapped a hoof around her.

Twilight’s heart skipped a beat and the drowsiness cleared from her mind instantly. Pillows do not have hooves; and I don’t even own a plush pillow!

Carefully, Twilight opened her eyes, afraid of what she would find only to have light blue fur fill her vision. She quickly pushed and scrambled away from the thing out of panic, only for another surprise to greet her. The edge of the bed.

Twilight hit the floor with a dull thud and groaned as she worked her hoof out from underneath her. A snickering from above caused the alicorn to glance back up and see a very familiar pegasus with a multi-colored mane.

“Rainbow Dash!”

Rainbow chuckled again, and flashed a lazy smile. “Hey, Twilight.”

Twilight gave the blue speedster a withering glare. “Why are you in my bed?”

“Oh, thats easy,” Rainbow Dash said, seemingly relieved at what Twilight thought was a pretty hard question to answer. “The princesses came by and said you were suffering from hypopotimis or something-”

“Hypothermia,” Twilight corrected.

“Yeah, hypodermic shock and until your body got use to not producing heat anymore, that you had to be kept warm. They said something about an Ember Stone or something like that, but I figured that it was probably just like when one of the high altitude team members gets hypothermia.”

Twilight started to slowly rub her forehead while giving Rainbow an annoyed look.

Rainbow Dash winked in response, “It is too easy to mess with you Twilight. So anyways, I volunteered to stay and help warm you up overnight.”

“Well that was very...kind of you’ Twilight tried to suppress a shiver “But I think I will be fine.”Just as she finished, a wave of dizziness swept over the alicorn and she was forced to lay back down.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I guess I am just a little dizzy is all.” Twilight said quickly. In truth however, she wasn’t fine. The news that Rainbow Dash had delivered added to the already great mental burden the Twilight was bearing. To find out that she was drifting further and further from being a pony was becoming too taxing on her.

“You know, being Captain of the Weather Patrol means that I see every injury that happens on the job, including all the hypothermia cases. Last time I checked, shivering and collapsing were not signs that somepony is fine.”

Twilight just groaned in response, fighting hard to not lose consciousness again. She climbed back into her bed as Rainbow Dash laid back down. The blue pegasus pulled her drowsy friend up to her chest and patted her back.

“Don’t worry Twi, just go back to sleep, I’ve got you.”

Twilight slowly wrapped her forelegs around her light blue friend, clinging to the only source of warmth she could find.

Rainbow, like all pegasi, had an extremely fine coat that was almost like the down of a newborn chick. This was in order to give her better aerodynamics, and although Twilight was embarrassed to admit it, her friend was also extremely comfortable to cuddle with. The lavender mare subconsciously pulled herself up a little tighter against the pegasus. She shed a single tear, that was quick to ice over, as she drifted off.

Rainbow Dash watched as Twilight fell peacefully into dreamland, incredibly grateful that the bookworm couldn’t see the huge grin of victory on her face as she too began to doze.

~~~~~

Twilight stretched in her bed and gave a wide yawn. She clumsily grasped around, feeling like something was missing. The purple mare sat up and looked around for he new soft pillow, but didn't see the pegasus anywhere. The spot next to her was still warm though, which meant Rainbow must have just gotten up.

The lavender alicorn got up out of bed and yawned again as she cleared the ice from around her eyes. I must have been crying in my sleep, I suppose it is good I don’t remember my dreams.

Twilight got out of bed and stretched her legs a bit more before trotted over to the vanity in the corner of her room. She was afraid to look in the mirror, expecting to see a hideous monster in her reflection. Twilight took a few deep breaths before looking up and giving a sigh of relief. she still looked normal, and there was no ice clinging to her coat either. With the exception of her breath being visible whenever she exhaled, she looked normal. Twilight picked up the brush in her magic and then froze, her magical aura was a snowy blue.

“But my magic has always been the same color as my eyes,” she whimpered to nopony in particular.

"It still is…"

Twilight shivered at the sound of Frostmourne’s voice but took a closer examination of herself in the mirror. Her eyes were in fact now also light blue in color. She swallow hard and sat down, feeling as though she might collapse. The purple mare took deliberate, slow breaths in an attempt to keep the tears at bay. Confusion, grief, and panic worked through the young alicorn's body as she looked at the change. In the end, she failed and couldn't stop the tears from rolling down her face.

“Hey Twi?” Rainbow Dash’s voice came from downstairs.

Twilight tried to pull herself together to answer, but she could only manage to say “yes,” horsley in between sniffles.

“Hey Twilight?” This time Rainbow’s voice was much closer and Twilight could see her friend out of the corner of her eye; she was standing at the bedroom door with a concerned look on her face.

The pegasus speedster swiftly stepped through the bedroom towards the lavender mare that she had been charged with taking care of. When she reached Twilight she placed a hoof on her friends shoulder. “Is everything okay Twi?” she asked apprehensively.

Twilight spun around and flung herself into her friends arms, her tears coming back to her.

The pegasus slowly wrapped her hooves around the purple princess and began to gently rock her her back and forth. After a few minutes Twilight finally regained control of her emotions and pulled away from Rainbow.

“Shh, It’ll be okay,” she whispered as stroked the back of Twilight's head. It was an action her mother did for her when she was a filly, and frustrated with flight school. It had a calming effect on her and it was something Rainbow was hoping would help ease her friend as well.

“Sorry...I just was overwhelmed I guess,” Twilight said as she conjured up a tissue to wipe her nose on.

Rainbow Dash gave the alicorn a confused look. “Sorry for what? You have been through so much, at least I assume you have since you haven’t actually told me anything that is happening yet, but anyways, you have obviously been through a lot and you can’t just keep these things bottled up inside of you.” Rainbow Dash walked over to where Twilight’s brush had fallen to the ground unnoticed and retrieved it. “But the important thing is that you don’t have to face it alone.”

“But how can I go to my friends when I am the biggest danger to them?” Twilight retorted, a hint of bitterness in her voice.

Rainbow didn’t answer at first, she just sat down behind Twilight and began to brush the alicorn’s mane. When she did speak, it wasn’t in her normally carefree manner or even in her fallback friendly voice; her voice was wise, mature sounding. “Now, I’m not really the best pony to ask, but my dad once told me, after a fight I had with Gilda in flight school, that friends hurt each other sometimes. I guess it makes sense. I mean who else could hurt somepony’s friends more than those they are friends with? I mean, our friends are the things we hold closest. So, when we hold everything else at hoof’s length away how could our friends not be the biggest danger to us?” Rainbow Dash rubbed the back of her head, feeling a bit awkward. “I guess that doesn’t make much sense does it?”

Twilight sat in silence as she mulled those words over in her head. “I think I understand, but what if it isn’t really me though? What if it is something that wants to hurt you all and is trying to use me to get to you?”

Rainbow Dash did almost flinch but she managed to suppress it and just keep brushing. “And who might that be?”

“I did promise I would tell you what happened, and I guess now is as good a time as any, but I think we should probably eat first.” Twilight said with some confidence returning to her voice. Maybe if I can just handle this one step at a time, I can get past it without any problems...just one step at a time

Frostmourne’s presence flared in Twilight's mind and she felt his chilling words, "What a noble goal, I suppose I shall keep count of the hoof falls then..." His presence left as abruptly as it had come and served to only steel the alicorn’s mind.

One step at a time.

“Uh, Twilight?” Rainbow asked cautiously.

Twilight snapped out of her thoughts and gave a poor imitation of her normal chuckle, “Sorry, I must have just gotten overwhelmed by... the thought of food.”

Rainbow Dash couldn’t help but chuckle .“You’re so weird sometime,” she said with a smile and pulled Twilight to her hooves.

They then proceeded down the stairs to the dining room, Twilight quickly taking her own spot at the small wooden table. Only moments later, the small green and purple form of Spike walked in carrying a plate of food in either claw and one balanced on his head.

“Good morning, Twilight,” Spike said with a caring smile. “It’s good to see you are feeling better.”

“Thanks Spike,” Twilight replied, patting the dragon on the head as he delivered a plate in front of her. When she looked over at the plate and say the delicate, golden brown squares with rivers of brown sugary sap running down the side, her smile broke into a full on grin. “Waffles!”

By the time the young dragon took his own place at the table Twilight had already cleaned half of her plate.

“Woah, easy there Twi, you might give yourself a stomach ache,” Rainbow Dash said with slight concern.

Twilight froze and slowly turned to her prismatic friend. Dash almost flinched as they locked eye, Twilight’s seemed to boil with the intensity and rage of the sun. “I don’t care.” she replied through gritted teeth and then immediately returned to wolfing down her breakfast. About a minute later Twilight paused again and looked up from her plate with a sad expression. “Sorry, I… I don’t know what came over me.”

Rainbow Dash gave Spike a questioning glance but he just shrugged in response. The rest of breakfast passed in silence and once all the plates had been cleaned, including Twilight’s second plate, the purple alicorn cleared her throat.

“So, I guess now is as good a time as any to explain what happened?” Twilight said quietly, hoping that either Spike or Rainbow Dash would give a good reason not to explain what had happened.

Rainbow Dash nodded and Spike just kept his eyes locked on Twilight.

“Well, it all started with a mad pony and... a sword.”

~~~~~

“And that’s how Equestria was made!” Pinkie finished as she set down the puppet and the ice cream cone she had been using in her story.

She frowned though as the three fillies she had been entertaining were staring down the street and not at the ending of her production. “Hey, what gives? You guess just totally missed the super-duper awesome part! What are you looking at anyways?”

Pinkie Pie couldn’t wait to see what was cool enough to top even one of her own stories. So she hopped off the bench and followed the Cutie Mark Crusader line of sight down the road until she ran right into the coldest stallion she had ever crashed into.

“Sorry there, I didn’t see you, I must have been too busy tracking the lines of sight from my friends back there,” Pinkie pointed back at the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and then let out a sudden gasp and began hopping with excitement. “Are you new to Ponyville? Are you visiting someone?”

The stallion groaned in response, to which the hyperactive pony took as a yes. “That’s so cool! I’m Pinkie Pie, what's your name?”

The stallion moaned this time in response.

“Auhhhhhhhhhhhh?” questioned Pinkie as she placed a hoof thoughtfully to her chin. “Hmm, I’ve never heard of that name before. Are you from Saddle Arabia? You must be a really important person! You should totally go meet my friend Twilight, she’s a Princess. And I’ll go get a party together for you so you can meet eveypony else!”

Pinkie Pie hopped away from the slightly confused corpse and it returned to shambling back towards the library treehouse.

It’s master calls.

~~~~~

“And now here we are.” Twilight finished and she then laid her head on the table, emotionally exhausted.

“Well,” Rainbow started, but she really couldn’t think of anything to say. Spike, for the first time today, also seemed to be without a response of any kind. Luckily, the silence was soon broken by a knock at the door.

“I’ll get that,” Spike volunteered and hopped off his chair, making his way out of the dining room.

The two mares sat in continued silence while they waited for Spike to finish dealing with the visitor. That plan was quickly destroyed however by a scream coming from the front door. Twilight jumped up in shock before sprinting out of the room towards the front door. She jumped over a hysterical Spike and continued towards the source of the disruption. Rounding the corner, she looked down the hall leading to the entryway and she couldn’t believe what she saw. It was the body of the colt that had died just a few days ago from her stun spell, standing up right on all fours. His coat was completely pale and frozen over, just like she had left him after their first and last encounter.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“Arr,” the animated corpse stopped its slow shambling for a moment as if trying to think. “This.”

Twilight backed up about half a pace as the corpse continued its slow progression forward. “This what?” she asked, confused as to what the icy body was saying.

“Arr...Thes”

Twilight shivered, the voice of the thing was saturated with death, but more so it had almost the same haunting echo that the voice of Frostmourne had.

The shambling corpse suddenly locked eyes with Twilight as if had finally found what it was looking for.

“Arth thus!” the cadaver exclaimed before lunging at Twilight with amazing agility and accuracy.

Twilight ducked and sidestepped the attack as some unknown instinct seemed to take over. She continued to give ground as the corpse pushed forward, trying to slash at her with its now rotting hooves. Eventually, It had backed Twilight into a corner and reared up on its hind legs to deal a devastating blow. But in that moment that exposed its torso, Twilight lunged forward, the icy steel shape of the cursed sword appearing in her hooves.

The wicked blade tore through the corpse’s stomach and with a swift upward slice, ending the abomination’s undeath.

As Twilight's senses returned to her, Spike and Rainbow Dash emerged from the other room to assess the outcome.

“Umm, Twilight…” the light blue pegasus said nervously. “How did you do that?”

Twilight’s eyes were fixed on the sword she now held in her right hoof and her voice was shaky with fear. “I don’t know, Dash, I don’t know...”

Author's Note

Thank for sticking with me so far. I apologize that this chapter took so long to get out. I had the double curse of video games and this being a slice of life-y chapter which I am not so great with. Once again, a huge thank you to Blood Lord for editing, he really helped this chapter to shine despite my weaknesses with the touchy feely stuff. As always, feel free to leave a comment letting me know what you think or anything I could do better.

Next chapter should answer a few question, and hopefully start to raise the one question that I want all of you reading to be asking. Although you may already being asking it, in which cause, "Relax Sam Flynn. All your questions will be answered soon."

Title Song

Chapter Four: Give me the Night

Author's Note

Thank you all for putting up with my bad and dumb April fools joke. Here is the actual chapter four and I think you all should like it very much (considering it took me half a year to get out). A huge thanks to Blood Lord for his support on this and his friendly reminders to not slack off for too long. And secondly, a huge thank you to all of you who have been following this story.

Song in Title

Chapter Four: Give me the Night

An Icy Existence

Chapter 4: Give Me the Night

By DigitDaemon

Edited (and much much more) by Blood Lord

far north in a land plagued by the moaning wind and driving snow was a barren desert of ice and in the center of that desert, stood a single tower. The tower rose up from the snow around it like a snaggled, rotting tooth with wreckage and debris sticking out of it. The high winds of the chilled wasteland had long ago given up on toppling the grim obstacle and instead swirled around it singing its mournful dirge.

Atop the tower there was a throne made completely out of ice and far to big for anything but a dragon. Around the empty seat gathered a group of four figures, waiting patiently for their Master. One of them was a massive beetle with short wings and a spiky carapace. Another was the ghost of a female deer wearing physical clothing. The third was a minotaur, or what was left of one, most of the flesh had rotted away and the skeleton was left bear. The last figure was a griffon whose exposed body was covered in crimson runes.

The four of them stood in silence, none of them particularly liking each other. However, their cooperation was not up to them to decide and so they stood in an uncomfortable peace.

Waiting for him.

Twilight sat at the small table in Fluttershy’s cottage and watched as the butter yellow pegasus busily zipped around the room to attend to her animals. About an hour after the local guard had arrived, a contingency of arcane investigators from the royal archive in Canterlot had shown up and sealed off the library, effectively displacing a disgruntled Twilight Sparkle and Spike.

Being separated from her books was hard enough, but she also had further tests and studies on herself she wanted to run, research to do and needed her tree house. Rainbow Dash had to leave for her own work with the weather team, leaving Twilight bored as she watched Fluttershy take care of her chores with Spike’s help. Twilight had offered to help, but under the circumstances, Fluttershy was afraid that she might be too rough with the animals, and Twilight had to grudgingly agreed.

With a deep sigh, Twilight put her head down on her hooves and looked out on the table. A old animal care magazine, some pencils, the morning mail, her glass of water…

Twilight bolted up, a sudden idea forming in her head. She picked up her glass of water with both of her hooves, because her magic would have frozen it instantly, and poured the contents onto the table, afterwards, she used a pinprick of telekinetic energy to slowly form a cube shape out of the water. She then cut the cube into twenty seven smaller cubes of equal size and reassembled them into a larger cube. She added her friends and her own cutie mark to each side to differentiate them, and then with a few last touches, her puzzle cube was complete. She immediately began running through different permutations and their solutions.

“Twelve seconds…” she mumbled to herself. “Slower than average, by three percent.”

As Twilight sat the cube down to ponder the meaning of her self observations she realised that the usual noise of Fluttershy’s cottage was gone. She looked up and found Fluttershy, Spike, and all of the animals looking at her with amazement on their faces.

“Wow Twilight,” Fluttershy praised, “that was really good. I’ve never seen someone solve one of those things so quickly.”

Twilight blushed a bit. “Well, I’ve done better…”

"Yes, it was quite amazing, actually, whispered the voice in her head. That would be an invaluable skill to have as a warrior."

Twilight wrinkled her muzzle in annoyance. "It’s just permutations and memorization, combat is too chaotic to use the the same principle."

"I wasn’t referring to that, you took one look at that cube thing, and you were able plan out every move you would have to make to solve it. That is an important part of fighting, knowing how to read your enemy."

Twilight shook her head, "Well, I guess it is to bad I am not a warrior then."

"If you want to survive the coming storm, you will need to learn to be one. and since we seem to share a body now, I would also appreciate your continued survival."

“What storm?”

Fluttershy gave her a confused look, “Um, Twilight? The weather’s is only a little cloudy, are you feeling alright?”

Twilight was confused for a second, being interrupted reminded her that she wasn’t alone. “Sorry Fluttershy, I was just discussing something with…” She hesitated, not sure she should tell her friend the truth or not. While she trusted the yellow pegasus, she also knew that her friend was easily frightened, and while maybe she had a reason to be so, Twilight didn’t want to frighten her friend. Eventually, her conscience got the better of her though. “Fluttershy, we need to talk.”

Twilight marched past the line of investigators still hanging around the tree. Her conversation had gone as well as could be expected. Fluttershy was obviously nervous at the revelation but had managed to stay brave for her friends sake. While Twilight was thankful that the pegasus cared enough to not run or hide, She really didn’t do a good job at hiding her fear. Walking on eggshells around her friend was not something Twilight had any interest in doing and decided instead to cut her visit short and see if the guard was done at her library.

Twilight reached the end of the hallway and found the pony she was looking for standing over a chalk outline that had replaced the form of her attacker.

“So... was it him?” Twilight asked the detective.

“If you mean the body we picked up on the outskirts of town, yes.” He paused to jot something down in his notebook. “We are still waiting for an expert’s opinion but it seems that he was reanimated with some class of necromancy.”

Twilight nodded. “Is there any way to find out who reanimated him?”

The detective shrugged in response. “That’s for the expert to determine.”

“Right…” Twilight looked back outside at the other guardsponies standing outside. “So, when will you be done here?”

“In about an hour, hopefully. Princess Celestia asked that there be a guard detail post twenty four seven around the library though.”

“Of course she did…” Twilight rolled her eyes at the idea of needing a security detail. Although events provide it was a good idea, she could take care of herself. Not to mention that Celestia did it without even asking her. Twilight felt her temper flare at that last thought, and threw one more comment back at the detective before leaving. “Just... make sure they stay out of my way.”

The sergeant looked up from his notebook, slightly put off from the sudden change in attitude, “Yes, your Highness. I’ll speak with them before I leave.”

Twilight flicked her tail in a half hearted gesture of thanks and walked off towards the kitchen.

"What are you so upset about? At least they make an effort to protect you"

Twilight checked that she was out of earshot of the Sergeant. “What do you mean by that?”

"Did Luna ever tell you what happened a thousand years ago?"

“Are we really going to talk about that now?” asked Twilight as she summoned a journal from her desk. “Weren’t you there when she talked about it?”

"It has relevance, Princess. Just answer the question."

“Yeah, she built an army to try and overthrow Princess Celestia,” Twilight said as if reciting from a history book.

"Correct, but did she tell you how she built that army? How she convinced tens of thousands of ponies to fight and die for her?"

“No,” Twilight replied slowly, not liking where this conversation was going.

"Of course not!"The general’s voice changed from mild disinterest to thinly veiled anger. "Well, let me tell you a story then…"

Twilight involuntarily swallowed at the generals words, knowing she did not want to hear them and also that she had no choice.

"One thousand years ago Luna decided that she wanted to control all the day as well as the night and knew that she would have to overthrow her sister to do it."

“I know,” said Twilight. “It’s a old pony’s tale about Nightmare Moon. She was beaten by Celestia by using the Elements of Harmony to banish her to the moon.”

"That would be the candy coated version," whispered the voice. "Luna needed power, an army and officers to command it. More importantly, she needed the public to believe that Celestia was a monster."

“Hmm, Mhm. Fascinating,” said Twilight as she began to doodle in the top corner of the journal.

"So, in order to convince towns to join her, she dressed her followers up as castle guards and disguised herself as her sister. Then, she destroyed burned and pillaged her way across the country side until she had drawn enough enemies towards her sister so that she was evenly matched."

“That...But she… What?”Twilight had to stop herself for a moment and collect her thought, “But that was the Nightmare wasn’t it? Nightmare Moon, right?”

Frostmourne snorted in contempt "Not at first. Luna sought power she needed to overthrow her sister, so she searched far and wide, tapping into her own powers of the night and the dark magics of King Sombra. Nightmare Moon emerged far later as a result. the “princess” that destroyed my village and killed my wife and unborn child was cold and calculating. Who knows, maybe Nightmare Moon was a fractured part of her psyche or something that she created herself, but she had always seemed sane to me."

Twilight slumped down onto the floor, trying to process what she had just been told. Luna was a tyrant and a murderer? Celestia lied and even erased some of the history of Equestria to protect her sister?.

“No!” Twilight shouted pulling herself back up and slamming the journal close. “I don’t believe you. Why should I?”

"Oh I don’t know, maybe because I was there" deadpanned the voice. "I have only been truthful to you, my dear Princess, what would I have against you to believe otherwise?"

“You tried to kill me.”

"The circumstance were more complicated than you could understand."

“Try me,” Twilight spat.

"That’s a story for later. Perhaps you should asked your esteemed mentor and her treacherous sister about this instead."

Twilight stood there seething for a moment before finally teleporting a blank scroll and writing utensils to herself. She quickly jotted down a message copied it to another scroll and teleported both copies away.

“I will ask them and once they tell me the truth, I will find a way to burn you from my mind,” promised Twilight as she sat down to wait..

The winds of the far north tremble and died at the throes of an even greater force. The four hooded figures looked up to the sky as the sound of pounding wings grew louder. From the cloud covered sky, descended the undead titian. He was most likely the largest dragon in all of the lands, but he had died many ages ago. It was difficult to tell where the dried, rotten flesh remained and the cold ice began. Pure magic pounded in his body and wings, casting an eerie glow and illuminating his skeleton. He was a dracolich, the ancient undead of the dragons.

The dracolich circled the tower once before landing on his throne, and letting out a commanding roar. The force shaking the entire tower so badly that its thunder was echoed by the sound of ice and other thing breaking free and crashing to the icy desert below.

The Four Figures quickly bowed before the dracolich as he studied them with glowing blue eyes that reflected a wicked intelligence.

“Where there were once five, there stands four,” his voice rumbled softly. “Why has your brother failed to return to me? Do my summons mean nothing to him?”

The ghost pony spoke, still bowing, “Lord, Malganis has taken Kelzad and his forces to Equestria in search of you blade.”

The dracolich snorted, sending a small tremor through the tower. “He presumes to know my will? Rash and arrogant as ever. They will fall as will those that oppose me.”

The dracolich looked over the commanders of his army. “Stand, I did not spare you so that you may entertain my ego.”

The massive beast looked carefully at each of them as he spoke. “ When your Master needs something of you, it will be commanded. As for my blade, it is right where it needs to be, in the possession of the one who will use it most effectively. Understood?”

The four commanders nodded.

“Now, Sylvana…“Take your forces and guard the coast, take your time in preparing your defence. If Kelzad is going to play his hand, we can expect Equestria to respond in kind. Let them fall where they land..” The Dragon watched as the ghost bowed and took a step back, then he rested his eyes on the monstrous beetle that stood before him

“Anubrak…Inevitably, some of their forces will break through. Set up a labyrinth of tunnels to draw them into. Kill all who enter.”

“I’ll see to it,” replied the Crypt Lord.

“Cerabyss.”The rotting minotaur stepped forward.

“You will divide your force between Sylvana's and Anubrak's. You shall funnel the living to our maws and our spears. Do not allow them to wander around.”

“Of course,” Cerabyss return turned and shuffled back into line with the other commanders.

“And you Talous,” The deathly monstrosity smiled cruelly.

“Yes, sir?” The griffin shuddered under the dead Elder Dragon’s gaze.

“Since you and your armies are still living, you will serve me two fold. You will take your army to Equestria and die there for me in battle. Then see to it that you lead their armies back here.”

When the griffin general failed to answer, the dragon lord eyed him with amusement before leaning down so that his head rest just feet away from the griffin’s face. “Talous. Did you hear your Master? Are you shrinking back from your promise to me? Shall I seek out a different soul more worthy of my gifts of immortality? ” the dracolich said softly.

“Y-your will is mine.” Talous said quickly, and with a slight stutter.

“Good,” the dragon sat back up right and made a dismissive gesture with his left wing. “Go forth, my commanders. Lead the living to their deaths.”

Twilight paced back and forth nervously as she awaited the princesses to arrive. She was sure that her fears would be dismissed by them. After all what reason did she have to trust the soul of a pony who was there to witness it first hoof?

“Okay, so maybe my fears are a little more rational than I’d like, but I still doubt that its the exact truth.” Twilight said aloud to herself. She knew that waiting wasn’t exactly the best thing to do for her. It made her anxious and the result of that was never good; Ponyville actually had its own incident log for those occasions that Twilight Sparkle was forced to wait and descended into the madness of anxiety. Luckily, for both Twilight and Ponyville, her pacing was soon interrupted by a crash in library’s main room.

Twilight trotted into the next room still muttering to herself. She plucked the blue pegasus from the pile of books and stacked them back into the bookshelf. Rainbow Dash’s ungraceful entrances were actually so common now that this was all accomplished by a single spell Twilight had created a spell specific for situations like this

“Thanks Twi.” Rainbow responded, mostly out of habit, the nuance of crashing through the window having worn off on her as well.

“No problem,” Twilight said in between hushed whispers to herself.

“Yo, Twilight, you alright?”

“No.”

Rainbow Dash finally walked around to the front of her spaced out friend and waved her hoof in front of the mare’s muzzle. Twilight shook her head back and forth several times and finally focused her attention on Rainbow.

“Sorry, I was just...thinking,” Twilight said with a sigh.

Rainbow Dash snorted, “Yeah, when are you not? What are you thinking, or should I say worrying about?”

“Its nothi…” Rainbow Dash interrupted her answer with a shake of the head, communicating that nothing was not an acceptable answer. “The princesses might not be who we think they are.”

“What, are they aliens?”

“No, they might not be as innocent as we think they are.”

“Well duh!” Rainbow Dash said in exasperation, “You think anyone could live as long as they have without banging?”

Twilights cheeks turned a slight shade of red and her sad expression turned to horror.

“What?” Rainbow Dash responded with confusion.

Twilight shook her head. “That's not what I meant at all.”

“Oh.”

“I meant, they might have more blood on their hooves than we thought.”

This time it was Rainbow Dash who looked mildly horrified, “Oooooh.”

The two stood in silence for a few more seconds before Rainbow Dash’s face returned to its normal chipper look. “Well, I guess that kind of makes sense though, doesn’t it? I mean they lived during the times of Discord and King Sombra. They must have gotten there hooves dirty at some point.”

Twilight nodded, “Yeah, that is true, and I am also willing to accept that they have to capacity to make mistakes, but that's still not exactly what I am talking about.”

The blue weather pony shrugged in defeat. “If you're not going to tell me what it is that has you so worried,” she said in an uncharacteristically sullen voice. “Then how am I supposed to help you as a friend? I mean, that's why I came here in the first place.”

“I-I know, Rainbow,” said Twilight as she sat down. It’s just… I’m pretty sure this is wrong, something silly, and there is no sense in spreading rumors without cause.”

Rainbow Dash shrugged and walked over to one of the shelves pretending to suddenly be interested in the subject of pre-classical literature.

“Rainbow,” Twilight said with a sigh, “You don’t have to pretend to read as an excuse to hang around.”

“Oh thank Celestia,” the blue speedster replied with obvious relief as she returned the book to the wrong shelf. The fact that it was an improvement over her usual discarding of books on the floor brought a smile to Twilight’s face.

“You are quite welcome, my little pony.”

Both Twilight and Dash spun to face the door, finding both Princess Celestia and Luna walking in.

“SorryIdefinitlydidnotthinkyouwouldhearthatgottogobye” The prism haired pegasus shouted as she fled out the same window she had crashed through minutes before.

Twilight on the other hoof diverted her gaze to the floor.

“Hello, Twilight Sparkle,” greeted Celestia as a pair of cushions levitated over for the three to sit on. “You seem troubled, more so than usual. Is there a problem?”

“I have a... question,” Twilight said cautiously, as if the intention itself might hurt her.

Luna walked up to the new princess and hunched down, putting her face in between Twilight and the ground. “I assume that this question is about the past, my past, and you are afraid that we will be upset by your asking.”

“No,” said Twilight as she looked up. “I am afraid that I will be angry at your answer, both your answers.”

Celestia gently took a seat on one of the floor cushions and motioned for both Twilight and Luna to do the same.

“We also assume that you and our former general have been speaking then?” Luna asked once they had settled.

Twilight nodded.

“Well, then, the knowledge will be no less to bear the longer we wait, what is it thou would ask of us?”

Twilight gulped, trying to overcome the lump in her throat, “Did you kill them?”

Luna locked eyes with the quivering young alicorn. “I have killed many in the past, young Twilight. So you’re going to have to be more specific about ‘them’.”

"Stalling, typical. You will die before you get a straight answer from her. Or, on occasion, right afterwards."

“The villagers, when you were building your army,” Twilight’s words became a bit more forceful, “Did you kill them?”

“We—” Luna was silenced by Celestia’s raised hoof.

“Twilight, why is the past, this past such a fascination to you right now?” asked the Sun Princess.

“Because there is a voice in my head who I am inclined to not believe,” replied Twilight, no longer nervous but determined to find the truth as she looked back at her former teacher. “But I can only disagree if I have evidence that he is wrong and I trust you two enough to give me the truth.”

“Yes,” quietly said Luna. “I killed them, all of them. I choose to embrace something dark, and I made up a persona to hide behind when I could no longer face what I had done. Nightmare Moon. With her… with it, I could pretend I was detached from everything that it wasn’t me. Does that satisfy you, Twilight Sparkle?”

The youngest of the three alicorns looked at her in horror. “W-why?”

“Why? You have yet to understand the addictions of power, true power,” said Luna as she stood up. “I hold no excuse for myself, and I will not justify what I did. I had one thousand years to come to terms with myself. I imagine it will also take time for you too.”

With a flash of deep blue light, the Princess of the Night was gone.

Twilight slumped down onto her belly, her eyes unfocused. “And you,” she whispered. “You knew didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Celestia started to approach her former student, but before she could touch a hoof to Twilight to comfort her, but she didn’t get that chance. There was another flash of magic, this time magenta as Twilight reappeared a few feet away.

“How could you cover for her?” Twilight screamed at her old mentor. “She committed murder, hundreds of times. She killed her own soldiers, innocent families so they would hate you more and you just swept it under the rug!”

“Twilight, please calm down.”

“Calm? How can I be calm knowing that the biggest criminal and tyrant ever to exist in this nation escaped justice because of you?!”

“She faced justice Twilight, the Elements saw to it. Celestia replied, still calm and tempered. “She faced a thousand years on the moon, alone, trapped. Only able to think about what she had done.”

“Oh, timeout then. Go sit on the moon and think about what you did young lady!”” Twilight gave a sarcastic chuckle. “Good to know that each ponies life is worth one year in the eyes of the great Elements of Harmony. Donut Joe still owes me for poker last month, guess I’ll just stab him while he sleeps, it’s only a years punishment. And hell! I’m immortal, why should I care about a year here and there, right?”

“Twilight, enough,” commanded the alicorn as the sharp glint of anger crossed her eyes.

“Enough? Enough?!” Twilight screamed. “Enough of what? facing the past? Answering for what yo—”

“Twilight Sparkle!” boomed Princess Celestia. “You weren’t there! You have no idea what decisions I had to face that night against Luna, against my only blood. Could you swing the executioner's axe against Shining Armor if he became like Sombra? Could you strike him down?”

“D-don’t—” stammered Twilight as she took a step back, ears folding back and her eyes squeezed shut. But it wasn’t from cowering down, it was from trying to control the boiling anger within. She wanted to lash out, she wanted to… she wanted to...

“Some day, Twilight, you’ll have to make hard decisions,” said Celestia with sadness as she stood up. “You’ll have to live with not only what you choose to do, but what you could have done.”

Twilight looked up at her former mentor, this time the glint of anger was clear in her own eyes. Celestia responded with a eyebrow raised in amusement. “Don’t do it, Twilight.”

“Don’t what?”

“Please—”

“Please what?!” Twilight Screamed hysterically.

“Please help!” shrieked a familiar voice from outside followed seconds later by the shattering of glass as a blooded Rainbow Dash plowed through one of the closed windows. She didn’t even acknowledge the wounds however as she looked at Twilight and Celestia, her eyes wide with fear.

“Zombies are attacking Ponyville!”

Chapter 5: Blow Me Away

An Icy Existence

Chapter 5: Blow Me Away

By DigitDaemon

Edited (and much much more) by Lord Commander

Rainbow Dash gently flapped her wings, gliding around Ponyville as she waited for the Princesses to finish their meeting with Twilight. A side wind caught her just under her left wing, causing her to flutter about for a moment before regaining control and leveling herself back out. Normally, she wouldn’t be flying on such a dismal day. The entire sky was covered in light grey clouds, and a rogue wind current plagued the skies which was preventing the clouds from gathering into thicker, heavier storm clouds. Rainbow had half a mind to break up the clouds herself, weather schedule be darned, but... she couldn’t just leave Twilight after she was done with the Princesses.

Originally, she had flown off because she was just embarrassed to have been caught swearing with Celestia’s name. In hindsight, it was pretty apparent that the Princess hadn’t taken any offence from it. Now however, she was waiting because she figured that whatever Twilight had wanted to talk about with them, she would want to do so in private.

It was pretty funny to her actually, in an ironic sense. Before meeting Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash had had a pretty ‘devil may care’ attitude. Basically, she had never stressed over anything, just relaxed and enjoyed whatever life decided to give her. However, after making friends with Twilight, Rainbow had picked up on some of her habits. Reading was a big one, but the one that she tried to hide the most was worrying. Sometimes she just sat on a cloud and worried about Twilight. Other times, it was about what Twilight was stressing about, and that was what was happening right now.

Rainbow Dash let out a sigh as she cut up into the cloud layer, her wings slicing out a good chunk of the grey clouds, and she went to work on making a small cloud to lay on. Her thoughts drifted as she made the cloud, a frown began creasing her face as she thought of Twilight. With any luck, maybe Princess Celestia had some solution to her icy problem, some sort of spell or magic thing that could just turn Twilight back into her usual egghead self and not this… other pony.

“I hope you know what you are doing, Twilight,” said Rainbow Dash as she laid down on the cloud and fluffed up the extra bit into a pillow.

“I hope so too, but Dashie, you know Twilight isn’t here, right?”

Rainbow looked around for a moment, tilting over the edge of the cloud to find Pinkie Pie bouncing back up from a trampoline set underneath. “Hi Pinkie.”

“Hiya, want to come see the parade with me?”

Rainbow Dash rolled over the edge of the cloud and dropped like a rock, her wings flared open and bleed her speed off until she landed gently on the ground. She watched as Pinkie bounced a couple of more times, wondering if she was going to have to go in and stop it or something, until Pinkie bounced off and did a few somersaults.

“Tada!” said Pinkie as she threw her hooves into the air, before falling prey to a few giggles.“Hi Dashie!”

“Hi Pinkie Pie,” Rainbow Dash trailed off with a half chuckle. “Again.”

“So want to go see the parade with me?”

“There is a parade today?” Rainbow replied with some confusion.

“Totally,” said Pinkie, as she collapsed the trampoline and hide it behind a nearby bush. “I was upstairs in my room, putting together this big surprise anniversary party for the Cakes, even though they threatened me last year not to do it in their room again during ‘snuggle time’ or else I’d lose my key to the sugar cupboard, and probably the house. So I figured I’d just do it in the front like all my normal parties, and then my tail gets all twitchy-twitch! Pinkie Pie paused just long enough to press her face up against Rainbow Dash’s. “Which means we were having a parade!... or a big fight. So I looked out my window, and I saw a huge group of ponies moving this way.”

“Huge group of ponies? Weird, I didn’t see anything scheduled for today,” Rainbow looked up at the sky. “Wonder why they would want to hold a parade on a day like this? Maybe it’s a circus?”

Pinkie started giggling again as she started going down the road with a bounce. “Well let's find out, silly. Wait, that made sense, so they are silly. Let's go find out why they are being silly, makes sense!”

To her credit, Rainbow Dash only spent a few seconds trying to figure out what Pinkie was trying to say before dropping it, and following her skipping friend down the street towards the outskirts of town. “Better not be something like Flim and Flam showing up again.”

As they got to the edge of town it became increasingly apparent that something was off. The massive group of ponies were all stumbling around, disorganized. It looked like they were just wandering around, but towards Ponyville. As Rainbow Dash got closer, she noticed that there was something off about their coat colors. They were all faded, greyed slightly too as if light hadn’t been on them in a long time, and they hadn’t eaten right in years.

“Oh my gosh, is it nightmare night again already!” Pinkie Pie squealed. “I totally don’t have a costume.

“Uh, Pinkie, it's the middle of November,” said Rainbow Dash.

“Oh, well. I better tell them before they get weird looks in town.” Before Rainbow Dash could stop her, Pinkie bounced off into the mob in the distance.

“Pinkie!” Rainbow Dash zoomed towards the group in close pursuit. As she got closer she involuntarily shuddered at the smell of decay that permeated the space around the group. She could easily see a pink blob bounce up and down inside the grey mob as the ghoulish ponies jumped after her with surprising agility. Rainbow Dash was so focused on catching her friend however that she only had a split second to react as one of the shuffling grey ponies jumped up at her.

Rainbow Dash pushed backwards, getting most of her body out of range of the head on attack. The assailant still managed catch the very tip of Dash’s right wing’s largest primary feather though, giving the her a good up close look at the creature.

The skin on its face was pulled so tight that it failed to cover the pony’s gums and the muscles around its eyes. Its teeth were sharp, pointed and set in rows like a shark. Most immediately relevant though, its front hooves had a massive pointed bony protrusions that looked like a twisted perversion of a dragon’s claws, which were sharp enough that as one of them caught her primary feather it cleanly sliced off the tip.

Zombies!

Rainbow Dash’s sudden stop gave the other ghouls around her the opportunity to also jump at her. Despite their un-pony speed, Rainbow Dash was still faster, and she was gone before a single one was two feet off the ground. As she flew forward with renewed energy, Rainbow used the air pocket forming around her as a makeshift shield, pushing the ghouls back as she plowed towards Pinkie Pie. Any other unfortunate ghoul that got in her way was caught in the subsonic pressure wave and thrown back into the ground.

As Pinkie came within range Dash adjusted her speed just a bit, slowing so that she could catch the pink mare at the top of her jump. As soon as Pinkie was right in front of of the blue speedster, Rainbow’s hooves shot forward and grabbed hold of her. A single reversal of her wings, and a hard flap launched the two straight into the sky. Rainbow Dash banked hard and flew as fast as possible while safely carrying Pinkie Pie back to Ponyville.

Just as Dash passed above the roofs’ of the first few houses in town, signalling her arrival in Ponyville proper, she glanced back over her shoulder and blanched at what she saw. The group of undead heading towards the city was even larger than she had thought, numbering well into the hundreds.

In a few short seconds later, Rainbow Dash came to a stop in front of Sugarcube Corner, dropping her energetic cargo.

“Dashie!” Pinkie Pie pouted. “What did you do that for?”

“Did what for?” Dash shot back. “Save our life? Gee, I wonder why I’d do that.”

Pinkie blinked twice and then looked away. “Well who the hay is going to lead them away from Ponyville now!?”

Rainbow Dash jumped back up into the air in sudden panic. “I need to find Twilight. Pinkie, get everypony out of here!”

“Please help!” Rainbow Dash shrieked as she approached the library.

She saw the window as she came up on it, normally it was open. Today however, it was latched shut. At first, Rainbow did a mental check on if she had time to slow down before berating herself, This is too important!

The impact was less severe than she thought it would be, the panel shattered easily beneath her outstretched hooves. As she passed through the window however, she felt the shards of glass still in the pane cut into her skin, leaving lines of red all along her body.

Despite the injuries however, she still managed to stick the landing, coming to a stop on all four hooves in front of a flustered looking Princess Celestia and a very, very angry Twilight Sparkle.

“Zombies are attacking Ponyville”

Twilight let out a furious snort. “Rainbow Dash, I don’t have the bucking patience to deal with your paranoia right now.”

Rainbow Dash for her part only flinched a little. “My paranoia?” she shrieked. “Okay, maybe they aren’t zombies, but there are like, thousands of them right outside town and they tried to kill me and Pinkie Pie!”

Seeing the genuine fear in Rainbows eyes and hearing the panic in her voice seemed to break the veil of rage surrounding Twilight. Her muscles unclenched, her snarl turned into a frown and her eyes seemed to brighten, if only a little.

After a few deep breaths, the princess of magic finally spoke, “Right, I… I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.” She looked Rainbow Dash in the eyes and gave her a pleading look. “I… how far away are they?.”

“At best? Maybe five minutes out,” replied Rainbow Dash.

“I’ll get the guard,” said Celestia as she stood up.

Rainbow Dash let out a sigh of relief. “Oh good, and we ca—”

“No!”

Celestia and Rainbow Dash both turned to Twilight and gave her a questioning look.

“It is too late for that. It takes the closest Royal Guard garrison twenty-two minutes to rally and fifteen and minutes to reach Ponyville,” stated Twilight as she levitated a map of Ponyville and the surrounding area over and looked at Rainbow Dash. “You said they were five minutes away?”

“About, I told Pinkie to start evacuating everypony though.”

“Where are they coming from?” asked Twilight. Rainbow shifted over to the map and looked at it, quickly tapping a clearing in the North. “Here, Pinkie Pie noticed them earlier from her window, that’s the way it faces and where we were attacked.”

“There is no way everypony will be clear by the time they get there. I have to stop them.”

“Twilight wait!” Celestia begged, but with a flash of icy-blue magic Twilight Sparkle was gone.

When Twilight reappeared in the market she could already hear screams coming from the direction of the north end of town.

“Hey, sword jerk!” she shouted in her mind. “Are you awake?”

“As if I could sleep.”

Twilight turned and began galloping towards the sounds of fear and destruction. The mob of ponies running away instinctively parted for her, making her journey easy. “I need you to teach me how to fight.”

Frostmourne let out an amused snort. “Impossible, fighting is something that takes even the most basic of warriors a few weeks. There isn’t enough time for you.”

“I thought you said if I died you would too.”

“Well,” replied Frostmourne, his voice full of amusement. “There is another way…”

Twilight shook her head. “No.”

“I promise I won’t hurt you or anypony else. It is the only way, unless you would rather wait for the guards.”

Twilight skidded to a halt, by now she was at the edge of the residential district and only a block or so from where the screams had come from. It seemed like the entire area had evacuated by then. At least, that’s what she hope since anyone left had stopped screaming.

“They will be on us soon,” Frostmourne interjected impatiently. “Will you fight, or run?”

As the ancient general finished, the ground erupted in a shower of earth. Without thinking, the wicked blade appeared before Twilight, manifested out of ice, and speared the spider creature before it had even finished emerging from the ground.

Twilight Sparkle scowled at the freshly re-killed beast. “Looks like we fight.”

A feeling of cold swelled inside her chest. It wasn’t an uncomfortable chill, reminding Twilight more of a cool blanket being pressed to her skin. She took a deep breath, allowing the general more access to her body, feeling his power and being mesh with her own. Upon exhaling, she felt a strange sense of peace and calmness: Determination. The earth shook again and Twilight quickly jumped backwards, placing her sword in the path of the emerging insect and allowed it to impale itself.

As the second creature fell to the ground the icy blade shattered and left cold steel in its place.

“Your conjuration is exquisite,” Frostmourne complimented. “The blade is nearly perfect.”

“Thanks, your reflex aren’t lacking either,” Twilight replied, the sword floating up and slicing deeply into a third spider creature, driving it back.”Even after a thousand years of sleep.”

There was a blood curdling moan immediately followed by an animalistic pony corpse racing around the corner. Twilight grimaced as soon as she saw it. Before, even though it was dead, it was still a pony. Hesitation filled her movements and she heard Frostmourne snarl as control was cut from him. The sword jerked in mid air, aiming too low for a clean kill, and instead lopped the pony’s hind legs off. Despite the somewhat jagged shape of the sword’s blade, and it’s messed up strike, it cut like a hot knife through butter.

“Twilight, these are not the ponies they used to be. They are but corpses enslaved by dark magic,” the general said coldly. “You must put aside regret if you want to save the living.”

Twilight bit her bottom lip and looked over at the ghoul. It was still trying to come after her, the nightmarish thing dug it’s forehooves into the ground and crawled towards her. Twilight brought the sword around and held it before her in defense. As it furiously inched closer to her, Twilight could see more details about the former pony. It had very little skin covering its rotting muscle, and its skull had been damaged enough to leave the tissue exposed. What she at first thought had been pointed teeth, she then realized were fragments of bone that must lodged into its jaw while it had been chewing on other dead.

“Your right, and even if they were,” a single tear fell from the princess’s eye, “it's no way to live.”

Without hesitation she charged forward, and swung the sword.

Celestia stared at the spot Twilight had been standing in silence.

“Um, princess?” Rainbow asked hesitantly.

Celestia shook her head to clear her thoughts, “Sorry Rainbow Dash, I was just struck with an old memory.”

“Yeah, no problem I guess,” The pegasus replied, “What do we do now?”

“I’m sorry Rainbow Dash but there is something I must do and I alone. Maybe this time I will get it right.” With a blinding light and radiating warmth that filled the room, the princess vanished.

The sea of animated corpses were steadily becoming a mountain of bodies as Twilight made short work of the mindless opponents. As she fought her way out of the residential district and back into the outskirts of town, new horrors began making their way through the ranks of the undead. These skeleton warriors were fragile, and not just limited to ponies any more. griffins and few bipedal horrors made up their rank and were armed with rusted swords and spears. This forced Twilight to give more attention to them as she quickly learned that they well trained. But there was more to this undead advance as even more of the spider creatures began to burst from the ground and attack her from behind.

Twilight leaped to the sky and tried to fly towards a clear spot but sudden thump had some sort of sticky residue on her wings, causing her to crash into the dead army below. Twilight scrambled off the dead that had broken her fall, resorting to instinctive kicking, and blindly swinging her sword until she better grasped the situation and instantly threw up a shield, pushing all of the creatures away from her. It was then that she collapsed onto her knees, breathing harshly, and feeling a sticky warmth from her side.

“Are you okay?” asked Frostmournecalmly.

Twilight rolled from her back onto her hooves and stood up.

“I think I’m—” Twilight stopped and brought her sword back up just in time to deflect the oncoming ghoul and dispatch him, “—fine.”

“I have an idea,” replied Frostmourne. “Why don’t you allow me to handle the sword and you can focus on using magic.”

Twilight continued to deflect and take out the attacking undead but her ear twitched in place of her question.

“We can cover twice as much ground and I don’t need your magic to fight.”

Twilight dropped the sword from her telekinetic grasp and instinctively grabbed the hilt in her jaw. The feeling of her body moving without her input was startling at first, but after shaking it off she began to focus on her spellwork. She started with the basic homing magic projectile, but with her head moving to swing the sword, it was impossible to lock a target so she switched to a quick and dirty lightning spell instead. It turned out that lightning made quick work of the brittle bone and starved flesh, turning the hordes of undead into splinters and burnt flesh.

Twilight’s body came to a stop during a momentary lull in the fight and Twilight assumed control again. “Well, that worked.”

“Indeed.”

Just as Twilight reassumed a fighting stance, the ground burst open again and two more spider jumped out. With heightened reflexes she hit them with a bolt of lightning but this one went straight through them and into the ground without causing anything more than a fraction of a seconds pause.

“Guess it doesn’t work for everything.”

Three more spiders emerged from behind, cutting off Twilight's escape and advanced on her. Twilight vanished from the group and appeared on the top of a roof of a nearby building. Focusing as much magic into her horn as she could, she cast a very charged version of a candle light spell, igniting the spiders into a roaring inferno. Just as she began search for a new target, a bolt of green energy hit her squarely in the back knocking her down into a nearby building.

“Come on, get up!” Frostmourne yelled internally as a group of skeletons charged towards the downed alicorn.

Twilight however was too slow in recovering and skeletal soldier were already upon her. Just as their swords were raised, a beam of blindingly bright light shot out, burning a hole through each of them.

Twilight turned her head, mouth falling open at what was looming behind her.

Celestia’s crown was replaced by an ornamental helmet made of bronze with a golden sunburst. She wore golden, plated armor, decorated with stylized sun imagery and rubies. Her wings even had golden frames attached to them, and her feathers had blades tucked into them so that she could use them as additional weapons. But hefted in her magical glow was a giant warhammer that looked more fitting for a minotaur than the royal head of Equestria. Celestia looked like the vengeful avatar of the Sun.

“Princess Celestia,” Twilight said half in awe and half in confusion.

“Hello, Twilight,” replied Celestia with a serene smile. “It just occurred to me that we never covered very much of war in any of our lessons. While I do prefer to end disagreements with kindness and not fighting, that is clearly not an option at this point.”

Chapter Six: My Masquerade

Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.

Chapter One: Live by the Steel, Die by the Sword

Author's Note

This is the final version of this chapter. I really recommend rereading this chapter because it has the first taste of combat in it and if there is anything you don't like about the way I am writing the combat or there is something I do that you want to see more of, now is the time to tell me. Also, I changed a little bit of stuff that will be important later in regards to the origin of Arrested Thesis.

Once again, a massive thank you to Blood Lord for editing this, but also a huge thank you to anyone reading this, especially anyone taking the time to reread the chapter.

Title Song

Chapter One: Live by the Steel, Die by the Sword

An Icy Existence

Chapter 1: Live by the Steel, Die by the Sword

By: DigitDaemon

Edited (and much much more) By: Bloodlord

Twilight shivered again.

It wasn’t because of the inches of ice she was trapped in. No, she had encased herself. Possessing the inherit magics of all three races, alicorns were surprisingly durable.

What she trembled at, was her mistake. The thing locked deep within her metaphysical energy matrix that controlled her magic. It was the thing that had to be stopped. She had to be stopped.

"Why do you resist so?"

Twilight fought back, suppressing that thing and focusing on the ice around her. Her mind wandered for a moment, back when she was first crowned as a princess. Euphoria, bliss, excitement, all those things could have described that moment. But there was one dark though, a final fear that didn't approach her until the celebrations had died down; eternal life would grant her the ability to withstand time, but watch her friends die around her.

"You could just accept the inevitable."

Twilight shivered as the cruel, sweet voice of temptation slithered through her mind.

"No, I am perfectly happy here." Twilight reasoned back.

"Ha. You’re already bored out of your mind, and not a day has gone by. I do have to commend you, problem solving as a means to stay sane, quite clever."

"Thank you, its simple psychology,I…" Twilight would have scowled if she could. "I know what you are doing."

"It is a shame you waste your talents frozen in ice." With that final comment there was no further response from the voice in her mind, but Twilight knew that it was right. She wouldn’t stay frozen for long.

One day before:

Arrested Thesis gazed at the small town in the distance. His eyes were full of hate and ambition that was only slightly warmer than the ice clinging to the black cloak that covered his pale body. The only other notable feature, was the silver gleam of the hilt of a sword poking out from the side of his clothing.

He may have been betrayed by his crew simply because they had been hungry and cold. He had promised them that they would be forever remembered by history. As soon as things got tough though, they had mutinied, but it was time for him to make a kingdom of loyal ponies. No one would disobey his new power.

He couldn’t help but grin at the sight of his first conquest, so peaceful and so utterly naive to the reckoning he would soon deliver. Yes, they will be perfect for your new army master, one that will wipe the living scourge of this land. Arrested Thesis looked down at the sword by his side and smiled grimly as the echoing words faded from his mind. How loyal, he thought to himself.

Far off a great beast shifted and let out a small chuckle.

Arrested These looked back out over the surrounding countryside, “I will finally have my day. The power of the sword I wield now will grant me what should have been mine in the first place. I will rule all that-”

“Excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt your monologue, but I think that I should probably stop you before you get any further down that track.”

Arrested Thesis spun violently towards the speaker and drew his sword, making a hasty slashing motion in the hope of quickly putting an end to the life of the fool that dared to interrupt him. Whether or not he was talking to himself out loud, no one would disrespect their future king like that.

Much to his disappointment, the speaker was actually hovering about ten feet away from him. It was a lavender pegasus mare, with a navy blue mane and tail. At least he thought so until he saw her horn light up, and a bright light filled his vision.

He quickly jumped to the side and began running around the alicorn in an attempt to flank her and keep out of the path of her magic. Arrested Thesis quickly found out however, that the newly crowned princess, Twilight Sparkle, was far more gifted with magic than he had hoped and instead of a few lucky shots on her part, every spell was a near miss of him and they were getting closer each time.

Thinking quickly, he caught the next bolt on his blade and used the ancient magic inside to throw it back at his opponent, who had to spend her next spell deflecting her own attack.

Arrested Thesis used the distraction to charge at the alicorn princess and leap into the air, but as he brought his sword down, Twilight twisted her wings and threw herself out of the path of the sword. But she wasn’t fast enough. Twilight cried out in pain as the tip of the blade cut into her foreleg, and jerked back. She felt emptier somehow, like the sword had taken part of her.

Arrested Thesis landed on all fours and spun around to once again face his opponent, but he only caught a glance of her figure before it was gone in a flash of light. He quickly spun again, trying to catch sight of her again, but every time he had her in view, she would teleport again.

Getting tired of the alicorn’s rabbit hole strategy, Arrested Thesis slammed his blade into the ground, the runes along the blade flaring with power as they inhibited Twilight’s ability to teleport.

As Twilight came to a halt in front of the forsaken swordpony he made a full body lunge at her that she only narrowly avoided. Without teleportation, the princess was slow and vulnerable. Weak.

Or so he assumed. As Arrested Thesis swung at her again, a blade of magenta magical energy hissed into existence to deflect it. The second strike was more powerful and shattered Twilight’s defense without trouble.

The Princess jumped backwards as her assailant continued his advance. Deciding that she had no choice but to play the madpony’s game for the time being, Twilight once again focused on her conjurations, this time a perfect replica of a knights longsword appeared before her.

Power thundered as the blades meet. Sparks flying as Death’s steel met the force of a Goddess of Magic. Neither side seemed able to yield as they danced between parries and strikes, counter attacks and magic. Arrested Thesis for all his skill and experience, could not overcome the raw magical power of Twilight Sparkle. She in turn could not overpower his barrage of attacks.

The two circled each other warily now, each waiting for the other to let their guard down. Arrested Thesis made a jab at Twilight, only to have it counter attacked. He may have underestimated her.

“You have potential, Princess Twilight Sparkle, but no skill” shouted Arrested. “You’d make a worthy Lieutenant in my new Empire.”

“I don’t think you’ll have the pleasure,” she called out, and pointed to the ground at his hooves.

Arrested Thesis’ eyes went wide as rune beneath him activated.

She had played him like a violin; while he was wasting time fighting her, she had placed a sleeping glyph on the ground where they were fighting and had been biding her time while the glyph charged to full power, and unfortunately for him, it just had.

Arrested Thesis mouthed a silent curse as he lost consciousness and tumbled to the ground, his dreadful blade, still glowing with power, clattering to a stop next to him.

Twilight sighed in relief as her magic dissipated. As she looked around to survey the damage however, she realized something wasn’t right.

Arrested Thesis had been knocked out as Twilight had intended. But as he lay there, the ground beneath him quickly turned black as everything around died and rapidly decayed. The air became thick with the smell of rot and heavy with an aura of powerful death magic. A nearby tree went from a healthy brown with branches covered in green to grey and deathly as it shed its leaves. Finally, after extending for another thirty feet, the circle of death finally faded and the rest of the land was left untouched.

“What in the world? I’ve never seen magic behave like this,” Twilight mumbled as she pawed the decayed ground. It didn't look right, it didn't feel right to her. She carefully stood along the edge of the decay and closed her eyes. Twilight reached out and examined the area with her magic, looking for more detail. But as she laid out her own magical field, she was shocked by what she saw.

Her would be assailant’s energy was flowing freely into the wicked sword that he had carried, now resting beside him. It was as if the sword had been reaching out for energy in the area around it, taking from the plants and trees, before locking on to him. Her observation was in vain though because before she could even think of a way to act, she saw the last of his soul consumed by the sword leaving him dead and covered in sharp ice crystals.

“Is this… Is this soul magic? What the hay is this thing?” Twilight asked out loud, wishing she was back at the Royal Archives. Maybe the answers to her questions were there. Twilight didn’t know much about this type of magic herself, she had only come across it in references, mostly legal ones, and a few manuals that her brother had brought back on how to detect it and what it felt like to be attacked using soul magic. All she did know is that it was highly illegal, one of the worst magical crimes that a pony could commit.

The sword was horrific in appearance, certainly something from the frozen depths of Tartarus. It was made of polished steel, the grip bound in leather and adorned with metal rings. A strange skull sat on the blade above the hilt, its horns reaching up and wrapping itself along the guard. The blade itself was uniquely designed with a pair of almost scythe like projections protruding from the base of the skull, and then an asymmetrically designed blade with wicked serrations reaching up a third of one side before tapering off to point. Ancient, cryptic runes, in some language that Twilight couldn’t make out, ran down the middle of the blade.

“After I had stunned him, the sword must have… been triggered to drain the life energy from him, some sort of fail safe maybe?” Twilight frowned as she studied the blade from a distance. She was certainly afraid. She knew that great power and great darkness dwelt beneath its surface, but nothing about what to do with it.

Twilight carefully picked it up in her telekinetic grasp with the intent of disposing of it, but she immediately lost her equilibrium in a massive wave of cold and nausea and fell to the ground. A quick glance around confirmed that she hadn’t started the same mechanism that had killed the stallion, and the sword was still in her grasp.

But something had awoken.

Her magical grip had instantly frozen to the handle of the sword. Panicking, Twilight tried her hardest to shake the blade out of her grip, but no matter how much she pried, and shook the blade around, she couldn’t drop it.

What was just as bad was something from it was pushing its way through the magic link. No matter how much she fought back, no matter how many layers of defense she threw up, it pressed on. As it drew closer to the front of her conscious thought, she felt icy tendrils wrap around her from the inside.

"Do not fear me Princess of Magic. I am the key to your future, our future. Together, we will soon rule this land."

Twilight struggled to stay in control. Every chilling, sweet word of seduction felt like the breath of a winter’s storm across her mind and every moment she fought it, she felt her mind freeze over a little more.

“But I don’t want to rule Equestria…” Twilight sank to the ground as her defenses began to fail. “Well… I guess I kind of already do in part, but I don’t need you…” Twilight’s eyes slowly drifted closed as her final thought of resistance faded.

"Then you will serve me, won’t you dear?"

Twilight’s eyes snapped back open and were radiating a bright purple glow. In a reflexive reaction, the magic around her gathered up and exploded into a huge beam of brilliant violet light into the sky. Her magic now bolstered by the magic of the planet itself began to break the sword down into simply the information that was once matter, swallowing it up and absorbing it into the vast ethereal body of magic that Twilight governed.

Darkness was the last thing she remembered, That and a laugh, but she couldn’t tell if it was the voice, or her.

Twilight groaned as feeling began to return to her, and wished it hadn’t. She felt like she was literally on death’s door, but something kept her back. Every joint ached, every muscle burned, but the worst was the chill coming from deep within her. It was as if she had swallowed a giant ice cube, and then fell asleep outside in a snowstorm. The chill permeated every space of her being, it felt like ice water was dumped into her head.

Slowly, she opened her eyes and struggled to get into a sitting position, clutching her head at the same time, begging under her breath for the throbbing to stop.

Then she remembered where she was.

Twilight’s eyes flared opened and she leaped to her hooves as the adrenaline surged through her body. A bright flare from her horn, and a shield was in place. But nothing was there.

Twilight carefully deactivated the shield and looked around, memories of what just happened came flooding back into her mind. The pony she had… fought against, still laid in his own heap of ice, the tree was dead, and the sword…

Twilight spun around, even taking to the air to look for the sword that the pony had, but she couldn’t find it anywhere. Still in the air, she closed her eyes and tried to focus her magic, but found it to be fuzzy. Frowning, she returned to ground and tried looking again.

As Twilight slowly regained control over her magic, she thought it was over, that she had destroyed the cursed sword once and for all. As she continued to observe herself however, she realized that she was actually much colder than she should have been. She had thought that it had just been a reaction to the recent events at first because she wasn’t uncomfortable at all, but her internal temperature was deathly low.

Twilight didn’t like the implications of this, she was responsible for the innate magic that flowed through the land of Equestria as well as the arcane magic that was used to make everyday life for the ponies of Equestria easier. Her magic had become almost sort of symbiotic with the latent magic of Equestria. So, how would her magic effect Equestria if it was changed permanently?

Obviously, she didn’t need to worry about legal repercussions for the stallion’s death. After all, who would question a princess when she said she had been assaulted? That didn’t help her conscience though. There was also the problem of what actually had happened to the sword, Twilight could feel its aura of hate, but it was part of her own magic now.

“Hey, you alright?”

Twilight leapt up and spun around in surprise and found a very familiar pegasus hovering behind her.

“Rainbow Dash! How many times have I told you not to sneak up on me?”

“I dunno, but probably around thirty four times now.”

“What the hay happened here Twi?” asked Rainbow Dash as she landed. “First there was the light show display, and then there is all this dead… stuff.

Twilight had a moment of panic as Rainbow Dash peeked around her in the hope of discovering what was going on, realizing that she had more pressing matters than her friend’s constant teasing and trickery.

“Um...yeah, he’s dead.” she said reluctantly.

Rainbow Dash instinctively backed up a bit, “You didn’t, you know...murder him?”

“Yes, Dash. I, the Princess of Magic, Bearer of an Element of Harmony and Celestia’s personal protege, randomly murdered somepony,” Twilight deadpanned as she levitated a rock over to herself and touched it because a unicorn or alicorn could not directly feel their own magic. She immediately frowned when she made contact, finding it freezing instead of being warmed by her magic.

Rainbow Dash, realizing the stupidity of her assumption, looked away shamefully. “Sorry Twi, I wasn’t thinking when I asked that.”

Twilight simply nodded and placed the rock back down. “I know, sorry. I’m a little… distracted here.”

Rainbow looked over again as morbid curiosity and a need for reassurance of personal safety took over. “So… what did happen here?”

“I… I’m not sure how to say,” struggled Twilight as she tried to find the words.

"You could just kill her and save yourself the trouble," spoke the voice in her head. Except it was different this time, cold, disinterested and not exactly as evil. "Also, is that mane natural or does she dye it? In my village, she would have been quite the looker. I suppose it is good she is not in my village though, she would also be dead."

“Um, Twi? Are you okay?” Rainbow Dash asked. “You look like you saw a ghost.”

Twilight slowly shook her head. “Not exactly…”

“Oh, well that’s-”

“But I am pretty sure I just heard one.”

Rainbow Dash studied her friend for a moment, hoping that Twilight was just joking with her. She doubted very much that that was the case though; Twilight was not one to start joking about a serious matter and certainly not if there was somepony dead.

“Can I help you somehow?” The pegasus asked wearily, not wanting to upset Twilight further.

“I need you to get the Princesses,” replied Twilight. “I need to talk with them, ask them to come to the library as soon as you can. Then, please tell the local sergeant that this body needs to be collected for further examination.”

“Right,” said Rainbow Dash with a nod. She started to fly off but circled back around to Twilight, who had started to slowly walk back towards town.

“Um, Twilight, couldn’t you use your magic to contact them a lot faster?”

Twilight looked up at her flying friend, her face was serious and emotionless, but Rainbow Dash could read the fear in her eyes.

“It’s too dangerous to use my magic right now. Hurry please.”

And with that, she turned and continued her slow walk back to her house, leaving Rainbow Dash confused and more than a little disturbed.

When the two princess teleported into the library, Twilight had almost vaporized them, or attempted to. She was already jumpy and it seemed that after absorbing the sword, her reactions had become far more violent. She had been able to catch herself though and snuff out her magic before the princesses had completely re-coalesced.

“Twilight, your house smells thickly of magic,” Luna said as she looked around the dark room, sensing the energy of a failed or aborted spell. “And appears to be a war zone. Tell me, dear sister, is this typical of a small town library?”

“Oh,” Twilight quickly looked around for a cover. “I was just...re-shelving books,” Twilight smiled in hopes of subverting suspicion.

Luna countered with a confused look of her own.

“Because it helps calm my nerves?”

Luna continued to just stare at her.

“After I knocked them over...to calm my nerves?”

Celestia, wanting to halt any budding conflict, found her opportunity to cut in, “And what is it that is grating on your nerves, my faithful student?”

“Well…” Twilight hesitated, trying to think of a good way to summarize the recent event of that day. “I, uh, swallowed a crazy sword.”

Both monarchs gave Twilight a worried and confused look.

“I… didn’t know thou wast into the circus arts,” said Luna apprehensively. “Perhaps you should seek medical attention instead of us or book arrangement?”.

Twilight shook her head vigorously, “Not physically swallowed.”

“Then how?” Celestia asked, raising an eyebrow of her own.

Twilight let out a sigh and began explaining the previous events of the day as they made their way upstairs.

“And then I ask Spike to leave and I have been sitting here waiting for you since then.” Twilight finished.

“Sorting books.” Celestia interjected.

Twilight gave her a confused look but quickly got her meaning, “Yeah...sorting books.”

“And knocking over bookcases.”

“Yeah,” said Twilight as she watched the Sister’s exchange glances.

“We know of the sword you speak of,” said Luna with care. “We are responsible for its creation.”

“I don’t understand,” said Twilight, looking eyes with Princess Luna, “Why?”

“Twilight, many years ago, during the Lunar Rebellions, my sister formed an army,” said Celestia as she gently placed a wing around Luna. “Her army was formed from the outcasts of society, the poor, those that didn’t quite fit in. “

“But one of our soldiers distinguished himself with loyalty and brutality,” continued Luna. “We rewarded him by forging a sword that could match his cunning, his resolve, and his wrath.”

The room remained silent for almost a minute before the Princess of the Night spoke again.

“The magic that I felt upon entering t’was not a levitation spell, was it Twilight?”

Twilight was taken aback by the question. “What do you mean? You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”

“Correct, we would not. However, the sword that is now a part of you is poisoning your thoughts.” The expression on Twilights face, one of painful regret, confirmed Luna’s suspicions. “Your first instinct, upon the apparent invasion of your home would normally push you to run or hide. You instead prepared to attack the invaders.”

The Princess of Magic looked down at her hooves. “I’m sorry.” Twilight whispered, only barely audible.

Luna shook her head, “Please, do not be. You recognized what you were doing and stopped yourself. It is my place to be sorry for I hath placed you in this terrible situation, but thou hath been able to control thyself remarkable well.”

Twilight spoke up again, “What your saying is that besides the voice in my head, I will naturally be more aggressive and violent.”

“We would expect so, but-”

“And that, if I wasn’t careful, I might hurt somepony?”

“Yes, but you must-”

Twilight stood up and began charging energy through her horn, “Thank you Celestia for all your teaching, and Luna, for your friendship and counseling. Please tell my friends and family that I love them very much.”

With a flash, Twilight Sparkle was gone, leaving the two rulers staring at empty space.

Luna looked to Celestia with deep concern in her eyes, “We must find her. Might she not hurt herself?”

Celestia let out a sigh, “No. Not badly at least, she doesn’t know how. I taught her that there are ways that alicorns can die, but she does not know any of them. She will just lock herself up where she thinks no one will look.”

Luna nodded, much more relieved but still sad. “So, we should start looking for her then!”

“Not yet. Give her some time to cool off, then I will go get her.”

Luna gave her sister a puzzled look.

“My faithful student is not that imaginative when it comes to hiding places.”

Twilight reappeared inside of a dark room. She quickly walked over into one of the corners, and in a swift motion with her horn brought a great slab of ice up and completely encased herself within.

Now the only pony that will have to get hurt is me. Twilight thought to herself as she beckoned for the eternal hibernation that she hoped would consume her.