Nature's Turmoil

Several questions ran marathons in Tenmei's mind. Why had Rekka attacked the alicorn maress? Why was he driven by bloodlust? He couldn't find the answers, regardless of whatever theories he came up with. The stallion felt himself slipping off of a rounded surface and began to panic. What if this fall was about to end his life? What if this fall was about to cripple him and render him useless?

He felt a pair of hooves grasp at his midsection and right him onto the surface, letting his hooves touch solid ground again. He breathed a sigh of relief. Outside, the thunder boomed as if the world was beginning to end.

The stallion felt a cold, smooth surface wrap around him like a foreleg. It made him shudder a bit, but he got over it relatively quick. It was then he was able to discern one surface from another, as if whatever had been embracing him had overlapping layers.

"Misaki, is that your wing?" He asks, his voice still on the weak side.

The blond-maned alicorn smiled when she was acknowledged. "Yes," She replied swiftly. "I'm using it to keep you upright. You need to learn to walk again, and that I shall provide."

The lone unicorn amongst the group looked around the bleak, dark cavern to ensure that everypony was staying together.

The thunder outside crashed and howled with twice the force now, and all were tense for a brief moment.

"It would seem that--" The unicorn started, only to be cut off by Misaki, "Don't you dare utter her name! You could very well be calling forth our demise!"

The unicorn closed her mouth and nodded.

Misaki turned away, scrunching her eyes closed, "Forgive me for my outburst, Raki. But the things I've seen..."

"I understand. It was terrible." Raki agreed. She looked at the alicorn with a sort of sadness lingering in her eyes.

"We have to move, preferably now." Chrysalis cut in, eyes narrowed and wings buzzing anxiously. "She is drawing nearer by the minute."

"I do hope we need not partake in another needless fight." Celestia stated as she began to walk away from the group, who caught on and began to follow.

"Luna?" Misaki asked, looking at the night-blue alicorn as the group trudged along.

"Hmm?" Luna asked, looking at the mechanized pony.

"Do we have a particular plan in mind, aside from stowing ourselves away before they find us?" Misaki asked, her mechanical foreleg retracting a strange set of claws on the hoof's margin.

Luna was silent for a few moments before answering, "No."

The group stopped in their tracks upon seeing a great, big hole where a wall should've been. It let in just enough light to reveal that a sharp right was literally just around the corner.

The sight outside the hole, however, caused all hearts to sink. Tenmei couldn't see, but his ears alone were more than enough to tell him what was going on around him.

Raki walked up to the hole, breathing heavily as she tried to hold in her sobs. The only word she could muster the strength to utter was "why?"

"How?" Celestia questioned as she stood there in her place, stiff as a rock.

The clouds above were black as night--perhaps darker than obsidian, even--as vivid purple lightning flashed and struck across the sky. Many of the things that had been lightning-struck were lit ablaze in a fearsome flame. What the group could see of the ocean was raging as if heralding the flooding of the world. Vicious gusts of wind tore away still more of the world, and some gales had moved as though a sword had been slicing through them. Blizzards of insane magnitude assaulted areas which had yet to be touched by fire. Thunder roared and shook the earth as if the very skies were dominated by some insane god.

"The world....it's....crumbling." Tenmei remarked, shaking his head sadly.

"No, it is not just crumbling. It's being torn asunder." Luna replied, looking to the path down on the right.

Raki begun moving down the path, her hoofsteps echoing into the darkness which seemed rather eager to welcome her again. "We're wasting time." She said dryly.

Celestia nodded. She walked over to join the unicorn, her horn glowing with a bright white light. Everypony else followed suit again.

But, none of them knew that, in the dark clouds above, there was indeed something who was eying that particular hole. Watching from the purple lightning and obsidian sky was an alicorn mare with a lavender body and dark purple mane. Her curved horn and darkened wings were stained in crimson, and her mane and tail were disheveled with tangles and filth. Her dark purple eyes glinted with malice as she began flapping her wings, causing more electrical sparks to dance around her frame.

The mare let off a scream imbued with anger, hate, and lust; her mind clouded with only one goal in mind.

To kill whatever living thing she could find, to kill whatever she lay her hooves on. To lay waste upon that which was not the clouds, to lay waste to any who dared oppose her.

She let off another shriek, this one more beast-like than the last. Her mind was still clouded with fury, with hatred, with malice. Her horn began glowing with still more sparks as she spotted a flying shape down below. Soon, that shape was struck by merciless magic channeled in the form of lightning. It caught fire and fell to the pitiful earth below, no life remaining in whatever body it had. Another flying shape had soon suffered the same fate, falling out of the sky in a decrepit fashion.

The mare turned her attention back to the hole in the earth that she had been watching and smiled wickedly, her muzzle gleaming in a crimson sheen.

She was waiting for them to utter one thing and one thing alone.

Her name.