Chapters Two regal alicorn mares--one night blue and the other snow white with a mane the colors of the waking dawn--fought a seemingly-endless battle with a stallion whose power could've easily rivaled their own. Rage and bloodlust had overtaken him, crimson eyes even redder as he howled for blood. Wings reminiscent of fire scattered still-blazing ash as he fought tooth and nail to overcome the obstacle before him. His scarlet horn, stained in the blood and feathers of past victims, glowed with white-hot magic as fire danced around his hooves.
His unkempt and probably-bloodstained-mane and tail billowed out wildly behind him as he kept up his rather animalistic onslaught.
The regal alicorn mares were starting to lose their footing in the battle as their magic barrier was strained and began to break. The orange-and-red alicorn saw this crack and howled in triumph as he began to widen that crack.
He had an intention in his eyes, and both mares saw it.
He wanted to ravage, and then kill.
The barrier broke as he let loose another magic bolt of fire. It hit the white alicorn in the chest and she screamed as her body was thrown halfway across the makeshift arena. She skid on her side, breaking a wing in the process.
"Celestia!" Shouted the other alicorn, only to find herself next to her fellow pony. Both hurt alicorns, muscles aching in pain, looked up to see the stallion walk to them with a slow pace as a wicked grin of victory was plastered on his muzzle. A maniacal laugh escaped his throat, revealing teeth stained in crimson.
Suddenly, another alicorn stallion appeared in front of the injured mares. His body was tan and his hooves were brown. He had a rather short tail, and his earth-colored wings were spread wide. In a light brown aura of magic he gripped a golden crossbow. He had a nicely trimmed mane and he wore glasses over his brown eyes.
The other stallion stopped and glared at the intruder. "You dare keep me from what is rightfully mine, Tenmei?" He asked, his voice reeking of evil and sin.
"I never thought it'd come down to this, Rekka. What has gotten into you?" Tenmei retorted, gritting his teeth as he aimed the crossbow at his adversary.
"What has gotten into me? Quit asking pointless questions, you flea." Rekka replied, producing a large gun-like object with his magic. He took aim at Tenmei, who dared take an entire trot forward.
Rekka found himself taking a step back as three more ponies appeared, all of whom were mares. The first was black with a gnarled horn and wings filled with holes. Harlequin green eyes with dual irises looked at the red alicorn with wonder as green, holey mane seemed to cling to her form.
The second was a blue-gray alicorn with a horn, right foreleg, and wings made entirely of metal. Green and red wires dotted her body, and her tail was made of the aforementioned wires. Her wild blond mane hung low. She was confused as evidenced by her raising a brow.
The third was a simple white unicorn with a wavy blue mane. She had some sort of bone to pick, but nopony knew with who. Her facial expression was locked into a snarl.
Rekka gave a sinister grin as he, for some reason, made his gun disappear. The standing mares and stallion glanced around hastily, expecting some sort of surprise.
At once, a searing pain hit Tenmei right in the eyes as his vision became red and then black. He found himself screaming in agony, clutching at his face frantically with his hooves and simultaneously rendering himself unable to see the culprit.
The blue-gray alicorn quickly flashed a blinding light with her horn. When it disappeared, everypony that the red stallion had been looking at were no longer present in the room.
Rekka looked around for any signs of the group. "Dammit! I should've killed them right then and there!" He hissed, stomping his hoof in fury as the wreckage around him began crumbling in flames. He unfurled his wings and began taking to the blackened skies above, his horn crackling with a fire like none other.
A blinding light flashed in a cavern before six ponies appeared in its dark depths. The gnarly black alicorn was busy wrapping Tenmei's head with a bandage made from cloth and held together with a sickly green goo.
"It's antibiotic, so don't worry. It'll only sting a little bit after this." She said, clutching the stallion in her holey forelegs as she kept wrapping at a frantic pace. Blood was dripping from a huge scar that cut clean over his eyes and a good fraction of his face, and it simply wouldn't stop.
"C-Chrysalis, is there glass on my face?" Tenmei asked, his voice weak from the pain he sustained.
It was then that Celestia saw exactly what he had meant--the stallion lost his glasses. "Did you--" She stammered.
"I've already checked. His glasses and sight are good as dead." Chrysalis replied, shaking her head solemnly as she finished wrapping the still-fresh wounds.
"I-I'm permanently blind?" Tenmei asked, his voice cracking in shock.
"This is worse than I thought..." Commented the night-blue alicorn mare, tears beginning to fall from her eyes.
Outside the cavern, thunder clashed loudly and its booming sounds echoed throughout the naturally occurring stonework. The foundations were shaken so thoroughly that bits of debris began falling down in a miniature cascade of dust. Raging gusts of wind howled viciously, its angry voice carrying faint pleas for mercy to the ears of the group of ponies through the small holes created by the earlier shaking of the cavern. Heavy raindrops pitter-pattered onto the floor, once more through the ceiling. The rain didn't do much good.
The grey-blue alicorn motioned for the others to follow her using her mechanical foreleg. Chrysalis lifted Tenmei onto her backside before getting up herself, and the rest of the group followed the cybernetic alicorn through the dark depths of the cavern.
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.
The group of ponies kept walking down a trodden cavern path rather begrudgingly, sometimes stopping occasionally, the sole insectoid of the lot ensuring that her wings were kept shut at all times. She looked at her fellow travelers and, out of all of them, Raki was the most distraught. Her mane was messy, there were bags under her eyes, and she was thinner than the others; but she wasn't so thin she'd die in the next hour.
Her dual-colored eyes looked at Tenmei next. The 'gauze' on his face had contained his wound pretty well, and the stallion was looking every which way as if trying to use that which no longer existed for him. Some strands of mane were out of place, and he was walking a bit awkwardly, but he was otherwise fine. Next, Celestia and Luna were being glanced at, and all they did was sit down on the damp stone floor, the white mare's horn still glowing with a bright light.
Misaki was also sitting down, the wires that made her tails moving on their own as if they were headless snakes. They then connected with the rest of the forlorn wires dotting her body.
"Why haven't you used your talon?" Chrysalis asked, eyes set straight on the partially-metallic mare.
"I fear it may attract one of them ." Misaki answered bluntly, her mane clinging to her form.
"You could use it to cut up food." Chrysalis sighed, ears twitching.
"If we found any!" Misaki cut back sharply in a menacing hiss. She then turned away, ears flat on her head and head hanging low. "I'm sorry....but for the past few days, I've been on edge since...it started."
All present froze as eerie laughter that sounded like it came from a deranged mare permeated the caverns. It echoed softly before fading from the world. Then, the sound of hooves beating on the stone came after that.
"Who's there?!" Tenmei cried at last, swiveling his head from side to side as his ears caught the echoes that bounced off the wall.
Silence was what greeted him. It was as if the world had denied him yet another answer to his ever-piling questions.
Misaki rose, and so did Celestia and Luna. "We must move now!" The metallic alicorn wailed as she began to gallop past everypony else. A bright purple flash of lightning landed right in front of what would've been the group's escape route.
"Going somewhere?" Cooed a mare's voice, sounding as if the owner had became insane long ago.
Chrysalis tried going the opposite direction, only to nearly become a lightning rod herself. Again, hooves beating against stone echoed in the dismal darkness, just outside the margins of Celestia's light.
"It doesn't matter where you go; I detected your movements through electrical impulses running amok in your bodies." Cooed the mare's voice once more. "You cannot escape me. Or the others, for that matter."
"I know that voice..." Tenmei murmured, swiveling his head again. "Yuuki, is that you?!"
Silence was present for another couple of fleeting seconds. Then, the unseen pursuer laughed nonchalantly.
"Who else would it be, sweet little Tenmei?" The voice answered as into the light walked a disheveled purple mare, hooves caked in crimson. Faint electrical sparks danced around her body as her dark wings splayed wide in a menacing manner.
"The Attribute of Lightning has been tainted...." Luna murmured, ears flat on her head as she stared at the purple mare.
"Tainted? 'Tis a lie, I'm afraid." Yuuki cut back in a joking manner, smiling just wide enough to reveal red teeth. She shook her head, some parts of her mane that had been defying gravity bobbing up and down as she did.
Celestia stepped towards her. "Then what explains your newfound taste for blood?" She retorted, her magenta eyes staring into the dark purple voids that made Yuuki's own.
Yuuki's face immediately contorted into a scowl. She stared the pure white alicorn menacingly. "I'm not a vampire." She answered quickly. She then looked away rather mockingly, and chuckled to herself as her horn took on a light purple glow. A spot in the air was surrounded by this aura before a strange, ball-like object appeared in it. It had a light grey outside, and deep purple inside.
"What are you planning?!" Raki shrieked at last, catching the purple alicorn's attention.
Yuuki flashed her a stained smile as the ball-like thing levitated next to her head. "Oh, I dunno, perhaps seeing how long you wretched fleas survive my grand and glorious electricity?" Her eyes then moved to the sole stallion in the group. "Ah, and find myself a new male to be my plaything. Once I find Nagare, I'll beat him to a pulp!"
"They've turned on each other as well?" Celestia cursed under her breath, her glare breaking to reveal a hue of surprise.
Yuuki's wings flared out wider. She didn't move an inch otherwise. "Who's first? I thought it would be generous of me to let at least one of you have the first strike." She cooed in a taunting manner.
Everypony was silent. None dared say a single word, for bewilderment had gripped them firmly in its invisible claw.
"Suit yourselves." Yuuki chimed, flashing another grin as she used her magic to thrust the ball towards the group, striking Tenmei square in the muzzle and causing him to land on his back. The ball then returned to the alicorn, who sent it towards Misaki. The cybernetic alicorn dodged it by mere inches as she spread her wings and took flight.
Chrysalis spread her wings and charged at the purple mare, her horn glowing with shimmering green flames. Yuuki did not see this coming, and quickly retaliated by charging up her own horn with deadly electrical currents. Both combatants shrieked as their magical energies flew from their horns and collided, intermingling into a deadly explosion which knocked all back a few feet. Tenmei was sent back further than everypony else, and narrowly avoided hitting a rock wall by utilizing his wings.
Yuuki remained unfazed by the explosion, though there were now scratch marks dotting her legs. She took notice of the flying stallion and began beating her own wings to propel for another flight. Tenmei's own horn lit up, and his crossbow now hovered next to him.
"Fool! Do you honestly think you can hit me with that thing while you cannot see?!" Yuuki shrieked as if in protest, her own weapon floating next to her.
Tenmei didn't answer. He couldn't answer. Instead, he hovered in place as if it had been years since he last used his wings.
Yuuki was getting angry. "So be it!" She yelled, flying towards the stallion with front hooves outstretched before her. Tenmei found another searing pain right in his chest, and was now being pinned against the rocky wall. The purple alicorn held the other ponies of the group in magical bubbles so as to keep them occupied.
"Leave him alone!" Raki shouted, pounding the walls of her new prison with her hooves before getting an electrical current rushing through her body. She convulsed and shrieked for a moment before it stopped entirely, leaving her in a pain-induced daze.
And then that was when the stallion smirked, his crossbow levitating behind the purple mare. His magic pulled the trigger slowly, and Yuuki only turned around fast enough to let the bolt hit her square in the heart. She let go and shrieked in pain, her cry sounding like a thousand souls pleading for mercy. Tenmei's magic then grabbed the bolt and shoved it deeper into her body, causing fresh blood and a hue of black to permeate her coat as she fell to the ground. Her magic dissipated, causing the others in their prisons to be set free. The stallion also fell to the ground, but remained relatively unharmed.
Then, as a bright violet light encased the purple alicorn, something most horrendous happened. Something that caused even hell to quake in fear.
She began to change .
Author's Note
It begins...