Shadows of Drakmord

Twilight and her friends rushed back out into the streets, looking all around for Slash and the crystal heart. They saw fires, ruined buildings, and wanton destruction everywhere they looked, but could see no sign of the Changeling. Until…

“Hey, what are we all looking at?”

They turned around, and there was Slash, standing in their midst with a giant grin on his face.

“Hi”

“Get him” Rainbow and Applejack yelled as they dove for him. Their heads bonked together as Slash ducked out of the way and kept running.

He didn’t get far however, as a glowing wall materialized in his path. Slash skidded to a halt and made a hard right into an alley; Twilight and the others in pursuit. Seeing her chance, Twilight teleported to the other end of the alley as Rainbow, Cadance, and Fluttershy took to the air, the rest moving in on foot.

“We’ve got you sorrounded!” She yelled.

“No you don’t, you’re just in the way.” Slash replied as he picked up Twilight in his magic grasp and kept running.

“Hey, no fair!” Twilight objected “You said you wouldn’t use magic!”

“Yeah, to hurt you. This doesn’t hurt does it?” Slash responded with a laugh as he threw her into a news stand further down the street. “Oh, and hurt pride doesn’t count.”

“Hey you!” Pinkie yelled, appearing out of the same news stand Twilight was thrown into. “Nopony does that to Pinkies’ friends! Saaaay CHEESE!” She proceeded to pelt him with blocks of assorted cheeses while yelling various cheese-based puns.

Slash managed to get away after being pummeled with an entire wheel of Gouda, and Pinkies “Gouda know ya’” pun by dodging into a warehouse. Twilight and the rest followed inside.

Inside the warehouse, it was nearly impossible to see anything, and smelled strongly of scented candles. Twilight ignited her horn in a dim glow; Rarity, Shining, and Cadance did so as well. Finally able to observe their surroundings, they noticed the lack of windows and the mountains of crates piled high before them.

“This must be one of those new storage buildings;” Twilight mused “built after the empire reappeared in order to hold the new imports being shipped into the city.”

“That’s great Twi, but maybe we should focus on finding this jerk so that we can get the Princesses back.” Rainbow dash reminded her as she flew up to the ceiling for a better view.

“Oh, right.” Twilight replied sheepishly before beginning her search with the others.They split into four groups, one unicorn in each providing light.

“Anypony see anything yet?” Spike called out.

“I can see a lot of boxes, and even some crates!” Pinkie replied from atop some boxes. Spike rolled his eyes.

“Nothing over here, but keep your guard up; he could be anywhere.” Shining warned them as he looked past another pile of crates.

“It’s so dark in here.” Fluttershy noted in a timid voice.

“Ah know,” Applejack agreed “I can hardly see my hoof in front of my face.”

“That’s why…” Slash’s voice whispered from seemingly everywhere in the darkness. Before every single crate burst open, their contents instantly alight; flooding the area with an overwhelming bright light.

“I FREAKING LOVE CANDLES!” Slash shouted from atop the tallest stack of crates as though he were the king of burning scented wax. With his love of candles declared, he kicked the tower over and made his escape from the now burning building and magically blocked the door behind him; several crates exploding in his wake. Twilight and the rest rushed over to the door only to discover this fact as they tried to open it.

“Everypony out of the way.” Applejack told them as she spun around and bucked at the doors. They came out of the ordeal indented with a pair of hoof-shaped, but didn’t budge in the slightest. “Aw nuts! These things are bolted down tight.”

“Well we need to get out of here;” Rainbow yelled as she body-slammed the doors. “this place is burning up fast.”

“Everyone chill out,” Spike said as he stepped forward with a confident grin “I got this.”

He faced the door as the others gave him some room. He took a long, deep inhale. The smoke began to clear, the fires dimmed until they were extinguished, and the room was once more plunged into darkness. Then a bright white flame erupted from Spikes’ jaws as he exhaled. Several seconds of an intense cone of flame melted through the solid steel door like a giant blowtorch, and soon they had their way out.

“Wow Spike, that was incredible.” Twilight complemented him as they made their way outside. The others shared their praise as well.

“I knew you had a certain affinity for fire, but I never imagined you could manage anything on that large of a scale.” Rarity told him, wide-eyed.

“Yeah, the fire was all “Shoom”. And then you made it go all “Fwoosh”! And that door just went “blub blub blub”.” Rainbow reenacted through sound effects.

“Yeah, I’ve been working on that one for a while now.” Spike said, slightly coughing up excess smoke “Trying to make myself more useful for when the bad guys show up.” He explained “You know, like they do every other week.” He mumbled to himself.

=====

For nearly an hour, the chase led them all across the crystal empire; ducking into and out of ruined buildings and homes, through the market street, and past more than a few of fire-fights between the remaining Crimson and Dominion forces. Each time Slash was within their reach, he would pull some nasty trick and get away, usually leaving behind a not-so-clever insult. Once he even tried to use Fluttershy as a meat-shield before she turned The Stare on him. He narrowly escaped by clothes-pinning his eyes shut and flinging her into a tree.

Finally, after their chase had led them back to the base of the crystal tower, they found Slash sitting on the pedestal where the heart would normally be; a bored expression across his entire body.

“Well… I have to say I’m disappointed.” he said in a monotone as Twilight and the rest reached him, most of them on the verge of exhaustion. “I expected more of a fight out of Equetrias’ greatest defenders.”

“I don’t care… what you wanted. Just give us the Princesses back.” Twilight yelled at him as best she could, considering how out of breath she was.

“Hmm…” he tapped his chin “yeah, okay.”

To everyone’s surprise, Slash stepped off the pedestal and calmly walked towards them. Twilight tensed up as he got closer to her, her friends were ready to spring on him the second he tried to hurt her. But instead he simply held out the crystal heart in his hole-ridden hoof for her to take. There was a nervous pause and an awkward silence.

“What are you waiting for, just take it.” Slash said in a slightly mocking tone.

Twilight kept her gaze on Slash as she hesitantly raised her own hoof, and quickly snatched the heart away. She let out the breath she had been holding and took several steps backwards; the heart now safely in her grasp.

“Oh and one little thing,” Slash smirked at them “I lied about that whole ‘their souls are trapped inside, you can free them’ speech. You can’t actually bring them back, they’re gone.”

“WHAT?!” everypony else yelled in unison.

In her anger, Twilight lit her horn charged at Slash. “You dirty little-” In hindsight, this was not the wisest decision. Slash stood his ground as his bandages whipped around Twilight, lifting her off the ground and squeezing tightly around her neck. Shining was the first to respond, hitting Slash with a blast from his horn. Slash staggered, but remained standing; he threw up a wall of flame before anyone else could try to slug him, much like Wither had done in the stadium. Spike attempted to eat the flames as he had done before in the warehouse, but the fire was not the same; it had an evil quality to it, and in seconds he was coughing and chocking on the black flames.

Inside the cone, Twilight struggled against the bandages choking her, managing to pull them off and drop down to the floor.

“You said that we could bring the Princesses back if we got the heart from you!” Twilight yelled in outrage before casting an arc-lightning as powerful as she could muster. “You LIAR!” The massive bolt would have struck Slash directly in the chest if he hadn’t deflected it with a spell of his own. Though neither spell connected with its’ target, both Slash and Twilight felt the backlash from their magics colliding.

“And believing me was your mistake. Thinking you were ever a challenge was mine.” Slash said as he turned away indifferently, shrugging off the knockback from the spell. “You’re weak compared to me Twilight Sparkle, you and all your friends. Get stronger, we’ll meet again when you’re ready to give me a true challange. Until then, remember today.”

Slash’s body slowly turned to ashes, scattering away on the wind as the wall of flames dispersed.

The wind howled and roared above the darkened skies of the empire. Lightning struck frequently among the storm clouds. A tornado of sleet and snow engulfed the crystal tower, and for the second time in the last year, a battle between good and evil raged at the top.

Wither had left himself completely unprotected while he prepared his spell, and for the past hour and a half, Galendra had been hacking and blasting at Wither with everything she had. But Wither proved that unprotected wasn’t nearly the same as defenseless as he blocked or avoided nearly all of Galendras’ strikes.

“Hold still you freak!” Galendra shouted over the wind “I’m going to kill you for what you’ve done here.”

“How about you back off? I’m doing what should have been done long ago; I’m doing what’s right!” Wither yelled back as he threw a flying kick at Galendra.

“Butchering innocent people, draining them to death? Is that what you think is right?” Galendra asked as she dodged and parried before striking back.

“Innocent people, no. But them? Yes… yes every time.” Wither said, his voice dripping with malice “How could you call them innocent?” he swiped “Knowing what you know- what we ALL know.” he deflected Galendras’ blades once more “And why would you Crimson shut-ins intervene now? After millennia of no involvement what so ever, why would you defend them?!” his claws clashed against her blades.

“Because we’ve watched them like you have, but we’ve seen how things have changed. Thousands of years have passed since the sundering, since the hunts!” Galendra continued to hack and stab at Wither “They may have been the worst monsters we had ever known once, but I’ve seen for a fact that it’s not true anymore. I won’t let you take them!” Galendra knocked Wither back and ran him through with her swords.

Now impaled on her blades, Wither hovered there, nearly motionless.

“But Galendra, don’t you see?” Wither hung there limply as he looked up to meet Galendras’ eyes “That’s exactly what they are, and I was stupid to think they could be anything else. They…will all… Die.”

Galendra tore through Wither when he said that; her blades hacking and cleaving at his form, black ichor gushing from his body with every swing, again and again until she finally went for the neck, pouring the last of her momentum into one final strike; decapitated Wither in a single, clean cut.

She breathed heavily, her neck and shoulders slumped. “You’re wrong Wither; I’ve seen how things have changed, how they have changed, and how good they can be if they’re given the chance. You can’t be right about them. They’re not the merciless imperials that hunted us down so long ago. I have to believe that they’re better than what we all remember.”

“I knew someone who thought the same thing once.” Wither materialized behind her, speaking in a dead serious tone “She gave them a chance to prove her right, and they tore the world apart!” his tone became much more angry “I’m so sick of you idiots wanting to beg those monsters for forgiveness, when they should be apologizing to US for what THEY did!”

“Maybe we didn’t deserve what happened to us.” Galendra reasoned “But what we tried to do was a horrible mistake!”

“IT WAS NOT A MISTAKE!” He yelled, the wind picking up as his anger flared. “If it was, then where was their kindness when we needed their help most? Where were they when we were starving to death? I’ll tell you where, they were hunting us down and

KILLING US! They knew what we did would make us gods among them if we ever got it right, and they feared us enough to attempt genocide!” Wither screamed as the blizzard grew more intense.

“And now, you’re saving them from us so that if they don’t decide to kill you all when this is over, then maybe they’ll like you enough to accept you all again, and welcome you back to their side like old times- You unbelievable moron!”

“When they decide to betray you, I hope you remember that I was right.” Wither told her, having finally calmed down to his normal cold, calculating demeanor.

“Oh and by the way… my spell is finally done charging.”

Wither then shot a wave of black sludge at Galendra. Before she could move, her legs and wings were covered in the slime, forbidding her from staying airborne and sending her plummeting to the ground hundreds of feet below.