“How about a trade, princess Twilight?”
The gravelly voice of Tirek poured over and through Twilight Sparkle as she stared him down. A trade? she thought, as she felt the anger grow in her soul. Surely he's joking?
Scarcely had she thought this when Tirek snapped his fingers, and several magic bubble fields popped into existence into the air around the centaur's head. In them were her greatest friends in the world, and Discord. Every one of them were frightened, worried, and utterly drained of their innate magic.
“Their release,” Tirek continued, with only a second's pause, “for all the alacorn magic in Equestria!”
Twilight gasped as her mind processed the offer, and by extension the implied consequences of refusing it. He wouldn't, she thought, even as her friends raised their voices in protest, begging her to deny Tirek's deal. Even as heartless as he is, he couldn't possibly...
He would, a second voice in her head spoke up. The finality behind the sudden insight hit her like a hammer blow, and Twilight froze. He's rampaged across Equestria, stolen all of the magic we need to grow our food, to build, defend, and run our very civilization, and betrayed his one ally out of pure spite. He would, *he will*.
“What's it going to be, princess?” Tirek pressed, his smug tone announcing to all of his confidence in what Twilight would pick. The arrogance of it all pressed on her mind, and burrowed into her very soul. The anger that had been temporarily banked at the shock of seeing her friends in such dire straits now rose again, fed by the centaur's vile behavior.
While she thought and stewed on the situation, a small part of Twilight's analytical mind noted an exchange between Fluttershy and Discord that warmed her heart and dimmed the anger. She was not the only one who noticed it, though, as Tirek lost his temper at their words. “ENOUGH!” he shouted, and then stomped his forelegs into the ground. He then raised a hand and pointed towards Twilight Sparkle. “I want an answer, and I want it now!”
The callousness of his ultimatum, coming right on the heel of his continued mistreatment of her friends, finally snapped something deep in Twilight's mind. Even here, even now, when he holds all the cards, he demands more and denies my friends the treatment they deserve, she thought, as the fury began to grow. He threatens them, he threatens me, he threatens everything I love and cherish, and he thinks he's going to get away with it? That I'll cave in? For a moment she had planned to do exactly that, but the beast's ill-timed outburst forced the idea from her mind. Twilight's expression started to shift, slowly morphing from one of shock and fear, into one of determination, and then anger. Her lips peeled up and back to bare her teeth, and her eyes narrowed as she turned her gaze upon the centaur's twisted face.
“I'll give you my magic,” she promised, yet her tone said something very different from her words; it was not a voice of conceding, but an oily promise of violence. Even as she spoke, her horn lit up, and the magic she had absorbed from her royal peers welled up in tune with her own. “I'll give you every damned drop!” she shouted, and then unleashed a beam of destructive power. Her aim was true, and it blasted into Tirek's face to send him flying backwards and into the mountain that the two had plowed through only minutes ago. A satisfying crunch of stone announced the impact, and a small landslide fell over the crater to bury it in loose dirt and boulders.
A moment of silence fell over the scene, but was short-lived as Tirek roared under the tonnes of material and then exerted his will upon the magic he had stolen. The pile of rock and dirty blasted apart as if a bomb had gone off, and the centaur strode forward with a look of seething hatred upon his visage. “You pathetic fool!” he roared, as he snapped his fingers again and teleported Twilight's captured friends to his side once again. “You knew that wouldn't work, and yet you throw your friends' lives away for nothing!” He reached out, and then grabbed the orb that held Spike. “You'll pay, starting with your worthless assistant!”
“No,” Twilight stated, he voice projecting a great distance despite the fact that she hadn't spoke louder than a normal conversation. The single word of refusal carried with it an undertone of something beyond the ken of those who heard it, and even Tirek paused as all eyes turned to regard Twilight Sparkle.
Or what had once been Twilight Sparkle. The instant she saw Tirek grab Spike's enclosure she felt her fury morph into something she had never experienced before: rage. Pure, unadulterated rage filled her, and in that singular point in time she found something within her that had been buried for years, a power that welled up from a font she hadn't even realized she had. Her mind, already blinded by her emotions, never questioned it as she drew from this new well of energy and found it to be as deep and mysterious as the Elements of Harmony she had once wielded. Yet the power of Harmony had felt warm and welcoming when she used it, like a mother's embrace. But this new power was more than warm, it was hot, searing, and it burned like nothing Twilight had ever felt before.
And she loved it. She reveled in it as it flowed into and through her, and then manifested itself outside of her body. Her mane and tail flashed and became orange flames that trailed from her as her hair had done, her coat lost all of its color to become a pure, unmarked white, and her eyes became pupil-less orbs of red. Those friends who had been with her during the hydra encounter at Froggy Bottom Bog recognized the form, and yet she continued to change as her wings spread open and changed from feathers to flame, while lines of fire rippled across her coat, looking as if an endless wildfire was eternally consuming her fur. The air itself rippled from the sheer heat pouring off of her, and when Twilight began to stalk forward she left behind glowing patches of semi-molten rock in her hoofsteps.
“I am Twilight Sparkle,” the alacorn announced as she moved towards Tirek and her friends. Her voice resonated with the new power she held, and a sense of foreboding filled those who heard it. “I am the Element of Magic, a princess of Equestria, Daughter of Fire, and Mistress of the Eternal Flame,” she said, her voice growing more alien as she spoke, no thought given to the words that came from her mouth. “Life and Death flow from my hooves in equal measure, and the Sun itself is a vassal of my empire. I am the very maw of entropy, and you will not, hurt, my, friends!” At that, Twilight flexed her wings and shot into the air. The more she flapped, the more her wings grew, until their ends became indistinct and the flames surrounded her in a mighty corona.
Tirek looked upon her, and his expression finally betrayed a hint of fear. It soon faded, however, as his usual sneer reclaimed his face, and the centaur charged his magic to send a massive orb of destructive power towards the altered pony. “Die!” he shouted, even as he released the bolt.
The ball of death flew true and slammed into Twilight's protective aura. A massive explosion filled the sky with fire and dust, and for a moment it seemed that Tirek had finally won. A grin crossed his face for the briefest of moments before the dust cleared, and he saw Twilight as she was before the impact, still hovering in place. “Impossible!”
The expression on Twilight's distorted face twisted into a sneer at Tirek's outburst. And then, quite surprisingly, she laughed. “You are a foal playing with forces you don't understand, hungry for power that you have no idea how to wield,” she said, amusement in her booming voice. “Before me you are but an insect to be squashed.” The humor faded from her voice and expression at that, and a look of hunger washed over her face. “Or better yet, consumed as the insignificant morsel you are.”
Tirek snarled at the pronouncement. “You dare to dismiss me?” he shouted, as anger overrode fear of the fiery being before him. “You pathetic excuse of a pony! Of any living creature! I am Tirek the Conqueror, before whom entire nations fall!” At this he turned, and then dug his enormous hands into the side of the mountain behind him before he heaved with all of his might. A great slab of granite, easily the size of the royal palace in Canterlot, was torn from the living rock, and Tirek lifted it above his head. “You are beneath me, and I end this farce now!” he shouted, and then hurled the great stone even as he willed his magic to cause the earth below Twilight to erupt upwards in a spike.
Twilight Sparkle looked upon the incoming stone with contempt, and a wave of her hoof caused a loop of incandescence to erupt from the corona around her. The burning prominence slashed through the granite slab as it reached her and sent the two halves flying to either side, while below the spike simply impacted her blazing shield and instantly slagged into lava. The rage in her heart peaked upon seeing his pathetic denial of her power, and the fire around her grew. “You wish an end? Then so be it,” she said, and then shot forward with a flap of her burning wings. She flew through the air at a speed that even Rainbow Dash found herself in awe of, and as Twilight closed in on Tirek her body seemed to be consumed by the flames, until all of her flesh was naught but fire that glowed with the light of the sun. Even her head and face were now nothing but a conflagration given form, and her friends could only watch in terror as her mouth opened, and then grew inequinely wide.
Then she reached Tirek, and the image of her body disappeared utterly as the flames of her power wrapped around the centaur's hastily-erected shield. He began to work on a spell to launch a counteroffensive, but balked as the shield spell itself was eaten out from under his mental grasp. “What? How!” was all he had time to shout, before the living inferno that was Twilight Sparkle finally fell upon his flesh, and the screams began.
Twilight ignored his screeches of pain, as the sensation of consuming filled every corner of her being. Yeesssss, was the only thought she had, while Tirek burned away under her touch. Her new power was not any normal fire, nor the mere pyromancy of mundane magics, but an eldritch flame that consumed the very matter of the centaur's body itself, converting it into pure energy that Twilight absorbed into her very soul. The transformed pony felt nothing but ecstasy as she fed upon Tirek's body, only to have the feeling abruptly end as the last of his bones were consumed and her flames found no more to feast upon. For a moment she considered the magic Tirek had stolen from Equestria, but in that moment of contemplation said magic burst outwards in every direction and soon found its way to its rightful owners.
Disappointed, Twilight released some of her new power and felt her body reform into the white-coated appearance it had before she launched herself at Tirek. The flames pulled back, leaving only her mane and wings afire, and she simply stood and stared at the blackened ground that marked the centaur's last stand. More, she thought, as she narrowed her red eyes at the spot, and the desire to regain the ecstasy she felt became an overriding impulse in her mind. I want more. I must have more.
“Twilight?” a voice asked, and the flame-wreathed pony snapped her head around to see that her friends had been released from Tirek's holding spell and had gathered a few meters away. Everyone, even Discord, had looks of horror upon their face, and they flinched under Twilight's glare. Applejack had been the one to speak up, and she gulped as she pressed on. “Are... are ya okay there, sugarcube?”
A grin most terrifying spread across Twilight's muzzle. “More delicious morsels,” she said, and then licked her lips
The eyes of the seven beings before her widened, and as one they took a step back. “Twilight,” Applejack haltingly began, but scarcely had she spoken when Twilight swung a wing out and sent a curtain of fire along the ground. The leading edge raced faster than thought and its height grew, until it met its own ends and formed a dome around the alacorn and her friends, who looked around in shock and fear at their new predicament.
Even as they looked for an escape, though, Twilight stalked forward. “Whom shall I sample first?” she asked, which garnered the attention of all those before her. “Perhaps the earth pony... I wonder what flavor you will be?” came a more pointed question, directed to Applejack. Even as she spoke, the inferno began to overtake her form once again, and Twilight's grin began to grow.
Until, that is, someone broke out from amongst her friends and ran forward. Reacting on instinct, Twilight snapped her head to face the incoming being, and with a mere thought hurled a gout of flame to intercept it. A round of gasps was heard, and Rarity shouted out: “Spike!”
Spike? Twilight thought, confused. The word seemed to bore into her mind, and it elicited a sudden feeling of conflict within her. Briefly, she closed her eyes and shook her head in an attempt to rid herself of the sensation, but to no avail.
Spike, meanwhile, opened his eyes just as Twilight closed hers. He looked over his skin, surprised to see the living flames battering at his scales, but unable to penetrate or burn them. Well, glad I guessed right, he thought, and then turned his gaze up to his adoptive sister as she shook her head in confusion. “Twilight,” he said, pleadingly.
Her eyes snapped open at that, and for a moment the red orbs seemed to bypass his fire immunity to burn his very soul. The moment passed quickly, however, as he saw the signs of consternation on the alacorn's face, and his heart wrenched in sympathy. “Twilight, it's me, Spike,” he said, as he took another step forward. A shield of flame erupted between them at that, as Twilight instinctively sought to protect herself, but the dragon merely pushed through it as if it weren't there. The confusion in her expression only grew, and Spike took this as a good sign. I'm getting to her. “You remember me, don't you, Twilight?”
“Ssssspike,” she hissed, and then shook her head again. What is this? I feel as if something was lost, she thought. Within her she could sense the war in her mind between two factions, neither of which she understood nor recognized, and this vexed her. “What are you, to deny my hunger?”
Briefly, Spike thought to give a straight answer, but an even more poignant response entered his mind and slipped from his lips. “I'm your brother, Twi,” he said, and then stepped forward again. The transformed alacorn simply stood, ironically frozen in place as he advanced. “I'm your friend.”
“We all are,” another voice chimed in, and Twilight snapped her gaze up to see that the other ponies and Discord had all tentatively crept forward, moving as close as they could before the heat became unbearable. It had been Rarity who had spoken up this time, but the others nodded at her words. “We care about you, Twilight.”
“Ya gone to a dark place, Twi,” Applejack added. “Please, come back to us, back to your friends.”
“Friends?” Twilight asked, as the dire resonance in her voice started to fade. The fiery dome above the group faded from existence, and even her shield dissipated as her mind was increasingly distracted by an upwelling of some great epiphany. The sheer immensity of it overwhelmed the pony, and she shut her eyes in pain and concentration as she sought to sort it all out.
And then, in an instant, it all snapped into place. All of her thoughts, emotions, and most importantly, her memories flowed back into her mind, and Twilight gasped as the enormity of her life suddenly crashed back into her unnaturally narrowed paradigm. My friends, they're here, they're safe from Tirek, and...and... She shuddered, as her actions mere moments ago now filled her mind. I wanted—I nearly—no! Horror filled her, and her eyes snapped open as Twilight desperately sought confirmation that she hadn't fulfilled her new hunger.
The others all shared another, brief gasp as her eyes opened, for while the rest of her remained transformed, Twilight's eyes had shifted back to normal. The violet irises contracted tightly around her pupils, and tears began to flow from them, only to burst into puffs of steam the instant they left the safety of her eye sockets. “I'm sorry,” Twilight said, even as her breathing became ragged and shallow. Her voice trembled, and and she began to shudder uncontrollably as a full-scale panic attack started to set in. “I'm so, so sorry.”
“It's—it's alright, Twilight,” Fluttershy, surprisingly, spoke up. Although the fear of her friend still filled her mind, her heart drove her to speak out and offer the alacorn a faint smile. “We forgive you. Don't we, girls?” she asked, with a glance to the ponies at her sides, and the others quickly chimed in their agreement.
Rainbow Dash went a step further. “We'd never be mad at you for freaking out a bit, Twilight,” she said. “Now c'mon and lose the flames so we can go home.”
The words soothed part of Twilight's soul as she heard them, and their presence and sincerity gave her a modicum of control over her emotions. Yet they were not enough, and the alacorn sobbed as she shook her head. “No, no I can't,” she said, as she took a step back. “I almost—I have to—I'm sorry.” Another sob, and she started to blubber. “I'm so sorry,” Twilight added, and then lit up her horn.
“Twilight, wait!” Spike said, as he realized what she was going to do. He lunged forward as well in an attempt to close the last few paces with his adoptive sister, but her spell completed before he could reach her, and the burning alacorn disappeared in a flash of purple flames as she teleported away. This left Spike with nowhere to go but down, and he dropped to the dirt. “Oof!”
“Spike!” Rarity shouted, and she led the charge as the others moved forward to check on the dragon. “Are you alright?”
The little dragon grunted as he got back to his feet. “Yeah, nothing hurt but my pride,” he said, as he turned to face the others and dusted himself off. He then took on a pensive expression and looked to his friends. “But now what are we going to do?”
A profound silence met this question, as nopony nor draconequis had any ready reply. Then, much to the surprise of the group, Discord suddenly seemed to throw off his moping stupor, and then reached down to grab some dirt in his hands. “Seems to me we need to talk to some ponies who might have an idea of what just happened,” he said, as he started to mold the dirt into a mound.
“Even you don't know?” Fluttershy asked, as she turned to her erstwhile, and hopefully now again friend.
“Did my expression of pure terror not convey my utter bafflement at the situation?” he asked, surprisingly gentle with his tone. “No, dear Fluttershy, for all that I have seen, this takes the cake.” He paused then, and glanced to the side to mutter. “To think, frightened by a pony.”
Applejack coughed to get his attention, and spoke up a soon as she had it. “Ah'm not sure we feel up ta trustin' ya enough to go anywhere with ya, Discord,” she said, harshly. “Not after what you pulled.”
Discord winced, but nodded. “True, and you're right to feel that way,” he said, surprisingly contrite. He then turned to his task as he continued. “But that's why I'm bringing those ponies here,” he added, and then reached down to grab the top of his dirt pile, and then slapped its side with the other hand. To the amazement of the others, the top layer of dirt flew off like dust to reveal a green, pony-sized bag with a zipper on top. A bit of mirth entered Discord's expression and tone, then, as he lifted the bag from the ground. “Now, prepare to be amazed,” he said, as he unzipped the bag, turned it upside down, and then shook it.
A second and three shakes later, Celestia dropped out of the bag with an undignified yelp to land on the ground in a heap. Scarcely had the group time to absorb this before Luna fell out next and slammed into her older sister, eliciting another pair of yelps from both alacorns. One more shake of the bag, and Cadance slipped out to land atop Luna, which once again set off a train of wordless exclamations.
Groans of pain emanated from the three princesses, though they were short. “Luna,” Celestia began, her voice surprisingly terse for those who had seldom heard anything but her usual, warm tones. “You have two seconds to get off of me before I buck you to the moon.”
“I don't see why thou would complain,” Luna retorted, even as she and Cadance began the task of extricating themselves from the pony pile. “Thine rear end can absorb the strain, given it's fluffier than Cloudsdale and twice as wide.”
“I don't think this is the time, aunties,” Cadance interjected, before the two siblings could get into their argument. At her words the royal sisters looked over the area, and quickly came to the same conclusions she had.
“Indeed,” Celestia agreed, as her voice dropped back into a more neutral tone. A smile graced her lips, though, as she saw the ponies in the immediate area bowing to her, or rather, she smiled at the fact that their cutie marks were in place. “It appears Tirek has been defeated,” she observed, and then sighed. “Please rise, my ponies, now is not the time for formalities.”
“Sooth,” Luna added, as their subjects stood up. “Pray tell, where is the scoundrel, so that we may hurl him back to Tartarus?” She directed this question to Applejack, who was the nearest to the royal ponies.
“Uh,” Applejack uttered, as she glanced to each of her friends in a vain hope that one of them would step up and offer an explanation. All of them, however, were just as clueless and shellshocked as she was, and so the farmer turned back to give the princesses a confounded look. “He's... uh...”
“Wait,” Cadance interrupted, as she swiveled her head about. “Where's Twilight?”
Luna frowned in concentration, and then blinked as she realized she couldn't access her magic. She then glanced to her flank, as well as those of her fellow royals. “And why hath our magic not been returned?”
Celestia, meanwhile, had taken the time to study to faces of Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Fluttershy, Spike, and even Discord. She saw the looks of fear, worry, and confusion, and when she added that up in her mind with the lack of both Twilight Sparkle and Tirek, she felt her stomach turn into a pit of ice. “My little ponies,” she began, somberly. “What happened here?”