Fall of the Rightful King

Chapter Thirty-One

Black cords wove themselves over Derek’s chest wound, stopping the bleeding. He jumped up, slamming me in the chest with a spell and throwing me down. Paper Back jumped at him but he stood his God damn ground. I have no idea how. He grabbed Paper Back by the neck, held her out, and with his other hand, started to draw symbols on the ground.

"Time..." he breathed "for you... to work... for me." Paper Back started to scream. Her tail started to lengthen and thicken, and her front hooves split open into claws. Derek still drew more symbols. I lunged forward, scratching at the symbols to mess them up. He aimed a kick at my hand and something broke. I shouted and my arm reflexively pulled back.

“You made a mistake, Nick!” Derek said, smiling. “I could feel it the second you started using dark magic. You shouldn't have stopped! It’s intoxicating. It’s beautiful.”

Paper Back twisted and lashed out with her tail, striking Derek's arm and he dropped her. She started to run away, screaming when she looked down at her body. Derek reached out and dark ropes lashed out from the circle, wrapping around Paper Back and pulling her roughly back into the circle. He stepped back, out of range of her tail.

“And it’s so powerful!” Derek said, continuing like nothing had happened. I stood up and he threw me to the ground again. “Without it, I’m a third-rate magician at best. But with dark magic, I can go toe-to-toe with a centuries-old sorcerer. Imagine what you could be.”

Half of Paper Back’s face just dropped away, revealing something reptilian underneath. On the left, she had two glowing orange eyes. On the right her normal, green eye looked agonized. Her mouth opened, the scaly half full of badly angled, sharp teeth. When she screamed, it was part her, part monstrous screech, and totally unimaginable.

I lunged for Derek again. He kicked, again. This time, though, I pulled up a shield and absorbed the energy of his kick. He stepped back, out of my range, then looked at the transforming Paper Back again.

Perfect. I released the energy I'd absorbed from his blow, using it to throw me forward. I hit him, which was absorbed by his shield, but then I drew the symbol Derek himself had taught me on him. The dark power knocked us away from each other. I sat up and saw that his shield had disappeared. He stood up, eyes blazing, and ran right at me.

This scaly thing jumped forward with a roar. Derek struck it with his arm, which spun it away from him. It left him exposed to her hind legs, which were still completely pony. She bucked with all the strength she had. Derek fell backwards. His chest had caved in.

“Risa…” he gasped.

I looked at Paper Back, or what had been Paper Back. She still had the same basic shape, but her front hooves had turned into vicious-looking claws, her tail was long and crocodile-like, and her muzzle had half twisted into a dragonlike snout. She wailed and curled up into a ball, hot tears falling across her face. I dropped to my knees next to her. I touched her side, but she twisted away from me and wailed again. She looked up at me with her three eyes. She was in so much pain.

I couldn’t fix her. But maybe something could.

"Come on!" I shouted at the sky, then at Alexander's tower. "Come on! Why isn't your spell working on her? Fix her!" My voice echoed. That seemed to be the only effect.

Paper Back tried to say something, but her mutated face only let her make these pained howling noises. She twisted and howled in a new spasm of agony.

I had an idea. A stupid, wildly crazy idea.

"If this doesn't work," I said in a choked whisper, "I'm so sorry."

I used the symbol on her. The familiar dark power whipped into her body, burning away any magic. The look Paper Back gave me... I had betrayed her. I had hurt her even further even in her worst moment. An eternity passed in those few seconds.

"Come on, come on!" I said. Finally, gold light settled around her and her body started to soften and change.

"Oh, thank God!" I said, relief bubbling out of my chest and pushing tears out of my eyes. Her claws melted back into hooves. Her tail dropped off, and brown curls flowed out to replace it. Her agonized, bestial face softened and pulled back bit by bit, leaving her with a delicate muzzle once more. As a final spark, the gold light swirled around her horn, turned green, and flowed into her body.

She gasped, opened her eyes, and slowly raised a hoof in front of her face. She looked at her other front hoof, touched her face, and started to cry again.

"Paper Back," I said, and I pulled her into a hug. "I'm so sorry, it was the only thing I could think of to do. I'm so glad it worked. It's ok," I said. "It's ok now." She slowly stopped crying, then stood up. I wiped blood from her face.

"Are you ok?" I asked.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I lost my best friend today and Derek turned me into a monster and I really, really, just want to go home." She swallowed. "But more than that, I know we have to stop Alexander. We have to. Ev-even if it means I'll never see my family again, and they'll never know what happened to me. I have to protect them from this."

We stood and walked into the tower.

Inside, I could see that the tower was just made of stone, wood, and metal. But there was golden light flowing through it. It reminded me of light falling through water. The place we were in was like an entrance hall, with a distant ceiling and large arches. There was a huge painting at one end of the hall, showing what looked like a royal family from hundreds of years ago. There was a crowned father, a mother standing at his side, and two children. Everyone was dressed in red and purple, except for the little boy. His clothes were golden.

There were tall windows in the hall, but they didn't seem to look out onto any landscape, or anything at all. The only thing I could see through them were distant, complex patterns of intersecting light. There was something mind-bending about the patterns, like they shouldn't be possible. It gave me a headache, so I looked away from them.

Alexander’s voice came from somewhere outside the room. "You have traveled far and have defeated that great fool, Derek. Though you have blasphemed your sacred powers by usage of the powers anathema to life, you have done so in desperation and ignorance. Here, a second gift, that you may trust me."

I felt information flood my head, like it had when we'd first faced him. Healing magic. Not everything he knew, but the principles of restoration.

"There. Knowledge sufficient to heal even ailments like yours. Now join me in the great chamber."

We walked out of the room, into a hallway, and into what had to be the great chamber. The room was huge. The walls were smooth, golden stone, reinforced with metal covered in in inscriptions and symbols. There was a pit, which I'll get to in a minute, in the center of the room, which took up most of the floor space. The rest of the room was mostly a walkway, except for where we were standing, which was a circular platform that jutted out over the pit. The ground, made of the same material as the walls, had gold embedded in it to form lines and symbols. The circles and patterns of symbols I saw here were so far beyond me. I could only grasp the basic idea of what they did. Protection. Far sight. Transportation. And one circle so heavily reinforced and covered with power amplifying symbols, it must have been where he cast the original spells from.

The pit was only a few feet deep, but the ground there wasn't a floor. It was a series of multicolored lines and symbols, so dense and complicated that they made the rest of the room look like a kid's drawings. They swirled, floated, and mixed with each other over a dark and swirling abyss. I couldn't even understand a single part of the symbols in the pit. They weren't anything like what Derek or Alexander used. There were symbols there that repeated themselves at smaller and smaller levels, twisting away forever.

More than that, I could feel its power. It was monolithic and dwarfed me. If you could somehow pack a mountain into a column however many miles high, and stand next to it, you'd feel a little of what I felt. There was a stream of light coming out of the pit, right from the center of whatever that was. It curled up to the top of the room, hundreds of feet up, where an awful lot of energy twisted and boiled in tight, rapid spirals.

Alexander stood on the side of the room. He glowed a soft gold and looked exactly as human as he had when I first saw him. He looked up as we walked in.

"Behold," he said. He flicked his wrist. A twenty foot high figure appeared in front of us. It was like a man made of black fire, so dense you couldn't see through it. There was something wrong about it. Something dark, empty... It disappeared as soon as it had appeared.

"I wanted you to see what they were like," Alexander said, walking towards us. "The void wielders. They forged that dark blade you felt earlier. It is their symbol you have used. Those things took magic from us. Do you understand? I just wanted to restore magic to the Earth. I suppose in some manner I have succeeded, but is this world truly the Earth now, when we have been twisted into the forms of beasts?"

I had no idea what to do. I hadn't been expecting anything like this. The energy coming out of the pit got a lot more violent and started to boil out in all directions. Alexander turned and, using golden light from his hands, managed to restrain it and focus it back into the violent energy at the top of the tower. He was breathing hard when he finished.

"That fool, Derek... he has no idea what he's done. Using dark magic in such a way... did he never understand that I avoided dark magic for a reason?"

"So," I said. "Did you... not mean to change people?"

Alexander sighed. "I thought I could reopen the portal to our sister world. Not that silly statue the 'element of magic' has used to visit a school, of all places. That portal had no true strength and its connection was severed as soon as I began to open the great seal. I thought I could use the magic of their world to bring magic to ours. I knew the way had been sealed, but the scale of the protections… our ancestors were mighty indeed.”

"Did you mean to change people?" I asked a bit more firmly. My voice was coming back to me. I felt Paper Back's stance shift next to me.

"No, Nicholas, you do not understand," he said. "When I began to break open the seal, the energy within... it flowed outwards, and I could not restrain it. I cannot remove it, for it is a living thing. It is a part of this world now. And yet you are wrong even about what the energy did.

"I changed no one," he said. "Magic is desiring with power. The energy from the seal provided everyone the power, and the patterns through which desires could be granted. The magic merely granted their desires."

"No, no, that's bullshit," I said. "Ok, maybe some people wanted to be ponies. But everyone? And what about the people who didn't want to change?"

"Child," he said, "the mind is not a whole. It is fragmented. The desires of each man gave shape to the powers surrounding them. You and I alone possess powers sufficient to deny the magic. If you permitted the living magic to change you it would, but...

"I have looked deeply into the minds of your friends. Your friend Alan desired womanly companionship. He desired a body with strength and stamina. He received this. Your lover, Erin-"

"Stop," I said, pointing at him. "Don't you dare talk about Erin, and don't you dare talk about Alan. You killed him. You killed millions!"

"Many have died, Nick," he said. "And many, many more would die had I not restrained the power above." He pointed up at the twisting energy. "Do not blame me for the failures of unguided minds damaging themselves with their power."

"And the mind control?" I yelled, taking a step towards him. "Was that their fault too?"

He glared at me. "The world is weak and has forgotten its place. We are lost without our magic, Nicholas! The world tears itself apart, and has done so since before my father walked the land. I have established peace! I would have killed tenfold as many if it meant restoring magic! Do not blame me for the loss of the weak. They are no great loss."

I ran up and punched him.