You'll do.

Fuck you, you prick! Let me out of here! What the fuck is happening?

Shut up and listen. I have much to tell you, and nothing you can tell me will matter. Powers beyond your understanding have dipped their fingers into our existence, and humanity has once again been brought to the forefront of their minds. The path we take next will depend on a handful of people, one of which is you, and all of which are close to you.

The blackness that had swallowed me retreated, and I wasn't at Mike's anymore. I was in some sort of castle tower, a single room with a single door and a single window looking out into blue sky. The cotton was pulled from my ears and I heard the clang of metal and screams of effort and pain. A battle.

My instincts kicked in and I dashed to the window, my boots clicking excitedly on the stone.

Peering out over the railing, I saw the streets of Canterlot that I walked down not a few hours ago, war-torn and destroyed. The building I'd drank my soda on wasn't there, replaced by a taller, rounder building. Or, it would have been taller, had it not been sheared off and toppled over onto some sort of crawling war machine, crushing it like a giant metal spider. The surviving members of its apparently human crew were fighting off a smaller force of ponies and unicorns. Despite the humans having better weaponry and numbers on their side, the ponies seemed to be winning through sheer tenacity. A human with purple hair fired energy blasts from a cannon he had slung over his shoulder, but the ponies nimbly dodged out of the way, sometimes being missed by mere inches, until finally a pegasus penetrated his guard and savaged his throat with a pair of talon-like claws. The dog-like humanoids under his command were quickly overwhelmed after the loss of their leader.

Similar scenes unfolded all across the landscape stretched before me as hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned groups of ponies, unicorns and pegasi, all wearing armor painted to match the colors of the buildings around them cut down the human troops. Along with the pegasi wielding their metal bird-of-prey talons, the magical horses were armed with other weapons I'd never seen before, ponies shod with thick, wrought-iron war hooves, unicorns wielding razor-sharp scissorblades with a deadly accuracy that could only be achieved by magic. The equines were obviously extremely well-trained, darting through the rubble of their former city like deer through a forest, their human enemies seemed surprised by the ponies ferocity. Despite this, some seemed to be putting up a good fight with a wide variety of weapondry; I saw a woman wearing thick armor wielding something that vaguely resembled an assault rife, fire green crystalline projectiles into the chest of a pony who had been advancing upon a man in a robe carrying a staff. The man nodded thanks to her, then turned and conjured fire from his hands to ward off a flock of pegasi who were harrowing a group of dog-men armed with swords and small one-handed weapons that resembled pistols.

I heard a shout behind the door at my back. I whipped around just in time to see myself, wearing an unrecognizable style of golden armor draped with furs, burst through the door, cursing in that wierd-ass language that I can't recall ever hearing or learning, but could understand nonetheless.

"Fucking taurshit! That's what this is! A clusterfuck from the beginning to the end!" Fraterlex walked right through me like a ghost and planted both hands on the railing behind me, as if he was about to hop over it, land a hundred feet below, and join the losing human forces.

I realized this was like that scene from Harry Potter; I was looking into someones memory of the final battle of the Human Wars.A surprisingly unfamiliar sensation, but UNJOs memory-sharing technology was far less vivid, tending to leave a user with vague impressions rather than actual experiences.

Fratermutis, wearing the same black cloak reinforced with chain mail and bits of silver plate metal and looking a lot more alive than when I last saw him, followed after his brother, a little more stoic, but obviously just as angry. "Treacherous, primitive, four-legged, handless animals. Just like them to wait till the moment before the planet was ours to pull another thrice-damned Alicorn out of their collective asses."

The sisters entered the room together, Sororeverax in front, Sororivita bringing up the rear. Like their statues, they resembled the girl from the dream and Ari, respectively, but with different hair color and styles. Sororeverax, with her gray hair tied in a bun and wearing a simple white dress, looked elegant and polished, but seemed to seethe with a cold, lethal rage. Sororivita seemed to be the only one who was not furious, quite the contrary, she blindly followed her sister, watering her dress made from living plants with her tears.

Fraterlex's fingers dug into the stone railing so hard that it began to crack. Sororeverax went to his side and placed a delicate hand over his. "Lex."

His eyes softened and he gazed into hers a little bit longer than I thought was appropriate, then turned to his brother. "We must do something. Our troops are being slaughtered by the hundreds, we cannot win a war and kill this alicorn. We must find a way to contain her while our civilians get to the bunkers."

"She is of another kind. Not all can resist magic the way Royals do, and the amount of ambient energy she's throwing off rivals a star in its power." The anger in his face became despair as this sunk in. "A solar flare knocking on our doorstep, overloading the auras of innocent civilians whilst we are forced to watch."

"If that is true, we must keep her as far from the children as possible." Lex turned to his oldest sister. "Vera, they are safe?"

Vera glanced at her sister, who sniffed and attempted to regain her composure. Looking back, she nodded. "They are with Father. He knows."

"You told him?"

"They are his grandchildren. He will take good care of them, no matter what."

Closing his eyes, Lex leaned back over the railing and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Huma help us all if we get out of this."

"We may need His help sooner than that." Sororivita spoke for the first time, her voice shockingly soft amid the sounds of battle. She pointed at the horizon, where a thin contrail could be seen tracing across the sky, quickly approaching. "She comes."

Lex leaned back from the railing and slipped Gravic into his hand, giving me my first good look at the thing. Defying physics, the head seemed to grow larger and heavier when it was held, going from the size of a doorstop to the size of a cinder block. The head itself seemed to reflect no light whatsoever, making it look like a boxy black hole with an ornate handle. The gilded chain attached to the end of the grip writhed like a living creature, unwinding itself around Fraterlex's waist and coiling tightly around his forearm. "Steel yourself, Vita. This is a fight that can only end in death."

The contrail continued to come closer as the other Royals readied their vulgate. They stayed like this in silent preparation, waiting for their enemy to reach them. Imagine their surprise as it began to pass right over them.

Vita's eyes widened. She cried out two words before dashing out the door at a speed far too fast for a normal human; "THE CHILDREN!"

"Vita, wait for me!" Without hesitating, Fratermutis followed his sister. Vera was about to leave as well when Fraterlex caught her arm.

"Lex, we do not have time to-" She stopped short when she saw the look on her older brother's face.

His voice was soft, and his eyes tender, a sharp contrast to the Fraterlex of a few minutes ago. "I wouldn't take any of it back."

Vera took his hands in hers and gave him a sad smile. "Neither would I."

The siblings met with a passionate, sexual kiss that dropped my jaw, bugged my eyes, and stimulated my gag reflex. I knew there was something fucked-ass-backwards about these kids.

. . .

I followed them because I felt like I should, and I had nothing other than that to go on. Stone hallways whipped past the Royals and I in a blur, and we exited the castle into the cityscape to the north. The advancing army to the south was only tangible here as the muffled sounds of battle that managed to mount the peaks of Canterlot Castle. Vehicles and people crowded the streets, but it was eerily quiet, the only sounds were the screams of death over the rooftops, and the orders called out by the human and semihuman guards, politely directing the refugees to their designated shelters. Oddly, I noticed that those taking shelter were all pure, none of them bearing any features more inhuman than oddly coloured hair or eyes. Hmm.

The buildings gave way to the upward sloping hill that became the base of the cliff face I'd approached with the royal sisters. The Royals and I sped past a stream of people, thousands strong, who were flooding into a cave in the cliffside across the field. We arrived at the floodgate into the mountain and veered away from the refugees to a meeting place where various leaders of the human forces were holding some sort of counsel.

The assembled council appeared to have no human members. Many of them were badly injured. A man with a dog head and tail was missing both eyes and the tip of his ear, but these looked long-healed. A recent injury had split his jowl down the side, making his lower lip hang down and exposing several sharp teeth. He also bore several cuts and a the hair on his neck was singed, exposing soft pink flesh underneath.

Next to him was a creature that stood on two legs with a posture akin to a persons, but a long neck and a draconic head poked out from what I thought was a cloak made from dragon skin, but actually turned out to be a pair of scaly wings, folded about himself, covering his person. Dripping red blood from beneath this scaly curtain told me that the dragon-man, too, was wounded, though I barely needed the hint, what with the shrapnel still sticking out of half his face.

After him was a creature that seemed to be designed along the same lines, built on the frame of a human, but seemingly mixed with another animal as well, in this case a bird. What bird exactly, an eagle, or maybe an owl? Unlike the dragon-man, the bird-man's face was disturbingly human, rendered even more so by the fact that his entire beak seemed have been recently ripped off, leaving him with a pair of red, fleshy, toothless lips. A pair of tawny wings jutted from his shoulders, the feathers scorched in some places.

Following him in the semicircle, were a few more recognizable, if less fantastic creatures; a tall, regal woman with pointed ears, a stunted man with a thick beard, a nine-foot-tall Minotaur missing one of his horns, a female Centaur wearing a quiver strapped between her bare breasts, and, to my surprise, a small, grey donkey, with pair of wings sprouting from his shoulders, and a stubby horn poking out of his head.

Entering the circle, Lex gently grabbed the dog-man by the chin and inspected his wound. After a moment, he released him, satisfied. "Romulus, we don't have any time for pleasantries. How many can we save?"

When he spoke, his voice rumbled deep in his chest, and his speech was slurred; he would periodically pause to slurp up a mix of blood and drool. "The council has convened. It was a clean, surgical attack. They snuck in through one of the outer entrances of the Warren, and entered when the sun was high; many of us were above-ground. From the tunnels, they were able to slip right through the outer defenses." His ears laid back and he hung his head. "My mate and pups are dead, along with countless others. The Aviary is lost. The Anubi shall fade into the void. We have failed you, and paid the price."

Lex turned to the bird- and dragon-men, a look of disbelief on his face. "Is this true?"

The dragons deep, chocolaty voice answered. "The Aviary is in possession of the enemy, and Niner died protecting the eggs. Farvran and I only escaped because Roland sacrificed his life to save us. He wished to join his bond-mate, and I do not blame him; I dearly wish to join mine as well."

The Avan looked at the dragon, and together they sighed. The bird-mans beak-less lips parted, and in his high, crackly voice said, "Too many eggs smashed, too many females slain. The Wyvern may survive, but the Avan are lost. There is nothing that can be done, now."

Lex turned to the line of refugees, which was quickly disappearing deep into the ground. "I'm afraid to ask, but were we all hit so hard?"

The woman with the pointed ears shook her head, drops of multicolored blood winging off the tips of her hair. "They knew they would not survive a trek through the elves forest, and our elders stand by their consul; moving the last of our continental forces to Canterlot was a good decision, but we did not expect the handiwork of a double-agent. They could not have entered the Warrens any other way. It is the only explanation for this tragedy."

The short man piped up, scratching idly at the half-dozen arrows embedded in his shoulder. "Of course not, you know full well I didn't connect the mines to those damned caverns in the first place, for that exact reason! How my grandfathers would roll in their graves, if I let any of your kind in my charge come to harm, and the dwarves eradicated by a bunch of handless heathens; No, we have stuffed as many Pures into the mines as we could, far away from those cursed stones."

The minotaur's report followed. The herds and farms were untouched, as they contained no pure humans, but the prisons deep in the mountains, like the Aviary, had been connected to the Warrens. As such, they were now overrun with guerrilla pony warriors, who had immediately begun to free the POWs, human criminals, and dangerous animals within, many of which immediately turned on their captors with gusto, creating even more chaos on the battlefield.

The centaur detailed that most of her kind were ferrying civilians out of the combat zones, and providing support for the other races, but they were no warriors; it seemed that with the loss of the Anubi and the Avan, the brunt of the human military force, there was little that the other races could do but get as many humans as they could into the bunkers and wait for the ponies to starve or leave, an unlikely prospect if they took the farms as easily as the rest of the city, and it seemed their attack would not end until either every pony or every human was dead.

Lex listened to all this, and his frown deepened with every word. Finally, he turned to the donkey, and it spoke. "When two blazing infernos collide, they burn each other out, but after destruction comes rebirth, and without an end there is no beginning. It may take a long time, and you may lose hope, but always a forest springs up, full of life, and from the remains of chaos, harmony may begin to take root."

The Royal nodded at this cryptic advice, then looked to the refugees, the flood thinning to a trickle as the humans were herded into the bunker, until all that was left was an old man and two kids. The old man was wearing a dark robe and his salt-and-pepper hair and beard looked like they hadn't been trimmed in a decade. His face was wrinkled with laugh lines and pocked with scars. For a moment, the man seemed familiar to me, but that was impossible.

He stopped walking and turned to look at the assembled council, peering at each of them in turn, his eyes lingering on the Royals. As his gaze passed over my incorporeal form, I looked into his eyes, and I perceived a sadness that seemed almost inhuman in its depth.

After a moment, he approached, slowly, as if each step pained him, until he was close enough that I could hear his labored breathing. In both hands he held that of a child, a boy in his right, a girl in his left. They both looked about five years old, old enough to understand that their world was falling apart. At first, I wondered who they were, but then I looked closer. The boy had grey hair like his mother, but his eyes were a deep blue like his fathers. His cousin had red hair like her mother, but hazel eyes like her father. Both of them looking cute as a button. Both of them the product of a brother and sister fucking.

The old man looked at the Royals.

The Royals looked back.

The old man sighed. "When your mother passed from this world, it lost its meaning to me. I was foolish to think your lives had stopped as completely as mine had. It was foolish of me to leave you alone, with no guidance. Take your children, hide in the bunker and let me fight her. I will reap what I have sown."

Fraterlex shook his head. "No, Father, you will only get yourself killed. Only the four of us fighting together stand a chance. Take the children, hide them and hide yourself. You are the only one I trust to take care of them."

"You are cruel to me, my son. You ask me to cower and hide, to continue living in a world without my beloved, to watch as my children are killed?"

"I would only ask it of you, because how could you not?"

"Fitting how my sentence was given by the Avatar of Justice and Penance, my oldest son. I will care for these children, better than I did my own."

"Thank you, Father. Whatever happens, I will be content knowing that my son and niece are safe with you."

The words could barely leave their lips, heavy as they were with things unsaid. A distant father and his neglected children, struggling to say goodbye. Which is why I was surprised to see the four Royals moved as one to embrace their father and children. They sat silently for a few moments, enjoying each others presence one last time, for the first time as a family.

Paterex broke the hug and took the children's hands once again. "Time is short. Adam, Eve, say goodbye, and then you must come with me."

The children, apparently too terrified to speak, waved their final goodbye to their parents, who all returned the farewell with sad smiles. With that, the King turned and headed for the bunker. He stopped only once. Looking back, he asked, "Why did you name them after my parents? I cannot imagine you having much respect for those names after the stories I told."

The Royals looked at each other for a few seconds before Vita spoke up. "Because we knew that no matter how much pain they caused you, you would still love them. Not because you have to, but because that is who you are."

The King seemed taken aback by his youngest daughters answer. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but thought better of it and walked away, disappearing into the mountainside. The door banged shut with an echoing clang, and the air was briefly permeated with the grating noises of the locks sunk deep into the mountain sliding into place. Just from the scale of the door, and the sound of the mechanisms, I guessed the bunker was so littered with redundancy, no matter how you tried to get in, it would be difficult.

The noise of the battle in the city had died down, and the muffled noise of other bunkers closing rolled over the hills, like some kind of spastic drum player. A centaur sped away from the city toward the council and the Royals, bearing news: Any humans left alive were safe in the bunkers, and the Equestrian forces were being held back at their gates. With no humans left to kill, the ponies were losing their initial ferocity, and with no humans left to defend, what was left of the Human forces were making a comeback. The tide of the battle could easily turn in either direction, but the threat of the Alicorn that I knew was Celestia still loomed overhead, like the angry eye of Sauron.

A few tense minutes passed, none of the assembled party willing to put down their weapons, nothing to do but wait for this Alicorn who seemed blessed with a power beyond what her species possessed.

A cloaked figure, obviously a pony, emerged from the city, accompanied by soldiers of the same race. They marched across the field, and came to a rest far enough away to anticipate attack, but not prevent communication. The human council looked confusedly at Celestia above. The cloaked pony came forward and addressed the Royals in a familiar voice, speaking English. "I have come to negotiate your surrender."

Farvran's eyes narrowed, and the Avan hissed, spraying blood from his savaged face. "Candy Striper!"

The pony laughed and threw back his hood. His pale fur and red stripes marked him as none other than Peppermint, the princess' butler. Now it was my turn to look confused. "Are you surprised?"

The assembled lieutenants all voiced exclamations of anger; Romulus and Farvran looked ready to attack him. In contrast, the Royals regarded him coolly, and Lex replied, "Not that there was a traitor in our midst. Nor, even particularly, that it was you. You are a Monster, after all, a servant of chaos."

"Chaos is a gentler master than your kind. Not that I would know, I serve Celestia, the most powerful of the remaining alicorns. You may hide in your holes as long as you like, but you've made yourself the enemy of an immortal. She will wait as long as she needs to."

Lex scoffed, the concerned father was gone, in his place, a confident warrior. "We are not defeated yet. The real battle hasn't even begun."

"Indeed it hasn't, but if you will not surrender, there is no need for my princess to soil her hooves with this filth you've hurled her way."

The elf-lady spoke quietly. "So you are a hypocrite as well as a traitor. You are the work of human hands just as we are, but like a spoiled child you have rebelled against your creators, in the hopes you can improve your position at the loss of theirs."

Peppermint shook his head, smiling his carnivorous teeth. "Humanity has tampered with the workings of Tartarus, and doing so have orchestrated their own demise. I am an example of the hideous power that lies beyond the black gates, and the terrible fate that awaits those who seek to use it for their own gain."

With this, he threw himself down on the ground, his front hooves spreading as the horrible, gut-wrenching squelch of bone sliding over bone permeated the post-battle silence. The pony's interlocking teeth grated against each other as he grimaced, obviously in great pain. Underneath his cloak, his body rippled unreally, rear legs lengthening, spine extending, and the cloak began to split , exposing angry red flesh dusted with pale white, downy hair. The transformation traveled up his body into his back, his forelegs pawed the ground, and his voice distorted queerly as his throat and chest rearranged themselves. I recoiled as his hooves peeled back to expose four long, thin, lobster-red fingers. He straightened, standing upright on two legs. The hood of the cloak fell back, revealing an ugly, squashed horse face frilled by a pair of curling horns. The muscles responsible for his transformation still pulsing along his body, his newly-formed shoulders rippled and the cloak exploded. A pair of fan-shaped wings unfolded themselves, and a gout of fire erupted from his mouth as Peppermint roared his frustration to the world.

There Peppermint stood, in all his putrid glory, a real-life demon from Hell, smoke pouring from his maw. His back hooves remained, quivering behind the shreds of cloak that still hung from his new waist. His muzzle, too, remained, oddly stretched, but still there, and his face was now framed by a pair of goat-like horns, and a short, whispy white beard had grown under his chin. His upper body was that of a man's, misshapen but muscular. His forelimbs now ended with clawed hands, one of them pointing a finger accusingly at the human leaders. His voice rippled through the air like a miasma, deep and echoing.

"Gaze upon me and despair, for I am an evil monster, brought into the world for no purpose but to destroy what is just and good!" He roared again, then visibly calmed himself, and when he spoke again, the dark voice was tinged with condescending sarcasm. "Do me one last favor, my most merciful masters; If you truly cannot bear to part with your lives, would you do me the justice of taking mine?"

He moved with the same impossible quickness I'd seen before, too fast for a normal human to see or even react. The human lieutenants jumped to a similar action, drawing weapons and bearing arms. The elven woman literally teleported behind him and ran him through with a bright green blade. He reached over his shoulder and grabbed her by the head, and flung her bodily into the dwarf man, who was bowled off his feet. The dwarf seemed to have the worse time of it; when he had his wind back, he could be heard berating her, "Oh, bloody hell, Nirine, you never hear of dwarves getting tossed about like that!"

The Avan and the wyvern arced to either side of the abomination, as if they were going to pincer him, but at the last moment, Farvran leapt up, and the dragon opened his mouth. From it, a torrent of blue fire I could only compare to military-grade incendiary bombing burst forth. Jerking his head to the side, Peppermint spat a red fireball that was dwarfed by the dragon's. It resisted the flood for only a second, but was overwhelmed quickly, and I thought it was the end of it.

The wyvern hovered in the air for a moment, an impossible amount of flame still pouring from him. When it ended, he tucked his wings and landed gently on the ground, his unhinged jawbones rolling back into place. Before him, the soft grass of the hill was a dying inferno. Where Peppermint had stood, the very dirt had melted into a solid, puckered sheet of black glass. A curled, glowing figure shifted visibly underneath, dying.

Or, so I thought. The light beneath the solidified soil intensified, and the entire lump began to rise out of the ground. A loud roar of effort boiled out, as well as fire. With a ear-shattering crack, the chunk shattered in two, the pieces flung outward. Peppermint, who was soot-blackened and dirty, but apparently unharmed, sank his claws into one and threw it at the wyvern. The dragon-creature stalled in midair to avoid it, squalling.

Peppermint tore the elf-woman's green blade from where it had stuck in his chest, then took to the air. His fan-like wings beat so fast they blurred, chopping up wind like helicopter blades. He darted right for the Avan, who had pulled up from the pincer attack to avoid the surprise inferno, and the bird-man whipped a bronze blade from it's scabbard to cross swords with the demon. After they traded several blows, it became clear that Farvran was the better swordsman, but then Peppermint spat a black liquid that could have been either poison or acid into his eyes, grabbed him around the neck with his two barbed, prehensile tongues, and bit his head off.

Farvran's headless body thumped to the ground, and Peppermint swallowed, a gigantic lump slipping slowly down his long neck. Then the elf was behind him again, though this time she had what looked like a bundle of steel cables in her hand. Before he could spin to meet her, she'd shoved the bundle into his wings. They caught and ground to a painful halt, the fragile bones snapping apart spectacularly. The devil fell to the ground painfully.

A long, green spear materialized in the she-elf's hands, and she drove it through through the raw wound her sword had made. Peppermint let out a pained screech, which was cut off short when the head of the spear exploded. The iron-hard flesh of the creatures abdomen rippled with the force, and the elf was spattered with a fountain of black gore, but Peppermint only seemed stunned.

The dwarf-man charged in then, swinging what appeared to be a war-hammer made from an anvil in a high arc over his head. Despite the exploding spear in his chest cavity, Peppermint caught the blow deftly on his horns, deflecting it to the side. With a sweep of his paw, Peppermint clipped the dwarf beneath the legs and launched him over his shoulders, directly into the elf. They collided, and the demon was free once more.

Peppermint spun and vomited a plume of fire over the pair, and the elf teleported away. The dwarf was not so lucky.

"SODOR!"

"NIRINE!

"BYTHEGODSPUTITOUT!" The fireball that the dwarf had become charged off, before tripping and rolling on the ground. The elf-woman teleported to the dwarf's side, conjuring mists of water from her hands to douse him.

I seemed to be the only one who noticed Peppermint slip an odd, pistol-like weapon from the shreds of his ruined cloak and aim it at the elf. There was a soft piff and the weapon discharged a tiny, glass dart, which embedded itself in her flesh. She did not seem to notice, and Peppermint was soon once again occupied, as he was charged by the drake, the centaur and the minotaur all at once.

The glass dart shattered, and I saw a tiny, green crystal glinting at me from the wound. The dwarf seemed alright, but now, the elf reached back and felt the tip of the crystal, her eyes snapping open in shock. She whipped around with a furious look on her face, which became an expression of agony as the crystal began to spread over her body. "No!"

The dragon and the minotaur were holding Peppermint by the arms while the centaur slashed him with a sword. He spat poison in her eyes and elbowed the drake in the shrapnel wound on his face. The minotaur struggled to restrain him, but he was laughing.

"You think your humans are so pure? Look at me! Look at this!" Peppermint pointed at the elf with his free arm. She had fallen to the ground, writhing as the crystal continued to spread. "You think them awful, terrible things, but they all were created by human hands. Humans only use their knowledge to control, and that which they cannot control, they destroy! Open your eyes!"

The little grey donkey, who'd been avoiding the fighting and staying out of sight, leapt into the fray. He bellowed two words in the loudest, most resonating voice I'd ever heard. "HOLD HIM."

The little donkey's horn began to glow with an otherworldly red light as he approached Peppermint, who for the first time began to show a shred of fear as the drake and the centaur moved to help restrain him. "CANDY STRIPER, WHO HAS TAKEN THE NAME PEPPERMINT, YOU HAVE COMMITTED CRIMES AGAINST YOUR CREATORS AND FELLOW CREATIONS. YOU HAVE BETRAYED YOUR PURPOSE AND THE TRUST OF YOUR FELLOWS. AS RECOMPENSE FOR YOUR ACTIONS, I, PEDRONUS THE SHREWD, SENTENCE YOUR SOUL TO BE CONSUMED BY THE DEMON-OF-THE-PIT AZERAK THE UNQUENCHABLE, AND YOUR BODY TO WANDER, LIFELESS FOR ALL ETERNITY."

Pedronus began to chant in a guttural tongue , and the red light flowed from his horn, forming a portal in front of Peppermint, who continued to struggle. A massive creature with the head of a squid and the body of a snake flopped partway out of the portal, but in a deep, primal part of me, I knew this was just a tiny portion of the real thing. I couldn't tell what color it was, and it emitted a sound I coudn't quite grasp, but I knew it was laughing. It was happy, and for no good reason.

The squid-snake snapped taut, launching itself at Peppermint and wrapping its tentacles over his mouth and nose. Pulses of light began to run the length of the demon as it sucked out Peppermint's soul. He reacted the way you would expect, screaming and writhing, the former still audible despite the inter-dimensional abomination covering his mouth.

Meanwhile, Sodor was tending to Nirine, their roles reversed. Her body was mostly encased in the green crystal, only her face, contorted with pain, and her right arm was free still. Sodor babbled nearly incoherently as he ran his hands over her, desperately searching for a way to help. "Now you just hold on, Nirine, Pedronus is going to sort the devil out, just hold on, we'll get you fixed up after the battle, don't look at me like that, you're going to be fine..."

Nirine placed her free hand on the dwarf's cheek, and it began to harden there. "Sodor... Remember to water my plants."

Nirine closed her eyes and the green engulfed them. The crystal began to fade to white and crumble to dust.

Shaking, the dwarf stood. "Fuck." He turned to the devil, whose soul was still being sucked.

An otherworldy rumble shuddered from the portal. Peppermint's fighting was becoming weak.

Everyone was watching the portal, but I looked up.

Celestia was coming.

The fury of the sun slashed down like lightning, severing Azerak's soul-sucker. The demon-of-the-pit did not scream, instead, there was a sort of anti-noise as the otherworldy limb fell to the ground and rotted to mush in seconds.

The anti-noise became an anti-voice, a quiet scratching in the deepest part of my ear. To swallow the sun would only give me a burnt tongue; I'll not fight this one, Pedronus. Release me.

Pedronus sighed, and the portal closed.

In the center of the clearing, a star blazed. Celestia was silent, in the same armor she'd fought me in, though now she was armed.

The armor had more pieces to it, a helm in the shape of a bird's head, and a pair of sheathes on either side. Her front hooves had a pair of the pegasi war-talons and the back were weighted with heavy, spiked battle-hooves. Aside from the fact that she seemed to literally glow with power, her normally rainbow-ripple mane had become a crown of blazing fire, and dirt was starting to melt into glass under her hooves. She looked dangerous.

"Peppermint, are you well?" Celestia's voice shook with concern. She'd been worried about the damn thing.

"No, but I am alive... on the outside." The creature replied hoarsely from where he'd fallen to the ground. His angry red skin had paled to a soft pink, and he was visibly shuddering. He didn't look like he was getting back up.

"Close enough."

The helm swiveled on her long neck, and there was another pause as the expressionless slit stared at the royals.

Fratermutis broke the silence. He allowed a grim smile. "Have you come to kill us all, Little Star?"

She snorted softly, like a laugh that didn't quite make it.

"No, I've come to make you all beg for death. We'll see how I feel after that."

Author's Note

It was plenty long a while ago, but I didn't want to end the chapter in the middle of a flashback.