Forgotten Legacy

We stood on a hilltop, the chill wind ruffling our coats. I glanced over at Sunset, the cold look in her eye having returned. It bothered me to see her like that, but I had trouble faulting her. Below us, the milling army of undead formed rough ranks. A single figure started trotting out, and I went forward with Shining Armor to meet with them.

Sorla looked at us with the emotionless eyes that made her unreadable. I shivered as the gaze roved over me before turning to my brother.

“I assume that this is not a social call,” she said, the corners of her mouth quirking upwards.

“We will give you this one chance to surrender,” Shining Armor said. “Lay down your arms and release the spell you have on those poor souls and we will show leniency.”

“No,” she replied, turning to leave. “You want my head, come and claim it. No quarter, asked nor given.”

I watched as she trotted off. “That could have gone better,” I said.

Shining smiled grimly as we went back to the vanguard. Azure piped up as we reached the front rank.

“Am I to assume she didn’t kiss your hindquarters when you asked her to?” she called, eliciting a laugh from the front rank around her.

“No, she politely declined,” Shining said, smiling, causing a fresh round of laughter.

“The terms?” Gleam Star asked, his size imposing while standing this close to him. Even Big Mac would have seemed small next to him.

“No quarter, asked nor given,” my brother sighed. “She’s dedicated to the course, and so are we.”

We formed ranks again and crested the hill, watching as the mismatched group of risen dead shambled towards us, struggling with the snow. We started marching forth, the frontmost guards lowering lances as we slowly began building to a trot. Sunset, the Dashes, and I hopped into the air, wings spread as the army sped into a canter, then a full gallop. The Wonderbolts shot past us, diving in strafing runs as the two armies clashed. Sunset let forth a lance of fire, carving a path directly in front of her, landing in the slush and powering up another spell. I landed behind her and guarded her flank, just as Sunshine would have. The press of the opposing army was immediate, coming forward from all sides. I threw up a shield, holding them at bay for a moment while Sunset finished her spell, a large sphere of fire falling directly over us before she added her mana to my shield, covering us from all but the hot wash of air as the fireball detonated.

But for all the burnt corpses and piles of ash, more rushed in to fill the void.

“This is going to be a very long day,” she said, horn lighting up again as we were swallowed by the oncoming horde.

I watched the battle in the mirror as Cadence and Starlight reviewed a map and moved pieces on it, giving orders to be conveyed to the battlefield. I stretched my left foreleg out, working through the pain in the shoulder and stretching the scar tissue a little. I hated that Sunny was out there without me, but I knew she had all of our friends from both sides of the mirror with her.

I forced down a flash of anger at myself. She had warned me to stay together, but I had rushed off after a set of Earth Ponies because I was worried that our patrols wouldn’t have caught them. It had cost me a day in the medical ward and I was warned not to try to manifest my wings again or take my Midnight form for a few days.

The memory of the bolt ripping through the juncture of my wing replayed itself over and over in my mind. To take my mind off it I had pulled a few books of magic theory from the library, reading them over, finding the information enlightening.

“Do you need anything?” I hear a voice, looking up to see Sonata poking her head in. Her regular roostertail was missing, her mane loose down her neck and over her shoulder.

“No, thank you,” I said. “Are you ok?”

She fidgeted for a moment. “You were hurt pretty bad,” she started. “And now our friends are out there, and I’m afraid they won’t come back.”

I got up and moved over to her, hugging her. All the Sirens had warmed considerably since the incident with the Harpies. They were now part of my circle of friends, and I hated my friends worrying like this.

“It’s ok, Sonata,” I said as a flash of orange light from the mirror caught my eye, revealing Sunset and Twilight for a moment, their coats smoking.

“They’ll come back.”

I blinked the flash spots away as I shot a bolt of force forward, given us some clearance to take to the air again. Sunset’s horn never dimmed, though I could see mana drain beginning to build in her eyes. She shot out another lance of fire, giving some beleaguered EUP a chance to regroup.

“We can’t keep this up for long,” I called out, adding my own firepower to the assault, blasting a Pegasus from dive bombing AJ and Jackie. I saw diamond constructs both slicing through ranks and shielding medics as they ferried wounded from the lines.

“We have to,” she replied. “She can’t have an unlimited source of fighters. Eventually, they’ll burn out.”

We landed again, rotating in place as we fired beams of force and fire, clearing a large circle around my brother, Azure, Gleam, and the Apples.

“We ain’t gaining any ground,” AJ shouted, her armor scored and pitted. Jackie had a long scratch along her armor, bearing testament to how fierce the fight was getting. I saw out of the corner of my eye that the circle was drawing closed again. I set myself, wings spreading out of reflex.

“Just in case,” Azure said, rapier floating in front of her. “It’s been an honor, Princess. Both of you.”

The horde descended on us again, but just as we began striking a swath of them were blow away by a plummeting form. I had thought it was a Wonderbolt strafe, but the form didn’t pull up. Rather, is landed and fired a bolt from her horn, the teal blast momentarily blinding me. When my sight cleared, I grinned at the sight.

Princess Luna stood there, an axe worked with lunar images hovering in her mantic grasp. Her armor was reminiscent of the barding she had worn as Nightmare Moon, dark and simple. A trio of her personal guard landed around her, the Pegasi eyeing the undead as though personally insulted.

“Luna!” Sunset cried, the cry going up across the battlefield that the Princess of the Moon had joined the fray.

“A fine fight thou hast found, Twilight Sparkle, Sunset Shimmer,” she said, her axe cleaving through a hornless Unicorn and blasting a nearly featherless Pegasus from the air. “Mine sister has hastened to the palace to aid in the planning and my thestrals shall join us upon the setting of the sun.”

I grinned. The tide before us wasn’t any smaller, but the size of our arsenal had just grown.

“Aunt Celie!” Cadence cried as the Princess of the Sun entered the room, clad in armor with a broadsword along her barrel.

“Luna and I decided that we would be of more use here than watching the borders,” she said, nuzzling her niece as I and the Sirens bowed. “Well, Luna decided, and I decided to keep an eye on her. She’s at the front and I thought I’d help with planning a counteroffensive.”

The two princesses began discussing plans and strategies, but something began digging in the back of my mind. The mention of a counteroffensive had sparked a fragment of a memory, something important, but the more I groped for the thought the more elusive it became.

“Well, it’s nice to know that our odds went up,” Starlight said as she returned from fetching a meal for everyone. “Fortunately, they haven’t lost any ground, but they haven’t gained any either. It seems that the army was larger than we thought.”

“How are the mana converters holding out?” I asked, referring to the crystals that she, Sunset, Twilight and I had infused to redirect mana into flame spells.

“They seem to be holding up, but the mana ratio is off with some,” she sighed. “Just too many variables and not enough time to test.”

I nodded, the niggling thought slowly drifting to the front again. Something about crystals and mana. I heard Sunset’s voice for a moment, quiet and sleepy.

As above, so below.

Thaumaturgy, enchantment, whatever you called it, it dealt with transferring mana from one location to another, or from one thing to another.

I frowned, bringing the book I had read over to me again, pages flipping as it brought up a section on thaumaturgic rituals.

“Sunshine?” Starlight asked.

“Somethings not right,” I said. “There’s too many for her to be able to raise and control based on the Law of Thaumaturgic Decay.”

“The what?” Aria asked.

“It’s a law that states that any imbued item, be it a bracelet or a raised body, it takes more mana to create than it produces,” Starlight said, coming to look over my shoulder at the diagrams. “If she’s right than Sorla is breaking all kinds of magic laws.”

“I think she’s using crystals,” I said. “It’s been years since Sombra attempted to retake the Empire, but she waited till now to make her move. She likely used that time to store mana in batteries of some sort.”

“It’s possible,” Starlight said. “But the stockpile she’d need would be enormous and our scout reports haven’t revealed any.”

“I don’t think she’d be hauling them around,” I said, seeing a familiar thaumaturgic symbol. “I think she’s draining them from a distance.”

I laid the book down, showing the same circle that Twilight had tried drawing back in her lab at the castle in Ponyville.

Starlight looked at the diagram, then whirled and grabbed a map, laying it down next to the book. A quill flew over from a desk, and she began drawing lines on it.

“We’ve been trying to make sense of the patterns her patrols have been working,” She said, the quill flying feverishly across the map. “They didn’t adequately cover the land she had claimed for camp. There was a perimeter search, but the internal patrols were seemingly erratic.” She lowered the quill and turned the map to us. Precise lines of a thaumaturgic circle were now evident.

“She's turned the battlefield into one giant thaumaturgic circle,” she said. Grabbing the map and rushing to the war room to alert the Princesses.

I reached inside, pulling as much mana as I could and forced it through the bond with as much clarity as I could.

Sunny, it’s a trap!