Fire in the Leaves, Fire in the Mountains

Cadence coughed.  The fired had destroyed most of the royal palace, and Shining Armor had rallied what troops remained to help evacuate survivors.  She had seen her aunt take to the skies against the hideous dark interloper, and her new companion had fought valiantly against it, but with little success.  From her vantage point in the tower, she watched, helplessly as the titanic shapeshifting creature broke her sister's wing, and more importantly, her resolve.  Her mother had not returned yet, and although her sister was truly mighty, she was not infallible, as evidenced in her battle against the changeling queen.  Cadence herself was very young by alicorn standards, and knew that if she tried to join the fray, she would be torn to pieces.  So she watched on through her window as the terrible battle unfolded on one end near canterlot, and across her room, through another window, she could see the untempered schism of Discord's madness unfold upon the hapless citizens of ponyville.  The last time Discord had gotten out was bad enough; he'd imprisoned her mother and her aunt in a kaleidiscopic dimension of utter madness, and it was only through their own phenomenal resolve, and her mother's dark blue embrace that she and her mother had managed to stay sane.  She never knew if Celestia was there with them, and she didn't want to ask what she went through.  Her particular room and section of the castle had been spared the raging inferno that Celestia had become after seeing Twilight Sparkle so tragically struck down.  She closed her eyes, and began sobbing again. She was so young, mother; why did she have to die so suddenly?

Cadence sobbed in quiet anguish.  She understood why her mother had not been present for the majority of her wedding.  As much as she knew she loved her, she understood that with the incident leading up to the death of her father and her mother's transfiguration into Nightmare Moon, and her subsequent banishment, Luna had never known her daughter outside of her being an infant, as much as she intended on raising Cadence herself.  Her childhood (and extremely rapid growth to maturity, which is awkward for any pony, alicorn or otherwise), was spent with Celestia as her stepmother, and despite her assurances that her mother loved her very much, she had always resented Celestia for banishing her mother, however unintentional.  Celestia herself, although she never talked about it, was, according to her mother after the wedding, as barren as the face of the moon.  Her mother, before the reception, had pulled her aside to talk with her privately.  As much as she had wanted to attend the wedding, she simply wasn't ready to face the fact her daughter was getting married, after barely even getting to know her, which was hard enough.  Cadence's initial resentment to her mother's reticence to meet, talk, or spend any time intimately at all catching up, bonding, all the thing she'd expect her real mother to do, had been absent.  She had developed from confusion into dispair, and then into resentment, which had eventually allowed the powerful queen of the changelings to catch her off guard one night and imprison her.  Celestia's heart softened and broke down for her mother being genuinely overwhelmed with the world, with her family, and with finally being freed from the enslavement to her darker self she had been unable to free herself from.

As Cadence watched the battle make its way into the mountains, and the terrible destruction of her aunt driven mad by grief, her thoughts drifted to empathy of what kind of a toll time had exacted on her mother and her aunt.  Celestia told her, when she old enough to understand of course, that losing her husband, the late Prince Agravis, had pushed into madness after letting the jealousy of her sister that she had kept bottled up for so long stew inside.  When her mother had returned, the Elements of Harmony had shown what was in Celestia's heart to Nightmare moon, and the thousand years of regret and lamenting her sister had gone through, and how dearly she truly loved her sister.  That love had broken her psychological imprisonment, and obliterated the magical parasite that had been born of her mother's cold hatred of her sister. When it came to the wedding, Luna could do nothing but dispair for her late husband, and the years lost with her daughter.  She surmised it was this distress and all the stress of the royal wedding, the threats made against the crown, that had made her obsessively meticulous aunt blind to the threat from within, and the emotional distraction of luna, the wedding party, compounded with her own softness from years of being the benevolent monarch, and not the terrifying Avatar of the Sun her now long-dead enemies had known her to be.

Luna's heartfelt apology and reconciliation prior to the reception had given her a glimpse into the power she wielded with her husband, and the untapped potential she had as an alicorn.  Her love she felt every day seeing Shining armor was put to shame in her mother's uncontrollable sobbing as she wept for joy for her daughter, and moreover how powerful she was to become as a future ruler of equestria.  Cadence had a gift was more valuable than even the raising of the moon and sun; the ability to bring people together in harmony.  Her mother told her this and more, and as she lay her her embrace, having her hair stroked, feeling her cold, silver tears fall onto her face, she finally understood how much her mother loved her; and she knew, that even when her husband passed away from the inevitable march of old age, her mother would love her so strongly as to give all of eternity to her in a love so all-encompassing, that she would never truly understand it until she had children of her own.

Cadence shook out of her reverie as she saw her mother and an especially large...and strange looking, to say the least...colt burst into view through a green flame erupting from the ground.  Her mother cried out as she saw Twilight, and ran over to the lavender unicorn's body, sobbing on the ground.  Cadence fought back tears unsuccessfully, and watched as the truly gigantic colt made his way over to the body.  After whispering something into her mother's ear and placing his hoof on her shoulder, Cadence watched in amazement as she saw the strange colt close his eyes, and brought Twilight back from the dead.  Who is he that he wields such *POWER*??? she asked herself with incredulity, not quite sure what she was seeing.  She retreated from her telescope, and blinked several times after sitting down to consider what she had seen.  Celestia's companion, while he seemed immensely powerful in combat and in general magic casting, did become severely injured after her sister's sudden titanic burst of power, and seemed to be unconscious, as he had gotten up briefly, then collapsed again.  Getting up again, she stopped in her tracks as she suddenly took in all the devastation her sister had caused.  The sky was still blood-red for whatever reason involving Celestia's transfiguration, but despite this she could still easily see that where there was once a picturesque mountain range obscuring her view of the horizon beyond her window, a significant portion of it had been leveled.   Instead of the morning sun, the horrific blackness had begun to cover a significant portion of the horizon in her view, and she gulped as she saw the inferno that was Celestia go out and become replaced by a dull, golden glimmer.

Twilight Sparkle stumbled up upon shaky footing, and looked off into the distance.  A red light had blazed into existence towards where her mentor was fighting, and she sensed the rage and utterly sickening evil that came from the vast plume of magic that had erupted.  Something...strange...stirred deep inside her.  She looked over at Luna, and saw her looking back, astonishingly, at Cadence, who had emerged from the castle and flown down to see them.  As she alighted upon the ground, Cadence was about to say something when Luna put up a hoof and silenced her.  Luna turned to Twilight with a look of such fierce intensity, such uncharacteristic resoluteness that Twilight promptly sat down in awe at a Princess who she now saw truly for the first time.  Thousands of years of loss, pain, and fierce, determined love and the will to fight to any lengths to preserve that love was etched in her face and overwhelming stare.

"The Elements are fractured.  Discord has brought his chaos to divide us and Luvaeis has brought his malevolence to end us, and bring all that we know to die.  There is something that can be done to save all of us, to defeat both of them in an instant, but I need you to bring back my sister, and I need you to know how much you love her.  A moment will come soon when each of us will stand on the precipice of losing who we hold most dear to us, and in that single, paramount moment a decision will be made by each of the Element holders.  They will choose between the finality of their own darkness, or the love that makes them whole, and defines each and every one of us.  In that single, crucial moment, they will realize their full potential as an element bearer, and the power that will be wielded by all of you, and all of us, will be enough to destroy this menace once and for all.  Go to my sister now."

Twilight blinked, and in a moment understood.  Cadence's power in expelling the Changelings, the way the elements had affected Nightmare Moon and Discord each time they were used.

Fluttershy was terrified.  Discord had obviously returned from his imprisonment, and hordes of rabbits with unnaturally long legs, and ferocious squads of large ducks with cleats stomped about around.  The sun had stayed its unnatural red color, and gave everything a far more sinister tint that the otherwise whimsical scene would normally permit.  Liira was still sleeping soundly, and despite the occasional explosion in the distance, and gigantic birds making low-flying passes at her cottage, rattling the cottage, she was snoring peacefully.  Fluttershy squeaked as she heard a loud knocking on her door, and immediately hid under the covers. "FLUTTERSHY HELP ME! PLEASE OPEN THE DOOR!!!" She heard a panicked Rainbow Dash outside, yelling very loudly. "PLEASE! THEY'RE COMING! HURRYYYY!!!!" Fluttershy swallowed her fear, and forced the resolve she had taught herself to surface.  She galloped over to the door, and opened it, expecting her friend to bowl her over.  Hearing or feeling nothing, she opened her eyes and looked around.  She didn't like what she saw.

To her horror, Rainbow Dash had a lot of her once multi-chromatic mane chewed away, as well as a good portion of her fur, and some of her flesh.  She was screaming and thrashing wildly at a number of sharp-toothed chickens that had been chewing on her, and dodging her kicks to bite very painfully.  Rainbow Dash looked at her friend, pleadingly. "HELP ME PLEASE OH GOD IT HURTS SO MUCH!!!" Fighting the urge to pass out, she again steeled herself. "HEY!!!" she yelled loudly, with her best Stare face on.  The chickens immediately stopped biting Rainbow Dash, and looked at her.

"YOU LEAVE MY FRIEND ALONE, YOU BAD, BAD BIRDS!!! HOW DARE YOU ATTACK SOMEPONY LIKE THAT! YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES!!!" Fluttershy felt something...unpleasant and angry well up inside her.  She had felt something similar when she'd stared down the Cockatrice, but this was...different.  "YOU'RE HORRIBLE, ATTACKING SOMEPONY LIKE THAT, YOU SHOULDN'T BE HERE AT ALL, TERRIBLE, DISGUSTING THINGS!!!" She was shrieking now, and she felt her rage come up through her normally calm, kind heart.  It felt as if a dam inside her was breaking, an unbearable pressure was mounting. This isn't right...they did something wrong, but look at what you're doing! you're hurting them, please stop! A part of her was wailing in the distance, and she saw the chickens bleeding out of their eyes, ears and mouths, staring at her with a blank, terrified expression that transcended any fear she had ever felt. "YOU SHOULD JUST GO AWAY, YOU HORRIBLE, AWFUL THINGS! YOU SHOULD DIE FOR WHAT YOU DID! I WANT YOU DEAD YOU SHOULD SUFFER AND DIE!!! DIE!!!!!"  She couldn't believe what she was saying.

She didn't want them to die despite what they'd done to her best friend, and she was horrified that she couldn't control her rage.

A red haze began to cloud the corners of her vision, worse than anything she had experienced before, and in a small, sliver of understanding, she recognized the chickens that had attacked her friend were her pets, Patricia and Annette, that she had helped raise ever since she settled here with Angel.  She saw the horror and terror in their eyes as they cried tears of blood, and suddenly, the dam inside her broke.  She stumbled as she felt a torrent of black magic, a malevolence that she had kept kept contained in a small, dark corner of her heart burst free, along with all the horrible memories of her childhood that she had forced herself to forget.  Fluttershy was crying black tears from black eyes, and watched helplessly as the weight of her suffering physically ripped apart the animals she had called her friends.  The blackness pooled about her, and she wailed in a mix of dispair and rage. She looked at Rainbow Dash.  Her friend was no longer panicked, and instead of the revulsion, confusion ro disbelief she was expecting she saw...compassion.  She saw in her gaze a clear, utter understanding of every moment of pain she had gone through in her life, of her abuse by her parents and peers, her other friends or lovers that had come and gone, and left their indelible blackness on her soul that she had hidden away.

Kill her.

NO OH GOD NO PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME DO THIS

The blackness that was now pouring out of her eyes and mouth, pooling on the ground like so much ink was speaking in her head, whispering its wrath and malevolence

KILL HER NOW.  THEY ALL DESERVE TO DIE.  EVERY SINGLE CREATURE ON THIS ROTTEN EARTH THAT YOU HAVE MET IN YOUR ROTTEN EXISTENCE DESERVES TO PERISH IN AGONY.

NOT RAINBOW! SHE'S NEVER HURT ME, SHE LOVES ME! SHE-

YOU WILL KILL HER!!! YOU WILL REND THE FLESH FROM HER BODY AND EAT IT!!! YOU WILL DO THIS OR I WILL MURDER EVERYTHING YOU LOVE AND BRING IT BACK JUST TO HURT IT AGAIN! DO IT NOW

NO I WILL NOT!

WHY??? WHY WON'T YOU KILL HER YOU STUPID, USELESS MARE???

BECAUSE I LOVE HER!!!!

The world exploded in light, and she saw Rainbow Dash, holding her tight and telling her that everything was going to be all right.  She gasped as she felt the darkness she had held inside her for so long become purged in blaze of magic that dwarfed anything she had ever felt before.  Her butterfly necklace, the Element of Kindness, seared into existence around her neck, and she gasped as she felt the whole of existence open up before her heart, and the immense weight of the knowledge of every bearer of the element of kindness stretching back past the very origin of their world.  At the end of the line, past the countless faces of ponies, she saw the ebon form of a titanic mare rise, and greet her gaze.  She felt the weight of infinity upon her mind, and in the instant it became too much to bear, that the unbearable enormity of what was thrust upon her with her purging became too much, it was lifted from her.  She opened her eyes, and saw Rainbow Dash staring back at her, her hair a dazzling display of lights and colors, spreading out like rainbows across a thousand worlds.  Her fur sparkled like sapphire waters, and in an instant, when she opened her eyes and saw her, she could see her as nothing else other than the ethreal goddess before her, and her necklace with the element of loyalty blazing a bright red.

A low rumbling reverberated throughout the desert, and Celestia watched in terror as cracks appeared beneath the ground, sand pouring down into deep chasms.  A violent, head-splitting shriek of outrage shattered what few mountains and bluffs surrounded them, and slowly, Celestia looked up into the glaring red light that spilled out across the desert and sky, blotting out her sun.

A blazing crimson eye appeared above her, crackling with red lightning, and the black chasm surrounding it seemed to suck the very color out of the sky, as well as the air rushing into the void where it led to.  Wearily, Celestia tried unsuccessfully to regain her footing and collapsed on the sand beneath her.  That last attack had left her completely spent; she could barely even move.

She rested her head down upon the sand, waiting for the inevitable. So this is how I die...