Author's Note

The Battle of Canterlot, Part 1

The Minotaurs charged, and a large chunk of the Maulers began to zoom towards the castle in their smoky tendrils. The Minotaurs were slowed, however, by the suits of armor that were standing guard at the entrance to the city. They brought their large axes down on the suits, which occasionally would deflect the blow and counterattack. The others were cleaved in two.

At the castle, Glynn turned to the princesses, who were still slightly put off from how easily the protective bubble fell.

"Get to the throne room - you won't be out of the fight there, but you won't be in it," Glynn shouted. "Make it a temporary infirmary."

Celestia and Luna narrowed their eyes at the same time. "We will not sit idly by while you fight!" Celestia said heatedly. "Do not forget that we are princesses. My sister and I know ponies that are much more suited to infirmary work than we are. Lulu, gather Miss Rarity and Miss Fluttershy and assign them the infirmary task."

"My apologies," Glynn said sheepishly.

"Nonetheless, it would be good for us to stay inside so as to keep it well defended," Celestia responded quickly, eyeing the approaching Maulers. "Now, I must get going. Best of luck, Glynn." Once she left, Glynn whipped out his wand and faced the oncoming storm.

Those Maulers were now very close... his pupils dilated.

"INCOMING!!" he bellowed, and shot a spell at one of the tendrils of smoke. The spell connected with it, making it materialize back into a Mauler. He hit the ground limply, bouncing painfully over the ground.

There were more shouts and hollers from the Hippogriffs and Changelings, who were positioned in the courtyard due to their magical and/or flying capabilities. Curses rained down from above as the Maulers blasted through ornate archways that lined it. Huge craters were blasted in the pavement, sending Hippogriffs and Changelings alike flying in all directions.

"Get inside!!" bellowed Glynn, throwing open the doors while trying to curse as many Maulers out of the air as possible.

Whatever the non-humans expected the battle to be, it clearly wasn't this. They seemed dazed by the massive amount of destruction in just a short time. They hurried into the castle in a half-daze.

Meanwhile, in the rafters, Joey had heard the sounds of battle commencing. He walked closer to Jo-Ann, who had the bag full of Horcruxes. Naiose had Starswirl's Journal, and the three friends had been planning on where they should combine all of the Horcruxes when the sloped roof to Naiose's left exploded in a flurry of timber and stone shards.

His friend whipped out his wand as a Mauler emerged from the dust. He cursed aside one of the guard pegasi that had accompanied them up to the rafter, then shot another at Naiose, who blocked it with a swift swiping motion. Jo-Ann cursed the Mauler from the side, and he tumbled backwards out of his own hole. Several squads of the Unicorn Guard charged into the room to assist the three friends with the oncoming horde of enemies.

When the first Mauler emerged through the hole, he was immediately blasted away by a beam from one of the guards. Two more landed, then suddenly, there were three Maulers there. The unicorn guards held their own, however; due to their ability to use magic, they were able to keep them at bay.

"We can't stay here!" Joey cried out to Jo-Ann and Naiose, blasting a Mauler out of his way. "We have to destroy the Horcruxes!!"

Naiose fought his way through the crowd to Joey. "Do you think the guards can hold their own?" he asked at a shout.

"Yes, I'm positive! Jo-Ann! JO-ANN!"

His girlfriend clutched his arm. "I'm right here - what's the problem?"

"We have to leave!" Joey replied, pulling her through the crowd after Naiose. "We need to take care of the Horcruxes!"

"What about the guards?!"

"They'll manage!" Joey shouted back irritably. "We can help them later! Let's go!!"

The three friends sprinted through the crowd towards the stairs, blasting aside Maulers as they went. Before long, they had reached the stairs unnoticed because of the commotion. Joey ushered them down, keeping watch just in case someone decided to attack. Seeing no one, he followed his friends.

The hallways below were empty, but quaked slightly as spells from the outside hit the castle. Shouts, hollers, and crackling sounds of spells being fired echoed around the place ominously.

"C'mon... finding an empty room shouldn't be too hard," Joey muttered to his friends, and they ran down the hall until they found a small door on the left. Joey walked up to it and edged it open. It was a spare bedroom, and it was completely empty.

"Perfect," Joey heard Jo-Ann say from behind him. "There's enough space..."

"Yeah," Naiose agreed, then turned to her. "What did Glynn tell us to do again when we had all of them?"

"Place them in a circle, I think," Jo-Ann murmured.

"Nice. Real helpful," Joey said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

Naiose walked up to the bookshelf that sat against the opposite wall from them. He perused the titles, looking like he had seen something there and was trying to confirm it. When he had reached the left side of the bottom shelf, he paused.

"Huh," he said. "That did say Horcruxes. Maybe this book will help?" He held it up for the other two to see. The title read, Horcruxes: A History and Their Actualities.

"How in the world did the ponies get their hands - I mean, hooves - on this??" Jo-Ann asked indignantly.

Joey looked around the room, squinting. Something about the scent in the air was familiar... he walked over to a cabinet and opened it. Nothing but a small mirror was inside. He moved on to the next one, and found nothing. The search proved fruitless until he checked a drawer in the bedside table.

There sat a lonely picture. He picked it up, blew the dust off of it, and studied it. It was a photo of his father, his mother, and himself all at a Colorado Rapids game... his favorite soccer team. How old was he when the picture was taken? Fourteen, maybe?

As he stared at the photo, the words that came out of his mouth next were automatic. "This was the room my dad stayed in when you came to Equestria for the first time."

"Oh..." Jo-Ann said quietly, gauging Joey's reaction. "Oh wow. That explains the Horcrux book."

"Uh, guys?" Naiose said impatiently. "Look, I know that this is weird for you, but can we please hurry this up? We don't exactly have hours to do this."

"Yeah - you're right," Joey said curtly, brushing off his friend's inconsiderate behavior. They had a huge task at hand, after all. "Jo, can you pull out the Horcruxes? Let's start by placing them in a circle, like Glynn told us to."

Before long, they had set out four the five Horcruxes in a near-perfect circle, with one gap left for the last one, which happened to be Queen Marinia's Breastplate. The moment Joey placed the Breastplate in the last spot, all the Horcruxes began to shiver, quaking on the ground magically. Each of them shot a beam of pitch black energy towards the center of the circle. In then place where all the beams met, a large sphere of the same energy swelled up in the center. An eerie howling sound filled the room, but nothing else happened.

After a couple of minutes of nothing, Joey murmured, "Well. That was anticlimactic."

Naiose laughed, then started searching through the pages of the book he had found. He grunted, then closed the book with a snap. "Nothing," he said.

"You didn't even give a proper look," Jo-Ann said irritably. "Here, give me that."

Naiose handed over the book to her, and she herself began to look through it. Every now and then, she frowned, but after a long moment of silence she grinned.

"Here it says that the only way a Horcrux can be destroyed is by the special touch of its creator. There's a spell here, too..." The smile fell off of her face into a look of absolute hopelessness as she read back over the sentence. "Oh, no... Lord Valkaris has to be the one to destroy them."

Lord Valkaris has to destroy them, Joey repeated in his mind with dread settling in his stomach. Wait. Lord Valkaris... himself...

"Do people who share souls count?" he asked quickly.

Jo-Ann and Naiose immediately perked up. "I - I don't know! Try it!" Jo-Ann urged eagerly.

"Okay - uh... what do I do?" Joey asked, eyeing the magic spectacle on the floor.

"Try touching the ball of energy," Naiose suggested.

"WHAT!?" Joey yelped. "Are you mad??"

"Just do it," Naiose said impatiently.

Joey hesitated, then stepped up to the shaking circle of Horcruxes in front of him. He knelt down and rested his eyes on the dark sphere of pulsing energy. He took a deep breath, then plunged his hand into it.

He expected to feel a searing, burning sensation, but was thrown off completely when a stingy, icy cold pressed in on his hand from all sides. He yelped, but it was lost in the shrill shriek that sent knives through their eardrums. As soon as he placed his hand within the sphere, his chest erupted into a roaring pain.

The horrible scream of Lord Valkaris issued from each of the Horcruxes in the circle as each of them began to shrivel up slowly and turn into a black color. They continued to do this until they all resembled raisin-esque objects. When they had become that way, the black energy faded, and a soft wail echoed throughout the room. The Horcruxes were no more.

Joey doubled over in pain and clenched his eyes, submitting to the vision that loomed over him.

"My lord!!" cried a Mauler as Joey slowly got to his feet. He was standing on a high rise that gave him a view of the entire city of Canterlot, which was nearly completely drenched in flames. He did not pay this much attention, however; he had blacked out terribly and painfully - why??

"M-My lord! Are you alright?" the Mauler said warily. "Do you need help g -"

"I do not require assistance, Claudier," Joey snarled in his cold, high pitched voice. "I am merely feeling my power return to me... destroying the protective shield over the city was, I must admit, quite taxing."

The Mauler retreated back into the crowd, and Joey looked back upon the nearly ruinous city below him. He smirked as a slight feeling of satisfaction came to him, but he felt a foreign emotion become dominant in his core - anxiety. Of course he had lied to his Mauler - the idea of magic leaving him in the first place was absurd. But why did he black out? He had his Horcruxes, didn't he, safely inside of him?

... Or were they?

No... it would not matter what the location of the Horcruxes were. Surely the boy wouldn't know of them - his worst enemy as well as danger. No - he would think that Horcruxes are merely a fairy tale spun up by that miserable witch, J.K. Rowling. Would he?

A sickening image of the boy's father swam into view.

He had forgotten about the boy's father... maybe he had let something slip to the self-righteous man before his death?

He hoped dearly that this wasn't the case - but just to be sure, he needed the boy dead - and soon.

Joey awoke from his vision and looked at his two friends, alarmed.

"He's figuring it out, I think," Joey said breathlessly. "Now he wants me dead even more... I think he's onto us!"

"We need to get out of here," Jo-Ann replied. "We were assigned to help fight - now we have to hold up our end of the bargain."

A loud BOOM echoed from above, unsettling dust that lay on the ornate crystal chandelier above. The three friends exchanged worried glances, then departed the room quickly.

The hallway was now a whole new world. A huge chunk of the wall opposite of them had been blown away, revealing the open air from outside beyond. There was frantic clopping as Rarity dashed past, levitating a mangled griffon on a stretcher. To their left, Maulers were charging around the corner, and all that stood between them and the three friends were Twilight, Celestia and Shining Armor, all of whom were soiled from battle.

As a Mauler narrowly missed Celestia's head with a curse, Joey sent another down at the aggressor, who had to dive out of the way.

"Nice of you to join us!" Twilight said through grit teeth, blasting a lavender beam of magic down the hallway. She hit a Minotaur squarely in the chest, sending him backward into a wall, which crumbled from the impact.

"Sorry! We were a little bust doing saving-the-world stuff!" Joey replied, swiftly blocking an approaching curse as he began to battle side by side with his friends and the princesses.

"And what would that be?" Twilight asked, hopping to one side to avoid a curse before retaliating.

"Just destroying fragments of Valkaris's soul," Joey shouted in a conversational voice. "I can explain later if we get through this!"

"Less talking, more fighting!" Shining Armor shouted.

They held their ground for a while, forcing Maulers and Minotaurs alike under cover. Mostly just the Minotaurs, however, since their axes and swords were no match for magic.

"You can do better than that, Rosery!! Were'n't you put in charge of the Hippogriffs?" Naiose taunted, easily avoiding a curse from the said Mauler. He sent one back at the man, making him spin out of the way. His hood fell down, revealing a skinny man with pale blonde hair.

Rosery sent another curse at Naiose as a diversion, then immediately, shot a spell at the ceiling. It exploded upon contact, raining the entire corridor in large stones and rubble. Twilight pulled Joey out of the way of a column that surely would have squashed him only moments before.

The cave-in separated the evil forces from the good ones for the most part. A large pile of marble and foundation rose nearly to the top of the corridor, which now had a massive hole in the ceiling. The sound of people scrambling over rocks could be heard from the other side.

"Is everyone okay??" Joey shouted, and looked around him. There was Twilight, Celestia, Shining, Jo-Ann - but where was Naiose?

"Naiose!" Joey called, feeling a horrible feeling rise in his gut. "Naiose! Where are you?"

He took a step forward and nearly tripped over something soft. That something soft sputtered as his foot made light contact with it. Joey looked down and felt his insides vanish.

Naiose, half-buried under rubble, was covered in scratches and bruises. He coughed up some blood as Joey knelt down next to him, hardly believing his eyes.

"Heh... was a good show, wasn't it?" his friend asked thickly, looking at him with his one good eye.

"Naiose, no - no, don't you dare!" Joey said in a mad panic, trying to wipe blood off of his friend's face with the sleeve of his robe. "Stay with me, buddy!"

"Heh... good show... too bad..." Naiose laughed, then coughed terribly, getting even more blood on his face. "To bad I can't see... how this ends..."

Joey's best friend for life looked up at the hole in the ceiling and moved no more.