Author's Note

(Doing quick recaps by request)
Last time:
Crater Cemetery and Nightmare Moon assault Rarity's castle, occupied by the Bloodstorm Cartel, in an attempt to stop Eclipse from casting the Azoth spell. Eclipse and Sonata, protected from Nightmare Moon by the bad luck from the lucky coin, attempt to hold Nightmare Moon off until the spell is ready.
Coco, under the influence of a dive, leads Rarity back to the castle to collect something important.

Ghosts 10: The Ghost Identity

Within an eyeshot of the castle once more, Rarity could see the ghosts swarming the facility. Ice assailed Rarity’s home from every side, battering the walls to the point she worried she’d need to find a new place to live after all this.

Part of her wanted to root for the cartel, beating them back as best they could, the only real hope the castle had at staying intact now. But she had more important concerns.

One of Dust’s companions was psychic. He was a stocky little fellow with a crooked face, though not as crooked as Rarity initially assumed. He’d been wincing this whole time from some extrasensory overload that got only worse the closer they came to the castle.

“There’s something really bad just a little bit south of here,” he said. “A hell of a lot worse than a specter.”

Everypony thought it but none of them wanted to say the likely culprit. Nightmare Moon. In any capacity, that would be an unwinnable fight.

“Is it moving?” Dust asked.

“No. It’s been in one spot for a while now.” He shook his head and then winced in sudden pain. “Gack! No, there it goes… just a little at a time.”

So they at least had some time.

“Even with my leg busted like this,” Dust moved her right foreleg in a wide circle. “I’m pretty sure I can get us in and out of there before whatever it is shows up.”

She certainly didn’t move like it was ‘busted’ but it looked in wretched condition. The fur all along it had been burnt off and the revealed skin was bruised and crooked. Rarity imagined the limb had fractured and Dust simply had the mental fortitude to fight it anyway.

“I’m still not sure if going inside is part of the plan,” Rarity cautioned.

Dust stopped a moment before turning to Rarity, more annoyed at having to remember she existed than anything else.

“What plan?”

“Coco’s plan.”

Though all this certainly looked like enough chaos for Coco to work with, but she was just standing there and had been for some time. Was she even looking at anything, her gaze was more beyond the castle than at it.

“Coco is just standing there!” Dust grabbed Coco and jostled her so violently it would have made poor Coco cry were she more herself. Yet Coco Pummel just stood there, looking up at some exact point of the castle with that intense stare.

“She’s waiting for something.”

“This ain’t a good place for waiting. I’m not a waiting type of pony. And your friends got what? An hour before she comes off her high?” Dust moved her hooves from one side to another as if dragging and dropping Coco into the castle. “We drag Coco inside the castle and force her to do whatever she’s gonna do. I’ve seen ponies on dive before. Sometimes they just do stupid, useless things and you gotta step in yourself.”

Rarity frowned at Dust’s retort. She hadn’t been expecting any kind of reason from such an unreasonable pony. Lightning Dust had always struck her as little more than a ruffian. But Rarity supposed even a pony like her needed some tactical sense to keep a head on her shoulder.

“No. They only ever seem to be doing useless things,” Rarity watched Coco carefully. “You just can’t follow their logic. And the problem with yours is that we don’t know what we’re looking for. Going into the castle might be going away from it. She brought us back here not in there. We may break in, as you propose, only for our objective to emerge in this very spot.”

Dust moved her head from side to side, seriously considering Rarity’s words. Then she did the last thing Rarity would have expected and acquiesced to Rarity’s logic.

“Alright! Then let’s think. Name me the three most important things that are or could be in there.” Dust jerked her head toward the castle. “If we’re stuck on this spot then we might as well do something useful here.”

Rarity hesitated to answer, not because she couldn’t list any, but because she was talking to Dust. On the one side, it seemed strange to be brainstorming anything with such a brute. On the other, Rarity didn’t like divulging anything to her either.

Really, what was Rainbow Dash thinking?

“For one, there is Twilight’s house,” said Rarity. “Any number of magical objects could be in there. I never cataloged half of it. I assume they’d have taken some of it out, but there must be more in there that is too dangerous to move or seems to have no apparent value.”

“For my part,” Blueblood spoke up, “I assumed Coco was after some piece of equipment Rarity had. There’s all manner of machinery in there and the Mad Science Cartel would do everything in their power not to destroy it.”

He could only turn up his hoof.

“And a third?” Dust asked.

“An alicorn feather,” said Rarity. As the words left her lips, she almost believed that had to be it. It would certainly be the most dramatic answer to the question. But she needed to keep her head cooler until some actual evidence prevailed. “From the queen of light.”

Dust and her ponies grew quiet at the mention of an alicorn feather.

“You don’t suppose the Cartel got a hold of that, do you?” Blueblood asked.

“We hid it as best we could,” said Rarity. “I suppose a pony like Auntie Eclipse might have found it. I know for a fact there are ways to detect ‘alicorn magic’ or whatever it is.”

“Yeah, Allgood had one when he hired me.” Dust crossed her forelegs in deep thought.

“When he hired you to brutalize a child,” Rarity said more bluntly but more honestly.

“I beat up a lot of ponies. They can’t all be adults.”

“Why that’s! How can you say something like that?”

“Listen, I gotta do what I gotta do because ponies like you can’t follow the rules and make problems.” Dust jabbed a hoof at Rarity’s chest.

“If that’s the way you see it then I’m perfectly fine with you leaving.” Rarity stood her ground. “I never needed or wanted your help with what ‘you gotta do’. Honestly, I don’t know why Rainbow Dash would send the likes of you. What did she even say to you?”

That finally shut her up. Whatever the answer, Dust didn’t want to say it out loud. Dash did have a way…

“Well,” the short buck interrupted them. “I’m just here 'cause Flash Bang was kind of an idiot and a coward and Dash kind of isn’t. If nothing else.”

Both turned to him and gave a simultaneous and unenthusiastic ‘thanks’.

“Look. What I meant to say is this,” said Dust. “Can your friend not make an alicorn detector or something? They clearly exist.”

“She likely already has that ability,” said Rarity. “The only hard part will be getting us to understand where it is, if that’s what she’s trying to do, so pay close attention to anything Coco says to you.”

There was a sudden motion about the attackers. As though swept by a wind, they swirled, then retreated. Everypony paused and looked on, knowing that had to be a terrible sign.

Aether took the shape of something enormous, towering over the castle in the distance just behind it. Rarity had to crane her neck up to discern what it could be.

A phantom mountain? It certainly appeared stone, albeit ethereal, glowing rock still visible in the night…

No! As soon as Rarity felt the ground tremble, she knew what it was!

“Is that a bucking volcano?” Dust’s short friend called out what was now obvious.

Another specter had broken its seal and summoned a volcano, one no doubt about to explode and obliterate the entire area!

And it was at that moment Coco charged past the short pony and towards the castle. He looked at her, then to Dust, mortified by the implications of that.

“Are we running toward the volcano? You people know what a volcano is, right?”

“She must see something we don’t! It will work out!” Rarity ran after Coco.

“I ain’t gonna look yellow in front of these ponies,” said Dust and went after her.

The short pony was the last to follow, but follow he did as the ground began to quake as the castle fast approached. It would mean certain death unless…

Hissteria saw a group of ponies approaching across the now-empty field. It wasn’t easy to make out in the dark, but he could guess who was leading them.

“They’re coming back?! What is wrong with those ponies?”

King Cobra swung the rocket launcher down at the incoming ponies, but Hissteria stopped her.

“Don’t! If we miss a single specter it’s over!” At least he hoped Rarity wasn’t going to suicide bomb the castle.

Hissteria stood on top of the highest tower with four of his best ponies. They had no time to fight off the ghosts that tried to topple it from every direction, he had a dozen or so more at lower points fighting them off. The five on top had another mission.

An all-out attack from Crater Cemetery was the worst-case scenario. They were prepared for a few ghosts, but not this many. The walls and barriers around the castle would do nothing to protect them against this enemy. They could come from any direction, even below.

Worse, they had several ponies capable of destroying the entire facility in a single blow. Hissteria wasn’t sure why all the specters weren’t unleashing the echoes of their disasters all at once, he’d never fought against more than one before. There must have been some reason, but it seemed they could unleash one approximately every fifteen minutes. At least, that was the trend so far.

Almost everypony remained downstairs in the main hall. That was where the nexus had been set up. When the time came, Eclipse would channel the energies from their six artifacts of power to cast the azoth spell– their only hope of getting out of this alive.

The wind alone forced them to keep their heads down, to say nothing of the constant pelting of ice and lightning. Just the ambient chill brought this place to the level of a brutal winter and the cold cut to the bone when a ghost got anywhere close.

Only occasionally could they peak out to try and assess the situation and even then a terrible swirling fog covered the area such that Hissteria had to rely on the psychic perception of his comrades to pull through.

The fighting was growing too intense, the kind of battle Hissteria knew they couldn’t win and thus tried to avoid fighting at all costs. But it was a battle they’d have to fight somewhere eventually, and the reward of having access to the new government of the pirate coast and Everfree combined was simply too great to ignore.

Speaking of, Batton landed up the stairs, taking a tone of no time to waste. However bad it was up here, it’d be worse down there.

“Why are all of your best over here?” Batton demanded. “If the nexus is destroyed it’s all over.”

“And if just one specter gets their seal to activate then the nexus and all of us are gone!” Hissteria shouted back. “Did you not notice that?!”

He gestured briefly to the actual volcano behind them. Batton looked up at it with a frown. The tremors it sent out must have been unnoticeable through all the commotion.

As a matter of course, he got a chance to prove the point. King Cobra finally managed to spot where the specter behind this was, swinging the rocket launcher around toward the enemy. Hissteria saw them, hiding behind a wall of ice.

As far as Hissteria was aware, she was the strongest psychic in this place. Even then, it was all the kid could manage to keep watch on the five or six specters in this place, trying to scope out which would try next.

Also alongside Hissteria were three of his best snipers, all equipped with their most accurate guns. Most importantly, they were loaded up with special enchanted bullets, designed specifically for ghost busting. These bullets were rarely used as slicing off the limbs of ghosts did far more damage than targeting non-existent organs and blunt damage only stunned them. But when your objective was to stun them…

Cobra fired off the rocket. There was no time to wait for it to demolish the wall. All three snipers and Hissteria fired at once, relying on psychic perception to land the hit. The sound of the volcano behind them grew enormous, flooding everything else out. The rocket ruptured the barrier and then…

Though he couldn’t tell which shot connected, he knew somepony had done it. In an instant, the volcano behind them vanished and the relative silence of the wind took over.

Now he saw that specter reeling and clutching its head. The smoke had been blown aside in moments.

It wasn’t enough to kill them, sadly, but a major blow to the head like that at just the right time could disrupt their attack all the same. Normally, a specter wouldn’t be able to use their seal again for days, but Hissteria couldn’t tell if it’d be shorter or longer if he interrupted like this.

The ghosts learned after the first time, erecting a wall of ice to try and protect the second specter. The high-powered rockets they got from the Mad Science Cartel punched a hole through that. The game of cat and mouse would continue. He’d have to guess what their next trick would be and guess right.

Batton Pass hadn’t waited around to tell them to carry on, she was already gone. Hissteria growled to himself. He’d missed his chance to warn her about Rarity and couldn’t possibly spare a single pony for even a minute. The ghosts were already coming back.

Perhaps it was for the best she didn’t see what happened next. King Cobra nearly collapsed back under cover instead of ducking away from the return fire. Normally unfazed by anything, a kid who barely reacted to the death of her own parents, she now clenched her teeth and trembled before regaining her Barings. The other, weaker psychics showed signs of nausea as well, though less so.

Something was coming… any psychic who got too close to Crater Cemetery had convulsions and began to vomit uncontrollably, the stronger the worse. It’d only be so long until King Cobra was unable to act.

Hopefully, Eclipse wouldn’t let it come to that, and could keep whatever approached at bay just a little longer.

The position became unsurvivable and Eclipse gave a great leap back. Too many attacks came from too many directions, obliterating the ground Eclipse had just stood upon. Even then, Eclipse was forced into repeated leaps as the shadows tried to close in around her.

Nightmare Moon now spread out like a hydra, slowly trying to encircle Eclipse's position again and again. She had just gotten out of such a half-circle and now that wall stood before her a good distance.

And that monster truly could have crushed her just then, the desire to avoid Sonata’s destruction alone gave her a path out. Keeping that banshee alive had been her best idea today. Eclipse could avoid any truly destructive attacks by holding Sonata close, but if the heads of this hydra managed to surround her, to separate the two, it would be over all too soon.

“Unfortunately we are losing ground, slowly,” said Eclipse as she finally landed in a relatively safe area.

A fighting, stalling retreat was the best Eclipse could manage. Despite all this, she knew not to give one hundred percent at any given moment.

This manner of confrontation was one that fell out of favor with Eclipse some time ago. Her body was already starting to show signs of fatigue while the enemy appeared to only grow stronger with every attack.

Slow, delay, distract.

As the black hydra once again began to charge and spread out, Eclipse readied her most reliable defense. Timeless Ground, placing the grains of sand in front of her into a stasis then, surrounding each one with a micro-shield, lifted them all into the air. An observer wouldn’t have even noticed the barrier of dust rising in such a windstorm.

With reckless abandon, not at all something Eclipse would expect from a god, the nightmare slammed into her defense. A brief second and it looked like her spell had worked, a flash in which everything around her stood still. Every head froze. Sonata looked up at the towering monstrosity with amazement that Eclipse had stalled it in its tracks.

One. Two. Three.

Something was wrong!

Eclipse began erecting as many barriers of as many different kinds as she could in that time. In those next five seconds, she brought out seven! Each was the sort she wouldn’t expect any normal pony to be able to break through.

By some means, Nightmare Moon overcame the stasis and came tumbling clumsily forward. Without even trying, it had torn through the rest with such ferocity that Eclipse got hardly a clue as to which sort of shield was best.

But there was something she could use here. That it always rushed forward without any worry, like a foal with a gun and a false sense of invincibility. She had seen gods and those who considered themselves gods and none of them carried themselves in such an unsophisticated manner.

Was it supreme confidence and the belief it would win no matter what? Or supreme pride and the need to see Eclipse as beneath effort?

She could use either one but needed to know which! She recalled everything she knew about Crater Cemetery and turned her better eye to Sonata.

“If there’s anything you can do or tell me.” Eclipse held her up.

“Is there anything I can do?”

Sonata craned her neck to look back and up at Eclipse.

“Oh boy!” Sonata shouted over the roar in the air. “If there was anything I could do against that!”

“I know that your competence is lacking!” Eclipse held Sonata forcefully against the incoming onslaught, making a point of not stepping back. “But you have some connection to it! Even making it say a single word now will be more use than the lives of a thousand soldiers.”

“Say something? Ah!” Sonata, already a fool, struggled under pressure. “What if I just make it angrier?!”

Eclipse stood firm, letting Nightmare Moon surround them more than before, forcing Sonata to speak now or perish.

“Okay! If I don’t have any choice.” Sonata gulped. “The one thing that’d make her angrier than anything else is that… she isn’t really our goddess, Luna!”

There it was! A moment of weakness through that reckless onslaught. It was subtle but Eclipse managed to capture it ever so briefly. If there was one skill Eclipse had honed to perfection in her two centuries of life it was the ability to never let such a moment slip.

“Did I see a lapse just now?” Eclipse smiled cooly at her opponent. “Are you saying she’s… jealous?”

The twisting heads lurched forward once again in a chaotic, explosive mess. Once more, Eclipse was thrown into the fire, straining herself but still deftly maneuvering through the maze. It targeted Sonata more fiercely than before, focusing its efforts on tearing that pony away more than on harming Eclipse this time.

They very nearly clamped down on her. She had to move two bodies around, both hers and Sonatas as the latter was too slow to even tell what was happening here. Eclipse nearly fell but one burst of magic sent her back just far enough for relief. Another small loss, more lost ground.

“And they call you a god?” Eclipse clicked her tongue. “I suppose this is why it resorts to mind control? Because such a pathetic wreck could never manage to be seen as such otherwise?”

Once again, it repeated its tactic of surrounding, then overwhelming. Certain to break Eclipse if this kept up. But Eclipse knew it could hear and, more importantly, care about what they said.

“That’s exactly it!” Sonata nodded eagerly. Eclipse needed her to be completely genuine and hoped she wasn’t playing along. “We… my family will only acknowledge Star Feather as our ancestor and Luna as our god. That was the whole reason she started with those chains.”

“That is sad.” Eclipse rested her eyes for a moment. “You know, I stopped caring about other ponies, their petty morals and opinions, when I was twelve. It plays at a god but can’t even manage that level of detachment? To the point, it has to pretend to have approval?”

“No, it’s true,” Sonata nodded along, desperately trying to be useful for once. “She knew we might be dangerous one day but kept us alive for like revenge and stuff. She’s totally on about, uh, stuff!”

“Really? You let a threat remain to satisfy some grudge?” Eclipse looked up straight at the monster, neither moving. It disliked the conversation. Yes, it really did have the need to prove something to itself! “Like some child who can’t but devour all their sweets in one night. The body of a god and the mind of a child, I suppose. How pathetic you are.”

“You are the one who doesn’t understand!” It answered this time. It really was just a fool. “I have what you seek– the power to be as ‘indulgent’ as I please. It doesn’t matter how many mistakes I make. I am the true god. My will is inevitable.”

But really, Eclipse considered every word it said a minor victory. And through that bluster, Eclipse believed she saw another mistake.

“You know her better than I do,” Eclipse told Sonata. “Is there any god truer than this child?”

Sonata had the answer immediately but refused to say it out of fear for a moment. Such pathetic, insolent creatures with their worthless feelings! Eclipse brought her magic down on Sonata, half-intending to crush her head if she didn’t speak up, turning that fear in the right direction.

“There is! Star Feather! Princess Luna, she’s the only one we’d ever worship and…”

There was something more. Sonata braced herself before speaking.

“A-actually there is one more,” said Sonata, “above that… there’s the real god of ponies. Golden Feather… Celestia.”

There! That moment!

Eclipse threw Sonata high into the air so that Nightmare Moon could strike at either separately. Indecision. Emotion.

Pushing herself to her limit, Eclipse fired the same black arrow spell that had killed Screwball and likely Twilight, not something she would have been able to use without that slip. The impact it had on the nightmare was profound!

The entire thing buckled. The heads were forced to crane around to protect the center from being hurled back and even then, Eclipse’s attack managed to press it precious inches.

As it struggled, she finally had a chance to go on the offensive. No longer retraining herself, she attacked repeatedly as quickly as she could hitting it with wave after wave of searing flames.

An onlooker may have thought Eclipse finally gained the upper hoof as it tumbled backward. Yet she knew better. No actual damage, save time wasted, had been done.

Eclipse breathed heavily as Nightmare Moon writhed and then erupted into the air, firing upward like a tower jutting perhaps a mile high. And from it came an immense scream of rage.

“Yes!” Eclipse called out to it, ready to face its next counter. But the shout did nothing to unnerve her, it was already blitzing her. “Show me more of your childishness!”

Just one or two more moments like that might be enough.

Rarity and the others rushed into the castle, honestly having trouble keeping up with Coco who burst through a door with wild abandon. Just as she did, the volcano poised to explode then vanished. Dust’s ponies reacted with a certain chagrin that made Rarity wonder if they were more upset about being proven wrong than relieved at not being incinerated.

The backroom they entered stood completely empty, strange given just how many ponies had been here before. Were they clustered together on the other side? She supposed that did make sense given the opponent.

Coco led them into a secret passage Rarity was certain Coco didn’t actually know about. It would take them over the entrance hall. There, they would confirm what Rarity suspected. The front was crowded far past capacity.

Ponies stood wither to wither, heavily armed. Just as they entered, ghosts began their attack again, coming more from below than anywhere else. To mitigate this, the cartel had torn holes into the floor, giving them at least a chance to see the attack coming.

Having long given up hope of salvaging any of her home, Rarity merely turned her head forward and joined the others in being as silent as possible.

They had to hustle for only one moment as they passed the torn-out husk of a painting that was supposed to serve as a secret door. Had somepony discovered this passage? And why would they rip it open?

The area just after that was just a small space with peepholes to manually observe a few locations. But as suspected, somepony beat them here. A pink filly lay on her back looking up at the ceiling, sweating and breathing heavily.

The poor thing looked to have a terrible fever, laying in a cold sweat, looking up at the ceiling awake but not truly conscious. She rolled just a little but not in a way that betrayed any awareness of Rarity’s arrival.

Dust became motionless upon seeing the filly and whispered something to her two companions.

Coco, whom Rarity watched constantly, ignored the filly, instead training her own eyes on an object on the far side of the room. Rarity’s heart skipped a beat upon recognizing what it was.

A persona core!

There was no way to know which of their robots it was. The others were broken and had their persona cores removed, only Saccharine escaping. Rescuing them was somewhere on the list as well, though they would remain relatively safe for now. Even still, knowing Coco had brought her here, Rarity couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow…

She stepped forward to try and reach the core.

“Rarity, I’ve seen this pony.” Dust grabbed hold and pulled her back. “We can’t fight her.”

It crossed Rarty as odd to see such caution from Lightning Dust, especially for this pony of all things.

The gruff little stallion seized the pony up, unimpressed.

“I think I could take her! The pony you were talking about before must have been high on something like this one.” He smirked at Coco. “And now she’s crashed.”

“Look, I don’t know what happened to her, but I also don’t want what might set this monster off. And if we do, we’re screwed,” said Dust. “Just leave them to their stupor and let’s get on with our mission.”

He tried inspecting the filly further, only to get a smack from Dust which brought him back in line.

Rarity could only hope Coco hadn’t brought them up here to wake a sleeping dragon.

“I think Coco brought me here to get that.” Rarity pointed at the persona core, getting a nod from Dust.

Rarity and the others carefully trotted around the room, hugging the wall to give the filly a wide birth and the chance to remain oblivious, only Coco remaining behind.

They leaned in to look at the sphere. It took Rarity a moment, but she knew for certain this was it.

“Saccharine,” Rarity said. This raised too many questions. How did it get here? Was Sweetie Belle… Rarity looked at Coco, standing firm. “I’m certain this is why we came back here. Or at least, half of it. Though I hope not.”

“We risked our lives for a toaster?” the short stallion frowned.

“Saccharine is my sister.”

“Really?” Shorty scoffed. “You think a toaster is your sister and you wonder why we–“

“This is not a toaster!” Rarity hissed. “This is a persona core. The brains of a robot.”

“It looks like a toaster,” he grumbled.

“A toaster sphere?” Dust asked.

“They’re mad by definition, so yes! They would make a toasting sphere.”

“For your information,” Rarity huffed, “toasting spheres are far more efficient than–”

Rarity reached out for Saccharine’s brain only for Dust to knock her hoof away.

“Careful! My adventurer instinct tells me the second we take that thing; it’s going to wake up.” Dust glanced down at the threat. “We gotta ready an escape route first. Everypony back up, then I’ll take it in a dash so we’re already running. Nopony touch anything until–”

Coco shoved them aside and grabbed the persona core.

Dust watched with her mouth agape as Coco proceeded to carry it over to the sleeping threat. Already the filly was beginning to stir with the vaguest of awareness as predicted, picking that up had been like water splashed on the face of a drunk.

Coco dropped the personal core, letting it roll toward Rarity, who panicked to get it back. Then Coco let out a shout and began pummeling the filly ferociously.`

“Holy crow! Leave her and let’s go!” Dust grabbed Rarity and tried to evacuate the scene but it was already too late.

Vines wrapped around their exit, then around any wall that could be made into an exit with a good enough punch. In short, they were surrounded in every direction. Dust and her companions exercised caution rather than charging at the vines.

At last, the filly staggered to her feet, sending Coco staggering back in the same motion.

“What do you know about this pony?” Rarity demanded. Any information about what they were dealing with would be very useful.

“I didn’t get all of it, but I heard something about it being the Element of Magic,” said Dust. “Or a shard or the like.”

Rarity swallowed hard, hoping that was a misunderstanding. Her own limited information on that subject provided only dread.

“You!” The filly lifted a single hoof and pointed it at Rarity. “I honestly wasn’t expecting you to come back here. You were supposed to just run away. What is it with you people? Why does something always go wrong at the last moment no matter how hard I try?”

Once again Coco stepped forward.

“Because every crystal is a vibration in a bee which is more intelligent than every pony combined,” Coco said that line with the smuggest look like it had been some epic comeback.

That was even less sensical than the words would have normally been.

But if the annoyed twitch of the filly’s eye was any indication, then she understood exactly what Coco meant. And that was a very, very bad sign. There was only one way you understood exactly what dive-speak meant. Dust had been absolutely right.

“Alright, we need to get out of here,” said Rarity.

Dust and the others did try to break through with claw blades and lightning, as Rarity clutched Saccharine tightly and watched Coco, their only real hope.

“It’s always the one you don’t expect, isn’t it?” The filly staggered to her hooves, her attention now on Coco. “I watched everyone who mattered so closely the first time only for a literally nopony to come along and ruin everything! You’re literally a joke character, don’t you get that? This shouldn’t happen!”

A thorny root tore out of the ground, piercing forward at Coco’s heart. Coco turned slightly, letting it impale her shoulder instead.

Coco met her eyes with a triumphant grin. Taking such a grievous wound had been exactly what she wanted. The filly watched her carefully and somehow understood the implication of this, acknowledging she’d been beaten in some manner by this move.

That didn’t bode well. Magic certainly could see through the chaos as Coco did. They were at best equals on that front, only Coco had no physical strength.

“Killing you will only make this worse, won’t it?” Magic spat. “Why does this keep happening?!”

Though she couldn’t quite follow, Rarity could see the obvious flaw in this pony’s thinking. Though she didn’t know exactly what was meant, the breadth of it could be inferred. But pointing out the mistake seemed like it’d be wasted on them.

The filly took one look at Rarity’s expression and in something not far off from a drunken rage shoved everything off a nearby shelf before half-collapsing to the floor.

“Don’t give me that look! I can’t watch everypony!” She covered one eye. “That’s my problem. I’m not powerful enough. Even the sight of my true self can’t see everything and if you can’t see everything you might as well be blind. That’s the ‘lesson’ here so shut up!”

“I didn’t say anything.” Rarity jealously clutched Saccharine’s core.

“You were thinking it!” Magic pointed at her head. “I have this worthless brain for now and it might be going catatonic but being an idiot makes me understand idiots.”

Just then Magic choked on her own words and fell against the wall.

“I’m not… an idiot!” Magic or… perhaps somepony else shouted. “I knew this would happen. Just let me do it.”

Rarity’s ears twitched upon hearing that. She knew the sort of creature Magic was to be a sort of parasite, one that needed a body to be ‘complete’ as Starlight put it. What if…?

“Wait!” Rarity leaned down. “Can you understand me? The pony it's possessing! I might be able to help you. Just tell me what happened.”

But all that inner struggle faded in an instant and nothing but contempt filled the filly.

“Don’t you dare! I won’t stand for your moralization! This is what I want!” With sudden resolution, the filly stood. “Yes. Yes, I do want this! I want you all to just die and leave me alone!”

Her whole demeanor changed in that moment. The clumsy, drunken lethargy vanished replaced instead by a supreme confidence. Her body glowed bright with magic, magic on par with that of a witch.

She pointed a hoof at Rarity and the force behind her motion left no doubt the filly could have splattered them and half the small army in the room just behind. Yet Coco stood there, looking her dead in the eyes. The filly couldn’t make such a large strike, Rarity was certain!

Instead, she swiped a hoof, making a much more precise attack. The walls of vines loosened and went through the room, lashing at everypony present.

Left on her own, Rarity knew she’d be torn to shreds. Everypony else sprang into action, Coco, Dust, and the other two pegasi all moving out just before Rarity lost sight of them.

She felt something slam into her, she felt sharp cuts along her back, but in the tumult, she could see nothing, had no idea if any limb was still attached and her brain needed only another moment or two to process it before her world became unimaginable pain and then nothing.

When she managed to open her eyes again it was Dust, breathless but holding fast. Below her was the Cartel and just behind a wave of vines ripped up the stone wall.

Coco, Blueblood, the second… only the short one fell into a bad position. The vines pinned him against the stairs, but Rarity had no chance to see his fate. The other four fell into the main entrance surrounded by an already intense battle.

Rarity could hardly tell if anypony even noticed their arrival. The cartel pitched fire into the hole in the floor as ghosts came in from every direction.

The filly stood at the top of the stairs.

“Rarity!” Blood oozing down her shoulder, Coco pointed with all the intensity she could manage at Magic, Rarity certain that’s what it was. “Not!”

Coco struggled to think of what to say.

“Not… the other way!”

Coco blinked and Rarity’s heart sank. Time was running out fast!

“No time for riddles!” Dust charged away from the fighting, dragging Rarity with her. A highly frustrated Coco followed with Blueblood in tow as Dust’s third went to try and rescue the short pony.

Batton spun in a wide circle, holding a phantom at bay with her enchanted claw blade. With a shout, she threw it at the charging group, bowling all of them back. This bought her less than a second as another threat emerged from behind.

She turned but paused seeing it wasn’t ghosts but that filly, Eclipse’s student. And it wasn’t just her!

“Again?!” Batton Pass shouted up at the painting. This was the second time that filly came bursting out of the frame.

This time it was even more perplexing. She was covered in vines and chased after Rarity and a few other ponies who should have at least escaped but apparently even that was too much to ask for at the moment.

The filly chased the group, carried just in front of the edge of her attacks by a green pegasus. Lagging slightly behind were two more pegasi. The parade came briefly into the room, each of them shouting as they ran straight past the battle, ignoring it completely before disappearing into the other side of the castle.

“Should we worry about that?” One of them shouted at Batton pass as they rolled off.

“Um.” Batton considered it, then shook her head as another wave of ghosts charged through the door. “No. I think our only choice here is to hope whatever that was just takes care of itself.”

“If we go outside she’ll be able to use big attacks again,” Dust warned as they reached the door they had originally entered from.

She turned back to see that Crater Cemetery had bought them an extra second. Four ghosts went straight for Magic with just enough force to force her to dispatch them with on flick of her horn. A fifth ghost tried to attack Rarity’s group, but after seeing the filly’s display of power, slowly sank into the ground.

“Do you have any other plan?” Rarity retorted.

“No! Does your psycho friend?”

Coco opened the door and went outside.

“Guess we’re going with that.”

They charged outside but Magic charged faster. Rarity hardly even saw what happened but in a blaze Magic overtook and bowled the lot of them open, grabbing Dust and throwing her back into the castle. Magic landed not behind them but in front, pincered Rarity between her and the castle.

As Rarity, Blueblood, and Coco stood up, magic covered the entire edifice of the castle behind them with vines. Magic blocked their only path forward.

Coco, Blueblood, Rarity… and the persona core. The pegasi, their only real fighters were trapped inside.

“Perfect!” Coco jumped at the filly, trying to punch her. The filly held back her attack again to instead thrust some of the vines out and over, slamming them into Coco and throwing her to one side.

“Hahahaha!” Though cut in a dozen different places, Coco laughed maniacally through it all, landing on her feet with little difficulty. “Haha! Ha…. Heh?”

She blinked once.

“Wait. What was I laughing about again?”

Coco touched the gaping wound on her shoulder and pulled it to her eyes, looking at the red blood now on her hoof. Before Coco could process any of this, Rarity already knew what it meant.

Her dive had worn off.