"Less."

I instantly duck down and watch as she soars over me and lands on the side of the wall like Spiderman or something before launching herself off of it and landing right beside me as she unleashes another beam point blank.

Ha, doesn’t she know ranged attacks in melee distance cause disadvantage? I tilt my head to the side to dodge the beam as it roars past me. I start my turn by repeating the same hand motions I used versus the wooden wolf, run my left hand along the blade of my rapier as it sparks to life with purple lightning.

I feint left then quickly dash to the right and attempt to run her through with my blade directed at her barrel.

18, +7. 25.

The tip strikes true and sinks into her side, I internally celebrate but am cut short when I see that her fur isn’t really fur. It’s like an outer layer of thick darkness that sputters and flickers off of her where the rapier pierces through. She still gives a small wince indicating that I made it through the darkness but I realize now why her AC is so high. Let’s see the damage.

8, +5. 13 Piercing damage.

I pull the blade out quickly and see some blood along the steel as I return back to my neutral position, so it seems like if she’s resistant to piercing damage its only non-magical. Luckily my rapier has a small +1 enchantment. Her wound emits the same purple lightning for a moment and I feel the hum of my bracers as I activate them to cast booming blade a second time.

16, +7. 23.

This time the blade hits that layer of magical darkness and almost bounces off. Complete miss.

Both of these attacks happen in just a few seconds, and I’m instantly back on defense as her horn lights up again. It’s much brighter than before though, whatever this is, it’s new.

With a loud boom her horn explodes and a wave of darkness at least 20ft wide and as thin as a scythe’s blade shoots out almost faster than I can react.

Dexterity Save.
19, +4. 23.

I quickly pull my rapier up and try to block the hit or redirect it with a parry, but the force is much greater than I can imagine as I’m pushed back by the wave while sparks fly off of my rapier. I grab it with both hands and start to grit my teeth. I don’t have the hit points to fail here.

I start putting all my weight into pushing down with the rapier, and then I use the momentum of being pushed by with the leverage my blade pushing down to launch myself straight up into the air. I watch the wave of darkness soar under me and flip around to look at Nightmare again.

She’s gone. I quickly rotate myself around as I fall to the ground trying to find her and spot her racing towards the girls and the artifacts. After two steps however I see the purple lightning wrack her body accompanied by a loud THOOM of thunder.

7 Thunder damage.

She clicks her teeth and I see her eyes half close for a second, but she continues moving through the pain.

“Oh no you don’t Nightmare! Your fight is with ME.” I land and redirect the force from my fall into a mighty push off the ground, screaming straight at her. When I’m a few feet away from her she stops and turns toward me.

“Learn your place, pest!”

I inhale as deeply as I can before leaping off the ground. I’m directly above her when I release another roar of fire.

1. 6. 1. 13 Fire damage.

I know she jumped to dodge the last fire, so I decided to release this one above her hoping to prevent that instinctual response. It seems to work as she just lowers herself to the ground and lets out a yelp. I land and use the last of my movement to put myself directly between her and the ponies. I glance behind and see Twilight on the ground with her horn sparking as she tries to interface with the artifacts. 48 seconds left on the bladesong.

It’s then that I realize, I’m a huge idiot. I just spared a glance and looked away from my enemy, a goddess no less, who’s less than 5ft away. Why did I realize this? Because I’m suddenly looking at the hard stone floor as my face quickly approaches it.

“You dare look away from me?! That mistake will be your la- ” I have no clue if she said anything after that because it was the final thing I heard before I felt what must’ve been my head cratering into the hard floor of the castle.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Third Person POV

“Ignis!” Applejack cried out as she watched the elfs’ head thud against the floor. Nightmare Moon stood over his body with one of her front hooves parked directly on the back of his cranium.
For a novice he was more annoying than I thought he’d be. Luckily whatever that magic was fell far short of the bladesong’s of the past. Nightmare thought to herself as she glared at the unconscious body under her. “Now then, let’s deal with these pesky elements!”

“Get off of him right now!” Rainbow yelled out as she flexed her wings and rocketed towards the alicorn, but she passes straight through her as Nightmare shifts into her mist form and creates a powerful wind to knock back Twilight and the others.

They all watch as the starry mist begins to circle around the elements like a tornado, spinning faster and faster as the elements begin to lift off the ground. Twilight realizes what’s about to happens and leaps straight into the typhoon of raw magic as it blinks from existence. The other 5 ponies looking dazed as they realize that Twilight, Nightmare, and the elements are gone. After another second they realize Ignis is gone as well.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ignis POV

Pure darkness. I’m floating in a void of black. Looking around at the vast nothingness I realize I must be unconscious. God that was a stupid move. How do I wake up? Am I dead? I need to help the ponies activate the artifacts!

Suddenly I see the twenty sided dice appear again.

Death Saving Throws.

Under it there’s three squares. Each square holding its own d20. The one on the far left beings to roll in place.

1. The first square turns green.

2. The second square turns red.

Welp, this is it. This is how I die.

The third die begins to roll in place.

Cmon cmon, please just a 10 or higher. Do it for the 1 time!

It slowly comes to stop but it’s cocked, it could land on 2 or 18, but I can’t tell which way its going to fall…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Third Person POV

“Dang-nab-it, what the blazes is that mare thinkin’ jumpin into that magical tornado! We’ve gotta split up and find them! Rainbow fly up and see if you can spot anything, everypony else with me.” Applejack barks out orders to the others.

Fluttershy is in tears looking around as if she’s completely lost. Seemingly in a state of shock from the sight of limp elf with a pool of blood under his head. Rarity and Pinkie are just staring at the spot where Nightmare and the elements used to be, seemingly in a daze.

Rainbow gives a salute and rockets into the air to begin sweeping the area. Applejack tries to talk to the girls again to get them out of their shocked states. “Girls I know this is bad, but it’s gunna be worse if we don’t find where they went! Now come on!” The others turn to look at her, Pinkie suddenly shakes her head left and right so fast it’s a blur before stopping with her eyes spinning. She grabs her head and her eyes come to a stop and her face drops into a serious expression. Fluttershy looks like she’s about to say something when suddenly a huge purple pillar of magic is seen a few hundred feet away in another section of the ruins.

“That magic is Twilight! I see her, she’s facing down Nightmare by herself, we have to go!” Rainbow yells out from the sky before flying off towards the area the magic came from.

“Cmon girls let’s go!” Applejack yells out and takes off with the other three following behind her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Twilight's Location, Third Person POV

Twilight stops channeling her magic hoping somepony from her group saw it and begins casting a scanning spell on the unconscious, barely breathing, elf. From across the room Nightmare is laughing as she holds the elements above her in her magic. “Ahahahah! Try and save him if you can pony, but with the elements in my control now you’re all as doomed as he is!”

Nightmare channels powerful magic before slamming the elements onto the ground, shattering them completely. “With this, my night will last forever!” She continues maniacally laughing.

Twilight doesn’t even respond as her scanning spell finishes. She just looks at the elf in shock. 9 broken ribs, both forearms fractured, broken nose and jaw, left ankle completely shattered. She knows what the broken nose and jaw were caused by, and that’s why she’s so shocked. He was fighting with all of these broken bones?! While we laughed at trees and made friends with a sea serpent he was fighting for his life trying to protect the elements. Waiting for us. For ponies he’d only known for a couple of hours….

Twilight's resolve hardens and she stands up and faces Nightmare. She begins running her left forehoof across the ground as if she means to charge at the alicorn. Smoke huffs from her nose as her horn begins to charge.

“Really? REALLY? You’re kidding right?” Nightmare gives the purple unicorn a deadpan stare as she begins to wonder what caused the sudden motivation for the young mare. However, Nightmare doesn’t get another second to ponder the situation as suddenly a blast of magic fires from the unicorn.

Nightmare responds with a blast of her own and as the beams clash they explode into a plume of smoke. “You seriously mean to challenge me on your own?! You’ve gone mad” Nightmare taunts.

The smoke clears and the alicorn discovers Twilight has disappeared, she starts scanning left and right looking for her when she hears POP behind her. Quickly turning around she spots the unicorn teleport in and fire off another beam directly at her. This time she’s too close for Nightmare to respond with a beam of her own so she opts to conjure a shield this time. “Don’t you see there’s no hope! Why don’t you just join me instead of continuing with this pointless resistance?! I can see you’re quite gifted magically and I could teach you much.”

Twilight continues to ignore the mare and begins rapidly teleporting over and over, landing all around the alicorn. Every time she pops into existence she fires off another blast of magic.

Nightmare has no trouble responding to each blast with a blast of her own before she finally becomes annoyed and shouts, “ENOUGH!” The alicorn seizes Twilight in her magic, completely stopping her from teleporting again, and uses her telekinesis to throw the unicorn as hard as she can into the wall on the other side of the ruin.

“Gah!” Twilight shouts in pain as she bounces off the wall and lands next to the unconscious elf. She slowly rises back up with her legs shaking under her, panting hard as she considers her next move. Before any of them can do something however, Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Pinkie come screaming into the ruin at full speed and Pinkie yells out, “Leave her alone you big meanie!”

Rainbow flies in from a broken window on the side landing beside Twilight and chimes in, “Yeah Nightmare Moon, if you want her you’ll have to get through all of us!” All five of the ponies stand in front of Twilight and the downed elf.

“Oh is that all? Easy enough.” Nightmare casually responds before blasting a powerful beam at what’s left of the roof directly above the 6 ponies.

All six of them look up in panic as the huge chunks of stone start to crumble and fall towards them. “Everypony move!” All 6 of them start to scatter before they all instantly realize at the same time. Somepony has to protect Ignis!

They all dive towards each other and try to cover the elf with their bodies, hoping that if they stand together they can withstand the debris.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ignis POV

1. The third box turns red.

Everything starts to fade away and I feel a numbing chillness begin to spread throughout my body.

You are dead.

System shutting dow-

SYSTEM ERROR. ERROR. ERROR.

What? What’s happening? I feel a warmth on my back and turn around. I see the sun. It’s right in front of me…. And there’s another alicorn inside of it, this one pure white. She looks.. Shackled? Is this Celestia? I try to speak but nothing comes out.

ERROR. Class incompatibility. ERROR.

//////////////// DIVINE INTERVENTION ////////////////

M̴̦̖͌̏a̷͕̙͗̀i̸̩͗n̷̖̝̏͘ ̵̢̚q̶̟̙̓͋ṷ̶̐̕è̶̖͉͐s̸̼̤͆̎t̶̳͛:̴̡͔͝ ̵͉͓̈́͗S̵̗̔̇ư̴̯͉̊ȑ̴̺̫͘v̴̧͙̍ḯ̷͚͘v̵̞̓e̵͖̖̿

Ḿ̴̠̣͕̱͙̭͉a̵̖͚͛͆̐i̶̪͛͗͊̈́̈́̅̾n̵̫̦͚̒̆͊̌ ̵̜̯̬͎͔͌q̶̊͆͜u̵͉̱̻̪͚͐͑͘é̸̻͓͓̮͊̆̚s̵͉̭͉̅̌̄̆͘͜ṭ̷̝͖́:̶͎̃͋̌͊̕͝ ̶̳̱̗̒̀͐̿͜͜G̷͚̯͇̗̿̋̕ę̴̤̫̤̘́͘t̷̡̗̱̔͂̑̌̄͛̽ ̷̻̺̝̬͓͕̙̐͋̋͗̆̔͊H̸̳̅͆́͘͘̕͠ơ̸͔̠̗̻͐̋́͐̚͜m̸̧̹̦̲͕̻̺̌̏̐͝ȩ̴͇̳͚͇̲͆̀̌͘

“Please bladesinger, I beg of you to allow me one favor.”

Yes?

“Please. Save my sister.”

Quest Override.

Main Quest: Save Princess Luna.

Hit Points: 1/21.

New Class Feature: Songblade Harmony (True Bladesong)
Harnessing the power of an Equestrian Heartsong, you unlock the true power of a bladesong.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Song, it should skip to the timestamp, but if not skip to 2:43

All 6 ponies open their eyes to see all the debris has landed around them instead of on them, and they suddenly hear a serene set of notes fall on their ears. They look up to see Ignis standing, looking down at them. Instead of motes of mana fluttering from the ground, he has a small golden glow emitting from his body with golden lightning coursing through his eyes. Dried blood on his face and running down the corner of his mouth as he smiles down at them.

He reaches out with a hand and helps Twilight up and as he does he sings, “There’s a moment that changes a life when, we do something that no one else can.” The other 5 also begin to rise to their hooves and he continues, “And the path that we’ve taken will lead us. One final stand.”

All 6 realize their fur is standing straight as a chill runs down their spines. The power in the room has shifted, everyone feels an eerie calmness. Everyone except for Nightmare Moon who now has beads of sweat on her face as she slowly takes a few steps backwards. “No, I know you stopped breathing, this can’t be happening!”

Ignis turns and faces Nightmare, “There’s a moment we make a decision,”

Fluttershy rises fully and faces Nightmare as well, joining in “Not to cower and crash to the ground.”

Twilight watches as all of her new friends turn and face Nightmare as Pinkie also starts singing, “The moment we laugh at our demons, our courage found!~”

There’s a light in Twilights eye as it clicks into place for her and she rises as well, now all 7 are singing, “When we stand with friends and we won’t retreat. As we stare down death, and the taste is sweet!”

The broken pieces of the elements begin to vibrate violently before reforming into 5 gems resembling the cutie marks of Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy embedded into amulets as they fly to their respective owners.

They watch as Ignis takes one step forward and when his foot hits the ground, he vanishes completely. They look ahead and realize he instantly appeared behind Nightmare. After they see him a huge burst of wind blows their manes back from where he was previously standing and they realize, he didn’t teleport. Before anything else happens though Twilight yells out, “That’s it, the spark for the 6th element wasn’t a literal spark, it’s the spark of harmony created when the other 5 elements are present. Each of you represent one of the tenets of harmony!” As she says that they all begin floating into the air and a crown with a gem in the shape of Twilights cutie mark appears and lands on her head. Their eyes all glow white.

“No! What is going on?!” Nightmare is in a pure panic now until she realizes the elf has appeared behind her, she instantly summons 2 of her own shadow blades as she turns to face Ignis.

Ignis slams his rapier towards her and the blade is caught between the two shadow blades as he yells out, “I may fall!”

He disappears again, reappearing to her right. She blocks his blade again as he continues to sing, “But not like this! It won’t be by your hand!”

Ignis and Nightmare fall into a beautiful dance of swordplay as he moves around her striking at nearly unobservable speed. “I may fall, but not this place. Not today!”

She starts to lose to him in speed and starts slowly accumulating slashes and cuts all over her body, “I MAY FALL!” he screams out again.

His slashes are piling up but she knows she can take hundreds more of his strikes if they’re this weak, so she decides to give up on him and puts all her effort into eliminating the element bearers before they can fully attune to the artifacts, she puts everything she can muster into a huge blast aimed directly at the floating mares.

Ignis appears directly in front of the blast and slams into it with his blade, after a few seconds he conjures his own shield and screams against the blast, “Bring it all, it’s not enough TO TAKE ME DOWN!”

“DAMN YOU, YOU FURLESS MONKEY. I THOUGHT YOU UNDERSTOOD MY PAIN. Why even apologize if you’re going to do this to me?!” Nightmares magic beam falls and as Ignis lands on the ground he continues to sing out “I may fall!” before suddenly the music in the air stops, the glow leaves his body, and a rainbow shockwave explodes out from the element bearers signifying they’ve finished their attunement.

Ignis speaks calmly to the mare, knowing this might be the last chance he gets to speak to her. He has no clue what these elements will do after all.

“I realized something while I was unconscious that I thought I should tell you, Luna.”

Nightmare freezes at that name, the teleport spell she was channeling fails at her lapse in concentration.

“In your story the celebration took place the afternoon of your birthday, during the day. Today however the celebration started at night, in fact the ponies stayed up and partied ALL night. The rising of the sun was going to mark the end of the celebration. She made the “summer sun celebration” take place at night? I mean that doesn’t sound right does it? I think Celestia was trying to show you that this holiday isn’t about her sun anymore Luna. After your banishment it was never about her sun.”

Nightmares eyes were blinking quickly as they became foggy again, and she dropped onto her barrel. Her eyes opened wide as tears slowly started to run down her face.

“Happy Birthday Luna.” Ignis smiled at her before his eyes roll back into his head and he unceremoniously drops onto the ground completely passed out. A wave of pure harmonic energy cascades forth from the floating mares and slams into Nightmare Moon she mutters out.

“Celestia… sister… We are sorry.”

Author's Note

WEW. Sorry if it's a bit messy, I was putting off writing this all day before I finally decided to write it before going to bed. Like the other chapters I slammed out this one all in 1 go in a couple hours. I did a quick once over and I think I caught all the grammar oopsies but if not just let me know. Also, before anyone gets upset, spoiler alert: That class feature won't be there when he wakes up.

This is the chapter that made me want to actually write this story to begin with, I was driving to work and the acoustic version of I may fall popped up on my youtube music radio station and this fight is what I came up with while i was driving.

That being said, I have no clue where to take the story from here haha. I have a few ideas but nothing solid, so the next chapter might be a week or two while I iron out where I want to go from here. Hope this chapter is as good as I think it is. I'm actually super happy with how it turned out. That song just fits so well here haha.