“Another disappointment.” The masked pony’s disgust was audible as she tossed her latest victim aside. “As they always are…” The tiara fell from Luna’s head as her lifeless and colorless body hit the floor and the last few wisps of dark blue magic seeped from her form.

Those last few gasps of Luna’s magic meandered for but a moment until the masked pony seemed to draw them in and absorb them through the armored horn on their head. Such magic being taken should’ve had a visible effect on the pony, but it produced none. There was no shaking or change in their physiology, they just stood there as if it was a much needed recharge.

Twilight couldn’t move. Her eyes were fixed on the lifeless alicorn sprawled across the floor. Her thoughts surged between panic and anger, each swing more violent than the last. The unicorn could feel the magic deep within her surge and well up. It was ready to unleash itself and burn the world around her, she could feel it. All she had to do was let it, and she was sure that it would stop the masked pony.

“You will pay for what you’ve done here.” It wasn’t Twilight’s rage filled words that filled the space in the throne room, it was Celestia’s. It was at that moment that Twilight suddenly registered the intense heat that was now filling the room, all of it coming from her mentor.

Celestia’s mane was as still as the air in the room, the non-existent breeze that usually kept it flowing having stopped from sheer fear. Twilight saw something that she had never seen grace her teacher’s features before, a snarl. The long alabaster horn that sprouted from her head was awash in fierce golden light that radiated with the heat of the sun.

Whatever Twilight felt, it was dwarfed by the sheer presence of Celestia’s fury. There was no room to be angry when the sun itself was about to unleash its power upon someone. She could only back away from the alicorn and hope to not be collateral damage.

The masked pony did not seem surprised or frightened at Celestia’s display. The fact that they were about the same height as Celestia, and seemingly just as powerful as Luna, definitely helped their courage. Their crystalline mask reflected the light and caused sunspots to dance on every surface of the opulent throne room as the stranger cocked their head to the side in bemusement at Celestia’s temper tantrum.

The mask itself wasn’t smooth, it looked like some kind of gem that had been inexpertly cut. It had a million different surfaces, all at different angles and of different sizes. The quality of the material was also poor, so cloudy that the features of the pony wearing the mask could not be discerned beneath it. There weren’t any holes for the eyes or the mouth either, nonetheless this stranger could still see everything and their voice could be heard as clear as day.

It wasn’t just the mask that concealed this pony’s identity either, it was their whole getup. Long flowing robes of what was once white cloth spilled onto the floor around their hooves and made it seem like they were gliding just above the floor as they moved. Bandages, or perhaps some kind of bodysuit, covered up their neck right up to the bottom of that mask.

The mask itself didn’t just cover the stranger’s face: it encased their entire head, even their horn. It was more of a helmet than a mask at that point. Not a trace of mane escaped, either. This was an enigma just as much as a pony, and it did not care for Celestia’s temper tantrum.

“What do you think, little one?” The stranger turned their eyeless gaze to Twilight. “Are you angry? Are you feeling…violent?” They kept the same monotone cadence through their entire sentence, until the last word. It was far more intense and curious.

“You will leave her alone!” Celestia stepped in front of Twilight and slammed her hoof against the tile. The entire throne room seemed to shake from the action and the stained glass windows rattled in their frames. The world itself seemed to quiver in terror. “This is between you and I, Twilight has nothing to do with it.”

“She has everything to do with it. You will see…”

Something happened in front of the stranger. That was the best way to explain it: something. It looked like the fabric of reality itself…crunched. Like spiderweb cracks running across a pane of glass. The stranger gave the two ponies a glance before they stepped into this aberration on the skin of the world. There wasn’t a visible entrance, they simply disappeared into the cracks.

Then reality seemed to straighten itself out and it looked, if you ignored Luna’s body, like nothing had happened at all. Twilight stepped nervously towards the spot that the stranger had occupied moments ago.

“Are…are they gone?” The anger gave way to the panic now as the stillness set in and Celestia’s fury faded. Alarm bells were going off in her head despite the new calm. Something wasn’t right. Why would somepony barge in here, do all of that to just…leave?

Unless they were a lot more afraid of Celestia than they showed.

“Luna…” Celestia went immediately to her little sister’s limp form and knelt beside it. She had been too hot, literally, for tears to form before. But now they were flowing freely. She cradled the grayed out body in her hooves and buried her face in the cool lifeless form as she cried. “No…no. Luna…I just got you back. Please. No.”

Twilight wanted to weep with her teacher. After all, she and her friends had just saved Luna from being Nightmare Moon. Celestia had finally been reunited with her long lost estranged loved one. But…something was wrong. Somepony that powerful didn’t just…leave.

“If I could do that…” Twilight mumbled to herself.

Then she acted. It wasn’t anything concrete, it was just instinct. She leapt to Celestia’s side and threw up a bubble of shimmering lavender magic around them. It wasn’t a split second later that the air above the grieving princess cracked and a beam of pure black darkness shot out from nowhere, aimed directly at Celestia’s back.

When two sources of magic touch, it’s like any other meeting of the senses. It’s an exchange of information. A unicorn can tell a lot when their magic meets another’s. This time, Twilight learned too much.

This magic, black as night and seemingly absorbing the light and color of the room around it, was not normal. Perhaps that was obvious, but it was the simple truth. It didn’t feel right. The texture was like nothing Twilight had felt before. It was like grabbing a bolt of cloth, expecting it to be silk, and feeling sandpaper instead.

The stranger leapt from the crack in the world, the black magic spouting from her horn in a laser focused strike. The featureless mask stared inquisitively at Twilight’s attempt to stop the onslaught, and Twilight could’ve sworn that she saw it smile.

The foul magic, the kind that did not belong to a pony nor anything else natural, ate away at Twilight’s barrier like acid. First it would strip the color from the barrier, then the barrier would crack and eventually shatter. Every time this happened, Twilight would throw up another one right beneath it. This, of course, led to an ever shrinking space for her to operate in.

All of this happened in the span of seconds. In that time, Twilight had already gone through half a dozen layers of shields and her seventh was being swiftly devoured. She had no idea how to get out of this. None of her tricks could move both her and Celestia successfully or repel the stranger. There wasn’t anything she could do but delay.

Then a golden shield blossomed above Twilight’s head and was there to absorb the impact of the strange unnatural magic once her own barrier shattered again. A wave of relief washed over the young unicorn as the all powerful princess of the sun stepped in.

The now golden bubble of sunlight infused magic expanded, gradually pushing back the corrupt black magic. Twilight stood, as did her mentor and she joined in. Her magic added another push and the alicorn was able to rise to her full height in the expanding bubble.

Luna was no slouch when it came to power, even though she was freshly recovered and slowly building her strength back up, she could still move the moon. Celestia herself was magnitudes stronger than her little sister. One thousand years of struggle and practice had made her more formidable than any other being on the planet.

And now she was being pushed back.

Celestia gritted her teeth and sweat poured from her forehead and dampened the pastel mane that was gradually losing its sheen. The golden bubble that surrounded the pair was becoming more and more gray by the second. The corrosive touch of the stranger’s magic was eating through what was most likely the strongest magical force in Equestria, and there was nothing either of them could do about it.

Twilight knew they couldn’t last for long under the assault. Something needed to be done. There was one last trick she could pull, maybe, but it would take all of her remaining magical strength. She had only successfully teleported once, in the castle when facing down Nightmare Moon. This situation was just as dire, so she needed to tap into that same primal power source to get both her and Princess Celestia out of this spot.

Twilight closed her eyes and did her best to block out the situation around her. She did her best to close the sound of clashing magic out and tried to think of the pool of magic deep inside of her soul. It was as deep and wide as the ocean and was just waiting to be used, all she had to do was mold it.

Twilight spun her magic into the appropriate spell and doubled the size she used on just herself in the decrepit castle.It was straining her talent and ability and she could feel her own body rejecting the amount of magic she was pushing through it.

It needed to be done, though.

When it felt like she could do no more, she snapped the spell into existence and the princess and her student disappeared in a flash of light. The destination she had in mind when she conjured the energy was her old room in one of the castle’s many towers. They both reappeared amidst Twilight’s things and crashed to the floor in a collectively exhausted heap.

Twilight could barely think and the world was spinning around her as she tried to stand. Celestia was in no better shape. Both were almost completely drained of energy, most likely another side effect of the stranger’s magic coming into contact with their own. But that teleportation spell took all that Twilight had left in the tank. If the stranger found them or followed them here, then…

The skin of reality cracked once more and the stranger stepped out of thin air. Their robes billowed behind them as they strode up to the two drained ponies. Their featureless face seemed to stare at Twilight with such curiosity that for a brief moment the unicorn felt like she was being studied.

“Is that really your limit?” The stranger asked, the disappointment in their voice immeasurable. “A teleportation spell? You may be the weakest I’ve encountered…” The face then turned to look at Celestia, who was slowly getting to her hooves. “You’re not the one I need…you barely know how to defend yourself. Pathetic.”

“You…you will leave this place.” Celestia staggered to stand in front of Twilight again. “Or…” She couldn’t even bother to make herself ‘or else.’ What threat could she make when she was pretty clearly outmatched? It would be an empty threat.

“Not without collecting my due.” The armored horn atop the stranger’s head became encased in that vantablack glow and Celestia soon became surrounded by the corrupting magic.

Twilight had seen this already once before, minutes ago when the same thing had happened to Princess Luna. She knew this would lead to her idol, her longtime mentor and teacher, becoming a colorless heap upon the floor. That pendulum of panic and anger flared up again.

She couldn’t let this happen.

This…stranger had to be stopped. Right here. Right now.

Twilight roared in anger and charged the assailant, her horn sparking with what little magic she had remaining in her body. She was within a foot of the robed menace when she was lifted off of her hooves by an all too familiar black glow.

This…aberration of magic touching her aura was bad, touching her body was far worse. It was like her skin was porous and this ooze seeped into the coat the very core of her being. It was suffocating and an outright violation of her autonomy. It seeped into every crevice of her soul, as if searching for something.

Then it found whatever it was looking for.

The black rot grabbed the spark that sat in the deepest part of her soul, and it pulled. The spark was more than just magic, it was Twilight and soon she was outside of her own body. She was nothing more than a mote of light suspended in a solution of black magic. She could not see anything, nor did she have any real senses, but she knew she was not within herself anymore and she knew she was headed slowly towards the multifaceted mask.

As soon as Twilight’s spark hit the crystal edifice of the stranger’s mask, sense returned. Suddenly she could see again, and all she saw was a nightmare come to life. It was as if she was in a shattered mirror; thousands of surfaces surrounded her and reflected scenes she could barely comprehend. They all showed Twilight…or at least, different Twilights. Some were unicorns like her, others were pegasi and there was even a lone earth pony Twilight amongst the cacophonous possibilities.

Then there were the ones that really stood out, the alicorns. They were, by far, the most represented on the little shards of reality that occupied the space. Then there were the most disturbing ones…the scenes of a limp and colorless body that once belonged to one of these Twilights, usually left on the floor of what looked to be Ponyville’s library or some opulent crystal castle.

Twilight didn’t have time to stare at every single one of these possibilities, as soon her spark was sent somewhere else…somewhere deeper beyond the shattered realities. It was a deep dark pit full of other little purple sparks…other Twilights.

She was now one of those colorless bodies she had seen before and this spark, this essence, was all that was left of her. The stranger had taken it.

Now she was but one voice in a chorus of stolen Twilights, all crying out for help and mercy. Twilight somehow knew that they would find neither.

Author's Note

Wheeee iunno just wanted to try something.