Not My Destiny
Grimdark Ending
by Smayds
Chapter 8 - Changes
Another scroll appeared in a silent pop of light, falling slowly onto the sizable pile to her left. She ignored it. They were getting more insistent, arriving several times an hour now. She wondered if she could cast some spell to stop them getting here at all.
She sighed, frozen tears cascading down her cheeks.
Sighing is so damned unsatisfying with no air. Nothing to blow out through your nostrils.
She went back to gazing sadly up at the world, wondering how long she could stay here before giving in. She'd lasted two weeks. She didn't think she could stay another second.
They've got to die. All five of them. It's too risky. They stopped me once, they can stop me again.
She agreed with herself.
And then I can kill everything else. But them first. Too much of a risk to start, if they're alive.
She couldn't remember if she was crying because she'd hurt Fluttershy, or because she hadn't killed her.
"Why don't ya' just go an' GET HER?" Applejack asked, exasperated. Then, she remembered who she was talking to. "Uh, sorry, Princess. Ah just miss ma friend, is all."
"I miss her too, Applejack. But I can't go and get her. I can't go to the moon." Celestia shook her head sadly.
The meeting was taking place in the Ponyville library, as per Celestia's suggestion. It was far more convenient for the two alicorns to travel to the village than it was for the five mortal ponies, and one relatively-mortal dragon, to travel to Canterlot.
"Buh-but you sent Princess Luna there!" Rarity objected, with a nervous glance at the younger alicorn, who was busying herself with pacing around and looking annoyed. "A thousand years ago! And you can raise the sun! And Princess Luna can move the moon and stars! That's more magic than you could possibly need to just go and get her!"
"I used the Elements of Harmony to imprison my sister within the moon." Celestia bowed her head slightly. "And my sister had vast, unimaginable powers available to her when the prison broke, so coming back from the moon was trivial. But remember the special circumstances surrounding each of these events. Twilight Sparkle has powers that dwarf our own, even combined. She has simply taken herself out of our direct reach. Neither Luna nor myself can teleport to the moon. It's too far. We would die in the attempt."
These words were like thunder in the ears of the five ponies and one dragon. The Princesses could do anything, couldn't they?
Apparently not.
"We can send scrolls. We are constantly sending her scrolls. But we cannot go ourselves. Such a thing is beyond us!" Luna stopped her pacing and glared. She looked angry. "Nor can we send a messenger. You are all too large, even the dragon, and even if we could send you, you would perish almost immediately! Twilight Sparkle can survive such a place," Luna snorted, "and so could I. But no mortal creature can."
"Well," Fluttershy put in, "you could always ask me how to get her back."
Two earth ponies, one pegasus pony, one unicorn pony, two immortal alicorns, and one baby dragon looked at the shyest pony any of them had ever met. The determination on the yellow pegasus's face was incredible.
"Do you want her back? Because I want her back."
Celestia bowed her head. "What do you suggest?"
"Princess Luna? I have a question. It's about bringing the night," Fluttershy asked. Luna cocked her head. "What else can you do with the night sky?"
The sun had set. The night had risen. They were ready to try.
"Please remember, my little ponies, that she may not come back, even after this," Celestia said.
Fluttershy simply looked determined. "We have to try. What are we if we don't try to get our friend back?"
Celestia looked at Luna. The younger alicorn nodded back slowly. A hundred members of the Royal Guard were in Ponyville, just in case. They were door-knocking right now, just in case. They had orders that Celestia had never imagined she would have to issue. Just in case.
"Little Sister, if you would please do the honours?"
Luna trotted up the short staircase to the library's large picture-window. The glass panels glowed pale blue, opened, swung outwards. She had a fine view of her magnificent night sky. The other ponies gathered around as she raised her head, closed her eyes, and sent the magic of the night out to all of the infinite heavens.
They looked at the dark silhouette on the face of the gibbous moon.
They waited.
They hoped.
The stars...
Twilight blinked. The stars. The stars were moving.
The constellations swirled and changed, individual points of light and great clusters, all moving, slowly, steadily.
They were bunching together, forming lines, curves, twists... words. They were forming words.
Twilight looked on, stunned, as the entire universe rearranged itself, just for her. They were sending her a message. She wouldn't read the scrolls, so they were moving the very heavens themselves to give her a message.
Please come home.
I miss you.
I'm waiting for you in the library.
- Fluttershy
Fluttershy...
Fluttershy misses me...
After I...
She remembered what she'd done. Her eyes snapped wide, shattering the twin trails of ice on her cheeks.
She remembered what she HADN'T done.
Fluttershy! She's alive! She's still alive!
They can use the Elements!
The enormous image of a weeping alicorn vanished from the face of the moon.
Her hooves touched the wooden floor of the library's large, welcoming ground floor.
A pink-and-yellow blur slammed into her. A pair of front legs wrapped tightly around her neck. She was being ferociously hugged by a crying pegasus. Her vision was completely blocked now by light-pink hair, but she'd briefly caught a glimpse of who else was in the room.
All of her friends.
Excellent.
And the Princesses.
Damn.
"Twilight! Twilight! Oh, thank goodness! I thought you were never coming back! Oh, I've missed you so much! Oh! You're so cold!"
"Fluttershy!" Twilight gasped, hugging back.
I'm so sorry I didn't kill you.
"I'm so sorry I almost killed you! Are you alright? Are you okay? Was anypony else hurt? I'm so sorry! I -"
Soft thumps as all of her other friends joined the hug. Sniffs and sobs. Twilight was crying with sheer joy.
I have you all right here, you can't get away, and now you're all going to die. I'm so happy!
"My friends! My best... My best friends! I... I don't know what I was thinking! You're all here! I'm so happy!"
The hug broke up. Twilight stepped back and looked with trepidation at the beaming pony right in front of her. Fluttershy looked fine. There were a few patches where her coat hadn't quite grown back in. "You're alright! You're okay! I thought you were dead! I... I... I just..."
Fluttershy wiggled her wings, her smile getting wider. The feathers on one were a little fluffier than the other. "I'm just fine! The Princess herself arrived at the spa right after the explosion! There were quite a few burns and a couple of sprains. I was the worst but she regrew my wing just like that! Oh, you were right. I was so hungry! Remember, right after you got your wings?"
Twilight was momentarily distracted by the sight of Luna, standing at the large, round picture window. The midnight-blue Princess stood silently, back to Twilight, eyes closed, horn glowing as she restored the heavens. Below her stood her older sister. She was behind the circle of her chattering friends, smiling down at Twilight. The small alicorn jumped forward and nuzzled her neck. "Celestia! Oh, I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!"
Celestia sat back and looked quizzical. "Why are you sorry, Twilight Sparkle? There was no harm done."
I'm sorry you're here and I can't just start slaughtering my friends.
"I'm sorry for running away!" She turned around, to look at all of her best friends. She smiled.
Maybe a fire spell. I could burn them to death.
No, just telekinesis. Easy. Crush them.
Whatever's quick and clean. They don't have to suffer.
But maybe...
Maybe I want them to suffer...
Maybe that would be... Delicious...
"Uh, Twi'?" Her farmer friend was looking at her with the deepest concern. "Y'all right there, sugarcube?"
Twilight seized Applejack and hurled her, at an appreciable fraction of the speed of sound, straight at the wall.
WHAT AM I DOING?! THE PRINCESSES ARE IN THE ROOM!
She teleported Applejack right back to where she had been standing. The orange earth pony fell over with a muffled "Ooof!"
The newest alicorn was standing stock-still, staring at Applejack.
There was absolute silence for a moment, then Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash helped Applejack back to her hooves. She looked windswept, and appeared to be trying not to throw up. Twilight felt a hoof touch her shoulder. Celestia. She could feel the ornamental shoe, see the gleam of gold out of the corner of her eye.
Did I just do that faster than Celestia or Luna could react?
...Excellent.
"Applejack. Are you okay, AJ? Did I hurt you?" Twilight's voice was incredibly calm and soft.
"Ah, uh, woah, my stars. Ah'm okay, Twi'. Dizzier'n a spinnin' top, but Ah'm okay. What jus' happened?"
Twilight closed her eyes briefly. Opening them again, she continued speaking in that cool, calm, collected voice.
"I just picked you up and threw you at the wall. Then I realised what I was doing and teleported you back. If I hadn't caught you in time, you would have hit the wall, and you were moving fast enough to die from the impact. I just tried to kill you, Applejack. I'm so sorry."
I'm so sorry that Celestia and Luna are here. Well, Luna is terrified of me. Might be able to use that... Celestia, though. Hmmm.
There was complete and total silence. Twilight closed her eyes again. She felt Celestia right beside her. She took a deep breath.
At least I can sigh properly again.
She sighed.
Twilight opened her eyes and looked at her friends. She smiled.
"I'm going to kill all of you."
Every single face in the room was beyond shock.
Can't do anything with both Princesses in the room.
So, get rid of them, dummy!
Celestia and Luna shouted in surprise, both igniting their own horns, when they felt Twilight's magic begin to surge. By the time they had noticed, however, they were already far, far too late.
With one almighty shove, Twilight had thrown them both from the library, Luna flying straight through the window she was standing at, and Celestia shattering the front door into matchsticks as she was unceremoniously hurled through it. As Celestia scrambled back to her hooves, glancing quickly around to see that Luna had taken flight and was heading straight back towards the smashed window, an enormous reddish-purple haze erupted in the air before them. Tightly enclosing the library, a vast, undulating, writhing magical bubble had appeared, ostensibly to keep the two royal alicorns from re-entering the tree.
"Twilight! Twilight Sparkle! What are you doing?!" Celestia shouted. What answered her from inside the library almost brought her heart to a stop.
Laughter. Gleeful psychotic laughter, and then, to her dread, screams of terror.
Twilight was rolling on the floor, laughing so hard that tears were streaming down her cheeks. All six of her friends were scrambling to get away. Rainbow Dash had grabbed Applejack, who she was still supporting, and flown straight at the window that Luna had been blasted through, crashing off the inside of the magical barrier with a flash of hot sparks. The rainbow-blue pegasus was trying to struggle back to her feet, while Applejack, who seemed to have caught the full magical recoil from the barrier, was flopping around drunkenly, moaning in pain, while thin trickles of blood began to seep from her ears. Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie and Rarity, levitating a crying Spike before her, had fled upstairs, hard on each other's hooves.
This won't do... Oh, this just won't do at all. Everypony needs to have a front-row seat for this.
As her powerful barrier flashed and flickered and hummed under wild attacks from the two alicorns outside, the alicorn inside sat up, wiped her tear-streaked eyes, pointed her horn at the shaken, disorientated Rainbow Dash, and caught her in a small bubble of the same magic that was keeping the two Princesses from spoiling her fun - without the useful little incendiary-contact spell added, of course. She didn't want to burn them to death - at least, not yet. Applejack wasn't going anywhere at the moment. With another blaze of her horn, her four other friends came shrieking and tumbling down the stairs, before each of them were caught in their own personal floating prisons.
They all twisted and writhed in mid-air as the shouts from the Princesses became louder and more insistent. Luna was actually starting to sound hysterical.
Twilight stood up, then left the floor as enough magic started to pour through her that she levitated. Applejack glowed and began to float as well, as Twilight seized her most dependable friend with her magic. The orange earth pony was twitching her limbs feebly, trying to blink her dazed eyes open. There were small dark burns and angry blisters along her forelegs, where she'd smashed right into Twilight's impassible barrier. She cracked an eye open and gazed waveringly back at Twilight, confusion and pain clouding her red-streaked face. One of her ears had stopped bleeding, but the other one let out a new small rivulet as Twilight pivoted her through the air.
Now, where was I?
Smiling pleasantly at Applejack, Twilight clenched her magical fist, feeling and hearing a cascade of satisfying crunches, then hurled the broken pony against the far wall as hard as she could. With an impact that stunned every mortal eardrum in the room, the thick wooden partition cracked, a spray of fine red droplets spattering the wall in a wide ring around the crushed and ruined apple farmer. As the small, broken, bleeding body collapsed onto the floor with a sickly-wet crunchy thud, a torrent of horrified screams and shrieks erupted from her trapped friends. Fluttershy's eyes and mouth were open wide in complete terror. Rarity, also wide-eyed, was clutching at her chest and gasping. Rainbow Dash was screaming, her eyes shut, hooves in her ears. And both Spike and Pinkie Pie were vomiting explosively inside their tiny floating prisons of light.
Let them stew in it. I have a promise to keep first.
The rippling bubble around Fluttershy vanished, and the small yellow pegasus hit the floor. With a yelp of terror, Fluttershy started to bolt for the stairs again, but Twilight caught her. The new Night Mare grabbed her shy friend's wings and wrenched her off the floor and into the air.
Fluttershy screeched in agony - Twilight was purposefully bending and pulling her wing joints the wrong way. Tears of pain and terror were streaming down the madly-twisting pony's face as Twilight drew her close and looked deeply into her eyes.
All Fluttershy saw were two hot white orbs of utter horrific blankness. All she felt was pain so bad it made her sick, overlaid with the most immense terror she'd ever felt in her mostly-terrified life. But she knew. Fluttershy knew. This was different. She'd almost never been in actual danger before, she'd just spent most of her life over-reacting. This was SO different. Twilight had just smashed Applejack, one of her best friends, into a sickening crumpled mess that was now trailing streams of bright-red blood all over the wooden floor.
"Now, Fluttershy, dear," Twilight said in a very quiet, very soothing voice, "I believe I was going to eat your face." Fluttershy screamed and twisted madly. "Oh, don't worry. Don't worry. Plenty of time for that. Which was the wing that I accidentally snapped off you?"
The screams coming through the broken window were bad enough, but from twenty feet in the air, the royal sisters could see inside as well. Celestia felt her heart wrench as Twilight started waving Fluttershy's newly ripped-off wing in front of her streaming eyes. Hot spatters of blood were mixing with Fluttershy's anguished tears.
"Was it this one? No?"
Fluttershy screamed in agony and despair, drowning out the similar cries from Twilight's other friends.
"No matter." A crunching, tearing crack, a chorus of horrified screams. "It had to be one of 'em, right? I got it again. Perfect score. Now," another, louder scream from Fluttershy, "if I work my telekinesis into the skin, right here, just above your ear..." More anguished screams and sobs, then a screech of pure white-hot agony, a horrific ripping sound...
Celestia dropped to the ground like a stone, Luna flapping down to land beside her. "I can't do this. I can't sit here and watch, and hear... I just can't..." More screams from the open window and door. "I'll evacuate the town. Keep trying to get through the barrier!" Celestia took to the air and flew towards the nearest temporary guard post, bellowing orders.
Terrified, Luna leaped back into the air, throwing shards of her most powerful magic against the barrier to no apparent avail, and moved back towards the shattered window. She suddenly gasped in shock.
Twilight Sparkle. Dark smears around her muzzle. Ropes of bloody drool hanging from her slack, laughing mouth. A torn and dripping-red scrap of yellowish hide in her magical grasp. The small lavender alicorn was levitating just inside the empty window-frame, gazing at the Princess of the Night with eyes of fire.
Luna stared for a moment into the terrible, terrible eyes that gazed back at her from only three feet away, from out of her blackest nightmares, then she fell out of the sky, landing awkwardly on her side. She retched, bile screaming hotly up her throat. Thrashing and clambering wildly back to her hooves, shuddering, scrambling backwards, she choked down a mouthful of vomit and took to the air once more. Roaring back into the sky with a look of wild bestial panic on her face, she flew, as fast as she could, away from the library, away from Ponyville.
Away from The Lunacy.
Celestia saw her sister flee. She barked a few more quick orders at the guardsponies.
"Get them all out, fast! Don't let them take any possessions. Tell them their lives are at stake! Hurry!" She whirled away from the shocked golden-armoured pegasi and streaked back to the still-protected library.
Fluttershy wasn't trying to get away any more. She still twitched and softly gasped, but that wouldn't last much longer, as she was losing far too much blood. Twilight turned her attention towards her remaining friends.
My best friends...
This'll be over soon, and then I can just take the world apart.
Yay!
She threw Pinkie Pie, still within her prison, at the wall where Applejack had died. Not fast enough to kill, or even break bones this time. Twilight dropped her magical cage just as Pinkie hit the wall.
Splattered with her own stomach contents, the dazed pony fell full onto the broken, mangled body of her farmer friend. Choking and retching, Pinkie Pie scrambled up, eyes wide with horror, as she slipped and fell over the bloody, spongy mass. Hooves slick with blood and vomit, the pink earth pony tripped, landing on her back, throwing up again at the horrors that were shattering her happy world. She felt something seize her mane, and she was wrenched violently into the air by it.
Pinkie Pie had never felt such physical pain in all her life, but next to the emotional torture she was being subjected to, it was nothing. She was no stranger to misery and sadness, but to have it purposely inflicted upon her by one of her best friends in the whole wide world was too much. This was worse than rape. This was worse than murder. To see her friends dying in torment before her eyes... This was the most horrific torture that could be inflicted upon such a purely joyous spirit as herself, and she found that she couldn't take it. It was like asking an earthworm to comprehend an advanced mathematics problem. Impossible. So far outside her understanding and comprehension.
She passed out from utter emotional overload. Twilight cocked an eyebrow at her droopy pink friend.
Well, I don't really have to torture them to death, I just have to kill them. Even though it's a lot of fun. And my goodness, I do LOVE blood...
Still holding Pinkie aloft, she bent her head down to the ruin of Fluttershy's face. Small trickles of blood were still popping and oozing out of the torn muscles. Closing her eyes briefly, she licked Fluttershy's gruesome cheek. The red-and-yellow pegasus shuddered very slightly.
That tastes SO GOOD.
And there's plenty of blood for the moment. Don't need any more just yet.
Working Pinkie Pie's head carefully from side to side, she managed to dislocate the vertebrae and neatly sever the spinal cord. Tossing the floppy body aside as casually as a discarded tissue, she turned around again to see Spike, Rarity and Rainbow Dash all slumped unconscious themselves.
Frowning, Twilight released them, and they bumped and banged to the floor. Swooping softly towards Rarity, she noticed that the chest of the white unicorn was still.
Not breathing?
Frowning deeper, she picked her up, sending her magic flowing through the unicorn's skin, searching around her organs...
There.
Oh.
Rarity's heart wasn't beating. Perhaps the shock had been too much, and she'd suffered a heart attack? Quite possible.
Probably the sight of all this blood on the floor. So untidy.
Still, gotta make sure she's dead.
With sickening crunches and snaps, Twilight twisted Rarity's head completely around a full circle. Dark blood gushed in a torrent from the dead unicorn's elegant white nose, earning a squeal of delight at this unexpected surprise. Twilight lapped greedily for a moment at Rarity's gore-soaked muzzle, then, as a surge of inspiration hit her, lowered her lips to the red-stained cheek just to the side of Rarity's slack mouth. Running her teeth lightly along the skin for a moment, she became aware of something.
My teeth.
They're sharper than they should be.
They're... pointed?
Opening her mouth wider, she bit into the flesh of Rarity's face. She felt the tissues give way under her teeth, then her new set of dental implements met as she clenched her jaw and tore her face away from the dead unicorn's own. With a slight snapping sound, she found herself chewing deliciously on a mouthful of meat.
And it was oh, SO good.
Twilight swallowed. She was in heaven. Dropping the now assuredly-lifeless body, she bobbed along to her rainbow-maned friend. Yes, Rainbow Dash was breathing. So, this Bearer had just fainted, then. She picked her up.
Rainbow Dash yelled, seeming to come to her senses. She thrashed and spun wildly, fear etched deep all over her face. "Twilight! Twilight! Please! Oh please, oh please! Don't kill me! PLEASE! Oh no, please, PLEASE!" She began to beat her wings furiously in a frantic attempt to break Twilight's telekinetic grip, whipping up a reasonably impressive wind in the enclosed room.
Twilight paused, blinking suddenly. Her gaze wandered away from the struggling, shrieking pegasus and around the horrific sights in the ancient library's large and otherwise welcoming reading room. Pinkie Pie, her neck bent double, lying next to Applejack, a misshapen pile of bloody-orange flesh. Rarity, head twisted backwards, blood flowing slowly now from her nostrils, mouth and cheek, half-opened eyes glazing over. Fluttershy, covered in blood from snout to tail, the torn muscles and shredded ligaments of her face still shaking slightly as the last of her life escaped into the large sticky puddle of congealing red mess in which she lay. Spike, unconscious in a puddle of yellowish vomit, face-down, possibly even drowning in his own sick. Not an Element of Harmony, but still, she had to start on the "normal" folks sometime.
And here, in my grip, Rainbow Dash. The last Element. My friend, my most loyal friend, who taught me how to fly.
"Thanks for teaching me to fly, Rainbow Dash."
The hyperventilating rainbow-topped blur stopped screeching and twisting and looked straight at Twilight Sparkle with tear-filled, bloodshot eyes. "Whuh-what?"
"I really appreciated it! Oh, you're right. You're SO right! No wonder you never use your hooves if you can help it! It's fantastic! I love flying!"
Dash's eyes were flicking rapidly around the room, grief and terror darkening her face. "Oh, no- no, pr-pr-puh- No problem, Tw- Twi. You w-wanna g-go flying n-n-now?"
"No, I'm okay, thanks. But you go right ahead. Here," Twilight offered, dropping her magical barrier and pointing the pegasus at the window, "I'll get you started on your way."
Rainbow Dash found herself hurled through the ruined window at a speed many, many times faster than she had ever traveled in her life. Rainbow-coloured sparks and smoke burst from her feathers as she twisted, screaming, in the incredibly hard and hot air. The pressure and speed were far too great, and she felt one of her wings break with a stab of hot pain, whipping around into the slipstream behind her. With her skin blistering and cracking from the friction of her hypersonic passage, she burst into white-hot flames, flared briefly against the night sky, and screamed no more.
Twilight was about to go and see if Spike had drowned, or if she'd have to put a hoof through his skull for good measure, when she found that she couldn't move.
A thick, sparkling sheath of golden light had encased her. She unconsciously pulled on the spell, in a vain attempt to knock the caster out. The spell thickened, blazed brighter than the day.
She was caught.
Luna was flapping in mid-air, looking back at the distant lights of Ponyville. She had to go back. She had to. Those ponies, her beloved subjects, were being slaughtered by Twilight Sparkle! She couldn't stand it!
She started heading slowly back towards the town, dread and horror in her heart.
She couldn't possibly think of what she would do or how she would help. That magical barrier seemed completely impenetrable. Such a powerful spell! And there was the other problem. Twilight Sparkle would simply have to look at her again, and again, she would flee. She could not face The Lunacy. The fear... The fear was far too great.
Were she to still have the powers of The Night Mare, she might be able to do something. But those powers were gone. Too dark to begin with. And completely gone.
She could get them back...
If she succumbed...
She had no jealousy left in her. Her little ponies loved and enjoyed the night she made. They honoured her with one of their most beloved nights of celebration. Were she to fall to jealousy again... Even if she triumphed, would she not just try, once again, to bring forth eternal night? No. Too dangerous. Far too dangerous. And utterly impossible. She felt not a scrap of jealousy, not over anything.
Fear. She had fear. Fear for The Lunacy. She could fall to her fear, but how would that help? She would be afraid, far too afraid to do anything. She would run. She would probably use her dark powers to run to the moon and hide. But Twilight Sparkle could teleport to the moon unaided. And now... The Lunacy would follow her there, and find her in her terror. She could not fall to her fear.
Was there any hope?
Yes...
She hated The Lunacy. Far more powerful than her fear was her hatred for the thing that had taken her will, had made her overthrow and imprison her sister, had made her bring about her first fruitless attempt at endless night. She hated it. She could face it in hatred. She wouldn't be a risk to Equestria. She hated only The Lunacy.
Did she?
Luna examined her soul as she flew towards Ponyville. Besides The Lunacy, what did she hate?
Nothing. Hate was not in her nature. She was not born to hate. She was born to love, care, guide, rule.
But not to hate. The only hate she felt was for The Lunacy.
She could do this... To save Equestria... She would do this.
Luna released her instinctive alicorn restraint and began examining her darkest emotion. She let it seethe and boil.
Hate.
She hated The Lunacy.
Hated what it was doing to Twilight Sparkle.
Hated what it wanted to do to Equestria.
Hated what it had done to her, most of all.
Luna concentrated very hard on just how much she hated this monster.
Deeper and blacker and colder than the lowest pit of Hell, a hatred to crack the very world rose through her, consumed her.
Transformed her.
The night sky flashed brilliant white to match her unquenchable fury, then the moon and the stars winked out, leaving only a blackness above as profound as the hatred in her heart. Straight ahead, a distant fireball blossomed into the sky. She streaked towards it with the strong, powerful beating of wings as dark as the night around her.
Why didn't I throw Rainbow Dash INTO the barrier? That would have killed her too. Why did I drop it?
Thrashing madly, Twilight caught flashing glimpses of Celestia flitting to each of her friends in turn, bending low over their corpses with horn ablaze. Not one single friend stirred. Celestia finally stood and faced her former student as rivers of golden tears streamed down her sad, regal face.
"Twilight Sparkle..." The horror and sadness within Celestia was as plain as the day itself.
Twilight stopped struggling and smiled up at her former teacher.
Magic, you idiot! You're caught in a magical holding spell! You can't twist your way out of it! USE YOUR MAGIC!
Twilight's horn ignited.
Celestia saw her cage begin to change its magical hue, shifting in blotches from her own light-gold aura into Twilight's deep magenta-red. She threw another holding spell around both the small alicorn and the rapidly-deteriorating snare she'd already hit her with. She felt the immense tug of power as her former student unconsciously tried to empty her of magic. It would strengthen the spell considerably. Even so, it would only hold for moments, but she had to buy time. She whirled and, taking to the air, bolted back through the twisted window-frame. Gazing up at the night sky as she gained altitude, she saw it suddenly flare into a pure, bright, furious white, then extinguish itself into deepest black. She did not pause to wonder why. Hovering high in the air above the library tree, she surveyed the streets of Ponyville. There were still far too many ponies making their way out of the town.
Six pure souls had already died from this madness. The five ponies among them were all special to her, but her heart bled most especially for Spike. She'd raised the little dragon, had trained him in magic, had presented him to Twilight to be her assistant on his fifth birthday. And now, he'd never grow into the magnificent winged beast he was destined to become. Choking to death on his own vomit at the insignificant dragon age of only twelve years old... It made her want to vomit herself. She wouldn't risk as much as a single more life. Summoning her seldom-used Voice, she filled her lungs. She didn't like using it on her subjects, but right now, she had no choice.
"EVERYPONY! THIS IS YOUR PRINCESS! RUN! RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! FLEE! GET AWAY FROM PONYVILLE, NOW! RUN! RUN! DO NOT LOOK BACK! DO NOT LOOK BACK! RUN! RUN! RUN NOW! AS FAST AS -"
The Ponyville Public Library exploded into a gigantic, roiling, violent fireball. Celestia was knocked, tumbling, upwards and slightly to the side. She caught herself and dived for the ground, heart aching for the bodies of the slain that could not now be recovered and buried with dignity.
Vast chunks of flaming tree were falling around her. The nearby shops and houses had been blasted flat. Some of them, too, were starting to burn.
As the enormous fireball began to cool and darken high above, she beat her wings and cautiously approached the fiercely-burning pit where the magnificent old tree had once stood.
Something was rising from the blazing inferno.
Something hotter and brighter than the fire itself.
Its coat was sun-white, its eyes blood-red, its mane and tail were roaring sheets of yellow-orange flame. Two great wings spread wide from its shoulders, the outermost feathers of which curved forwards into long, shimmering sickle-shaped blades. The horn on its forehead was very long, and very sharp, with glittering jagged protrusions every few inches that seemed to follow some half-forgotten ancient pattern of absolute elemental horror and destruction. It had no hooves, the ends of each of its legs flowing smoothly into multiple thickly-crowded bunches of five or six long, jagged, viciously-hooked claws. The marks on its flanks could never be called "cutie marks." Each looked exactly like the world, burning in towering flames. It looked at Celestia with death in its eyes as it rose slowly into the air, blazing arcs of white-blue lightning leaping between it and the surrounding ground and burning houses and shops.
The Thing opened its jaws. Rows and rows of jagged, uneven teeth. A gaping maw of horror. It was smiling at Celestia. A terrible, world-ending smile. It spoke.
"I am Night Mare Flare," came a deep, shadowed voice of absolute murderous destruction. "This world is mine to devour. And YOU," it spat at Celestia, "are standing foolishly in my WAY!"
Night Mare Flare moved. Faster than sight could follow, those hundreds of teeth had closed around Celestia's neck. Spinning and twisting rapidly through the air, the monster released her at high speed, sending her straight towards a collection of dwellings.
Celestia slammed through the side of the quaint town cottage. Before the rubble had even started to fall, she burst up through the still-collapsing roof and seized the Night Mare around its neck with all of her considerable magical might. The monster sucked and pulled at her spell, strengthening it beyond measure. The scattered and broken wreckage of the town began to smoke and flame from the sheer magical force she was exerting. Gasping with the effort required to maintain such an immensely-powerful spell, she managed to choke out "Twilight! Please! Fight it, fight it!"
The whole world twisted as her telekinetic grip was broken as easily as spider-silk. White-hot tendrils of fire snaked around her, crushed her, held her immovable. The monster had her, had her in an obscene parody of a lover's embrace. She felt hot teeth grate her cheek, jagged claws rake along her belly and flanks. Night Mare Flare hissed into her ear. Its voice, harsh and cold as the roots of a mountain, almost stopped her heart.
"Twilight Sparkle is dead. As is Equestria. As are YOU!"
Celestia felt herself flailing through the air, disorienting her. Night Mare Flare was spinning her around, whipping her towards the ground, towards...
"NO! NOOOOOO!!!"
To the accompaniment of shrieks of terror and a vicious, sadistic laugh from Night Mare Flare, Celestia smashed hard into the ground, right in the middle of Mane Street.
The street was crowded with ponies trying to flee.
Dozens of them were knocked through the air in all directions, some smashing into houses with little wet thuds, others flying hundreds of feet before tumbling to the ground.
And there were six or seven of them underneath her, crushed to bloody pulp as she was hurled onto them.
Coat streaming with the blood of her beloved subjects, eyes streaming with tears of horror and disbelief, Celestia found herself wrenched back up off the shattered ground and remains, back up into the air. Her eyes swept over the panicking crowds beneath her. Almost everypony was screaming. Foals were being trampled in the sudden stampede that had resulted. She could see the smashed and broken bodies of those that had hit some of the nearest buildings, most bleeding severely, all with numerous sickeningly-broken bones, quite a few of them obviously dead.
She was held still and helpless in the air as, to a chorus of deafening horrified screaming, Night Mare Flare landed in the middle of the street. The ponies nearest it burst into flame, fell burning to the street, rolled and gasped in agony. Night Mare Flare approached the nearest one, just a young colt, writhing and screaming in pain. It opened its jaws, lowered its head, and picked up the flaming foal.
It looked straight at Celestia as it bit down with apparent glee.
Celestia, held motionless in the air about twenty feet away, started screaming as well.
Sudden vicious lashes of deepest midnight ripped and clawed at the monster. Celestia wrenched herself free from the weakening telekinetic grip, spun, streaked away for an instant, turned back to attack with all her might. Night Mare Flare was flying out of control through the air directly at the town pavilion, away from the panicking members of the public. As she began to wonder how, she felt a large pony materialise out of the air next to her. As she whirled to face it, she heard the newcomer speak in a smooth, silky, confident voice. A voice she hadn't heard for more than ten centuries.
"Please, Big Sister. Allow me."
Night Mare Moon launched herself after the monster with all the power of a thousand years of hatred.
Without stopping to even ask herself how Luna had done it, Celestia wheeled around and fled, as fast as she could, straight towards Canterlot. She was momentarily too shaken to teleport, and thinking about what she was going to do made her even more so.
She had to. She had to do this. She didn't have a choice any more.
Her blood-soaked coat, rapidly drying now in the wind of her passage, attested to that.
Night Mare Moon wrenched the monster from the smoking rubble of the town pavilion and threw it straight up into the sky, racing to meet it head-on. It was disorientated, clearly, from her arrival and her dark magical attacks. She seized it in her magical grip and slung it as fast and as hard as she could straight back down, from hundreds of feet in the air, at the destroyed central building of the town square.
The rubble burst into flames as the blazing alicorn slammed into the middle of the pile. The individual smashed pieces of wood flew high from the impact. No, not because of the impact... They were flying high under telekinetic control.
Night Mare Moon darted rapidly to the side as the flaming pieces of timber shot at her like arrows. They all missed, but they swooped around behind her, angling for another attack. She avoided this as well, and prepared for a third evasion, but the jagged burning missiles weren't coming back at her.
They were flying straight at the hundreds of ponies that were caught on the bridges out of town.
"NO!" Night Mare Moon screamed, searching around desperately for the monster. She couldn't see it. It wasn't anywhere. She turned her attention on the flying rubble, but before she could even think about trying to grab and move it, jagged talons slammed into her back at an enormous speed, carrying her down and forwards towards the ground. Just before she hit, she saw the tons and tons of burning wood crash at high speed into the thickest part of the crowd that was trying to force its way over the bridges.
With an enormous impact, she smashed through the branches of a tree and into a deserted walkway. Tensing to spring back into the air, she found herself already airborne, upside-down, and moving at tremendous speed at the central bridge over the river. She twisted, tried to break the powerful ropes of white fire holding her. The monster on her back was screaming with insane laughter as it rode her all the way down into the very centre of the crowded bridge.
The bridge smashed to rocks and dust. Five or six ponies were killed immediately with the impact, half-a-dozen more burst into screaming pyres as the monster passed them and fell, with Night Mare Moon still underneath it, into the water, and dozens were thrown high and far from the force of the collision itself.
And then, the Thing hit the river.
Night Mare Moon was smashed straight down into the mud of the riverbed from the force of the explosion. Gathering her magic, she vanished into mist which reappeared a hundred feet above the carnage below. Huge billowing clouds of steam obscured much of the scene, but more than a hundred ponies lay in a wide, scattered half-circle on the townward side of the destroyed stone bridge. Most of them were missing quite a bit of skin, almost all of them had missing limbs. A few didn't have heads. The closest ones were all dead, killed by the blistering cloud of steam. A few that had been further away were groaning, moving feebly due to concussion and their horrible burns.
She moved to the side to avoid a falling chunk of stone from the bridge. No... that had been a pony. She watched in horror as the mare smashed face-first onto the path below.
"WHERE ARE YOU?!" she thundered. "WHERE ARE YOU?! I WILL KILL YOU FOR THIS!"
A three-storey house came down on her with the force of an earthquake, smashing her into the ground below, burying her with the dead. She leaped upwards as hard as she could, sending the wreckage flying, and felt blazing ropes of fire seize her about the neck. Struggling to break the hold, she was whirled around, faster and faster, until the flaming grip released her, sending her flying horizontally at enormous speed. She was heading towards...
She was heading straight towards the monster, now wreathed in flames of blazing blue. After flinging her, it must have teleported into her path. She had no time to react, she was moving far too fast. She would collide with it, but she didn't worry too much about that. The Thing would take the full impact. She pointed her horn directly at the middle of its slathering face, wondering if she could perhaps skewer it. Not likely. She couldn't pierce its foul flaming hide. Alicorns were indestructible...
Apparently not.
The Thing wasn't directly in her path, it was just off to the side. As she blasted past it at thousands and thousands of miles per hour, she watched in dim horror as a huge, thick, blazing tendril of its mane of fire reached out, wrapped around her horn, used her speed and direction of movement as a lever, pulled in the other direction as hard as an angry god...
CRACK
"Well?" Celestia asked. "Do you see my point?"
The silky-smooth voice in her head paused slightly before answering. "Yes. Eternal chaos wouldn't be a whole lot of fun on a cold, dead, lifeless ball of ashes. I see your point."
"If you do this for me..." The anguish in Celestia's voice was plain. "If you do this..."
"Yeeeessss?" the voice drawled.
Celestia had no choice. There was no way, absolutely no way, that her sister and herself could stop Night Mare Flare. More and more of her beloved ponies would die. And then, the world would burn, and everything would be dead.
Celestia began to choke.
"A life of eternal chaos is... is infinitely more preferable to... to... than... than the death of this world and everything on it. If you do this for me... I will..." Celestia sniffed briefly.
She closed her eyes. Drew a breath. Exhaled. Then, she re-composed herself.
The Princess of the Sun looked straight at the face of the statue, the glow around her horn growing more steady.
"Don't kill anypony else."
"Oh, Celestia, give me some credit. I never wanted to KILL anyone!" the voice chided. "You can't mess with ponies' heads if they're DEAD! So what are you offering me to go along with this little day-trip out of my prison?"
"Not a day-trip. I couldn't put you back in if you got out anyway."
Once again the voice was silent for a moment. "What's really the deal here?" it asked, suddenly sounding serious. It was probably the only time it had EVER sounded serious.
"If you kill Twilight Sparkle, for the sake of every living thing in this world, I will give you Equestria. Forever."
Chapter 09: The Third Eternal Sister
Not My Destiny
Grimdark Ending
by Smayds
Chapter 8 - Changes
The spell was cast. It would take some time to pick apart the prison woven by the Elements. Celestia had to get back and help her sister.
"Join me when the prison breaks. I should be in Ponyville, or nearby at least."
Discord's voice rang inside her head. "Oh, count on it," he said, in a tone of unmistakable victory. "See you soon, Celestia."
The glow around her horn faded, and she turned and left the vault deep beneath Canterlot Castle. She didn't bother re-locking the magical door.
Twilight Sparkle trotted cheerfully up to the small, sobbing, shivering midnight-blue form that was huddled on the ground. "Well, that went better than I expected! How're you feeling?" Her voice was almost indecently chipper. A sob answered her. "Oh, come on, Luna! We're gonna have some fun, you and I!"
Glowing dark red, Luna was dragged slowly off the ground until she hung, limp hooves dangling, about five feet in the air. She didn't raise her head. She just kept sobbing.
"You've never felt physical pain before?" Twilight asked. "Well, get used to it. The rest of your sorry life is going to be full of it. And you are going to love it," she added, a strange flickering glow appearing around the edges of Luna's eyes as Twilight slowly levitated the Midnight Princess's broken horn.
Twilight sent fine threads of subtle magic through Luna's terrified eyes and into her head, searching her mind, finding her thoughts, her conscience, her desires... Her will. All laid bare before Twilight like so many pages in a book.
She started tearing some pages out. She scribbled a few new ones. She worked quickly and methodically for a few moments.
Twilight released the other alicorn. She fell, catching herself, and stood facing her victor. Her eyes were blank, save for a faint residual glow in the centre that looked just like Twilight's aura. She opened her mouth and spoke in a voice that sounded like it was deep underground, perhaps coming from a grave.
"What do you have in mind first, Mistress?"
Twilight smiled. "Let us wait for your sister first. I am sure that she will be back, and then we shall give her a marvelous surprise." She paused suddenly, cocking her head. "But I am feeling hungry," she added.
The Princess of the Sun flew rapidly down towards her favourite village, fresh pain springing forth in her chest from what she saw. Most of the buildings were still intact, but there was a lot of rubble strewn about, some of it burning faintly. She spied the destroyed bridge, then the bodies, and her heart knew another great pang of grief. But not horror. No more horror. She was starting to accept that this was happening, and she would stop it if she could. There may be time to mourn the dead later, but not now.
Landing in Mane Street, she folded her wings and cast her head about. Not a sound, aside from the scattered crackling of the small fires. She looked with sadness at the body before her, a young pegasus filly, badly burned and broken, obviously separated from her parents, too young to fly away to safety. Now the poor child would never feel the freedom of the skies.
Safety. The word made her snort. Where in the whole world was safe now?
She sat down in the street and bowed her head. Night Mare Flare had clearly left, probably still engaged in battle with her sister, however that would pan out. So, Luna had chosen to fall to her dark emotions. Chosen to, in order to save Equestria. Perhaps she could. A creature that was once borne of The Lunacy might be able to fight it.
Looking about the countryside, she didn't see any particular trail of destruction, neither broken trees nor distant fires, that gave her a clue as to what direction the inevitable battle had moved off in. She wouldn't go looking for them on her own. She would wait here for Discord. She settled down for a grief-filled rest, among her beloved subjects, to remind herself how badly she'd failed them.
A shrieking, piercing scream rang out, shattering the morbid stillness. She was in the air in an instant, fifty feet high, scanning around rapidly for the source of the -
They were over there, by that destroyed fountain. She drifted closer, almost unaware of the movement. She could not believe what her eyes and ears and heart told her was happening.
Celestia stared in horror. She'd thought that nothing else could horrify her after this evening, but she seemed to have found some new reserve of the dark emotion. Some new, massive reserve. What she was looking at was the worst thing she would ever see.
Luna, small and light-blue-maned, was screaming her lungs out in agony as thick dark blood oozed down her forehead from the shattered stump of her horn. The Royal Princess of the Night was hovering about three feet off the ground, spread-eagled, her legs pulled viciously out to the sides. Each of her hooves was caught in a ball of deep red magic, her tail held high by another red glow, while the small alicorn that had once been her beloved student brutally sodomized her with the jagged end of Luna's own shattered horn. The horn, grasped in a telekinetic red glow, was slick with blood. With every savage thrust, Luna screamed anew, a hoarse, choking, anguished cry that seemed to tear Celestia's heart completely from her chest with every gruesome repetition. But it was what she was screaming that made Celestia feel more horror than she had ever thought she could.
"MORE!" Luna screamed despairingly. "MORE! YES! AHHHHH! FUCK! MEEEEEE! HARDER! MORE! MOOOOORE!"
Celestia nearly fell out of the air. Her now-infinite horror somehow increased as she forced herself to look harder at her sister. There were small divots of flesh missing from Luna's flanks and back, slowly dribbling blood. They looked like they had been carved out with sharp...
They were bites. Twilight had been biting Luna. Twilight had been eating Luna.
Somehow, Twilight had broken Luna's horn. And now she was possessing her, body and mind. And she was injured - bitten! She had wounds that could only be bites.
Luna's horn! It was broken! It was impossible, but clearly true. Luna was mortal!
The Lunacy had possessed the younger alicorn before. Had it somehow used that fact to break her unbreakable horn? To take her immortality?
Celestia could see no other answer.
Twilight Sparkle, royal blood dripping from her razor-toothed mouth, stuck out her tongue at Celestia, winked, and bit down, hard. The foul teeth had no apparent affect on Twilight's indestructible alicorn-flesh. Then she smiled pleasantly at her former teacher. "Welcome back! We started without you, as you can see. Sorry about that!" She hadn't missed a single bloody thrust. She lowered her head to Luna's flank and chewed off another piece of the Royal Princess's flesh with apparent glee. Luna screamed and panted in despair and joy.
Leaving the glowing horn to continue its damnable work, the small lavender alicorn trotted around to look Luna in the eyes. Celestia saw a sick longing in them, as if Luna was smitten with this monster. Twilight opened her mouth, offering the bloody-red scrap of muscle, fat and skin to her eager slave.
Luna extended her panting mouth and accepted the offering from Twilight. Closing her eyes, an expression of utter bliss crossed her tortured face as she chewed on her own freshly-gouged meat.
Celestia, quivering in mid-air, was already at her limit when her sister turned her blood-soaked face towards her and spoke, in a voice filled with agony and lust, ecstasy and torment.
"You're next, Big Sister," Luna panted up at Celestia. "Oh, she's gonna fuck you. She's gonna fuck you bad. And then she'll eat you. I bet you taste like a fucking dream."
It was too much. Far, far too much. She forgot her plan, her pact with Discord. She would kill Twilight Sparkle herself. No. Twilight Sparkle was long dead. She'd been dead from the moment The Lunacy invaded her mind. So she would not kill Twilight Sparkle. She would kill The Lunacy.
For the first time, ever, Celestia lost control of her emotions. Hate, anger, grief, rage, they all blazed inside her. Rage was strongest. Rage took her. A rage that was now hotter than the sun she commanded.
Twilight Sparkle seemed to sense what was happening inside Celestia's heart. The small alicorn leaped into the air, doubling in size, her mane and tail igniting, her flesh burning white-hot, her eyes blazing sudden red, wings and horn expanding and extending, ragged talons bursting from her hooves and wingtips, her jaws surging forwards into a face-splitting maw of teeth, teeth, teeth. She looked at her soon-to-be attacker, and smiled. This was perfect.
Celestia blossomed into a tall sheet of yellow-white sunfire as she allowed her rage to run free. She knew where this might end. She knew that she herself might destroy the world, even willingly, even gleefully, in pursuit of Night Mare Flare.
She didn't care. As long as she killed The Lunacy, she didn't care.
The air shimmered with blistering heat, the wind suddenly fast and powerful, a fierce updraft forming directly over the Princess of the Sun. The scattered and smoldering rubble of the town, all the bodies of the ponies, the trees and grass for hundreds of yards around, even the rocks and dirt, everything suddenly flashed into white-hot flames as the sheet of blazing white fire coalesced into the shape of a huge winged unicorn, more than twice Celestia's size. An alicorn of pure stellar fire, far too bright for mortal eyes to look at, far too hot for mortal matter to be anywhere near. An alicorn that looked to be made out of the very sun itself.
The white-and-yellow-speckled Sun Goddess glanced down through the whirling, blistering air to see her sister's body reduced to glowing-white ash which was being quickly whipped away in the sudden firestorm. She didn't care. Luna was out of her torment. She hadn't killed her, really. She had released her, from the rape of the body and the mind. And she would take revenge upon her rapist.
She looked up at Night Mare Flare.
The smaller monster smiled its world-ending smile at the blazing alicorn. "Excellent," it crooned.
As its long, spiky, jagged horn began to glow bright red, The Sun Goddess charged, at a speed fairly near that of light.
The collision felled trees and cracked the earth for fifty miles around.
The spell was complete. The prison had been broken. Now it was up to him.
There were a few tiny splintering noises. Small fragments of stone chipped and flew from the surface of the statue, revealing a faint glow beneath them. More and more chips and fragments, then the larger cracks began to join into longer jagged lines of dull purple light.
With a crash more like glass than stone, the entire statue shattered into powdery fragments.
There was a flash, and then he was gone from the vault in which he had been safely kept.
Screaming with rage, Night Mare Flare smashed into the third floor of the skyscraper with an almighty crash of glass and stone. The twenty-storey building came smashing down around it, thousands and thousands of tons of wood and metal and carved and shaped rock, along with hundreds of screaming ponies, burying the monster in a rubble pile a hundred feet deep. The rubble suddenly flamed and blazed, the metal flowed and boiled, concrete shattered and splintered and stone melted into lava. With sudden white-yellow flames, the entire pile of flaming and molten rubble blazed white-hot as Celestia threw a spell of pure solar fire straight at it, burning the entire pile of scrap and flesh to ash in seconds. The Sun Goddess looked down at what she had done. The superheated windstorm that came with Celestia blasted the grey-white ash in all directions, tearing the windows out of the nearby already-flaming buildings, cracking the foundations of a few of the nearer ones.
Night Mare Flare was sitting patiently in the centre of the shallow red-hot crater, smiling politely up at the force of nature above her.
Celestia blazed brilliant white as she seized the monster in her telekinetic grip. Again she strained at the jagged horn, twisting it this way and that with enough force to crack the world, to no apparent effect. The nearby buildings were shattering and crumbling under her radiant heat, the dust of their collapses being quickly swirled away by the torturous winds, though the crater she'd made was starting to fill up again, rubble tumbling in towards the centre, and her target.
Ripping Night Mare Flare off the ground and high into the sky with enough speed to produce a thick visible compression wave in the air, the Sun Goddess flew straight up after it, passing it closely, grabbing again at the horn with all of her strength. The monster was sent, spinning rapidly, towards the further side of the city, where the buildings had not yet begin to burn.
Night Mare Flare smashed completely through one giant skyscraper, the speed of its passage through the structure dragging the collapsing building along in its wake, then through another, then into the ground at an angle, throwing up vast clouds of dirt and rock. Dozens of nearby towers and buildings shook and tilted in this enormous upheaval, and then they, too, began to fall.
All the flames in the city stopped moving, held suddenly in place as if they were glowing sculptures.
The falling buildings stopped in mid-collapse.
The empty night sky above turned bright red. All the buildings surrounding the huge pile of flaming rubble bent and twisted away from the crater. Quiet, smooth, confident laughter sounded, seeming to come from every direction at once, then, in a burst of light, Discord appeared right next to the Solar Princess.
"Well, it didn't take long to find you." Discord gestured back over the countryside towards the distant fires of Ponyville. "I just followed the mile-wide trail of flames. Now. Things have changed, yes?"
Celestia stared at her ancient foe. "Whoever kills her gets Equestria. Forever. No interference. No questions asked."
Discord nodded. "But I get first go!"
"I've been 'having a go' for the last hour."
"Oooh! My turn now!"
Night Mare Flare saw the long, thin, snakelike draconequus come flying towards it, flashes of magical energy rippling around his front paws. Discord was clearly not going to waste time on trying to cause craziness and madness and so on. He was going for the kill.
Excellent!
Night Mare Flare was caught in a blaze of red-hot magic, stretching and pulling and clawing at it in every direction possible. It flew through the air, spinning and screaming, until it hit a large apartment building. The faint cacophony of screams told the tale - there were clearly still ponies inside.
Night Mare Flare screamed and thrashed in apparent agony. None of its magic seemed to do any good at all against the Master of Chaos.
This is getting the job done marvelously.
Manehattan was a wreck. Hundreds of buildings were now blazing rubble. The Solar Princess seemed content to hang back on the fringes and watch as Discord ripped and tore at the newest alicorn with all of his impressive magical might. She genuinely didn't care what happened to Equestria any more. She didn't care for her little ponies. She didn't even care if the entire world was destroyed in this seemingly-endless battle. She just wanted The Lunacy dead, no matter what it took to achieve this. The Sun Goddess turned her attention back to the raging battle before her.
Night Mare Flare hit the ground at an enormous speed. The cloud of dust and rubble that was thrown up from the impact reached nearly a mile into the sky. It leaped from the huge impact crater and flew at the draconequus, talons outstretched, vicious teeth bared, horn blazing reddish-white.
Floating in mid-air, Discord stepped neatly aside from the oncoming alicorn, extended his arms, and seized the creature's jagged horn as it passed him by. With a tremendous pull, he sent Night Mare Flare spinning off at high speed, almost directly towards Celestia.
"It's still my turn!" he shouted. "No cheating! Just hit that thing back to me, Celestia!"
Celestia obliged. A giant flaming mass appeared in front of the Sun Goddess, moving like a whip towards the screaming form of Night Mare Flare. It smacked the monstrosity so hard that clouds briefly condensed out of the hot air around the impact point. Spitting and shrieking, the monster was catapulted back through the air towards a viciously-grinning Discord.
It was beginning to feel the first onset of boredom.
Oh, fuck it. He's just having a laugh now.
And Celestia's more fun to mess with.
The monster stopped dead in midair, its horn flashing bright red for a moment. It seemed to Discord that the rest of the world was suddenly... switched off. The two magical beings were floating in -
"What?!"
They were floating in absolutely nothing. They were surrounded by an infinite void of total nothingness, stretching off forever in every single direction. The Master of Chaos was definitely caught off-guard by this.
"What's this? This shouldn't have happened!"
Discord flashed away. He reappeared immediately in the same spot.
"What? What?!"
"Oh, be quiet, you little fool. Enough's enough."
Discord seemed to ripple with magical energy. Little sparks started to flash all around Night Mare Flare, the empty nothing of this strange place seeming to warp and ripple, but nothing else happened. The sparks winked out.
"Hmm," said the Element of Disharmony. His eyes glowed brightly, and he suddenly loomed large in front of the alicorn, staring as hard as he could straight into its eyes. He opened his mouth to speak...
Night Mare Flare's jagged horn blazing a violent, pulsing, sickly yellow-green.
Discord shrank in size until he was barely five feet long. Eyes wide, he tried to teleport away again, if not out of this place, then at least a little further away from what he suddenly recognised before him. Preferably, a lot further away. He couldn't teleport. He couldn't teleport at all.
"You're boring me," Night Mare Flare said flatly. "You were fun when it started, but now, you're just boring."
Discord started screaming, twisting madly, struggling to get away, but there was no solid surface to stand on, no air to beat his wings against in this empty realm of pure magic. His own powers had fled him completely, seemingly drained into the ancient terror he could not now bear to look at. His screaming became panicked, hysterical.
"ENOUGH!"
Discord's screams were cut off instantly. The now-small draconequus still flapped his mouth, still twisted and writhed, still darted his wild eyes everywhere but at the alicorn. Suddenly, he glowed faintly magenta-red, and he became rigid, unmoving. He bobbed through the nothingness until he was floating right in front of Night Mare Flare, his wide, terrified eyes locking onto the jagged horn he saw before him. Faint puffs of the same magenta-red glow could be seen underneath the powerful sick-yellow glare surrounding Night Mare Flare's horn.
"You remember it, do you? Took you long enough." A smirk was spreading across the monster's face. "We've been fighting for hours, you even had your claws on it at one point, and you're just now recognising it?" Night Mare Flare snorted in amusement.
"You... you... you..." Discord whispered.
"Me," Night Mare Flare said, the corners of its enormous mouth quirking into a smirk.
"But... Celestia said... The Lunacy... you're... The Lunacy... not... You can't- can't be..."
"Sharaheng Zus," Night Mare Flare said with a murderous grin. "Pleased to re-make your acquaintance."
Discord started screaming and twisting again, but was immediately stilled with a fast pulse of light from the horn.
"It's been a long time, Ankoshung Zast. A very long time since I made you and set you loose on Equestria. I've visited your statue from time to time, of course. Even after Celestia locked it away in that crypt..."
Discord was barely able to comprehend the words he heard, so enormous was his terror. His eyes were locked onto the horn once again. The ancient glowing pattern of jagged twists and spikes was like a childhood horror in his mind, forgotten for thousands and thousands of years. He'd seen that horn before. He'd seen it, glowing like this, as his spirit was formed out of the air and the ground, as he was instructed by his until-now-unknown maker, as his soul was poured into the results of the sacrifice of thirteen different living creatures... All of this for the sole purpose of bringing disharmony to Equestria. He'd seen the pattern in the horn before him when he was told that his failure would mean his destruction...
"You played your part perfectly, child. You drew Celestia and Luna to Equestria. Job well done. I wasn't at all surprised that they imprisoned you. They couldn't kill you, of course."
Night Mare Flare lowered its horn. The tip pushed easily through the otherwise-indestructible fur and skin right over Discord's heart. The blood that flowed was the same colour as the arcane glow of the horn.
"I have no such problem."
The ruined city of Manehattan reappeared around them as Night Mare Flare released the magical hold on Discord's voice, letting him scream, both in fear as well as in agony now. It wanted to remember its creation's final 'words.'
Celestia flew slow circles high above the ruined city, whipping the smoke and dust into huge flurries. She was looking for Night Mare Flare and Discord. She had no idea where they had gone, and she was worried.
A scream. A loud, high-pitched, wailing scream of agony... She whirled to face the direction it had come from. She couldn't see anything in that direction, just destroyed buildings and rubble-filled streets...
A random jumble of bodyparts, covered with a strange greenish-yellow substance, suddenly appeared in the air in front of the Sun Goddess. Just before they were incinerated away to glowing ash, she recognised a goat leg, an eagle's claw, a large spiky bat's wing, what seemed to be a deer's antler... A misshapen pony's head, eyes blank, tongue lolling out...
As she was coming to the impossible realisation that Discord was dead, something collided with her at a tremendous speed. She felt teeth around her neck, she felt many claws scrabbling over her hide of solar plasma. She felt a magical power unlike anything she'd ever felt before...
Her roaring fire flickered for a moment as some enormous blackness clouded her mind. Night Mare Flare didn't just have her in a physical hold, it had her in a magical grasp that was suddenly far stronger than she'd expected. Gathering herself, she released a huge burst of energy, which both threw the monster off, and blasted the entire enormous, ruined city into glowing ash.
Celestia paused for a moment. She looked at what she'd just done. She saw the magical shockwave she'd made, still visible, moving away from her at a tremendous speed in every direction. She saw buildings and rubble and terrified, screaming, fleeing ponies ignite into yellow-white flames as the magical wavefront passed.
She'd just killed at least a million of her beloved subjects.
She didn't care. The monster wasn't one of them. It wasn't dead. The monster that had caused so much death and destruction wasn't dead. The monster that had even somehow managed to kill an indestructible magical spirit was still alive. It would die. Celestia would kill it, then she could mourn her sister and all the other, insignificant dead, and rebuild her world.
Night Mare Flare was heading back towards her, its sharp and spiky horn aimed right at at her face, moving faster than she could believe. Celestia tensed, flexed her magic, prepared herself.
She released another enormous burst of magical energy, far larger than the last. This one blew the burned ground underneath her into whirling fragments, for miles and miles in every direction. She caught sight of her enemy, far away now, mane and tail still blazing fire, spinning out of control and heading right towards the lights of the distant city of New Martindale.
Seething with fury, the Solar Princess channeled all the magical power that was available to her. She exploded into an enormous mass of alicorn-shaped flame, hundreds of feet long, sharp spikes of white-hot sunfire extending all over her magical body. The ground beneath her, already blasted and burning, began to glow a bright yellow-white from her radiant heat. The air itself seemed to ignite, and massive walls of fire raced away from her in every direction, turning the trees and ground and occasional buildings they passed into dull-white ash.
The Sun Goddess screamed a curse at her fleeing prey, and launched herself after Night Mare Flare.
She would finish this. She would finish this now. Whatever the cost.
The roaring walls of fire before her had overtaken the cowardly monster, with no apparent effect on it, blasting right to the horizons in all directions, destroying everything they touched. She closed in on her quarry, enormous white-hot hooves extended to catch it, trap it, crush it, incinerate it into ash.
Her prey stopped dead-still in the air before her. Celestia smiled. It was making this easy for -
A vast, boiling, rippling, screaming wave of utter blackness exploded out of Night Mare Flare, spreading across everything that Celestia could see. She couldn't escape it, she couldn't outrun it -
Celestia screamed as it hit her. With a ripping, tearing crack, she shrank into a small pink-and-green-maned winged unicorn and fell out of the sky, momentarily stunned. She managed to catch herself, and rapidly flapped down to land near the charred and smoldering top of a small hill that was underneath her. She turned around and looked up into the sky, her eyes going wide at what she saw.
Night Mare Flare had transformed into a huge ball of rippling fire, hanging still in the air. There were no features visible, but Celestia had no doubt that the Thing was staring straight at her, an expression of pure triumph on its face.
The ball of fire flashed white-hot, then cooled to a sphere of utter blackness.
Celestia reached for her magic. She couldn't find it.
It wasn't there.
There was no magic at all for her to use. No magic. None at all. Not anywhere.
"Well! Thank you for FINALLY being so accommodating!" The ball of blackness in the sky sounded half-overjoyed, half-annoyed. "Ten thousand years I've been waiting for that, and you finally oblige with a blast of solar plasma that burned the entire world into ash!"
Celestia stood, stunned, gazing at this monster of monsters in the sky before her.
"Oh, before I forget." The Lunacy made a horrible, gurgling, choking noise, then it spat a small wet lavender ball right at Celestia.
The Princess moved to the side, watching the incoming mass, confident that it wouldn't hit her... She recognised the projectile...
Sending a spray of glowing stone fragments in all directions, Twilight Sparkle smashed into the hot rock where Celestia had been standing. With a groan, the small winged unicorn started to get to shaky hooves. Celestia darted over to her and helped her stand.
"Twilight? Twilight?! Are you hurt? Are you alright?"
The small alicorn shook her head to clear the dust out of her eyes. She raised her gaze to Celestia's.
If Celestia could be killed, the look on Twilight's face would have done it.
Horror, sorrow, anguish, pain, remorse, fear, terror... The face of the small purple alicorn was straight out of Celestia's most horrific nightmares. Twilight had been raped far more thoroughly than Luna.
The Princess turned to look at the monstrous ball of death in the sky. Somehow, she found her voice. "You just... You used Twilight Sparkle to..."
"To empower me." The Lunacy flared white for a moment, before returning to its twisting, swirling black. "To empower me to force the Third Eternal Sister to follow through with her destiny."
"You used Twilight to destroy the world! You... You..." Words totally failed the ancient alicorn.
The Lunacy laughed, a loud, cracking, cackling laugh. If it still had a head, Celestia could imagine it thrown back in mirth. She glared at the monster while feeling around for her magic. She would rip it into fragments if she could only find some magic! Where had all her magic gone?!
"Twilight Sparkle?" the monster choked. "Twilight Sparkle didn't destroy the world! You did!"
Celestia's eyes went wide.
"But..." she started. "But... but my mother's prophecy..."
"Twilight Sparkle's not the third Eternal Sister! She's the fifth! You are the third Eternal Sister!"
Celestia's mouth dropped open in shock.
"And poor precious Luna was the fourth!" Night Mare Flare laughed, a horrifying grating cackle that sounded like a million windows smashing at once. "Starshine and Moonrise were the first and second! Your parents were ALICORNS!"
Celestia didn't want to believe this. It wasn't possible. Her mother and father were unicorns. They didn't have wings. It just was not possible...
"Your parents were thousands of years old when they sacrificed their immortality to see the future. I should know. I was there." The Lunacy sounded smug beyond imagining. "I saw them transform from enormous alicorns into small wingless unicorns. I saw them realise what was going to happen, I saw them take measures to prevent the end of the world."
"The book," Celestia breathed. "My mother's book. She never told me. She never mentioned -"
"Oh, that book took nearly a hundred years to write. Some of the things in it had happened before it was finished, I should think."
"You know about the book?!" Celestia's disbelief at the situation actually increased.
"I was watching over your precious mother's shoulder as she wrote it!" The Lunacy laughed. "I saw her speak to you on her deathbed, give you that small box containing the work of decades. I had never been happier. I waited for such a long time to make the first prediction bear fruit."
Despite the fact that she somehow knew this to be true, Celestia just couldn't believe it. It was too... It was too crazy.
"You knew that I was the third Eternal Sister? You never tried to attack me, control me?"
The ball of darkness contracted slightly. "Repeatedly. I never could. I tried. For six thousand years I have tried. But you're just too noble. So I attacked your bitch of a sister."
"DON'T YOU DARE SPEAK ABOUT LUNA LIKE THAT!"
The Lunacy chuckled. "I'll speak about my little whore however I like. QUIET!" it warned, seeing Celestia about to shout again. "She was easy. I thought I'd succeeded the first time, but you somehow managed to bend all of the Elements of Harmony to your will. Fine. You banished us both to the moon. I waited. And today, I finally win."
Celestia didn't respond. The Lunacy couldn't resist taking another jab at her.
"Taking your weak, insignificant younger sister and transforming her into a creature of madness and dark powers... Even that didn't make you turn to your own inner demons. It took a thousand years, but I finally found something to make you snap. Breaking her, far more completely than I could when I made her turn into The Night Mare. Your precious student there is so incredibly powerful. Far more powerful than you and your late sister combined. My powers grew to match hers. And I found how to break you."
The spinning ball of blackness twisted into a silhouette of Luna, floating spread-eagled, writhing in ecstasy as a smaller winged silhouette repeatedly rammed something jagged into the area beneath her tail. The Lunacy started to laugh as Celestia and Twilight began to weep.
"And then," the monster said, huge quantities of sick mirth invading its horrid voice, "you finally snapped. Finally. Oh, I could have destroyed the world on my own, with the powers of the fifth Eternal Sister at my command. I could fling this ball of rock and dirt straight into your sun. But it was so much more fun to watch you do it for me!" Ringing peals of laughter shook the superheated air.
Celestia still couldn't say anything. The tears streaming from her eyes were boiling away into two small trails of steam in the blistering heat. Next to her, wrapped in her wing, her former student shook violently, sobbing at what she had helped to bring about.
"And you have, very neatly indeed, fulfilled a prophecy that was written almost a hundred years before your birth." The spinning ball of blackness seemed to actually bow politely. "Thank you for that. I would have had no trouble doing the same, but it was so entertaining watching you break, and watching you eat the world while trying to kill me. Besides," the monster chuckled, "it wasn't my place to do so, whereas it was, if you'll pardon the expression, your destiny."
Celestia stayed stock-still, stunned beyond comprehension.
"And now, the end. My work is done. Oh, don't worry," The Lunacy said. "Life will return to this filthy ball of dirt. I hope the next five hundred million years aren't too boring for you."
The ball of darkness flared briefly. The sun roared high into the sky. Celestia and Twilight could see that the familiar blue sky was now dull red, choked with the smoke from an entire world burning.
The Lunacy blazed sudden reddish-gold. The ball of light and heat in the sky shrank, its illumination fading, its warmth dying, until it was no larger and no brighter than one of Luna's beautiful stars. The stars the world would never see again.
The Lunacy spoke for the last time. "Good bye. I'll see you in two or three billion years to repeat the pleasure."
The dark sphere evaporated into steamy mist that was whipped away by the torturous winds of fire that swept the world.
Celestia and Twilight, both sobbing, embraced each other. Each had only the other for comfort on this dying ball of flame and ash. They stayed like that for hours, days. After what seemed years, they broke apart.
"So," said Twilight Sparkle.
"So," sniffed Celestia. "So, we wait, Little Sister."
Sobbing, they embraced each other once again.
