The Forgotten Prince

Chapters

Chapter II: The Essence of Fear
Chapter III: Dead Ponyville
Chapter IV: The Dark Alicorn
Chapter V: Duel of the Immortals
Chapter VI: Heartbroken
Chapter VIII: Deciphering the Enigma
Chapter IX: The Key to Salvation
Chapter X: A Heart of Courage
Chapter I: A Song from a Weeping Heart
Chapter VII: Trail of Memories

Chapter II: The Essence of Fear

Chapter II: The Essence of Fear

As the inhabitants of Ponyville woke up, they too would be found standing perplexed and shocked by the windows or doorways of their homes. It would not be long until a large group of ponies was gathered outside on the streets, either exchanging questions that nopony was able to answer or exclamations of concern and awe.

Twilight had just finished writing a letter to princess Celestia, asking her mentor if it was everything alright at the Canterlot castle, and if she knew anything at all about this strange phenomenon, as she could not stop worrying and assuming the worst.

Could this unexpected absence of both sun and moon mean that something terrible had happened to the princesses? And should she assume that the celestial bodies’ disappearing was, somehow, connected to the blinding haze and the freezing air? In a more deep concern, well buried in her conscious, her mind dwelled with the possible meanings of the dream she had the previous night.

Shrugging away her clouding thoughts, she rolled up the parchment very quickly and handed it to a still drowsy Spike for him to blow some magical fire on it, thus sending it through the air and to its respective destination. In the case a response from her mentor would not have arrived in the next few hours, she thought, she and her friends would depart immediately to Canterlot.

Before going outside, she remembered to get her satchel from the closet upstairs, and then rushed back to the library on the ground floor, where she began searching anxiously through the bookshelves and drawers, packing some things she thought could be useful in the case things got worse or a journey to the capital city was necessary, things the young dragon could barely discern through half-closed eyes due to heavy eyelids.

Only then did Twilight hurriedly walk over to the front door and open it, letting an unpleasant chilly blow of air get past her and inside the house.

“Hurry up, Spike! We can’t stay here and do nothing, we have to figure out what’s going on!”

Once outside, she noticed some ponies passing close by at a nervous pace, all heading towards the same direction. She could hear some of them mentioning that Mayor Mare was about to give a speech in the city hall, concerning this whole situation. Twilight though that, maybe, she had been already informed of some important news. She hastened her trot and followed the crowd.

A few minutes later, she found herself forced to stop, for right in front of her was a big, compressed throng of scared and wondering ponies. She wanted to listen closely to the speech, so she had to push through in order to reach the first row. Spike always followed behind, even at a slower pace, but found it much easier to get to the front by simply crawling under the many legs, given his small size.

After a while after reaching the front row, despite all the noise, Twilight was able to hear a familiar squealing voice calling her name nearby, so she turned her head in that direction. Her gaze immediately landed on was an unmistakable pink and curly mane, bouncing in the middle of the crowd, and quite noticeable even through the mist. It was Pinkie Pie, followed closely by Rarity and Rainbow Dash, the latter hovering above them, Twilight could state as they drew closer.

“Hey, girls!” Twilight greeted them, though without hiding her concerned expression, which was quite evident to them.

“Hello, Twilight...” Rarity was the first to respond, giving a clearly upset sigh “what an unpleasant surprise to wake up to, huh?”

Pinkie bore quite an un-Pinkie-like annoyed expression on her face.

“Speaking of surprises, I had just prepared this super-duper-amazing special surprise to show you guys at the party this morning, and now I don’t even know if it is morning at all! This is so confusing...”

Rarity turned again to Twilight.

“I just hope that all this isn’t a sign that something terrible happened to the princesses...”

“My thought’s the same, Rarity. I’ve sent princess Celestia a letter asking if it was everything alright, but she hasn’t responded yet.”

Still floating in the air right above them, Rainbow Dash was the one that looked the most displeased.

“And what’s with this stupid fog? I couldn’t dispatch it, not for anything I tried! Ugh... I just KNOW they’ll be on my back about this one!” she grunted while looking away, cross-armed, swollen in her own pride to be the fastest and most efficient weather patrol worker.

“Does any of you know where Fluttershy and Applejack could be?” the purple unicorn inquired.

“Fluttershy must’ve bunkered with her animals inside her house as soon as she took a peek outside the window” the cyan pegasus replied.

“As for Applejack, she’s coming over there!” Pinkie pointed away “I can see her hat already!”

Twilight turned aroung to see the orange farmer pony on her way to meet with them. She also looked quite unsatisfied.

“Hey, gang. Ah reckon by this amount of ponies here that y’all are as concerned about this whole mess as Ah am.”

“What took you so long to get here?” Rarity inquired.

“The rooster didn’t cluck. The poor thing must’ve been confused by the lack of light... Ah’d be too, if Ah hadn’t got up and looked through the window and saw this... sorry if y’all were waiting for me.”

“It’s okay, Applejack” Twilight said.

“Thanks, Twi. And Ah wanted to ask you: has princess Celestia told you anything about what’s goin’ on?”

She shook her head negatively as a response “Mayor Mare should be here any minute to tell us if she has received any information.”

“Ah see...”

After some more minutes, the tall doors of the city hall opened side to side, and through them exited Mayor Mare, who was being flanked by two Canterlot royal guards, both their expressions as stiff and cold as the heavy armours they wore. Everypony ceased the murmurs when the mayor approached the podium and cleared her throat. Twilight and her friends perked up their ears in full attention.

“Citizens of Ponyville, by now you all must have noticed that a bizarre phenomenon has befallen over our town. I have received information that this exact same event is happening over many other cities, if not, I am afraid to say, throughout all of Equestria, as I speak.

Despite the fact that the sun hasn’t raised yet and the moon, too, has gone missing from the skies, I can assure you that the royal sisters of Canterlot are perfectly safe and sound. They’ve sent messengers to all corners of Equestria to assure their subjects that this is no matter to worry ourselves about, and that they will try to resume the normal cycle of day and night as soon as possible.

As for the strange weather, it was first though that this was a lapse from the part of the pegasi weather patrol...”

At that moment, Rainbow Dash could not hold her indignation anymore and felt the need to let it out. She hastily dashed through the air until her face met with that of the speaker.

“Now wait just a minute, if there is anything I won’t stand is somepony accusing me of being an incompetent worker! I take my job very seriously, ma’am! I could clear the skies of Ponyville and surroundings in seconds, but THIS, this was just out of my reach!”

Mayor Mare simply closed her eyes, her expression as placid as ever.

“Do not worry, miss Rainbow Dash, we all know very well that you are an excellent worker. In fact, we also know that if you couldn’t dispatch some random cloud, haze or storm, whatsoever, nopony could. And I’m afraid that’s the case: word from all over Equestria is that this awful mist and sudden lower of temperature are all connected to whatever terrible force has managed to take control over both the sun and the moon. It cannot be dispatched because it is from a... magical source.”

The whole crowd burst in noisy murmurs, and Twilight just had her suspicions confirmed. If it was true that some mysterious force had taken control of both day and night, and was spreading this cold, thick haze throughout the land, then they would be facing a whole new threat, perhaps even bigger than Nightmare Moon, Discord, king Sombra, or any other, she though, for it could clearly rival the powers of princess Celestia, the most powerful pony known to her.

Mayor Mare cleared her throat once more, subtly calling everypony’s attention one last time as she concluded her brief speech.

“So now that you have all been informed, I would advise everypony to resume your daily routines, and pretend none of this has ever happened. The royal sisters assure us they’ll have this all taken care of before long. Just remember to be careful on the roads, since they’re very slippery and hard to see.”

All the other ponies began to leave to different directions. Though slightly calmed down, they were all still a bit apprehensive. Twilight and her friends, on the other hoof, remained there.

“There’s something wrong here, girls...” the purple unicorn stated “whatever’s causing all this is clearly a menace to princess Celestia’s powers; so why would she just send messengers everywhere, and not tell us anything in the first place?”

Nopony was able to answer, though they all understood Twilight’s preoccupation.

“I mean... we ARE the elements of harmony, aren’t we? She has called our help in several other occasions. So why would this one be any different? It just doesn’t make sense!”

“You heard Mayor Mare saying that the princesses would solve this themselves, Twi!” Applejack remembered her “Though I understand your concern, maybe they really just wanna try to fix everything alone this time. Ah mean, it’s their sun and moon, after all. If somepony or something is trying to take them, it’s only natural that they want to be them alone to bring them back.”

“Yes, darling!” Rarity assured her “You have to trust princess Celestia if she says she is able to take care of this herself.”

Her friends had a point, but she still wondered why her teacher would not notify her at all of something like this. Twilight just sighed impatiently.

“What other choice do I have, right?”

That said, they all prepared to leave to their respective duties, like the mayor had recommended.

Suddenly, a cold and howling gale rose up without a warning, almost making Applejack’s hat fly away, if she had not caught it with her hoof first.

The wind was quickly growing stronger, so much that Rainbow Dash had to land on the ground and Spike was nearly knocked down from his tiny feet. It blew through their manes in a disagreeable way, as the air seemed to be getting chillier than before, while the sound of all sorts of things being thrown to the ground or the loose shutters banging was heard among the incessant whistling, creating an incredibly harsh atmosphere.

Many other ponies could be heard screaming and running to their homes from all directions. The six friends, too, felt they had to find cover somewhere quickly.

Before long, they found themselves forced to half-close their eyes in order to prevent getting flying dust on them, but carried on their difficult pace against the tempest. Through semi-shut eyes, Twilight noticed that the fog was getting dimmer, until it was practically pitch black.

An ear-splitting thunder was heard, and they all got scared and shot open their eyes with a collective gasp. The haze seemed to be lifting a little, but only enough for them to become aware of some darker, massive clouds forming in the sky, shooting some very bright blood-red bolts of lightning, followed by other deafening thunders.

At some point, one thunderous bolt hit the middle of the street they were on, only a few meters in front of them. What they saw next made them freeze where they stood and agape in panic and terror: from the scorched hole in the pavement emerged the dark, shadowy and ethereal-looking figure of an earth pony, though much skinnier and taller than any normal, healthy pony they had ever seen; its mere sight sent chills down their spines, for it had no eyes, no mouth, no face at all; yet, they knew it was somehow looking at them.

It got out from the hole and began walking towards them very slowly. They wanted to scream out of pure horror, but their mouths would not let them, and it kept walking in their direction, while emitting a bloodcurdling sound that got louder and louder as the distance between them narrowed, very perceptible even through the howling tempest and the shrilling thunders. It sounded like a mixture of static noise with the heavy and painful respiration of a dying pony, spitting a torrent of indistinguishable words between breaths in a demonic, shrieking voice.

At some point, Applejack finally managed to come back to her senses, and took the lead of the group, starting by turning around on her hooves.

“Run guys! Follow me this way!”

They scampered as fast as they could away from the thing. Applejack led them inside the first door she found, after taking a few twists and turns in order to lose it, without noticing that it had not even tried to run after them.

She hurriedly closed the door behind her. Inside was pitch black, occasionally lit up faintly by the red lightning storm, flashing through the windows in the form of unearthly and frightening crimson beams, but at least the tempest would not get them there and, hopefully, neither would that horrible figure.

“What the hay... was that thing?!” Rainbow Dash asked, while still trying to catch her breath.

“Don’t know...” Applejack said in a serious tone “But let’s hope we don’t run into that again... or that there aren’t more of those out there!...”

“We have to find Fluttershy!” Pinkie reminded “The poor thing must be so scared, all alone in her house... and what if there ARE more of those things, and they manage to get her? What would they do to her? Aw, this is terrible!”

“Calm down, Pinkie!” Twilight stepped in “I’m sure she’ll be safe as long as she’s inside her house. What we need to do now is stay indoors as well, at least until the storm is gone. Meanwhile, we should figure out whose house we’ve just invaded.”

That said, they began searching for a light switch. Pinkie Pie found one, but unfortunately the power was out, probably because of the tempest, so Twilight had to improvise and lit up her horn.

The dim magical source of light flickered like a candle of white fire. It was not very bright, but it would do for a small, circular beam.

She walked slowly and carefully further inside the house, followed closely behind by the others, while muttering silently to herself “Princess Celestia is REALLY gonna have to explain me this one.”

With all the doors and windows closed, the inside of the house was immerse in a strange, deadening silence, interrupted only by the sporadic muffled thunders outside and sound of their hoofsteps treading on the wooden floor.

After walking a bit further into the shadows, they all started noticing a bizarre and alarming change in their surroundings and in the atmospheric pressure. Their hooves were suddenly treading over a harder, noisy surface, which the beam of light revealed to be a rusty metal grill. Through its holes, they could see an unfathomable hole in the ground, where the light could not find the end, giving them the frightful sensation of standing above a bottomless pit.

The concrete walls and ceiling were utterly covered in slimy, dripping mold, and the stench of humidity filling the heavy air around them was nearly unbearable. The disquieting intermittent silence only interrupted by the occasional thunders from before was now replaced by a constant low and grave whooshing, like water rushing through large pipes behind the concrete. None of them would say they were even in the same world anymore.

At some point, Twilight felt a painful sting in one of her front hooves and let out an audible shriek, stopping immediately, followed by the rest of the group. She pointed her light source to her still aching sole, only to find out a shattered piece of glass jabbed in it, not too deeply, but enough to cause some blood to spurt around the wound, and, on the floor in front of them, more broken shards were scattered, some utterly covered in crimson, fresh blood, still dripping, which was not of any of them, but there was so much of it that they all gasped in dread at the sight.

It was then that the six friends’ noses detected a different and exceptionally foul scent in the air, right before the purple pony’s beam caught something large and moist lying still ahead of them, which contrasted with the absolute dull nothingness on that infinite pitch black corridor.

Upon approaching it with caution, they all came to the immediate realisation of what it actually was, and some aghast squeals and whimpers were heard, in a mixture of horror and disgust, for they had stumbled across the corpses of two fully grown-up ponies. Both of them had their whole bodies burnt beyond recognition, with whatever remaining skin tissue as dark as a piece of charcoal, and an odd gap on their chests, from which some smoke was still coming out, suggesting the bizarre conclusion that they had combusted from the inside out.

While Pinkie and Rarity turned their faces away, both because of the shock of such a horrific sight and the nauseous reek of burnt flesh, Rainbow Dash and Applejack simply stood there staring confused, with the latter covering the innocent eyes of the young dragon with one hoof. The librarian pony, however, went a bit further in examining the bodies, and found out another possible cause of death, as their necks appeared to have been sawn deeply.

In their already completely baffled minds, the six friends shared now common questions: who could these two unfortunate souls be? How did they get here? Or better yet... where is “here”?

All of a sudden, a sad and stifled weeping became audible, coming from the far end of the dark hallway. Twilight looked back to her friends, who, by the looks on their faces, shared the same bewilderment and curiosity to find its source, so they pressed forward, with even more caution in every step.

The more they walked, the more the incessant sobs increased in volume, echoing throughout the corridor, repeating themselves, and creating such a disquieting scenario that one’s very sanity could be felt slowly weakening. Eventually, Twilight and her friends started catching glimpses of shadows changing or moving from the corners of their eyes, and so the mystification gave way to unease, and the unease was slowly giving way to pure dread.

Soon, they would all find themselves scampering, with their hearts beating incredibly fast from both the rush and the alarmed state of their minds. They did not want to be in this place anymore.

“There’s a door!” Twilight exclaimed from the front of the group, noticeably relieved.

On the side wall was an ajar wooden door; a red shaft of light passed through the gap for a split second and spread on the floor of the hallway, accompanied by an ear-splitting thunder, followed immediately by complete obscurity.

The corridor prolonged much further past it, but no amount of foalish curiosity would make them want to spend one more second in there, neither did the circumstances of what followed: the petrifying static noise and high-pitched whispers had returned, coming from amidst the darkness in front of them. Their pupils narrowed as they saw the head of another figure coming out of the shadows, treading patiently, knowing exactly where they were despite having no face and being made of black smoke.

There was yet another one, coming from behind; how it got to them so quickly, given that they had been running and not being followed for minutes, while those things were apparently so slow, nopony knew, nor did they care at the moment.

The purple unicorn hastily pushed the door open, led all the others inside and closed it, while Applejack and Rainbow Dash struggled to move a nearby weighty piece of furniture to bar it, hoping it would give them some time. Twilight focused her faint beam of light on her surroundings in order to inspect which division they had entered.

It was somepony’s bedroom. On one side, there was a tidily made bed, with comfortable-looking sheets and bedspread, and one bedside table with a lamp and a box of tissues on it. On the other side was a closet and a tall, broken mirror, which caught her attention instantaneously, since the rest of the room, seemed very clean and organised. There was only a major problem: with the two silhouettes standing outside in the hallway, they were trapped in there.

Twilight walked over to the opposite wall, the one with the window through which they could gaze the horrendous sky filled with massive dark clouds and the unremitting blood-coloured bolts of lightning, while the others followed her with their gazes from near the barricaded door. She focused the light of her horn on the shatters of the mirror, scattered on the carpet, and noticed that some of them had what seemed to be more fresh blood on them.

Upon looking closer, she noticed a trail of small red drops along the carpet, leading to the darkest corner of the room. She turned her head and the beam of light in that direction. There, almost unnoticeable, sat the form of a female adult pony, facing the wall with her head down and her mane covering her face. It was her who was crying, for she broke the long silence and gave another desperate sob when the horn was pointed directly at her.

“H-hello...?” Twilight called quietly, hesitating a bit, but the pony did not respond, confined to her ceaseless crying.

Her coat, mane and tail were a total mess, unkempt and with blood stains all over them. However, Twilight was able to recognise her by her cutie mark.

“Berry Punch?”

After hearing her name, the pony lifted up her head in a swift motion and, though without turning to face her, answered between more sobs.

“T-Twilight?! I-is that you?” Her voice seemed more like an echoed, nervous whisper, barely resembling Berry Punch’s usual timbre as Twilight remembered, but a phantom’s lament.

“Yes, it’s me...” She began approaching her back slowly “Why are you crying here, all alone? And the blood... are you hurt?”

“I-I’m scared, Twilight! S-so scared! The others... t-they were scared too, but they’ve figured their own way to never fear anything... anymore.”

Twilight felt a bit frightened just to think of what those words could mean, freezing completely where she stood.

“What do you mean? Who are the others you’re talking about?”

“Lyra and Bon Bon... t-this is their house. When the storm came, everypony ran to their homes, b-but I was very far from mine... so they let me hide in here.”

“Where are they now, Berry?”

She let out another loud whimper, but after it all the remaining tears were swollen.

“They... they left me here, all alone. We thought we’d be safe indoors, but we’re not. N-nopony is safe... she comes anyway!”

The way she pronounced those last words was quite disturbing, not to mention that their meaning was absolutely senseless, almost as if uttered by an insane pony.

“Berry? Who are you talking about?”

“She comes through the mirrors... Lyra and Bon simply couldn’t bear feeling her presence growing inside their bodies, taking control of their whole being. So they ran outside with some mirror shards and... cut their own throats open!”

That last statement literally sent unpleasant chills down Twilight’s spine, as well as those of her friends, who had been listening to the whole conversation by the door.

“Who’s her, Berry?” Twilight tried to pluck a concise answer from her, as the mulberry-coloured pony’s state of mind was perceptibly shaken and fragile.

“You can’t fear what you cannot see, can you?” She continued, her tone of voice starting to fall into insanity with words that made no sense “The eyes might deceive you. But it’s alright! She’ll come either way!” She then started laughing maniacally.

“Berry Punch, you’re scaring me...” The purple pony hurriedly backed away, feeling her heart pounding faster than ever and cold sweat forming on her forehead.

“WHERE ARE YOU GOING, TWILIGHT?!” Her scream sounded like a possessed screech. And like a thunder, she stood up and turned around to face them, though she was not yet visible in the shadow of the corner. Twilight tripped in the carpet with the sudden alarm.

“DON’T LEAVE ME HERE ALONE AGAIN! NOT WITH... HER!!!”

As she finally stepped away from the shadows, they all felt their whole bodies shudder and the blood freeze inside their veins from the horrendous sight that was right before them: both of Berry Punch’s eyes were gone, leaving nothing but two black, soggy holes, and fresh crimson blood streaming from them and down her cheeks. Her mouth was fully open, allowing them to see that her tongue had been cut off and all the teeth pulled out, resulting in more blood pouring continuously down her chin. That was why the words managed to escape her mouth only in the form of echoed ghostly whimpers.

She limped in their direction slowly, leaving bloody hoofprints behind, as the shards of the broken mirror jabbed into her hooves when she treaded over them, forcing a cry of pain from her. Each breath she took sounded agonizingly difficult and heavy.

Neither of them could understand who or what could have done such a horrible thing to somepony, and that just added up to the perplexity after having heard her insane dander.

“B-Berry Punch?” Pinkie squealed pleadingly.

She did not seem to listen; instead, she rapidly dashed forward and rose up on her hind legs, preparing to attack them with her front, sore hooves, already high up in the air.

Chapter III: Dead Ponyville

Chapter III: Dead Ponyville

A loud dull sound was heard. A mist of absolute disorientation and torpidity took over the rainbow-haired pegasus. She felt like everything was fading away from her, for she could not move a single muscle, nor even feel the surface where her numb body had landed.

Her vision was blinded for a few seconds, then changing to blurriness, and all she could hear were muffled and vague background noises. A keen pain was piercing continuously through her head, and she often felt like she was about to lose her consciousness. Yet, with great effort, she was managing to keep her eyelids open.

She was lying still on the ground, facing the black sky, absent of both celestial bodies, occasionally lit up by an immense blood-red flash for a split second, fading away immediately into more darkness. Indistinct shadows passed before her blurred sight at great speed, accompanied by several rapid shots of light that pierced through the skies from all directions.

At some point, between all the tumult and with a dizzy hearing, she was able to hear a familiar voice calling her name nearby. It called again, appearing to be getting closer, for it was louder and clearer the second time.

“Rainbow Dash!” shouted the orange farmer pony, while running to her fallen friend. She looked quite hurt herself, with several bruises and cuts all over her body, almost like she had been caught too close to an explosion, but she was still able to scamper incredibly fast.

She skidded the last few meters away from the cyan pegasus, stopping right to her side, and held her head up from the ground on her front hooves.

“Dash! Dash, can you hear me? Please don’t be dead!”

All that came out of her mouth were low, inarticulate mutters, since she was not able to move her jaw in order to talk clearly, but that was all that Applejack needed to be sure that her friend was still alive, so she sighed in great relief.

“C’mon, RD! We can’t stay here, those things are still falling from the sky!”

That said, she promptly lifted Rainbow Dash up and laid her body carefully on her own back, allowing her to carry the injured Pegasus around. After checking if her friend was well secured, she started running as hastily as she could while carrying the weight of a grown up pony’s numb body, evading a couple of lightning strikes that clashed with the ground perilously close to her.

Rainbow Dash felt a chilly gust of wind hit her face from the haste Applejack was scampering. The blurriness was starting to fade away slowly and her hearing was becoming clearer, allowing her to become aware of the tumultuous, dreadful situation that had settled all around them: frightened screams and powerful blasts, ear-splitting thunders and the sound of lightning bolts clashing violently with the paved streets, and the incessant howling of the wind utterly filled the atmosphere.

She lifted her head leisurely, looking just above Applejack’s stirring mane, only to gaze upon a total war happening right before her eyes: numerous guards scattering around the streets and flying around the skies restlessly, trying to evacuate the citizens from their houses while fighting, unsuccessfully, the shadowy figures that were generated with each bolt of lightning that met the ground.

The unicorn classes were continuously shooting at the strange entities with spheres of light that came out of their horns, but only proving their efforts to be completely worthless, since the shots would just go through their tall, slender bodies, like they were made of black, dense smoke. The desperate and scared guards would eventually find themselves forced to run away from them, while they just kept walking in their direction, slowly and menacingly.

“There’s too many of them!” Rainbow Dash heard one unicorn soldier yell nervously to his commander, while beginning to back down “Our magic is useless against them, sir!”

“Forget about them!” ordered the superior in response, as he turned around and started running away from the figure as well “Let’s hurry and evacuate all the remaining citizens!”

A few houses in front, she witnessed one guard falling out of a window, followed by another mangled female pony she was not able to recognise. Her eyes, tongue and teeth had also been cut off, but this one had even one of the front legs hewn, revealing a bloody bone sticking out of the leg stub. She landed right on top of the guard with a thud and grappled his neck with her only front hoof left.

“I’M SO AFRAID! WHY WON’T YOU HELP ME?!” she screeched demonically at him, as thick blood strings dripped from her mouth and onto his face.

What Rainbow Dash saw next made her want to vomit, as the mutilated pony began stabbing furiously the fallen guard’s stomach, neck and eyes with the splintered bone of her severed leg. The doomed soldier screamed in excruciating pain, while the attacker kept shrieking and wounding him mortally.

Another thunder was heard, followed by the distant cry of a pegasi class soldier high up above, who had been hit by the lightning strike and lost control of his flight. He landed with a big dull sound a few scarce meters in front of Applejack, who had to slow down a bit in order not to get crushed by his body. The impact on the cold, hard paving killed him instantaneously.

Rainbow Dash could barely recognise Ponyville as she had always known it. Though she still could not conjure words very well, her mind inquired herself with a deeply saddened question.

“How did it come to this?”

The answer was revealed to her while anesthetised and unmoving, as flashbacks progressively formed in her mind, still clouded by the force of whatever blow had struck her.

“B-Berry Punch?” Pinkie squealed pleadingly.

She did not seem to listen; instead, she rapidly dashed forward and rose up on her hind legs, preparing to attack them with her front, sore hooves, already high up in the air.

Suddenly, just as she was about to land down her hooves on them, a loud blast was heard, and everything went white, blinding them briefly. It had been a shot of light that hit the window of the room they were in, shattering the glass into pieces.

That was the perfect distraction for Twilight and her friends to escape the house; since they were just one floor above the ground, they simply ran past their staggered assailant and jumped down through the large hole opened on the wall.

Once back on the street, they immediately noticed more ghostly entities approaching them from the distance. Their faceless heads were all turned to them, like they knew they would exit through that door at that precise moment. As they got closer, the horrible sound of static noise, moribund breath and demonic whispers became audible again, coming from within their ethereal bodies.

However, before they got too close, a platoon of unicorn class soldiers that had been deployed on the town square appeared from one side of the street, and hurriedly set a formation in front of the six friends, while conjuring up rapid magic shots of light to try to repel the figures.

“Come on, you all!” shouted the unicorn commander to Twilight and her friends “We have orders to evacuate this whole town and escort you to safety for now! You don’t wanna be left behind, do ya?”

They all looked at each other, before Twilight replied.

“But... could you just tell us what’s happening here, first?”

“No time! We need to hurry, c’mon!”

“Wait! Our friend, she lives near the edge of the Everfree forest, we need to go get her!”

“Yeah, and what about our families?” Applejack added up to their concern.

“What will be of my dear sister?!” fretted the designer white unicorn.

“We’ll get them, as well as all the other citizens. Don’t worry about that now! Go, go!”

The guards pushed the six friends forward, leading them to the main street, while a few others protected the rearguard and continued shooting at the shadowy forms.

At some point, they noticed other groups of soldiers coming out of the houses, followed by terrified and confused ponies, who had also been instructed to follow them to a provisory shelter.

Flanked by two guards, Twilight found herself swollen in yet more concern and questions than before, especially after seeing Berry Punch mutilated and disfigured like that... who could do such a terrible thing? Her maimed face and her shattering screams of pain were all still very vivid in her mind, and it made her shudder the simple thought of being more tortured ponies like her out there.

Suddenly, almost like a fear had materialised itself directly from Twilight’s mind, one pony threw himself out of a window a scarce meters ahead of them, landing right in front the commander, who was put to a complete halt by the unexpected alarm.

It was a male pony, with a brownish coat and a darker brown mane and tail, both awfully dirty and unkempt. He had bruises all over his body, and a large open cut on the side of his ribcage, from which blood streamed profusely and formed a small pool underneath his stiff, deadened form.

As the commander approached to inspect him, he got up on his front legs in a split second and started crawling, dragging his insensitive hind legs behind. He too had both his eyes cut off and his entire jaw had been ripped out, leaving thick curdles of blood hanging down and dripping from where his tongue should be. He crawled to them very swiftly, while shrieking through painful breaths, constant sobbing and reverberated wheezes.

“AFRAID... SO AFRAID... SHE’S HERE!”

He launched himself at the shocked and frozen commander, bringing him down, and started punching him enraged in the head, while the latter just screamed in pain and horror. The soldiers hurried to rescue their superior, but the mangled pony jumped at another one of them, who also began to cry in indescribable panic.

Rainbow Dash woke up a second time from a terrifying nightmare made of reassembling memories to another exactly identical happening right before her eyes, with the only difference between the two being but a couple of lost minutes.

Applejack was still running through the scorched streets of Ponyville, dodging an occasional lightning strike or trying to avoid the large dark figures that, no matter what turn she took, seemed to always know exactly where and when she would pass by them.

“You okay there, RD?” she shouted, while panting heavily from the effort she had been putting on herself in order to keep running with a semiconscious Rainbow Dash on her back for so many minutes “Try not to fall asleep again, okay?”

The pegasus was still not able to respond clearly; only indistinct mumbles and small groans came out from her mouth. Her eyes were half-closed, but she would not take them away from the devastating scenario happening in every corner.

Frightened, hopeless guards were beginning to retreat with the few citizens still unharmed they had managed to gather, while the others seemed to be suffering from the same bizarre curse and attacked any soldier that tried to get close to them.

Chaos, destruction, fear and death had befallen over Ponyville, ravaging its inhabitants to a point that even the guards doing their best was not enough to protect them all.

A few minutes later, Applejack finally stopped, having a bit of difficulty in trying to catch her breath. She had managed to get out of the town completely, and she found herself standing on a long road that led to the edge of the Everfree forest, far ahead. Twilight, Spike, Pinkie and Rarity, along with the three scared little faces of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, were there waiting for them there. All of them had bruises and small cuts as well, like they had been on a struggle, and Pinkie even had one large bite mark on her front leg.

“Look! There they are!” the young dragon exclaimed.

As soon as they all became aware of Applejack’s arrival, they ran in her direction, sighing in immense relief to see that she had found Rainbow Dash and that both of them had made it out of Ponyville alive.

Twilight lifted the rainbow-haired pegasus from Applejack’s back with her magic grapple and laid her body cautiously on the grass. Once laid down, she made another effort to talk, with her mouth still feeling numb and her head aching a little.

“Rainbow! Are you alright? Can you talk?”

“I... I think I’m fine now... what happened to me?”

“You were struck by a lightning bolt! It’s a miracle that you’re still alive!”

“Yeah, and then you’ve lost control and did some oopsie-loopsies while freefalling, zzzuuuuuu!, pchiu!, and then you crashed on a rooftop and rolled down from it, and bum!, you landed on the floor!” the pink pony gabbed in her typical squealing and hyperactive voice, though showing some seriousness and concern in her tone.

“Thank goodness Applejack got you before one of those things did, darling!” Rarity added up.

Applejack was still desperate to catch her breath after such a rough ride, when she noticed that, aside from her little sister, neither her brother nor her granny were there, among them.

“Pinkie, have you... seen mah brother... or mah granny?”

The pink pony perked down her ears and bore a lamenting expression on her face.

“I’m so sorry, Applejack, I couldn’t find Granny Smith anywhere in the house or the barn. As for your brother, I’ve... actually found him, but he was already like the others... he kept all his teeth intact, though. In fact, it was him who did this to me!” She pointed down to her bite mark.

The farmer pony understood. She had already prepared herself mentally for something like that to happen, so she did not shed a single tear.

Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash made an attempt to get up on her hooves but, as soon as she put some weight on them, her front legs started shaking and she ultimately dropped heavily to the ground, cursing and groaning.

Applejack had just regained her full stamina, so she approached the hurt Pegasus and promptly lent her a hoof to help her get up. She then passed her front leg above her own shoulder, in order to aid her move around.

“C’mon, partner. We still have to get Flutters, before we leave this cursed place for good.”

That settled, the six of them proceeded to follow the road, leading to their bashful friend’s cottage.

During their paced march, another sudden flashback assaulted Rainbow Dash’s mind.

After the unpredicted attack of the tortured pony to the platoon of unicorns that was escorting them, the situation got absolutely out of control. The fearsome shadowy forms began appearing from every direction, surrounding them completely, and Twilight and her friends found themselves forced to run away as fast as they could, leaving the soldiers behind to their doom.

As soon as they lost sight of all of them, they stopped for a brief moment to catch up their breath and to make up their own plan of escape. The purple unicorn spoke first.

“Alright, it’s obvious that we’re not safe in Ponyville anymore, so we need to gather up with Fluttershy and our families as soon as possible, and head to the Canterlot castle. It should be safer there, with the princesses, and I seriously want to personally ask princess Celestia what in Equestria is going on.”

“Sweetie Belle had invited Applebloom and Scootaloo to a sleepover, so they’re still in the boutique” Rarity informed.

“Oh, this is horrible!” Pinkie whimpered, with tears beginning to form at the edges of her blue eyes “Poor Berry Punch... poor Time Turner... who could be so mean to do something like that to them? And who is ‘she’ they were all talking about?”

Rarity placed a heartfelt hoof on her pink friend’s shoulder, trying to calm her down as she started crying and sobbing.

“I have no idea, Pinkie...” Twilight responded in a low, sincere tone, as she shared the same lament and apprehension “but I know that we can’t stay here any longer, or we’ll risk that this terrible curse will get to us, as well.”

They understood she was right, so they listened carefully as she began to set up a plan to leave Ponyville on their own, now that they were separated from the escort.

“So everypony understood? After we get to Sugarcube Corner, we’ll split in two different directions: me, Spike and Rarity will take the left street, where we’ll pass by Carouselle Boutique and get the girls. While that, Applejack will go with Pinkie and Rainbow down the right road, which leads to Sweet Apple Acres, and you’ll gather up with the rest of your family. Finally, we’ll meet at the northernmost edge of town, and from there we’ll go get Fluttershy.”

With a final agreement, they proceeded to scamper towards Ponyville’s pastry shop, where Pinkie lived and worked. A sudden, horrifying thought came to her mind, as she wondered if the same thing that had happened to Berry Punch and Time Turner could also have happened to the Cake couple, or even worse: their little, innocent babies!

The pink pony shuddered and whimpered silently while running with her friends, but tried to shrug those thoughts off, imagining that none of this had ever happened and remembering how her delicious pastries and the parties she threw to her friends there always made her extremely happy.

As they arrived at the intersection right in front of Sugarcube Corner, they noticed that the doors had been knocked down, indicating that, probably, the guards had already been there, and escorted the Cakes out to the shelter.

“I just hope that they can make it out of here safely...” Pinkie sighed with a bit of unease.

From there, they parted through different ways, like planned, and Applejack took the lead of her group as they went down the right road.

However, they were put to a halt when another lightning strike clashed fiercely with the stone paving in front of them with an ear-splitting sound, and making debris fly in their direction, some actually hitting them and leaving slashes and bruises on their skin.

Another frightening, mysterious silhouette appeared before them, and started walking in their direction. The orange and the pink pony took a deep breath for some courage, before rushing towards it at the same time, splitting in two different ways only a few meters away from actually running into it, with Applejack passing by its right and Pinkie by its left.

The figure did not try to attack neither of them, nor did it stop its slow march, heading now in the direction of Rainbow Dash, who promptly left off and flew above it without a problem.

“Get down here, RD! You might get hit!” Applejack shouted at her when they finally lost sight of the silhouette, while running down the street they were on.

But the pegasus did not listen, for she was too high and distant, so she continued dashing through the skies and the tempest, until what was almost foreseen to happen occurred: because of her imprudence and excessive confidence in her flight skills, the following lightning that lit up the skies of crimson-red, accompanied by a loud thunder that almost shacked the earth, clashed directly with Rainbow Dash’s body and she lost her senses for a brief moment, sufficient for her to lose control and start a freefall.

“DASH!!!” Applejack and Pinkie gasped at the same time, as they saw her friend falling very fast from a great altitude.

Concluded the final segment required for Rainbow Dash to completely remake the moments previous to her temporary amnesia, what happened afterwards followed with the memories of the ponies who witnessed her fall.

“Pinkie, go get mah family and meet up with the others! Tell ‘em Ah’m gonna get Dash!” Applejack ordered, already heading in the direction where the cyan pegasus had fallen.

“I will! Be careful, Applejack!” Pinkie replied, before she too scampered away.

In a few minutes, the pink pony had reached the dirt trail leading to Sweet Apple Acres, now so gloomy and silent she gulped nervously before proceeding up the hill and to the house.

She was all alone there; with all the horrors happening down in Ponyville, all she could hear was the distant and faint commotion, and the red bolts of lightning did not seem to stretch that far. But the murkiness and morbidity all around her, throughout the acres as far as her eyes could see, were still quite distressing, so she hastened her pace, determined to do what she was supposed to there, and then get back to meet the rest of the group, as planned.

Once she reached the porch, she gasped upon seeing Winona lying dead on the floor, her eyes still open, and approached her mysteriously unscathed body to place a hoof gently on her head, still warm, as if she had died not too long ago.

“Goodbye, Winona...” Pinkie whimpered, with tears forming in the edges of her eyes “I’m so sorry I couldn’t be faster.”

Leaving the body, she turned around and tried to open the door, which fortunately was unlocked, so she had no trouble getting in the house, though the interior was absolutely dark and dead silent.

Taking a deep breath for courage and hoping not to come across with anything scary inside, being silhouette or distorted pony, she trespassed the threshold and began searching for a light source, taking her time to adjust her eyes to the darkness in the case she would find none.

“H-hello?” she called in an anxious tone “Big Mac? Granny Smith? Anypony in here?”

Minutes have passed, but nopony would respond, and she had already searched through all of the ground floor. Her hopes of finding anypony unscathed in there were diminishing, but she was still going to carry out her promise to Applejack to find her brother and granny, even if there was a chance that they were already dead, or worse, turned into those possessed ponies scourging the streets of Ponyville.

She then went to look for them in the barn. Upon reaching the tall wooden doors, she cautiously slid one of them open and peeped inside, trying to recognize somepony familiar the best she could in the total darkness there. She called again, but only to meet with no response at all, so she gulp nervously before stepping inside.

Like the house, the barn was utterly pitch black and dead silent, with the only difference being a rather pestilent and tainted scent in the air her nostrils quickly picked up.

Suddenly, her ears perked up and her legs stopped instantaneously as she heard a weak and prolonged growl coming from scarce meters ahead of her. On full alert and trembling in fear, she watched a bulky shadow move across the barn in front of her, while emitting that horrendous grunt, before disappearing and going quiet once more.

Pinkie could feel the cold sweat streaming down her forehead, as her breath got heavier and her heart beat faster. She was definitely not alone in there, but she so terrified at that point she would not dare to even move. The slow roars were intermittent, echoing from every direction, circling her, and each time appearing closer, but it was when they were silenced that the dread was greater.

A strangely longer pause followed, and the pink pony was totally petrified, even her breath had stopped to the suspense; whatever that thing was, it was very close.

And so, hulking through the darkness came a large indistinctive form, its breathing horribly sickened and distorted breathing, limping towards her, to the point where her vision inside the pitch black barn could finally discern who was standing menacingly before her.

“Big Mac?” Pinkie’s voice was almost inaudible.

The red farmer pony jumped abruptly at her, his hefty body immediately knocking hers to the ground, forcing her to land on her back and smack her head on the floor. He wrapped both his front hooves around her thin pink neck and grasped firmly, cutting her air supply, and slowly approaching his head to hers, revealing the horrendous state in which that mysterious plague had left him.

Besides his muscular body covered in the same amount of painful-looking wounds and blood as the others, he had jagged broken ribs protruding from his back, fairly resembling a dragon’s back scales, but the worst part was his head, so awfully deformed it caused Pinkie want to vomit, as his mouth was abnormally widened throughout the entirety of his skull, replacing the nostrils and the eyes, and many sharp, crooked teeth ripped out through his gums.

Pinkie fought desperately with her front hooves, trying to get his teeth away from her face, but only ending up getting bitten on one leg. Before his salivating giant maw got nearer, she finally managed to deliver a fierce kick with one hind hoof in his stomach, stunning him enough time for her to break free from his strong grip and run away towards the farther end of the barn.

The adrenaline was immense, her heart pounded like never before and she was panting heavily. Her eyes welled in tears after being closer to look in the face of her own death than she had ever in her life.

The disfigured Big Mac had chased her until she found herself corralled against the wall and skidded to a stop and turned around to see his massive built, slowly approaching, like a predator hunting his cornered prey. Behind him was the dim ray of light from the crack of the door from where she had entered, and her only way out.

Pinkie actually believed this was her doom for a moment. However, she suddenly realised that underneath her hooves lied a rather hollow and unstable surface; it was a trapdoor, hidden between the straw scattered on the ground. Without thinking twice, she hurried to open it and slip to the cellar in the basement, just before Big Mac leaped at her, but only burying his long teeth on the wooden hatch.

The cellar was equally dark and quiet, but nevertheless Pinkie took a deep breath of relief, thinking she was all alone now. Soon enough, a faint, distinctive noise proved her wrong, though it was not much of an alarming sound this time, more like a waning respiration. A few steps forward and a familiar face became clear in the middle of the total murkiness, one Pinkie was truly glad to see immaculate.

“Granny Smith!” She rushed to the elder pony, who sat unmoving against a wooden support beam, and realised she was awfully pale and about to lose consciousness caused by deep cuts on her wrists, almost dried out, moistening the hay beneath her in a crimson pool, with a small, rusty knife nearby. Pinkie held her head up on one of her hooves “Granny Smith, Applejack sent me to get you, we’re gathering outside and preparing to leave Ponyville, and...”

“No, Pinkie...” She was interrupted by the elder, who still managed to mutter through great effort “Ah’m afraid Ah can’t go with you, dear. This evil that has befallen over us... nothing like it has ever been seen. It’s beyond our understanding. When Ah saw mah Big Mac turn, Ah knew it was just a matter of time before it would come to me too, so Ah prepared mahself...” she pointed to the knife laid beside her, then inhaling deeply as if in her final breath “You must go, dear. Find your friends and leave this place. Princess Celestia... she’s an immortal, she might know of something. But Ah need you to promise me one thing.”

Pinkie could not hide her profoundly sorrowful face while holding somepony she realised was not going to live much longer. Tears rolled down her face and dripped on Granny Smith’s, but she tried to hold back the distressed sobs for a moment and spoke.

“Of course.”

“When you find mah Applejack, don’t tell her you’ve seen me like this. Ah don’t want her to make up an image of how her granny has died, to live with it as her last memory of me...”

With that, she slowly closed her aged, tired, wrinkled eyes for the last time, becoming quiet and inert. Pinkie laid her gently, still washed up in tears, and said goodbye to the elder before leaving the cellar through a basement door she knew of, which led just outside the barn. Once there, she just ran as fast as she could, scampering through the freezing agitated air towards the location where they were supposed to meet, trying to distract herself from the overwhelming misery this day had brought her.

Promises kept, so had Pinkie’s remembrance also come to an end, as the group continued following Twilight’s lead to the farther outskirts of the town.

“There it is, sugarcube!” said the Applejack to Rainbow Dash, whom he was aiding to walk “There’s Flutters’ house, we’ve made it!”

Indeed, they had arrived at the bridge that led to Fluttershy’s cottage, only, when they crossed it, there was something terribly wrong that made them all agape in dread and worry at the sight before them.

The cottage was on fire and utterly destroyed, the once beautiful garden was reduced to ashes, as well as the houses the yellow pegasus made for her animal friends, and all the trees of the edge of the forest nearby were felled and scorched.

The still lively flames and the embers altogether created a dire red aura in this already appealing scenario, contrasting with the darkness that swallowed the town they had left behind moments ago.

“No... no, NO! Fluttershy!” Twilight cried out, refusing the possibility that her innocent, kind friend Fluttershy could be dead.

She called again, followed closely behind by all the others, who were muted and perplexed with the sight before them. It almost seemed like a giant dragon had passed by and blew fire on the whole site.

No matter how many times Twilight would call her friend’s name, she would obtain no response, so she began to feel desperate and heartbroken.

At last, she stopped and gave up, falling to the ground as her legs collapsed from the deep sorrow in her heart. She looked down, with her mane covering her face, as thick tears streamed down her cheeks profusely and she sobbed uncontrollably.

“Fluttershy...” she muttered.

All of a sudden, Pinkie shouted so loud it startled them a bit.

“Over there! I see her!” She pointed towards one of the many burned trees, far away from the house.

Twilight turned her head back up in hope that it was true, and they all immediately spotted Flutteshy on the distance, sitting immobilised on the grass, near a stump.

They rushed to meet her, but only when they got close did they notice just how miserable she looked. Her mane and tail were unkempt and covered in ashes and slight burns, and her face was awfully pale and frozen in a shattered expression, with her mouth agape and her saddened eyes opened wide, with tears formed on the edges, but determined not to fall, for the shock she was feeling was too much and the pain in her heart too intense to even allow herself to cry.

“Fluttershy! I’m so glad that you’re okay!” Twilight ran to hug her, but she remained stiff and unmoving, only letting a few words out of her mouth, quietly and slowly.

“My friends... they didn’t make it...” She began to whimper, as one of the holding tears streamed down her face, at last, followed by many others. She closed her eyes and looked down “They’re all dead!...”

They all understood and shared the same grief as her. Fluttershy loved her critters like she loved any other pony, and if something happened to them, she would be deeply broken-hearted. All of the others approached to hug her as well, for what she needed right now was to know that her best friends were there for the bad moments, trying to lessen the pain for now.

After she finally pulled herself back together and swallowed the remaining tears, Twilight informed her of their plan in a gentle tone.

“Fluttershy, we need to leave Ponyville. I don’t know what curse we are dealing with, but we should go to the Canterlot castle and ask the princesses if they know what’s going on. Okay?”

She simply nodded affirmatively in her own innocent and bashful way.

That settled, the nine ponies and the young dragon set march along the edge of the Everfree forest, heading towards the mountain where the city of Canterlot was built on, and leaving behind a dark, ruined, and deadened Ponyville.

Chapter IV: The Dark Alicorn

Chapter IV: The Dark Alicorn

The six friends, the young dragon and the three Cutie Mark Crusaders had been walking close to the edge of the Everfree forest for quite a long time. Although neither the sun nor the moon were anywhere to be found in the sky, in order for them to even tell apart if it was still daytime or already nightfall, they deduced they must have been marching for several hours, which had rendered them terribly exhausted.

The dark clouds and the tempest had vanished completely some time ago, and the sinister gray, dense and cold fog had returned to cover entirely the landscape, making it a little more difficult for them to orientate. However, they had found it much easier to simply stay close to the tree line growing on the edge of the forest, that way maintaining a rectilinear trajectory towards the mountain where the capital city was built on.

During the whole time they had been walking, not a single word had come out of either of their mouths, being the only disturbance to an absolute dead silence the sounds of their hooves and paws treading on the moist, wild grass, and snapping the dead fallen leaves.

Not even a soft breeze could be felt blowing from any direction, yet the air all around was freezing all the time, reaching the point that their breaths became visible. Eventually, Spike, shaking every bone of his body, had to get closer to Twilight in search for some warmth.

The purple unicorn was leading the group, followed closely behind by Sweetie Belle, Applebloom and Scootaloo, all mute, frightened and saddened. After them, followed Rarity and Pinkie Pie, with Fluttershy in the middle of both, and in the rear of the group were Applejack, aiding a still torpid, limping Rainbow Dash to walk.

The rainbow-haired pegasus had already recovered her full senses, but her legs still felt quite numb. She would have tripped and fallen to the ground countless times if her faithful friend was not there to help her with each step. Rainbow Dash being incapacitated was also the reason why their pace was so slow, otherwise Twilight would have wanted to meet with princess Celestia as quickly as possible.

The air appeared to be getting chillier gradually. Spike was beginning to feel very sleepy, and found it difficult to keep his eyelids open, let alone to keep up with them. Twilight lifted him up with her magic grapple, and laid him down on her back.

“Rest, Spike...” she said to him in a low tone “I understand you must be very tired. It’s been a hard day for every one of us.”

Before long, the young dragon fell asleep profoundly on Twilight’s back, lulled by the slow, calming stirrings of her shoulders with each step she took. His little, adorable snoring became audible, and added up to the sole sound of hooves traipsing.

Sweetie Belle took a prolonged, wide yawn, as she was also feeling very tired from all the marching. She leant against her elder sister’s moving body, placing her little head gently on her fur, and resting her eyes for a bit, while the small legs continued walking almost unconsciously.

Applebloom and Scootaloo were the next ones to surrender to the sleepiness, leaning each on one side of Pinkie. The four youths looked so peaceful sleeping that the pink pony let out a low “Aww...”, and Fluttershy showed a tiny smile, forgetting for a moment the shock she had felt before.

“Poor things...” Rarity sighed, as she admired the serenity with which they all were sleeping, despite everything they had been put up with the whole day. She envied the way his young, innocent minds could simply turn off and forget even the worst life-threatening situations, while she, as well as the other elements, could not find any rest or solace for their concerns.

In the rear, Rainbow Dash began trembling from the cold air. She cursed a little, though it was so low that only Applejack was able to hear clearly.

“First that stupid fog, then that crazy storm with all those... things!... Now we’re back to the stupid fog again. Ugh, I can’t take it anymore! I wanna know who’s behind all this, and teach him or her a lesson!”

“Sure thing, sugarcube,” the orange pony said, while patting on her back with her hoof in a friendly way “sure thing.”

The cyan pegasus then changed swiftly to a more worried expression, as she let out a nervous sigh and turned her head down.

“I just hope that this isn’t the end of Equestria, you know? I... I fear that this might be the end.”

“We’ll work this out together like we did all the other times, RD. Don’t you worry.”

Back to the front of the group, the designer white unicorn whispered to Twilight, very carefully not to startle her younger sister or any of the other youngsters, who had their eyes closed but were still moving leisurely.

“Twilight, dear, do you think that there’s still much left to get to Canterlot?”

“I can’t tell for sure, Rarity, but this is definitely the right way” she answered, while taking a confirmation glimpse at the dim silhouettes of the peripheral trees to their side.

“I hope we get there fast...” Pinkie sighed, as Applebloom and Scootaloo began snoring smoothly and adorably on both her sides.

At the city of Canterlot, nopony seemed to have had any rest in the previous hours, since the bizarre events started.

Messengers were arriving from all corners of Equestria, delivering the same unpleasant news to the princesses, that every single city, town, or village had been attacked by a mysterious tempest of enormous dark clouds, striking the earth with a powerful lightening, all at the exact same time.

Some of the Canterlot royal guards had been dispatched to help the local guards in those areas defending their citizens, but the reports of failed attempts to save as many ponies as they could, as well as countless casualties would never halt to arrive to the ears of the two royal sisters.

In the meantime, the city of Canterlot itself had been under attack by the same force, with the strange ethereal figures wandering around the streets and mutilated ponies lurking in the shadows of their homes, lunging themselves at the guards that would pass by them, unaware of the citizens’ creepy and unexplainable possession.

Only the castle, however, had remained utterly intact and impenetrable against the evil force sown right outside its walls.

Celestia felt terrified and desperate, like she had not felt for thousands of years. For the first time in her millenary life, she actually feared her powers would prove themselves to be useless against this threat, and she would not be able to protect her beloved subjects, whose safety she worried more about than her own wellbeing.

By the time the storm lifted and the thick haze came back, everything calmed down a bit, as all the shadowy silhouettes seemed to have faded away into thin air.

The guards proceeded to scatter around the streets, trying to help as many survivors as they could find and to recover the bodies of the deceased ones on the once resplendent capital city, now reduced to piles of scorched wreckage and debris that remained after the havoc.

Only a few mangled ponies could be found still wandering on the streets, not counting those who were probably hiding inside the houses, but the soldiers tried to avoid them every time they encountered one, as much pleading for help sounded its cry. The ones outside kept limping or crawling around, continuously emitting painful, heartrending shrieks of agony, as their bodies appeared to be putrefying and growing mouldy at a fastened pace. Because of that, a strong, disgusting scent of decay became quite noticeable on the streets, almost unbearable.

Back at the castle, one pegasi class captain wearing a golden armour with cobalt-blue feathers on his helmet landed on the floor of the throne room, right before the two unquiet princesses, who were the only ones in there, and took a quick bow before reporting them the current situation.

“Your highnesses, we have managed to gather about one hundred citizens unharmed so far. They’re now being escorted to the city bunker, deeper inside the mountain. But I’m afraid to inform you that the losses are... quite uncountable.”

“I feared as much...” Celestia lamented, trying to hide her immense anxiety behind her graceful, regal pose “that is why I’ve decided it’s best to hide everypony in Equestria where is safe: out from under the sky. At least for now...”

Princess Luna shared the same apprehension as her elder sister. She had remained silent every time a guard entered the throne room to deliver some information, only conferring quietly with her elder sister when the soldiers left them both alone again.

Celestia ordered the captain to quicken in guiding the citizens gathered so far to the bunker, which he responded with another muted bow, taking off hurriedly. The vast, empty room became dead silent once more.

Luna walked closer to her sister, each slow, apprehensive step echoing throughout the entire chamber, as the silver horseshoes stepped on the cold marble floor.

“The magical fog has returned, but I sense that it’s going to get dark again very soon...”

“Yes, I’m afraid you’re right, Luna...” Celestia replied simply.

“What do you think it’s causing all of this?”

The elder alicorn sighed in both dread and exasperation for not being able to provide a reasonable answer, not even to herself.

“I have no idea, Luna.” She closed her eyes “No idea at all...”

“Is it possible that we’re dealing with the same thing that ravaged the entire land, and... killed our parents and our race, more than a thousand years ago?”

Celestia shot her eyes open and faltered a little. It was like something had struck her right in her most painful memory, reopening the worst scar in her mind.

“That is what I fear the most, my dear sister.” She turned around to face her. The princess of the sun could not hide the fear in her eyes, but she also bore quite a resolute expression “But if that is the case, then, this time, WE’ll be there to protect our defenceless subjects.

We’re NOT fillies anymore, you and I; we WON’T stay hidden while we watch others sacrifice themselves for something that is as much precious to them as it is to us: peace and harmony!

We ARE going to defend Equestria together, Luna; and we’re going to take back what’s ours for right, or should we not be deserving of our cutie marks, or our heritage as the last direct descendants of the ancient alicorn race! And we WILL avenge mother and father!”

Luna stood quietly while listening to Celestia’s speech. Though her determination was definitely the one of a true monarch, the princess of the moon could not help but to feel a little frightened by her words. Still, she understood that her sister was right.

Even if the last time that something like this had happened resulted in the obliteration of the primal race of the alicorns, their family, the two of them had undoubtedly grown much strong together, and have defeated many enemies with their combined powers. Maybe they have even surpassed the powers of their ancestors, and should be able to finish now the war they have lost before.

Luna nodded affirmatively, as she finally made up her mind “I’m with you, sister!”

Celestia smiled. “Thank you, Luna. You have no idea how good it is for me to have you by my side in this. Let us go get in our armours.”

That said, they both left the throne room, and headed to the royal armoury.

Meanwhile, the six elements of harmony plus the sleeping Spike and Cutie Mark Crusaders continued marching straight forward, parallel to the Everfree forest, without stopping even once.

Some of them were starting to feel intensively annoyed and exhausted, constantly complaining or grunting, but Twilight simply ignored them, determined to get to the Canterlot castle as swiftly as they could, so a quick stop for some rest would only be a waste of time, as well as the fact that their safety was depending on how soon they would get there, which the purple unicorn was well aware.

Rainbow Dash, who had already complained many times before for multiple reasons, shouted once again from the back of the group.

“Twilight! Don’t you think that we should be there already? We’re walking for hours! My hooves hurt, and I’m freezing here! Are you sure you haven’t got us all lost?”

“For the last time, Dash: we’ve been walking close to the edge of the Everfree forest so that we wouldn’t stray from our trail. This IS the right way, so stop whining!”

“Whining?! In case you’ve forgotten, I got struck by a lightening AND I can barely walk, let alone FLY! I have plenty of reasons to be complaining, but I don’t whine! Whining is for little fillies...”

“Well then, you should quit acting like a little filly!”

Those words hit the rainbow-haired pegasus’ pride harshly, so much that she gritted her teeth and gave a hint of wanting to lunge at her, but was impeded by Applejack, who was still holding her.

“Easy there, partner!” The orange farmer pony tried to calm her down.

“No, Applejack, I’m sick of this! Some things must be said!” The cyan pegasus yelled at Twilight, who was put to a halt and turned to her, followed by the entire group, confused with her friend’s unexpected change of behaviour “You think this is easy for me?! Or for any of us?! Or are you just so stubborn that you haven’t noticed it yet?!”

“Rainbow Dash? What are talking abou-”

“THIS! This whole thing that has happened today, and is still happening right now! I saw my friends die, my house get destroyed, and my hometown get reduced to ashes! I know Fluttershy must feel the same way, now that her house was burned down, and all her animals are all dead!”

The sensitive yellow pegasus irrupted in a profuse cry again after being remembered of the heartbreaking trauma that she had sought to forget just hours ago. She sat on the grass, covering her face with her front hooves. Pinkie and Rarity promptly walked over to console her.

The three crusaders and the young dragon began to wake up a bit startled from the sudden noisy argument and the stifled sound of crying.

“Hum?... What’s going on?” Sweetie Belle asked, still very drowsy.

“Nothing, Sweetie Belle, everything’s alright. Go back to sleep, dear...” Rarity spoke up, still holding on to Fluttershy kindly “You shouldn’t talk like that, Rainbow Dash. Look what you did to the poor thing.”

“Oh, I’m not even done yet!” Rainbow Dash turned her gaze to Twilight again, her eyes piercing the librarian pony like daggers in flames “I thought you were different, Twilight! After all we’ve seen and suffered today, what do you do next?! You run away! You run away and seek for hiding at your teacher’s castle, like the coward egghead you are!”

Everypony stood shocked to what they were hearing, as they could not recognise her friend anymore. Those accusations were not of Rainbow Dash at all, not even when she was being brash.

“Shut up, Rainbow Dash...” Twilight said, leaning her head slightly forward in order to cover her eyes with her purple fringe.

“And Celestia herself has only proven to be a royal disappointment! While everypony was out there dying or losing their homes, where was she?! Comfy, inside her BIG castle! Big ruler, if you ask me!”

“Shut up!”

“Now I know why Celestia has chosen you as her apprentice! You two are just the same: two pathetic, hypocritical cowards!”

“I SAID SHUT UP!”

The purple unicorn swiftly lifted her head up, revealing small tears forming in the edges of her infuriated eyes, and, in just a split second, she shot a beam of lavender magic aura out of her horn, which hit Rainbow Dash right in one side of her face and caused her to be thrown to the ground, loosen from Applejack’s holding.

All the others were more shaken and perplexed than before, after witnessing what had happened right before them.

Twilight closed her eyes, letting all the tears roll down her cheeks, and began breathing heavily, in an attempt to pull herself back together. Only after she finally managed to slow down the breathing did she realise what she had just done: she had attacked one of her best friends, who was badly injured, to make it worse. She immediately felt crushed by remorse.

“Oh my goodness, Rainbow Dash!” She ran towards where the pegasus was lying immobile on the ground “Rainbow, I-I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to...”

“No, it’s okay, Twilight...” She rustled leisurely on the grass, not wanting to face any of them “I’m the one who should be sorry... I know that you would never run away from a fight. I don’t know what took over me, I’m sorry...”

All of a sudden, a freezing, tumultuous gale rose up incredibly fast. As the thick mist seemed to be lifting, it revealed a cloudy sky above them, which was getting darker and darker.

“It’s happening again!” Applejack observed, holding her hat with one hoof.

With the haze gone, they managed to spot a distinct silhouette of a mountain with a majestic city built on it in the distance.

“There’s Canterlot!” Twilight pointed “Come on, there’s not much time left!”

After the farmer pony picked the rainbow-haired pegasus back up from the ground, and between the deafening howling of the strong winds, they hurriedly regrouped together and scampered as hastily as they could towards the capital city.

The dreadful blood-red lightening with ear-splitting thunders returned soon after they had reached the base of the mountain.

When they finally arrived, they stated that the main entrance to the city was unguarded and the gates had already been knocked down from their large, metal hinges by the force of the tempest.

The streets seemed completely empty, as if all the citizens had already been evacuated. Canterlot was nothing but a frightening and devastated ghost town.

“Not here, too! This is horrible!...” the pink pony whimpered.

“I know, Pinkie...” Twilight responded “But we still need to get to the castl- AH!”

She was interrupted and put to a full stop when an unexpected crimson lightening clashed with the stone pavement right in front of them. A terrifying black, faceless and bald head of an abnormally tall and thin pony appeared, staring at them with no eyes. It was almost like... that thing, whether it was real or not, was able to sense their presence from their fear.

It took a few steps towards them, while emitting the same bizarre sounds of static noise, painful breaths, and rapid demonic whispers, until a group of royal guards showed up and guided them away from it.

“What are you still doing here?” one white pegasus soldier in a golden armour yelled as they were running down a street “Haven’t you been instructed to head to the bunker, like everypony else?”

“We’re not from Canterlot!” Twilight answered right away.

“What?! Where are you from, then?”

“We’re from Ponyville!” Rarity responded.

They stopped by a small, dark alley between two tall buildings.

“Ponyville?!” the guard repeated, incredulous “So how did you ended up here? Did you run away from your escort?”

“They all died, so we had to flee from our town all by ourselves!” the purple unicorn informed.

“And you decided to come here?” the soldier retorted in a scolding tone.

“I have to speak with princess Celestia!”

All of a sudden, they were startled by shrieking, pleading voice coming from the alley they were standing right in front of.

“WHO’S THERE?! PLEASE!... DON’T LEAVE MEEE!!!”

A female pony jumped out of the shadows and landed in the middle of them. This one was awfully maimed, being perhaps in the most appealing state they had seen so far, for not only her eyes and jaw had been ripped out, she was also missing an ear, a great portion of her mane and, worst of all, the whole bottom part of her body. She was surrounded by an unbearable stench of putrefaction, as her skin had already lost its colour to an unhealthy, cadaverous pale tone, and she was leaving a large trail of blood behind as she crawled swiftly in their direction.

With the guards distracted by the hostile possessed pony, Twilight and her friends took the chance and fled from the scene. Before long, they found themselves standing in the middle of the Canterlot central plaza, an extremely vast space where all the main streets would lead, well adorned with a beautiful pattern in the stone paving and a glorious fountain in the centre. But most importantly, right in front of it was the stairway to the tall doors of the castle.

The winds became stronger and louder than ever, and the lightening more frequent, tearing the skies from all direction unceasingly. Yells, thunders and magic shots came from absolutely everywhere, as the royal guards were battling both on the sky and on the ground against the outnumbering dark figures and mutilated ponies.

Suddenly, Twilight noticed a familiar beam of golden magic aura shooting from high above in the sky.

“Princess Celestia!” she called.

As soon as she recognised her pupil’s voice, the princess of the sun descended very swiftly, landing on the ground near them. She was wearing a shining golden chest plate with archaic symbols carved in it that covered all of her ribcage, two pairs of golden horseshoes with the same patterns, taller than the ones she wore casually, covering almost the entirety of her long legs, and a beautifully ornamented golden war helmet on her head.

“Twilight! What are you all doing here? This is not safe, you should go hide in the bunker!”

“But princess, what’s going on?”

The alicorn gave an impatient sigh, but felt like her student deserved a truthful answer.

“I can’t tell you for sure Twilight. But I’m afraid that we’re dealing with the worst crisis Equestria has ever seen in more than a thousand of years.”

“Do you mean that this has already happened before?”

“Yes, and the last time this happened, my race was annihilated from the face of the earth.”

They all stood in great shock and concern after hearing that, but still, Twilight was determined not to hide and stay idly by while the princesses and the guards battled arduously until their last breaths to defend what was so endeared for them as it was for eveypony else.

“Still, we’re here to help in any way we can!”

“Please understand, this is no time to be stubborn, Twilight! You mus-”

An abrupt deafening blast muffled her, coming from a higher part of the castle, where their attention was instantaneously drawn to; one of the towers had just fallen and clashed with another below, consequentially knocking it down.

“LOOK OUT!” Celestia opened her wings and used them to propel all of them aside, just before the falling tower hit the ground so hard it quaked, and every stone was reduced to a massive pile of bricks and dust.

As soon as the princess had finished coughing, she looked back up at the ruined high walls of the castle and, upon seeing the gigantic gap left, with all the floors exposed to the feeble red light of the sky, she let out a desperate cry.

“LUNA!” She hurriedly turned to her apprentice once more and, though still a bit reluctant about putting her in such a perilous situation, she designated them a task “Twilight, listen carefully, if you truly wish to help, then go up there and search for my sister. She was somewhere in that wing that just collpased. Please, hurry!”

“Already on it, princess!” The purple pony hastily helped her downed friends up and led them through the pile of debris and up the stairs in front of the tall doors of the castle.

All of a sudden, and for aggravating the panic, an incredibly blustering roar smothered all the tumult, coming from high up above, far beyond the murky clouds; for those more astute, they recognised it sounded just like a dragon. Twilight and the others stopped at the already half-open door, also trimming the sky with their eyes.

The thunders ceased, and all the ghostly silhouettes froze completely where they stood, like dark, smoky statues. The guards stopped fighting, and everything went dead silent, as everypony turned their heads upwards, expecting to see a dragon piercing through the clouds at any moment.

And so it did, only it was not a normal dragon: it was colossal, about ten times bigger than the largest dragon ever seen, with three pairs of large wings, and its overall appearance resembled that of the dark figures, all made of dense, black smoke, and bare of any facial features.

It landed on the main plaza with such violence it wrecked the fountain in the centre. It let out another loud roar, before lowering its massive head. Everypony’s bewilderment only grew even more with this strange behaviour of a giant ethereal dragon, but not as much as with what they saw next, as through the smoke that was the dragon’s head came out the silhouette of a large pony.

“A... a dragon rider?” The guards stuttered, baffled at the sight.

It was an alicorn. A male one, judging by his form, slightly bigger than Celestia, and he wore a full-body armour made of a mysterious-looking black metal, revealing only his lengthy, flat mane and tail, both black as his heavy armour, and his long horn and grandly spread wings of dark grey. A mask was attached to the helmet frame, hiding his face completely, and a thin black crown rested on his head, in front of his horn.

He was treading patiently towards Celestia from the other side of the plaza, when the royal guards moved in.

“Don’t let him get near the princess, come on!”

The unicorn class soldiers started shooting magic spheres at him, but the shots seemed to phase out in the air before even touching him, like he had a magical invisible barrier around him, so the other classes charged towards him with the sabres ready on their mouths.

However, before they got too close, he created a sonorous explosion of a powerful gust of wind and an intense light that blinded Celestia, Twilight, and all of her friends for a few seconds.

When they looked up again, he was still walking in their direction, and all the guards were scattered throughout the area, most of them unconscious, as they had been thrown brutally through the air.

Without turning her gaze around, the princess of the sun muttered to her pupil and her friends, who were still standing in the middle of the hide stairs.

“Twilight, get inside immediately and go find Luna like I told you!”

That said, the group hastily headed inside, shutting the heavy doors behind them, and began scampering through the prolonged entrance hall, heading to the first stairway upwards.

Princess Celestia regained her pose, spreading her wings imposingly, and walked over to the armoured new arrival. The both of them stopped face to face, standing only scarce meters away from each other, and engaged first in an unarmed dialogue.

“Who are you?” Celestia vociferously inquired.

His response came in a terrifyingly grave voice, and in a truly soulless and apathetic tone. It echoed from everywhere around them, and literally sent uncomfortable chills down their spines.

“I am the last alicorn.”

Chapter V: Duel of the Immortals

Chapter V: Duel of the Immortals

The main plaza in the centre of Canterlot city was utterly dead silent, with the six elements, the young dragon and the Cutie Mark Crusaders standing completely frozen in panic between by castle doors, following attentively the dialogue between the princess of the sun, who had her wings dauntingly spread wide, and the stranger who claimed to be the last alicorn.

On the opposite side of the vast paved area was the enormous, fearsome dragon of six wings and no face, made of thick, dark smoke, standing idle behind its master, the mysterious alicorn in the black armour, also spreading his wings, though with much more calm and less pride. He faced Celestia through his metallic mask, which hid the entirety of his face, making the latter feel not comfortable at all with his sudden coming. She could not recall ever meeting or seeing such pony in all her millenary life, and nothing about his appearance would give her any reason to trust him, let alone the fact that his vague and untruthful presentation irritated her.

“What are you talking about?” she vociferated to him in response to his last statement “I do not know you. You dare violate the memory of our ancestors through vague lies? Me and my sister are the ONLY surviving descendants of the ancient race of the alicorns!”

His strong, deep and loud voice was heard again. It seemed to be coming not from within him, but from everywhere around them, echoing and reverberating on the walls and in the air, as he spoke slowly and clearly, articulating each and every word carefully.

“An error I will make sure to mend tonight. My previous defeat managed but to delay me, but now I have awoken from my prison of slumber and returned to the land of mortals to finally fulfil my destiny, starting by spilling your blood on this very soil, princess.”

“You intend to overthrow me? To dominate Equestria through fear, and threaten those who oppose you with horrible deaths, is that why you’ve come here, fiend?”

The giant dark dragon behind him growled menacingly and flipped his massive ethereal-looking wings once. As he responded in the same disturbing voice, his pose remained perfectly unshaken, facing the princess with his face hidden, while she looked at him with distrustful eyes.

“You mistake my intentions. It is not sovereignty over this land that I yearn, have it by whatever name you desire. I am the prince of fear, harbinger of death; I am to bring about the fall of my own kin, so it is prophesised. It is but your blood I seek, daughter of Nebula and Galaxia, for only I must remain, of all alicorns already slain, to overlook her mighty craft, as she will prepare this world for the next to come.”

That last proclamation really unsettled Celestia. She felt every single part of her body shudder unconsciously, her breath fastened nervously and her pupils dilated as she kept gazing at the strange pony, now with pure horror and dread present from those words, which she refused to believe to be true, even with such assertiveness wherewith he uttered each of them.

“You mean, all these years, you were the responsible behind all of this?”

She seemed to be gradually losing the hold on her own emotions, eventually exploding in a frenzy wrath like none of them had ever seen.

“You’re the source of this evil that has come to torment my subjects? Was it you who made the exact same thing happen before, more than a thousand years ago?! WHO KILLED MY MOTHER AND MY FATHER?! ANSWER ME!”

While anypony else would have flinched in fright at the princess’ clamorous cries, the very pony to whom she was directing all of her ire did not move a single muscle, always keeping his majestic posture.

“Yes. But believe I had no choice. She was always right about me...” for a brief moment, his tone seemed to bore a slight bit of resentment, one detail Celestia ignored completely, focused only in channelling all her hatred towards him.

The princess was panting heavily from the shouting, with her eyes widened and still piercing the alicorn right before her like burning daggers. When she finally calmed down, she closed them tightly and gritted her teeth, as one limpid tear rolled down her cold cheek. Lowering her wings and trembling from her tall, slim legs, she dropped her head, having her beautiful, stirring four-coloured mane covering her face, as constant, heartbreaking sobs became audible.

Then, in a swift motion, the princess of the day lifted her head back up, and with a painful and sad tone still present she spoke again, all of her heart burning in rage.

“I had promised myself I would avenge mother and father’s deaths. You have come to threaten my subjects and destroy everything that we love, but you will fail!”

She lit her horn with an incandescent golden magic aura, while leaning her head slightly forward, pointing it at the dark alicorn.

“You have made the mistake of coming back after so many years. Now, the only thing you will find is going to be your own demise!”

She charged up a massive beam with all of her might and immediately struck him with it in, not giving him any chance to divert the attack. As it hit him, it created a thunderous explosion, so luminescent it was almost like a second sun. There was no possible way anypony could have survived such a powerful destructive blast.

However, as the dust settled down, it revealed that the dark alicorn was still standing on the exact same spot without even a single scratch on his armour, much to their great astound.

His horn held a very bright, scintillating sphere of golden magic aura, which Celestia recognised as being the compressed power of her own blast just in time before he used it to strike her back with her own shot. She conjured up a magical shield that deflected the potent beam from her, and quickly retaliated by casting several rapid shots of magic, all directed at him. Yet, before they even touched him, they were repelled to all directions, before acquiring a curve trajectory and homing back to her, who had to deflect them with another magical shield.

Celestia was more exasperated than ever, as she realised this was not going to be an easy fight. Still, she was determined to have her revenge and do whatever it took to protect Equestria and its inhabitants, so she summoned more strength in order to put a definite end to it.

“I am the princess of the sun!” She closed her eyes. Her horn and cutie mark began emitting an intense light, as a broad, translucent and spherical golden aura surrounded her form utterly, and the paved floor beneath her hooves shook and cracked “I summon the ancient power of the solar sphere to aid me!”

She shot her eyes open, which were irradiating an ardent, blinding light.

In the meantime, Twilight and her friends had just reached an elongated and ruined corridor, where the dim light provided by the sky irradiated in its fullness through a massive hole in the wall, which prolonged itself farther upwards to other floors above them.

Upon reaching the corner, they all nearly bumped with two royal guards coming from the other side, both in a miserable state, bruised and with some burns on their fur, with one of them barely conscious while the other aided him to walk. They could not help but to mutually on their unexpected encounter, but the immediate relief was obvious from the soldier who could still speak.

“Thank goodness, we were starting to think we’d never see anypony alive in here! Our entire unit died when the tower fell down, we were searching for a way out here before more of the castle crumbled.”

“I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through...” responded the librarian pony with some hurry “we were sent up here by princess Celestia to look for princess Luna, have you seen her?”

“I’m afraid not, but her highness was there with us when the whole damn thing came down, so she must still be there...” he pointed to the segment of the hallway behind him with his hoof “if she’s still alive...”

“Come on, girls! There no time t- AH!”

She was interrupted by a sudden, single bolt of lightning which struck directly the two guards, piercing through both their bodies, as they dropped heavily and unmoving on the floor with a dull sound.

The ten friends froze agape with their hearts pumping nearly out of their chests from the indescribable shock after witnessing such a violent and rapid death of somepony they had just talked to. But then, just as the luminescent burn mark on their bodies cooled down, they got back up leisurely, and stood backwards in silence, without even breathing.

Before long, the two guards turned their heads to face them, both revealing their eyeballs completely black, with narrow bright red pupils staring menacingly at them, as they also turned their bodies and prepared an hostile stance.

“Run!” cried Rarity, rapidly grabbing her little sister and leading the other youngsters in the front, commanding them to follow her through the hallway from where the soldiers had come.

Back in the main plaza, the next move was the armoured alicorn’s, who simply lit up his horn with a mystical white magic aura for a brief moment, followed immediately by a reaction from the colossal black dragon, which exhaled a massive column of fire out of where its mouth should be, through the dense smoke of his head. As it hit the ground, between the dark pony and the dragon itself, the column bifurcated, and, as if by magic, it spread quickly and formed a perfect circumference of tall, lively flames all around the plaza, closing just behind Celestia.

Some downed royal guards still managed to gather some strength and felt the urge to rush inside the vast arena to help the princess, but were all instantaneously thrown away through the air by a hot burst spit by the magical flames, landing painfully with small portions of their fur scorched.

It seemed that the strange pony intended to fight Celestia alone, without any unwanted interference.

The princess, now at the peak of her power and with her aura shining like the very sun she controlled, rushed at her opponent so swiftly that anypony could have believed she was moving even faster than Rainbow Dash. Yet, it seemed that he, too, had mastered some light speed moves, as he dodged by jumping high up in the air so rapidly no eyes could follow.

In the castle, the friends were still trying to elope their two possessed chasers, who were alarmingly faster than any other enemy they had encountered, when they were all forced to skid to a stop before falling through a great hole in the ground, which followed the greater gap in the wall in a confusion of piles of dust and scorched debris.

With the two guards nearing them, they saw no other choice than to jump over the deep hole, extending downwards a few floors. After throwing the three crusaders and the young dragon first, they all followed as quickly as possible, with Fluttershy carrying Rainbow Dash through the air. Twilight remained the last, leaping just before one of the soldiers grabbed her.

Once they were all one the other side and sighing in relief, believing they were safe, another terrible surprise struck them as the pursuers boldly proceeded to jump over as well. Yet, like an unexpected stroke of luck, the cracked and frail stone where they landed soon succumbed beneath their hooves, and they both fell to their death.

“Phew, that was close!” Applejack let out, wiping up the cold sweat from her forehead.

Before continuing, Twilight approached the edge of the declining ground, where the wall had collapsed entirely, and caught a glimpse of the fierce duel occurring further down outside. The only thing she could discern inside the wide circle of fire were two large blurs, one white and the other black, moving around and crisscrossing on the ground and in the air at an astonishing haste, and constantly conjuring rapid magic shots at each other, the white blur golden shots, and the black one pale shots.

Terrified, the purple unicorn could only wish for her teacher to survive this deadly encounter, but her hopes would become lower and lower every time she heard her cry in pain after being struck by the enemy’s matching magic. Shrugging away all her concerned thoughts, she focused on their objective the princess had designated them, and followed the rest of the group.

After a few minutes of battling, the two combatants finally landed on the ground simultaneously, facing each other. Celestia still had her powers in full berserk, and her anger and resolution were exploding, but she was starting to feel her body exhausted from both the effort she had been putting herself into, and the wounds from white shots that hit her.

His magic spheres were not made of pure energy, like hers or the ones a unicorn would normally shoot, for those would burn like hot plasma. Instead, these felt like incandescent sharp blades, leaving several open cuts where they had touched her body, even cutting through her armour plate.

As Celestia got back to her battle stance, suggesting she was still far from surrendering, he enlightened his horn again, surprising her by creating not one, not two, but three perfect replicas of himself, absolutely indistinguishable from one another and from the original one. The four armoured ponies surrounded her completely, all standing still and facing her in a threatening way.

Without thinking twice, the princess directed her next strike to the one immediately in front of her, who, in just a split second, phased out like smoke into thin air and reappeared slightly closer to her, and delivered another painful, slicing strike out of his horn on her. At that point, she realised the only way out of this would require her figuring out which one was the original and surprise him with a powerful attack at the right moment.

The other replicas did not wait for her to recompose and strike back, as they, too, started shooting at her from all directions, and Celestia had found herself forced to cast a magical barrier around her temporarily in order not to die from all the wounds she had received by then. However, his magic was too powerful and her strengths were fading quickly, as the blood streamed continuously from her cuts. She did not even have much power left to maintain the barrier that was shielding her.

Suddenly, moved by a desperate thought, but nevertheless possibly her last chance of surviving, she lifted her head up, pointing her horn directly to the sky, and created an explosion of incandescent light and strong, multidirectional winds, which did seem to have confounded the four armoured ponies a little, at least for a brief moment.

A white blur then landed heavily on the ground from far up above, and then proceeding to move extraordinarily hastily between the four opponents surrounding it, clashing with each of them multiple times and leaving a long trail behind of a bright golden light.

None of the armoured ponies was able to parry this relentless, frenetic attack. Each time they got hit, they would actually react and back off slightly, and, though they would not emit any sound of pain, they were perceptibly stunned.

When the blur finally halted back in the middle of the four enemies, it reshaped in Celestia’s form, still in her battle stance and facing one of them specifically. The replicas vanished like thick, dark smoke, leaving only the already recomposed original one, who was right before the princess’ sight.

In a more calmer ambient that was the final corridor Twilight and her friends had yet to comb looking for the princess of the night, all they would come across were more piles of wreckage and clouds of dust, in a dangerously bent and unstable storey.

They had searched restlessly all rooms, often having to use force to knock down a stuck door, bucking their way in. Unfortunately, all they had found would be either nothing or more death.

That was the last hallway they had left to search for the younger princess, and they had reached a dead end made of an impenetrable wall of fallen stones ahead, blocking further access inside the castle. There was nothing they could do to continue.

“Oh no, what’re we gonna do now?” Twilight looked desperate at the impenetrable obstruction before them, tormented by the thought of failing the task her mentor had designated them.

Another lonely bolt of lightning tore the skies completely out of the blue, missing the purple unicorn by only a few centimetres, making her jolt and yelp in alarm.

“Woah, that was close!” Rainbow Dash let out, her heart fastened from the scare, like all the others.

“It almost seemed it was... aiming directly at you, Twilight” stated Fluttershy, which would unbridle a wave of unsettling thoughts on everypony’s minds, already frightened without considering that a force of nature might have been attempting to hunt them down.

They were forced to put their worries aside when a muffled sound coming from the other side of the massive wall of debris drew their attention.

“Did you hear that?” asked Rarity in a low tone, while putting her ear against the wreckage, followed by a brief moment of deadening silence, aggravating the suspense.

The entire wall burst suddenly, propelling all of them backwards and to the ground, making them feel a bit disorientated. Before they realised, another four possessed guards, their eyes just like the other two from before, had launched themselves through the hole and landed right on top of Twilight, Pinkie, Applejack and Fluttershy, immobilizing them.

Just as their frightening heads, with their mouths open, were about to bite the skin off their faces, a torrent of frenetic shots of light blue magic came out of the hole from where they had emerged, hitting every single one of the undead soldiers and liberating the ponies within their hold.

As the guards got up rapidly, prepared to attack again, a familiar form leaped through the dusty breach, bustled and focused, in a silver armour of identical design as that of Celestia’s golden one.

“Princess Luna!” the ten friends exclaimed, blissful to see the younger princess still alive.

Without thinking twice, the six elements got up as well and aided the monarch in fighting off their enemies, delivering hard bucks or shooting magic at them. Rainbow Dash, who had regained some sensitivity in her legs, attempted several stunning kicks on any that would get too close to her and Applejack, supporting her.

But the guards’ determination to kill their prey was not easily breakable, so that the fiery struggle would only end after they were either violently thrown off the castle through the gaps in the walls, falling from a great altitude, or crushed beneath the heavy stones of a crumbling ceiling. At last, the friends could all truly sigh in relief.

“Are you okay, princess?” Applejack inquired, still breathless from combating with the weight of the cyan pegasus on her shoulders.

“I’m fine, but what are you all doing here?” she answered promptly, but clearly agitated with their presence there “I thought my sister and I had sent garrisons to Ponyville as well, with orders to evacuate everypony to the district bunker!”

“It’s a long story, princess.” Twilight intervened, trying to hasten the conversation “We were delegated by your sister to come up here look for you right after the large tower collapsed. Just before we entered the castle, a giant dragon came out of nowhere and landed in the central plaza, ridden by a strange alicorn in black armour...”

“An alicorn, you say?” Luna repeated, astounded and a little sceptical.

“It’s truth, they’re both fighting down there right now!” Spike assured, standing near the edge of the cracked and unstable floor, pointing far downward to the feverish battle of powerful bolts and explosions of golden and pale magic.

“We have to go back down, the princess needs our help!” pleaded the crusaders.

Celestia was terribly drained and starting to find difficulty in catching her breath, as well as the fact that the large amount of blood she had already lost from her wounds had weakened her severely, and her pain was so excruciating she could barely stand up on her legs much longer.

Taking in one last agonizing inhale, she rapidly propelled at him, having both their horns clashed with each other. They were now battling literally face to face and without any magic, only relying on their own strength, using the horns as sabres. Yet, she could not hold her position for very long, since, apart from her weakened state, the dark alicorn was larger and much stronger than her, as she felt his immense force pushing her backwards with the biggest ease.

Out of desperation, she attempted to astound him with a magical strike delivered directly from her horn to his masked face, but right before she could finish casting it, he was the one to take her aback with a potent repulse spell, so powerful that the multidirectional gusts of magical wind it generated even extinguished the flames delimitating the round arena, and the princess of the day was thrown a scarce meters in the air, but still managed to land on her hooves.

However, as she looked back up and prepared to retaliate at her enemy, he was already gone and nowhere to be found, though it did not take very long for him to reappear, in the form of a dark blur descending vertically from a great altitude and landing so rapidly and fiercely, like a thunderous lightning, that the pavement of the whole plaza trembled, and many big cracks opened on the hard stone. Both the still fading black trail he left behind and his tall armoured legs were emanating highly energetic electricity.

All the shaking in the ground formed another wall bounding the battling area, this one made of protuberances of stone, rock and dirt.

The vibration on the floor had disorientated Celestia a little. Without wasting any time, the dark alicorn lit up his horn once again, involving himself entirely with electricity, and then trespassed her whole body brutally, like an horizontal lightening strike, halting right behind an electrified Celestia, screaming shatteringly in excruciating pain.

What remained of her light had vanished completely, and her beautiful golden aura and shine in her eyes dimmed.

The armoured alicorn approached the fallen adversary unhurriedly. She was still breathing, though barely alive, but still managed to move her head slightly and through much effort in order to look up at him. He glared down on her through his faceless metal mask, with his wings spread wide.

His dark horn irradiated his pale magic aura once more, and Celestia realised this was the end. She was exhausted and close to dying; he was too much powerful, even for her.

She regretted not being able to protect her subjects, like she had committed herself to. Her mind drifted to her mother and father, then to her race and family. She recalled their faces with an unmatchable grief; shattered by the failure to avenge them all, in the end. A tear fell from one of her saddened, closed eyes, and rolled down her cheek, while she let a small sob and silently muttered to herself “I’m so sorry. Mother. Father. I’ll be with you soon...”

She expected a final, merciful strike to come down and put a definite end to her suffering, which never actually came. Instead, she felt like her body was being lifted up from the ground. Her bewilderment only aggravated, as the next thing she felt was a rather warm liquid touching her body, spreading up her limbs and involving her utterly.

She made an effort to open her eyes again, immediately realising that she was, indeed, hovering in the air, right in front of the dark alicorn, inside of some a strange magical bubble he was conjuring up, which he was also filling up slowly with magically generated water. He wanted to drown her.

It would not be too long until the water level reached the top of the bubble and Celestia was completely submersed. She closed her eyes, as she felt the life escaping from her with her last exhalations. The image of her favourite student and her friends came to her head. She would miss them very much, without a doubt, but there was another one who she would miss above all: her dearest sister Luna.

“Goodbye, Luna. Please, don’t forget about me...” she thought with great melancholy.

All of a sudden, a cry was heard from high up in the sky, amongst the black clouds. A rapid cobalt blue sphere of magic struck the armoured pony directly from above, having no other effect on him but breaking his concentration on the bubble spell, making it burst. Celestia fell back on the ground, coughing all the water out of her lungs and gasping desperately for air.

A dark blue blur then landed on the ruined paving of the plaza, right between the dark alicorn and the fallen princess. Far behind her followed the friends from Ponyville, leaping from a lower window onto a sloped stone roof, and sliding down back to the top of the staircase.

“Luna...” Celestia mumbled quietly, finding it difficult to even talk. She felt peaceful to see her sister before losing her senses from her weakened state.

“Worry not, my dear sister, I’m here.”

The princess of the moon eyed the pony in the black armour with no fear, only ardent anger in her face, like she was about to murder him.

“You! Who do you think you are to come here, disrupt our peace and try to murder my sister?!”

To everypony’s surprise, instead of simply standing in silence like he used to, the dark alicorn appeared to have shuddered slightly, even taking one quick step back, just from seeing Luna.

“Why have you come here? What do you want from us?!” the younger princess kept shouting at him vigorously “ANSWER ME!”

“Luna...” he uttered in his strong, grave and reverberated voice.

That was when everypony got absolutely confused, but not as much as Luna.

“How... do you know my name?” she inquired, now in a completely different tone, more of a surprised rather than an enraged one.

He did not respond. Instead, he backed off a few more steps, before lighting up his horn, commanding the gigantic dragon that was right behind him to approach his massive head, having the dense black smoke engulfed him entirely, until he disappeared from sight, within the beast’s body.

After that, the dragon quickly took off, creating a gust of wind with each beat of its six wide wings, almost knocking down everypony below, and headed back up to the clouds, whence it had come. Once it was no longer visible, all the darkness faded away again, leaving the thick, grey fog taking over everywhere, for the third time.

Now that the calm had returned, Twilight managed to concentrate on her teleporting spell, sending herself and her friends inside the ring of rock protuberances where the battle took place, and they rushed as fast as they could to the injured princess

“She is still alive, but has just lost her consciousness...” Luna informed them, with one of her front hooves holding Celestia’s head, and the other placed over her golden chest plate, all destroyed and torn open, showing clearly the damage made to her body “We have to get her to the castle hospital wing quickly, before she loses more blood!”

“We’ll help you, princess!” Twilight said promptly, using her magic to lift up Celestia’s insensitive body.

“Thank you so much...” Luna approached to whisper at her sister’s hear “You’ll be alright, my sister. Just hang on.”

Chapter VI: Heartbroken

Chapter VI: Heartbroken

Luna sat in the hospital wing waiting room, already relieved from the weight of her silver armour, accompanied by the six elements, the young dragon and the Cutie Mark Crusaders, all sharing the same unease towards the elder alicorn sister’s critical condition.

All of them had already received some medical care for their minor injuries, and Rainbow Dash was able to walk and fly once more.

They had all been there in a deadening silence for almost six hours straight since they brought her to the medical facilities inside the castle, but she had not woken up yet. The doctors did inform them that her wounds looked quite deep and severe, and she had lost a great amount of blood; she would be very lucky if she even woke up...

At least neither the dark tempest nor the alicorn riding the smoke dragon had returned, leaving them only with the unpleasantly cold, grey mist that seemed to cover the entire land, but, nevertheless, it gave them a sense of relief, for it was a period of eerie calm.

The younger princess remained sitting perfectly still, leaning her head slightly forward and looking blankly at the floor. Her night-sky-blue mane was not even stirring like it used to; instead, it just fell to the ground straight and dull, covering her sorrowed face from the sight of her friends from Ponyville.

She was feeling more disorientated than all the others, for not only she was still dwelling with the shock of realising that she had almost lost her sister to the mysterious pony in the black armour, if she had not showed up sooner, but also the last thing he uttered before he withdrew from Canterlot had made her dive into absolute bewilderment and wonder: “Luna...”

To make it worse, his fearsome, deep and grave voice kept calling her name repeatedly in her mind, no matter how hard she tried to shrug it off. How did he know her name? And why?... Who was him?

Eventually, she succumbed to the discomforting heaviness of all the thoughts running through her head, and her eyes began to well up with large, stressful tears.

“I’m so sorry, my sister...” she muttered in silence to herself, closing her eyes as she did. The tears streamed down and fell to the ground “If only I could’ve been faster... you wouldn’t be in this state. It’s all my fault, I’m sorry...”

Luna let out a heartbreaking sob, interrupted by an unexpected hoof placed caringly on her shoulder. Twilight and her friends were all standing up and surrounding her, with their friendly and comprehensive eyes focused on hers. She knew they, too, cared for Celestia’s health, as well as for her own wellbeing, otherwise these amazing friends would not be here together, giving each other support in this difficult moment for everypony. No words were needed to express their feelings.

All of a sudden, their moment of silence was interrupted by a female nurse pony entering the room they were in, who got the immediate full attention from all of them, expecting to hear about Celestia’s condition and hoping to hear good news.

“Princess Luna,” she called in a soft tone “your sister has finally awakened.”

Those were the best words they could have heard to find some consolation for their gruelling anxiety. Sighs and exclamations of solace were heard, before the intern continued.

“Thankfully, she is fully conscious and able to talk. However, she is still very weak, and I’m afraid she won’t be able to get up from bed any time soon. She has requested to see all of you now.”

They exchanged glances of curiosity, before proceeded to follow the nurse through the door from where she came in, which led to a long corridor, all in white and with many doors along both side walls. It was adorned with simple paintings of peaceful verdant meadows and beautiful wild flowers, creating a serene ambient that contrasted with the horrible havoc and carnage just outside the castle walls.

Upon reaching the end of the corridor, the pony leading them pointed at a door to the left, where they entered as quietly as they could, with Luna stepping inside first.

The room was quadrangular, quite ample, also white and well illuminated by a big, round lamp hanging from the ceiling. There was a single, large rectangular window, closed firmly, from which it was possible to see the city below. On one side was the only bed of the room, where the princess of the day was laid down. Above the headboard hung another painting on the wall, this one of a stunning sunset, with the red sun gently touching the horizon as the sky began to darken and the first stars became visible above. Placed over her bedside table was one glass jar filled with water, and one modest white orchid in it.

Celestia was, indeed, awaken now, though she did look very hurt and weak. Some of the many bandages wrapping up her body were still visibly soaked with stains of blood from her cuts, which only stopped bleeding after much effort from the doctors and countless changes of bandages.

Disregarding that, all that mattered was the fact that she was stable and conscious, but, above all, she was glad to see her younger sister, her favourite student, and all her friends again. She smiled at them as they entered.

Luna ran swiftly to her sister’s bedside and hugged her as gently as she could, trying not to hurt her. As Celestia hugged her back, tears fell from the younger princess’ eyes again, these of pure joy.

“Oh, I’m so happy that you’re okay, sister! You can’t imagine what a relief it is!”

“I’m glad, Luna.” They slowly let go of each other “I’m glad.”

After that, they all sat in front of the bed, eager to hear what Celestia wanted to say to them.

“So now that you’re all here, I believe I owe some explanations about these events that have been happening since yesterday.” She turned her gaze to Twilight, who had her ears perked up in full interest “And I apologise to you, Twilight, for trying to hide something like this from you. I hope you understand that, if I didn’t tell you anything sooner, it wasn’t because I didn’t trust you, but only that I wanted to protect you.”

She cleared her throat before continuing.

“As you already know, me and Luna were the original wielders of the Elements of Harmony, at least until Nightmare Moon... took over my dear sister, and the incident we all know occurred, which caused both of us to lose control over that power, since it required always more than one user, and that they were all in perfect harmony with each other. The power materialised into six jewel pieces, and they had been waiting for their right heirs to find them, which would be you six.

The reason we first sought out the power of harmony was simple: survival, since we were left all alone after our entire race was completely vanquished by an unknown force more than a thousand years ago. We were just fillies...

I do remember a few details of that horrible day, and we’ve never seen our parents again. I hoped that something like that would never happen again, ever... or at least until we were ready to avenge our forefathers. Only last night have I met its true source.”

“You mean... that dark alicorn?” the purple unicorn inquired.

“Exactly. In all my life, I’ve never seen a pony as powerful as him... nor did I even consider it was possible for such being to exist.”

“I still heard him claiming to be the last alicorn” Twilight recalled.

“I must admit that I, too, didn’t believe him at first. But after seeing such magic and fighting skill, I now have no doubt that he must be a third pure-blooded alicorn like me and my sister.”

“Wait a second,” Rainbow Dash interrupted, everypony suddenly turning their attention to her “third? What about Princess Cadance?”

“Cadance wasn’t born an alicorn, Dash,” Twilight explained to her in Celestia’s place “she used to be a unicorn like me or Rarity, until one day she found an extremely rare talent within her: she spread love and companionship between her family members, since they were used to fight with each other regularly over wealth and interests. After that, she earned her wings, but she still has the same life span of a mortal pony. Princess Celestia and princess Luna, on the other hoof, were born pure-blood alicorns, having their wings since birth, and unlimited life span.”

“That is correct,” her tutor confirmed “however, as Twilight said correctly, we are only granted with unlimited life span, which means that we can’t die of old age, but we still can contract diseases, drown or bleed to death like any other pony.”

“Princess, if I may inquire,” Rarity stepped in “what did you mean exactly when you said that you had doubts about this pony’s existence?”

“A pertinent question, Rarity. As you may know, there are two primary types of magic: white and dark. White magic is much more difficult to learn, let alone to master, but it compensates in the end, as it is also much more powerful, since it comes from the good sentiments inside one’s heart. Dark magic, on the contrary, is much simpler and easy to cast, but it comes with a cost, for it drains the caster’s very essence, ultimately consuming him.

The thing that intrigued me the most was that the spells he used for the change of climate and making both sun and moon disappear left a magical trail in the air, which me and Luna were able to detect. At first, I believed that it could only be the work of some rather powerful dark wizard, but it didn’t make sense as to how could just some dark magic user grow so powerful overnight, let alone the fact that all our attempts to cleanse the curse were useless.

Yet, when I was confronting the dark alicorn, right when our horns clashed with each other, I felt a sudden burst of a new kind of magic, one that not even me could replicate: it is a mythological type called ethereal magic, and it stands in-between both white and dark, differing from them by the fact that only somepony who has lost their heart is able to cast it, hence why I wouldn’t be able to.”

All their faces were suddenly enlightened by both astonishment and perplexity.

“Now, how’s that even possible?” Applejack spoke “Ah ain’t no medic, but how can a pony be alive if he doesn’t have a heart?”

“It’s not that kind of heart, Applejack...” Luna responded “some also call it soul, but in reality it is a pony’s true essence, our feelings, good and bad, and what makes us different from each other. Without a heart... you cannot even exist.”

“Woah, so how’s it possible that he’s still around, causing all this trouble?” the farmer pony retorted.

Celestia thought in silence for a moment, before having come up with an answer based on uncertainty and mere speculation.

“It is possible that his body and heart have been separated. But if that is the case, his heart must be still alive somewhere. For when the heart dies, the body, too, ceases to exist.”

At that moment, Twilight remembered having read something about the connections between magic and the heart, some time ago, but it was always a subject that she found a little too bizarre and somewhat frightening to study.

“How’s it like? How does it feel to... not have a heart?”

“I cannot describe you exactly how it feels like, Twilight, for even I never actually seen anything like it before...” the princess of the day responded “but, in theory, imagine that you are unable to feel love for what you hold most endeared, or compassion towards your friends, or anypony who has ever been close to you. Without friendship or love, all you have left are the memories of once possessing emotions, and the unreachable desire to feel again.”

“How awful...” Fluttershy whimpered sorrowfully “poor thing, he must be suffering...”

Twilight rapidly turned around to face her, incredulous that she was actually feeling empathy for the one responsible for all the obliteration and death happening in every single corner of Equestria.

“You can’t be serious, Fluttershy! That... that MONSTER destroyed our hometown, took the lives of so many of our friends, nearly took princess Celestia’s too, and you’re even considering feeling sympathy for HIM?”

The shy, sensitive pony backed down a bit at her shouting, facing down with saddened, repentant eyes, in a gesture like she was pleading for Twilight to forgive her silliness.

As the purple unicorn calmed back down, she turned again to Celestia, with a determined expression on her face while she spoke to her.

“Princess Celestia, we want to help you in any way possible. Is there anything at all that we could do to possibly stop that evil pony?”

The bedridden monarch smiled, admired with her pupil’s firm and strong-minded attitude. She began to recall some of the last reports she had received from her messengers from every part of Equestria before she had left the castle to battle along with her sister, searching for something that she would find of great relevance, and a mission suitable for Twilight and her friends.

“Alright, Twilight. There is something I would like all of you to go investigate...”

The six elements approached the bed footboard in order to listen attentively.

“Shortly before the second storm came, a messenger arrived from the Crystal Empire. He said that, though Shining Armor and Cadance had successfully managed to keep the dark forces from breaking inside the castle so far, they were baffled to state that the Crystal Heart appeared to be, according to their description, melting.”

Another collective gasp of bewilderment was heard inside the room.

“So... is that it?” Twilight said “You want us to go to the Crystal Empire right away?”

“Yes. Let’s take the chance that no other storm has come yet. You should depart immediately.” She then turned to her younger sibling, sitting right beside her “Luna, would you do me the favour to order the guards to prepare a flying carriage?”

“Of course, my sister” she willingly acquiesced, promptly getting up and leaving the room back to the lengthy corridor.

“This will be a difficult task for you...” Celestia continued, after landing her gaze upon the young dragon and the crusaders, bashfully squeezed against each other, quietly behind the six elements “I do not think it would be safe for the young ones to go as well. Spike and the three little fillies should stay here, in the safety of the castle, while you go. Luna will stay too, to defend it in my place.”

“You can count on us, princess!” Twilight affirmed cheerfully.

“I know I can.” She smiled affectionately “I wish you all the best of luck.”

Only a few minutes later, the six friends were already leaving Canterlot inside a majestic, expensively ornamented carriage that hovered in the air as light as a feather, as if by magic, pulled by four sturdy pegasi class royal guards. Despite being a large vehicle, it was incredibly aerodynamic and fast, so they calculated that they should arrive their destiny in no longer than a couple of hours.

The orange country pony took a quick peek outside the window, only to notice the immense mist extended throughout the entirety of the land, as far as the eyes could reach, and even to the great altitude at which they were flying. She wondered how the ponies pulling them could know exactly where they were heading.

“Ah just hope we don’t get lost or anything...”

“Don’t worry, Applejack,” Twilight assured her “they are accustomed to travel to all sorts of places, some more difficult to find than others. As long as the fog is all that we have to worry about, we should be fine.”

“So what are you planning to do once we get there?” Rarity asked.

“First, I want to take a look at the Crystal Heart with my own eyes. You know, so I can have an idea of what we’re dealing with. I’m wondering if it’s also connected with the rest of the events. Then, if it happens to be necessary, we’ll use the Elements of Harmony on it.”

“Speaking of which...” Rainbow Dash interrupted abruptly “Where are the Elements? Weren’t they supposed to be back at your house?”

“Nope!” Twilight opened the satchel she carried on her back since the previous day, revealing a glimpse of the golden artefacts shining inside. “See, right before I left my house yesterday morning, I took some precautions in case the Elements would be needed.”

“That was real smart of you, sugarcube!” Applejack congratulated her friend’s prudence.

When they finally arrived, the climate still had not changed from the appearance of a world made entirely of haze. Even the once brilliant and spectacular buildings made of crystal were not noticeable from the distance, covered by the massive, dense grey wall.

Once they stepped out of the vehicle, a sudden, unpleasant chill hit them right in the face, freezing their cheeks. It seemed to be getting even colder than before.

At first, they wandered through the streets almost blindfold, unaware of their environments, and expecting to find something that might serve as a reference mark to find the castle, where they intended to go.

The city was completely empty, like they had already deduced, the morbid silence giving it a surprisingly sinister and frightening atmosphere, so much that they were not squeezing tightly against each other solely because of the cold air anymore.

Before long, however, they were found by Twilight’s brother, who had been patrolling the perimeter.

“Twily!” he called, making her turn her head swiftly in the direction where the familiar voice came from.

His silhouette quickly became fully visible to all of them, as he approached scampering. He wore his standard captain of the royal guard armour, all in tones of gold and lavender, and carryed his helmet with feathers under one of his front legs. The chest plate had a few gaps in it, and he himself had a few cuts and bruises all over his body, but, nevertheless, his determination to keep on fighting and his contempt to see her little sister there were quite appreciable.

“Shining Armor! I’m so glad to see you!”

“Me too! Princess Celestia replied to our message, claiming that she would send somepony to investigate our problem, but I never actually thought she’d send you!”

“She’s been injured... badly, that’s why she sent us!”

“Oh no, what happened?”

The six friends explained to him minutely everything since their exodus from Ponyville until their unexpected meeting with the mysterious armoured dark alicorn, riding the gigantic, six-winged smoke dragon, and how he subjugated the princess of the sun, nearly killing her.

“I see...” he said afterwards “well then, follow me. I’ll lead you to the castle. Cadance is there, in the Crystal Heart chamber, trying to figure out what bizarre phenomenon has befallen on it.”

Before they knew it, they were inside the castle, passing by the enormous hallways and the elongated corridors made of bright, limpid crystal, all as empty and dead as the city outside. The castle was not very lit, for all the chandeliers, lamps and torches were off, being the strange, unnatural scarce amount of light somehow associated with the fog the only source of illumination, coming from outside the tall stained glass windows.

At some point, they heard rushed hoofsteps coming from the end of the corridor they were in. It was Cadance who was coming to meet them, clearly tense, but still happy to see Shining Armor, and that he had brought Twilight and her friends. She also wore a battle armour, hers in golden, pink and white hues, and in slightly better state than that of her husband. She approached them and they greeted each other, before Shining Armor summarised what her sister and her friends had told him moments ago about the whole situation in Ponyville and Canterlot, and the circumstances that got them there.

“So Celestia has sent you all to go inspect what’s wrong with the Crystal Heart?” Twilight’s former foalsitter inquired.

“Yes, she mentioned it was... melting?”

“Come this way, you’ll see it for yourselves.”

A couple of more twists and turns inside the labyrinthine hallways of the castle, and they reached a big door that led to a spiral staircase heading downwards, which they hastily proceeded to descend. Shortly after, they began to notice how the faint light seemed to be dimming as they went further down, until it was almost pitch black and they could not even see the steps beneath their hooves.

Finally, they stopped right before another door, which the captain of the royal guard pushed open, revealing an ample and gloomy circular chamber, where the only source of light was the vague, dying blue beam of the Crystal Heart hovering perfectly static in the centre.

As they stepped in, they heard small splashes underneath their hooves, which also made echo in the emptiness of the room. The whole floor was flooded with no more than two centimetres of crystal clear water, whose source was no other than the magical jewel. Drop by drop, the transparent liquid would constantly and slowly fall from its bottom tip into the large pond below.

“It’s really strange, isn’t it?” Cadance asked, as they got closer.

“Hmm... I can’t seem to pick up any signs of a curse around it...” Twilight observed, scanning it carefully with her horn “which is really strange, since my first thought was that this was just another one of the strange events happening since yesterday... but the Crystal Heart doesn’t seem to be affected by any type of magic at all!”

“So... is it melting all by itself?” Shining Armor suggested, confused.

“There’s another odd thing right there: see, I don’t believe it’s melting, or its volume would’ve decreased a lot by now. It’s actually generating water around itself.”

Their curious eyes focused on the suspended gemstone, as they watched quietly the drops forming around its cold, barely lit blue surface, then rolling down leisurely, and ultimately falling to the ground in a dull and simple way.

“It almost looks like it’s... crying” the timid yellow pegasus muttered, unexplainably feeling terribly lugubrious from the sight.

Suddenly, a hoofstep was heard splashing in the water, which echoed throughout the entire room. It appeared to be coming from somewhere in the shadows that swallowed the most part of the chamber, which put the captain of the royal guard on full alert. Another splash followed: they were definitely not alone in there.

Shining Armor turned his head to where he believed the sound was coming from, and immediately landed his gaze upon a large amount of stirring shadows moving towards them, which eventually revealed the distinctive form of the fiend pony Twilight and her friends had already met before.

“Oh my goodness... it’s him!” the purple unicorn said with her voice trembling in panic and horror.

There he was again, advancing slowly in their direction, only this time he had his wings folded and was not wearing his full-body armour, but merely one smaller chest plate, two pairs of lofty horseshoes, and the same thin crown, all of black metal. His coat was utterly dark, so as his lengthy, straight mane and tail. They could not see his eyes, for his fringe covered them, and he had no cutie mark at all.

Without making any questions or thinking twice, Shining Armor bravely charged towards him in vehemence, only to see his excessive confidence being thrown to the ground like his dormant body, after his adversary easily threw him through the air just by using the same spell he had used to repel the royal guards back in Canterlot, before confronting Celestia.

“Shining Armor!” Cadance cried, as a blinding light illuminated the whole room for a split second.

After the intense flash dimmed and their vision readjusted, Twilight lit her horn and, without wasting any time, made the six Elements of Harmony fly out from the satchel, quickly placing the five necklaces around their respective owners’ necks, finalising with the crown-like one on her own head.

They charged up the power of the Elements and fired a massive rainbow-coloured beam, hitting directly their target. There was no way he could have survived that powerful strike. Yet, Twilight could not help but to feel that it all had been too much easy... he did not even tried to evade their attack.

After the dust settled, they could see that he was still standing on the agitated water, without even a single a scratch to be found.

“Oh no!...” Twilight whimpered desperately. She knew he would retaliate.

He reared up imposingly, and then clashed his front hooves vigorously with the ground, splashing some more water. This generated a small earthquake, and, as the shock waves got to where they were standing, they heard the Elements starting to crack.

“W-what’s happening?!”

“This... this isn’t possible!”

The six ponies witnessed all their hopes shatter into pieces like Elements they carried in a split second. That was it... he was more powerful than Celestia, and, not only he was immune to the power of the Elements of Harmony, he had just destroyed them with the greatest ease. Princess Cadance just sobbed uncontrollably while holding the head of her unconscious and possibly concussed husband on her front hooves.

His mighty voice echoed in the chamber as he spoke in his serene tone, but still loud and firm.

“You bear these symbols of friendship. So shall I put yours to the test.”

The dark alicorn enlightened his horn with his distinctive white magic aura and created a black mass of opaque smoke, which rapidly spread around and involved all of them completely.

When the spell was finished, the smoke phased out and everypony but him had disappeared. Only he remained alone in the chamber now, staring blankly at the faintly lit Crystal Heart.

Chapter VIII: Deciphering the Enigma

Chapter VIII: Deciphering the Enigma

The treetops stirred as a gentle and slightly cold breeze blew through them.

Luna had found herself wandering in the unknown woods alone, once again, for the images of her young self and her friend had phased out like ghostly apparitions as soon as the whole flashback of their first meeting came to an end.

She knew that they were nothing but mere projections of her mind, so a part of herself had already been expecting that to happen, but she still could not help but to feel awfully sad afterwards, like if she had the opportunity to reach them for a brief moment, and then lost it, probably, forever.

At least she heard him uttering his name at long last, which gave her some consolation. In fact, that was the very last thing that occurred right before they vanished.

She continued treading the moist grass, passing by the hill in the centre of the vast clearing, as the wind whistled calmly between the tree leafs and the scent of many different wild foliages lingered in the air, and she was completely lost in her thoughts.

A torrent of memory fragments flooded her mind, some longer than others, a few even felt absolutely unfamiliar, but, nevertheless, she followed them in hopes that they would lead to more details about what really happened more than a thousand years ago.

“I really enjoy being around with you. Do you think we could... maybe meet again, soon?”

Those had been the words she had used to seal their friendship. Upon meeting with an affirmative response, both the young foals had promised to meet each other every single night from then on. And that would be the perfect place to do so: exactly where they had met the first time, where he had saved her life, and where Luna’s dream had brought her to.

“You’re doing great! Just keep flapping your wings and don’t look down. I’m right here to catch you!”

Unlike her elder sister, Celestia, who had shown to be quite a naturally proficient flyer at a young age, Luna had been more clumsy and fumbling while moving in the air as a filly. She remembered the flight lessons her friend used to give her for so many nights. Losing control and falling down was frequent for her during the first weeks, but he would always be there to catch her. During the daytime, she would yearn excitedly for the nightfall to come, and resuming their lessons.

“Do you see that big boulder over there? I bet I can lift it with my magic!”

Another memory she recalled with great fondness: their magic skills demonstrations. She had always been eager to show him a new trick she had learned during the day. Sometimes, the spell would fail, leaving her slightly embarrassed. Yet he never derided her, not even once; instead, he would try to help her master the spell, as he had proven to be not only a gifted flyer, but also a very talented magic caster, considering his age.

Luna reached the other side of the hill, where a small lake of calm, limpid waters was hidden, right before the dense tree line ahead, marking the edge of the clearing.

“Come on in! The water’s great, I promise!”

It was there that they used to swim together, under the resplendent pale shine of the moon. Luna had never tried swimming in her life until then, but it would not take long for her to find it extremely fun.

The two foals had the best days of their youth back then. However, something unpredictable and terrible must have occurred in the meantime, as their meetings came to an end, and she never saw him ever again.

She approached the lake to see her own face mirrored in the water, observing how her saddened eyes could not hide her immense sense of longing. Those nights had been the best ones in her entire foalhood... why did it all have to end?

It was then that a horrible, shattering memory struck her: the morning after their last meeting... it had been exactly when all the strange events started for the first time... when their parents lost their lives, along with a great number of their race and their family. Could it be possible that he... had been killed that day, as well? Her heart refused to believe it, yet reason kept pointing it as being the painful truth. She and her sister had been told to be the only surviving alicorn descendants, so he must have been obliterated like all the others.

She closed her eyes tightly, as large tears began to form around their edges from the devastating melancholy that had overtaken her, then streaming down her cold cheeks before dripping into the water of the lake. She felt miserable just to think that she had utterly forgotten about her best friend and confider, nearly believing that he had forsaken her, when he could most probably have met with a terrible fate. Her heartrending sobs could hardly express all the sorrow and atonement inside of her, only there was nopony around to hear them.

As she slowly opened her eyes, she got a little startled upon realising that the face reflected in the lake was suddenly not hers anymore... or at least it did not look like her present self: it was filly Luna who was staring back at her in the water, and she looked just as sorrowful as her.

The reflexion of a young darker pony then appeared beside her, who she recognised as being her friend. He looked at her with his compassionate, caring light blue eyes, like he was pleading her not to be sad.

All of a sudden, Luna sensed a presence right to her side, corresponding to where his reflexion was relatively to hers. She hastily turned her head, landing her gaze right away on the dark silhouette of a very large and muscular pony, much bigger than herself, facing her in absolute silence.

Fear and panic were the first sentiments to overcome her, but they were immediately replaced by perplexity, and ultimately by a quaint, yet tremendous solace, as she recognised those distinctive brilliant icy-blue eyes looking deeply into hers. Every single muscle of her body froze and her eyes widened, with more tears rolling down from them, these ones of pure bliss.

“Fenrir?...”

In another dimension, the yellow pegasus kept searching tirelessly for anything that could be an exit out of the intricate upstairs hallways of the crystal castle, always followed closely by the young greyish alicorn colt she had found earlier in one of the many rooms, whose reliance she had earned by simply showing him some affection and kindness.

After taking one more turn, they came across the familiar form of a rainbow-haired pony, lying motionless in front of a broken tall glass window.

“Oh my goodness, Rainbow Dash!” Fluttershy rushed to her and lifted her head up on her front hooves, noticing the several painful-looking cuts and shards of glass tucked deep into her skin “You’re hurt! Did you crash against that window?”

She was still too numb and half-conscious to give a proper response. The yellow pony readily lifted her back up, and leant her against her own body for some balance.

As the cyan pegasus leisurely opened her eyelids while stammering and breathing with some difficulty, the colt cringed a little beside Fluttershy, frightened of the unfamiliar pony before him.

“Ugh... where am I?” She finally spoke up with some clarity “Did I make it to the castle?”

“Yes, but your landing was a bit too harsh. Here, I’ll help you walk...”

The injured pony rapidly moved away from her friend, who looked at her worried and confused at the same time.

“I don’t need your help! If I made it here all by myself, I can find a way out of this crazy place alone!” She then spotted the quivering colt hiding behind Fluttershy’s legs “Hey, who’s that one?”

“Oh, this is Fenrir. I found him in one of the rooms while I was searching for a way out of here.” She moved to the side and delicately pushed him forward “Come on, little fella, don’t be shy. Rainbow Dash is a good friend of mine, she won’t bite.”

As Rainbow Dash finally managed to inspect him better, she abruptly gasped and jolted in a burst of rage and disquietude, turning again to Fluttershy with a dreadfully alarmed expression on her face.

“Fluttershy, do you KNOW who he is?!”

The young colt hastily backed down to her shouting.

“Rainbow Dash, please! You’re scaring him...”

“HE’S THE DARK ALICORN! I caught a glimpse of his eyes when we were inside the Crystal Heart chamber, and they’re the same! I’m sure it’s him!”

“B-but... what are you saying? He’s just a young foal!”

“Step aside, Fluttershy! I’ll end this right now!”

She charged towards him with a menacing pose and a fervent, blinding determination visible in her eyes, which were entirely focused on the little colt, piercing him like burning daggers. She was definitely going to kill him.

However, Fluttershy was also resolute not to let her do him any harm, so she blocked her path.

“No, I won’t let you do it! Even if he is the dark alicorn, he’s just an innocent, defenceless colt! He hasn’t done anything wrong ye- AH!”

Rainbow Dash shoved her violently to the ground, hurting her quite badly, as she fell on her jaw, but not as much as her following bitter words.

“I am so SICK of you all! You claim to be my friends, but you’re just a bunch of scoffers and cowards! And I’ll be honest with you: I’ve never met a pony who was as naïve as you are in my entire life, Fluttershy. You disgust me!”

She rose up on her back hooves and started punching the fallen pegasus with both her front hooves, while the latter just flinched and cried pleadingly with teary eyes and her mind drenched in chagrin and incomprehension, which weighted more than any of the hits bruising her body. The colt just watched the whole scene petrified in horror and trembling uncontrollably.

“Rainbow Dash, pleas- Augh!... W-we’re friends!” Fluttershy beseeched.

Rainbow Dash delivered another painful punch on her face, before ceasing for a brief moment and looking down at her with despise.

“I don’t need any friends...” Her voiced sounded distorted when she uttered those words; a second timbre overlapping hers, similar to a demonic shriek.

She reared up once more and prepared to bring down one final, lethal struck on the badly wounded pony, shuddering on the floor. The yellow pegasus closed her eyes tightly and braced herself, expecting for the strike that would put an end to her life, inconsolably devastated that it would come from the one pony she least expected.

Yet, the strike never came down; instead, a deep inhalation was heard from the attacker, followed by the unmistakable dull sound of a body falling stiff on the floor. Fluttershy opened her eyes and glanced to her side, landing her gaze upon a convulsing Rainbow Dash lying next to her.

“R-Rainbow... Dash...!” She crawled to her through much agonising effort, as every single joint of her body hurt appallingly.

The spasms stopped as soon as she touched her shoulder, and everything went dead silent. She called her name again, but met with no reply; Rainbow Dash was not even breathing anymore.

Her cyan body then jumped swiftly from the ground, landing right on top of her, and began to chock her feverishly. Only then could Fluttershy notice, through desperate and agonising gasps, as the other pegasus had an incredibly strong grapple around her neck, that her eyes were not of the usual tone of rose they used to be: they were awfully darkened, looking like a pair of black spheres with small, bright red dots for pupils.

Not too long after, however, Rainbow Dash released her, sitting on top of her body while holding her own head tightly with both her front hooves, and let out a shattering scream. Fluttershy coughed and looked at her completely bewildered.

“Shut up. Shut up! Get out of my head!” the rainbow-haired pony cried, before she dropped to the side, wincing and sobbing in her lying position “I’m so sorry, Fluttershy! I never wanted to hurt you! It’s... HER! She’s inside me!”

“W-who?” The yellow pony stared at her in panic and dread, as her friend kept writhing frenetically.

“I can’t hold her much longer. Kill me! JUST KILL ME ALREADY!”

“I... I don’t understand what’s going on!” the other pegasus wept in absolute despair.

All of a sudden, the entire corridor was enlightened for a split second by a powerful, blinding flash of white light, carrying a slight gust of wind with it, and everything went calm and insensitive.

Once her vision returned, Fluttershy turned her head around to inspect her surroundings, immediately becoming aware of the source of that magical flare: Fenrir’s tiny horn and eyes were still emanating an intense pale shine, and only when it finally dimmed down did the young colt fell over to the ground.

She hurriedly got up on her hooves and ran towards him, without even noticing that all her bruises and pain had inexplicably vanished, washed away with the spell he conjured up. After lifting his little head up, she sighed in relief upon stating that he was awake, and merely exhausted.

“Fenrir, did you do that?”

“Forgive me, miss Fluttershy...” he muttered in a weakened tone, still struggling for breath “These tend to happen to me sometimes, I cannot control them...”

“You saved us, you have absolutely no reason to be sorry.” She kissed his cheek tenderly, making him blush a little “Thank you.”

“You’re very nice, miss Fluttershy... you remember me of my mother...”

Suddenly, she heard a moan behind her, so she turned around, still holding Fenrir’s head on her hooves, to see Rainbow Dash trying to get up, completely cured from her bizarre possession.

“Dash! Are you feeling okay?”

She was holding her head with one hoof, like it still ached, but still managed to sit up straight, despite feeling a bit disorientated.

“I... I think I’m fine now. And what about you, Fluttershy? I hope I didn’t harm you too much...”

“I’m okay, now. Fenrir saved us both.” She paused for a few seconds “Dash? Who were you struggling with inside your head?”

The inquired pony moved her sight away, staring down at the floor, before she began explaining.

“When we were back in Ponyville, before we found you outside of your house, I got hit by a lightening and nearly died from the fall. Since then, I’ve been hearing this strange voice whispering in my mind, driving me insane... sometimes I even lost control of my own actions...”

“Was that when you argued with Twilight?”

She simply nodded affirmatively, without lifting her head up to face her friend, perhaps because of the unbearable shame that memory brought her.

“And, after that, it happened again when we exited in this dimension, this time with Applejack...” Only then did she look at Fluttershy in the eyes, revealing hers filled with large tears of grief and repentance “I’m so sorry about everything I’ve done, I never meant to hurt any of my friends!”

The yellow pegasus purely smiled at her.

“Of course I forgive you, Dash. Don’t worry. I know you’d never intentionally harm your friends, and I’m glad you’re yourself again.”

At that moment, an unexpected pink beam of light irradiated from Fluttershy’s chest, much to their astonishment, as the collar representing the Element of Kindness reified itself around her neck.

Before they could exchange expression of wonder and awe, however, their attention was immediately drawn to the distinctive sound of hoofsteps coming from the far end of the corridor. There was a small group of bizarre-looking ponies with darkened fur and closed eyes walking slowly in their direction.

“Who are you?” Rainbow Dash demanded, not liking the appearance of any of them.

They all halted except for the one in the middle, who took a few more steps forward.

“We are your worst nightmares!...” it replied in the form of a horrifying, screeching female voice which reverberated inside their heads, one that the cyan pegasus recognised quite well, right before it rose on its front legs and clashed them thunderously with the ground below, creating numerous breaches in the crystal pave, ultimately collapsing beneath Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Fenrir, and a profound hole was opened vertically through the building, reaching down to several floors.

They fell along with the wreckage and shards of broken crystal. While Rainbow Dash managed to grab the edge of one floor before reaching the bottom, Fluttershy and Fenrir fell down to a farther distance, disappearing from sight within the shadows of the massive pit below.

“SHY!” The rainbow-haired pony cried in desperation “I will get you, I promise! Wait for me!”

Further down, somewhere in the awfully dark basement corridors of the castle, flooded with water up to the level of an adult pony’s knees, where the air was filled with the disgusting stench of mustiness, echoed the rhythmic splashes of two ponies walking through the murkiness, as they searched for a way out of there.

Rarity and Pinkie Pie had both exited the interdimensional maelstrom right into the dungeons of the crystal castle, and found each other in an intersection between several cell blocks a few minutes ago. They were now struggling together to find some kind of a stairwell leading to the upper floors.

Suddenly, they heard more hooves splashing in the water coming from every direction and getting gradually closer. Soon, they spotted one black silhouette of an unfamiliar and rather creepy pony coming out of the shadows, treading slowly towards them with its eyes closed. Not liking its aspect at all, they opted for scampering away from it, heading quickly through the corridor ahead.

Eventually, they reached two large, solid metal doors, which they hurriedly tried to push, then pull, but with no effect, for they were locked securely.

“What are we going to do now, Pinkie?”

The pink pony narrowed her eyes to better inspect the doors and the frame around them through the darkness. Almost instantaneously, she jumped in exaltation.

“Ooh, I found something!” She pointed to what looked like a pedestal made of crystal with a concavity on top of it, with a sign of carved words fixed on the wall just above it.

Rarity approached to read the sign “In order to open this door, a sacrifice must be made; fill the cold crystal bowl with thy warm life fluid, and passage shall be granted.”

“What’s this... life fluid?” Pinkie asked innocently.

“Oh dear, I believe this dreadful charade is referring to our blood.”

The pink pony shuddered at the thought of spilling her blood. But then again, she understood quite well that they had no other choice if they wanted to get out from there. Turning back was not an option at that point, as they could hear the group of fearful ponies drawing closer.

“I-I’ll do it...” she faltered, after gulping with a bit of unease “we’ll use my blood...”

“Absolutely out of the question, dear.” The white unicorn immediately lit up her horn and touched its tip to one of her own wrists, simulating a slicing motion with her forehead protuberance as she let out a stuffy whine.

“Rarity...” Pinkie watched her friend in great admiration, while she approached the bowl and began filling it with the blood dripping from the self-inflicted cut on her wrist.

“I simply could never ask a friend of mine to harm herself intentionally.” She smiled at her pink friend.

All of a sudden, an intense lavender light shun from her chest, and the collar representing the Element of Generosity materialised around her neck.

“Woah! Rarity, your Element! It reappeared!”

“It did!” she said, right after removing her front leg from the pedestal, for it was now completely filled and they had just heard the door unlocking magically “We have to find the others, maybe theirs have reappeared too.”

They pushed the door open easily, and proceeded to climb up the stairs on the other side.

Inside the princess of the night’s dream, Luna enlaced the large pony before her in a tight, loving hug. She knew very well that this was all a dream, as her mind kept telling her, yet never had she wished that this was all real so much as then. She was embracing her friend once again, at long last. Illusion or not, she wished for that moment to freeze in time, as her unceasing tears of merriment could express.

“Fenrir, I’m so happy to see you again!” She sobbed with her nose pressed tightly against his chest, drying the tears on his dark coat.

“Why do you cry, Luna?” he spoke in his slow, grave voice, which she had always found extremely calm and soft.

She let go of him and wiped her face with one of her hooves, recomposing herself.

“It’s just that... I’m really glad to see you again, but a part of me knows this is just a dream. You’re probably dead, and that hurts to be reminded. I’m not sure if I want to wake up...”

“Please, don’t say that.” He grabbed her chin very gently, directing her attentive eyes and adorably blushed face to him “I am not dead. Yes, this is your dream, but I am not a part of it. I have only come here to see you.”

“You... entered my dream?”

“Yes. Forgive my intrusion, but I missed you very much, Luna.”

She hugged him once more, overwhelmed with contempt and relief.

“Oh, I want to see you when I wake up. Where can we meet?”

“We cannot.”

“Huh?” She stepped back, confused “Why? I don’t understand.”

He turned his head to the side, having his long, straight, black mane hiding his bright blue eyes.

“Anywhere near me, you would be putting your life in a greater peril than you realise. I cannot promise to always be there to protect you, and I would never forgive myself if something happened to you. I do not want you to hate me...”

“I could never hate you. You’re my best friend! Please, I want to meet with you again, in the real world.”

Although still reluctant, he turned again to look at her pleading eyes and gave a prolonged sigh.

“I will be waiting for you at our usual place.”

The younger alicorn sister woke up in a darkened room, which she quickly recognised as being the one in the hospital wing of the Canterlot castle where Celestia was resting. She had fallen asleep leaning against the bed beside her elder sister, who slept profoundly, recovering from her wounds.

She got up carefully not to wake her up her, and took a quick glimpse at her to make sure she remained asleep, before exiting the room.

“Please forgive me, my dear sister. I know I promised to stay here, but... I just have to see him” she thought while running out along the hallway.

However, Celestia had not been truly asleep, as she opened her eyelids right after Luna left the room, and sat on her bed looking suspiciously through the door.

“Where is she going?” she questioned herself.

Meanwhile, Rarity and Pinkie had made it to the ground level floor of the castle, and were now trying to find the others as quickly as possible, running through the labyrinthine corridors, which at least were definitely better illuminated than the cell blocks where they came from.

A few turns later, and they came across one large pile of shatters of broken crystal, right in the centre of a hallway, with an extensive hole in the ceiling. They recognised a certain pink mane and yellow coat in the middle of the wreckage, and rushed to help it get up.

“Ohmygosh, Fluttershy!”

“Fluttershy dear, are you alright?”

She nodded affirmatively. They noticed that, like Rarity, she had already her Element reappeared and in one piece around her neck. Immediately after that, they landed their gaze upon the little colt she held on her lap, protecting him from the falling debris.

“Why, hello there!” the designer pony approached him “And what would your name be?”

“F-Fenrir...” he muttered bashfully.

In just a split second, Pinkie grabbed him from the yellow pegasus’ lap and squeezed him so tightly he squealed and could barely breathe.

“Ooooh, you’re SOOO cute! I love your tiny-weenie horn and your tiny-weenie wings so much!”

“Wait a second, he’s an alicorn?” Rarity interrupted her friend’s sudden excitement attack “How... and what is he doing here, in this place?”

“I’ve found him earlier, upstairs...” Fluttershy spoke up “I’ve also found Rainbow Dash, but then a group of terrifying ponies appeared out of nowhere, destroyed the floor below us, and we got separated.”

“We’ve also come across with some awfully-looking ponies in the dungeons...” Rarity informed, who was then interrupted by a suddenly stuttering and horrified Pinkie Pie.

“S-speaking of w-which...” She pointed horrified to the end of the hallway, where more of those bizarre ponies were coming from, all with their eyes closed.

Without hesitating, they turned to the opposite direction and ran as fast as they could, only to be forced into a full stop later, as another group was coming from there, as well. They were surrounded, but not entirely out of options for escaping. Rarity ordered them to follow her through one door to their side, which led to a small, faintly lit space, perfect for hiding until they passed.

Fenrir cringed and flickered inconsolably in pure dread on Fluttershy’s lap, which Pinkie noticed right away and felt she ought to abstract his mind, so she grabbed his little hooves with hers while looking at him in the eyes, smiling ever in a reassuring and amiable way.

“Don’t be afraid, little one. Your auntie Pinkie Pie will not let those meanie monsters get you” she whispered quietly, trying not to be heard from the other side of the door.

The colt become gradually less anxious, and she had even managed to put a petite smile back on his face. Even though this threat was real and they were not yet entirely safe of it, she simply could not stand to see such a young foal undergo the appealing fear for his life.

Her chest was suddenly illuminated by a strong, blue shine, lighting up the room they were in. The collar representing the Element of Laughter had materialised itself once again. However, that beam had also given away their position, as the dark ponies began hitting the door repeatedly with loud hits, from the other side.

“Oh no, please no...” Fluttershy whimpered.

All of a sudden, the wall on the opposite side to the door was knocked down, lifting a dense cloud of dust, through which a familiar figure appeared.

“Rainbow Dash!” the three friends yelled at the same time, clearly pleased to see her friend.

“I promised I’d get you, Fluttershy.” She stood in an heroic pose, smiling proudly while a red beam shot from her chest and acquired the shape of the Element of Loyalty “Come on, let’s get out of here!”

They followed her through the hallways, scampering as fast as their legs allowed them to, making countless twists and turns to try to lose the creepy ponies.

At some point, they stumbled with three other ponies right after taking another turn. Everypony fell on the ground, scratching their aching heads.

“Huh? Twilight?” the rainbow-haired pony said, upon realising who she had landed over.

“Girls? I’m so relieved to find you!” She got up in a split second and hugged each one of them, before noticing the colt under one of Fluttershy’s wing. She stared at his blue eyes with some dread, for she could swear she had seen them before.

“Fluttershy, he’s...”

“I know who he is, Twilight. But, please, trust me in this,” she assured her in a soothing tone “Fenrir is not evil. He saved me and Rainbow Dash a while ago, and he’s actually very kind and sweet. Fenrir is a good pony, I am certain of it.”

The cyan pegasus walked over to Applejack, scratching the back of her head with a bit of unease.

“Hey, AJ. Listen, I can’t tell you how sorry I am from how I behaved with you earlier. It’s a long story to explain, but... oh hay, friends again?” She offered her hoof, which the farmer pony promptly shook.

“Of course Ah forgive you, RD. And Ah also should apologise for letting you go all alone with that rain.”

“Hey girls, I recognise this!” Cadance suddenly drew their attention to a pair of tall doors right before them “This is the castle library!”

“Perfect, we should go inside!” Twilight said, always excited to be in the presence of literature “who knows? Some of the books may contain significant information relative to this dimension, and how to get out of here.”

They pushed the doors open. Inside was an enormous, clean chamber, with countless high bookshelves filled with the most assorted themes. On the centre, right ahead, there stood an old oaken table with a large book open on top of it, a burning candle to its side, and the unconscious body of Twilight’s brother laid on the floor.

“Shining Armor!” the purple unicorn and her former foalsitter called in unison and ran to him.

He moaned mutely and made some minor movements, indicating that he was beginning to wake up, giving them some mitigation. Cadance held his head up and caressed his forehead tenderly.

“I wonder what’s in this book over here.” Twilight moved near the dusty tome on top of the table, checking its cover and first pages. “Strange, there’s no title, nor does it say the name of the author.” Through reasons unknown, just by looking at it she got the feeling this mysterious book did not belong in that dimension.

She starting reading the pages on which the book was already open, as all the others got closer to listen attentively, also curious with what it might contain.

“The prophecy of the Ragnarök

And, in a single instant, the entire land trembled in shock and despair, as the fear living deep inside the hearts of all the four races that wander its surface gained a physical form, at last; a hideous beast who feeds on the horror it spreads, and grows stronger at each death it brings down on a living being. Her true name remains unpronounceable, the same as the hot furnace below the earth, in her forgotten realm, where the flames of damnation burn eternally and the sulphur poisons even the lungs that can no longer breathe.

At the apogee of the first great war against this goddess of fear, thirteen brave warriors of the divine ancient race of the alicorns gathered their powers to create an immaterial and utterly inaccessible prison where they could constrain the evil spirit for eternity; an alternative dimension, parallel to the one they inhabited, which became known as the Undone Dimension, for it remained ever incomplete, broken in many ways.

What none of the alicorn forefathers anticipated was that the immense power of the combined spell would result in an equally potent backfire, which unpredictably birthed a counterpart to the Undone Dimension; it unwillingly created the key to unlock the interdimensional gates.

The key itself held an amount of mystical power that was as colossal as it was unstable. But the alicorn ancestors were unaware that, in order to open the gates, they must be unlocked from both sides at the same time, which would require the key to be split in two pieces. Afraid of its power and instability, they decided it was best to destroy it, ensuring, that way, that the gates would never be opened. One of them, however, stood up against the others’ precipitate verdict, and readily accepted the key into her own heart. The benevolent, kind and merciful princess later became the founder and first ruler of the majestic Crystal Empire.

But the spirit of death was feverishly determined not to stay imprisoned for long. Although her powers were restrained from their world, her eyes were not, and she found a vessel of flesh and bone to harbour her power and essence there, one she could easily manipulate to do her biding, while safeguarding herself inside her captivity. And so began the second great war, this time resulting in a more tragic outcome, with thirteen valiant alicorns taken from the land of the living.

The vessel to her wrath had vanished as well then, but as destiny speaks the highest, the strings of time before the masterful craft of Norns dictate that it shall return one day, when its one thousandth one hundredth forty-third year is completed, brought back from the void by a soft harmonic, and it shall finish what she started.

There is one hope, and one only, to prevent the final event from befalling on the land, and it is to find the key and awaken its power, granted in the very day it was forged, ripped from the void where nothing dwells, and bound by the power of thirteen in one concentrated, and so it shall complete its destiny of vanquishing the maleficent goddess from both universes, thus restoring maximum balance and order.”

After hearing the lecture, they all stood in silence staring at each other confused, still attempting to decipher what was just read. For Twilight, on the other hoof, it all started to finally make some sense.

“A vessel that shall return one day...” she shared her thoughts aloud, gasping at a sudden realisation “could it have been Fenrir this whole time? The vehicle the wicked spirit this book speaks about has found to spread its power in our world?”

She suddenly felt her mind enlighten, as she looked now at the young colt beside Fluttershy, the image of the dark alicorn’s youth, in a whole different way. All the attentions in the library turned to the little alicorn, sharing the same thought.

“Sugarcube,” Applejack turned again to Twilight, behind the secretary “have you got any idea who this goddess might be?”

She shook her head negatively “I’ve never heard, or read about such a theme. This... Ragnarök thing appears to have already started even before princess Celestia was born!” She paused for a brief moment, looking over the book again “The founder and first ruler of the Crystal Empire... who was she?”

“I can answer that question!” Cadance responded right away “According to the records in the Crystal Empire historical archives, princess Aqua has founded the Crystal Empire more than a thousand years ago. There’s even a common myth among the crystal ponies, which says that the Crystal Heart is actually what remained of their beloved first leader’s heart, after her early demise.”

“That’s it!” Twilight jumped in elation, believing she had finally solved the riddle “If she accepted the key to her own heart, then that must mean that the Crystal Heart IS the key! That makes perfect sense, considering the amount of mystical power it has. And that’s one more reason why we must find it.”

“So... is this the Undone Dimension, where we are now?” Rarity inquired, still a bit confused.

“I don’t think so. If this was the Undone Dimension, I believe we would have already crossed paths with the goddess, by now.”

“Then, where are we?” Fluttershy interrogated.

“Hum, considering that it was the dark alicorn who sent us here, plus the fact that we found a projection of his youth... I believe we’re trapped inside his mind.”

She approached the book again and repeated the lines “Her true name remains unpronounceable, the same as the hot furnace below the earth, in her forgotten realm where the flames of damnation burn eternally and the sulphur poisons even the lungs that no longer breathe.”

“That sounds like hell, if you ask me!” Rainbow Dash let out.

Immediately after her state, the entire castle shook briefly, as if the words themselves had caused an unexpected, violent earthquake. They could barely stand up on their legs, until it finally stopped and everything when sinisterly dead silent.

“What’s going on?” Pinkie squealed.

The doors to the library were knocked down abruptly with a loud thump, and through them entered another large group of darkened ponies.

“We’ve gotta get out of here, follow me!”

The purple unicorn took the lead of the group and they headed rapidly towards a back door nearby, with Cadance carrying the heavy, numb body of her husband on her back.

“The Crystal Heart chamber!” Twilight remembered “That’s where we were when he sent us here, maybe the exit point’s in there!”

Before long, they found the door leading to the downward stairwell, and proceeded to descend it as fast as they could. However, the next door at the bottom of the stairs, behind which was the vast, round chamber they sought, was completely obstructed by a pile of debris.

“Stand back!” Twilight shouted to her friends behind her.

She then quickly enlightened her horn generating a powerful, thunderous explosion that cleared the passage and knocked the door down.

There it was, the Crystal Heart hovering static in the air, right in the centre of the entire chamber. Its faint blue light flickered weakly, and large drops of water formed around its hard surface, before streaming down leisurely, ultimately dripping into the thin layer of water below, completely filling the floor. Yet, nothing that could resemble a vortex end was there to be found, much to their frustration and despair, as they were running out of ideas.

“What do we do now?!”

Then, to their absolute astonishment, the floating jewel in front of them illuminated itself with a stunning, beaming blue shine, so bright and intense that they had to look away or cover their eyes in order not to hurt them. As soon as it dimmed down and they looked back at it, a sudden resplendent vision made all of them agape in wonder and surprise.

The Crystal Heart had disappeared, in its place standing the blazing, tall and beautiful form of a female alicorn. She was about the same size as Celestia, but her mane and tail were slightly longer and of the same colour as the sea, stirring as smoothly and graciously as the waves. Her coat was of a light bluish, like the clean waters of a flowing river, and her big, round eyes reminded the depths of the ocean, both in hues and in mystery.

Chapter IX: The Key to Salvation

Chapter IX: The Key to Salvation

The gracious and magnificent apparition of the blue alicorn princess walked slowly forward, stepping quietly on the crystal floor flooded with a thin layer of clear water. Her stunning, regal poise and divine beauty were simply astonishing, making Twilight and her friends widen their eyes and agape in total wonder. Her intense stare irradiated only tranquillity and love, though not in the same way as Celestia did; no... her eyes, of the same colour as the ocean, were filled with a different kind of love, much stronger and unwavering.

“Is... is that...” Twilight could not even speak eloquently, so much was the bafflement of this sight.

“Yes,” Cadance answered the tacit question on everypony else’s minds “that would be princess Aqua.”

Through the mystical, incandescent blaze that surrounded her form, they managed to see her mouth curled in a modest smile. Why was she smiling? They did not know. She was purely smiling at the ponies before her, and that made them almost forget about the fearful darkened ponies following them, who probably had already found the stairwell leading to the chamber they were in.

Suddenly, Fenrir stepped out from under one of Fluttershy’s wings and walked to the front of them. His little face bore some perplexity, but most of all it radiated an indescribable amount of contentment to see the ocean princess. She, too, looked down at the young black alicorn colt, and her face enlightened even more than before.

“Fenrir, I’m so happy to see you...” she uttered in a smooth tone.

Her voice sounded like that of a young adult, which made them think that, perhaps, she was one of the youngest alicorn ancestors, back when the fourth race wandered the land. She could not hide the bliss to see the little colt, who was now quivering, shaken by his overwhelming emotions.

“M-mother...!” he said, hastily running to embrace one of princess Aqua’s front legs tightly, sobbing constantly, while she lowered her head and closed her eyes, caressing him. Her smile never waned.

“I missed you so much!” Fenrir wept, burying his face further against her fur “I never want to separate from you, ever again!”

“Fenrir,” she gently lifted his chin up with her hoof, having his icy blue eyes meeting with hers “I love you too, believe me, more than anything. But I’m afraid I can’t stay here any longer, for I don’t belong to the world of the living anymore. You must be strong, my child.”

He tried as hard as he could to stifle his sobs. Closing his eyes firmly, he attempted to swallow his tears, though with no effect, for his sorrow was too much, dwelling inside such a young and innocent mind.

“There, there.” She hugged him again.

“Mother... I-I’m so sorry for what I did...” he spoke between persistent and heartrending whimpers.

“You were not the responsible for what happened. You don’t have to blame yourself.”

“But I could... if only I had tried to stop her from entering me!...”

“You couldn’t predict it. None of us could. My son...” she approached one of his tiny ears, perked down from the angst, and whispered “there’s still time to make things right. All you need is friends to help you, and guide you,” she glanced at Twilight and the others as she said that last sentence, flashing a smile in her eyes “and Fenrir, no matter what happens, I believe in you.”

The broad aura around her body shun more brightly, acquiring an ethereal glow like a ghostly apparition, which started to fade away gradually.

“It’s time...” she said serenely, as she got up after one last nuzzling with her son. They all understood she was merely a ghost, a memory projected inside the dark alicorn’s mind, and now it was time for her to go.

“Wait, mother!” The colt swiftly dashed towards her again “Could you take me with you? Please?...”

She curled her mouth in another caring smile, as her heavenly eyes sparkled in bliss, making everything feel alright.

That was it! Twilight knew, now, what kind of love princess Aqua emitted that princess Celestia did not possess, more mysterious, yet much more powerful than any other known: motherly love.

“Yes, you may come with me...” she responded, embracing him with her wide blue wings “but understand that it’s not your time yet. Even if you come now, you’ll not truly be with me. There’s something you must do first. Hard choices will be presented to you, so be ready. You’ll have to find your true destiny, your shore...”

The brilliant glow became so intense it was almost blinding, and Twilight and her friends had to cover their eyes once more. A soft burst was heard, accompanied by a smooth breeze running through their manes, coming from the centre of the chamber, and then everything was quiet and dim.

Upon opening their eyelids, they all realised that both princess Aqua and the young Fenrir were gone. But most alarming of all was that the Crystal Heart had also disappeared from sight, and was nowhere to be found.

“Now what?!” Applejack questioned, quickly reminded that they were still running away from the darkened ponies swarming the castle.

The purple unicorn snapped out of her engulfing thoughts about all that the unexpected apparition of the ocean princess had said, trying to decipher whatever she meant. She turned around to face the rest of them.

“I... don’t know what to do... we can’t stay here any minute longer, but now I don’t know how to get out of this place! I’m all out of ideas.” She tilted her head down in desperation.

“Come on, Twi!” Rainbow Dash jolted, giving her some motivation “If anypony could come up with a solution in a situation like this, it’s you! Just think!”

She furrowed her eyebrows and began pacing nervously on circles, searching in her mind for something, anything, that could possibly work to get them out of there. Then, she halted abruptly and turned to her friends, her face suddenly enlightened with a hopeful idea, though, at the same time, she felt a bit hesitant about it.

“There’s something we could try... but I don’t know if it’ll work...”

“It doesn’t matter! Just do it, we’re running out of time!” the farmer pony shouted.

“But in order for that to work, I’ll need your help, girls!”

“Tell us what you want, dear!” Rarity demanded right away.

“I need you all to concentrate as hard as you can on our home world. Project every single detail of it in your minds.”

“What? What good would that do?...” Pinkie started, only to be immediately interrupted by the instructing unicorn.

“Do you want to get out of here or not?! Just do it!”

None of them dared to question anything else. They all closed their eyes, and each thought about images of their world, their homes, their friends and families; blissful memories from way before the events began, and when everypony was happy. Canterlot had not been attacked yet, the two sister princesses ruled Equestria together peacefully, and life in Ponyville was simple, but full of joy.

Their meditation was unexpectedly interrupted by the alarming tumult of many hooves scampering down the stairs, approaching the vast chamber at the bottom. They all petrified in horror from hearing the hurry the eerie ponies were now in hunting them, considering how they never fastened their pace before, when running after them. At this rate, they would reach them in just a few seconds, and they would be trapped there.

“Oh no, they’re coming...” Fluttershy whimpered, shaking inconsolably where she stood.

“Don’t stop now!” Twilight ordered “Keep thinking about our world!”

With their efforts doubled, they continued invoking the mental images of the Equestria where they came from. Sweat ran down their foreheads, either from the might they were putting into the focus, or from the fright of the enemy hoofsteps sounding closer and closer.

All of a sudden, the coloured jewels encrusted in the collars around their respective five owners’ necks lit themselves up, and each shot a bright beam towards the centre, where they all met with Twilight. A light lavender aura shun around the entirety of her form, and the final Element of Harmony reappeared; the golden, refulgent crown materialised on the librarian pony’s head, and generated a white, thick mist, which spread around the whole area and involved all of them.

At that precise moment, the ponies with terribly darkened skin and shut eyelids reached the bottom of the staircase and, in a split second, a horde of them jumped in through the door, with some of them walking on the walls like spiders, making it all an absolutely horrifying and bizarre scenario.

However, they arrived too late, for the waxen haze the Elements had created together was rapidly phasing out, leaving nothing behind. The possessed ponies all roared in wrath at the same time, which sound like a strident and horrendous demonic screech.

Twilight and her friends were found in the middle of the same disorientating spiralling and deafening multidirectional sound waves that made up the same vortex as before, only this time none of them was separated from the rest, as they could see each other’s figures, though indistinct and distorted from the violent stretching of both space and time.

At last, they exited all on the same exact spot, thrown to a hard floor. Twilight fell first, followed by Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, then Applejack and Rarity, and ultimately Cadance, Shining Armor and Pinkie Pie. The latter instantaneously got up and start jumping in excitement on top of the pile of ponies below her and gabbing like she usually does.

“Whee, that was fun! Last time I ended up diving into the sewer water, but now the landing was much smoother! Whoo, I wanna go again!”

Underneath her hooves, many puffs and squeals were heard, until they started complaining to her irritated. After she finally stopped, the stack disassembled and everypony rolled to the sides before getting back up on their hooves. Twilight rose up the last, still trying desperately to catch her breath after being crushed by the weight of seven ponies on top of her.

“We... we did it?” the designer unicorn said upon inspecting her surrounding, recognising that they were inside the Crystal Heart chamber of the “normal Equestria”, for there was not a single dark pony in sight anymore, and the Crystal Heart was there again, hovering above their heads.

“YEAH!!!” Rainbow Dash burst in uncontained ecstasy, promptly hugging Twilight, who had just barely got up on her quivering legs, so tightly that she squealed with what little amount of air she had in her lungs “You made it! I knew you could do it, Twi! You’re a genius!”

“Ack!... Dash!... Can’t breathe!” She struggled to free herself from the tough embrace, as much as she appreciated the congratulation for her uncertain, yet successful solution.

“Yes, darling, you sure have saved us all!”

“Hurray for Twilight!” The pink pony was still jumping around like crazy.

“But how did you do it?” Cadance asked, while holding her dormant husband’s head on her lap and fondling her forehead affectionately.

She finished normalising her breath, before she cleared her throat and began explaining, noticeably proud of her achievement.

“It was actually simpler than I thought. The dark alicorn had sent us to inside his confused head by using a very ancient and powerful spell called the ‘dive to the mind’. I remembered having read about it in the private section of the Canterlot castle library, and so I thought about doing the exact opposite process of the spell he had conjured up, using the unbreakable link between our own minds and our home world. In other words, we all created the exit point thanks to the memories we have of our world.”

“Wow! That was really smart of you, Twi!” Applejack applauded.

The purple unicorn casted the spell to make the Elements withdraw once more, storing them inside her horn. All of a sudden, a low, feeble mutter was heard nearby.

“Shining Armor!” Cadance and Twilight turned their full attention to the awaking stallion, followed by all the others, who shared their concern for him.

He opened his eyes leisurely, first staring at the ceiling, then having them wander around disorientated, until they finally found a familiar face.

“Are you okay, big brother?”

“Honey, we’re here!”

His lips curled into a weak, but visible smile.

“Hey, hon... hey, Twily.” His voice was still weak, and so he paused for a brief moment. Cadance cried happy tears of relief, while Twilight sat next to him and held one of his hooves. He then continued “You won’t believe... the strange dream I just had.”

All of them shared a group laugh, glad to know that the captain of the royal guard had awoken again, and with some sense of humour.

With a more serious expression on her face, Twilight got up and walked over to the Crystal Heart hung in the air, still emitting the same vague and scintillating blue glow, as drops of water formed continuously on its cold surface, then falling down like large tears.

“We still have something to do...” she murmured, right before leaping to grab the floating jewel and taking it on her hooves “the key is the only thing that can end this.”

“And how, exactly, are you planning on doing so?” inquired the orange pony “That doesn’t seem much of a key ta me...”

“We’re taking it back to Canterlot. Princess Celestia might know how to use it.”

That said, they headed out of the round chamber, with Cadance aiding a limping Shining Armor to move in the rear of the group, as he was already determined to walk on his own hooves.

“Hopefully the carriage that brought us here is still outside...” Rarity stated, while they were climbing up the stairwell.

In the meantime, the princess of the night had flown through the dense grey fog all the way from Canterlot to the woods on the periphery of the old castle where she and her sister used to live with her parents. Practically not a single stone of it remained standing, as the wild and indomitable roots, and ivies, and tall plants had utterly taken over the once habitable and majestic castle, now reduced to ruins in the middle of a dark green nowhere.

She landed softly on the moist grass of the same hill she remembered from her foalhood, the hill that had been marked as a meeting point for so many months. She could have forgotten about her friend’s name, but that particular hill’s location was well stained in her memory.

Luna looked around for a bit, but quickly landed her gaze upon a rather familiar silhouette in the middle of the mist ahead of her, sitting by the edge of the lake at the bottom of the hill, and staring down at its serene, limpid waters, where the image of an inexistent full moon was reflected, much to her awe. She then noticed that his horn was discreetly lit up, so she assumed it was him who was faking the reflexion.

She found that sight of him on that precise spot, in that exact pose awfully lonely and heartrending. He did not seem to have noticed her arrival yet.

She was about to walk to him, when she found her muscles suddenly paralysed. A chill ran down her spine, as she felt her whole emotions shaken; a mixture of hypnotising delight with overwhelming melancholy predominated. She heard his voice singing, not to anypony but to himself.

“The moonlight soothes the eternal unrest

Mysterious blaze, beauty of the unknown

A veil of water beneath my hooves

A memory of love, though I am alone

A scary shadow, a forlorn spark

A castaway, condemned to oblivion

I came to a world that was not meant for me

Was I ever a good friend, was I ever a good son?

I keep chasing the voices of my farthest memories

(Memoriis sunt clavem ad praeteritum)

What was once the good in me? Oh, who am I now?

(Recludam ostium, reperio tua fata)

I can’t see the light to end my suffering

The path isn’t bright, my heart is no longer beaming

Who am I now?

Oh, who am I now?

Mother used to sing to me, embracing me

In her wings of motherly love, lulling me

Oceans of dreams, foalhood happiness

Highlighted in a world full of darkness

Now, I see the face mirrored in the lake below

An empty husk, eyes bare of a soul

Wandering lost, an ethereal existence

Without a shore, without any essence

I keep chasing the voices of my farthest memories

(Memoriis sunt clavem ad praeteritum)

What was once the good in me? Oh, who am I now?

(Recludam ostium, reperio tua fata)

I can’t see the light to end my suffering

The path isn’t bright, my heart is no longer beaming

Who am I now?

Oh, who am I now?

(Reprobaverunt, umbra, tenebris scintilla

Deest in litore, deest in cor)

I can’t see the light to end my suffering

The path isn’t bright, my heart is no longer beaming

(Memoriis sunt clavem ad praeteritum

Recludam ostium, reperio tua fata)

Who am I now?

Oh, who am I now?”

Luna walked slowly closer to him, treading as quietly as possible. After standing only scarce meters away from his back, she greeted him a little anxious, for this was the very first time she would be with her dear friend physically, and not in just a dream, in more than one thousand years.

“H-hello, Fenrir...”

He did not appear startled or surprised at all, turning his head around calmly, with his lengthy, flat dark mane sliding over his muscular shoulder and revealing his light sapphire eyes. He got up on his four legs, standing taller than Luna, and turned his whole body to her.

She was not able to discern any exact expression on his face, though she knew, somehow, that he was just as radiant to see her as she was to see him.

Truth was, deep inside, he, too, looked up to this meeting, only greatly apprehensive, for he knew she had not yet realised he was the pony inside the black armour, the one who nearly killed her sister.

Perhaps blinded by a more profound sentiment, she refused to associate the one who was her long time best friend and the late doom-driven invader.

“Luna... it has been so long.”

“Yes, quite a long time!” She was already beginning to feel some tears of bliss welling in her eyes, so she tried another approach that would abstract her from the intense feelings at that moment “Look at you, you’re... an adult, handsome stallion, now!”

“I could say the same about you. You have grown up to be quite a beautiful mare.” He gazed at her with such a suave stare she even blushed and shied out a bit. She found, in his arctic blue eyes, a strange and paradoxical comforting warmth.

“Fenrir, I...” She could not finish her sentence; suddenly succumbing to her emotions, she threw herself at him in a tight embrace, like she did in her dream, only now she was absolutely certain that this was all for real. He returned the hug, involving her with both his front hooves and his wide black wings.

She did not even care about all the events happening, or the magical fog surrounding them; she just wanted to savour every single second of that moment, feel his every heartbeat and his warmth. This was the solace she longed for, without even realising it, for so many years.

As they finally let go of each other, Luna recomposed herself before continuing. There was just so much she wanted to ask him she did not know where to start.

“Where have you been this whole time?”

“To be honest, I have no clue,” he articulated carefully each word, as it was usual for him “only that I have been imprisoned there for up until recent days, I am afraid. It was a horrible place, like a whole different world; dark creatures lurked everywhere, and I had to learn to fight alone to survive.”

“How did you escape, then?”

He rotated his head slightly to the side, recalling some past moments.

“It was about two days ago that I heard a familiar, melodious voice singing, like a siren chant. Somehow, its harmonic found me in that terrible place, and enlightened my path all the way back here.”

“Who was it?”

He turned again to Luna, looking at her deeply in the eyes.

“You.”

On another part of Equestria, the flying carriage was already high up in the air, and hurriedly heading back to the capital city of Canterlot, after the pegasi royal guards pulling it had been instructed to get the eight ponies to that destination as quickly as possible.

Inside sat eight ponies in complete silence, all sharing the same interminable unease as to how to use the Crystal Heart as a key and, upon unlocking the gates to the Undone Dimension, how to defeat the goddess of fear and death with it. Would princess Celestia really know the correct way to use it? Twilight assumed so, but it was still just a supposition.

The voice of Shining Armor then irrupted from the dead silence in the form of an interrogation.

“So you said that, while I was unconscious, we were all sent to an alternate dimension, and Twilight found a book that explained all that’s been happening lately?”

“Yes,” the purple unicorn responded to her brother “I believe that the dark alicorn, whose name is Fenrir, is not the real perpetrator of these events, but merely a way an ancient evil spirit has found to vehicle her powers in our world, since she has been imprisoned many millennia ago. She has used him to try to bring down the Ragnarök once before, only she failed. Right now, she’s using him again.”

“And we’re taking the Crystal Heart to princess Celestia because...?”

“The book said that, when the dimension that would hold her captive was forged, the spell backfired and generated a counterpart: the key to unlock that same dimension. It also said that only the key can destroy her forever.”

“And that key would be the Crystal Heart?”

“Correct!”

“So we’re just gonna open the interdimensional gates, hoping that some evil spirit doesn’t take the chance to slip past us back into our home world, and... stab it with the key till it dies?”

“Basically...” Twilight giggled.

“Alright, I’m in!”

The rainbow-haired pegasus had been distracted from the whole conversation, for, in the meantime, she was having a more private and serious dialogue with her friend Fluttershy, who she had found staring blankly out the window of the carriage.

“Hey, Shy. Is there something bothering you?”

“Hum? N-no...” she faltered, and Rainbow Dash realised that her mind was definitely away.

“Are you still thinking about what happened there? I can’t tell you how sorry I am for hurting you, but it’s like I said: it wasn’t me, I swear! I’d rather die than harm any of my friends...”

“No, Dash...” she interrupted her apologies, showing her a smile of comprehension “I already told you I’d forgive you. It’s not that...”

“Then, what is it? You can tell me if you feel you need to.”

The bashful yellow pegasus took a deep sigh.

“It’s Fenrir... after he saved us, he told me I remembered him of his mother.”

“Heh, you were right about him all along, Fluttershy. You were the only one of us who believed he was a good pony. No wonder he saw in you a motherly figure, you’re always showing unconditional kindness and understanding. Sometimes I envy you, you know?”

“The poor thing... his mother is dead, all he needed was somepony to love him.”

The conversation between Luna and Fenrir had prolonged for quite a few minutes. There was just so much they had to catch up to, and Luna had so many questions that needed to be answered, but she saved some which she considered to be more delicate for last.

They paused for a moment, contemplating in precious silence the marvellous sight of the false moon mirrored in the peaceful waters, until she finally gathered the courage to bring up the topic.

“Fenrir, what exactly did happen that day we both know? We’ve all mourned the deaths of our parents and our race, and I grieved believing that you had been... t-that you were gone, as well. Did you get imprisoned in that world you mentioned at the time of the great war?”

“No, it was not until it all ended that I was sealed away. Although I was there too, only fighting battles of my own.”

She did not understand what he meant, and her baffled curiosity only grew further.

“With whom? How did you survive?”

The forced reflection of the moon suddenly died out, as he broke the spell and hid his face away, covering his eyes with his long dark fringes, either from shame or from overwhelming regret, Luna did not know yet.

He knew it was only a matter of time before she would come to realisation, as much as he feared it, but he could not bear to hide her the truth any longer. If she was to know about him, about what he had done, it was best to be himself telling her.

“It doesn’t matter. But I know that what I have done deserves no forgiveness. I should be the only one lying dead that day. Maybe then, nopony would have died... at my hooves.”

Luna backed down to his statements, afraid of what he meant.

“W-what are you saying?”

“I thought it would be easier to simply hide it. Death. Ruin. I spread fear wherever I go, and they all have become a part of me. This is what I never wanted you to find out about me.”

“Fenrir... were you the responsible for what happened? Did you... did you kill my parents?”

His following silence was what utterly tore her apart, as she felt her heart sank in indescribable disappointment. The tears now welling in her eyes were of sudden, uncontained ire towards him, and she began to shiver.

“Are you the cause behind all of this? Were you the one in that armour, who nearly killed my sister?! ANSWER ME!”

“It’s truth.”

She stepped back from him, barely holding in all the anger and hate she felt burning inside of her.

“How could you? HOW COULD YOU?! WE WERE FRIENDS!” Large tears streamed profusely down her cheeks, as she shouted at the top of her lungs “I can’t believe you actually did it... how could I have been so blind?!... I wish you had never woken up. I wish we had never met!” She enlightened her horn and pointed it at him, preparing to strike him down “This is for my parents. This is for my sister!”

All of a sudden, the whole climate changed drastically from the initial fog to the violent tempest and dark clouds shooting powerful blood-red lightening, one of which landed close to them and diverted Luna’s focus on the spell.

It was happening again, only this time Fenrir did not seem to be the source, for he looked up at the changing sky, with his mane blown by the strong winds, just as confused as the princess of the night.

The more lightening clashed with the ground throughout the woods around them, the more fearsome dark figures emerged from the shadows of the tree line, until the two of them were completely surrounded in the clearing.

Then, the potent, ear-splitting growl of an enormous dragon was heard high up above their heads, making them look upwards. The colossal smoke dragon of six wings had returned, and was flying in circles over them. A black blur then dropped swiftly from it, landing right in front of the two of them.

“No, it can’t be... but why?” Fenrir muttered to himself in disbelief.

Before them was another dark alicorn wearing a heavy full-body black metal armour, only this one had a more ghostly, diaphanous appearance.

Without wasting any time, he shot a large magic sphere of white light at Luna, which Fenrir rapidly intersected with a pale magic shield of his own, standing in front of her with his wings spread wide, in a defensive stance.

“Leave her alone!” he ordered the attacker fearlessly, only he did not comply, and so they both engaged in a fierce struggle.

The second dark alicorn was clearly targeting the princess, though all his strikes were untiringly deflected by Fenrir, whose forces were precisely equal to those of the opponent.

As soon as the fight was put to a sudden end, the two identical selves stood quietly facing each other, the barest one gritting his teeth while staring menacingly at the metal mask of the other, which lacked of any holes for eyes, nostrils or mouth.

“You cannot protect her forever!” sounded a blood-curdling, strident female voice on both Luna and Fenrir’s heads “You seek for completion, I for freedom. Accept it that we still need each other! When you do, I’ll be waiting for you on the other side...”

After that, the armoured pony spread his wings and took off hastily back to the gigantic dragon hovering above, and then everything went dead silent and calm, as the dark figures phased out into the air and the dark clouds vanished, replaced by the magical mist once again.

Luna noticed a few bleeding cuts all over Fenrir’s skin. Her mind was completely shaken, questioning why would he do such horrible things, and now had just willingly sacrificed himself to protect her.

“You’re hurt!”

“It’s nothing” he responded readily, without turning around to face her.

“Why did you save me?... Again?”

“Because... you are all I have left.”

His ears suddenly perked up, as he heard the whistle of a magic shot piercing through the tree leaves in the distance, coming to them at great speed. He raised another aura shield, deflecting the blazing golden sphere from the two of them.

Immediately after that, the source of this unexpected shot revealed itself: Celestia appeared from between the shadowy trees and in the middle of the fog, wearing her golden armour over the bandages, accompanied by dozens of royal guards from all classes.

“Sister?!”

“Luna, get away from him!” the elder sister demanded in a ruthless tone “NOW!”

The unicorn soldiers promptly lit their horns, instantaneously creating several transparent magical chains, which, thrown at the dark alicorn, rapidly constricted his every limb and neck, ultimately bringing him down.

“Wait, no! Please, sister! AH!” Luna was surprised by two guards who appeared from behind, dragging her away from him forcefully.

“Luna!” Fenrir got up and was about to charge at the guards holding her when he was stunned by a painful slashing strike delivered on his face by the princess of the day, while held securely in the same place by the tightening translucent chains. The blow had left a deep cut over one of his eyes, from which blood streamed down to his chin, and dripped to the grass below.

“It was foalish of you to come here alone, Luna!” Celestia scolded her younger sister “This pony is too dangerous! Haven’t you seen the storm he threw at us just now? He knew we were coming!”

“No, it wasn’t him!” Luna kept trying desperately to free herself from the guards’ firm grapple “I swear, sister, there was another...”

“SILENCE! I should have suspected...” Celestia sounded terribly blinded by her desire for revenge, her eyes burning in pure rage, as she walked leisurely towards the dark alicorn “your little, ‘secret’ friend, the outcast of our race, and the causer of all evil that has befallen on us.”

“You... you knew about our meetings?” the younger princess asked surprised.

“I did. You could hide it from mother and father, but you could never hide a secret from me for too long. I used to follow you to your secret meetings here, a thousand years ago. Please understand that I only did it because I cared about you, little sister.”

The elder monarch stopped only scarce meters away from the dark alicorn, who had been standing on his spot perfectly still and mute, and directed to him with contempt.

“Are those chains tight enough? ‘Stranglers of the ethereal’, a long forgotten spell created for the sole purpose of holding down heartless beasts like yourself, whilst draining their magic. I made sure to prepare myself for our next encounter.”

She delivered another powerful magic hit on him, which he was not able to evade or defend. He let out but a quiet cry of pain, stifled between his gritted teeth, and barely reacted physically, maintaining his pose, wings recoiled, but always following Celestia with his gaze, who walked back and forth right in front of him.

“You may have deceived my sister, but you have never fooled me. My parents told me all about you, exiled in the north, cursing our race with your very existence... I had sworn to avenge them. You may have defeated me the first time, but now I’ll make sure to fulfil my promise!”

More excruciating strikes lashed and burned his body, eventually pulling out slightly louder cries and making his legs start to shake, while his blood dripped continuously to the ground.

“STOP! I beg you, sister!”

Moments ago, the air changing drastically to the devastating tempest was also felt around the swift carriage, already near its destiny. The multidirectional winds made the last part of the journey become much more agitated and harsh, but it was not until one red lightening hit the body of the flying vehicle that the pegasi pulling it lost control and they began to descent abruptly.

“We’re going down! Hold on!”

A thunderous crash was heard many kilometres in the distance, as they landed violently in the middle of some dense forest, cutting a few treetops.

They had a bit of a struggle to get out of the wreckage that was the crashed carriage, but, luckily, nopony was severely injured, not even the pegasi guards.

“This is just great!” Twilight vented “Now how are we supposed to get back to Canterlot in time?!”

“Well, at least it looks like the storm is gone already...” Rarity observed, realising that they were surrounded by fog again.

“That must’ve been the shortest one so far...” Applejack added “Ya think that means something, Twi?”

“It only tells me that we’re nearly out of time. Come on, we’ll hoof it there!”

A few minutes later of scampering through the woods, they were all startled by Pinkie Pie’s unexpected and jumpy squealing notice.

“Wait! I hear something!”

After perking up their ears, they, too, detected a strange and out-of-place sound not far from there. It sounded like magic shots being fired.

“There’s somepony around here!” Fluttershy said, her concern growing immediately.

They proceeded to look for the source of the blasts. Soon, they found an open clearing with a hill in the centre. Numerous silhouettes were scattered around it, which they did not take long to recognise.

“Princess Celestia!”

“Twilight?”

The princess of the day had just finished delivering one hard, vengeful strike on the dark alicorn, who had finally succumbed to the pain and blood loss, and fell over to the ground, still putting some effort to get back up, but with no effect. He breathed with difficulty, while his blood was soaked by the dirt beneath his aching body, yet his blank eyes stared continuously at Luna, who cried inconsolably in despair, unable to do anything.

The elements, Cadance and Shining Armor gasped upon seeing such a horrible and pitiful sight.

“Princess Celestia, don’t!” the purple unicorn pleaded, rushing to her with the Crystal Heart on her hoof “He’s not the responsible for what’s happening!”

“He admitted he was to blame. He has taken the lives of our ancestors, and showed his true intentions when he attempted to slay me!” the monarch sounded infinitely resolute and unbreakable.

“We crossed paths with him in the crystal castle, but, instead of killing us all straight away, he sent us to an alternate Crystal Empire, painted according his own memories. There, I found a mysterious book that seemed completely out of place, speaking of an ancient prophecy; apparently, there was once an ancient maleficent goddess who was sealed away in a parallel dimension by your forefathers, but she still managed to slip some of her power into our world, and made the dark alicorn her vessel.”

Although what she was hearing seemed unbelievable, Celestia found herself in an impasse, as these recent revelations would utterly unsettle everything she knew and believed. Nevertheless, it appeared that the same testimony was confirmed by her most faithful student and all her friends, giving her no choice but to accept it.

“But... my parents never told me anything about it...”

“They were trying to protect you, just like you were trying to protect me by not telling us what you knew about the events. Please believe in us, princess. The dark alicorn is NOT the bringer of the end.”

Celestia glanced at Fenrir’s lying form, then at her younger sister, motionless and with teary eyes, and lastly turned her attention back to Twilight.

“How do we stop this... goddess?”

“When the dimension where she’s imprisoned was created, the key to unlock it was also forged as its counterpart, which is said to be the only thing that can destroy her for good: princess Aqua’s heart!”

“The Crystal Heart?!” she asked incredulous.

As Twilight presented the jewel on her front hoof, everypony gasped at the same time. What faint light still shun from the Crystal Heart was now completely put out, and it looked nothing more than an ordinary, cold and dead gem cut in the shape of a heart.

“But... I don’t understand, the book said princess Aqua accepted the key to her own heart...” Twilight was halted by a sudden, enlightening epiphany, which made her eyes widen and her mouth remain open, though no word came out of it.

“What? What is it Twilight?” Celestia asked, a little worried with her pupil’s frozen expression.

She did not reply right away, as if she was planning something. She took a quick glimpse at Luna and noticed the way how she stared afflicted at the dying dark alicorn.

“Princess, could you please release your sister Luna?”

She acquiesced her request, signalling the two guards holding her sister down with a subtle nod.

Luna skidded to the injured alicorn laid down on the grass, and lifted his head up gently. She cried profusely, and her tears fell down on his face.

“Fenrir, I’m so sorry...”

“Why... why do you cry, Luna?” he muttered as best as his weak voice managed to speak.

“I’m crying because... I don’t want you to die!”

“I thought you hated me...”

“No, of course not! You’re my friend! I’m so sorry I doubted you. It wasn’t you who made all this happen. You’ve just been used. I... don’t want to lose you again...”

As she embraced him tighter, their horns met together, and suddenly irradiated a warm, incandescent white beam, which spread and involved the entirety of his body, healing all of his wounds. Nopony had ever witnessed such splendorous phenomenon before.

Once the light dimmed down and he got back up on his hooves, the Crystal Heart’s vague light shun once again, and Twilight smiled excitedly as she believed to have finally solved the riddle for good.

“What does this mean, Twilight?” Cadance questioned, behind her.

“It means that the Crystal Heart is NOT the key to the Undone Dimension!”

The confusion and wonder were total. Everypony looked at her, expecting an explanation.

“Princess Aqua had a son, whom she loved and cared for with all of her heart. The book only spoke metaphorically, but, in a way, she accepted HIM to her heart! HE is the key!”

“Fenrir is the key?” asked the shy yellow pegasus.

Twilight nodded affirmatively “You were right when you said the Crystal Heart appeared to be crying, Fluttershy. Princess Aqua is grieving for her son’s emptiness.”

Celestia glared completely astounded at the dark alicorn standing with her younger sister by his side. “He’s an alicorn prince?” she thought aloud.

“Wait,” Rainbow Dash interrupted “but how will he unlock the gates?”

“Hum... according to the book, the gates require the two pieces of the split key to open them from both sides at the same time, so Fenrir’s heart must be the second piece waiting on the other side!” the purple unicorn responded.

Fenrir recalled his previous encounter with his other armoured self, moments ago.

“I’ll be waiting for you on the other side...”

He closed his eyes and pointed his horn directly to the sky, creating a massive, wide column of incandescent light, which pierced the haze upwards and quickly involved himself, the princesses, the six elements, Cadance and Shining Armor. After that powerful spell was complete, they all vanished, remaining only the troubled royal guards, dispersed throughout the area.

“H-hey! Where did the majesties go?!”

Chapter X: A Heart of Courage

Chapter X: A Heart of Courage

The air was freezing and impregnated with the awful stench of rusting metals and scorched flesh. In the distance, nothing more than bare and deserted landscapes, and tall dunes of rust coloured sand touched by a dark skyline which filled the broad veil above their heads. Not a single cloud, star or celestial body could be found in this sky.

The calm was quite deadening, which put all their senses on full alert. Although there was not a single breeze blowing, the grains of sand seemed to be moving leisurely, following them and converging underneath their hooves as they treaded.

At some point, they started seeing horrible intermittent mirages of countless decomposing bodies of mysterious, unearthly creatures, all impaled in tall iron spears sticking out of the ground, or hanging from metal gallows, wrapped in weighty chains. They flashed before their sights for merely a split second, disappearing right away, but it was all it took to make them feel a bit nauseous.

This was, beyond doubt, the Undone Dimension the book spoke about; incomplete, for its empty appearance resembled an earth where life never got to birth, and its sky a void where not a single star has ever ignited; broken, due to the constantly shifting reality, and the mirages of dead beasts that never truly existed in neither worlds.

Through the dead silence of their march irrupted a potent lightening strike, completely out of the blue, which clashed thunderously with the sand scarce meters ahead and forced them to a halt. Only Fenrir continued forward after the dust settled, putting himself in front of everypony else and spreading his wide black wings, as if shielding them.

Before long, the already familiar colossal dark dragon with six wings revealed itself from behind one larger dune in the horizon ahead, flying in their direction with an incredible haste, and landing a quite few dozens of meters away from them, lifting more dust below its giant paws.

From inside of his ethereal, smoky body came the second dark alicorn, wearing the same full-body armour, only now he looked more palpable than the last time he met with Fenrir and Luna.

The two identical selves began a simultaneous, quiet and patient walk towards each other, stopping with only a couple of meters between them, and placing themselves right between the other ponies and the fearsome faceless dragon, shaking its head and folding back its wings.

“So you’ve come...” reverberated the female screeching voice, projected from within the armoured pony’s mask, in a tone that sounded like it was deriding him.

“I have come to put an end to this!” Fenrir replied simply and serenely.

“We both know that this will only end ONE way: you’ll be complete again, and I... I will be freed, at last!”

“I would rather die than aid you escape from here. The reason I have come is solely to obliterate you from both universes forever.”

The shrieking voice laughed maniacally “Obliterate ME? I AM YOUR HEART! Have you forgotten? When a heart is destroyed, the body ceases to exist, which means if you destroy me, you’ll vanish as well! Are you sure that was what your beloved mother wanted of her son? Are you not going to accomplish... her dying wish?”

He gritted his teeth, feeling the rage building up. His eyes, blue as ice, burned with anger, pierced the black metal mask before him.

“You made me believe I was to blame for all those horrors, and you told me I had no other choice. If I am culpable of anything, it is for having let you deceive me all this time. But now I understand. My true destiny, what my mother wanted me to discover, has always been to free the worlds from fear. To free them... from you!”

He charged at his opponent at the speed of light, but the latter managed to dodge him, sliding to the side and preparing to retaliate relentlessly. So swiftly were they moving around the area, leaping high up in the air and clashing with each other, that they became two blurs leaving dark trails behind. Rapid shots of pale magic were exchanged from both combatants, and a torrent of incandescent cutting spheres rained recklessly.

“We’ve got to help him!” Luna shouted, promptly rushing to the centre of the battle to aid him, followed by her elder sister, the elements, Cadance and Shining Armor.

However, before they got too close, the gigantic dragon on the other side roared sonorously and quickly took off in their direction, forcing them to stop and turn around to run away from it.

It tried to grab them, like a flying hunter capturing its helpless prey on the ground, but missed its first attempt, so it took a narrow turn in the air, and proceeded to fly past them again.

This time, Celestia managed to scathe its massive body with a hurried, but effective strike. The beast growled in pain, even though it was not actually alive, yet the wound only irritated it further.

For his next attack, it flew to a greater altitude and, while hovering right above them, breathed an immense vertical column of fire downwards, too wide to be possible to evade it in time. However, the incoming inferno was immediately deflected by a combined shield conjured up by both the two alicorn sisters, working together once more.

In the meantime, Fenrir had just stunned the self-acclaimed embodiment of his own heart with an accurate kick on the head, though only for a brief moment, but enough for him to concentrate on the dragon, in the distance, about to incinerate the ten ponies.

Without wasting any time, he lit up his horn while pointing it at the enormous creature, which closed its mouth right away, ceasing the fire exhalation, and started emanating several beams of white light from within his body made of dense smoke. It wailed in agony and despair, but its suffering did not last long, as it ultimately burst from the inside out in a violent explosion of blinding radiance. Only one final roar echoed throughout the surroundings after the six-winged dragon had been defeated.

The armoured pony had just gotten back up, and proceeded to charge at Fenrir rapidly. Upon impacting against him with great brutality, they were both knocked down to the sand, landing with a loud dull sound. The battle continued on the ground, now with more heavy punches and kicks than magic.

Eventually, Fenrir’s opponent managed to subjugate him by standing on top of him, chocking him with his metal horseshoes. However, he could not hold him down for too long, as he was once again astounded by a flashing blaze fired up from the barest dark alicorn’s horn directly to his mask.

Now standing back up on their hooves, but showing no signs of exhaustion yet, they advanced towards each other, clashing their horns together like sabres. They had matching forces, so none of them could overpower the other in this struggle of merely physical strength. Each pushed forward with all of his might, though they did not move from their spot.

It was then that the others finally reached back to where they were heading before being chased away by the dragon, only a few meters from the two fighting dark alicorns.

“Fenrir!” Luna called from behind him, distracting him for a split second.

“No, stay away!” He demanded them, right before his eyes suddenly widened, his pupils narrowed and his mouth froze open like he was letting out a muted howl of excruciating pain.

The pony in the armour had just stabbed him in the abdomen with his lengthy, sharp horn, jabbing it all the way until its base.

As he removed the horn in a swift and careless motion, which was entirely covered in crimson warm blood and dripping, the fatally wounded alicorn collapsed from his tall legs and kneeled, panting heavily.

“NO!” Twilight joined Luna in a unison and teary cry, while all the others simply froze in shock, not knowing what to do. Fluttershy hid her face with her front hooves, cringing as tears formed in her eyes.

However, despite being down and at the mercy of his own heart’s embodiment, he refused to acknowledge defeat, trying to get up but only to fall again.

The princess of the moon quickly dashed over to him, holding onto one of his front legs, and touched his horn with hers, a warm, stunning white blaze quickly growing from them, covering his whole body.

“What manner of power is that?!” the sinister female voice sounded astonished “Ah, I see... a deeper sentiment, old rival of my domain.”

Once completely healed, he stood up once more, resolute and fierce as ever.

“A power I yearn for possessing!...” hissed the armoured enemy “We were born as one. You cannot disrupt the link which keeps pulling us back together!”

In a split second, the armoured pony dashed to his other self, giving him no chance of evading him, but, right before colliding, an astonishing and intense flash was generated between them, shining so brightly the others had to cover their eyes.

When everything calmed down and they looked back up, there only remained one dark alicorn, standing up with his wings folded and facing them: the one wearing the black metal armour.

Yet, before anypony could say anything, his mask fell off to the ground all by itself, detaching from the metal frame where it was fit. Inside the metal frame, they could see Fenrir’s distinct face, bearing a strange tranquil expression and with his eyes closed.

“F-Fenrir?...” Luna approached him carefully, only to be stopped by a sudden startle caused by the swift whipping motion of a long tentacle made of thick dark smoke coming from his back, which nearly lashed her body.

“Luna!” The others ran to help her get up, as she fell over trying to dodge the unexpected attack.

More fearful tentacles protruded from his back, and his form began to rise up slowly in the air, even though his wings remained recoiled, defying gravity. The way he was suspended there, stiff as a statue, was a sight they found inexpressibly terrifying. An insane laugh was heard in a horribly distorted voice, combining his own and a second, demonic and awfully high-pitched one, coming from his throat despite the fact that he did not open his mouth at all, nor did his lips move. His eyes then shot open, all jet black and with small red dots for pupils.

“See how completion makes us the perfect being!” he hissed loudly in his dual voice, right before throwing his tentacles to the ground and quickly wrapping up the ten ponies below him, lifting them all up to his level.

They writhed and struggled to free themselves, but with no effect, for the grasp was only tightening up slowly and painfully, expelling the air out of their lungs.

His possessed eyes were focused on Celestia and Luna, suffocating right in front of him.

“Ah!... Nebula and Galaxia’s daughters. I made sure your parents squirmed and crawled before me, as they pathetically pleaded for their lives in their last moments. Do you know why? Because, as all living things, divine or not, they were scared to die!”

“That’s not true...” the elder sister managed to reply with what little amount of oxygen she had left “they wanted to live... because they wanted to see us again!”

“Is that so? Well then, I guess I’ll be doing you both a favour by sending you back to their presence!”

The younger sister just cried profusely, giving constant and heartrending sobs. He turned to her next, in a scoffing tone.

“What’s wrong, princess of the night? Do you fear death?”

Her answer could barely be heard, stifled by both the tight grapple and the sobbing, which was becoming more difficult from the lack of air. Her saddened blue eyes, slightly diffused by the welling tears, stared at him pleadingly.

“Fenrir... we’re friends...”

At that moment, everything appeared to have frozen in time, as the tentacles had suddenly stopped tightening up, then beginning to phase out like smoke in the air. As they did, all the hung ponies were released to fall a couple of meters down, landing on the sand below and gasping desperately.

As soon as they finished catching up their breaths and got back up on their hooves, they looked above their heads to see a powerful pale beam irradiating from the hovering Fenrir’s horn and eyes.

Something happened at that moment nopony could predict nor explain; time appeared to have halted, space shifted infinitely, and all witnessing the blinding phenomenon around the dark alicorn felt their minds simultaneously assaulted by series of memories which did not belong to either of them.

It all began with the forging of the Undone Dimension, and the consecutive imprisonment of the evil goddess of the ancient times, marked by a luminous explosion of epic proportions. Thirteen mighty horns concluded their combined spell by dimming down their respective magic auras, all dispersed around the circumference of the ample blast radius.

However, an unexpected multidirectional gale was generated from the very core of the closing interdimensional gates, throwing all of them violently far away through the air.

Some managed to recover from the harsh landing just in time to witness the very last flash emanated from the massive column of light that was the phasing gates acquiring the monumental shape of a mystical symbol: a brilliant white key, standing vertically, with three pairs of wings as the bow, one pair folded, one half spread, and one spread wide. It only shun for a couple of seconds before vanishing completely into thin air, but none of them had the interest to decipher its meaning.

A peaceful silence and soothing quietude took over the atmosphere at last, confirming that their mission had been a success. The thirteen brave warriors got up and gathered back together at the centre, where a large depression had been created in the ground. The shattered rocks and uncovered buried minerals there were still fuming from the great amount of energy released on that spot.

“Brothers, sisters...” spoke the strong, imposing voice of prince Nebula, in a triumphant tone “the spirit of fear has been sealed away. We stand victorious! Our people is, at long last, free from their terrors!”

The air was filled with rejoice and exclamations of victory and relief for a brief moment, until one rather peculiar, but weak sound nearby caught the attention of one of the youngest females, as she immediately perked up her ears and alerted the others.

“Hold, my brethren! I hear something...”

“What is it, Aqua?” questioned princess Galaxia, who was standing beside Nebula.

Instead of responding, she rushed to where the noise was coming from with such a hurry that it spiked up all the other alicorns’ curiosity, and propelled them to go after her. She searched in the middle of the ashes and debris anxiously, always followed closely by her brethren, until she finally found the source of the faint sound, yet that discovery brought only immeasurable bewilderment to everypony.

“A foal?!” Nebula observed, after Aqua lifted up the little form of a crying baby dark colt, with a pair of tiny wings and a petite horn, and laid him carefully on her front hooves, like she had always known how to carry a baby around. Once in her lap, he immediately stopped crying.

“H-how did he get here?”

“Look at his cutie mark!” a flaming red alicorn pointed to the colt’s flank, which showed the exact same symbol they had seen before the remains of the explosion had faded away: the six-winged waxen key.

“A key?...” Nebula thought aloud “Could it be... no, it cannot be possible!”

He was interrupted by a sudden potent beam of light shot from the young foal’s eyes, which forced them all to protect their sights. When it dimmed down, his cutie mark had disappeared mysteriously.

“Nebula, what does this mean?”

“It means... that our efforts are still far from conclusion. This foal was created by unnatural means to be the bearer of the power to unlock the gates once more. His very come to existence is threatening the piece we have won tonight.”

“What do we do with him?”

“It is obvious: we must ensure that the gates remain locked for eternity. This broken miscreation must be destroyed!”

The ocean princess reacted instantaneously at those last words, backing down hastily and pressing the baby alicorn against her own body.

“No! You cannot do that! How can you even consider doing such a crime against an innocent foal?!”

“Aqua, he is not like us, nor like any other earthly being. He is a mistake, he should have never existed!”

“He wields a power so great not even he will be able to control it” Galaxia added up.

“It is for the best...”

“No! I refuse to let you do it! It just... does not feel right! He may not have been born by natural means, but neither were any of us, brothers and sisters. Remember that we are all descendants of the remnants of genesis; we have come to embody the primal forces that set this universe in motion.”

“That was different, Aqua...” Nebula persisted in trying to show her reason “we profaned genesis and ourselves the moment we created that alternate dimension, even if it was the only way to hold our foe. By putting ourselves in a place not meant for us, we have been cursed with this aberration.”

As Aqua turned her face to look at the colt on her lap, she saw him wiggling happily and giving an adorable baby laugh. Only then had she noticed his icy blue eyes for the first time. At that moment, she felt overwhelmed by a wonderful feeling that was entirely new to her. Somehow, the simple act of staring at each other’s eyes had created an empathic bond between the two of them, and so the princess knew for sure she would never want to separate from this colt.

“I see no deformities, nor aspects of a curse. In a way, he was born to the thirteen of us. Our son; our brother.” She then faced the others with absolute resolution “If you fear his presence, then I shall take him with me, far away to the north, where I will raise him and teach him to control his powers.”

Nebula gave an impatient sigh, but ultimately consented.

“Very well, sister. But if he is ever seen straying alone, we will take our own measures.”

Princess Aqua arrived with her adopted son to the northernmost tip of the entire land, where they met with an immediate warm reception from the native earth ponies, who recognised the princess as one of their saviours from the evil spirit’s recently-ended reign of terror, and gladly accepted her as their beloved ruler.

Over the course of a few months, what began as a vast, unnamed native settlement would see numerous houses edified, a high wall raised all around the periphery, and an imposing, tall castle built in the centre. Since there were no other raw materials available there besides snow, ice and crystals, everything was constructed out of the latter, for it was the most resistant, and hence the name by which they baptised the newly-lifted realm: Crystal Empire.

It was one particularly radiant night, with a beautiful aurora borealis adorning the dark, starry sky, that when the ice wolves howled to the full moon in the distance, outside the great city walls, the young colt, sitting on her mother’s lap, had the most peculiar reaction to their call.

His tiny horn lit involuntarily, though princess Aqua never feared these spontaneous bursts of magic, which would be frequent in his first years, this time summoning a soft white magical string, which waved graciously throughout the castle corridors and halls, and materialised into several spectral wolves where it passed. They howled in a rather precious, beautiful and soothing symphony for a time, before the magical pack eventually vanished like smoke.

Princess Aqua looked at him, her ocean blue eyes glowing with pure joy.

“The wolves’ call is sadly misunderstood and feared by many; yet to you, it seems almost... familiar.” She smiled and reached one of her hooves for him to play with. “You need a name, one that holds the courage and might of legends of old. Folklore amongst the ponies of the north speaks of a mythic, great wolf-god by the name of Fenrir. May this name grant you strength and fortune, my dear son.”

It was already dark, and the ocean princess had just laid the tired baby colt in his cradle, in their new home that was the crystal castle. She used to sing to him a lullaby every night, in her young, melodious siren voice.

“Come, stop your crying, it’ll be alright

Just take my hoof, hold it tight

I will protect you from all around you

I will be here, don’t you cry

For one so small, you seem so strong

My wings will hold you, keep you safe and warm

This bond between us can’t be broken

I will be here, don’t you cry

‘Cause you’ll be in my heart

Yes, you’ll be in my heart

From this day on, now and forever more

You’ll be in my heart

No matter what they say

You’ll be in my heart, always

Why can’t they understand the way we feel?

They just don’t trust what they can’t explain

I know we’re different, but deep inside us

We’re not that different at all

And you’ll be in my heart

Yes, you’ll be in my heart

From this day on, now and forever more

Don’t listen to them, ‘cause what do they know?

We need each other, to have, to hold

They’ll see in time, I know

When destiny calls you, you must be strong

I may not be with you, but you’ve got to hold on

They’ll see in time, I know

We’ll show them together

‘Cause you’ll be in my heart

Yes, you’ll be in my heart

I’ll be there from this day on, now and forever more”

He fell asleep peacefully. She approached his forehead and kissed it tenderly, before whispering to his ear “Sweet dreams, Fenrir”.

Years of peace and prosperity had passed, during which the other members of the ancient alicorn race had scattered throughout the land, founding their own realms. In the meantime, Nebula and Galaxia were blessed with a second daughter, having their first been born three months after the great battle.

Princess Aqua, on the other hoof, lived isolated, but merrily with her son in the Crystal Empire. He had grown to a young, intelligent and handsome colt, who loved reading, learning magic, and flying around the skies above the crystal city. He had always shown to be a very kind and cordial prince, as he was very fond of everypony, and everypony liked him very much, but he especially loved his mother more than everything in the world.

The crystal ponies never feared him, despite knowing very well the uncanny conditions of his birth, as the princess of the ocean had always believed that no truth should be hidden from the people, an ideal which was the main pillar that supported the rapid growth of the majestic empire of the north.

Eventually, the prince had developed a great fascination for the night, and began wondering who could produce something so beautiful. Her mother had never told him anything about the other alicorns, though she was fully aware of everything that happened on the other realms, thanks to the sporadic letters she would receive from her brethren, which she kept away from her son, afraid that he would want to meet them and they would harm him.

But the young dark alicorn’s curiosity was insatiable, so he started leaving the castle silently at night, when princess Aqua thought he was already asleep, and went exploring the vastness of the land, far beyond the boundaries of his empire. It was on one of those nights that he found Luna, who he later befriended. He had never told her mother about her, choosing to keep their friendship and late meetings a secret.

However, a terrible event was bound to happen one day. After prince Fenrir experienced a sudden unleashing of a massive amount of energy he could not control, shooting out of his eyes in the form of powerful beams, being the first time such had happened on the very day he was born, right before his cutie mark had inexplicably disappeared, and now would reappear once again, he was unwillingly sent to the Undone Dimension.

Once there, he was quickly found by its residing lonely prisoner. Instead of devouring or torturing the unexpected visitor right away, thus feeding on his pain and horror after years of starvation, the evil goddess came up with an intricate, maleficent plan to use him to spread her power in the world she was sealed away from.

“W-who are you?” he inquired in a trembling voice the frightful being before him.

“Do not fear me, child, for I am the one who will give you purpose.”

Using a rare dark magic, she isolated her own heart, and merged it with the little prince’s, ensuring, that way, that a part of herself would remain within him after he would return to his home world.

As soon as he came back, he started hearing dire voices inside his head, which slowly drove him insane, until he finally succumbed and allowed her essence to take over him. He transformed into an adult armoured pony with dark tentacles protruding from his back, who controlled devastating tempests, and whose tremendous power was utterly under the control of the cruel goddess.

Once more were the thirteen alicorn warriors dispatched to battle this new thread, only none of them was expecting an enemy this powerful. This was not just the prior evil being they were dealing with, but an entity forged from the combination of two powerful beings; an absolutely flawless, divine existence. One by one, all of the alicorns would fall dead.

He was only defeated when the last remaining princess warrior made an ultimate sacrifice. Princess Aqua united her horn with that of her possessed son, and reached to his dormant heart, releasing it from the influence of the wicked spirit. Sadly, such endeavour ended up taking her life.

As the metal pieces of the armour fell to the ground, the little prince woke up in the middle of endless ruins, and quickly landed his gaze upon the heartbreaking sight of his mother’s fallen and motionless body.

“Mother! W-what happened?”

“Fenrir...” she spoke with difficulty, barely opening her eyes “you’ll have to be strong, my son... find your true destiny, find your shore...”

“Mother?... Please don’t leave me...”

“I love you” were the very last words to escape from her mouth, right before she stopped breathing and closed her eyelids softly. The ocean princess was dead.

Shaken by witnessing her mother’s demise, the young colt unleashed a power nopony ever thought to even exist, originated from the deep and unceasing sorrowfulness within him, which resulted in his fission: his heart was reclaimed by the evil spirit still residing in it and absorbed back into the parallel dimension, while his body dove into the depths of his own mind, where he remained imprisoned for more than one thousand years, in his sleep.

He was awaken by the chant of a familiar voice, only two days ago from the present day, like he himself had already explained in his conversation with Luna. What has yet to be told is that, on the night he finally woke up, he had a dialogue with the voices hissing inside his head, which deceived his oblivious and outdated mind into bringing the events once again.

“You were the responsible for their deaths, all of them. You murdered your own mother. But don’t regret... she claimed herself, as her dying wish, that she wanted you to find your destiny. This is it! You’re the last alicorn; the one who must survive the final battle against his own kind, and then bring about the end to all. Now awaken, heartless beast. My prince of fear, harbinger of death.”

At last, the blinking fragments of distant past came to an end as armoured dark alicorn got his hooves back on the ground, his horn and eyes still enlightened and increasing in intensity, yet his body remained statuesque and firm.

They all heard Fenrir’s normal voice again, roaring thunderously in a tremendous amount of force.

“I will not let you use me again! GET... OUT... OF MY HEART!”

Another powerful, blinding flash irrupted from within his entire form, obfuscating the sights of everypony around him.

This time, the following calmness revealed the whole black metal armour falling in parts, detaching gradually from his body and dropping on the sand. He opened his eyes, revealing them of the usual bright sapphire blue, and so they all knew for sure he was himself again.

“Fenrir!” Everypony called at the same time, with Luna running to hug him without delay, sighing in great relief and bliss.

“Look, your cutie mark!” Twilight pointed to his flank.

There it was again: the white key standing vertically, with three pairs of wings as the bow.

“The cutie mark is said to be also connected to one’s heart” Celestia informed.

“Do you feel it?” Luna asked him, placing a hoof over his muscular chest “Do you feel your heart again?”

He gently put one of his front hooves over hers and looked at her deeply in the eyes, making her blush quite a bit. His facial expression had changed from blank to a visible contentment, as his lips curled into a simple, but sincere smile.

“I do.”

All of a sudden, before they could savour the moment any longer, a concentrated tempest rose quickly, centred a few meters in the distance. Black dust flew and swirled in the air, forming an immense, sky-piercing tornado, from which numerous dark tentacles were thrown at them, only to be readily shielded by Celestia, Luna, Fenrir and Shining Armor.

Before long, the tumult began settling down slowly, and a large silhouette became observable coming from the core of the whirlwind in their direction.

Upon catching a clear glimpse of its true form, they felt immediately overwhelmed with an indescribable horror and unease, freezing completely where they stood and widening their eyes. This was the most horrendous and appealing creature they had ever seen. Not even in their worst nightmares would anypony ever be able to come up with something so terrifying.

“It’s her!...” Twilight squealed.

Bearing many resemblances to an adult female alicorn, with six bat wings spread wide, she was abnormally tall and thin like a walking skeleton lined with deadly pale skin, covered in white short fur. She wore a long, weightless dark cloak like silk, wavering softly as she treaded. And her face... it looked perfectly normal on one side, but a horrid, gruesome half skull on the other. Her eyes were two jet black eyeballs with shining red pupils, and long, dark hair grew on the “normal” side of her head, as well as her tail, wavering like blown magically.

Only Fenrir faced the demon fearlessly, and uttered her name without flinching.

“Hel...”

“How dare you pronounce my name?!” she shrieked infuriated in her high-pitched voice, as the sands started moving viciously beneath their hooves.

Before they knew it, an enormous fissure had opened, delimiting a circular area around them, while all the rest of the earth seemed to have fallen into an endless murky abyss, merging with the shadowy skyline. They were standing on top of a piece of rock in the middle of infinite darkness.

Hel shot a massive ray of blood-red magic aura from her horn directly at the dark alicorn, which he managed to intercept right away with a powerful white beam of his own, uniting with hers in midair.

“Since you refuse to submit to my will, your body exhausts what use I could give to it; because your heart disregards fear, it has no value to me. I’ll do what I should have done from the beginning: slay you and rip the power to free me from your dying carcass!” she screeched, before putting all of her might on the spell.

Fenrir took one step back, as he did not seem to be capable of holding her attack for much longer.

Suddenly, two spheres of pure energy flew out of the Crystal Heart on the purple unicorn’s hooves and from Luna’s chest, and began orbiting around him in broad circumferences. After that, several luminous archaic symbols appeared all over his dark coated body, and, ultimately, a third light irradiated from his chest, and ascended to his horn, where it remained scintillating.

Celestia gasped with her face frozen in shock.

“That’s it... the only way to destroy her” she mumbled quietly to herself, but was heard by Luna.

“What? What’s happening to him, sister?!”

Everypony turned to the elder monarch.

“Even though he has regained control over his heart, her essence must still be alive inside of him. He’s going to use that to his advantage... he’s going to strike her down with her own heart!”

“But if their hearts are still fused together, that will destroy him!” Luna turned to him swiftly “FENRIR, DON’T DO IT!”

Through his unbreakable concentration on the battle, he managed to slip a quick glimpse at her.

“Goodbye, Luna.” He purely smiled.

She was completely petrified, with tears at the edges of her eyes, as they all witnessed him summoning all his strengths to push forward towards the goddess, until their horns finally touched each other, and an epic and sonorous explosion of light and winds was generated.

A heavenly tranquillity and quietude filled the atmosphere afterwards. The two light orbs had flown back to where they had come from, one to the Crystal Heart and the other to Luna’s chest.

The ten ponies uncovered their sights unhurriedly and looked around, immediately realising that the evil spirit had vanished at last, and that the whole world appeared to be fading away, like ashes blown by the wind.

“Fenrir!” Luna rushed to a fallen and inert dark alicorn, lying scarce meters ahead. All his mystical, luminescent tattoos had disappeared, as well as his cutie mark, and his black coated form was slowly fading away, exactly as the entire dimension, dematerialising in fine, weightless ashes. She lifted his head up and rested it on her lap, while the others gathered around them “Please, say something!”

“Why...” he spoke in an awfully feeble and slow voice “why do you cry? You know I never liked... to see you crying.”

She tried desperately to unite their horns like before, but not even a single spark lit between them.

“No! Why won’t it work? It has to work, come on!”

“I’m afraid it’s not possible, Luna.” Celestia placed a kind hoof over her sister’s shoulder. “His heart has been destroyed, which means he cannot use magic anymore...”

“No, I don’t want you to die! Please, don’t leave me again!...”

“You will never be alone, Luna. You are a wonderful mare, capable of showing compassion and loved by more than you realise. You have your sister, who has always cared for your safety and well-being; you have ponies who love you simply for who you are, and would not hesitate to come in your aid, and share your pain in more difficult times. Never doubt that you are a precious friend; you have shown me that.

I wish to show my gratitude to the brave ponies who undertook my test in the world that served as my prison for a thousand years. Hel made me believe dead all of those who I cared for in the past, and doubts raised when I found Luna that night, in silver armour, gazing me like a stranger. I would have never dared to approach her after so long, drowned in so much guilt. Your endeavours showed me how firm friendship can really be.

And Celestia... I just wish I could be deserving of forgiveness for everything else I have done.”

“We forgive you, prince Fenrir.” The princess of the day was trying to hold back her own tears.

“Thank you.” He closed his eyelids leisurely and took one final breath.

Luna was desperately trying to swallow her shattering sadness, when her sorrowful heart felt the need to make his final moments memorable. For both him and herself.

“Why can’t they understand the way we feel?

They just don’t trust what they can’t explain

I know we’re different, but deep inside us

We’re not that different at all

And you’ll be in my heart

Yes, you’ll be in my heart

From this day on, now and forever more”

As the tears streamed down her cheeks from her closed eyes, she slowly approached her muzzle to his, about to surrender a timid kiss on the lips, but only reaching air, for he had just faded away completely at that exact moment, and, with him, the entire Undone Dimension.

They were again stepping on the soil of their home world, in the middle of the dense woods. The fog was finally gone, and the sky was blank in a vast veil of darkness, waiting for the sun and the moon to be raised by their respective princesses once more.

Celestia hugged her sorrowful sister compassionately.

“There, there... it’s alright, Luna.”

“He truly was a good pony,” Twilight spoke up “even though he didn’t have a heart, his memories alone guided him to make the right decisions.”

“Yes. He’s reunited with his mother again” Fluttershy concluded, smiling at the sky.

“Berry Punch! I’m so glad you could make it! Come in!” Pinkie Pie held the door open to the Sugarcube Corner pastry shop, where she was throwing the biggest party Ponyville had ever seen. All of her friends were there, including Spike, the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Big Mac and Granny Smith, among many others.

After their return in the previous night, they had discovered that no city, town or village had any vestige of the past events, and that everypony was alive and perfectly healthy. Everything seemed to have come back to normal, as if those terrible experiences had been nothing but mere illusions, now erased from everypony’s memories except those who stood within the Undone Dimension at the time of its wane.

Right now, colourful balloons and streamers, nice music, and table filled with delicious pastries and punch were exactly what the six elements needed to forget all about the confusion and tension in the last couple of days.

“Great party, Pinkie! As always!...”

“Thanks, Dashie! Hey, has anypony seen Twilight?”

“Ah think she went upstairs to write a letter to the princess.”

“Dear princess Celestia,

These prior two days certainly have been intense, life-threatening, and even traumatising, that is something we can both agree on. But, nevertheless, I believe they were plenty of lessons about friendship and life for us all.

Firstly, I learned that confidence is something of great importance if you want to keep firm the bonds between friends, a teacher and a student, or even family. It is alright to want to protect those you love from harm, but doing so by leaving them in ignorance may not always be the right way to do so.

I also learned that you should never be afraid of what you do not understand, that not everything, or everypony, is actually what they appear to be, and they all deserve the benefit of the doubt, no matter what we have been told about them.

But what I consider to be the most important lesson is that everypony is worthy of forgiveness, if they ask for it sincerely.

I would like to end this letter with a simple request of your highness: please, remain close to your sister. I know she must be suffering very much right now, after losing somepony so dear to her. Make her feel that she is not alone, that she is loved. That is what prince Fenrir would want.

Your faithful student,
Twilight Sparkle”

A door opened to the small and faintly lit room where the unicorn was writing the correspondence, and through it jumped in the vivacious pink pony.

“Come on, Twi! We’re all waiting for you downstairs!”

“I’m coming!” She left the parchment on the secretary to be sent to its destination later. For now, she only wanted to have some fun with all of her friends, celebrating the return of peace and harmony.

Weeks had passed, and the princess of the night sat alone on the balcony of the Canterlot castle, staring quietly at the beautiful dark sky filled with stars and enlightened with a stunning full moon high above.

The elder sister came outside and sat beside her. The two remained in silence for a few minutes, savouring the gentle, chilling breeze blowing through their manes, and the peaceful setting after the past endeavours and sufferings.

“I will never forget him” Luna spoke at last, facing her radiant moon delighted.

“I know, Luna. After all, it’s harder to forget somepony we have evidently fell in love with...”

“What?!” Luna suddenly blushed and flinched away, looking embarrassed at Celestia, who simply smiled at her “I-if you’re talking about that kiss... it’s not what you’re thinking, sis!”

“It’s alright, it only means that you’re growing up. I know it will be difficult for you to move on, having nurtured feelings for him, but I believe he would want you to live your life merrily more than anything.”

“You’re right. He will always live inside my heart.”

That said, they both got up and headed back inside the tower. Luna yawned and leant her drowsy head against Celestia’s warm body.

Neither of them noticed the long, dark feather, blown by the wind from a far distance, dropping subtly on the cold stone floor of the balcony.

The beginning...

Chapter I: A Song from a Weeping Heart

Chapter I: A Song from a Weeping Heart

A sight for many ages considered to be of infinite inspiration for poets and songwriters to work on marvellous, elaborate grand masterpieces: the full moon shone radiantly on the horizon, far by the mountains and above the sleeping magical land of Equestria. Its pale, soothing light lulled all the diurnal critters as they slept during this so prized hour dedicated to rest, while the nocturnal ones went out hunting and playing under the astounding starry sky.

On the balcony of the highest tower of the castle of Canterlot sat lonely the princess of the night, attending to her millenary duty of looking after the safety of her subjects during the darkest hour of the day, which she had done flawlessly ever since her return from banishment in the moon, and to her former self with the help of the Elements of Harmony.

This night, however, she was finding herself rather overwhelmed by an unexplained sense of loneliness, which kept drawing her attention away from the guarding position, and to the white face of the moon she had raised hours ago. Although it did not look any different from what she had seen innumerable times before, let alone the fact that she had even lived there for one thousand years, its plain sight forced her into experiencing an inquiring, but bitter longing, like it held the key to unlock some memories of her past she had once praised for keeping at all costs.

“What is it?” she silently muttered to herself “What could I have possibly forgotten that is now calling back?”

Out of the absolute calmness of this peaceful night, a familiar voice sounded, in a gentle tone, coming from behind the blue princess, startling her a bit.

“It’s a lovely night, my dear sister.”

Luna turned her head around, immediately catching a glimpse of her elder sister, who was standing by the doorway to the balcony.

“Celestia! What are you doing awake this late? You should be resting, you’ll have to raise the sun in a few hours!”

“I’m sorry if I startled you, Luna.” She approached and sat beside her, staring up at the sky. “It’s just that I’ve always loved your nights. You have no idea how much I’ve missed the way you arranged the constellations while you were gone.”

Luna felt a bit at unease. That was not the first time Celestia came to the balcony to talk with her and compliment her nights, but she usually did so right after sundown, before she went inside to her room. Why would she unexpectedly decide to visit her in the middle of the night?

Since Luna got back to her former self, she vowed to do her best to show her sister that she could take on her old duties without complaining for the lack of attention she would receive from their subjects. However, Celestia seemed to insist that she would supervise her younger sister’s work, like she did not know what she was doing; like she was an irresponsible foal or... like she doubted that she had really forgotten about her previous attempt to bring ever-lasting night.

Luna shrugged her thoughts away. Surely her sister knew better than anypony that Nightmare Moon was no longer within her, that her heart was not consumed by envy anymore. That was not the reason she had come tonight. But then, what?

“You seem a bit distracted, Luna,” Celestia interrupted her thoughts “is everything alright?”

Luna faltered as soon as she noticed her sister’s concerned eyes focused on her.

“I-it’s nothing...” She could not hide her unrest, for she was now recalling the previous longing the very moon brought her. Unaware of her perceptible distraction, she was staring at its round, pale face again.

Celestia noticed her sister’s distant expression and felt preoccupied. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Upon opening them again, she glared at the moon with a modest smile on her face to hide her worry.

“Do you still remember them, Luna? Mother and father?”

Luna trembled at the sudden question. She had spent so much time lately trying to recall something that she had long forgotten that she had not yet realised just how much she missed her parents, and how rarely she thought about them. It made her feel miserable to think how she must have been a horrible daughter for not remembering her deceased parents more often.

“It’s all right if you can’t,” the elder sister pulled her out of her thoughts, once again “after all, you were just a little filly who had barely learned to fly.” She chuckled warmly.

“I... do remember that day, however...” Luna said with a gloomy expression on her face. Her words made Celestia share the same sadness.

Celestia was not much older than Luna, only enough to had understood better what had happened that fateful day, when the two young princesses lost both of their parents, along with a great number of their race. It was all very clear in the elder sister’s head, even today, more than a thousand years later, and she would sometimes find herself having nightmares about it.

They had awaken to the people of the three common races screaming in pure horror and agony in the city surrounding the old castle where they used to live. Reports of the same unknown threat arrived from throughout the land, as it was rapidly spreading all over the existing realms.

The royal families, made up by the blessed ancient race of the alicorns and only the most powerful unicorns, had vowed to protect their people, and prepared themselves for the imminent battle.

Celestia and Luna’s parents, prince Nebula and princess Galaxia, hid their two daughters in the safety of the castle, with guards in every corner, before they too took off to combat. That would have been the last time the royal couple was ever seen.

Celestia can only recall with great sorrow the painful memory that she considers to be the worst moment of her foalhood.

By the end of that day, when darkness utterly filled the skies, bringing no moon nor stars, but a mitigating atmosphere, and a bizarre calm after the battle, two guards opened the doors to the chamber where the two princesses had been bunkered.

A scared Luna was curled up on the floor, shaking against her sister’s body, who was also lying down, covering her younger sister with one wing. She had remained alert the whole time, hence she widened her eyes and her expression lit up a bit as the two sentinels trespassed the threshold into the room.

However, their immediate silence and mournful expressions took away Celestia’s hopeful smile, as she knew what it meant. Tears began to form under her innocent, rose eyes.

“Your highnesses...” one of the guards finally spoke up “I’m afraid to inform you that your parents have... perished, during the battle. They’ve fought bravely, but... the evil was too greater. No remains of either of them could be found. I’m terribly sorry, princesses.”

Celestia cried for many hours straight, as she felt the bitter end of her foalhood and innocence. Luna just sobbed inconsolably, pressing her muzzle further against Celestia’s coat.

Finally, the elder sister managed to make an effort and swallow her tears. She had to be strong, for she would responsible for her sister and their entire kingdom from now on. Even all alone, she had to behave like a true leader, if not for their parents, or for their people... at least for Luna.

It hurt to just think about it, but if there was anything positive from these memories, Celestia would point out definitely the fact that it had brought her and sister even closer. Their fraternal love had grown so wide that their combined powers had proven to surpass every single threat they would encounter, such as the frightful King Sombra or the mischievous spirit of chaos, Discord, bringing harmony wherever they went. With these accomplishments, the people would eventually proclaim the two alicorn sisters as the rulers of the entire land, recently named Equestria.

They all lived merrily and peacefully for years, until the princess of the night started to grow jealous of her elder sister, because of the attention she and the sun she raised were getting, while she was being almost completely ignored. As the envy finally took over her being, she transformed into a new entity: Nightmare Moon.

That would have been another painful moment for the princess of the sun, as she had promised herself to protect her younger sister, yet she had found herself forced to imprison her away from the people her malevolent counterpart sought to harm, keeping her captive in her own celestial body.

That was the very first time the two sister fought against each other, and, as a result, her fraternal bond broke, and the power of harmony would be no longer under the control of either of them, materialising itself in the form of six charmed amulets, which awaited to be found by their most suitable heirs.

Celestia became aware of Luna’s expression and understood that, through her bafflement, her sister also shared the same pain every time she tried to remember all that they had both been through. She unfolded a wing over Luna’s back, as the younger sister looked up at her.

“We’ve been through so much, Luna...” Celestia sighed “but the important thing is that we’re together now. I promise I’ll never let you down again, my dear sister.”

They remained sat on the balcony, contemplating the dark sky in deep silence for a few more minutes. The two sisters felt now more close to each other than ever. Luna was finding the warmth of Celestia’s body very comforting, for it ensured that she was there for real.

The elder sister folded back her wing, and stood up unhurriedly.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” she asked again.

“Yes, you don’t need to worry about me, sister. Now please go to sleep, it’ll be dawn soon.”

With that, they exchanged the “good nights”, and Celestia headed back inside.

Luna lied when she said she was fine, for her mind was continuously struggling in an attempt to remember something that, so far, only the sight of the full moon seemed to help recalling. It was not a memory of their parents, for those she remembered quite well, actually, despite not putting much effort in recalling them. Maybe it was something related to the night itself?

Her mind drifted back to the day she got her cutie mark, the day she discovered her power to control the moon and raise the night. Unlike her sister when she had discovered her ability to control the sun, Luna’s talent had passed nearly unnoticed to the people of their kingdom, as well as all of the land.

Their mother, queen Galaxia, used to say to her that, though everypony seemed to be inactive and lazy at night, not paying too much attention to it, the darkest hour of the day was still as much important as the day itself, for it was the time to rest and dream, and that she could visit anypony’s dreams to see all the marvellous wonders that awaited there.

One night, however, shortly after Luna had raised the moon, she decided to go fly around the boundaries of the castle for a while, when she came upon a flock of bats coming out of nowhere, startling her and knocking her down.

The young filly fell from such a great altitude, without being able to recover balance, since she had hardly learned to fly. For a moment, she actually thought she was going to die.

But she didn’t... something, or better yet, somepony, had saved her right before she hit the ground. A flying pony, about the same age as she. Much to her regret, any further details surrounding this mysterious pony failed to her memory.

Luna gasped, still wondering.

“Who was him?”

A single word came up spontaneously to her head: “friend”.

It was not until that exact moment that she realised she used to have a foalhood friend. Perhaps she had never told her sister or their parents about him.

Now that she was thinking about it, they actually had met more than once, in the same hill he had saved her from falling to certain death. Every night he would be there waiting for her, and they would talk, and play, and laugh together. And in the end, he would always promise to come back... until one night he failed to that promise.

But what still bothered her was that, as much as she tried, she could not remember any of his traits, nor even his name. She turned to the face of the moon again, hoping it would give her more answers.

A soft breeze ran through her mane, flipping it graciously and caressing her cheeks, as a voice from the heart sang a sentimental melody.

“These nights used to be so full of wonders

Under the sky, a filly princess would play

Alone with herself, with no friends

But the stars in the wide dark veil

One night, another soul she had found

Before a twisting moment of destiny

He would not let her go down

Such kindness should be remembered dearly

Somepony to talk to

Somepony to play with

They swam the same moonlit waters

They flew through the same dark sky

Somepony who, in the end,

She could call a friend

He would not let her fall

Would not abandon her at all

He wiped away her tears

And scared away her fears

For many nights they had met at the hill

Laughing and playing in their youth’s thrill

At dawn he’d part with a promise of returning

Till one night none of him was ever heard or seen

Somepony to talk to

Somepony to play with

They swam the same moonlight waters

They flew through the same dark sky

Somepony who, in the end,

She could call a friend

Somepony who, in the end,

She could call a friend...”

One small, simple tear formed in her eye and streamed slowly down her cheek. She was suddenly feeling alone in a way she had never felt before, and it devastated her just to think that she had such a dear friend and now she was not able to even remember his name. Or perhaps... he had abandoned her, for some reason. But why?

“Oh, what am I going to do?” she asked herself quietly, as the tear dropped lonely on the cold stone floor.

In Ponyville, every house had its lights out for hours while its inhabitants slept, except for one. The tree house library in the centre of town had still some activity going on inside, in the room of the top floor, particularly.

Twilight Sparkle had decided to do some late night lecture, without realising just how late it was, and that all the lights on were bothering Spike’s sleep, as he got up clearly annoyed and exhausted.

“Twilight! When are you going to give those books a rest and come to bed?”

“In a minute, Spike!” she answered promptly, not even looking away from the page she was on.

“Ugh... you said that one hour ago. And one hour before that! This is going through all night! Please, pleeease would you just come to bed and turn off the lights at once?”

“Hmm... alright! I think I’ve had a good advance in my reading, anyway.”

Spike sighed in relief and dropped his head heavily on the pillow. She turned off the lights and whispered “good night” to the young dragon’s ear, who was already snoring and utterly unresponsive.

She then laid down on her bed between the comfortable sheets and looked through the window, admiring how Princess Luna’s moon looked so beautiful and full that night.

Only then had she realised just how tired she was, as she took a big, wide yawn, and felt her eyelids weighty. She closed them and thought about the big party she had promised Pinkie to attend to in the next morning, where all their friends would be as well. Before she could even notice, she had already fallen asleep profoundly.

She had the strangest dream, that night; one that could very well be described as an actual nightmare, if not a omen of events yet to happen, that is, if Twilight were a superstitious pony.

At first, she found herself swirling uncontrollably inside of what seemed to be a massive interdimensional vortex. Intense lights and deafening indistinctive noises disorientated her, until it all finally stopped, all of a sudden, and she felt solid land beneath her hooves.

Upon a first glimpse, she recognised herself in the middle of a sinister, deserted street, where it rained torrentially. However, she could not help but to find her surroundings quite familiar... and right she was: it was the Crystal Empire, only it was severely different from how she remembered it, ever lively and bright, now so awfully quiet and dark.

As she turned around, she immediately spotted a faint shimmer, reflected by a rather peculiar object, laying on the paved floor in the centre of the street she was on, where the rain water had quickly rose a scarce centimetres from the ground. She walked over to it and carefully picked it up with both her hooves, inspecting the large metallic piece, dripping water from its edges.

What she held before her eyes appeared to be an odd-looking black mask, without a single orifice for eyes, nostrils or mouth, carved with some strange symbols, perhaps some ancient runes, she thought.

The metal it was made of did not feel like any Twilight could remember by the touch, though it was quite hard, but also very light. But most intriguing of all were its dimensions: an incredibly wide maxillary edge, apparently meant to attach to some proper neck piece, added to such a spacious inside it would still feel loose to anypony she could think of, even Big Mac or Princess Celestia.

Beyond the bizarre and somewhat frightening faceless appearance of this mask, she could have sworn it was staring at her, trying to communicate through silent whispers. A thought that was starting to break through her over-rational mind and sent an unpleasant chill down her spine.

Twilight awoke in the next morning as normally as she could pretend. She got up from bed and stretched a little, before going to the bathroom to wash her face and arrange herself for the day. When she finished combing her hair and exited the bathroom, Spike was still asleep, but she could not bring herself to wake him up, since he was still a baby and she knew very well he needed his due time to rest in order to grow up healthy. Soon, she had already put behind her back all about her previous dream.

She did, however, notice something rather unusual: it was still dark in her room, which she thought it was strange, since, by that time, the sun should have been already raised, and its rays shining through the chinks in the curtains. She walked over to the window and opened it gently. What she saw then made her agape in absolute mystification, as she could not believe what was right before her eyes. She was not even able to explain it to herself.

A thick, grey fog utterly covered Ponyville, making it difficult to see the most nearby houses sharply, which were nothing but big, dark silhouettes from where she was looking, and it was freezing outside, as she felt a chilly gust of wind unpleasantly hitting her face the moment she put her nose outside the window frames.

But most strange of all was that it was impossible to discern if it was already day or still night. The bright solar sphere was nowhere to be seen, yet the sky seemed scarcely illuminated, so it was nothing like night time at all, neither.

Twilight knew better than anypony that only princess Celestia and princess Luna could control the daytime and the night time, respectively, and that the two of them were supposedly the most powerful ponies alive. So why, then, would such a sudden bizarre phenomenon occur? She began to worry badly.

“Wha... what’s going on here?”

Chapter VII: Trail of Memories

The purple unicorn felt utterly baffled by the sudden sensation of whirling uncontrollably inside an insubstantial space full of dark mist, and an indistinguishable uproar coming from every single direction. She had already lost her orientation and did not know where she was anymore, not that the constant, rapid pulsation was facilitating her discerning. It all seemed like a gigantic, eerie maelstrom. So much harsh was the turbulence that she had sworn it was taking forever to stop, until it finally did, only a few seconds later, in reality.

She landed violently on a hard surface with a painful dull sound. With great effort, she managed to gather some strength in order to get back up on her hooves, and proceeded to inspect her surroundings. As a slightly cold breeze soothingly caressed her aching body, she recognised a rather familiar sight before her: shining paved streets, beautiful tall buildings and a majestic, bright castle rising its high towers far away in the distance, all made of crystal.

She was still in the Crystal Empire. However, something looked very different about it. Despite the fact that it was still completely deserted and dead silent, it was no longer surrounded by the magical fog, and the sky was fully visible again, only with some ordinary rain clouds scattered around, menacing to start precipitating soon. She gasped when she noticed that even the moon had also returned to its original position, but found it more strange than actually relieving.

A déjà vu struck her upon realising that this was all like the strange dream she had the night before the events started. Yet, nothing made sense, she thought. The last thing she remembered was the dark alicorn mysteriously appearing inside the Crystal Heart chamber, striking Shining Armor and putting him unconscious, destroying the Elements of Harmony, and lastly conjuring up a spell on all of them. After that, they found themselves separated and spinning around inside the massive wormhole, which led to an apparently “normal version” of the Crystal Empire. Maybe this was all just an illusion... an alternate dimension, maybe.

Something definitely did not feel right. He could have simply killed them all with the greatest ease, so why would he send them there instead? She had to go investigate, and what better place to start than the castle itself, where it all started? It would be a long way to travel by hoof, though, and the streets were quite dark... but then again, they also seemed as empty and calm as back in the “foggy Equestria”, so there should not be anything that could possibly do her any harm, and hopefully she would even encounter her friends on the way... assuming that they were sent there as well.

As she began to walk, a loud thunder rumbled up above, startling her, right before torrential rain began to fall, which took her completely by surprise and soaked the entirety of her fur in an unpleasant way. Grunting and cursing a little, she rushed to cover under the balconies on one side of the street she was on, and continued walking while sticking close to the walls.

Meanwhile, back in the Canterlot castle, the princess of the moon had succumbed to weariness and fell fast asleep by her bedridden sister’s side, for even the embodiment of the night must sleep sometimes. She wandered alone in her own dreams, through some unknown dense and sinister woods, treading carefully over the fresh, dewy grass. It was the middle of the night... her night, back when everything was normal. Yet, that did not impede her from feeling uncomfortably frightened and aware, for she did not know where she was, or how she had even end up there.

Although the first sight of the massive tree line ahead seemed quite unfamiliar, she felt an unexpected déjà vu as she reached a vast clearing with a small hill in the centre. From there, one could clearly gaze the precious night sky, with all the stars dispersed and scintillating, and, in the middle, her stunning white full moon, shining radiantly, as always.

She could be admiring the gorgeous view, or wondering when did it all come back to normal, but instead her mind was distracted by a deeper and more sensitive thought.

“I’ve been here before...” she muttered to herself quietly “but when? Why?”

The annoying screeches of a random flock of bats passing by, high up in the air, alarmed her for a split second, but what really put her on full alert was the sudden desperate cry of a young foal that followed it, also coming from far above. She looked up and searched around very afflicted, until her eyes finally caught the silhouette of a filly falling from a great altitude.

She promptly spread her wings in an attempt to take off and go save her, but found herself unexplainably incapable to do so, like all her muscles had mysteriously frozen in the instant.

“No!... NO!” Luna screamed, devastated for being physically unable to save the helpless little filly, as she witnessed her falling to certain death.

Returning to the mysterious world, Applejack had just gotten up on her hooves a little disorientated and with a stinging headache from being thrown so fiercely to the ground after exiting the vortex. Upon taking a quick look around at her whereabouts, she came to the conclusion that she was still on the streets of the Crystal Empire, though the climate seemed to have returned to normal. She spotted the sky-scraping towers of the castle in the distance and, as if by instinct, she got the feeling that there was where she was supposed.

A few minutes later of walking alone, a shrilling thunder sounded, bursting through the dead silence of the streets, on which the only sound heard had been the echoing of her hooves stepping on the hard crystal floor with a constant, eerie cadence. It did not jolt her, actually, as she was accustomed to all types of weather from the agrarian work, so that she had already noticed the massive rain clouds approaching. However, it did irritate her a bit when the cold rain began to pour incessantly, soaking her coat and making her hat weighty on her head.

“Well, darn it!” she grumbled “Did it really have to rain now?”

Suddenly, her ears perked up, as she heard a faint moan coming from an alley on the other side of the street. She trotted there to discover its source, and found her rainbow-haired friend lying on the ground, her face visibly expressing the pain from her rough landing.

“RD, there you are!” Applejack rushed to her fallen form, promptly lifting her up and passing her front leg over her own shoulder.

“Where... where are we?...” the torpid cyan pegasus mumbled, while limping.

“Don’t know, sugarcube. We’ve all been separated inside that wormhole... that’s all Ah can remember.”

They got out from the alley, and went back to the main street.

“Where are we going?”

“Right now, Ah believe we should get to the castle.”

“Why?”

“Just this feeling Ah have...”

More minutes have passed. Despite the fact that their pace was significantly slowed down due to the hobbling pony, the sound of the large raindrops falling on the ground and the echoing hoofsteps duplicated in number made the march significantly more comfortable and less sinister.

At some point, in an attempt to break the silence between the two of them, Applejack spoke up.

“So... how did you get injured again?”

Rainbow Dash did not want to talk, for she had hurt her jaw on the landing, but she still made an effort to speak.

“Ugh... I was thrown to the rooftops and rolled all the way down, before landing where you found me... I’m lucky I didn’t break my wings!”

Applejack chuckled in a friendly way “Heh, well you sure do seem to be always getting yourself into trouble and later depending on me...”

The pegasus halted all of a sudden, forcing the earth pony to stop as well, and stared incredulously at her, like she had been awfully insulted.

“Excuse me?!”

“Yeah, remember yesterday, when you got struck by that lightening and Ah went back to get you, saving your life? This is the second time in two days that you get injured and end up depending on me...”

“Depending on you?! I didn’t ask for you to help me, you know!”

Rainbow Dash swiftly pulled her leg off from Applejack’s back and walked away from her, her eyes piercing hers like daggers.

“Now, hey, sugarcube, Ah didn’t mean to offend you...”

“But you just said it! I’M always getting myself into trouble, and I’M always depending on somepony else to save my flank! Do you really think that I’m that irresponsible, Applejack?! That I can’t take care of my own?!”

The orange pony could not recognise her anymore. That was the second time in two days that Rainbow Dash turned against one of her friends. Why was she unexpectedly behaving like this?

“Rainbow Dash... what’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?! Perhaps it was befriending you eggheads, who think that I’m nothing but a whining filly and foolish brat, in the first place!”

Applejack refused to believe in her ears. She was not even able to speak after hearing such a cruel confession. She stood still and agape, as the pegasus spread her wings and readily flew off towards the sky, through the hard rain.

Alone once again, the farmer pony found herself more devastated now than before she had come across with Rainbow Dash in the alley. Her words had been like stabs through her heart, as she felt everything shattering at that moment. Not even the rain could appease her broken heart.

However, she did not remain stationary on the same spot for much longer, as an otherworldly, shrieking sound unexpectedly came from behind her, a few blocks away, which made her turn around to look back, slightly frightened of what she would find.

There was a large group of ponies, of all the three common races, coming in her direction at a slow pace. At first sight, nothing unusual protruded about them, but, as they got closer, Applejack could notice that all of them had their coats and manes terribly discoloured and darkened. Furthermore, all of them walked with their eyes closed, which gave them quite a disturbing, spine-chilling aspect.

She had a bad feeling about those gloomy ponies, so, rather than go to them, she scampered away and took the first street corner she found, in an attempt to lose them. They did not seem to have followed her, but that she was not enough to ensure her that she was safe just yet. From what she had seen during the last couple of days, anything could turn up to be hostile, and jump out of nowhere when she least expected.

As she slowed down her pace, her eyes suddenly met with those of her own reflection on a mirrored store window, right to her side. The two pairs of green eyes got closer to each other, as she leant slightly forward, only to observe just how miserable she looked: all wet and soaked, with awful dark circles around her eyes from the lack of sleep during the last two days. Now that she thought about it, none of them had had any rest since the events started, just the day before.

She rubbed her eyes very gently with her front hooves, kneading them through her closed eyelids. As she opened them again and looked back at her mirrored self, she saw an image so startling it made her immediately jump away from the glass: her reflection was completely frozen in the same place, as in a photograph, and had now an identical appearance to that of those ponies from before, having its coat changed from orange to a murky brownish, its mane from blonde to a more dark and dead shade of gold, and its eyes closed, with what seemed to be blood tears beginning to stream from them and down her cheeks.

Then, before Applejack could do or think of anything else, her other self in the mirror shot her eyes open in a split second, revealing a pair of horrendous black eyeballs with two menacing bright red dots for pupils, staring at her, as its mouth curled into a sadistic smile, right before it rapidly jumped out of the mirror, launching itself to attack her, but missing barely, as Applejack managed to dodge it.

A creepy female voice sounded inside the orange pony’s head.

“I know your fears, Applejack. Imprisoned, but never truly gone, I have seen them. Basked in them. Dwelled in minds such as this realm you find yourself trapped in.”

She did not understand what it meant, nor did she lost a single second discerning it, as her attacker charged again at her with incredibly swift moves. She only thought about running away, as fast as she could, and try to get to the castle before more of those things appeared.

In the meantime, back at the Canterlot castle, a sleeping princess of the night roamed through what had suddenly become a nightmare.

“No!... NO!” Luna screamed, devastated for being physically unable to save the helpless little filly, as she witnessed her falling to certain death.

Then, to her great astonishment, she glimpsed a small dark blur hastily tearing through the sky, coming absolutely out of nowhere, and successfully grabbing the blue filly before she got to the ground level, and then flying with her to the pit of the hill, where it landed and carefully put her down.

The princess of the night was now able to take a better look at the filly, who was lying on the smoothly stirring grass, facing down and still trembling from the shock, until she finally calmed down from the trauma and turned her face up to look at her saviour.

At that moment, everything froze in time, as Luna widened her eyes and agape in disbelief: she looked just like her, when she was young.

After watching this whole scene, she realised that she, indeed, remembered this particular episode of her foalhood. This was when she met the one who would become her secret best friend, before he mysteriously disappeared and she forgot about him. A saddening thought came to her head, as she considered that this all was nothing more than just a dream, and that everything was happening inside her own mind, for only she knew about their meeting. Nevertheless, even if none of this was real, and merely a memory she was recalling during her sleep, she was still glad to see her friend again.

She carefully inspected the pony sitting in front of her younger self. A young colt, slim and tall, about the same age as her sister, with a pair of small wings. His mane and tail were black and his coat of a dark greyish, but no cutie mark could be found on his little flank. Her eyes then caught something sticking out on his forehead... a horn. He was an alicorn, too.

Alas, so dark was this particular night that she was not able to see more details about him, not even his eyes, much to her disappointment.

“T-thank you for saving me...” the filly Luna timidly faltered.

“Oh, that was nothing, really” he responded in a kind tone. He sounded a bit shy as well, but, nevertheless, she found him very sweet and his voice quite soothing.

The blue young princess slowly got up and sat facing him, while the adult Luna kept listening to the whole dialogue attentively, only scarce meters from them, not that they seemed to notice her presence.

“How did you know that I was in trouble?” the filly inquired.

“I saw you falling from there” he pointed his tiny hoof towards another distant hill in the middle of the woods, which was only mass of land visible from the one where they stood.

“What were you doing up there?”

“I usually come here every night.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Do your parents know you wander in the woods this late?”

“Do yours?”

She blushed a bit and tried to avoid the topic.

“What do you come here for?”

“I have never been fond of the sunlight. It is just too bright and hot. I prefer the night, and I have always admired the way you raise it.”

The young princess blushed again.

“N-nopony has ever paid much attention to my nights...”

The adult princess shed a single tear, not really knowing where it came from. She had always felt like she was being put aside, and watched her elder sister get all the attention and respect, which ultimately made her succumb to the overwhelming jealousy in her heart and turn into Nightmare Moon. If only she had remembered back then that there used to be somepony who liked her so much for what she was... maybe Equestria never had to see the evil lurking inside of her, and she would not be imprisoned in the moon by her own sister.

“You... you really like the night?” the filly asked again.

“Yes. It is quite calm and beautiful. Such as you.”

“Well... thank you.” She looked at him, blushing even more, with an adorable face filled with a smile of pure happiness.

“What is your name?”

She bashfully turned her gaze to the ground, unaware that one of her front hooves kept scratching the grass nervously.

“L-Luna...”

“Nice to meet you, Luna. I like your name very much.”

“Thank you, you’re very sweet. A-and what’s your name?”

In the distorted dimension, Twilight was already close to the castle entrance. She was completely soaked in rain water and uncomfortably cold, but at least nothing out of the ordinary had appeared out of nowhere or tried to harm her so far.

At some point, she spotted something moving around in the distance, so she hastened her pace to go investigate it. It looked like the figure of a pony, seemingly lost, as it kept walking anxiously in circles.

“Hey!” she shouted, hoping for it to listen.

And it did, as it immediately halted, turned around and ran to meet her. As it got nearer, Twilight could clearly identify to whom that silhouette belonged to: it was Cadance.

“Twilight! I’m so glad to finally see somepony! Where are we?”

“I don’t know, but I think that the dark alicorn sent us to an alternate dimension created by his mind.”

“Oh no, what are we going to do now? How do we get out of here?”

“If he conjured up the interdimensional vortex spell in the Crystal Heart chamber, then there’s probably an exit point in that exact same location in this dimension.”

“So we need to get to the castle?”

“Yes, but, before we find the exit point, we should go find the others...”

All of a sudden, their attention was caught by the sound of many hooves approaching them from all directions. There were groups of eerie-looking ponies with darkened fur and their eyes closed absolutely everywhere, surrounding them completely.

“W-who are you?” Cadance asked in dread.

Their answer came in the form of a female voice reverberating inside both their heads, with a nauseating sarcastic tone.

“Ah, Celestia’s protégé. Where is your mentor now? She is not here to save you, is she? Poor, poor Twilight Sparkle. Stuck here in this demented world with a false alicorn!”

“Who are you?! Answer us!” Twilight demanded daringly, trying to conceal her immense horror at that precise moment.

“Tell me, Twilight Sparkle... do you fear death?”

One of the many threatening ponies around them walked closer and stopped, before shooting his eyes open, revealing two terrifying black eyes with shining red pupils that pierced through their souls and, below them, blood tears poured continuously, dripping on the floor. He grinned insanely, and immediately jumped at them to gash their flesh.

Suddenly, Applejack showed up and kicked the attacker in the middle of his jump, sending him through the air and onto the ground.

“Applejack!” Twilight and Cadance called at the same time, definitely thankful to see her.

“C’mon, y’all! We can’t stay here, it’s not safe on the streets!”

“We need to get to the castle!” the purple unicorn informed.

“That’s exactly where Ah was heading too, follow me!”

With Applejack on the lead, the three ponies found an opening between two of the mysterious hostiles and ran away swiftly towards the last intersection before reaching the main street in front of the big crystal staircase that led to the tall castle doors.

“We’re almost there! Just a little further!”

Before they noticed, they were already inside the enormous entrance hall, with the heavy doors shut behind them. At last they could sigh in relief and have some calm, comfort, warmth, an opportunity to dry their fur and, most importantly, safety.

“Thank goodness Ah’ve found you just in time!”

“Thanks, Applejack. By the way, have you found any of the girls outside? Or my brother?”

The farmer pony hesitated a bit, but ultimately spoke up, leaning her head slightly down in shame.

“Ah’ve only met with Rainbow Dash. She was hurt, so Ah offered to help her up, but then Ah... said some nasty, stupid things in a joking way, which only made her become mad at me. After that, she took off and... she was gone.”

“What?!” Twilight scolded her “You let Rainbow Dash fly away ALONE with this rain? And with all those things creeping around on the streets? What if she falls down and they get her because she can’t get up?! How could you abandon your friend like that?!”

“Ah’m so sorry, Twi. You’re right, Ah shouldn’t have left Dash on her own. Ah’m a horrible friend.”

As Twilight calmed back down, she realised that Applejack was, indeed, extremely regretful and angry at herself. She walked over to her and placed a friendly hoof on her shoulder.

“Don’t say that, Applejack; you’re a wonderful friend, and I’m sorry for yelling at you like that. I don’t know what happened between you two, but I do know that you would never say or do anything with the intention of hurting your friends. And I’m glad you had the courage to tell us the truth straight away.”

“Thanks Twi...” she forced a modest smile.

An astounding beam of orange light suddenly began irradiating from Applejack’s chest.

“What in tarnation? What’s happenin’ to me?!”

Twilight and Cadance watched in surprise and wonder, as the collar representing the Element of Honesty materialised around their friend’s neck all in one piece, once again.

“That’s it!” The librarian pony jolted in great enthusiasm “When the dark alicorn shattered the Elements, he only managed to destroy their physical form. Yet their power is still alive, within each one of us! We’ll just have to revive them, and the jewels will appear again!”

“Yeah, but we don’t even know where the rest of the girls or your brother are!” Applejack recalled.

“Then we’ll have to go find them. Who knows? Maybe some have been sent inside the castle, or already got in here before us.”

Twilight promptly took the lead as they proceeded deeper into the castle’s long, dim and bare corridors.

Fluttershy had exited the vortex in the upstairs hallways of the castle, where the dormitories were, and she had been wandering around the many corridors there for several minutes, each looking absolutely identical to the previous one, and everywhere she turned had the same faint amount of light and a deadening silence that put all her senses on full alert.

After countless twists and turns, she finally made it to a hallway that was clearly different from the others, for it was shorter and only had a single door, right in front.

The diffident yellow Pegasus slowly approached it, rotated the knob and pushed it open as quietly as she could, afraid of what could possibly await on the other side.

It was just an ample room. There was a majestic round canopy bed on one side, and a big closet on the other; ahead of the door was a large window, through which all the light in that room entered, and one could see the rain pouring outside.

Fluttershy got a bit scared when she noticed somepony sitting on the floor by the window, but she immediately calmed down after realising it was just... a foal? What was a young foal doing here, in this place? From a closer look, she stated that it was a colt.

He remained there, sat perfectly still, facing the window and watching the rain fall outside, utterly absent of her presence.

“Hello...?” she muttered serenely.

The little colt was a bit startled to hear somepony there, as he turned his face quickly around to see her. Only then could Fluttershy observe him better: he was a young alicorn, with a greyish coat and a slightly darker mane and tail, and he had no cutie mark. His eyes stared at her, more frightened than she was of that bizarre dimension where she had entered; they were of a very brilliant icy-blue, like two small, glowing sapphires. She could almost swear that those were the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen.

“Oh, please don’t be afraid...” she said in her characteristic kind and peaceful manner, trying to gain his trust before stepping closer to him carefully “I’m Fluttershy. What’s your name, little one?”

He faltered a little at first, but ultimately managed to give a full response.

“M-my name is...”