Vision. Part Two: Great Destroyer.

The garden shattered as she turned around, the sound of breaking glass filled her senses. Next came the pain, like her body was being pulled in every direction. Something was burrowing into the back of her neck, but no matter if she tried to stop it with her hooves or magic it kept going. Just as suddenly as it came, the pain was gone, leaving her with silence in the dark. She felt for some kind of shape and found walls, she was trapped in a sphere.
"Hello?" She called out. "Can anyone hear me?" She sat for another moment, listening for some kind of response.

"My fault..." A whispering, raspy voice muttered from somewhere beyond her bubble. "It's my fault... I need... to make it... Right." She heard something drop. "Hermarasta fe Duren, my Sister. I'll wipe this place clean for you."

"Hello?" Luna called again. She heard the clanking and sliding of metal in response. There was light, coming from the top of the sphere, a hole as if from a gloriously honed blade. The dome started to change color, like old projector film exposed to a flame. It bubbled and hissed, revealing the world outside.

It was horrible, a wasteland, charred and cratered, the trees bare, twisted and skeletal, the sky burning red under the gaze of an overlarge crimson sun. Strange bipedal creatures lay burned and cleaved on the ground. They looked familiar, as if someone had taken a pony and stretched them into this new form. Looking closer, she realized that she recognized many of them. There lay Shining Armor, curled protectively around the body of his wife, both hewn in twain. There lay fair Fluttershy, a hole through her throat. Beside her lay the stout Applejack, the head and nothing more. Luna cast her gaze around, searching for some living soul, she found none. Only enough dead to fill Canterlot Castle twofold.

What could have done this? She ran, trying to get away from the field of bodies. What manner of Destroyer is this? She continued running, diving into the charred forest. "Hello? Anyone? Please? What happened here?" She glimpsed another familiar face, propped up against a tree, this one stopped her dead in her tracks. She stood, staring at it. "No..." She breathed. Scrambling over to stand over the poor soul, his eyes unfocused, his mottled tan and brown coat stained with blood from the gash running down his chest. She fell to her knees before him, reaching forward with her hands to cup his blank face. She could feel tears running down her face, but she didn't care. Some vague part of her realized that she had been changed like the others around her, but she paid it no heed.

She wanted this to stop, this place didn't make any sense, she wanted things to go back to when the colt before her had sent her letters. She wanted the sun to stop watching, she could feel the malevolence rolling off it like the heat it gave. She had seen war before, but nothing like this, even Discord despised death, what would hand so many over to it like this? Nothing made sense anymore, what could have done this? Where did it go? Why was the land so ravished? Where was her sister?

The body shuddered, taking a weak breath and snapping Luna out of her rising shock.
"Who...?" He weakly croaked. Luna looked around frantically, making sure there was nothing else hiding among the ruined forest.
"Pip, it's me, Luna. You remember right?" Pipsqueak tried to look up at her, but Luna placed a hand on his face. "No, don't move. You're hurt bad." Pipsqueak took another shuddering breath.
"General... tell Master, I'm sorry." He smiled weakly. "We'll get him one day, right?"

"General? Master? What are you talking about?" Pipsqueak's eyes focused and he blinked.
"General Luna," he croaked again. "Run." Luna heard it, the clank of metal. She looked over the way Pipsqueak was looking. Standing among the ashes was a figure clad in alabaster armor, glinting red in the light of the malevolent sun. The head to the armor was draconian in appearance, ridges almost like vertebra ran from nose to crest. The entirety of the armor was done up in a similar motif, spines running down the limbs and back. The chest and barrel of the armor were crafted to appear as a skeletal ribcage. It was hard to pick out other details as the air around the figure seemed to ripple despite the fact that he stood over her not a foot away.

"Sadness?" The figure spoke in the same voice that she had heard in the dark, only now there was an edge of hatred and disgust. "That's a new trick for his creatures to have." Luna heard the sound of a blade being drawn. The figure drew a spear that looked as if it were carved from the spinal column of an immense serpent. He flicked it and the blade flipped down, changing the spear to a scythe. "What, does he think I'll pity you?" Drawing on some reserve of strength, Pipsqueak shoved her away just as the figure swung the blade. Causing it to miss Luna and instead bury itself through Pipsqueak's neck and into the tree.

"Pipsqueak, no!" Luna scrambled to her feet, looking first to Pipsqueak's lifeless body, and then to the figure attempting to telekinetically pull its blade from the burned husk of a tree. "You brute!" She screamed, running towards the being. She jumped at it just as it pulled its blade loose, knocking her away from it with the shaft. It picked her up by her feet, hanging her upside down in front of its face. And she recognized it. "Krika?"

"Oh, did your master not tell you who you were sent to kill?" Krika hefted his blade, cocking it back. "Then I have a message for your slug to take back to him. Know that no matter what you send after me, no matter whose face it wears like a mocking mask. I will kill it. No matter where you hide, I will find you, 'Wearer of the Sun', The Great Destroyer comes for you!" With that he brought down the blade, and she screamed as the trance was broken.