34 Face to Face
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Rainbow Dash delivered a ferocious uppercut to a stone tiger, but rather than knocking it out, the big cat absorbed the blow and bit at the Element of Loyalty, narrowly missing her hind legs.
"Ugh…Twilight! Why isn't this working? Talonbite went down quickly enough!" She ducked as a stray rail cannon shot thundered by, blowing a crater in the wall, the rubble dropping into the pool.
Twilight hit a gray wyvern with a bolt of magic, but the flying statue shrugged it off and breathed a beam of red energy at the six ponies. The beam missed, but then the wyvern dived at Pinkie and snapped off a bit of her tail, making the party pony jump in surprise.
"I don't know, Dash! It seems like these things have a special kind of magic protecting them!"
They fought on and on, but just like the Doomknights, Faedran's oversized chess pieces refused to stay down for more than three seconds. The oncoming troops eventually backed the Elements of Harmony into the collapsed doorway.
Twilight and her friends looked at one another, trying to think of a plan. In their minds, everything they had ever used the Elements for rushed by in a hurricane of thought.
There was a second blinding flash of rainbow light, the spectral colors weaving into a protective shell around the six ponies. The stone pieces, ever relentless, charged at the bubble, but once the stone lance knight at the front touched the shield spell, the gray beings abruptly stopped. Cracks spread over the smooth gray marble. The rest of the pieces could only watch with unfeeling orange eyes as the lance knight's cracked body flared with rainbow light, then crumbled into dust on the floor.
On Faedran's chessboard, the miniature lance knight suddenly fell apart.
Mauraxus snorted derisively. "Really? Another shield spell? Hah. I'll just collapse it, and get this over with."
The dracolich waved a claw, sending a barrage of blue sparks at the Elemental bubble. The sparks zeroed in on Twilight and her friends, but as soon as they struck the rainbow shell, the sparks fizzled out and died, leaving the shell intact. The dracolich growled in confusion.
"What sorcery is this?" Mauraxus hissed. "Why. Can. I. Not. Break. Your. Spell?" Every word was punctuated with another torrent of sparks, each brighter and fiercer than the last. But no matter what Mauraxus threw at them, the bone dragon's spells could not even scratch the magic given off by the Elements of Harmony.
"Whatever you're doing, girls, don't stop!" Rarity said, her necklace giving off an ambient light. "We've got some time to think. Let's make the most of it; Twilight! How do we win this?"
The statues stared at the bubble of rainbow light, but did not dare to follow in the lance knight's footsteps and touch it. The gravel that used to be a chess piece was still smoldering slightly.
"I…I don't know! If only we had a clue!" Twilight fretted, looking at Mauraxus, who was continually firing spells at them.
As if on cue, Veil's lexicon, which Twilight had picked up from the room before, burst open, the pages flurrying and turning, finally settling on a page with a picture of a dark being casting a fireball spell at a wall, turning the wall into what looked like pudding. A short entry adorned the opposite page.
Twilight began to read the words aloud as she picked the book up with her hooves. "Manipulating reality," she babbled as quickly as she could, "is a particular branch of magic developed by the Grand Master that allows the user to completely change the nature and properties of anything, so long as it can be imagined. With sufficient training and knowledge, it is possible to change any object into another object, alter the nature of a spell, or do anything at all, so long as the caster has an understanding of what they are attempting to manipulate."
Another hammerblow of blue sparks cascaded harmlessly down the ponies' bubble. And suddenly, Twilight understood.
"He doesn't understand." She whispered, looking at the furious dracolich. "He doesn't understand what friendship is, so he can't manipulate it! Don't you see, girls? Mauraxus can change how normal magic and brute force affects them, but because he can't understand friendship, Mauraxus can't stop us!"
"Funny. I was just thinking the same thing."
Sirmyurin had suddenly teleported into the bubble, panting heavily. The alicorn was covered with scratches and burns, every injury crawling with blue sparks. "Too many Doomknights. Those rail cannons pack a punch, and they refuse to die. Or stay dead."
"Why?" asked Rainbow Dash.
Sirmyurin smirked. "Doomknights are a particularly nasty kind of undead. It's an old necromancer proverb that 'you can't kill what's already undead', but Mauraxus seems to have warped reality so that I can't even hurt them anymore. Smart pile of bones, that one. If we were still on the same side, I'd congratulate him."
"So how do we beat them?" Fluttershy asked timidly, flinching as a dozen ghostly scimitars disintegrated against the shield of Friendship. Mauraxus' Doomknights joined the ranks of Faedran's statues, launching spells and firing their weapons at the shell. Twilight began to feel a slight drain on her strength.
The alicorn took a moment to think. "As long as Mauraxus is here, he'll keep tipping the odds in their favor. Faedran plays fair, but Mauraxus is the kind that will do anything to win, but there's no way even a dracolich has enough raw power to summon all these Doomknights... Oh no."
The last exclamation was directed at the outside, where a different-looking Doomknight was aiming some kind of tube at them. There was an explosion, and hundreds of tiny black darts came arcing out, stabbing into the ground around them, sending cracks across the floor. The darts shattered, sending minuscule shards of shadow against the bubble.
Faedran swooped to Mauraxus' side.
Mauraxus, stop. If you continue summoning extradimensional weaponry like this, you'll collapse the entire infrastructure. Not only that, you are getting distracted. Focus on Veyrul, and then we can get out of here.
The dracolich paid his superior no attention, instead opening another yellow portal with a wave of his sword and allowing a bright green beam to come shooting out at the ponies, but like the rest of the attacks, the beam did nothing but make the bone dragon angrier.
Sirmyurin had been formulating a plan as he watched his former colleague's fruitless efforts.
"I've got it. Mauraxus is drawing power from his sword, Soulshatter. That blade contains over a hundred thousand souls, and if we don't separate them, eventually, he'll find a way through. So, I have an idea, but we'll only have one try to get it right. Are you with me?"
"Of course!"
"Sure thing!"
"Indeed we are."
Sirmyurin looked across the room at Veil, who had been all but forgotten in the chaos. His eyes misted over for a second. "I doubt it'll be long before Faedran gets over the shock of all of this and get back on task. We've got to hurry, if Veil is to make it out of this alive. So, this is what you must do…"
Mauraxus was just in the process of throwing a barrage of thunderbolts when suddenly, the barrier being given off by the Elements of Harmony vanished in a cloud of smoke, enshrouding the statues and a few Doomknights that had closed in. The bone dragon grinned, readying a ball of magma in his jaws, waiting for the smoke to clear.
"Now I have you…"
The smoke drifted apart to show Twilight, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Sirmyurin with their backs to the wall, all out of magic. Mauraxus roared triumphantly and let the ball of magma fly, hitting his targets dead center, the shockwave flattening the area around the door, breaking apart statues and Doomknights alike. When the dust finally settled, lying in the crater was nothing but the crumbled remains of statues, the broken bodies of fallen Doomknights, and the charred outlines of six ponies and one alicorn, burned into the floor.
Mauraxus! What have you done!
The superior looked at the chessboard in outrage as the last of his pieces crumbled to ash.
"I am sorry, my superior, if I have damaged your precious chess pieces, but you must remember, not everything is a game. With the alicorn and the pesky interlopers gone, we can finally attend to the actual objective."
Do not mock me…
"I am not mocking you. I am keeping us on task. Now…" Mauraxus looked down at Veil, lying passed out on the black marble floor. "I suppose that makes it easier. Where is the armor?"
"Right here."
"Thank you, Sirmyurin." The dracolich seemed to freeze up, then slowly turned around. "Wait…"
Whatever Mauraxus was planning to say next, nobody ever knew, because at that moment, a wave of rainbow light slammed into the bone dragon, sending him flying into the ceiling with a bone-breaking crunch. Soulshatter dropped from the dracolich's tail, hitting the floor and slowly levitating back up. Faedran took that opportunity to seize Veyrul's armor and vanish into thin air. The Elements of Harmony and Sirmyurin uncloaked and walked toward the undead dragon.
"Why…can I not warp your spells?" Mauraxus snarled, picking himself up, bone chips falling from his cracked frame.
"Because," Twilight said, her eyes twinkling. "You don't understand friendship, and friendship is magic."
Mauraxus' only response was to roar and pounce at the six ponies, sword in tow, but there was a sudden flash of light, and the dracolich's wings locked up, sending the bone dragon into a pool, water splashing everywhere.
Sirmyurin walked over to where the end of Mauraxus' tail lay on the floor, and picked up Soulshatter from the cracked vertebrae.
"Now, let's end this, once and for all."
Veil was dreaming. In her dream, she was surrounded by beings who she knew to be friends, but, as the ebony pony watched, one by one, they turned away and walked into the darkness, until only one remained, the two of them standing in the dark together.
A pony in black armor stood facing Veil, eyes glowing red behind the visor.
"Who…who are you?" Veil asked, her voice trembling a little.
"You know me." The armored pony responded, taking a step closer.
"No. No I don't. Please, tell me. I'm all alone here."
The pony in armor did a quick circle around Veil, who found herself unable to move.
Then the pony's visor flicked up, revealing...Veil herself. The area around her lit up, revealing a truly horrible sight. They were both standing on the scorched remains of dead beings, with a thin film of blood under their hooves. The Veil in armor gave an evil grin and moved even closer.
"I am you, Veil. We have nopony but each other. It's always been that way."
"No…no. I have mom…dad…my friends…" Veil stuttered, trying to retreat but unable to.
"Mother? Father?" The armored Veil laughed harshly. Do you think that they truly cared about us? That they mourned us when we left Equestria? Ha! We were forgotten about as soon as they sired another daughter."
"Wait! Another daughter? I have…a sister?"
"Indeed we did! And they loved her more than they ever did us." Veil flinched as her armored twin came even closer, so close she could feel the hot breath on her face, and it was frightening. "As for your friends, do you remember what they did when you were attacked by manitcores?"
"N-no." The real Veil said, trying to pull away.
"Liar. You remember, I remember. They all flew away, leaving us to die. Were it not for Mauraxus, we would both be dead."
"That was a mistake." Veil whispered. "I wish I'd never accepted that deal. Now, mom, dad, my sister, and my friends are all gone, and what have I gained?"
"What have we gained? We gained power, prestige, and friends who will never let us down. Now, let us fulfill our destiny, and give rise to the most powerful Court member who ever existed."
The armored Veil pulled closer, even closer to her unarmored counterpart.
"I'm doing this because I love you."
And the pegasus in armor leaned in the last few inches, and kissed Veil, their lips touching. Fireworks went off in Veil's mind. She could feel the energy flowing from the intimate contact, slowly strengthening her. The armored Veil pulled away for a moment, panting breathlessly.
"So, shall we do this? Come. Destiny awaits. Let us fulfill it, alone, as it has always been."
They kissed again, Veil's mouth being invaded by her copy's tongue, hungrily pulling her closer.
The taste of blood filled both their mouths. The armored pegasus looked down, gasping as she saw the bracer blade in her chest, piecing the armor like tissue paper. Veil, the real Veil, smiled sadly and let her copy fall, strings of blood connecting them at the mouth.
"I'm not alone. Even now, Twilight, Rainbow, Fluttershy, Pinkie, Rarity, Applejack, and Sirmyurin are all waiting for me, fighting for me, back in the land of the living. You, you're part of my past, and I love you too, but that time is over. I'm going to follow my heart and live life, just the way Celestia intended me to."
"But...if you go back…Faedran…Mauraxus…they'll destroy…you…"
"My life should have ended years ago." Veil said, looking down at herself. "Maybe my time has come, and if it has, I'll meet it as myself."
With nothing else to say, Veil summoned a yellow portal and began to walk toward it, back to the real world. As she departed, the dying pegasus on the floor shouted one last retort.
"I…WiLL…have…YoUr…SouL…OnE …Day…" Veyrul roared, shaking the dreamscape with his fury.
Veil began to cry ask she walked, leaving the dark dream behind.
Maybe you will, but until that day comes, my soul is my own.
Author's Notes
Veil kissing herself? What am I thinking?
Oh, wait. We're all insane here.
Leave a review, and fuel my insanity!