Chapter 26: Entangled
It didn't take the keen eyes of a griffon to spot a change so subtle and obscure as the complete change of colours in the sky. Dull scabrous red had melted into shocks of crimson, and now dims to the dulcet hues of purple and blue. In the most prideful part of her mind, Twilight wanted to believe that it was the sheer volume of raw aetheric energy reacting to her element. The deep lavenders and pale mauve that shifted from vibrant magenta had been her colours, after all. But once the swirling miasma of eldretch blues had entered the proverbial painting pot, she knew there was more to it. If her guide, this 'mayor' noticed it, he said nothing.
"Thank you for frightening off those, uh, dogs, by the way. I do appreciate it." She starts a little awkwardly while trotting alongside him. It seemed like the right thing for her to do after that little 'incident'.
"Oh, I can bet you could have dealt with them without me." The male replies with a dismissive wave of his hand. "But, you are quite welcome. Ahhhh, here we are."
He didn't need to say it, or to gesture with the flame topped cane to the bright amalgam tower of shimmering silver, though he did both. Like a single polished icicle of gleaming metal, they emerge from the winding row of rickety townhouses into an empty market square surrounding the silver tower. It was tall enough, though likely just a touch shorter than the Crystal Empire's Spire of the Eternal Heart. Wide at its base, it stretched sharply towards a single monolith of pure chromatic silver, and up in a multi-faceted metal structure that curves towards an icicle like peak that glitters with a cyan halo of light. Several little outrigger peaks stretch seamlessly from the main tower in sharp geometric planes.
Her scientific mind quickly caught something, and her smile brightens visibly, "Wow, it's like it's made of raw chromium! Look at that!" she says, eyes sparkling with wonder, practically reflecting off the base of the tower itself. "It has such regular facets and just look at its cleavage! It's a perfect elemental specimen!" The Alicorn's wings flicker as her mind turns over the elemental structure.
"I'm quite glad that you approve. This is the Tower of Anix. My own little corner away from the hustle and bustle of my responsibilities rebuilding this little spot." He gestures towards a doorway that opens very much by magic. With a glint of radiating cyan light, the perfect metal skin peels back, forming a perfect triangular arch that allows them entrance to the structure that looms over the rickety neglected city.
"And you are Anix, I take it?" Twilight looks back up, tilting her heads to regard the lanky figure.
He smiles, flashing just an instance of fangs. The pony most certainly notices that, and she files it away just as quickly as the practiced 'royal' smile tries to worm its way onto her face. "Hmm. Perceptive deduction, fortunate guess, or was it so obvious?"
"Well," she shrugs with a credulous glimmer of self-satisfaction, "it is new, so I suspect with a name like that, it was probably named for its owner."
"Mmmm," he smiles and nods, "Very close. You may call me Anix, for now. It's, more or less, correct." He gestures inside the black cavernous opening. The internal space, for what it is, glows with a pale blue light illuminating stark shadows and silhouettes of sharp interior decor not dissimilar to the Crystal Empire's usual bass reliefs, flying buttresses, and anchoring arcades.
No, no that wasn't quite right. Twilight was almost ashamed it took her so long: it had the same organic metallic crystalline formations as her own castle's undercrofts. She'd had her friends, and herself tidy the space up to make it homely, but even now she spotted the similar geometric shapes and near mathematical 'perfections'.
All at once, her mind registers the smell of primal magic, thick and noxious, melded with something more poignant. Twilight had sensed it twice, and it sent shivers down her spine both times. Now was a third, and its bitter perfume held the sickly scent of a ginko tree.
Dark magic.
She's sensed it with Celestia in the throne room, once contending with Sombra in the crystal empire. This was the same, and it snaps Twilight out of her amazed stupor in a heartbeat as Luna's words echo in her mind, 'Everypony and everyone past this point will mean you harm.'
Twilight starts again as the realization dulls her chipper disposition, "So, this space-"
"Is under new management, yes." Anix preempts whatever Twilight had to ask.
"Oh? For how long? It looks different compared to the surrounding homes." she points a hoof to the ramshackle townhouses and dilapidated spires jutting up around them. They were even taller than the two and three story residences she'd seen on first arrival. But each of these spaces bellied and sagged as if moments from crumbling.
She hadn't noticed it until she pointed, but latticed silver spars and prongs of crystalline growths were stretching up from caustic pools gathering in the recesses of the alleyways. Tiny kindled flames cast imperceptible pale witchlight so close to a Unicorn's illumination spells, that she swore she'd find a pony hiding around the corner.
"Not long." He replies, eyes glittering in the gathering dark.
Twilight swallows before turning back, not moving any closer to the entrance. Anix halts halfway between herself and the tower, his gaunt frame not obstructing any of the faint light pouring from the portal inwards. Instead, Twilight catches a glimpse of a shadow... more an outline, brighter than than the light bloom around it: it's tall, lanky, and winged, gasping a skull headed cane...
'Wait... skull?' Twilight looks more covertly, spotting the change from the flame, first mistaken for a twin tailed comet. But, perhaps she wasn't mistaken. It had changed.
As Twilight works the subtle incantations and effort into preparing a true-seeing spell, the male cranes his neck to gesture inwards. "Come, I'll get you some tea, miss Sparkle. Welcome to the Eight Points. Welcome to the realm that, in at lest one lost and ancient tongue, is called Sicarus."
Her horn glimmers, and the creature standing before her wavers in heat-haze. It constantly shifts and blurs, limbs never reconciling and outline inconsistent. But he was taller, wraith-like, leaning on a cane that glitters with power. No, it was a rod. It swirls with magic, the thaumic energy had to be enormous as it throws off radiating waves of arcane power.
Raising an arcane barrier around herself doesn't even get the male to blink, but his smirk grows a little wider as he waits with an outstretched gesture. So alike Discord, yet just different enough to be worrying.
"I'm in a maze, I know that." Twilight says, standing defiant for just a moment.
"Yes, Sicarus. The Maze. It's a nascent plane, just beginning its solidification in the Primordial flux. It is potential, the penultimate place of fate. And, Mistress Twilight Sparkle, it is no mistake that you're here." Anix inclines his head, and in a gout of pale blue-green flame, the facade melts like wax.
The creature stands tall next to the silver tower's entrance, gangly and somewhere between amazing and loathsome. Unnaturally thin limbs support its narrow figure, ending in curling talons; appearing incredibly avian-like with blue feathers lathered in a wet purple sheen and tipped in wisps of curling white. Its neck curls, and she sees the vulture like skull ending in a black twisted beak, icy magenta eyes peering at her. It simply nods, dipping its chin to a white cloth covered robe girded with a plain black leather belt. Its tall wings arc over its back, and it smiles in its toothy, uncomfortable way. Part of Twilight's analytical mind screams 'vulture' but part of her waking mind said 'bluejay', but regardless of what it was, it was all wrong.
As his wings unfurl, stretching dozens of paces each. Instinctively, the Alicorn's own lavender pinions flick out wide in a threat display, stance shifting lower to the ground as her muscles tense. Sweat beads on her brow and an acrid tang gathers in the back of her mouth as her heartbeat thunders in her chest.
"Nothing is coincidence, it is all as planned. Please, come in." His voice hadn't changed, even if every facet of his appearance had. His wing arches over the door as he gestures her inside. And yet the awkward sensation lingers thick in the air. It wasn't hard to smell the acerbic pong of Dark Magic commingling with primordial untapped ether. It was what Discord uses, they were so alike they could have been relatives. Part of her wonders if, just maybe, they were.
"I think I'd prefer to stay here and wait for Starlight and the rest of my friends, I hope you understand." Twilight resolutely nods, holding his gaze as a shudder and low bass thrum vibrates out from her hooves and across the courtyard.
The revealed creature rears its head once, eyes flickering in questing curiosity, before forming into a smirk. The buildings around them crackle and twist as spars shake off their contorting structure and hang suspended in the magic-saturated air. The Alicorn takes a quick reflexive glance just as the rotted timbers break apart and whirl around her in an amorphous pool of multi-spectral light. Solid surfaces melt and smear like oil paintings, creating a vast whirlpool depression that quickly solidifies in a neat ring around them.
"There, now no one will interrupt... oh, I don't mean your other friend, I mean the dogs, or the festering ones. Ugh, or the hedonites. We are not so different, you and I. I seek to know, I seek to help. You see, Mistress Twilight Sparkle, you are not unknown to us."
Taken aback at the reversal, the creature seems to summon a neat little table and chairs from the ether. It's a perfect pony-sized chrome table with nine sides appearing along with a low backless purple cushion sitting on her side. He gestures for her to sit while reaching behind him to unbuckle something from its garment. He simply tosses the item on the table, making the pony shy back at the meaty 'thump'.
Whatever Twilight was expecting, a simple black leatherette bound book with gold leaf and twin tailed red cloth bookmark, wasn't it.
"Go on. Take a look and judge for yourself, Twilight Sparkle. Please, indulge me for a moment-" he gestures the Alicorn to the table, then curls down to roost like a bird. With his wings folded up around his body, Twilight was certain she just glimpsed a second set of feathery pinions. But the illusion was gone and she was suddenly unsure how big he really was. He had seemed to stand twice her height as a 'human' or whatever he was, five times with arching wings outstretched, and now he didn't seem remarkably bigger than herself.
'He's magic. Just like Discord'.
But this was more fluid, more prone to deceit rather than just misdirection or fickle flights of fancy. It had been done so deliberately that her eyes had barely registered the shift.
Cautiously, carefully, the pony trots up to the table and takes a seat on the suspiciously offered cushions. Though, only after she'd covertly scryed it with an identification spell and learned it was just a conjured construct. It melds to her rump like gel rather than just a puffy cushion, and she wiggles to get comfortable. She swallows while stealing a glance at the tome, but her eyes never quite leave the creature seated a few paces beyond the other side of the table.
"Go ahead, look if you wish." Something beneath the table warbles, and Twilight leans back with a yelp of surprise.
The creature that scrambles up from underneath was... not what she was expecting. It was a dancing purple flame that smells faintly of sulphur and ozone. It blazes merrily, tiny limbs mostly amorphous as it pulls itself up onto the tabletop with quite some effort and a little bubbly 'yerp'. From there, it drifts lazily upwards in a flickering flame.
Seeing Twilight's puzzled expression, Anix replies with a warmer then usual tone, "We call them kindleflames, but some of the scions of the Material Plane call them tutelaries." It provides just enough lambent glow for her to read perfectly well, though the Alicorn was more than adept at reading in dim light.
"It... reminds me a little of a Parasprite. Anix, while I appreciate your hospitality, I really do have to find YEEEAAAH!" Almost without thinking she had used her arcane grasp to reach out, touching the book to flip it on its side to read the spine. But the moment her arcane grasp touched its surface, it sparked to life with a fizzle of power.
The black surface glows as blinding white lights dance across the page, burning away the leatherette and leaving behind a brown cover. But embossed in the centre is a golden pony head, stylized and fringed in golden clasps. It was identical to one in her library, Predictions and Prophecies: the tale of Nightmare Moon and the Elements of Harmony that had led her to Ponyville.
It was back home in a glass cabinet book case. So how was it here?
The being calling itself Anix, nods once in its serpentine 'gulp', "Read it, if you wish. You and I both know, Twilight Sparkle-" The Alicorn glances up, catching the glinting lavender and purple eyes of her avian host. "-that the greatest good comes through knowledge. The greatest evil, from ignorance."
She was about to open her mouth, but stops. While she didn't disagree entirely, something wasn't quite meshing together. Yet the Alicorn couldn't quite put the fragments back in place, so she nods once and notices one small alteration; on the spine of the book wasn't the familiar Ponish script, it was her emblazoned cutie mark.
'That wasn't there'
Opening the book up, she spots the familiar title page and ancient Ponish illustrations. But something else was different, it was thicker. She could tell in a moment that at least a hundred pages of the thick aged yellow parchment had been added. Twilight's voice hitched and her heart skipped a beat at the depiction of the two sisters, whispering, "Celestia... Luna-"
"Don't worry, she is alive and well." The creature croons like a supportive mentor. Twilight's gaze returns to the creature, casting a curious but suspicious glare its way. "It is the Eight Points, your companion is powerful and while the servants of other Powers might be formidable, you carry yourself... different. More confidently." Keeping curled up in the comfortable shell of wings, the creature's beak shifts like a griffon's pulling the cartilage at the edge to expose a grin. "I can show you her, I can even take you to her. I can help you, Twilight Sparkle. After all, it's no mistake that you are here, right now."
"How could you possibly know that?" She asks, but already she flips to the end of the tome of harmony.
"Because as I said, nothing is a coincidence. Nothing. Is there any surprise that you, Twilight, keep the same naming convention as your mentors? You are in company of both Luna and Celestia, yes?" He flicks a black talon at the page, and Twilight's gaze follows it, shocked at the portrait that it stops at. Her hoof scuffs against a picture of... something. An Alicorn of enormous statue, tall, faintly aurora spangled mane and lavender hued body adorned with all the golden raiment of Equestrian office. It had her cutie mark. It had her cutie mark! The picture was herself, surrounded by a kingdom of ponies in a bright white city stretching to the stars.
Her heart beats again, and she flips the page back and forth, finding more such illustrations of herself, and depictions of her friend. She spots a familiar image of two labeled element necklaces on opposite pages. The voice that whispers seems to come from everywhere, a convenient narrator for her jumbled thoughts. "Look again. Your friends Loyalty and Honesty are there as well. None of it is unforseen, Twilight Sparkle... after all, who do you think it was that named you?"
Twilight snaps her gaze up, looking at the creature guardedly. "Where's Rainbow Dash and Ap... wait, what do you mean?"
His eyes were glittering now, more than before. Part of her whispered that she'd said something. Something too much. She nodded, but something hitches in her mind. Elements of harmony, but nopony called them-
"You were foreseen. As was Luna. As was Celestia. One, the spirit of the Pony race in its halcyon age: an age now coming to a close. No one tribe, no one race to be hallowed over another. Celestia guided the ponies in their perfect golden age, one that's coming to an end as others are elevated to their stature. And that, Twilight, is all because of you."
The book flips back, and she's staring into a somewhat stylized version of her own nearly-complete academy. "Your school, your works, your efforts will elevate other races beyond their stations to be equal with the Pony civilization. You shall advance them by a thousand years and bring collaboration to the masses. You, Twilight, are the Little Star that was seen in the darkness of purest night for others, and the one who became the Last Light of pony superiority. You are the last glimmer of your racial hegemony. Celestia and Luna will soon step down from their pedestals, knowing full well they can no longer rule the kingdom that you have changed. Never again will ponies be exalted above others, though they laid the groundwork for everything."
Something rebels in her chest while a pressure builds in her core. A nervousness that couldn't determine whether that was good or bad... it was a keen sense of loss. "N-no! I don't want this to be about me! I wouldn't want ..." the worry and sickly sense of some betrayal sunk in her breast as her voice crackles, "I did this to help spread Harmony and Friendship! I, I didn't want to do anything to hurt or disappoint Celestia and Luna. I would never-"
She sees Anix coldly shrug, "All things simply are, Twilight. I have seen it. So surely the Master of Fate, has as well. Old Pony's kalpa has come to fruition, and thus begins the descent into New Night. Every era has its end, Twilight. You were named, destined, and promised to be the instrument of change. Just like Luna was to herald in the golden epoch of your kind. Though it was not in a way that others truly noticed: for doesn't your halcyon era begin with the Dawning of the First Light of Celestia's Sun?"
The world around her felt as if it was spinning. She had so many questions, so many things she wanted to dispute, but where to begin. "I... Luna's different, she's-"
The avian gave her no chance to reply. "Not the Nightmare? No, no she isn't. Even from here, I can feel that, and can tell you that. But she was the last vestige of the dark times, where tribes fought tribes and there was no unity of purpose. Luna sought a change, and she got it. She is the Night, or rather, Nightfall: the last trace of her barbaric era. Luna. Came. First. Celestia might be the elder, but it was always Luna who would be the catalyst of change. Just as she is now. For aren't you sitting here, with me, because of her?" The avian smiles, and she watches tongue tied, as he cocks his head like a bluejay and nods again.
Twilight had stopped reading, pushing her hoof over the memorial markers depicted of five other familiar sigils known so intimately to herself. Even distracted, she covers them up so she didn't have to see it.
"Search your heart, Twilight, you knew you were bound for greatness. This form, your Alicorn frame, is not common. You are no mere plebeian soul bound to work, and slave, and die with the only legacy being perhaps a few unaware offspring or a mouldering tome left in an abandoned library corner. Although, the latter was what you always expected of yourself, isn't it? No spouse, no foals, just some theories and books that list the name of the great scholar, Twilight Sparkle. That was to be your legacy..."
"I...Iiii..." she warbles awkwardly, gaze faltering from his piercing magenta eyes to fall back on the tome. A shiver ripples up her frame. After all, he was right.
"But the Powers saw different. We saw different. We saw, and we see, and we shall see, greatness." The swell of the words, the shift of his frame. He leans forward, smaller than before, more avian and less serpentine. It put her a little more at ease, as he felt less like a Draconequus and more like a griffon or hippogryph. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the waterfall of green-black sludge spewing from the cane's open mouth and glowing eye sockets.
The creature had no breath to continue its taunt as Luna sends rays of searing moonlight blistering through the air, scything sideways across the bestial gathering and obliterating both the chained corpse of the astartes and stone pillars. But it reflects off the bronze altar in the midst in a glittering shimmer of unlight. Crackling sparks momentarily silhouette the unholy monument.
It was fast, whatever it was: as quick as one of the Bloodthirsters but not even twice Luna's height. It darts around the edges as the rain of shrapnel stone and meat falls around it.
"Swift, not swift enough, Antithesii! No sorcerer has hold upon me!" It jutters nearly out of existence, reversing its direction and keeping every bit of its momentum. It darts back, forth, weaving and rushing at her with its greatsword held in both hands.
With a chopping swing, Ceifador snaps out to deflect the first cut, but sends haptic shudders bck along Luna's body. The second and third slices happen almost simultaneously as razor sweeps hiss high and low, forcing the Alicorn to skip back and barely ward away a fourth lunging slice with an errant parry of the blade. Hopping back, circling around, she nearly learned her mistake as one of the barbarian horde thrusts a spearpoint that bounces off her hind hoof. A swift kick shatters the haft, but the creature dove at her, taking advantage of her hesitation.
There was no dodging. Luna closes her eyes, a flash and disorienting blur later, she spins, teleporting a short distance and wheeling to face where she was. By then, the creature had already turned, its stance wide and blade upraised in clawed hands.
"That's one. You won't get that chance again." he taunts, passing a long forked tongue over its sharpened teeth.
"I won't need it." Luna snorts, fanning her wings out and dropping low as she stalks around him like a predator, "I've defeated that which called itself a bloodthirster, and I'll vanquish you, whatever you are."
Given the opportunity it thumps its broad chest and snarls, "I am Jethex, The Skulltaker, Herald of Kharneth! And I am your doom, Anthithesii!"
Luna's ear flicks as the term crops up again, "You keep calling me that." She sighs with a grumble, "Am I supposed to know what it means, beast?"
It snarls and darts at her, and she can barely loose a bolt of lightning and conjure Ceifador again. The lightning peels off the creature's hide, shedding motes of unlight that drift down as abyssal sparks. Jethex slides on one knee, slicing under Ceifador's guard, barely missing the Alicorn's belly as she throws herself to the side. Even then it's nearly too late as a swipe from the greatsword sings past her muzzle a fraction of a hooflength away.
"Because you are a mistake! You are an impossibility! You should not exist. You CAN NOT EXIST!" Itbuids to a shrieking crescendo. The barbaric congregation goes deathly silent as eyeless gazes hidden behind thick faceplates and horned helms turn in her direction. "But here you are, you stand before the servant of Kharneth! Your powers are feeble, your form too frail. You will not succeed, you will not take this galaxy from its rightful masters. The Anathema and the faithless fifth have no claim! Your masters have played their hand too soon, Antithesii! And I shall right this wrong, here and now!"
Once again Jethex charges, his sweeping blade singing through the air with reckless abandon. Despite its size, the greatsword cuts perfect figure eights, foiling the Princess's guard, merging into hacking chops only just batted back with her questing blade and more than once glancing off the fluted haft. But each missed cut spins the momentum further, sending the skeletal spirit into lunging feints and further questing thrusts with a precision better than any warlord Luna had ever dealt with. Save, perhaps, one.
"Horus." she mutters with a grunt as the red-metal blade snips the edge of a pinion feather on her wing, sending a scorching black flame down the quill. "I could really use your help about now."
A beat. A single errant pulse, weak and distant. But It was a pulse beneath her hooves nonetheless. Luna's ears perk up as she wards away another sweep of the crimson blade.
But the creature takes a step back at the name. Or, perhaps, the pulse.
The lull was a relief, but Luna could already sense the Skulltaker's confusion giving way to anger and surprise. And yet, she'd sensed where the pulse originated as the slow radial tremors rippled through the sandstone floor. They all spread out from the same spot. Her eyes quickly flick towards the brass altar at the center of it all.
"You are... not just Antithesii... you carry the stink of Anathema's stolen sons. You carry something of theirs. There is only one-and-twenty. What are you? whatareyou? WHATAREYOU?!" Its gibbering scream shakes the foundation of the caverns as Luna quickly charges her horn. She can hear the scramble of talons scratching the floor, the screeching rage and thrum of slicing metal.
The fizzle-pop of teleportation rends the air. And already she dives as Ceifador rematerializes. It was a calculation, one that she had an idea about, but no guarantee.
Plummeting, she channels all her strength into her wings remembering one moment it had worked before, courtesy of Loyalty of all ponies. Her descent is steep, straight down, halberd forming below her as she drops towards the brass altar.
Jethex, much to his promise, already wheels and dashes towards the center of the room, blade outstretched. In an incandescent bellow of rage, the milling hordes of warriors pour onto the dais far too late.
The greatsword spears upward, and Luna feels the blaze of abject agony as it drives through flesh and slices into bone. Right after the jarring crash of impact that carries the barbed greatsword through the base of her left wing, the tip of Ceifador drives straight into the centre of the unholy altar.
With a cataclysmic thunderclap mingling its formless scream with Luna's cry of pain, the abyss cracks apart in a whirling gale of blood red mist.
