Okay, sorry about this… but the actual battle with Queen Celestia will be shorter than you probably expected. I'm not good at writing long battle scenes, for one, and also for this to be only two chapters more I have to have a little more room to write the big finale.
BLTSweg: Cofffeee… but anyway, it's Colors, just so you know.
Inkwell: Hah, I love those videos. Have you heard of Tardissins or Cinemaresins? They're like the same thing but for Doctor Who and MLP respectively.
werewolf99: Well, if you actually read the stories, you'd know that there won't be a sequel for this; I just pick up with the original.
Tails3456 (Chapter 8 of the original All the Elements): Thank you for your ideas, but I will politely decline. I've chosen what I have for a reason, and to make my story mine. So I'm keeping the characters the way they are, and not adding new ones as well. Good ideas though, if you ever decide to do your own story.
Zacharythehedgehog: Heh heh, I've got plans.
TheAwesomeCoolJay: Ah, hi. Haven't seen you in a while. Also, I do be spawning stories. WOOT.
Ugh (all the way back in X Files Chapter 7… wow): Indeed I am.
Cobalt Spikes wasn't ready for the final battle. No way. He'd had no idea how powerful Queen Celestia had gotten since their last encounter. Last time it had been relatively easy, but this time she'd done some sort of combat enhancement magic on herself.
He felt a spike of resentment towards Merluna for not being at his side during this fight along with a stab of pain as he was slammed into a wall by a powerful strike from the Queen with the flat of her blade. He fell to the ground and felt like all of his ribs had broken. He rolled out of the way of a downward strike that would've cut him in half and flew into the air in an effort to reach higher ground that she couldn't reach with her heavy armor. He then realized that he was going nowhere, and looked down at his hooves to see that they were surrounded by a yellow light. Normally yellow was a soothing color to him, but this time it gave him a cold tingle down his side as he was slammed back into the ground by the Queen's magic.
"NO!" Celestia thundered. "NO RUNNING!"
Yeah, on the advantages scale Cobalt was scoring a big fat zero.
The only thing he could do was evade all the deadlier strikes at the moment and deflect the others. He was hoping he could work out some strategy to tire her out like he had with Percival, but even if he could, he doubted Celestia would be as hotheaded as the Knight, and there were no cliffs to trick her off of.
She was impressive in an, 'oh crap she's gonna kill me' way. It almost seemed as if she was some sort of fluid with solid form. One attack led to another with almost no break in motion. She was strong as well. He'd tried to duck behind a tree at one point, and nearly gotten beheaded as the blade sliced straight through the trunk.
He got a sudden, suicidal idea and launched himself straight at her, leaping straight onto her back after ducking a stab.
"Wha–hey!" she shouted, trying to throw him off. He used his wings to counter this movement, and began to hack at her neck armor.
The metal slowly but surely gave way, and out of the wound he dealt came a spurt of… liquid shadow? He gasped as the shadow flew toward him and wrapped itself around him like a blanket. His coat became a little more shaded, turning even a darker navy. His vision blurred and he fell off the Queen, coughing up even more blood.
He became aware of Caliburn shouting, "Now! The Sacred Swords!" he struggled to his hooves and brought out the swords. Staggering forward, he laid them around Celestia's fallen form. Even as he set them down, he could see the scabbard of Excalibur glowing, and Celestia starting to laugh darkly as life returned to her.
He set down the last blade, Percival's, and a shimmering circle appeared around Celestia. She rose to her hooves, but immediately collapsed again. "What?!" she gasped. "What's happening?!"
Cobalt stood up straighter and wiped the blood from his mouth. "You're dying." He said quietly.
"No!" Celestia tried to stand again, but once more fell to the ground. "Impossible!"
Cobalt gave a low, ironic laugh. "No, not impossible. You know what?" he mused thoughtfully. "I may not know who I am, but I do know one thing. I hate evil. Now DIE!" he shouted the last word at the top of his lungs, and as he did so, Celestia dissolved into shadow, just like one of the knights of the underworld.
This Cobalt hadn't expected. But he wasn't going to let that stop him. As he stepped forward to grab the scabbard, the only remnant of the fallen queen, he wondered about the shadow that had turned his coat darker. Had–had he just imagined that?
Yes. His mind whispered the answer, and he was so desperate to believe it, he couldn't stop himself from forgetting the terrifying event.
His next question: was that wound on his side healed yet? He shifted aside the magic bandage and observed the cut. To his relief, it seemed to have scarred over, and the scar was fading, his fur growing rapidly over it. Pretty soon it would be nothing but a memory.
He picked up the scabbard of Excalibur in his teeth and nodded to Caliburn, launching himself into the air and up to the courtyard of the castle.
ONE KNIGHT OF THE WIND RIFF LATER
Merluna felt cornered, to say the least. She nevertheless focused on looking calm and collected, like she had reason to be where she was. She stood in front of a tree in the courtyard of Canterlot Castle, waiting for the not-hero to return with the scabbard.
Sometimes those with heroic qualities could be so easy to manipulate. So gullible.
She was surrounded on all sides (except for the one with tree, but that felt like an enemy itself at this point. Lancelot, Gawain, Galahad, and Percival surrounded her on the four remaining sides, and though they were unarmed, they seemed menacing enough on their own.
"Merluna!" Gawain shouted. "Thou hast committed treason in the highest, against the queen herself, and therefore thou shalt die!"
"Kill me?" Merluna smiled, purely to make them more irritated. "With what? Thou hast no weapon."
"I hath my magic." Lancelot growled, her horn glowing.
"MERLUNA!"
Merluna looked up toward the source of the voice, and for a moment she thought that one of the knights of the underworld had learned to speak and was now descending upon her from a rift in the sky. Then she looked closer and saw that it was only a battered and bruised Cobalt fluttering down from one of the towers.
Cobalt had no joy on his face as he laid the Scabbard of Excalibur in front of Merluna. His eyes were cold–had they turned gray, or was that just her imagination? "Here." He muttered, raising his voice for the next sentence. "THE QUEEN IS DEAD!"
A collective gasp went up from the Knights, and the immediately turned their attention toward the young warrior.
"Though–" Cobalt added upon seeing some of the looks of hatred on their faces, "I think she was never alive." He glared up at Merluna. "When I killed her, she dissolved into shadow like a knight of the underworld. Care to explain?"
Merluna shifted uncomfortably; she would have to enact her plan earlier than expected. However, she displayed none of her inner discomfort about the circumstances in which she would do her dark deed, picking up the scabbard with her magic and smiling. "I would." She responded to Cobalt's prompt. "The truth–well, the truth is that there was never a Queen Celestia to begin with."
The Knights gave another collective gasp, while Cobalt merely rolled his eyes and twirled his hoof to say, 'go on'.
Merluna gulped at the risk she was putting herself in (what if one of the Knights were to kill her before she finished?) and plowed on. "She was nothing more than an illusion created to appease the masses by my grandfather, Starswirl the Bearded."
"Yeah, but you need the scabbard why?" Cobalt pressed.
"I intend to use it to right my father's mistakes." Merluna turned the simple levitation spell she was using into one that involved bouncing dark magic off the scabbard like a beacon. Her opportune positioning–at the middle of the top of the castle–would make the task even easier. "And you cannot stop me!" her icy blue eyes flashed silver and the four Knights plus one Warrior were blasted back by an invisible wave of energy.
Lancelot got to her hooves and raised her visor, revealing her panicked purple eyes. She surveyed the glowing Merluna, and turned toward Cobalt. "Warrior! We need our weapons!"
"Fine!" Cobalt nodded, doing one of his lightning-fast recovery moves and dropping the swords at the feet of the still recovering Knights. "But only to get out of here, not to fight her!"
"For what reason not?!" Galahad demanded, picking up her sword between her teeth.
At that moment, a huge earthquake shook the castle, and the sky turned blood red. Large, sharp pillars of white stuff began to rise out of the ground. They looked solid enough to spear a pony and quite a bit more while they were at it. The walls that had held for centuries began to crumble, and Cobalt took a calm step to the side as the area just under him dissolved into nothing. "That's why." He said as if nothing had happened. Then his eyes narrowed and he began snapping out orders. "Okay, leave your armor behind! You can get it later," he added upon seeing the Knights' incredulous looks. "Right now we need speed! Pegasi, fly out of here, the skies should be safe enough."
Galahad and Percival nodded to show they understood, and immediately left their armor and flew over the newly forming Dark Castle walls.
Cobalt turned his attention to the purple unicorn. "Lancelot, teleport out of here, same direction as the pegasi–take the rest of the armor if it means so much to you."
Lancelot nodded and vanished along with the Galahad's, Percival's, and Gawain's armor in a flash of lavender light, which left Gawain looking around startled, her armor having suddenly been teleported off her body.
"Gawain–" Cobalt set his jaw as he looked at the remaining Knight. "You can't get out of here any way but on hoof. So you're with me."
Gawain wasn't necessarily sure that was a good thing.
FIVE MINUTES LATER
Gawain soon realized that it was a good thing. Although she'd had more training than the rogue warrior, he'd obviously gotten more field experience than her since yesterday.
He seemed perfectly in his element as he slashed and stabbed the knights of the underworld, fighting side by side with her. She could hardly believe that they had been fighting merely the day before. She still guarded her back warily, though, for she worried that he might again show that dark side that had possessed him during their last encounter. She had not entirely forgotten that–or forgiven him–yet.
Literally seconds before the old castle collapsed completely, the two pushed through the front gate and made it out onto the lawn in front of the front of the castle. As they watched, the castle crumbled, the previous walls dissolving as the new whitish material made a new castle on top of it, with swooping walls and curved edges that cleaved the sky itself.
Cobalt looked at the scene of destruction, and terrifyingly felt a rush of happiness at seeing it. He felt himself, to his utter horror, desire more of it. Some strange, dark tickling at the back of his mind wanted this whole world to fall at his hooves, but this time to never be replaced.
Almost as instantly as this feeling reared its head, it vanished, and he was back to feeling the normal, moral despair a pony should feel in his situation.
Then he felt queasy, and his vision went black.
That's a wrap! One chapter left. Expect it to be long, expect it to take a week at least, and expect one of the most significant chapters I've written yet.
Also, I'm going to tell you a few of the themes I've been playing with throughout the course of the chapters, just so you can look back and see if you caught them:
Sickness, in all senses of the word, which is the one I think I used the most.
Decay. This was one of the fewest used, but it's clearly evident in this last chapter.
Insanity. I think I just said this one outright a few times, so yeah.
Darkness. Obvious, but I figured I'd say it anyway.
Innocence and Guilt. Those were two big ones as well.
And lastly, The Question of When it is Right to Kill.
So I guess chew on those until the next chapter, and I'll see you next week.
Radicool223 out!