NaNo2014: Shadows of Friendship: Part 24b

((a second update cause I screwed up the time on the last attempt to post))

“I…I sealed you?” Twilight asked, shaking slightly as she picked herself up, pain shooting down her back as she moved, “But I’m not an alicorn, I couldn’t…” She trailed off, her eyes widening as a thought hit her.

“Now you’re beginning to understand, little Princess.” The darkness hissed at her, “You’re not an alicorn now, but you were and we thought you destroyed when you ripped your soul in two and gave your life to try and get rid of us. Turns out you’re as hard to eliminate as we are. Shame that won’t save you now.”

Twilight did not get a chance to respond before she was in the air again, tumbling across the ground and slamming into the base of the silver tree.

“You must have sealed your alicorn powers away with half of your soul when you locked us away. Left yourself with little more than a unicorn’s form and strength.” The darkness cackled, “But we had an ace in the hole, a Princess of our own, a mare from the lands that spawned us and she has worked tirelessly for all this time to free us. It’s a shame you won’t be around to meet her. She has a lot she wants to say to you.”

“Wh…who says, it ends here?” Twilight demanded as she got up, the puzzle glowing, its golden glow pulsing in time with Twilight’s normal purple magic which was wrapped around the Elements of Harmony, trying to activate them, even as she stumbled, barely able to get to her feet, “I might only be a…part time Princess, but I am not…letting it end here.”

“You do not know who you are dealing with,” Nightmare Moon snorted. “You may be my sister’s student, but I am the stronger sister and I will destroy you!” Nightmare Moon tried to use her magic again, but Twilight was ready, calling up a small brown fuzzball from her deck with green hands and feet and sharp claws that leapt at the possessed Princess and exploded on contact.

The explosion pushed Nightmare Moon back, giving Twilight a chance to push a little more of her magic into the Elements, desperately hoping that that was the spark she needed and that she could use them to protect her friends. It certainly did something as the unicorn saw the marble spheres start to change colour, taking on the shades that she had seen in the book.

“No!” The Shadows and the Princess both screamed as the Elements started glowing, “No! We will not allow this to be!”

“Wha…aah!” Twilight cried out as hooves connected with her side and she went skidding across the floor, her magic cutting out as the dark possessed Princess used her powers to slam the unicorn into a wall so hard that the real brick work, the crumbling, decrepit, ancient brickwork, cracked and tumbled down, burying the filly.

“Finally!” Nightmare Moon snarled as she stalked towards the glowing elements, pausing before she stamped her hoof and unleashed a wave of Shadows that sucked up every drop of energy within the glowing spheres. The five orbs started cracking as something behind Nightmare Moon started moving.

The alicorn turned to stare at the sound when she realised that it was the sound of the rubble shifting and falling, her eyes widening when she saw Twilight pick herself out of the fallen bits out castle, her wings twitching a little to dislodge the fragments of stone and her ruby red eyes narrowed and focused on Nightmare Moon. Her own Shadows were flaring up like black flames around her as she moved out of the pile of black rubbish and stood in front of the possessed alicorn. “Do not write me off yet.” She growled out before shaking herself off, getting rid of some of the dust lightening her coat to an almost lavender-white.

The stone spheres continued to crack as Nightmare Moon laughed, a high pitched, slightly hysterical, psychotic laugh as the Elements shattered into a million little fragments, “You could not defeat us before, when you were whole! You’ll never do it now, wounded and pathetic as you are. Especially not alone! Your strength comes from Unity, it always has! And now your backup, your precious Elements of Harmony are gone, destroyed, forever!”

“The spheres may be gone, but my friends are always with me,” Twilight snapped back, her wings half opening as she tried to spread them in a display of dominance, “I will defeat you!”

“You? Defeat me?!” The alicorn laughed, her shadow taking the form of a twisted dragonic creature and spreading up the wall. Its shape shifting and changing as it grew, revealing wings with holes in and three rows of sharp teeth, “I have had many forms over the Millennia,” The darkness crowed through Nightmare Moon as the shadow changed again, becoming a huge unicorn with a barbed horn. “Equigypt, your country, was just the first. This time, this time your entire world will pay and there’s nothing you can do to stop me! Because poor Princess Twilight was stupid enough to come all this way without managing to protect a single one of her friends!”

“You’re wrong.” The alicorn Princess smirked, “My friends are safe. I figured out your game and protected myself from your dark mist. You can’t fight fair, you have to weaken us before we get to you, but guess what? I remember enough to remember that a Challenge always has to be fair. You might have weakened me, weakened my friends and destroyed the physical forms of the Elements, but I still have a chance.”

“What chance could you possibly have?” Nightmare Moon demanded, “What possible hope? You are nothing compared to me, nothing!”

“Twilight!” The purple Princess’s smirk turned to an honest, bright smile as her friends piled into the courtyard and stopped by the entrance, staring at the tableau before them.

“There’s my hope, my chance. My friends.” Twilight told the Night Goddess, feeling her strength grow and her magic increase exponentially, “They’re my strength and they’re so much more than that. Those Elements you destroyed? They’re just stone, Harmony is within everyone if you know where to look for it and I’ve found it within those five ponies that you see before you.”

“You cannot be serious? You honestly believe that you can defeat me with the power of friendship?” The alicorn cackled.

“There’s not just my friends, each of them embodies an Element.” Twilight informed her, “Pinkie Pie, who scared off the wolves that you sent after us by giggling at them, embodies the Element of Laughter!” As she spoke, the shards of the sphere of Laughter started glowing the same pink as Pinkie Pie’s coat and started swirling around her like glitter, shimmering in the moonlight.

“Oooh, pretty!” Pinkie Pie bounced on the spot, looking delighted.

“Wh…what?!” Nightmare Moon yelped, backing up in her confusion as she watched it happen.

“Rainbow Dash, who fought your summoned pegasi even when it could have cost her her life and refused to join up with them even when they flattered her, represents the Element of Loyalty!” The second sphere did the same, this time glowing with the same pale blue as Rainbow’s coat.

“Too cool!” Dash crowed.

“Oh no, no, no!” Nightmare Moon snarled, trying to blast the five by the door with a spell, only for Twilight to draw from her deck and set a trap that caused her attack to reflect back off of it and strike the alicorn, making her crash into the silver tree in the courtyard’s centre.

“Fluttershy,” Twilight continued as the possessed alicorn picked herself up, a look of vague panic on her features as she realised that she was in deep trouble, “Who protected Nightingale from me and helped her even after she fought against us, represents the Element of Kindness!”

“I was just doing what any pony would have done.” Fluttershy whispered as the shards of the corresponding element glowed a pale yellow colour and circled her.

“Applejack, who waylaid my fears about my transformation by telling me the truth, embodies the Element of Honesty!” The part-time Princess informed the possessed one, smirking as her theory was confirmed. The Element of Honesty swirled around Applejack like amber, glowing like a flame.

“You can’t do this, you can’t drive me back into the dark, I will not allow it!” Nightmare Moon snarled, launching herself at Twilight. The alicorn narrowly dodged, causing the Moon Goddess to go crashing to the floor behind her.

“And last but not least, Rarity, who tamed the dragon by selflessly offering her jewels, making her own work difficult in the process and promising to help him find his horde again, is the Element of Generosity!”

The last Element lit up and joined those already swirling around Twilight’s other friends. “I wonder if I could make something that shimmered like this for ponies to wear…” Rarity mused as she beheld the pretty lights.  

Twilight could not help the amused smile that crossed her face at the other unicorn’s comment even a Nightmare Moon snarled at her, “You still haven’t gotten the sixth Element and without your precious true name, the final key to the seal you used on me, you’ll never unlock your full potential and destroy me!”

“You’re wrong,” Twilight informed her, feeling smug that she knew something that the other Princess did not and trying to ignore the jab about her name, “The spark I felt when I realised that no matter how hard I try to push you away, you’ll always be my friends?” She asked her friends, looking at them with a smile, “That’s when I realised something. The final spark resides within the heart of all of us, and that spark is Magic!”

She let out a startled gasp as power erupted from the tree in the middle of the courtyard and formed a star like the one in the center of her cutie mark in the middle of the air.

NaNo2014: Shadows of Friendship: Part 2

Canterlot; Current Day.

“Please, Twilight?” Spike begged, the purple baby dragon fell to his knees, his forepaws coming together in front of him in a pleading motion as his bright green spikes quivered in time with the excited trembling of his body, “White Lightning never, ever shows off his new stuff in Canterlot. He ALWAYS does it in Manehatten. I know you don’t duel much anymore but can I go, please? Please?”

“Spike...” Twilight hesitated. She knew how much her friend and in some ways child, enjoyed it when her former classmate released the new DuelRune packs for public use. Before White Lightning had invented them, the card game she had enjoyed as a training tool at her mentor’s school had been nothing but a simple game to anyone who wasn’t using its summoning techniques, spells and traps as a way of fine tuning their control over their magic.

Ever since the DuelRune Grids had been released, however, Duel Monsters had exploded in popularity right across Equestria. The grids allowed non-unicorns to do what the more magically inclined had been able to do for years and the ability to see and hear the monsters battling as the two players duelled had pushed what had been an offshoot training tool into an insanely oft played thing.

For Twilight herself the DuelRunes did not mean much. They were well made and she enjoyed looking them over and trying to work out exactly how her former classmate had managed to make them work. However she had stopped playing the game for fun about a year or so ago, unless it was against Spike and she no longer needed the game to help teach her control over her magic.

For Spike however, who had enjoyed the game back when it had just been a simple card game, it was a huge step and he wanted to be there every time an upgrade was released. “Please, Twilight?” The baby dragon begged. “We’re supposed to be on holiday anyway.”

That made Twilight grimace. It was true that the school she attended, ‘Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns’ had let out so that everyone could go home for the Summer Sun Celebration, but her elder brother was Captain of the Palace Guard so he had not been able to come and see her and her parents had gone on vacation for it. This meant that she and Spike were on their own for the celebrations, which, in all honesty she planned to sleep through.

“Spike, it’s...”

She did not get to finish her sentence before Spike produced the book she had been searching for from the library and grinned at her, “You could take it with you.” He pointed out, knowing exactly which buttons to push, “And I wouldn’t be too far away if you needed me to take notes. It might be fun.”

Technically her baby dragon friend was right, he would be right there with her if she needed him. However she knew full well that if she tried to catch his attention once the display had started, she might as well be talking to a brick wall.

“Spike this is really important.” Twilight tried again. The purple unicorn flicked her multishaded tail in her irritation that no one seemed to understand that for her research was fun. Bar a good, challenging game of Duel Monsters, there was nothing she enjoyed as much as burying herself in her books and learning new things. “I know there’s something about this Summer Sun Celebration that...”

“Please?” Spike latched onto her left foreleg, “Please, please, please, please? I won’t ask you for anything for a month!”

“If I ask you to take a note or a letter will you actually pay attention to me?” Twilight asked him with a sigh, “And when I say it’s time to leave will you actually come with me this time?”

Spike blushed as much as a purple dragon could and scuffed the floor sheepishly with his foot at the reminder of the last time that they had gone to one of these demonstrations and he had successfully kept them out until late into the night.

“I swear on my comics.” Spike told her, his tone solemn as he crossed his heart.

“Alright, but let me pack my saddlebag.” The delighted cheer and momentary tightening of Spike’s grip before he darted off to grab his deck was reward enough for conceding and she let out an amused, yet exasperated huff before using her magic to pack the bag which had the same pink star surrounded by darker purple ones as her cutie mark.

In went the book she had been after, closely followed by quills and parchment so she could make her own notes while Spike was distracted. However she hesitated before packing the small fabric case with her cards in. She still enjoyed the game, but it was a distraction that she did not need.

“Ready Twilight?” Spike asked, practically bouncing in his excitement. She jumped a mile, shoving the last few things into her bag without looking and levitated it onto her back. Spike jumped up next, his own deck strapped to his hip via a holster she had had made especially for him for the previous Hearth’s Warming Eve.

“I still don’t know if this is such a good idea.” Twilight told the baby dragon clutching onto her sides as she cantered towards the door. “It would be much easier to do my research here.” She hesitated by the door, almost loath to exit into the bright sunlight outside.

Spike almost complained. He would have done in fact if he had not noticed the slight tremble under him, as if Twilight was shaking. “Twilight?” He asked, worried for his friend and the unicorn who had hatched him. “Are you okay?”

“Fine, fine.” Twilight took a deep breath and stepped out into the sunlight. It was not that she was agoraphobic by any stretch of the imagination. In fact she enjoyed curling up under a tree with a good book as much as the next pony. However it had been years since she had seen White Lightning in the hoof. The white unicorn stallion had been a fellow student at her school and had forever been battling her for the top spot. Right up until the accident, Lightning had been one of the most competent wielders of magic and had matched her in almost every subject, especially in Duel Monsters though he had never quite managed to defeat her in either marks or at the card game.

Then then accident had happened. No one was quite sure what had happened, but she and White Lightning had been duelling in the school courtyard when his step-sire had interrupted and at some point during the conversation the two stallions had had afterwards, Lightning’s horn had been broken and his access to his magic lost.

She had not seen hair or whisker of White Lightning since that day. He had withdrawn from the school the next day and his step-sire had passed away soon after, leaving the young stallion in charge of the massive company that his step-sire had run.

She had not duelled anyone but Spike since that day and it was slightly nerve wracking to think that Lightning was in her neck of the wood again. Still she knew she was being silly. He probably did not even remember her and she had much more important things to worry about, like why this Summer Sun Celebration, the thousandth in Equestria’s long history, worried her so greatly.

The crowd had already gathered when they arrived in the plaza at the centre of Canterlot and Twilight was more than happy to drop Spike off at the crowd’s thinnest point and retreat to a nearby café to have a bite to eat and read her book. The baby dragon weaved amongst the hooves of the excited crowd with practised ease and found himself a perch at the front of the gathered horde that would allow him to see everything perfectly.

Twilight tried to tune out the excited hum as she ordered a daisy sandwich, settled at a table and pulled her book out of her saddle bags. It was not easy, as every so often she would catch a word here or there that would catch her interest. However once her sandwich had arrived and she had found the section of the book she was looking for it was almost like the world around her melted away, leaving her in a little bubble of just her, her sandwich and her research.

The roar of the crowd as the demonstration started went completely unnoticed as Twilight read through the section on the Elements of Harmony and found that, frustratingly, there was not much written about them. Instead it recommended she turned to the section on ‘The Mare in the Moon.’

That proved much more productive. It spoke of the fact her mentor, Princess Celestia herself, had defeated a wicked mare of darkness, known as Nightmare Moon, using the Elements of Harmony and sealed her away on the moon. However the dark and powerful Alicorn had sworn that when a thousand years had passed she would return and bring night time eternal.

Her defeat had heralded the very first Summer Sun Celebration and it had been celebrated on the longest day of the year every year since, right up until the modern age and as Twilight was already aware, this year was the one thousandth celebration of that day.

“Oh…” Twilight breathed when she realised what that meant. “Spike?!” She asked, wanting him to help her confirm her findings. She glanced around and grimaced when she could not see the petite dragon for the horde of ponies gathered around the glow that could only be an active DuelRune grid. “Oh horse feathers.” She grumbled as she gathered up her things and ate the last bite of her sandwich before taking a deep breath and diving into the masses in order to try and reach her friend and scribe so he could send a letter to the Princess for her.

“Excuse me, pardon me,” Twlight apologised as she tried to squeeze her way through the crowds. It was almost impossible to see someone as small as Spike for the herd of ponies and no one wanted to move and possibly lose their vantage point. It was good for her in one way because it meant that there was no way her former classmate would be able to spot her. The problem was it meant that Spike probably would not be able to either. Not only that but she was a little worried, considering that she got stepped on twice while trying to find her friend. Spike was much smaller than most of the ponies here and it was quite possible that he would get trampled.

“Twilight!” Her head snapped towards the sound, which, both thankfully and frustratingly was coming from a certain baby dragon who was across the other side of the crowd from where she had left him and was waving at her from the back of another of the colts in her class. She could not help but wince and shy away from the hissing and complaining at the noise, which carried over the sounds of the demonstration. “Twilight, over here!”

A gap opened up in the crowds, allowing her to get to Spike’s side easily. She took advantage of it, well aware of the eyes on her as she made her way across to him, including one set that she had really hoped to avoid.

“Ow.” Spike’s ride was complaining as Twilight reached them, the black furred pony with his silvery grey mane and tail and his white crescent moon cutie mark, had his hoof covering his ear and looked pained, “I do need to be able to hear Spike.”

“Sorry Dark Moon.” Spike apologised, looking sheepish for all of about two seconds before grinning at Twilight. Before he could say anything or Twilight could ask him to take a letter for her, another voice broke into the conversation.

“Twilight Sparkle?” The young mare flinched at the sound of her name and turned to face the speaker, coming face to face with a pure white stallion of about her age with a short, tidy, brown mane and tail and the picture of the back of the Duel Monsters card for a cutie mark. He smirked as he looked her over, “It is you. Oh good, I needed someone to demonstrate my DuelRune grid on. You do still play, don’t you?”

“Well, not for a long time and I really need…”

“Go on Twilight.” Spike jumped down from Dark Moon’s back and pushed her forward towards the runic grid on the floor.

“Spike!” Twilight yelped, embarrassed and trying not to pay attention to the mutterings of the impatient crowd, “I don’t have tim…”

“What’s the matter Twilight?” White Lightning interrupted with a slightly vindictive chuckle, “It’s just a short demonstration. I would have thought Celestia’s prize pupil would jump at the chance to show off a new training tool.” He turned away, his tone turning nasty, “Unless, of course you don’t think that the Princess is a very good teacher…”

There was a sharp gasp from the crowd before complete silence fell.

“One game.” Twilight glared at the white stallion before her, using her magic to plop her saddlebag down next to Spike, “Just one.” She snapped as she lifted her deck box from her bag, “And you’ll see how good a teacher the Princess is!”

“Then step into the grid.” White Lightning gestured to the blue circle on the left of the runic grid taking up a lot of floor space, “And show us.”

“Once I’m done,” She told Spike as she cantered into the circle and put her hoof on the right sigil, causing the circle around her to glow and activating her half of the DuelRune grid below her, which lit up the same purple as her magic, “I need you to take a letter.”