Princesses of Equestria

Chapter 34: Horn to Horn

The world was ending, and it was all Twilight's fault.

Armonia cast the spell, but whose spell brought her back in the first place? Whose fears had, along with her rampant alicornomancy, breached the divide between Equestria and the Silent Realm?

Who had, time and time again, failed to defeat Armonia as Equestria was overrun? Who had, upon gaining the very power to correct her fateful mistake, arrived a split second too late to land the decisive blow?

The answer was all around Twilight. Screaming in her ears, so loud it rang through her, drove her to her knees, echoed through her soul:

My fault my fault all my fault ALL MY FAULT ALL—

Armonia's fault, Twilight thought with a supreme effort. I didn't think that. Her phobomancy did. It's trying to bury me alive, trying to get me to give up. It'll consume me if I let it. Consume my friends. Consume Shining Armor, Cadance, the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and everypony else I just freed. So don't let it! Never again. NEVER AGAIN!

"Never ... again." Twilight barely heard herself over the howl of wind, and the crack of stone. Hungry darkness surged around her in a scalding gale, peeling at her Heartstone aura. Shadowy vipers slithered up her legs, squeezed her throat, hissing words Twilight didn't dare hear.

Her mind raced. Obviously, she was trapped in phobomancy mist; Twilight recognized the poisonous miasma that Armonia had used back in Canterlot, and again, to far greater effect, in the cave.

If, as in that latter case, Armonia's mist took its victim off guard before they raised a magical defense, they'd be dragged into a nightmare with little chance of escape. But if they were ready, they could resist. For a while. Until Armonia drowned them with a flood of raw terror.

And what Armonia had just unleashed from the Crown of Harmony was no flood. It was an ocean, rising fast enough to utterly submerge Equestria in minutes. An ocean frigid and pitiless as the void of space.

Yet in that void, stars still shone.

Twilight found the closest. Drove her magic through the blackness. Took them all. Gathered them to her. Found the rest. Went to them.

The screams of Armonia's storm lessened a fraction. Dead grass crunched beneath Twilight's shaking hooves. Dimly, she recognized the slope of hillside around her. The plains before Canterlot mountain. And yes, there were the ponies she'd sent to them.

Equestria's people huddled to her instinctively, their own Heartstone auras guttering feebly as candles in a winter breeze. There were Cadance and Shining Armor. There were Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo. Captain Spitfire and the Wonderbolts. Granny Smith and Big Mac. Captain Flash Sentry, Sergeant Major Firmhoof, and tens of thousands more. All shining with Harmony's Link. All growing fainter by the second.

All but one.

"Never again," said Princess Twilight Sparkle, and cast a ward. Violet lightning formed a globe around those first lights she'd brought with her. Around Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rarity and Spike. Around Angel, Opalescence, Gummy, Pecky, Sniffles, Mister Cuddles, and the rest of Fluttershy's valiant menagerie.

Then further out, ten meters further, a hundred meters further, a mile. Round the people she'd sworn to protect. The people she'd failed before. The people she wouldn't fail again. They gasped, eyes drawn to what shone from Twilight, their stony bodies warmed by her magic's rays.

Twilight thought about what they meant to her. She thought about how hard they'd fought for her. How brave they'd been. How proud that made her. And none more so than those who were closest.