Lyra’s horn burned with energy, focused to a fine enough point to cut through the huge mass of sticky fluff around her. Pieces melted away from the extreme heat of the spell, but were being replaced by others almost as fast. She could hear shouts and cries for help as the candy wrapped around her fellow soldiers and pulled them down into the earth. It seeped into their mouths, but even then the ponies did not stop struggling, even minutes later. The candy appeared to be infused with oxygen, allowing it to sustain life even as it slowed and imprisoned the ponies trapped inside.

A squadron of earth ponies nearby were trying to pull one such unlucky prisoner out.

“Leave her!” Lyra yelled. “We need to clear a path to other unicorns so we can focus fire!”

“But Captain, we have to rescue them,” one of the soldiers protested.

“They can still breathe, somehow,” she replied, kicking away a tendril of cotton that had started making its way up one of her rear legs. “So they’re going to have to hold on. All of us will be joining them if we can’t organize at least one artillery battery.” She pointed one foreleg toward the area her magic was currently focused on clearing. “I can hear spells coming from that direction, so kick, stab, slash, bite if you have to, but get me through!”

With one final glance at their comrade’s futile kicks from within the bubble, the soldiers rushed to Lyra’s side to obey. They chopped with their spears and short hoof-blades, others resorting to stomping on the pieces and tearing at them with their teeth after losing their weapons. After a piece was separated from the rest of the mass, Lyra carefully swung her glowing beam of light toward it to destroy it before it could rejoin the rest. This way, they were able to make slow but steady progress through the barrier. The sound of spellcasting grew steadily louder.

Luna stared out at the emptiness around her. She could do more than simply see it, however. She felt it, deep within her body, and it suffused every part of her. The burning anger she had felt when Discord had mocked the Elements, her former friends, had drained away, and now all she could focus on was the nearly complete darkness around her. The distant stars twinkled at Luna as she tried and failed to determine where the void stopped, and where she began.

An enormous, disembodied claw appeared from the darkness and began squeezing Luna’s barrier. She struggled to sustain it, but she could feel it giving way. At one point, it was pushed in enough that part of her leg was actually outside the bubble. She screamed as she felt the blood in that leg turn into something solid and sharp. Luna focused that scream into a burst of power and used it to renew her spell. As soon as her leg was protected again, her body began working to reverse whatever Discord’s chaotic magic had done to her blood. That process was painful as well, but it was beginning to subside.

As the blinding agony withdrew, her thoughts cleared. Those thoughts turned to recalling Discord’s words, and the fact that Willowleaf had chosen not to fight beside her.

Luna turned the anger at that abandonment into more spells. Discs of pure light appeared around her. What little air there was shimmered with the energy as they grew brighter, then blasted out of the shield and into the claw. They sliced through its flesh, causing trails of purple bubbles to begin floating through space in every direction.

She watched in dismay as the damage was repaired in an instant.

He is right, she thought. An army, no matter how mighty, is not enough to defeat him. My bravado is only causing pain, to others and to myself.

Luna stopped casting her attack spells and focused on her defenses.

Lyra and her party finally burst through a particularly thick patch of candy, and they immediately noticed that the clearing was filled with the sound of deep, maniacal laughter.

A unicorn with a silvery coat and mane stood there, eyes wide and hungry, her face stained with streaks of red liquid. The entire area was cast in a dark, crimson glow thanks to her spells, which appeared to be forming out of the blood dripping from the spiral groove in her horn. The red energy that leapt from the horn at the cotton candy dissolved it with a touch, expanding the clearing even farther. The energy then flowed back into her horn, which seemed to invigorate the pony each time.

“Where are you, Discord?” Platina shouted. “I want to see you bleed!”

“What the heck?” Lyra exclaimed.

Platina whirled around to face the new voice. “Who are you?” Her spells remained active, and turned toward Lyra.

The soldiers instantly began spreading out into a defensive formation, and Lyra’s horn lit up with golden light.

“You don’t recognize us?” Lyra said. “You’ve been traveling with us for weeks.”

Platina blinked away the blood that had dripped into her eyes, then squinted at the group. “Ah, indeed,” she said. “Pardon me, I thought you were another chaos figment for a moment. What brings you here, sweetheart?”

The ancient unicorn’s voice had quickly become sedate and calm, but she was still sending lashes of blood out at the cotton candy around them, almost as if it were an afterthought.

“I was hoping to gather together enough unicorns to cut our way out of this mess,” Lyra said. Her horn stopped glowing, but she still kept her eyes locked on Platina. “It sounded like there would be a lot more in this area, based on the number of spells we heard.”

Platina smirked and dusted one of her hooves off on her chest. “Yes, well. I can see how one might think that. I suppose you want my help, then? Well, luckily for you, our interests happen to align in this situation. You should be aware, however, that we have been dimensionally shifted. Luna is not in the same place she was before, so if we expect to find her, we will need to find an aspect of Discord.”

“And… how do we do that?” Lyra took a couple steps closer, and the soldiers with her relaxed slightly, but not entirely.

“How do you think?” Platina asked with a twisted grin. “If you want to attract a spirit of chaos, then cause chaos!”

“You’re giving up already?” Luna saw a face in the darkness—not Discord’s, but her own, how it appeared now. Black-coated, black-horned, with slitted eyes and sharp teeth. The voice came from her. “Pathetic.”

Luna stared into the reflection of her eyes. She was distantly aware of Discord continuing to laugh and taunt her, but that sound became more and more muffled.

“I know,” she whispered, blinking away the beginnings of tears. “I am pathetic. The only reason I attacked was that I was wroth, now I… I don’t know. I have no worth to these ponies, not even to mine own sister. Not any longer.”

“So what?” Nightmare Moon scoffed. The rest of her body began solidifying, creating an unarmored copy of Luna’s form just outside of the warding spell. “Why are you looking to them to tell you you’re worthy? Leaving aside the fact that they can never truly understand you, value wouldn’t come from them anyway.”

“Dost thou think I have not also looked within?” Luna scowled, and her spell inched outward slightly, which had the side effect of increasing her air supply. “No matter how much I focus on the good deeds I have done, nor recall the good qualities ponies have told me that I possess, nor indulge in frivolity and forgetfulness, I have not been able to find any hint of my true measure. There is simply… simply nothing there.” Luna choked, her eyes finally breaking away from the ones staring back at her to look down at her feet. “Naught but a hollow, malicious numbness.”

“Still such a foal,” Nightmare Moon replied, smirking. “It doesn’t come from within, either.”

“Hold a moment,” Luna said. Her eyes slide back up to the image. “The Elements of Harmony should have banished thine image from my mind. Wherefore am I seeing thee now? Some trick of Discord’s, doubtless.”

Nightmare Moon rolled her eyes. “‘I’ am here because I am you. Not seeing me before was your own blindness.”

“But… why now?”

Nightmare Moon stepped forward, completely solid now, and joined Luna in the bubble of energy without any apparent struggle. “Because certain things are holding you back, and you need to be reminded of what those things are, just like in the past.”

“The past, when thou told me that my sister is what held me back?” Luna said, holding her ground as the Nightmare walked closer. “Forgive me if I am not overflowing with trust in thee at the moment.”

“I don’t give a damn whether you trust me or not, though the irony of that statement is quite amusing.” The Nightmare chuckled. “The point is, you’ve always known that the only way to advance is to eliminate obstacles. If that obstacle is your ego, then, well, the solution is clear, I think.”

“My ego?” Luna tensed now that Nightmare Moon was close enough to feel her breath. “I have precious little ego left. How can it be obstructing me?”

As Luna finished her question, she noticed a distant flash of light from across the sea of stars. One of them seemed to be moving, or growing brighter, or getting larger; something was changing about it. She also observed that Discord’s claw was no longer visibly pressing on her magical shield.

“Oh, please! Your ego is the most important thing in the world to you!” Nightmare Moon’s voice snapped her attention back. “The pain of having it bruised is so real, isn’t it? And real things are better than false things. You know that. I mean, don’t get me wrong, that feeling has been quite useful in the past, as well as entertaining. But it may be time to try something else.”

“What is the use?” Luna sighed and studied the single, solitary patch of earth she stood upon, drifting through space. “It is clear how little my struggle truly matters, now. Not even my family will remember me fondly. I just want to follow this path to its end, and then all will be over… I shall not have to hurt anyone again. No one will have to rely on me anymore. They will not see me as a villain, nor worse yet, lift me up as a hero.” Her eyes closed. “I desire only to be gone.”

“Then be gone!” Nightmare Moon snapped. “Stop whining about it and do it!”

Luna’s barrier shrank, and with it, her supply of oxygen shrank as well. She could already begin to feel the burning sensation as her breath came up short. Her innate regenerative magic worked to heal the damage being done to her body, but it would only be a matter of time before she succumbed. Her knees buckled and she slumped down to her solitary patch of earth as the anti-chaotic magic bubble was slowly squeezed inward by Discord’s claw.

“Captain, can we really trust this unicorn?”

“Not entirely,” Lyra responded to the whispered question. “Be on your guard, of course, but I think we all want the same thing here...”

The soldier nodded as Lyra continued blasting and cutting at the pink blobs and tendrils surrounding them. As powerful as her spells were, she could not help but stare at the very different display before her.

Platina had conjured a massive, interlocking network of dark, red magical sigils in the air, each of them backed up by whips of blood. Occasionally they flashed brightly, and every piece of candy between them was vaporized. Soldiers came tumbling out of the holes thus created, whom Lyra had to catch in her own magic, since Platina did not seem interested in making sure they didn’t fall painfully to the ground.

After she gently set them down, Lyra helped the rescuees through retching up the candy that had filled their lungs, then calmly explained the situation so they would not panic at the method of their rescue. This way, the ranks gradually swelled, including a number of unicorns who helped Lyra get rid of the few pieces that escaped Platina’s spells—mostly pieces that threatened to engulf them from the rear.

On top of the quick elimination of Discord’s mass of conjured cotton candy, Lyra noticed a constant, slight shimmer around Platina’s body, the telltale sign of a sustained invisible barrier. Lyra knew Luna’s former students were powerful, but this was something else.

“Face me, spirit!” Platina called to the sky, which was now almost visible thanks to her efficient work. “Are you afraid? Is this the limit of your power? Some fake cotton candy and a mass teleportation spell? You’re pathetic!”

“I am certainly not afraid of the likes of you.” Discord’s disembodied voice sounded all around them. “Nor am I pathetic. I’m not the little creep who had to hide from Celestia.”

“Yes,” Platina said, her smile widening. “Yes. More! Tell me what a creep I am, spirit. At least I have the excuse of being abused and threatened into my alicorn obsession. What reason do you have? Does the little draconequus have a crush?”

“If you think this is going to bait me into coming directly to you,” Discord said, “then you’re delusional. But of course, I’m sure you already knew that.”

Platina sighed. “Too bad. If you don’t want to play, then I guess we’ll have to go home. This place is far too boring.”

More blood surged out of Platina’s horn, then spread around herself and Lyra’s unit in a solid bubble. Lyra stared at her own murky reflection in the oozing wall of liquid, then she looked up at the dark, dripping dome that hung over their heads. A few of the soldiers gasped and shuffled, but Lyra told them to hold.

A deep, angry growl shook the ground, and then the dome was suddenly ripped away. Discord’s gigantic, leering face looked down at the group.

“We can’t have that, now can we?” he said. “Nopony is allowed to be bored under my rule. Come here.”

Discord gestured with one huge claw, and then Platina was pulled off the ground by an unseen force. Her barrier became visible as it crackled and sparked with purple energy. It temporarily singed the claw he had gestured with, but the force still pulled her upward, toward his smiling face.

Platina pointed all of her sigils toward Discord’s face and unleashed a blast of crimson energy that caused the whole area to shake. The face disappeared in a blink, causing the blast to shoot off into the sky. She remained held by the invisible spell, and grunted as her body began to be squeezed by it.

Below, without the work of Platina’s sigils to keep it at bay, the cotton candy was rapidly advancing on Lyra and her troops. With a thin beam of light conjured from her horn, she directed the magic of the unicorns with her into focused barrages, giving them all a specific point to fire on. A dazzling array of bright spells pushed back Discord’s conjurations, but the pace was much slower without Platina’s assistance.

“Cavalry!” Lyra commanded, causing the pegasus ponies in the party to snap to attention. “Help her! We’ll clear a path!”

A small wing of pegasi flew up toward Platina without hesitation. At the same instant, unicorn artillery shots from below began clearing away any candy that got too close to their wings. Meanwhile, the earth ponies prevented any from sneaking up too close to the formation, with their own hooves and teeth if necessary.

The pegasi took hold of Platina with their legs and tried to pull her back down to the ground. Her face, red from the pressure being exerted on her body, scowled at them. Unable to speak, she gestured with her head toward an area above them. With hardly any words needing to be spoken, a few of the ponies who still had their spears broke off in that direction, while the rest strained to pull away the unseen hand that was crushing the unicorn.

“Ow!” Discord’s cry of surprise and slight pain echoed all around them as the spearheads found purchase on… something. The ponies could not see what they had stabbed, but the pressure on Platina was released for a moment. The unicorn took advantage of the relief to teleport away in a spray of blood that splattered on the coats of the entire unit.