The massive thunderhead that had heralded Discord’s arrival split into hundreds of smaller clouds, and each of them began to glow with a pale red light. The clouds sparkled and shimmered as they formed a gauntlet around Luna’s aerial position from every direction. She kept track of them with her peripheral vision, but her attention was focused on Discord himself, who was looking around at her army struggling valiantly against his forest of cotton candy, shaking his head.

The moment Luna turned down to begin a dive toward him, dozens of the smaller clouds broke off from formation and flew straight toward her. She swatted most aside with her hooves and bursts of magic, but a couple slipped through. She felt a cold sensation where they passed through her, leaving heavy blocks of cherry-colored ice to try to weigh down and distract her. Luna clenched her teeth and flapped her wings faster.

Discord simply stood still, waiting for her and idly filing his claws. He occasionally glanced up as Luna burst through cloud after cloud. He responded by yawning and circling his paw, which caused even more of them to slam into and through her. She hissed and coughed, but did not waver from her course.

At the last moment before impact, Luna noticed that the light was reflecting off of Discord’s body in a strange way--she was diving straight toward a mirror image. Rather than stop, however, she transferred all of her weight into the strike, causing her to pass through the image and slam into the ground, deepening and widening the crater even further. The ice exploded off of her body from the impact, breaking into thousands of colorful shards before vanishing. Magic surged through her hooves and into the earth itself, and she focused on the deep connection she could feel through the soil.

The surface of the earth was roiling with chaotic energy, but the deep, steady magic within it remained strong. It was the truth, standing tall within a sea of lies. By turning her mind toward that truth, Luna could discern exactly where the “true” Discord was. The rest were mere aspects, portions of his power that could act independently, but which could be freely lost with little consequence to his core being. Losing aspects would weaken his power, but only losing his true self could destroy him.

As she expected, this true self was far away from the currently visible one, and also shuffling among several different copies. Discord had always been careful, but Luna was more connected to her magic than she had ever been. A small, grim smile formed on her lips as her eyes tracked where the real Discord was moving. They were invisible to most, but sight was an unnecessary luxury. She could sense his location within her soul.

Meanwhile, commanders called for any ponies who could move to reform their ranks. Many of them had lost their weapons, but they nonetheless gathered together, facing toward the solitary figure of Discord they could see. At least half of the gigantic dome of cotton candy still remained, but thousands of ponies were now free, enough to create a formidable line.

The draconequus snapped his fingers, and then hundreds of fully-armored copies of Discord riding very undersized, colorful stuffed animals appeared in an opposing formation. The false Discords set their mint candy cane lances toward the ponies and charged, the tiny legs of their mounts carrying them deceptively quickly. Banners bearing his face flapped in the wind. Pegasi dived down to harass and slow the charge, but more and more Discords were springing into being by the second.

The two forces met with an earth-shaking clash. The strikes from the candy lances were all designed to be surface wounds, and all the wounds they delivered were instantly closed and “cauterized” with a green, minty-fresh concoction. Thus, the ponies could continue to fight, at least until the pain and exhaustion overwhelmed them.

The larger, “commander” Discord cackled from the sidelines.

“Do you hear that?” Lyra gasped. “Over there, it sounds like a charge!”

Lyra and her band of soldiers could feel the ground shaking beneath their hooves, but it was currently the least of their worries. Dozens of hooked puppet strings had descended from the top of the dome of candy and plunged into the limbs of any ponies they could reach. Ponies who were caught began attacking their own allies, albeit with non-lethal bites, kicks, and holds. The attacking ponies remained conscious the whole time, staring wide as they were forced to watch their own bodies turn against them.

“It’s just a distraction!” Platina called back, her eyes glinting as her bloody magic blasted at the colorful ceiling above them. It was so effective that the sky was almost visible now through the translucent wisps of cotton. “He knows we’re cornering a significant portion of his power. I can feel it ahead. He’s trying to turn us away.”

“How do we know this isn’t the distraction?” Lyra shouted as she shoved away a captured earth pony with the broken shaft of a spear she had found.

Platina started a full-throated laugh, but she was cut off by a massive, disembodied dragon claw bursting out of the ground and closing around her. Lyra tried to cast a missile spell to help her, but the bolt was intercepted by the leaping body of one of the soldiers under Discord’s control. It burned a hole in his stomach as he fell to the ground, the puppet strings dis-attaching.

“No!” Lyra screamed. She tried to rush over to help him, but more ponies got in her way. Tears were in the eyes of many of them. Lyra reared back into a two-legged stance, her forelegs gripping her spear tightly. Jaw clenched, she focused her magic on creating the strongest barrier around herself that she could. The golden energy brightened and sparked as the bodies were flung at it by the puppet strings. Half a dozen ponies were unwillingly pounding against Lyra’s shield. It took all her concentration to hold it and still move forward toward the claw.

The claw, meanwhile, was starting to sink back down into the ground.

Lyra struck out with her broken staff the moment her barrier finally crumbled, aiming for the legs of the nearest pony in an attempt to disable them. She heard bones breaking, and the soldier’s eyes winced, but the legs kept moving, kept trying to kick and grab her. Weeping openly now, Lyra gathered up her energy for a teleportation spell, something she had relatively little practice with. However, the pile of puppeted ponies who leapt on her disrupted her concentration, causing the spell to fizzle out, and her body to fall to the earth.

Seconds before losing consciousness, Lyra felt the earth rumble, even closer than the earlier charge.

Discord’s claw, halfway into the ground, stopped moving, shuddered, then exploded in a shower of gore. As the pieces rained down, Platina levitated in the air, cackling. With waves of her hooves, her magic shot into the bodies of a nearby group of ponies Discord was controlling. The affected ponies yelped and jerked around wildly, as Platina used their own blood to wrestle against the puppet strings for control of their bodies.

Her face strained, and became drenched with sweat and blood, but the soldiers gradually began moving as she directed, and not as Discord directed. She sent dozens of them, even the earth ponies, soaring into the air, toward where the huge vision of Discord’s face looked down. Its eyes widened at the sudden reversal, and then the face winced as their hooves and weapons slammed into him.

The face disappeared with a flash, and that flash was soon followed by another, closer to the ground, just to the side of Platina’s vision. A tiny version of Discord appeared there, looking like it was trying to escape. Too late, the new Discord saw that his location was already surrounded by bloody arcane sigils floating in the air, turned inward toward his exact spot.

“Got ya,” Platina whispered, grinning. Discord screamed as an interlocking lattice of red energy beams shot through his body from every direction.

“Not fair!” he shouted. “There’s no way you could have known where I was going to appear!”

Platina’s grin turned into a smirk. “No way, unless I’ve been studying chaos magic for hundreds of years, that is.”

The tiny voice screamed louder, and then Discord’s aspect exploded in a shower of sparks and potpourri. Everything he had conjured in the vicinity, including the cotton candy, instantly vanished with him.

“Lyra, sweetheart,” Platina called down to the Captain, who was beginning to regain consciousness. “This is no time to be napping. We need to defeat more of these copies if we hope to weaken Discord enough.”

Lyra looked at Platina’s body, which was now so soaked with blood and viscera that barely a trace of her silver coat could be detected. Then, her eyes were drawn up to her soldiers, who were still suspended in mid-air thanks to Platina’s manipulation.

“Oh, my apologies,” Platina said when she noticed where Lyra was looking. She set them down gently, with a placating smile. “I got a bit carried away. Shall we?”

Lyra observed the rigid, wary faces of the soldiers who were set down, but she also saw that the entire environment for dozens of feet around them was devoid of anything created by Discord, replaced with a heavily damaged but otherwise natural field of grass. She sighed.

“Lead the way.”

Luna shouted a wordless battlecry and hurled herself through the ice clouds blocking her way. It would have been less painful if she had had time to don her armor, but pain was an afterthought now. Her entire world was a tunnel pointing straight toward the true form of Discord.

Most of the ponies in the chaotic melee a short distance away could not see her, but hearing her shout caused their morale to surge, and they began gaining ground on the army of Discords.

Discord was so busy laughing and clapping at the display that he did not notice that Luna was charging at him until too late. He decided to answer her earlier physical attacks with one of his own, and extended his claws so that they would dig into her leaping body. They did, and she screamed, but Luna had so much momentum by then that she bent his arms back and slammed into his body. As the two of them tumbled to the ground, Luna reared her head back, then plunged it down toward his neck, where she sank her long, sharp teeth into his flesh.

Ponies at the front line were momentarily confused by the sight of Luna apparently attacking the air. The confusion lessened when they heard Discord’s pained yowl from the same direction.

Discord struggled with all of his limbs to pry Luna’s jaws off of his neck, but that only caused his flesh to tear faster. His panic subsided after a second, and he willed himself into an entirely different location.

Floating hundreds of feet in the air, Discord expected the pain to stop. It did not. He looked down and saw that Luna’s teeth still clung to him.

“How the—!” he started to say in a choked, rasping voice. Discord made a hacking sound as her mouth squeezed down on his windpipe. Then he saw it. Luna’s throat was making large gulping motions; she was drinking his blood, and through it, she was connecting her essence to his. That was how she followed him. He forced himself to remain calm, and figured out exactly what would get her off of him.

Luna’s mind was a swirling maelstrom of rage and hatred. Every crime Discord had ever committed was part of that storm, playing out in her mind’s eye. She felt every moment of the pain he had inflicted on ponies, her ponies, and then she felt them again as she remembered the years she spent trying to repair their shattered minds in the wake of ending his rule. So many had ended their lives before she could help them, and the ones she could help were never the same.

Celestia had tended to their newly rescued subjects during the day, by healing their bodies, comforting them with kind words and warm embraces, and restoring order and predictability to their daily lives, but she could not go with Luna into the realm of dreams. Luna tried to tell her sister of what she saw there, but after several times of only being met with uncomprehending gazes and platitudes, the words stopped coming. Luna learned to cope on her own.

Now it was no longer Discord’s neck she was biting. Her eyes widened when she saw it was a dark blue-coated pony’s neck. Luna’s own self, as she had looked those many centuries ago, stared back at her, struggling to escape her attack. Renewed anger swelled up in her as the younger her fought and screamed.

Coward! She screamed back at herself. Thou never searched for aid because it was too difficult? Because one single pony was incapable of understanding? Die, thou ignorant foal!

Luna wrenched her head back and forth, tearing out her own throat. She could not breathe, though some life still remained in her body. Luna drank the blood pouring out of her wound in between body-wracking sobs.

Discord saw the events play out as well, as their minds were already entwining. Desperate, he teleported them again, and they were instantly surrounded by molten rock. He had teleported them into an active volcano. It was by no means pleasant for him, but being a spirit, he was more resistant to it than Luna was. He wished he could laugh as he felt her screams of agony vibrating pleasantly through his body.

The heat was so intense that her regalia melted away in an instant. Her magical crown melted too after a few more seconds, and the jewel inside it shattered. The volcano was not, however, working as expected on Luna herself. Even after a minute in the magma, Luna’s teeth were still clamping hard onto Discord’s throat. Most of her body was a charred, ruined mess, but she was regenerating much faster than he expected. Even through all her muffled screams, she refused to teleport away. So he teleported them somewhere else instead.

Following in the trail Platina confidently blazed, Lyra’s party swelled to hundreds of warriors. They hacked their way through the wispy pink mass in their way as fast as they could. There were a variety of animals living inside the candy now, with the bodies of natural creatures, but all with the face of Discord. They leapt out, snarling and trying to claw and bite the ponies. The creatures were easy for them to defeat, but they were a distraction and a delay.

Platina occasionally glanced back at them, tapping one of her feet as she waited for them to catch up to her. All the ponies who were not actively working on hacking through the candy had their weapons within easy reach, and eyed the ancient sorcerer warily.

“Come on, Lyra!” Platina said with an eager grin. “I can sense something powerful in the next clearing. It must be another aspect!”

Lyra could sense it too, and it was a sensation that caused a cold sweat to break out on her back. She steeled herself for what lay ahead, but she refused to move any faster than she felt her unit could handle.

Platina tore the largest opening she could in the remaining wisps of candy before the clearing, and then jumped through, prepared to face a horde of chaos beasts or a draconequus sorcerer. What she did see caused most of her spells to dissipate as her concentration faltered.

The army’s baggage and passenger wagons were circled just ahead, but they were undamaged. Prince-Consort Blueblood could be seen in the gaps between them, protecting the wounded and civilians from the wagons with a blue shield spell powerful enough for Platina to momentarily quirk one of her eyebrows at it. She did not completely lose her concentration until she saw what was outside of the circle of wagons, however.

Two copies of Discord were sprawled across the ground, their bodies shriveled, shrunken, and colorless. Between them stood Platina’s fellow student, Nickle Waltz, though standing might have been too strong a word. His head was dipped down and huddled up, and his legs were shaking. His eyes darted around all sides, and widened considerably when he noticed the entire battalion of ponies charge into the clearing.

“What the heck?” Platina said, striding forward first. “What happened here, Waltz!?”

“Please don’t yell at me,” he muttered, cringing away from her.

Platina groaned. “I am not yelling at you, honey, I am simply… surprised.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“What wasn’t your fault?” She tilted her head at him.

“Nothing,” he said, finally forcing himself to stop retreating as Platina stopped a few feet away from him and the Discord corpses. “Anything?”

Platina rolled her eyes. “Please just tell me what happened here,” she said, much more gently than before. “If you don’t mind.”

“I was just with those nice ponies over there,” he replied, looking over toward Blueblood and his group. Lyra was already moving toward him and asking him what was happening. “Then these spirits showed up and started using some kind of magic. I… I was just thinking that they seemed different. They didn’t look real at all. Next thing I knew, they were dead. I said I was sorry, but the rest of the ponies ran away from me and circled up.”

“You didn’t cast any spells?” Platina stared, slack-jawed. “Didn’t use any magic?”

“I don’t think so. Should I have?” Nickel Waltz said. “Sorry.”

“Stop apo—” Platina stopped herself short, instead rubbing between her eyes and sighing. “Look, you didn’t do anything wrong. Just wait here for a moment, okay?”

He gulped, but nodded. “Okay.”

Platina sidled up to Lyra and Blueblood, who were already engaging in a whispered conversation.

“I don’t know if it’s a threat or not,” Blueblood was saying. “I’m just telling you what I saw.”

“Hey, I know that,” Lyra said. “All I mean is that it doesn’t seem possible, not that I don’t believe you.”

“I’m telling you, we need to do something before it’s too—” Blueblood clamped his mouth shut as soon as he noticed Platina approach.

Platina arched an eyebrow at him. “Please, finish your sentence, dear,” she said. “Don’t mind me.”

“I was simply trailing off naturally,” Blueblood said, his lips forming a rictus smile.

“Something you want to tell us about your friend, Platina?” Lyra asked. “Our illustrious Prince-Consort says that those Discords just melted in front of him, and nopony here even saw a spell being cast.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Platina said. “He’s harmless. Unstable, but harmless.”

“That… doesn’t sound very harmless to me.” Lyra frowned, and Blueblood nodded along with her words.

Platina sighed. “Look. Back in our day, Luna… came down on him the hardest. I’m not saying he didn’t deserve it. Perhaps he did. He never directly hurt anyone, but that urge was there, and he may have been planning to. But he’s practically a completely different pony now. Waltz was a bit unhinged even before that, and the centuries of solitary study have done his mind no favors. Even so, I know him better than any of you. I know that the mere thought of violence sends him into panic. When I tell you that he isn’t a threat to you, I mean it. It was only because Willowleaf and I were there to support him that he was able to help Luna against Celestia at all.”

“Okay, then how did somepony like that manage to defeat two Discords in seconds?” Blueblood protested.

“He has always had insights that the rest of us can only barely comprehend.” Platina shrugged. “Perhaps he has learned to cloak his magic, and you just didn’t notice it. Why worry about it? He saved your precious rears. You should be thanking him!”

Platina turned away from them and stomped off, back toward Nickel Waltz. He backed away from her advance at first, so she slowed herself down deliberately and forced a smile.

“Waltz, honey,” she said tenderly, “everything’s fine. We’re going to head over there and help out our new soldier friends now, alright?”

“Help with what?” he asked, his eyes focused on the sky that was peeking out from the ruined wisps of cotton candy above them.

“With defeating Discord, of course,” she said. “I know you can do it. I will be here with you the whole time, alright?

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Waltz said, “but thanks for the offer.”

“Why won’t it be--hey, I’m talking to you. What are you looking at…?” Platina followed his gaze up to two figures in the sky.

Luna and Discord battled there for a few seconds, then disappeared, and a few seconds after that they reappeared elsewhere in the sky. The whole time, they were blazing like a multicolored sun due to all the magic pouring from them.

“Holy ponyfeathers,” Lyra said after a quick gasp. “That’s way too much energy in one place. We need to get a shield up now, in case it blows! Come on, unicorns, let’s get working!”

Lyra was tired and drained, but she started to gather all of her arcane reserves for a protection spell. Most of the unicorns around her did as well, including Nickel Waltz after some gentle guidance from Platina. There was one pony who did not join in, however.

“Blueblood!” Lyra shouted. “Aren’t you supposed to be good at shields? We need you now more than ever!”

“What about Luna?” Blueblood asked quietly.

“Luna...” Lyra glanced from him, up to Luna as she battled with Discord, then back at Blueblood. “She can take care of herself. She wouldn’t want us to throw our lives away for help she doesn’t need.”

“Now is when she needs help the most!” Blueblood began preparing his own separate protection spell, and pointed it high into the sky.

“I…” Lyra chewed on her lip, staring up into the brilliant light above them.

“If you could help, I would appreciate it,” Blueblood said, grunting as he poured all the magic he could into the spell he was preparing. “I’m not about to lose her… her position now that we… I mean, I, have come so far.”

Lyra eyed Blueblood’s face, which was etched with internal conflict, but also what seemed to be genuine concern. She sighed heavily. “Alright, everypony! Change of plans. Divide the barrier between us and the Queen. We’re all going to get through this!”

Amidst a sea of cheers and grim smiles, only one voice protested.

“You can’t be serious,” Platina said. “That’s going to weaken the spell by far more than half, simply due to the divided attention. If you try to protect everyone, it will be too weak, and you’ll end up protecting no one!”

“It’s going to have to be strong enough,” Lyra replied, glaring hard. “That’s just the way it is.”

The look Platina returned was just as intense. “Then you’ve killed yourselves.” She shook her head. “Very well, do what you will. My shield will be over us, and only us. That way at least some of us will survive.”

“Suit yourself.”

Hundreds of magic trails of every color swirled above the group’s heads, gathering energy and waiting for the right moment to be cast. Everyone who was not focused on building the spell stared up at Luna and Discord, as they teleported all over the sky, and exchanged massive blows with each other when they could be seen. Some of them could feel the earth shake with each of the strikes.

Discord clawed and kicked at Luna whenever they were not teleporting, and she responded by slamming her own hooves into his body. The blows caused a great deal of pain, but their main use was as a distraction from the true battle unfolding. The pair teleported again under Discord’s power.

This time, they appeared on the bottom of the ocean. The overwhelming pressure crushed Luna’s body, and her lungs screamed for air, but repaired themselves just as quickly as she drew more of Discord’s life energy into herself.

Discord tried to use the connection developing between them to overwhelm Luna’s soul with chaos and pain, but that soul was burning too brightly. The orderly procession of the heavens she and her sister had spent millennia developing gave her spirit, ragged and tormented as it was, a deep, unwavering connection to reality. He could, perhaps, sever that connection, but it had still imprinted itself on Luna in a fundamental way. All the energy she took from him was being transformed into her own.

Gradually, Luna perceived a change in the energy she was consuming. She knew it was not real, only a perception like when her younger self had appeared, but the sensation itself was real to her. It felt darker, yet more familiar. Now, it was Nightmare Moon she was biting into. The black mare held herself with too much contempt and dignity to scream, but Luna could see the pain and terror in her eyes.

Good! her inner voice yelled. 'Tis but a fraction of that which thou caused to my subjects!

Nightmare Moon sneered, clearly wishing her throat were free so she could retort. It was pointless to speak them, however, since Luna already knew well what they would be.

I do not care that it is my fault! Justice shall be done for hurting them, for all those years of manipulating and abusing them for thine own gain! Even should it mean my death, I shall never allow thee to walk this earth again!

Nightmare Moon, too, fell before her, her blood taken to fuel Luna’s magical reserves.

Discord tried every place he could think of that would interrupt Luna’s attack. The top of mountains. The depths of the void. Places where time moved in random directions. A dimension where everything was inside out. A dimension where all the senses were interchanged randomly. Inside his own body, then hers. Places that defied all description. But Discord soon realized that nothing could remove her, because she had seen all of this and more within the minds of ponies who endured his rule, back in ancient times. Not only that, but her body was now brimming with chaos magic, giving her nearly the same resistance to it that he had.

His fury did at least allow him to pull away enough to speak.

“No, damn it!” he said, coughing with his last breaths. “You don’t get to win. I win! I always win! If I don’t, then nopony does!”

Discord teleported them back to the skies above the candy battlefield, where everything he had summoned was rapidly fading away. Luna’s army thought they had routed Discord’s forces, and were cheering over the fallen copies. Discord responded by gathering up the remnants of his power within the copies, and focusing it into the roiling vortex of chaos energy that was focused around Discord and Luna. The vortex was growing more and more unstable.

Luna, too, gathered up the remnants of her power, and made use of the magic she had consumed from Discord to prepare one enormous spell. To cast a shield large enough to cover her army took nearly all the energy had left. Trying to include herself in the protection took all of it. She was much closer to where the epicenter would be, so she was not sure it would be enough, but she had to try. Luna had come too far, seen too much, to die now. But if her spell managed to save even one of her subjects, then that was enough.

She began to worry at Discord’s neck.

“Luna, don’t do this,” he struggled to say. “You’re going to hurt everypony here, including yourself. Your spell isn’t going to be enough!”

Luna bit down harder, silencing him. The struggle gradually faded from his body, but pure hate and fear remained on his face.

Then, Luna felt her entire universe explode with light, sound, heat, every experience imaginable and unimaginable. Discord’s essence shattered into infinite pieces and scattered around her. Her senses were overwhelmed, and responded by shutting down.

Her world was an empty void, cut off from all sensation. Even her own memories drifted away, until there was no self left to experience the deprivation.

The first feeling that returned was a gentle wind. Then sounds carried on that wind. A voice, who she remembered, calling out a name she realized was hers. Luna! it was shouting. The voice sounded strained and exhausted, but determined. Her first instinct was to fight the emotions that came flooding back then, but… she did not. She let them wash over her, and every piece they touched revitalized her spirit. As her soul reforged itself, her physical awareness gradually returned as well.

There were clear blue skies all around her, a sight which made Luna want to weep, but her tear ducts had not been restored yet. She was floating, and not under her own power--there was a magical shield around her, not composed of simply one color, but hundreds of colors, working together to protect her. Her ruined throat emitted a dry sob when she looked down and saw her soldiers, her friends, were all safe, and they were using their magic in unison to bring her gently down to the ground. Luna didn’t know how her spell had been strong enough, but it had.

Pegasi flew up to meet her as she drifted down. Luna felt so full, so complete, at the sight that she did not immediately notice what was missing. It hit her when she looked at the sun. It had risen on its own, and the light of dawn was gradually spreading over the fields of Equestria. She no longer felt magically connected to it, nor to the moon. More than that, she realized that no one was controlling it. The sun was moving under its own power for the first time since Discord’s reign.

Luna’s ears perked up as the sound of ponies cheering reached them. She smiled, slowly closing her eyes as she began to heal.

Author's Notes:

Finally finished! Thanks to RockstarRaccoon for prereading, and to all you loyal readers.

Next up, the fallout of all this. And what are the griffons up to?