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Heart of Loyalty

by PonyAmorous

Chapter 20: Chapter 18

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Chapter 18

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Through some great feat of willpower, Twilight managed to keep her screaming internal as she opened her mouth to reply.

"Now let's just talk abou—"

"Wrong answer."

Twilight didn't quite see what happened next.

One instant, Celestia was a good 20 strides in front of her, then a momentary flicker and Twilight found herself flying backward with the frontal barrier she had raised in startled reflex completely shattered. Fortunately, the moment she started moving, another reflex prompted her to pour magic into a rear barrier that helped cushion her subsequent impact through three trees and into the sturdy trunk of a fourth, letting her off with only a cracked rib instead of the shattered spine she would almost certainly have ended up with otherwise.

Though she wouldn't notice it until later, being more than a bit distracted at the moment, something in the blow had purged the stage dye from her mane, coat, and tail, returning her to her usual lavender self. The distant cry of "You kicked the highlights out of her hair!" went unnoticed, drowned out by the pain that was starting to make itself at home in every part of her body.

Before she could pick herself up off the ground, a bright white disc that gave off a high pitched hum appeared directly above her. Twilight rolled out of the way just in time to avoid a searing beam of white light that shot down from the disc, leaving a black circular scorch on the ground. Three more discs appeared alongside the first and proceeded to chase her, working together to fire beams in increasingly elaborate patterns. Hardly able to get her hooves under her most of the time, most of Twilight's dodging was accomplished by roughly throwing herself with her own magic.

After a few narrow misses resulting in a singed mane and tail, Twilight ripped up a large patch of earth that had been glassed by beam strikes, pulling it up and over her in a protective dome. A quick spell increased the reflectivity of the glass to a mirror like sheen, while the surface warped and flowed, covering the dome's surface with small concave pockets formed of three edges intersecting at right angles, like a honeycomb if bees were obsessed with corners. The beams struck the retroreflectors, melting them to slag, but having enough of their energy reflected straight back to strike the discs themselves, which disappeared with a pop.

Gasping for breath, Twilight channeled some healing magic into her cracked rib, forming a temporary patch that would hold it together and numb the pain to keep her on her hooves for the next hour or so, but would require some real treatment later. She shot a dumbfounded look at Celestia, taken aback by the unexpectedly brutal lethality of her opening salvo.

As if sensing Twilight's unspoken question, Celestia replied. "I am very good at healing magic. You would be quite surprised at what a pony can survive and what I can bring them back from. Now, perhaps you're ready to rethink your—"

Celestia was interrupted by the sudden impact of a blue blur that ricocheted off the side of her head and back up into the air. The brief shimmer of a golden barrier revealed that the projectile had been stopped inches from her face, but the grooves her hooves dug into the ground as she slid several meters testified to just how much force had been behind it.

"Leave her alone!"

Celestia shot an annoyed glare up at Rainbow Dash who was already leveling herself out and turning for another attack run. A golden aura plucked the pegasus out of the air and pressed her against a nearby tree. More magic poured into the trunk, causing the bark to rapidly grow until it had completely encased her limbs and torso, leaving only her head sticking out of a pony shaped knot in the wood.

With Rainbow Dash immobilized, Celestia turned back to the matter at hoof to find Twilight had been quite industrious with the the few seconds of distraction. Roughly two dozen purple orbs surrounded the princess, forming a dome with no more than a few inches between any two adjacent orbs. Twilight was too busy panting from the exertion of creating them all so quickly to smile, but managed an internal smirk as they started humming.

It doesn't matter how freakishly fast you move, you can't dodge this.

She didn't expect it to end the fight (it would take significantly more than that to put Celestia out of commission), but at least it would keep her on the defensive. Perhaps it would even buy enough time to work on freeing Dash and fleeing at supersonic speed until they passed the boundaries of the interdiction field. What she certainly didn't expect was for Celestia to disappear in a flash of golden light that signified teleportation.

Cheating! That's Cheating!

Despite the overwhelming unfairness of her opponent being able to teleport within an interdiction field, Twilight retained enough presence of mind to immediately throw herself sideways, narrowly avoiding a hoof strike that left a small crater in her previous position, and to fire a strong blast straight down into the ground, blowing up an obscuring cloud of dirt, dust, and smoke. Surrounding plant life withered as she rapidly pulled in moisture from the environment into a compact ball of water and instantly vaporized it, blanketing the area in steam to complete her makeshift smokescreen.

The moment line of sight was broken, she took off at a gallop in a random direction, spawning illusory silhouettes to head off in other directions, or just run back and forth erratically. It would buy her a few moments to think, but not long. Celestia was already eliminating copies at a frightful pace, faster than Twilight could produce them even if doing so wasn't little more than a way to exhaust herself and hand Celestia a victory through attrition. Any of her attacks could be the lucky one that hit the real target, and the odds of that happening grew larger every moment.

First on the list was fighting fire with fire. If the teleportation situation remained this asymmetric, her chances didn't even approach those of the proverbial snowball in Tartarus. Not liking her chances of brute forcing through Celestia's interdiction field, Twilight decided to even things in the other direction by throwing up a field of her own. At least that would boost her odds of getting out of this from laughable to merely abysmal.

A moment after her spell had swept through the area, she was nearly knocked off her hooves by the arcanic pressure wave created by its subsequent shatter. Celestia had wasted no time in tearing it apart like wet tissue paper. Twilight quickly gathered up the shattered remains of the spellwork before it could dissipate and reforged the field anew. It was promptly shattered again.

As long as she kept reforging the field from the remains of the previous one, the actual energy cost should remain a fraction of what Celestia spent to blow it apart each time. Unfortunately, there was no telling just how deep her former teacher's reserves of magical power were. Any plan relying on victory through attrition fell somewhere on the spectrum from foolhardy to suicidal.

Think, Twilight! Think!

She had a few illusory copies fire a few equally illusory attacks and shuffle positions in response to Celestia working her way uncomfortably close to her real location.

If I can't block her teleportation with my own field, I'll just have to neutralize hers.

Easier said than done. We don't have the kind of power to punch through that. Even if we did, there's nothing stopping her from using our own trick against us and reforging it.

I don't need to break it. Just compromise it. If she can still teleport with it up, there must be some kind of mechanism that recognizes her and makes an exception. A backdoor into the system. By necessity, that makes the whole thing less secure than just a solid wall. I just need to pick the lock.

Twilight focused her magical senses on the interdiction field that permeated the area, revealing the intricate spellcraft that lay underneath. A complex web of golden threads in a tight mesh, strong and resilient. Pressure on any single point would be rebuffed by the strength of many connected points, the whole network standing together as one. Redundant lines crossed, looped, and doubled back on themselves in a maddeningly labyrinthian knot that dared any attempt at comprehension.

In short, it was the exact kind of puzzle a more innocent and naive Twilight of the past might have rejoiced at burning a weekend deciphering. Now the stakes were substantially higher and the time frame substantially shorter. Hoping the few remaining seconds her decoys could buy her would be enough, she got to work.

Input! Sensing! Detection! There's gotta be some part of this that works to identify Celestia as separate from other targets, and that has to start with a sensor somewhere! Then that should lead—which should trigger—which calls—there! Now to just—

As Twilight dove deeper into the guts of the spell, something in Celestia's magic sense gave something analogous to an ear twitch. She turned away from the Twilight she was currently pursuing and adjusted course several degrees to her right. The sensation grew stronger.

Almost there! Just a little...got it!

Twilight finally managed to worm her way into the section of spell responsible for gating access. There didn't seem any simple way to destroy it, isolate it, or take it out of the picture in any other fashion. There was, however, something she could do that was even better. Add additional exception targets.

Twilight punched in her own magical signature just as Celestia materialized in front of her in a flash of golden light, horn pointed straight at her face. As a blossom of light emerged from the tip, Twilight focused on her intense desire to be anywhere else. Shards of scorched bark exploded out of the tree Twilight had been leaning against as she reappeared in a violet flash behind Celestia. The princess quickly spun around with a shield raised, instinctively anticipating an attack from the rear, but she only caught Twilight catching her bearings before disappearing in another flash.

Celestia's eyes widened with alarm. A moment later, she disappeared in a flash of her own and reappeared directly next to Twilight, who was already working to extract Rainbow Dash from her arboreal prison. The violent extension of an alabaster wing, known through most of Twilight's life as a source of soothing maternal compassion, struck with enough force to send her flying off her hooves and rolling through the dirt.

As she rolled to a stop, she felt the interdiction field drop, replaced immediately by a new one. A much simpler one without built in exceptions. At least her opponent wouldn't be able to teleport anymore. It was a small step in the right direction, but as she spat out a small amount of blood and pulled herself to shaking hooves, it felt quite small indeed.

Now the fight can begin in earnest.

It was too bad her body felt like she had already lost this fight several times over.

Three spears of light formed in the air and thrust downward at Twilight, who jumped backward just in time to avoid being skewered. She tried to counterattack, emulating the dark daggers she had seen Luna use against her once, but Celestia was too quick to get a fix on, suddenly appearing off her left flank with a melee strike.

Twilight twisted, turning it into a glancing blow that only grazed her barrier, but still sent her skidding backward on her hooves. She resorted to blasting off wide angle concussive waves to force Celestia to keep her distance, which was only slightly effective. Aside from being only marginally less dangerous at range, Celestia's flash steps made her nearly impossible to hit, even if Twilight wasn't kept on a constant and ever weakening defensive by the endless assault. With the way she was constantly being forced to fall back, steered by an attack to one side or the other, Twilight had no doubt that she would soon find her back hitting a wall.

I just need some time to think!

Twilight sprayed a thick stream of frost in front of her, briefly driving her enemy back, then arced it over herself, creating a protective dome of ice that was quickly reinforced inside by one of frozen earth. Twilight sat in the cold darkness, already feeling a faint directional heat from where Celestia was burning her way through like a blowtorch through a wax statue.

She had to be faster. Move faster or at the very least think faster if she was going to come up with a way out of this. While Twilight Sparkle on a slow day thought faster than most ponies scrambling to finish their thesis an hour before deadline after an unfortunate ink spill, it simply wasn't enough here. She needed a boost.

Knowing she would pay for it later, Twilight turned her magic in upon herself. Her pupils dilated as her adrenal glands kicked into overdrive. Her muscles twitched as they stockpiled extra reserves of oxygen, pulled in by the swollen aveoli in her hyperventilating lungs. She grit her teeth at the burning sensation that set into her entire body as the magic worked into her nerves, reinforcing myelin layers to speed up conduction, or creating redundant pathways to transmit signals at the speed of aether rather than electrochemical potential.

Riding a buzz that would make Pinkie on coffee look like Gummy in a freezer, Twilight felt like she could grab the world and break it in half. She quickly set to work priming a flashbang spell that would trigger the moment the inner dome was breached, adding a few sharpened rock projectiles as a bonus. Celestia would of course have a frontal shield up, expecting an attack the moment she broke through, but that was just a distraction.

Twilight moved to a point 90 degrees off from where Celestia was quickly burning through, and begun work on an exit. Frozen earth flowed like a liquid across the inner surface of the dome, from the point where her horn touched the wall to the site of the imminent breach. From Celestia's perspective, it would probably look like a desperate attempt to keep her at bay by thickening the barrier (one doomed to failure as the princess pushed through faster than the spot could be reinforced), but it would delay just enough to get the timing right.

The darkness filled with a searing light as Celestia's punched through the inner wall, glowing like the sun. An even brighter light filled the space as Twilight's trap immediately activated while she simultaneously erupted out of the now paper thin side of the dome. Between the blinding light and the motion, there was no time to get a visual fix, but thanks to basic geometry, she knew just where to aim anyway. At the moment when Celestia was blocking a barrage of small rocks to the face, Twilight sailed through the air and let loose a blind fire volley of attacks at her flank. A storm of purple beams and telekinetically propelled bits of rock and debris (the remnants of the wall through which she had made her dramatic exit), launched themselves at the approximate location of her target.

She landed and refocused her sight just in time to see the last of her assault blocked, deflected, and otherwise neutralized as Celestia turned to face her with inequine speed, though her heightened visual acuity managed to pick up what appeared to be an unsightly welt or two on the royal posterior. The dramatic flaring of wings that followed might have just been meant to intimidate, but it might also have been to obscure what possibly could have been a few small specks of scarlet staining the pure white coat of the solar matriarch. A reflexive effort to hide any evidence that a mortal pony could draw divine blood.

Up to this point, Celestia's face had been a dispassionate mask of serenity. She had gone about kicking Twilight's haunches around the area with the same sense of calm and duty with which she might offer a toast at a banquet, instruct a lesson, or fulfill any other of her royal responsibilities. Now that mask cracked around the eyes, in which clear irritation could be seen. Bits of flame could be seen sparking sporadically on the fringes of her tricolor mane.

In an instant the assault was back on. Twilight's heightened perception and reflexes helped her keep clear of the attacks, but she was still stuck unequivocally on the defensive, lucky to get even an attempt at a counterattack after every tenth strike and unable to find anything that would even connect, much less do any real damage. Celestia's attacks were also growing harder and harder to avoid. Whether she was starting to slow down, Celestia was speeding up, or her actions were just growing more predictable, Twilight couldn't tell. What she could tell was that the momentum had turned against her.

It's not enough. I need more! I have to be faster. Or at least make her slower.

Twilight projected a curtain of strong gravity in front of her. An ordinary pony walking into it would have been driven straight into the dirt, unable to get up. To Celestia, it was more like a sudden unexpected shift from running on pavement to running on sand, just slowing her down enough for Twilight to leap away from the next hoof strike.

Still not enough! More!

She pumped more magic into the field, causing the image of Celestia on the other side to flicker and shift position slightly due to the increased refraction of the now much denser air. Whether it was this effect or luck that caused Celestia's next searing beam to fire wide of its mark, Twilight wasn't sure.

More!

The gravitational field grew stronger still and stretched into a protective ring as Twilight pushed it out in all directions. As the view around her rippled, a mad idea struck. She pulled up the beginning of one of the spells she had seen in the Starswirl section of the library, making several rapid modifications. This on the fly spellcraft would turn this fight around, and she gave it a 70% chance it wouldn't rip her apart on the atomic level. The math on those odds might have been a bit shaky, but optimism was an important part of both magical innovation and dueling one's mentor/ruler/deity.

Twilight continued pushing power into the gravitational ring around her, feeling it warp the surrounding space as she constricted a zero gravity bubble around herself until it traced the outline of her body. She held her breath and pushed against a growing resistance in the fabric of the universe until there was a metaphysical 'pop' and something began to give with a reluctant grinding progress. Twilight focused her gaze on Celestia, who had broken off her attack and taken a cautious defensive pose while trying to determine exactly what it was Twilight was doing. The constant rippling of her mane began to slow until it reached an apparent stop.

Along with everything else.

Still holding her breath, Twilight gazed about at the perfectly still world around her. She hadn't actually stopped time, just encouraged it to greatly slow down for everything but her. Or one could say she had greatly accelerated herself into a much faster time stream than her surroundings. It came down to a matter of perspective at this point, and both were equally valid descriptions. The important fact was that she finally had the speed advantage.

She attempted to take a step forward and found the air firm and resistant, like a wall of ball bearings suspended in gelatin. Of course. She was trying to push her way through nearly stationary molecules with a casual walking speed that was probably somewhere near mach 10. Twilight wasted no time in summoning a protective barrier to hold the heat of friction at bay as she pushed her way forward. Even if the strain of maintaining this time spell wasn't immense, breathing the air in this state was not feasible. She only had as long as the breath held in her lungs would last her.

No sound issued from her hoofsteps as she crossed the distance. With the requisite pressure waves moving at a glacial pace, the entire world was silent, truly silent in an unnerving way, leaving her own thundering heartbeat as the only sound in the universe. More disorienting than the sound, however, were the colors.

From the moment the spell took effect, the color pallet of the world had shifted. With a longer perceived time between peaks of light waves striking her retina, everything had become slightly more red. Things that were already a dark red, like the flecks of blood on her coat, had turned black as they shifted out of her visual spectrum. Most astonishing of all were the new patterns of blue and purple that emerged on some of the surrounding vegetation, shifted down from the formerly ultraviolet.

What really threw her for a loop was how much everything changed whenever she moved. Taking a step reversed the effect in front of her, turning the black blood stains red, then orange, then a light yellow, while former greens turned blue and purple. Meanwhile, the red effect only deepened behind her, until she came to a stop and the world returned to its new "normal". As stunning as her surroundings were, they weren't enough to distract Twilight from the fact that she was currently in a fight for her life, even without the reminder from the ever dwindling supply of oxygen in her lungs. She approached Celestia and considered how best to attack.

A physical strike from her current sped up state would certainly pack quite a bit of power, but would that mean shattering her own bones like trying to punch through a concrete wall? Or would she only experience the impulse based on force and collision time from her own time frame? It depended on how time reacted on the contact point between the two streams. That she had managed to walk without shattering her ankles was a good sign, but it was still probably best not to push it. Melee attacks were out.

The usefulness of projectiles and makeshift weapons from the environment was severely limited as well. She couldn't pick up a rock or a tree to bludgeon her opponent with, because it was stuck in the same slowed time frame. Nearly immovable.

Out of curiosity, Twilight tried casting one of her standard magical bolts. It froze in place as it left her horn, causing her to take a step back to avoid the awkward pooling buildup of magic as the back end of the attack tried to exit into the same space. She examined the misshapen bolt. If she looked closely, she could see it crawl forward ever so slowly. She set to work casting more bolts in a tight ring around Celestia. To avoid the pooling effect, she gave a gentle sweep of her head through each attack, painting purple beams into the air with her horn like a calligrapher with a brush. From this short range, there was no way they wouldn't hit their target before a shield was raised.

She looked up to Celestia's face. Her pupils had shifted slightly and there was a faint glow emanating from the base of her horn, likely the beginning of a first reflexive response to Twilight's initial movement.

How fast is she?!

Twilight looked at her ring of attacks and knew it wasn't enough. She needed a decisive stroke. She wouldn't easily pull off something like this again, and the burning in her lungs made it clear she didn't have much time left to make it count. She needed something truly incapacitating.

Touching her horn to the ground beneath Celestia's hooves, she cast a spell to change its consistency. Now a 5 meter diameter circle on the surface and 20 meter cylindrical shaft beneath it would temporarily behave like a liquid. Like quicksand without the water. She could see the normally instantaneous spell trickling from the edges of the circle inward and knew it was gradually working its way down as well. Next, she took a step back and cast a counter-spell over a slightly larger circle with a delay timer of 1 microsecond. Finally, vision starting to fill with spots from the lack of oxygen, Twilight summoned all her remaining strength to rain down a storm of telekinetic blows onto Celestia's head.

Finally reaching her breaking point, Twilight leaped clear of the area, covered her ears, and let out her breath as she ended the spell.

As time resumed its normal flow, the area was rocked by a series of sonic booms and a glaring heat as Twilight's hoofsteps kicked plumes of dirt skyward and left small craters in the ground. At the same time, a brilliant flash of purple coincided with a fountain of liquefied earth shooting into the air as Celestia was driven straight down like a nail, the ground instantly closing and solidifying above her as if the planet itself had simply swallowed her whole.

Twilight pulled herself to shaky hooves, panting for breath and staring in partial disbelief as the first bits of liquid earth began to rain back down.

I did it? I did it! Now what? Dash! Get Dash and get out of here!

After taking a moment to get her bearings and work out which direction she needed to head, she forced her exhausted legs to take a few staggering steps.

Move damnit! You can rest when you're dead!
Or preferably, miles away from here, in a secure location, wrapped in cyan wings!

She had made it perhaps twenty paces when a large rumbling shook the ground beneath her hooves.

No.

The rumbling only grew in intensity.

Nooo.

Twilight turned around to see another jet of scorched soil launch into the air as an incandescent Celestia erupted out of the ground, mane and tail ablaze. Her scorching gaze fixed squarely on the bruised, battered, and desperately in need of a nap unicorn below her.

Oh, come on!

***

Fluttershy flapped her wings harder as she approached the ridge, her stomach a knot of fear and anxiety. Her hooves still held an absent minded grip on the pie she had been holding when whatever it was had crashed down on the outskirts of the woods. Unable to control herself, she had taken off immediately towards the crash site, compelled to investigate.

Something in her knew it was nothing good, and urged her to run and hide, but that terror was outweighed by the fear of not knowing the details of the threat. Better a concrete and defined fear than an amorphous one. Especially if, as something deep in her gut told her, it was a threat to her friends.

Maybe it was just that repeated world saving adventures with her friends had physically conditioned her to run towards disasters instead of away, no matter how scared she felt. Maybe that was the same reason Applejack was charging along right behind her. Or maybe she was simply trying to stop her from charging in like a damn fool. That might explain the angry shouting, the exact words of which she had been too lost in her own thoughts to make out.

As she drew closer, clouds of smoke and dust reached up from above the last rise, illuminated by flashes of light and accompanied by thundering crashes. The smell of smoke, burnt dust, and blood grew stronger. Fluttershy braced herself and put on a final burst of speed to reach the crest and looked down from the bluff on the scene below.

Down amidst the carnage of destroyed vegetation stood Princess Celestia. Opposite her stood Twilight, surrounded by some kind of shimmering field and looking like she had been dragged by the tail through Tartarus. Fluttershy heard a set of hoofsteps come to a stop beside her.

"Just what in tarnation do you think—"

The rebuke was cut off by the force of a sonic boom knocking them both off their hooves. They quickly scrambled to right themselves and looked below through the cloud of settling dust to find that Celestia had vanished from sight. An exhausted looking Twilight, a ways off from her previous position, staggered to her hooves and began to crawl away amidst a dark brown rain.

The pair stared in shock a moment. Fluttershy had just opened her mouth and leaned forward to call out to Twilight when there was a sudden tremor and a terrifying flaming alicorn burst out of the ground, causing her to duck back down again and resume her cautious peering.

The fiery alicorn unleashed a torrent of flame that engulfed Twilight, sending Fluttershy's heart leaping in panic as a strangled cry died in her throat. The inferno passed a few seconds later to reveal, much to her relief, an intact Twilight surrounded by a flickering shield, though sporting a few patches of fresh burns. A small storm of lightning swirled around the alicorn in an apparent counterattack, with a few bolts even seeming to connect, but if they caused more than a minor annoyance to their target, it wasn't visible from this distance.

Fluttershy squeezed her eyes shut.

Do something!

Do what? What could I possibly do that wouldn't be worse than useless in this situation?

This was always going to end this way. Twilight was never going to go quietly.

This will be over soon and then...and then the princess will arrest her and take her away.

She opened one eye and caught sight of Twilight not quite succeeding at dodging an attack and being sent rolling across the ground. As she came to a stop, she pushed herself back up once again with a wet cough that left behind a dark patch of blood, causing Fluttershy to squeeze her eyes shut once again.

Not if she gets herself killed first! Which is definitely what she's heading for at this rate. If there were any pony in the world powerful and stubborn enough to die rather than be taken alive, it would be her.

Just surrender already, Twilight. Please!

She opened her eyes once again to a sight that should have brought a measure of relief. Twilght was held suspended in a golden glow. She still kicked and thrashed, magic glowing at the end of her horn, but it was pointless. The fight was decidedly over. Celestia, the flames having vanished from her mane and tale, was saying something inaudible from her current distance. Likely trying to convince Twilight to cease her struggling and accept that it was over.

For some reason, the fact that the peril to Twilight's life had passed didn't bring the expected relief. Twilight would finally be arrested and taken away. Locked up for what might be forever. Fluttershy couldn't exactly argue that Twilight hadn't earned such a fate several times over, nor that such an outcome was anything other than what she ultimately anticipated from the very start.

Maybe they'll let me visit her when she's locked away in the dungeon.

Some insane part of her mind still said to rush in and save her. To throw away everything and attack Princess Celestia herself, all to free an unrepentant criminal who would never even love her back. A pony who would only run off with her best friend even if her laughably implausible treasonous attempt succeeded.

Fluttershy did her best to squash the thought.

I'll bring her tea and cupcakes, and board games to play, and books! I'll come every day, or as often as they'll let me. I'll keep her updated on what's going on outside.

There were several flashes down below as Celestia made several unsuccessful attempts to get Twilight to finally stop resisting.

I'll be the highlight of her day. Her connection to the outside world. Maybe, with enough time, she'll even...see me differently. Maybe she'll...

The golden glow had intensified around the area of Twilight's throat. The kicking of her hind legs grew gradually less energetic. It was nearly over. Fluttershy could see the panic in her eyes as they darted wildly around her surroundings. A desperate, unspoken message thrown out into the world, directed at nopony in particular, but clearly received by the watching pegasus.

Help!

Without the slightest input from her mind, Fluttershy's body took action.

***

"That's enough, Twilight. Stop resisting."

"NO!"

Twilight thrashed in the magical grip that held her. Built up magic pulsed in her horn, held in check by the golden aura, just like when Luna had held her. Unfortunately for her, it looked like Celestia was not going to be moving her anywhere close enough to get off a good kick to the horn this time.

"It's over, Twilight. Time to give up."

"Never! As long as my heart is still beating, it's not over until I say it is!"

She pushed another surge of magic into her horn. The buildup, in addition to turning her eyes a bright white, was creating a splitting headache, but it was hardly worse than how the rest of her body felt.

"Sleep!"

Celestia issued the command, but the spell fizzled with a flash as Twilight blocked and dispelled it. She couldn't get magic out of her body, but she could still counteract any spell trying to act within it. She wasn't going to be rendered unconscious that easily.

"You are severely trying my already worn patience."

Golden chains manifested out of thin air and began wrapping themselves around Twilight, but disintegrated on contact.

"I remember that trick from Luna," Twilight spat back.

"Fine," Celestia responded coldly, "it's inelegant, but it seems you've left me no choice."

The golden aura tightened around Twilight's neck. The white began to drain from her eyes as spots danced across her vision and the world started to grow dark around the edges. Her eyes gave one last desperate flicker before rolling back into her head.

No....can't....stop...

The constriction around her throat suddenly vanished, along with the rest of the field holding her. As she hit the ground and sucked in a lungful of air, her eyes rolled back down to behold Princess Celestia with a face full of banana cream pie.

"Disc–?"

That was as far as the stunned Celestia got before Twilight froze the world once again with a scream. She flung magical attacks with wild abandon, including copious amounts of the shadowy daggers she had once seen Luna use. In her desperation, she even conjured the first large object she could think of from the nearby town. A steamroller popped into existence directly above Celestia's head and Twilight proceeded to hammer it with a few downward telekinetic strikes before she finally gathered her wits enough to turn and run.

Somehow she managed to keep her legs moving and her breath held until she returned to the tree Dash had been imprisoned in. The spell dropped and Twilight braced as the shock wave from her sonic boom washed over her, much to Dash's surprise.

"What the—? Twilight!"

She quickly fired a beam at the arboreally bound pegasus that melted off the restraining bark like hot wax. Still trying to catch her breath, she wrapped her hooves around her prize and managed to choke out two commands.

"UP! FAST!"

Dash complied, rocketing them into the air with a speed that sent their blood rushing into their back hooves. The moment Twilight felt them pass beyond the boundary of the interdiction field, they disappeared in a brilliant purple flash.

***

Oh, dear.

That was all that cycled through Flutterhy's head as she watched the pie leave her hoof and fly in an elegant arc toward Princess Celestia's head. One more thought intruded as she saw it land squarely in the face of the ruling diarch and goddess of the sun.

I really shouldn't have done that.

Her view of the unfolding disaster was abruptly interrupted by her being yanked backwards, thrown over somepony's back, and carried off at great speed.

"What the blazes is wrong with you?!" Applejack hissed in a barely subdued whisper, desperately hoping they could get clear without being seen or heard. Her next exclamation was delayed by another echoing boom from the scene they were leaving behind. "Have you lost every last scrap of sense in that yellow head of yours?!"

"I-I don't know what happened. I just reacted and before I knew it—"

"Shut it and let me think of how I'm gonna save your sorry flank from this."

Fluttershy tightened her grip around the farm pony's back and pressed her cheek into a hug. "Thanks for looking out for me."

Applejack's only response was a constant stream of muttered profanities as she kept running.

***

With a brilliant flash of purple, Twilight Sparkle appeared in the darkness. She looked around to find...nothing. This wasn't right. She should be...well, she didn't have an exact destination in mind during that last teleport, just a general direction, but she should definitely be somewhere and not this nowhere. More importantly, wherever she was, Rainbow Dash should be there with her. Another quick inspection confirmed that this was not the case.

She attempted to summon magic to her horn for some more light and cried out at the searing pain. Glancing down at a partially reflective piece of void she happened to be standing on, she saw a large crack running down the length of her horn. Given what she had just put it through, it wasn't all that unexpected.

Had this caused her to botch the teleport? Left her trapped in subspace or thrown into some dimensional gap between worlds, while Rainbow Dash was sent off who knows where? It seemed unlikely. A botched teleport might send them to different locations, but they should probably still be on the same plane of existence. It didn't explain what she was doing here. It was more like something had interrupted her mid-transit and redirected her here, but why?

The sound of smug applause echoed through the void.

"Good show! I say, good show indeed old chap!"

A serpentine figure with mismatched limbs emerged from the darkness, wearing a top hat and monocle.

"Discord!" Twilight spat the name with a mixture of disdain, bewilderment, apprehension, and exhaustion.

"Hello, Twilight. I thought it was time we had a bit of a chat."


Author's Note

Next chapter coming much sooner than whatever passes for normal. I was just going to roll the next scene in with this chapter, but after all that action, this seemed like a natural break point.

As much as it may seem like I'm just throwing out random twists to keep the fic going, I promise there is actually an end things are progressing towards. I may even write it before my incredibly unhealthy lifestyle kills me.

Next Chapter: Chapter 19 Estimated time remaining: 2 Hours, 7 Minutes
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