"Alright, girls, I'm glad you're all here.  Not a moment too soon, either, because we're about to have some very important company."  Twilight spoke in a very matter-of-fact way as she descended the stairs into her living room.  The five ponies all turned to look with varying degrees of interest, but each one was compelled to pay attention in some way.  "I've asked you all to come here, as you know, because Celestia has been manipulating every single one of us for years.  Now, I've decided to confront the 'good princess' about this nasty business, but unfortunately before I could actually think of a... peaceful way to do so..."  Twilight had to force herself to keep a straight face as she said this.  "Somepony leaked information about this meeting, I'm not sure who or how, but I do know that Celestia is on her way here as we speak.  Hold fast, my friends, because she's going to try and stop us any way she can."

"Well we all know she can lose...  You saw what Chrysalis did to her.  Discord too, she couldn't stop either of them on her own."  Rainbow Dash exclaimed, eager to engage in an all out fight with the Princess if she could.  "She made us do the dirty work!  She doesn't stand a chance."

"T-Twilight said nopony had to get hurt..."  Fluttershy spoke up as soon as Rainbow Dash exhibited her violent streak.  The other pegasus rolled her eyes, but Twilight addressed that concern as skillfully as she could.

"You're right, Fluttershy, nopony has to get hurt.  The Princess isn't likely to be violent anyhow, unless of course we start it, so I don't think it'll even come to that."  Twilight tried to cut anymore peanut-gallery input by taking a very dominant stance in the conversation: just spouting off what she needed them all to know with no breaks in between.  "You all need to trust me, that's the only way we'll make it through this."

"What's going to happen, exactly?"  Rarity asked through a forced quizzical look, though her timid posture suggested that she was far more afraid than she was letting on.

"I don't know for sure, but this is going to be trying.  Be strong, girls, I believe in you."  Twilight's comment came out as almost sincere, though she really just mimicked herself from an earlier bout of actual sincerity some months ago.  It did, however, inspire confidence and courage in her companions, most of whom sat up straighter and took a few deep breaths to prepare themselves.  The undead, however, continued to stare off blankly into space.  For the next fifteen minutes, Twilight began positioning her friends, equipped with all six elements of harmony, as far from the front door as they could be without leaving the room.  Each of the five ponies in support of Twilight stood incrementally along her circular wall of bookshelves, anxiously awaiting the arrival of Twilight's old mentor.  

Twilight was the first to hear Celestia land just outside her door.  For the first time in a while the Princess apparently didn't force her guards to carry her where she needed to go, though Twilight could certainly hear dozens of hooves falling onto the ground right after Celestia's heavy, dramatic landing.  To the unicorn's surprise, however, the other sets of hooves kept coming and coming.  Eventually, she must have heard at least fifty other pegasus ponies land outside the library: Celestia knew what she was getting into and brought a platoon to back her up.  Fluttershy's teeth were audibly chattering, and Rarity kept shifting her weight so heavily that Twilight could actually feel it vibrate through the floor.  Within only a few seconds of the final pony landing, and definitely without hesitation, Celestia kicked in Twilight's doorway.

"Alright you six, get inside but stay by this wall, don't get too close to her yet."  Celestia's expression wasn't one of wise placidity as it usually was, but instead was completely overcast with disdain.  The Princess's army was marching outside the library, surrounding the entire tree in a circle of very heavily armed and armored pegasi.  However, six individuals stepped inside the doorway, immediately taking their places in almost perfect intervals along the circular wall opposite Twilight's friends.  Each one, with the Princess included, was wearing an intricately, but crudely, carved pewter pendant.  They were somewhat unremarkable in their size and craftsmanship, but each one boasted a large tree with knotted roots in a deep relief sculpting on the facade.

"You know, the door wasn't locked, Princess."  Twilight said, glancing around and studying each of the ponies around her.  The one on the leftmost edge of their formation seemed worried, but the others were stoic veterans that had clearly done something like this before, or at least trained every single day for it.

"Don't speak, abomination."  Celestia's indifference actually caught Twilight off guard for a second, but she rebounded back in a most personal way.

"That's how you talk to your favorite student?"

"I'm giving you a chance to get out of her right now, Iago, I know it's you.  Don't think that if I have to I won't kill Twilight to make sure you never see the light of day again."

Twilight opened her mouth to speak once more, but her body seized up and refused to cooperate.  Her head tilted down and twisted to the side, stretching out and making her entire form shudder.  Immediately after the unicorn's body fell into complete limpness, Twilight felt as though her muscles had taken control of themselves.  She started to speak, but not in her usual voice, and certainly not one that she had any control over: this was Iago's voice.  His true voice.

"Come now, Celestia, surely even you can recognize when I'm controlling someone's vocations."  The voice that carried words from Twilight's mouth was much, much higher pitched than she had expected.  The voice in her head had absolutely no tone, but this one seemed to have a very heavy one, and one that registered almost in an ancient, raspy squeal than much of a speaking voice.

"I know Twilight would never willingly do any of this!"  Twilight recognized Iago's tactic in getting Celestia riled up, so she didn't resist him.  She did, however, study the Princess's body, knowing the tells that she expressed whenever she got exceptionally angry.  This was working all too well.  "You get out of her!  You're not getting your way this time!  I'll kill you before I let you do this all over again."

"Oh that's where you're wrong.  But I'll tell you what: I'm not going to kill you."  Iago laughed his little laugh, and as high as it was it was still menacing.  "I'm going to let Twilight do it.  You see I've learned something in these past two thousand years...  You've never once killed your students.  You always waited until I did it for you."

"You lie!"  Celestia actually bucked herself forward with this; one of her guards on her side reached a hoof out and placed it on her foreleg, to which she immediately pulled herself back and tried to calm down as best she could.  Iago had her in a very nasty little web.

"Do I?  You've never killed a student whenever we've fought... and all those ones that died because of your negligence--"

"You killed them, you monster!  You murdered them for your own gain!  I won't let you take Twilight, and I won't let you hurt any of my subjects.  Ever!  Again!"  The Princess was screaming now, with her eyes tearing up and her mouth in an uncharacteristic scowl of hatred.  Twilight saw weakness in her emotions, but she also saw an unyielding determination; something that could be a problem.

"Allow me to prove that I mean what I say, 'Princess'...  You and your little guards will be the only casualties tonight, and all from Twilight's doing.  You see I've been teaching her about you, and she's not very happy about what she found out.  It may surprise you to know that she's not under my control, but simply under my wing."

Celestia didn't even dignify this with a verbal response, but she did proceed with a very potent action.  She reached up, quickly and viciously, and slammed her hoof into the figure around her neck.  The instant she made this contact, a pale, thick green light seemed to trace its way around the relief carving, culminating in the Princess yelling out some word in an archaic language that Twilight had never heard before.  This word did not simply fall off and die after a single echo like most of her speech did inside the library: it created something of an explosion.  

A magical wall threw itself in all directions, slamming into Twilight and forcing her back against her bookcases: she bowled over Applejack on the way, and only barely missed Rarity.  The dome that had exploded outward only seemed to effect Twilight, however, as the other ponies were left completely unmoved.  She did notice, though, that the elements of harmony necklaces on each of her friends (her own tiara included) received the same forceful blow that Twilight's entire body had.  Each one was inscribed with the runic pattern to keep a dead pony bound, and each one shattered into dust the instant the spell touched them.  Without their phylacteries to bind them any longer, the two earth ponies dropped limp onto the floor, returning to the peace of death for the final time.  None of those present in the library, save Celestia, knew that the radius of the spell consumed the entire town, shattering every single object that Twilight had left in her wake and killing every single walking corpse that she had brought back.  The Princess just wanted insurance that all of Ponyville wouldn't need to be policed until every undead was destroyed.

That bitch!  Kill her, Twilight!  Kill her now!  Iago's voice screeched into Twilight's mind, though it had returned back to its old, toneless sound.  He did, however, sound as though he were in a great deal of pain even though Twilight barely felt a thing besides the pressure of her body slamming into the shelf.

"Run, girls, that's not Twilight anymore."  Celestia called over to the remaining three ponies in the room.  Fluttershy immediately ran sobbing out the door, so Twilight tripped her as she ran.  The pegasus ate the hardwood floor on her way down, making her curl up to cover her nose with her forelegs and reduce herself down to the fetal position.  Two of the guards behind Celestia stepped forward to help her, but the Princess held her wings up to stop them.  "I'll ensure she makes it out safely, you all need to stay in formation.  Fluttershy, run!"  Fluttershy weakly attempted to crawl, but she was just too shaken to make any real progress; the guards stood and watched, but clearly didn't enjoy the order to do nothing.  Rarity and Rainbow Dash didn't run along with Fluttershy in the beginning, though; they stayed by Twilight's side.

"Don't listen to that cow!"  Twilight spoke in an unnervingly calm tone, projecting her words loudly but with a kind of restraint that only served to make the situation uncomfortable.  "She just killed Applejack and Pinkie Pie!"

"She's lying to you!  I don't know what she's been telling you, but you have to trust me.  She's being manipulated and she's manipulating you all, too!  I can save her but you can't be near her.  She'll kill you all!"

"That's enough out of you!"  Twilight barked at the Princess, picking herself up fully and standing up straight.  Subtly, she wrapped a kinetic tether around Fluttershy's hind leg so that she couldn't escape; none of the guards noticed a thing.  "You've lied to me and my friends for long enough, Celestia.  Iago was right, he isn't controlling me, he's just been teaching me!  He's given me magic, he's given me knowledge, he's shown me history from books that you've had burned!"  As Twilight spoke her own emotions started to leak into her mind.  Iago was allowing this, of course, for his own gain; Twilight's body very quickly began to radiate an intense heat.

Princess Celestia only stood there, staring into Twilight's eyes and trying her best to judge if Twilight was being honest.  Iago wasn't even trying to invade her, and Twilight figured that he'd attempted it once before and was promptly thrown back.  

"Twilight...  That's really you, isn't it?  You really believe him..."  The anger melted away from Celestia's face and was replaced by an expression of deep, penetrating sorrow.  

"I'm afraid so, Princess.  He's been a much better teacher to me than you have.  I've made the kinds of improvements that I used to only dream of.  While I was under you I just slowly crawled my way up to worthless cantrips that I never get a chance to use outside of a lesson plan."  This cut deep into Celestia's resolve, so much so that she actually winced and let a tear creep its way down her cheek.  Twilight took a step forward, getting ready to simply slice off her head, but she wasn't prepared for the soldiers' reaction.  The instant Twilight moved, each one of the trusted pegasus ponies that Celestia had brought along tilted their heads down and touched their amulets, all of which produced a sound that seemed to only bother Twilight and Iago.  The sound began as a simply distracting thing, but very quickly grew to be a deafening, crippling cacophony.  It was unlike any real-world sound that she'd ever heard before, but its presence was undeniable.  

Celestia recovered from the personal wound that Twilight had dealt her and flapped her wings in a silent order to advance.  The guards did so, causing the sound to grow louder as they approached and bringing Twilight to her knees.  Iago was screaming inside her head, which didn't help Twilight's own attempt to just grin and bear the pain, so she eventually broke down and let out a pained howl of her own.  She knew that they'd kill her if they got close enough, or at least felt that way from the horrible agony that the assault on her mind was causing her, so she singled out the weakest link: the newbie pegasus on the far left.  The instant she looked him in the eyes, the cacophony seemed to relax; he had lost his concentration and sealed his own fate as Twilight's target.  

"Don't look at her!"  Celestia yelled at him, reinforcing his morale but only temporarily.

He has a family, Twilight.  The small break in intensity had given Iago enough time to pick out some information about the stallion when Twilight gazed into his eyes, and he communicated every single piece that he could before the noise grew again.  He has one child, a daughter.  He and his wife live together in Canterlot on a very nice wage.  He signed up for this role because, prior to now, these specific magical guards haven't been used for five hundred years.  He wanted an easy, cushy job without the day to day danger of being an actual guard.  He's afraid.

"What are you doing here?"  Twilight took deep, menacing breaths and continued to keep eye contact with the pegasus, frightening him just by her presence, and even more by her question.  He didn't answer.

"Do not let her speak to you!  Ignore it and stay in formation!"  Celestia just wouldn't shut up, but Twilight could tell by his hesitation that her assault was getting through.

"Didn't she tell you that you could die here?  Even if you succeed in killing me, there's nothing stopping me from leveling this town in a fiery explosion as my final action.  Who's going to support your wife and daughter if daddy's been burnt alive?"

"H--...  How could you know that?"  The guard finally stopped moving entirely, breaking the sound in its entirety; evidently all six of them needed to be in synch for the spell to work.  The guards and the Princess all shot him a glare, both terrified and angry.

"I know everything about you..." Twilight said, flashing him a grin and letting Iago scrounge around for more information with as little pause as she could manage.

His name is Kenning.

"... Kenning."  Twilight made sure to enunciate his name with a bitter and snappy tone.  He was so unprepared for this event that he couldn't even move.

"All of you, leave, right now."  Celestia saw what was about to happen and ordered her guards to exit.  The one immediately to the Princess's right started to protest but she just glared down at him and shook her head.  "I said leave, that's an order.  Tell Aegis and Waerd that they're needed, but you need to leave before you're all killed."

Twilight couldn't help herself but laugh at the small troupe.  Whatever Celestia's 'plan b' was would have to do far better than that to kill the most powerful unicorn on the planet.  After the guards had left (Twilight had simply let them go, deciding that it wasn't worth the provocation to kill them just then), two more stepped inside the door and took their places right by Celestia's side.  These two dark gray pegasi wore the same pendants that the others did, but they were clearly far better trained.  In fact, Twilight recognized them as the pair of guards that frequently sat to the right and left of the Princess's throne: her most trusted, most capable, and most loyal personal bodyguards.  Aside from the pendants, the two guards carried spears, seemingly made out of the same pewter and engraved with a similar knotted pattern going up the shafts.  

"Iago, I'm going to give you one last chance to leave her body.  You can't harm these two, nor can you harm me.  The Old Magic won't break through these wards, but the enchantment on the spears will help them seek out your black, shriveled heart the instant I give the order."

"I imagine even magical spears will still kill me along with him, Princess."  Twilight said, hoping to bring out another hesitation from her old teacher.

"I don't care.  Iago's too dangerous to let live, and besides...  You made your bed, Twilight, and picked only the most unfortunate company.  There's nothing I can do to help you as long as you submit to him."

Heh...  She may not be able to help you, but I can.  Iago spoke in the most disgusting little slithery voice that he could manage.  That notwithstanding, the prospect certainly intrigued Twilight.

How so?  She asked, keeping the Princess and her guards distracted on the outside world with a short giggle of her own.  The two guards held their spears perfectly still and aimed right for the unicorn; they may as well have been made of the same stone that Celestia's garden statues were.  Fluttershy, from the ground, looked over her shoulder at Twilight as she laughed; not long after did Twilight have the attention of Rarity and Rainbow Dash as well.

Just hold still, I'm going to make a few changes.

Twilight stood up straight, held her breath, tilted her head back, and closed her eyes in preparation for whatever Iago was planning, and what that was had made itself very evident very quickly.  Twilight felt her body stretch and twist, extending her legs, splitting her hooves into thrice-cloven, clawed lumps at the ends of her fetlocks.  Her muzzle pushed its way out of her skull, stretching and crackling as new bone was created from virtually nothing: her teeth extended as well, sharpening at the tips and filling out the new space within her muzzle.  Her ribs felt as though they were being pushed out from the inside, expanding and adding to one another to create a solid mass around her heart and lungs, while her spine lengthened to keep proportion with her new legs.  From her position, Twilight could hear the crackle and pop of every single bone and joint in her body, including those that were added.  Her legs now had two sets of knees, her neck was much longer and her jaw felt as though it could unhinge itself with how wide she could open it.  The two guards stared on, stoically keeping their faces as still as they could despite the terror that they felt deep down inside.  The pseudonatural terror that stood before them sent the stomachs of every single pony in the room sinking down to the very depths of their bodies.  Celestia started to look a little nauseous as well, though she must have seen this song and dance at least once before; she simply shook her head and rapidly regained her composure.  The guards stayed under orders to stay at Celestia's side, though she held her hoof up in preparation for the attack.  Twilight looked around the room, catching an almost panoramic view from what she could only assume were a new, better-set eyes, and smiled a big, wolfish grin at each of the very brave guards.  

Now, my pet, kill them.  Iago said with a calm and almost jaunty quality of voice within her mind.  Twilight was all too happy to oblige that request.  She let out a gravelly, piercing howl and immediately bounded forward, upon which Celestia gave the command to kill.  Twilight, not being used to her new joints and limbs, stumbled forward toward the guards, giving absolutely no attention to their spears.  Both of them, in a systematic and perfectly synchronized attack, buried the pewter things in Twilight's chest, though her thick, interwoven ribcage caught them before they could get in very far.  The pair looked surprised for a second, reacting by pushing harder and making absolutely no progress, to their chagrin.  Twilight, however, gave out her terrifying, new version of a giggle and swung her heavy, multi-jointed legs at the guard to her left.  The impact was bone-shattering, dislocating his shoulder and leaving several gashes in the side of the victim as Twilight's 'claws' tore right through his coat and flesh.  He was thrown a few feet away, dropping his spear (which was stuck inside Twilight's chest) and hit the ground with a yelp.

The other guard watched in terror as the abomination very nearly killed his companion.  She swung her foreleg back at him, going for a clean hit to the skull, but he ducked just in time, removed the spear, and slashed at Twilight's face in a feeble attempt to blind her.  The spearhead burrowed into Twilight's muzzle, glancing off of the thick bone and ripping its way out the opposite side of her face, but she didn't even flinch.  The guard just stood and stared into her eyes, trying his best to recover from the swing in time and failing miserably: Twilight had thrown herself onto him and began monstrously tearing him to pieces.  The pounce had knocked out the spear in Twilight's skin-and-bones aberrant chest out and sent it clanging away, so the guard's only hope of saving himself was effectively removed.  She clamped her jaw down on his neck, instantly crushing his windpipe and coming very close to pulverizing the vertebrae in his spine.  She dug her clawed hooves (if you could even call them that by that point) into his chest and raked, pulling shreds of skin and bits of muscle out with them.  She shook her head side to side, viciously snarling and digging her teeth into his flesh as he struggled to survive by kicking and swinging at Twilight's stomach to no avail.  Eventually, with the strength of Twilight's new body, she had torn the guard's head off, leaving his stump of a neck and torn open chest cavity to gush blood onto the floor.  

Twilight had no time to really enjoy her kill, however, because both Celestia and the other wounded guard had thrown themselves into her to try and save the victim.  It had taken her only two seconds to kill him as she did, and the reactions of the shaken Princess and wounded bodyguard were too little, too late to keep him from his gruesome fate.  The sheer force at which the two bodies had slammed into Twilight's own had knocked her down, with Celestia burying a hoof into her neck and pressing her full weight down on the aberrant form beneath.  The remaining guard grabbed his spear and punctured Twilight's stomach with it, angling it up so that it pushed into her chest cavity under the armor plated ribcage that Iago had grown for her.  

Unlike the first attack, Twilight actually felt pain with the stab wound.  Iago apparently did too, as he immediately shrieked inside Twilight's mind and spouted off orders at her.

Get it out!  Get it the fuck out of us now!

Twilight yelled out in her own way, unable to articulate any words with her new, blasphemously formed mouth, and so only released the most primal, agonized noises that anyone in the room had ever heard.  Rarity and Rainbow Dash were so shocked by the transformation that they were still catching up with the battle itself.  Fluttershy had backed herself into the wall and stared on in horrid fascination.  She couldn't look away from the terrors that unfolded before her and simply sat there, rocking herself back and forth in the fetal position.  Twilight reared back her hind legs, folded them as best she could (which, with a several-jointed design proved to be remarkably well), and kicked the guard in the chest.  This sent him halfway across the room from the sheer strength and force behind it, but she hadn't managed to wound him very much.  As soon as he landed, he recovered his bearings and, even with the pain of a dislocated shoulder, ran for the other spear.  Twilight was too distracted by trying to snap her jaws onto Celestia's throat (or leg, or anything she could reach for, really) to notice.  The once-proud unicorn's brilliant mind had been reduced to a swirling mass of hatred and bloodlust, leaving her oblivious to any sort of intentions that the ponies around her had.  The remaining guard ran forward, using his entire might and momentum to force the spear into Twilight's torso, just inches from the other and pointing in the same direction.

Twilight felt every single inch of the spear enter her body: it had punctured one of her lungs and caught itself on the inside of her ribcage, while the other had only barely missed her heart.  Iago's screeching had become like that of a dying animal, piercing the inside of Twilight's mind and cutting off any shred of organized thought that she might have been able to produce: her only goal at that point was survival.  Twilight writhed and flailed on the ground, swinging her imposing limbs and snapping her deadly jaws, even stabbing at Celestia's foreleg as best she could with her twisted, lengthened horn, but the Princess was magically restraining the abominable unicorn from getting close enough to deal any damage aside from surface scratches.  Iago's agonized screeches were accompanied by a deep feeling of hatred, one that spanned the gap between both of their minds and built upon itself, forcing the unicorn to become incredibly hot to the touch.  So much so that the Princess had to fight her instincts to let her go and prevent her hoof from burning away.

"Fine work, Aegis.  Please now, chant with me."  The Princess was holding back her own sorrow and grief, trying to remain stoic in the face of such a gruesome treatment of her once prized student.  As she looked down, into the abominable monster that once was Twilight beneath her, snapping frothing jaws, darting her unblinking eyes back and forth, writhing on the ground and unable to articulate a single thought that wasn't pure hatred, her heart broke into pieces.  She truly loved Twilight like a daughter, and now was struggling to kill her like an animal in front of her three (remaining) best friends, all of whom watched with the fixation of extreme post traumatic stress.  Celestia closed her eyes, pressing down even harder with her foreleg on Twilight's neck and moving her other foreleg to the thing's chest.  Her remaining bodyguard placed his hooves on both of the spears, also closing his eyes.  They began to chant in tandem, giving what sounded like a final prayer in the ancient, guttural language that the other spells had all been cast in.

The chant began low and slow, though it gained speed and power as Celestia and Aegis spoke.  They were in perfect synchronization, and the sound of the powerful old words excited their pendants and the spears; Twilight felt as though they had just gotten red-hot and were burning her from the inside out.  All four of the powerful objects glowed with the same pale green light as they had before, and it only grew in intensity as the chant went on, so even Twilight's feral brain could tell that she needed to do something or die.  Iago, who was feeling the brunt of the pain, made a split-second decision to simply add more limbs to Twilight's form: two long, prehensile, barely formed masses sprang from Twilight's shoulders, pushing her up off of the ground partway and throwing her enemies off balance.  She whipped one of the new tentacles around, slamming it into the side of Aegis's skull and knocking him unconscious almost immediately.  She used her new freedom to kick Celestia in the chest with one of her forelegs, forcing her back several feet before letting out a blood-curdling howl of animosity.  Celestia flinched and didn't quite seem to know what to do, but her spell had been interrupted and the spears had stopped glowing, so she needed to think very quickly.  Twilight's first order of business was to remove the spears; each of her new limbs wrapped its thick, muscular mass around a spear, yanking hard and ripping the long pewter things from her chest.  At this moment, the three smaller ponies in the room broke out of their trance of terror, realizing (not for the first time, but for the one that seemed the most real) that their lives were in immediate danger.  Fluttershy tried to run, but Twilight threw a spear in a fit of angry reflex.  The little yellow pegasus didn't stand a chance.

As soon as Fluttershy opened her wings to fly out the door, the long spear punctured her chest just behind her left shoulder.  It pushed itself all the way through, piercing the wall behind her and pinning her body to it.  She felt nothing to begin with, but looked down and saw herself so grievously wounded that she could do nothing but quake and try to find the appropriate noise to make for that situation.  She stood there babbling a little bit, quickly getting woozy from major internal bleeding as her pulmonary artery was severed by the weapon.  Rarity saw the pony that she had spent countless days at the spa with get impaled on the wall, making her hesitate from her running and reel back in shock.  The white unicorn backed herself against the wall, hyperventilating and nervously glancing around for some kind of escape; the only one had Celestia and a terrifying monstrosity between her and it.  Rainbow Dash's eyes clouded up with tears as she watched Fluttershy try to find someplace to place her legs in a desperate search for even a tiny amount of respite from the pain.  The yellow pegasus, one of her best friends in the entire world, was dying in pain right in front of her and there was nothing she could do about it; Rainbow Dash certainly knew that she couldn't harm Twilight in her current state, so she backed against the same wall as Rarity.  The white unicorn instinctively pressed her body against Rainbow's, and the cyan pegasus hugged herself around Rarity; their minds were virtually destroyed by fear, so they reverted to their basest need for the smallest amount of comfort with one another.  They were all that was left.

Celestia looked around at the destruction unfolding, doing her best to keep focused on Twilight's pattern of movements so that she could stop the monster in its tracks if she needed to.  Fluttershy's face was streaked with tears and blood was slowly pouring from her mouth; death found her in just under two minutes from the first strike, leaving her hanging limply from the punctured wall.  She saw the gruesomely sundered corpse of Waerd growing cold and coagulated in the middle of the library.  She saw the Aegis knocked unconscious and Rarity and Rainbow Dash huddled together in fear like children; each of their lives depended on her success, so she tried her best to pain Twilight as a fully deserving target, but all the Princess could see was her student.  No matter how deformed, how horribly altered Twilight's face was at the time, she looked into her eyes and saw the young, intelligent, naive unicorn behind them, and she knew that she would rather die than let Iago take anymore lives that day.  Celestia grabbed her pendant with her hoof and tore it from her neck, rushing forward and tackling Twilight, forcing the pendant against her face and holding Twilight's entire body as still as she could with a magical aura.  Twilight once more felt a searing pain burrow through her head; the magic of the archaic pendant blinded her temporarily and felt as though it were threatening to burn a hole right through her skull.

"Run, damn it!"  Celestia yelled through her own tears.  Her voice trembled in anger and sorrow, projecting the rawest vibrato of a tortured soul that ever existed.  The two ponies saw their opportunity and ran, though Rainbow Dash stopped on the way to try and help Fluttershy.  Rarity was already out the door, but Twilight wasn't intent on letting them escape if she could help it.  She swung her foreleg in a wide arc, materializing, to the best of her ability at that time of distraction and pain, a telekinetic blade that would reach the pegasus.  It was a little too long for the room, however, and hit the ceiling, gouging out wood almost a foot deep before progressing down.  Rainbow Dash heard the blade hit the ceiling and spun around; she made it about half of a turn before the invisible thing connected.  

Celestia watched all of this in what seemed to her like slow motion.  She could see the slow, thin red line form along Rainbow's body as the shimmering, transparent blade cut her from the top of the small of her back down to her belly.  She could watch as blood filled the seam and signified the separation that only momentarily held her together via surface tension of her bodily fluids.  The Princess nearly threw up when Rainbow's body split in half just forward of her hips.  The pegasus fell, not quite sure what had happened, but came to a very rude awakening when she looked down and saw her own viscera slowly oozing out onto the hardwood floor.  

For about five seconds, Rainbow Dash stared in disbelief, mouth agape and with all of the color draining from her face.  After that, however, she let out a weak, raspy, pitiful yell.  She was so deep in shock that there was nothing she could do besides scream for several seconds, and eventually attempt to scoop her innards back into her abdominal cavity with her hooves.  Celestia forcibly tore her attention away from Rainbow Dash's bifurcated body and pinned it back to Twilight.  With no more potential casualties in the room, and with her anger at Iago having been pent up since the last time they met more than five hundred years ago, she expressed her rage duly.  Twilight continued to fight, and Iago continued to yell in agonized noises inside her head, but Celestia proceeded to savagely bash the pendant into Twilight's face and chest over and over.

"Get out of her!  Get out!"  Celestia's face was wrought with tears and red cheeks from an intense anger, she no longer saw her student inside of the murderous creature beneath her, only her most despised enemy hiding  behind yet another unacceptable casualty.  "Leave her alone, you son of a bitch!"  

The charm that Celestia was using to smash into Twilight had an effect beyond just bludgeoning pain.  She could feel the magic it contained slowly crushing Iago, or at least it felt like crushing, and as he was dragged away, screaming and fighting and writhing within her mind, his effects on her slowly wore away as well.  Twilight's body began to shift back to normal (though this process wasn't exactly quick and painless); her jaw pulled back to a normal pony muzzle , her legs lost their joints and their extra length, her ribs became vulnerable and flexible once more, and her spine crunched its way back down to size.  The worst thing about this vicious, passionate beating, however, was the pain.  Every single instance of pain that Twilight should have felt while Iago was within her: the broken leg, the shattered bones, the cuts, the impacts, the burning, the nausea, the loss of herself, and of course the intense changes to her form hit her all at once.  Twilight screamed again, but this time it was truly Twilight, and Celestia knew it.  She couldn't stop her assault, though, lest Iago take over once more and more firmly root himself inside her mind.  She pressed her pendant into Twilight's vulnerable little chest, permanently burning the design of the tree into her fragile skin, but exorcising Iago's presence in the one final move.  Twilight could feel the cloud of anger and hatred drain away into a vacuum, she could feel his shrieking start to grow quieter and move... down, for lack of a better description.  His presence left her mind, and as it did so did all of her hatred, all of her shock, and all of her emotion.

"Get out of her!  I'm going to kill you, you bastard!  Get out!"  Celestia let her anger and sadness take over completely.  Her movements were jerky and violent, and her resolve had all but disappeared completely.  Tears flowed freely from off of her chin and onto Twilight, and for the first time in a while the purple unicorn actually felt something.  Twilight felt remorse, sadness of her own, empathy for the Princess and horror at what she'd done to her friends.  She felt the cool thud of tears landing on her fur, and the uncomfortable grind of hot stone against her body, but she also felt a deep, throbbing pain in her chest...  Something else was very, very wrong.

Celestia ceased her relentless barrage of blows on Twilight's chest and dropped her amulet.  The big, regal alacorn knelt down beside her pupil, quickly cradling her head and back with her hooves and stretching her wings out to blanket her.  Twilight wasn't quite sure how to react, or even how to feel for that matter.  The apathy, coupled with dull pain everywhere in her body (much worse in some parts than others) simply had her confused.

Twilight's emotions slowly flooded back to her, though not in the same proportions as when Iago had left: she actually felt happy, she felt loved, and she felt warm.  She wanted to look up to the Princess, to thank her, to cry on her shoulder, to cling onto her and never let go, to dance and laugh, even to try and strangle her for what she did.  Every single emotion that Twilight felt in her entire life came back and directed itself toward Celestia, and they only continued to grow in intensity as the vacuum of her mind filled itself once again without Iago to filter it.  Twilight tried to move, but her muscles were so stiff that she felt as though they'd break if she supported her own weight.

"Don't move, Twilight...  Is Iago still there?"  Celestia kept her muzzle very close to Twilight's ears, letting her hear every single word, feel the caress of her breath, and pick up on the calming tone of voice that Celestia used.  Despite all that Iago had taught her, despite everything she truly hated about the Princess, Twilight couldn't bring herself to feel any genuine animosity for her at that point.  She opened her mouth to speak, but the instant she did that everything went very, very wrong.  The unicorn felt a deep, sharp pain in her chest, giving her flashbacks to her feral state not too long ago of being stabbed with those damned spears.  She looked down and her wounds had healed, however even the movement of her neck caused her such an intense feeling of agony that she nearly passed out.  Celestia took a step back, letting Twilight lay still on the ground and watching in fear at what was happening.

Twilight couldn't help herself from screaming at that point as the pain moved itself up from her lower chest to behind her sternum; she felt like she was being gutted, but she couldn't see anything.  Her screams didn't last too long; they quickly garbled as blood filled Twilight's esophagus.  She rolled over onto her stomach instinctively, trying to cough out all of the fluid in her lungs (all of which splattered in crimson dots and splashes in front of her), but it just kept on coming.  The Princess ran over next to her and tried to heal Twilight with one of her spells, to a mixed effect: Twilight felt her body fill with warmth as some of her flesh began to knit together from the spell, but still had a piercing, agonizing pain shooting through her entire body.  Once again it moved, though this time Twilight felt more than just a general ascension: something alive was moving around in her throat.  Twilight panicked, still only barely conscious from half-drowning on blood and coming down off of a feral state into an emotionless, painful heap, and tried to get whatever was in her throat out.  She leaned forward and coughed violently, splattering more blood out onto the hardwood and moving the lump a little bit more.  This, however, blocked off her already limited air, so she laid down on the floor and violently beat at her neck with one of her hooves, trying to kill it or move it or do whatever she could to stop it from killing her.  Her movements grew jerky and uncoordinated; she made a great deal of noise flopping around on her floor, and Princess Celestia didn't know what to do even in all of her wisdom and experience.

Celestia called for the guards and ten of them entered, most of which reeled in horror at the carnage strewn about the small room.  Fluttershy's lifeless body dangled like a piece of meat on the wall, directly beneath which was the still writhing and screaming torso of Rainbow Dash, separated by her other half with about a foot of space covered in tripe.  Two more bodies littered the floor, lifeless yet seeming relatively unharmed, and in the center sat the bloodied, battered, choking student being cradled by the bloodied, battered, sobbing teacher.

Rainbow Dash reached up a hoof and tried to grab onto the leg of one of the guards.  He felt the sharp pain of grief stab him in his heart and promptly knelt down to hold onto her hoof, looking her in the eyes and trying to calm her down from her wailing, terrified state.  This guard was a saint, keeping his eyes locked with Rainbow Dash's and gently stroking her hoof, reassuring her even though he knew in his heart of hearts that she would die within the hour, sooner if she was lucky.  

"Please..."  Celestia had to muster up the constitution to say such a thing, but she proceeded with the order, gruesome as it was.  "Just put her out of her misery.  I don't want her to suffer anymore."

"No!"  Rainbow Dash protested to the best of her ability, but when your abdominal muscles are severed your words tend not to carry very well.  Her yells came out weak and pleading, nothing at all like the proud image that she was so used to holding up with herself.  "I don't wanna die!"

The guard tending Rainbow Dash looked over his shoulder at Celestia, not needing to say anything to portray his hesitance to her.  "She's in shock,"  The Princess said with tears in her eyes, refusing to look away from Twilight's dying form for even a second.  "Please, just end it.  If there were anything I, or any other in the world, could do to help we'd have done it already."

The guard solemnly lowered his head, waved to another (who promptly brought him a spear) and stood to position the weapon.  Rainbow Dash pled in a kind of agonized and terrified gibberish that could only come from a fatally wounded animal.  She had lost any kind of higher thought to her situation and reverted to almost childlike instincts: clinging onto the guard's foreleg with her own so tightly that she nearly pulled her body (what was still contiguous anyway) off of the ground, crying loudly, hiding her eyes from the spear as it was pointed toward the center of her chest, and wishing aloud that the guard would just get away.

Another guard came over to help, pressing Rainbow's shoulders down to the ground so that the spear carrier wouldn't miss and cause anymore pain than was necessary.  Both stallions were empathizing heavily with Rainbow Dash, crying quietly even through their stoic warrior facades, and trying their best to calm her final seconds down.  They failed in doing so, however, as one would expect, but the iron tipped spear did pierce Rainbow's weakly beating heart with the speed and precision of a weathered veteran of many wars.  She took one final gasp as the weapon punctured her chest, and then everyone who dared gaze on the heart wrenching scene did watch as the life in her gorgeous, magenta eyes faded away into the pale glaze of death.

Twilight's eyes were indeed glued to the scene her friend's final breath, though she herself felt as though her own wasn't far away.  The unicorn had lost the will to fight, darkness was closing around the corners of her vision and her blood flowed freely from her mouth and nose.  She tried to stand once more, tried to crawl or do any kind of movement, but simply couldn't muster the power.  Just as it seemed all hope was lost, however, she felt her body wrench itself upward.  Her eyes shot open and she started to retch violently, hacking against her will and trying to expunge whatever was inside of her.  Celestia stayed close, trying her best to help Twilight cough up what was in her throat by continually pounding her hoof on the unicorn's back.  The world's colors were blinding, as was the pain in her body, but Twilight remained conscious through it all thanks to the boon (or perhaps curse) of some unseen force.

The time came for the object to move away from Twilight's esophagus, though whatever it was didn't want to leave without a fight.  Twilight screamed in pain, letting the lump muffle her voice as it left her throat behind; it felt to her like she had swallowed fishhooks that were being yanked out from her stomach.  Celestia backed up, letting Twilight have some space, and from her muzzle dropped the perpetrator:  A small, fuzzy lump followed by an avalanche of blood and soft muscle from the inside of Twilight's body; she fell almost as soon as the ball of wet fur did.  The lump unfurled itself and hissed, revealing itself to be a little white rat (as white as it could have been after being soaked in pints of blood for nearly two straight minutes) that stood in a combative stance at the center of the crimson pool.  Celestia reeled back, though only for a second, before grabbing the closest guard's weapon and swinging it at the rat.  Its dexterity proved much faster than the Princess's clumsy, raging strike however, and the rat scurried off toward a damaged window at the far side of the living room.  

"Kill it!  Kill it now!"  The Princess screamed at every one of her guards, though few reacted quickly enough even to have a chance at stopping the creature.  Twilight, in her weakness, directed her eyes to the halberd that the Princess had swung and tried to use her telekinesis.  The trick that Iago had taught her didn't work even in the slightest, so she returned to her unicorn magic.  This much more familiar orison actually did what it was intended: it sent a weak, lavender aura around the haft of the polearm and ripped it free from the ground.  She threw it as accurately as she could at the wall, trying to track the rodent and impale it as it ran up to the window.  Celestia was surprised by this act of strength and dropped to her knees by Twilight, unable to react any more than she had without accidentally harming one of her guards or herself in her drained condition.  

The halberd flew through the air, narrowly missing (and startling) two of the white pegasi that were in pursuit of the filthy rat and buried itself into the wood so deep that nearly half of the blade disappeared into the wall.  Unfortunately, Twilight had missed her target, which quickly scaled the wall to perch on the windowsill.  Amidst the bloody paw prints up the facade, the rat turned its head to look down at Twilight: the piercing green of its eyes burrowed into the unicorn's mind as what might be the last thing she truly saw.  The familiarity of this feeling, the futility of her life as it dwindled away only to be looked down on by something so insignificant left a wound far deeper than the dozens of vicious claw marks on the inside of her throat and lungs.  Iago had gotten exactly what he wanted: a crushing blow to Celestia, the removal of Twilight Sparkle, and an escape with his own body to command.

The rodent turned and jumped out the window, to which the Princess ordered every single guard in Ponyville to comb the streets and slaughter anything with a bald tail, though the doubt in her voice suggested that she knew it was hopeless to pursue.  She turned to Twilight and hung her head down, knocking her horn against Twilight's and casting her most potent healing spell.  The Princess was desperately trying to save Twilight from a brutal end by her oldest enemy, but she knew for a fact that anyone touched by Iago's corruption was doomed to a bloody fate.  Twilight's flesh refused to knit any more and she continued to bleed into her lungs, slowly drowning at the Princess's hooves.  Celestia wept loudly, continuing to attempt the healing, though after a point she just yelled in frustration with her magical aura surrounding the both of them.  

"Stay with me, Twilight...  Please."  The Princess gave up her magic and simply leaned down to hold Twilight against her chest.  The wounded unicorn was fading very quickly, unable to feel too much beyond numb pressure and the cold caress of Celestia's metal breastplate on her cheek.  Twilight looked up as best she could, though her strength wasn't quite enough for her to lift her head entirely.  The Princess helped, using her hoof to gently guide Twilight's head up so that they could lock eyes one last time.  Both were letting tears stream down their cheeks, though for different reasons of course.  Twilight's emotional imbalance still hadn't quite sorted itself out, so she looked on and cycled through every single primal emotion known to pony kind.  Celestia, on the other hand, was watching yet another prodigious student of hers die in her grasp.  She couldn't help but feel completely at fault; had she kept Twilight in Canterlot this never would have happened, or had she taken heed of Spike's very first letter she might have been able to stop it all.  Silently, the Princess cursed herself and wept for Twilight, holding her close enough that her student could hear her powerful heartbeat.

Twilight's mind started to go numb, her body had long since dulled and become a husk of cumbersome meat dangling from the frayed sinew of her consciousness.  The unicorn closed her eyes and nuzzled herself into the Princess's pure white fur, staining it with copious amounts of blood.  Twilight wasn't quite sure if she was still alive at any given moment once her eyes closed, but she continued to feel sensations from the world around her for some time.  The Princess refused to let Twilight go for as long as she felt breath against her skin; she held onto her like a child holds onto a doll, casting her futile healing magic as imaginary medicine for something already dead.  Twilight felt the warmth of this healing, though she never felt relief from her slow descent into death.  Each of her senses began to dwindle and dull, leaving her with the feeling of being cast into nothingness.  Eventually every one of them shut down one by one, starting with sight on the closing of her eyelids.  Her taste went next, followed closely by touch.  For all she knew she was floating in a void, slipping quickly away from the world of the living.  Twilight could only hear the Princess's heartbeat erratically adjusting to the patterns of her sob-laden breaths.  The strings keeping Twilight alive were eventually cut, however, and she could only experience one final sensation, one final link to the world.

Whether it was real or not, Twilight Sparkle's last remnant of life was a scent; the bittersweet aroma of a nightshade flower; soft and regal, tender and deadly, mild and powerful all on its own.  Twilight's name would, from then on, be struck down in the records as another victim of purest evil; she'd be remembered only by Rarity for killing every one of her friends, and only by Celestia as yet another critical failure.  She slid unwittingly away, falling into the void as even the nightshade smell receded.  Twilight submitted to the darkness, taking her place against the cold, gentle bosom of death alongside the other Elements of Harmony, resting peacefully in quiet eternity.

~Fin