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“Go! Fly, you must get the Crystal to safety!” the Queen commanded, remaining firm despite her obvious panic about the onslaught of darkness decimating her kingdom.
Ribbon hesitated. “But Your Majesty! What about you?!”
The Queen squared her shoulders, tears in her eyes. “I will do what I must for my kingdom, and for our people. I will buy the time you need to escape. This is the most important task you will ever bear, and I am sorry for placing this burden on you so young, but you must leave! Now!”
Ribbon nodded grimly, clinging to the Crystal as it took off, rocketing out of Ripple Star’s atmosphere.
The Queen watched her go, a tear rolling down her cheek. “Our fate is in your hands, Ribbon…” She grit her teeth, shaking her head. “No; I will not be so easily put down!” She turned to stride out of the vault, calling on the ancient Fae magic that ran deep in her bloodline. She watched the darkness begin to withdraw, attempting to re-coalesce and give chase to the lone Fairy that was escaping with its prize. “Oh no you don’t!” She raised her hands to the sky, the loose sleeves of her kimono hanging around her elbows for but a moment before they began to whip about in the maelstrom of power conjured forth by the Queen. “Our quarrel is not finished, abomination!” Her palms turned inward, and she allowed her arms to lower as she rose into the air, leveling a teary glare at the roiling mass of darkness and malefic, bloodshot eyes. “I will not allow you to take the heart of this world! If you want to consume this planet’s light…” A blinding glow welled up from within her, erupting outward and burning away the wispy tendrils of darkness that had begun to reach for her. “You’ll have to extinguish mine first!” she screamed, voice ragged with her anguish at what this monstrosity had done to her people.
The darkness lunged for her en masse, a horde of a thousand eyes and hands and teeth hellbent on her destruction. The inhabitants of the palace and the surrounding area had all long since either died or fled, leaving only these two primal forces locked in a struggle for dominance in the skies above.
She was not cowed, throwing her arms wide as if to shield the world from this threat. “I know not from whence you came, but while I still draw breath, you will not encroach further on this sacred place!”
The darkness slammed into the barrier she had conjured forth, gnashing teeth glaring murderously and bloodshot eyes screaming their hatred for this being that dared to defy them. Shadowy fists hammered against the light only to burn away a bit more with each blow, yet the light within her still grew, her violet eyes burning ever brighter. “You may frighten me, but I, too, am nothing to be trifled with!” She thrust her hands forward, a blinding aurora roaring forth and buffeting the darkness back, great swathes peeling away and dissolving before the intense light and heat. “I am Titania, Keeper of the Crystal of Light, Queen of the Heart of Creation, and I will not suffer your offenses in silence!”
The mass of evil recoiled from her assault, splitting down the middle and streaking around to attack her from opposite sides. She grit her teeth, separating her arms again, and the aurora followed, cleaving in two to follow her opponent to either side. Inky claws raked across her shield, and piercing wails rent the air, making unspeakable promises of an agonizing fate once her resistance was overcome. The light surrounding her melted the shadows away, but there was seemingly no end to the abomination’s power or size. It began to creep outward along the barrier, slowly surrounding her with a solid sphere of darkness.
Tears dripped down her cheeks, and she pushed herself to her limits, determined to take every last scrap of power from this monster that she could before it consumed her. “I will never surrender to the likes of you!” The light grew in intensity once again, but it was starting to be too much for even Titania’s formidable command of it, and her outline wavered as her light started to disrupt her corporeal form.
The barrier began to shrink, inch by inch, for even as it burned away the darkness, so too was the light that did so consumed, the energy spent. The sphere began to close in. Titania was at peace with her fate, however; the abomination had focused all its efforts on her, so determined was it to stamp out her defiance, and so it had allowed Ribbon to escape with the only thing that truly mattered… The Crystal of Light. No matter what befell her, the cosmos would continue to thrive, as was her duty as the Crystal’s guardian.
As the swirling blackness drew ever closer, she noticed a stronger presence in the cloud directly in front of her; fear gripped her heart as a winged form resolved, a twisted mockery of an angelic being with a halo atop its head, its single massive eye glaring imperiously.
YOU ARE STRONG. I WILL ENJOY BREAKING YOU.
She cried out as the telepathic voice lanced through her mind, laced with sadistic indifference; the owner was of a power she could have previously hardly imagined. For all she had done… she was merely an inconvenience. A starving, feral beast before the hunter.
But she would not give up; she would make the hunter limp home and bandage the bloody wounds she had inflicted. “You can try,” she snarled, angry tears rolling down her cheeks as she abandoned her attempt at spreading her power evenly, instead focusing everything she had left into conjuring a beam of light aimed directly at the great eye before her. She loosed her power along with a scream of rage. “But not if I take you with me!”
The abomination recoiled as the brilliant lance struck true, even as the darkness rushed in to claim its victim; her screams echoed through the empty streets as the light was bled from her very being, and the monster glared furiously with a grim satisfaction as it subdued her will, blood now leaking from its eye.
YOU DARE INJURE ME? INSOLENT FOOL, I WILL MAKE YOU SUFFER THE GREATEST PUNISHMENT YOU COULD EVER IMAGINE. The great eye closed, blood running down the creature’s body. I WILL LEAVE YOU ALIVE, AND YOU WILL BE THE ONE TO STRIP THE LIGHT FROM THE SOULS OF YOUR PEOPLE, HELPLESS TO STOP IT.
Titania let out a sob as she was lowered to the ground, barely alive or in control of her own body; she watched as her finger painted a rune on the flagstone she laid upon, in her own blood. The rune glowed, and she realized with horror that it was a calling rune, to draw her people out of hiding.
She was less at peace with her fate, now; she could only pray that Ribbon would find someone or something that could save them all.