Blackjack destroys the Angel of Darkness's Soul with a Moonstone

She ripped the banner in two and then looked straight into my eyes. I leaned forward and jammed my moonstone-coated horn into her brow. “No, this is Peppermint!” I hissed. Without the recollector, there was no way she could experience the memory in the orb.

So I gave her mine, transferring a memory of a memory into her mind. It was like dumping a cup of flamer fuel into a smoldering fire. When the memory entered her consciousness, it set light to everything else. A filly didn’t have a lot of memories in general, particularly underneath all the experiences she’d had since waking in the Wasteland. ‘Not a lot’ wasn’t ‘none’, though, and suddenly that simple little memory was drawing up others inside her that had lain dim and dark in the depths of her mind. Shujaa giving rides on her back. Twist baking her a six layer birthday cake. Said cake toppling like a felled tree when Peppermint tried to eat the bottom layer first (Who’d miss it? It was the bottom one, after all.). And dozens more. The memories, thoughts, and emotions of the filly at Rampage's core lit up, the quickfire searing through the brambly depths of her mind.

“No!” Rampage sobbed as she released me and fell on her side, clutching her head and writhing as though in physical pain. I scrambled back as quickly as I could, flopping while I watched the armored mare flail like Tenebra in the midst of an epileptic fit. Her claws raked at her head as if trying to physically scrape the memories out of her skull, and, failing at that, ripped and shredded at the ground. Finally, she collapsed on her side, sobbing brokenly, blood and tears mixing in the sparkling moon dust covering her and tiny bits of carpet drifting in the air like feathers.

“She wanted me to live. Mommies die for their babies. But I didn’t. I killed my baby, Mommy. I killed her,” she choked out through helpless sobs. I approached slowly as she muttered, “I’m sorry, Mommy. I am so sorry.”

I knelt down and stroked her gently. “Shh… shh… It’s okay, Peppermint.”

“Don’t call me that, Blackjack. I’m not Peppermint anymore, and I’m not Psychoshy,” Rampage said as she looked up at me morosely. “She wanted me to live, Blackjack…” Rampage blubbered. “She wants me to live… but how can I? I killed my own baby. I... I fucking murdered my own daughter, Blackjack. How do I come back from that?”

Gee, where had I heard that before? She embraced me, and I braced myself as she wept. “I know it hurts, Rampage,” I said gently, waiting as she held me in her hooves. “And I know that you don’t want to go on, but I need you.” Her sobbing continued as the embrace tightened around my shoulders. Keep the anger in check, though. I struggled to keep my voice even. “I need your help.” Her sobbing slowed, and I waited, rage condensing to hate. “We need to save the world.” Show your fucking face...

Her weeping stopped. “No,” Rampage breathed as her hooves tightened around me in a crushing embrace. Then she lifted her head, stared into my eyes, and smiled. “We need to give it peace!” There you are!

And I looked straight into her eyes, vacant as the corpse of a dead star, and pressed my horn against her forehead and unloaded… something… straight into Rampage’s mind. It wasn’t any kind of spell, per se. It was to mind magic what a balefire egg was to precision. As she started to crush me, I rammed a white-hot lance of rage, frustration, fear, and will straight into the pool of Rampage’s mind. The Angel was like an oily blot smothering the flames I’d ignited. With fiery rage and hate, I poured every bit of magic I could squeeze through my horn into her head. There was no ‘mental spell matrix’ or ‘envisioning then actualizing’ like Twilight’s books taught. This was me wanting nothing more right now than to rip, burn, gnash, tear, and obliterate that foul, bilious madness inside Rampage. White light poured out of Rampage’s eyes as I pushed everything I could into her.

The Angel recoiled. I advanced. The Angel hid. I pursued. The Angel threw images of Glory’s corpse at me. I denied. The Angel promised peace. I mandated action. Deeper and deeper, hotter and hotter, my will burned after her. It would help me kill Cognitum. I didn’t want it. It would help me kill the Legate! The Eater itself! Just stop. I refused. It threw the sensation of serene peace at me like a choking blanket.

“You want peace?” I shouted into Rampage. “Have it!”

I dug down all the way to a hard little knot that I couldn’t push into, and seizing every bit of that slimy, acidic, poisonous thought, I pulled. I ripped. I consumed. I eradicated. With mental ferocity that outpaced the ruin of any balefire explosion, I tore every last bit to splinters.

Then my horn burned out with a pop, and we both fell again. The moonstone that had stuck to my horn had turned inky black. It fell freely around my hooves, and I watched as it disintegrated, releasing a black shadow that was swept away with a tiny pathetic scream upon an ethereal wind.

“What did you do, Blackjack?” Scotch Tape asked in shock. She waved her hooves in the air. “I mean, she was all ‘Grrr!’ and then you went all ‘zap’, and her eyes went ‘wooosh’, and then you were both ‘Ohhh!’” And she slumped, as if momentarily winded by her question.

“I have no idea,” I groaned, touching the blackened end of my horn and yelping as a crackle of electricity zapped my hoof. Okay, that was new. “I was just really… really pissed when I did it, think I overdid it, and whatever it was...” I glanced at the sooty black remains of the dust. “I think it worked.”

At least, I hoped it did. Rampage was stirring. “Was it supposed to give me a splitting headache and make me feel like crap?” she asked as she sat up in a sulk, then slumped back on her rump. “‘Cause if so, bravo.”

“I went after that thing that killed Hope, Rampage,” I said, trying to tap my horn and getting another zap and zing of pain through my spire. “Ow…” I winced, then looked at her. “Did I get it?”

“I dunno. You went away, and then I came back, and...” She rubbed her face with her hooves, looking tired and older as she stared out one of the remaining windows. “Mom would be so ashamed of me,” she muttered.

Fallout Equestria Project Horizons Chapter 73:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/208056/74/fallout-equestria-project-horizons/chapter-73-apogee