//------------------------------//
// Revelations of the Flame 
// Story: Odrsjot 
// by Imploding Colon 
//------------------------------//

	"Come onnnn!  Come on come on come one!"  Floydien repeatedly kicked the dashboard, fuming.  After a blink, he leaned in and nuzzled the Noble Jury's consoles.  "Nancy Jane, Floydien is sorry for being a cruel boomer, but now is a bad time for beloved to turn into frigid nun of ice ice!"

Just then, the manaconduits flickered to live.  The steam thrusters sputtered, throwing the Jury into a limp hover.

"Gaaah!"  Floydien fell on his brown flank, gasping.  "She melts!  She melts!  Yes yes yes!"

"Woohoo!"  Props pumped her hoof, grinning from ear to ear as the ship twirled slowly about.  "Back in business!"

"Propsy, what was that?"  Ebon sputtered.

"I dunno!"  The blonde mare glanced across the deck.  "Zebra Zounds?!  Any zounding?"

"Guhhh..."  Pilate stood upright as O.A.S.I.S.' manasphere flickered back to life.  "I can't believe I forgot what true darkness felt like..."

"Beloved..."  Belle leaned over nuzzled him.  She glanced over the edge as everypony in Basso's and Zetta's group recovered.  "Are..."  She looked at him worriedly.  "Are you alright?"

"I fear I am the last pony to be concerned about," Pilate stammered, then waved his hoof towards the far end of the deck.  "Mr. Mane...?"

"Uhm..."  Ebon bit his lip.  Hard.  He grasped a quivering brown leg in his hoof, gently stroking the silky hairs around the metal steam plugs.  He glanced up at the rest of the ponies.  "It... it's not looking good, guys..."





"Unnngh..."  Slowly, Kera's green eyes fluttered open.  Her silken mane billowed in a cold breeze.  She looked up, then gasped.  "Huh?!  What in the—Zaaaaaid?!"

"What?!  What?!"  Zaid gasped, accidentally veering the managlider left and right as it soared up and out of the ravine.  "I checked the hoof-brakes this time, I swear!"

"What are you doing?!"  Kera squirmed, squirmed, and fought her way into the rear seat of the vessel.  "Rainbow Dash is back there and—"  She briefly turned wall-eyed, then pointed at the lavender tome rattling against the seat cushions.  "Why do we have the book?"

"Because... it's fundamental?"

"Zaid!"

"And I wouldn't be worried about Rainbow Dash at the moment..."  Zaid spoke, then shrugged.  "She's... uh... burning down the house at the moment."

"Huh?"  Kera squinted towards the center of the ravine.

A newer, brighter, and wilder light was pulsating from the center, forming hard shadows against each exposed machine part.





Shell lay limply on his side, breathing raggedly.

The tattoos of the corpses lying around him suddenly dimmed.  The horn in his pocket stopped pulsing.  Seconds later, his eye opened, pulsing instead.  He looked straight up.

"Ledomulien trennte!"  Arcshod was in the middle of hurdling the scimitar straight down.

Shell swung two hooves up and clopped them against the broad metal body of the blade, stopping it a hair's width from his forehead.

Arcshod gasped, his eyes flickering green.

The Prime Enforcer droned, "'Trennte,' yourself, foal-eater."  Then, with a pulsed of regained mana, he knocked the sword clear out of Arcshod's hooves.

The Xonan commandered stumbled backwards, gasping.

Shell kipped up to his hooves, landed on the edge of his taser, and flipped it up into the air.  The thing came alive with sparks in time for him to catch it, swivel about, and hurl the thing like an electrified javelin straight at his foe's throat.  "Haaaaaaugh!"

Arcshod would have shrieked... if it weren't for the spear that was impaling his neck.  The blow sent him flying back like a skewered boar, knocking his body up a platform, so that it ragdolled over a railing and collapsed in a pool of its own, slimy blood.

Shell stood still, panting for breath.  The edge of his bruised muzzle curled upwards.

"Did you see that, Imre?"  He slurred as he limped towards the wooden stairs leading towards where Arcshod's corpse fell.  "All it needed... w-was a good tailwind..."





Eagle Eye stirred in the mud.  Writhing, he pulled himself into a low squat, gazing thinly across the wasteland.

The battle to the east was still stalled, and none of the shells were exploding.  But he could see bodies stirring in the distance.  Whatever had overwhelmed him and the forces of both armies had come and gone.

He blinked his violet eyes, face wrought with confusion.  "I... what happened?"  With a pensive breath, he turned around.  "Josho—?"

A metal-braced hoof slammed into his side.

"Ooof!" Eagle Eye rolled over in pain.

"Nnnngh!" Seclorum kicked Eagle Eye in the chest... then again and again and again.

Eagle jolted from each violently punishing blow, ultimately curling up as she spat up blood and whimpered in pain.

Seclorum raised his hoof one last time to crush Eagle's skull... but hesitated at the last second.  "Hrmmmf..."  His nostrils flared as he stood back.  "Pathetic.  A colt like you... passing itself off as a soldier?"  With thudding hooves, he trotted over, then picked Eagle's shield up with metal-braced limbs.  He shuffled back, then squatted above Eagle, raising the shield high as he aimed for the small of Eagle's neck.  "She'll be here soon..."  The old stallion slurred, "And she'll finish you off."

With tear-stained eyes, Eagle looked up, twitching.

Seclorum's teeth glinted upon the knifing edge of morning.  He brought the shield violently down... or at least he would have, if he still had his hooves mere seconds after Eagle Eye's flying sword lopped them off.  "Graa-aaaaugh!"  Seclorum fell back, howling in agony as he waved two metal-braced stubs in front of him.

The old stallion's body fell, revealing Josho standing behind him, his body slumped forward from the force of his weapon-toss.  He stared at Seclorum, panting.

Seclorum tried clutching himself, but failed.  The pony was reduced to a howling, bleeding mess.  Half of his metal rigging was bent inward from the thrown weapon's massacring impact.  Gurgling incoherently, he rolled over in the mud and lay still.

Josho clenched his eyes shut.  "Shoulda taken up the navy, ya bastard..."  He spat into the ground, seethed for a moment, then opened his eyes with a pained expression.  After a few seconds, he shook it loose, then scrambled past Seclorum until he sat at Eagle's side.  "Eyes up, sunshine."  He cradled the petite stallion, lightly slapping his cheek.  "Hey.  Hey!"  He forced Eagle's trembling chin up.  "Look here."  He waved the flat of his hoof before his lavender face.  "How many fingers am I holding up?"

Eagle Eye squinted.  "Wh-what...?"

"Trick question."  Josho smirked as he ruffled the unicorn's mane.  "Glad you could join the party, princess."  He frowned.  "Don't ever do it again."

"But... but Pilate sensed..."  Eagle Eye looked over, and he gasped sharply.  His eyes reflected a bloody, bloody mess.  "Josho!  Your fr-friend!"

Josho shook his head.  "He ain't no friend of mine no more!  Not after he almost—"

"No, you d-don't understand..."  Eagle Eye quivered all over.  He pointed a jittery hoof.  "Josho, look..."

Josho did.  His eyes went wide as his jaw dropped.





Slowly, step by step, Shell ascended the top most deck of the collapsed Lightning Bearer.  As he ascended, his hooves nearly slipped.  Calmly, he looked down.

Blood was trickling down the lopsided wooden partitions, only the fluid wasn't red.  Much rather, the material was slimy, viscous... and green.

Shell raised an eyebrow over the unscarred half of his face.  At last, he reached the top deck, rounded the railing, and stared down.  He froze in place, unblinking, his jaw tight.





Limping side by side, Josho and Eagle Eye shuffled through the mud and wreckage.  Their eyes remained locked on the body before them.  Eagle had to clench his teeth shut to avoid the urge to vomit.

Quietly, Josho set Eagle down and trotted the rest of the way.  When he reached the shuddering body in its metal cage, he knelt on limp hooves, leaning over.  He inhaled and exhaled in shallow breaths, his eyes squinting over Seclorum's bloody stumps, the green fluid oozing out of his wounds, and the alien hollow spaces forming at random across the remaining lengths of his limbs.

Seclorum's breaths came in little whimpers.  His eyes had glazed over, pulsing with a dim green glow from deep within his skull.  As he lay like a limp piece of meat inside his metal braces, the color left his body—one length of coat after another—replaced instead by a glossy black gloss, like a shell.  Seclorum's own eyes caught sight of a band of green energy rivuleting across his battered flesh, and his trembles increased.

At last, with pitiful little squeaks, his eyes swam up, met Josho's, and immediately teared.  "J-Josho..."  He coughed and whimpered, tiny fangs forming along his jawline.  "What... wh-what am I...?"

Josho's mouth hung open.  Silent, he simply shook his head before exhaling, "I do not know, old friend."

The creature's green eyes welled with tears.  "I don't... I don't understand..."  A spasm flew through the thing's carapace.  "Grkkk... she... she promised... sh-she promised she would..."  A pair of translucent green ear-clefts went limp, as did the rest of its body.  Then, finally, a lasting jerk.

Josho didn't realize it, but he had reached forward to grasp the thing's shoulder.  He and Eagle Eye watched with mute confusion as the remaining legs of the creature curled up with a crackling sound, and then all was still.  In the deathly silence to follow, both unicorns could only gaze at each other, stupefied.





Shell knelt down, rubbing his chin in deep thought.

The taser lay skewered through Arcshod's neck, only it wasn't Arcshod.  Some hideous creature with an equine shape lay before Shell in the Xonan's stead, its obsidian carapace glinting from the surrounding flames.  Shell's eye traveled along the thing's slender body, studying a pair of flimsy membranes sticking out of the monster's back, made of webbed translucent gossamer, like dragonfly wings.

The Prime Enforcer's lips pursed.  Before he could utter any sort of an exclamation, he heard a pronounced burst of energy.  Gasping, he jerked his head up and gazed southeast with one wide eye.

A beam of lavender energy was shooting out of the ravine just east of Seclorum's encampment.  Soon, the lavender light split into several, forming a dancing spectrum.

The living prism forced a breath to jump out of Shell's lungs.  The horn in his vest pocket pulsed, and a single tear ran down his cheek.

"Spark alive, Imre..."  He choked.  "She lives."