XIII - Belly Of The Beast
Author's Note: Hey all! Craimer here for HhaF. I wanted to try my hand at a chapter in this epic freaking story. Shadow is doing an amazing job with Jace and how he acts. His writing puts me to shame! Seriously, this guy needs way more followers! Anyway, onto the chapter, written by CraimerX and made better by ShadowWeaver.
OTHER Author's Note: Top of the evening, everypony! ShadowWeaver and my pal CraimerX here, ready to nuke your asses with another chapter of HHaF. Like I said, this is a collaboration with Craimer's "What If: My Second Life", which he collaborated with none other than the notorious Coal Buck. Go check them out, and like them. LIKE. THEM. HARD.
AND NOW FOR THE THIRTEENTH CHAPTER OF HHaF!
XIII - Belly Of The Beast
"My God, these new weapons are kick-ass!" said Jace with a grin as he gave the Chain Scythe a stroke along the folded haft. Now that he, Praxis, and Vinyl had exited Markarth, while Zeke -- who had given them a piece of his mind for them wasting "a precious" three hours in the Dream Domain -- flew back into the hourglass and awaited to be called upon at a moment's notice, they were walking around the quaint town of Ponyville, subtly showing off their arsenal and letting Praxis explore the area better: the roads and streets winded, turned, and twisted, and could have led the satyr to utter confusion had he tried to go alone. Yet all the while, as they traipsed through the town, the trio of brawlers were receiving rather... awkward stares from the ponies at their weaponry. Some were in curiosity, some in awe, while most?
Most were spawned of... a smidgen of fear.
Yes, that was it. Praxis could see it. He could practically smell it emanating from them. That, and many more mixed emotions swam in them. Being a satyr seemed to have blessed him with... a strange ability to read emotions. And right now, he was reading a melting pot of them wherever he turned around.
But it was something he also passed off as a thing that satyrs could only do, thanks to Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson books.
"No kidding. But that white stuff we collected--" Vinyl began urgently.
"Hehe, you said 'white stuff'," interjected Praxis as he snapped out of his phiosophical stupor and giggled immaturely.
"Oh, shut up, you," she snapped. "But still, that... smoke... that can't be their... their souls, can’t they?" Vinyl asked the two of them.
"Hmm... maybe," answered Jace, ceasing his incessant stroking of his weapon and pondering on the matter for a moment or two. "That COULD be their souls... that is, if demons had souls and didn't feed on those of others. But still, they're dummies, and became sentient. Therefore, they seem to have souls."
"So that's what these gems do?" inquired Praxis as he rubbed his thumb along the Tempest Jade at Typhoon's hilt. "When imbibed by a weapon, they simply... take souls of the enemies and use them for power?" He let out a low whistle. "No wonder Aksheal said that the gems acted as leeches."
"Well, what do you expect from the great wizard Marrin?" asked Jace rhetorically. "That man makes Pinkie Pie's fourth wall-breaking look like a joke... which is saying something. She does it every other second."
"Does what every other second?" A peculiar and bubbly voice said from the depths of Praxis' messenger bag. He, Jace and Vinyl stared at the bag in surprise as Pinkie Pie popped headfirst out of it, causing some of the lighter contents to disperse. Praxis jumped in surprise as the all-pink mare landed on her hooves and beamed at them.
"Case in point," Jace said in a bored tone.
"Baa-aa-aa-aa!" the satyr exclaimed in shock. Pinke blinked before giving a giggle at his bleating.
"Omigosh, Mr. Goat-Man--" she began.
'Mr. Goat-Man? What the hell?' Jace and Vinyl thought in unbeknownst unison, making sure that they had stifled their laughter.
"--No need to be so..." Pinkie paused for a second as she spontaneously retrieved a pair of sunglasses and put them on. "baa-aa-aa-aashful."
A moment of silence.
"Aw, what gives? I was expecting somepony to scream really loud as a rock song came on," she complained as she removed her sunglasses.
"The world is a strange place, ain't it?" Vinyl told Pinkie.
"No kidding!" the party pony concurred. "First there were humans, then there's goat-men--"
"First off, I'm not a 'goat-man', and there's only one of me. I'm a satyr, and I'm called Praxis Moradov," the speaker told Pinkie as he put his belongings back in his bag.
"Hi, Praxis, I'm Pinkie Pie and it's nice to meet you and welcome to Ponyville! You're new here, huh? Are ya? Are ya? Are ya? Of course you are, because I don't know you and I know EVERYpony in Ponyville! Well, technically, it SHOULDN'T be everypony because you and Jace aren't ponies!" the pink mare said in one breath. How she wasn't pausing for air for her next sentence is an enigma to everyone there. "*GAAAASP*! I know! If you're new here, you must not have friends, and if you don't have any friends, you must be all lonely, and that won't fly for Pinkie Pie! No sirree! In fact, I'm gonna throw you the biggest party I've ever thrown anypon- er, anyBODY! I'm really sorry that I caused you trouble here in Ponyville, y'know, with everypony running and hiding and Then Rainbow Dash throwing... that... vase on your head...." she looked down at the ground, the sound of a balloon slowly and quietly deflating resonating from her. Her poofy, hot-pink mane was gradually deflating.
'Uh-oh, bad news!' Praxis thought urgently. "Hey, hey, hey, why the long face?" He asked her in concern.
"Umm...." Pinkie mumbled. "It's just that Rainbow Dash wasn't very nice to you. In fact... nopony was nice to you. So why are you being nice to us? Shouldn't you get angry or something?"
Praxis sighed. "Silly Pinkie," he said, patting her on the head. "That isn't how I work. I think that... everything deserves kindness. And in turn, kindness is returned to the sender. Love, brotherhood, friendship, wisdom, assistance: these are pillars that hold up the vast temple of unity. Tear them down, even unsettle one of them, and we'll all be buried in the ruins, arguing amongst one another when we could be repairing what we have destroyed."
"Whoa..." said Jace. "That's pretty deep, Prax."
"No kidding," agreed Vinyl. "That's... poetic, even."
“Yeah, I’ve had a knack for that kind of stuff...” He smiled a bit as he removed his hand from the depths of her now-reinflated mane.
"Dude, I'm bored out of my wits," Jace said, sighing loudly.
"Ugh... I know that feel," Vinyl grumbled, beating her hoof on the dirt road. "Hey, Prax, Jace, you wanna go to the Everfree and train a little?"
"The Everfree?" Praxis scoffed. "Mare, please, I LIVE there and I'm alive. How do you think I got these babies?" He flicked the manticore fang earrings to indicate their presence.
“Yeah, yeah, quit your gloating, fluffy.” She rolled her eyes and walked away.
"H-hey!" Jace called out to her. "Where are you going?"
"If some pointy-earred goat bastard doesn't wanna go to the Everfree, then we have no other option. Froggy Bottom Bog is our next stop!" she replied as she got smaller and smaller in the distance.
"Pointy-earred go--? Aw, hell no," hissed Praxis.
"Well, come on, dude," Jace told him. He darted after his marefriend before she would assume he was chicken.
"Ooh, ooh, can I come? Please?" Pinkie asked Praxis.
"Err..." the satyr hesitated. "I dunno. It isn't safe."
"Awww, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaase?" She was now begging him, hooves wrapped around his legs as she gave him a set of large, sad eyes.
"Oh, not the puppy-dog eyes! That's foul play!" He exclaimed, his remark rewarding him with Pinkie jutting her lower lip slightly. "O-oh, God, no pouting! Stop pouting!" She tilted her head and let her ears droop, breaking him down in one fell swoop of D'aww.
He sighed, defeated by the cuteness of it all. "Fine, fine, fine!" He turned around as she relinquished her grip on him. He bent down, telling her to get on his back. "Get on, it'll be much faster."
"Oh boy!" she cried as she hopped on his back. She landed, Praxis giving a grunt from the impact. He stood up and locked Pinkie's hind legs in the crooks of his arms. She wrapped her forelegs around his neck and looked over his shoulder. She gasped at the sight. She didn't think being tall was exactly beneficial.
"Hold on!" He said. He took off down the street, kicking up dust as he accelerated.
"WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Pinkie cried at the top of her lungs, making Praxis wince from how loud she was. He folded his ears down. While Pinkie's screams of joy were still audible, at least they weren't deafening.
He had slowed down when he had reached Vinyl and Jace, who were sprinting as quickly as possible.
"Did you try ditching me?" He asked them as he started running backwards. Pinkie was giggling loudly as they turned around.
"NOO, WE WERE JUST RACING THERE!" Vinyl shouted sarcastically, pushing her sunshades back up on her nose with her magic. She was panting heavily from her running. She slowed down to a jog. Jace and Praxis followed her example, the latter turning around again to run normally.
"Why did Pinkie come along?" inquired Jace, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
"Puppy-dog eyes. Pouting. Clinging. 'Nuff said," Praxis explained dully.
"Oh. Pinkie, don't give us too much trouble while we train, alright?"
"Okie-dokie-lokie!" Pinkie said.
"Alright!" Vinyl said. "Let's go!"
Jace looked over at a sweating Praxis. “Hey, Prax!" he said to the worn out satyr. "Check out my new little move...” Prax turned from his hardcore training session, giving the human his undivided attention. Jace held the Chain Scythe in his hands and they glowed a dark red. The magic moved along the handle to the blade, which started to glow the same color as the magic that shrouded it. He smirked and swung the blade into the ground, dragging it across as fluidly and swiftly as a knife through butter. A fiery rift opened up, and another armada of demons started to claw their way through the burning fissure. They stood at attention, ready for orders. “A little demon army should help us out at some points...” He smirked as the rift closed. “Now, to kill them all.” He revved up the chainsaw portion of his scythe and started to go to town on the stable demons. He twirled the scythe like a baton, letting it reach high before he released the blade, letting it spin towards the demons and chopping them up in an instant. He called his trusty wrapon back with his magic, still spinning. It came back to him like a deadly boomerang, slicing the heads off the rest that he missed. “Whoo! I love this thing!”
The flood of Souls flowed into the skull's two Death Jets and began to glow as it got full power. “Awwww boy! Let’s see what my power is!” He used his magic to get the instructions of how to expel the magic in the skull. He smirked as he took the butt of the weapon and smashed it on the ground, a black shockwave being expelled from the handle. The black hit Jace’s legs, his shoes turning a jet black. His eyes glowed red as his body was blanketed in all black. There was a scream from Pinkie, who cowered in fear at this phenomenon.
"Well... shit," Praxis said, eyes wide.
“Cooooool!” was Vinyl’s response to all of this. Even though her boyfriend was getting encased by Celestia-knows-what, she’s seen him do worse. Much, much worse.
The blackness fully encased his body as he closed his eyes. A long breath of air could be heard as he slowly opened his eyes and grinned a sharp toothed grin.
“Chaos Reaper...I think I could get used to this,” he murmured darkly. It sounded like his voice was being shared by something else in his body. Like many different people talking at once.
He looked down at his now clawed hand and gripped the Chain scythe, the entire weapon the same black as him, save for the red skull on top. The sagewood looked like it had rotted away, and replacing it was a spinal cord, acting as a shaft for the Chain Scythe instead. “They don’t call this a Chain Scythe just for the chainsaw...” He let out a laugh when he started to swing the weapon around, the spine behaving like the chain of a flail. He moved it in a figure eight before throwing it out a tree and having the long blade get caught within the trunk. He yanked hard, uprroting the tree as it flew towards him. Praxis closed his eyes before sounds of a chainsaw cutting through wood could be heard. He opened them slowly to see the tree was vertically cut in half, Jace still standing in the middle of the two halves. The blackness had started to dissipate from his body and the scythe’s spinal cord haft slowly materialized back into sagewood.
Jace just stood there for the longest time before he fell onto his knees and then right onto his face. “JACE!” Before Praxis could react, Pinkie and Vinyl were rushing over to him to see if he was still alive and well.
They never even noticed an enormous shadow looming over them.
"Jace, wake up, dude!" Praxis implored, giving the fallen form of his friend a vicious shake in the hopes that he would awake. He checked his pulse by placing his ear on his chest, and breathed a sigh of relief when he discovered he was still alive. It appears that somepony had provided him with a dollop of water, because a clear fluid had splashed on Jace's face, sprinkling the others in it.
'Wait a damn second... THAT'S NOT WATER.'
Praxis turned around to see who was the culprit.
He almost ran out of there, screaming at the top of his lungs.
A massive leviathan as black as pitch stood above them all, towering to a staggering forty-two feet. Its spade-shaped head, no, THREE heads, were oscillating to and fro as it opened their trio of maws, saliva dangling off of their jaws. The three heads roared as loud as they could, making the floor tremor.
It was...
"A HYDRAAAAAA!" Pinkie wailed.
"PINKIE!" Vinyl shouted, getting out of the hydra's shadow. "Take Jace and GET SOMEWHERE SAFE!" Pinkie grabbed Jace by his shirt collar and zipped away to a treeline in the bogs, surprisingly unaffected by her burden's weight. "Praxis, you're with me!" Her Chaos Gloves had a golden aura around them as she thought of what to use against it.
"Finally!" He exclaimed as he threw off his jacket and drew Typhoon, holding it in an offensive stance. "A REAL fight, and not some dummies!"
"Wh... when did you get muscles!?" Vinyl lowered her shades to gawk more clearly at the satyr's well-built arms.
"Less asking, more killing!" He charged ahead and made to swing his sword upward, only to have the hydra smack him out of the way with its gargantuan tail. Praxis fell into a nearby swamp, breaking through the horrendous, stagnant water. Vinyl hopped aside to dodge a huge hydra foot. and summoned a large golden ax. She willed it to attack the leviathan's leg. A few of the black scales became dislodged, causing the hydra to roar in rage and pain, yet there wasn't any sign of severe damage.
"Damn it all!" Vinyl swore, morphing her ax mirage into a bow and arrow. She fired the arrow where she removed the scales, yet the hydra was too fast. It swung its tail to block the attack. She felt herself get tired a bit before fury washed over her like she was caught in a storm while out at sea. "That's it, I'm pissed!" She backed off to a safe distance used her magic to find out what her special ability for the Chaos Gloves were, and grinned wickedly when she saw that both Havoc Diamonds were shining like the radiant sun setting behind them. Praxis emerged from the swamp and spat out the disgusting water. He drew Typhoon and adopted the exact demonic grin as Vinyl did when he noticed the dragon Táifēng glowing brightly along with its Tempest Jades.
"SONIC...CLAP!" bellowed Vinyl, sucking in as much breath before viciously slamming her front hooves together. The sound of her hooves contacting were amplified a thousand fold by her technique as white rings began emerging from her front hooves and expanded forward, making the ground shake twice as harder than the hydra did before. The leviathan groaned in pain as it tried to stuff its head in the swamp waters to deaden the sound. The two fighters felt like they were winning.
But on the verge of success, Fate must always turn the tables.
Vinyl, exhausted from how much mana she distributed from her insufficient magic wells, went cross-eyed a little, panting fervently as she fell to the floor.
To the hydra, the apple was right for the picking as it lowered one of its heads to feast upon their supper.
But to Praxis, this spelled impending doom.
"Shit! VINYL!" He cried, taking off for the exhausted pony. He grabbed her and picked her up in a heartbeat, dodging the leviathan's severely enraged heads and tail. With enough strength, he threw Vinyl towards Pinkie and Jace at their safe spot at the treeline: Jace was awake, yet was exhausted from his Chaos Reaper technique. Pinkie caught Vinyl on her back and set her next to Jace.
"Alright, she's safe... but now I have to deal with tall, dark, and hideous over here," Praxis said, dodging and countering the black leviathan's heads, tail, and huge feet. "Hey!" he shouted to the hydra. "Guess what? I'm gonna fucking kill you!"
"RAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWRRR!!!!!"
'Note to self: buy every monster in Equestria a breath mint.'
The hydra swatted him in his brief stupor and sent him flying into a miscellaneous boulder. Praxis' spine was on the verge of snapping like a twig. He slumped to the dirt and regained his footing. He tasted a metalltic flavor in his mouth and spat on the ground. Blood was infused inside his saliva.
"That's it! No more Mr. Nice Guy!" he bellowed. He charged at the hydra and leapt into the air. "HURRICANE OF RAZORS!" He swung his blade in a horizontal circle, following Aksheal's example. The massive gusts of wind raced around him at head-spinning speeds, expanding rapidly like a raindrop in a pond. Through the deafening noise of the wind, he thought he heard a dragon give a roar. As the winds died down, Praxis saw the destruction of his attack. Several swamp cat-tails, trees, and boulders received numerous slashes from the highly concentrated winds and all but the boulders were lopped off as clean as dandelion heads. Many of the enormous hydra's scales were clipped off and it was bleeding a little in places, but it was still standing.
And it was more infuriated than before.
"D...damn it," he huffed, shaking his head from how much mana the technique siphoned from him. He fell to one knee in exhaustion -- both magical and physical -- and tried to regain his dwindled energy. He struggled in getting up, his knees knocking together as he wiped her brow of sweat.
"PRAXIIIS! LOOK OOOUUUT!" Jace, Pinkie, and Vinyl wailed in unison.
He looked up and saw a hydra's open mouth quickly descending upon him.
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scythe’s spinal cord haft
cauainf the hydra
1. Shaft.
2. I'm gonna assume you mean causing.
There must ALWAYS be a huge drain for big attacks eh?
Just knew there was gonna be some kinda drawback on those things lest they become too OP.
604988
Fixed them, but haft is a word.
And there has to be, because the gems' abilities take a huge hit on your magic wells. Too much magic-draining will fry you up if you're not careful.
I saw you wrote GAS instead of AS somewhere...
And now he shall embrace the insanity
605709
wait wait wait... when the hell did jace and vinyl become mare/boyfriends? did i miss something here, or are you just fucking with us? if i did miss something, please kindly point out the chapter
687595
its part of the collaboration, check out: "What If: My Second Life" to find out this stuff.
I've already read this story but I'm reading it again.
and
TIME TO GO HERCULES ON HIS ASS
I died laughing
you did well 