Fellowship is Madness

by Imperator Chiashi Zane

Midsummer's Nightmare, Part 3

The forest was dark, but between the two Unicorns and Kajiik’s magic tunic, there was enough light to see by. They stopped at the edge of a cliff, looking out across the forest. The castle was visible in the distance, an intimidatingly long distance away, and they had to stay in the forest to keep out of sight.

“I think I see the path over the…” the cliff dropped out from underneath Iron Hoof, and Hammer Soot darted forward to catch him, but Barkskin got there first. He had both of her hooves in his, sliding towards the new edge, “Pull me up!”

She shook her head, “I can’t. If I stand up, you’ll fall. I’m stuck here.”

“Drop me then. I’m just slowing you down if you can’t get me back up.”

She shook her head again, “No sir. I can’t leave you behind any more than you could leave Kajiik behind. You understand, right?”

“Drop me. I’d rather you lose one pony than two.”

“I’d rather we don’t lose any!”

A pair of hooves and a pair of cold brass talons gripped his armored sides, and he felt himself rising up onto the solid dirt again, “Thanks. Let’s go, that landslide was sure to alert some creatures that we’re here.”
__
“I hate Manticores. Angry ones more so,” Iron Hoof stared at the creature as the four mares attempted, poorly, to immobilize it so they could pass. A turn of its head revealed the reason for its rage. A massive slice out of its flank. Even if it healed, the Manticore would be permanently crippled, and would likely starve to death. He growled.
“Ladies, back away. I’ll handle this!” He started forward, hooves locking the various joints along his spine into an immobile sheet. It was the jousting set-up, but it worked wonders for being hard to eat. He charged, and let the creature scoop him up, “Kajiik, SHROUD!”

Everything went black, and he silently slashed at it, even as the Manticore tried to swallow him. A severed artery meant it bled out rather quickly, while a half-lucky shot at the neck severed it’s spinal column. The creature fell limp, and he wormed his way free, “Ok. Let’s move on. Quickly,” he had done Mercy Kills before, but this was the first on a creature that could have eaten him. He didn’t need to justify himself yet though. The blood would wash away.
__
Trees. Trees coming to life and laughing. That was disconcerting. And Fleethoof’s nervous laughter wasn’t helping. Hammer Soot covered her head with her talons, carefully crossing the sharp fingers between her ears.

Something touched her muzzle, and she yelped, lashing out with one talon, to find a split piece of bark that looked like a laughing face, “What?”

“Well, you looked scared, and my whole job is to make ponies happy. I couldn’t just let you suffer, so I went and got you a happy mask,” Fleethoof was grinning, ear to ear.
Hammer looked at the mask on the ground, then around at the trees. Several had bare bark, but it didn’t look like cut marks, “Where did you get the mask?”

“Oh, did you want another? Lemme go grab one.”

Grab one? From where? She watched the Party Pegasus dart over to one of the trees, give it a massive, slobbery kiss on its horrible face, and leaned back, holding the face-bark through what appeared to be sheer force of will.

She hoofed it over, and Hammer Soot pressed it against her muzzle, “Awesome. We can’t be too much further from the Castle.”
__
The sea serpent making the river too rough to cross stared incredulously at the Thestral rolling on the bank, curled up in spasms of laughter, “What are you laughing at? My fabulous moustache has been destroyed! I look hideous! Almost as bad as You!”

The Thestral stopped laughing, and stood up, “As bad as me? As bad as me!” She stomped forward, talons sinking into the dirt, “Your bucking Moustache will grow back! You’ll have that silly lip worm back in a week!” Her wings tensed, like she was going to lunge, “My Hooves! My Ears! My Bucking EYE! Won’t! Grow! Back!”

“Yeah, but I’ll be UGLY for a week! I won’t stand for that!”

At that, she did launch into the air. Talons slashed through the serpent’s neck, then through the bloodied facial hair, then she landed on the ground on the other side, “Quit Bitching at me,” she giggled, chortled, then started laughing loudly as she shook the blood off her fur, “Damn, that bastard was ugly.”
__
Of course the bridge was out. Why would the bridge ever be available when they needed one. The two fliers were beginning to tire, and were slogging alongside the groundbound. Even their bark-masks were beginning to get heavy. There was no way all of them could get across without a bridge. Kajiik looked at the two fliers, “Ro Sham Bo for who goes and puts the bridge back up.”

He was surprised when Blueberry Jam stepped up beside him, “I know a spell to give me wings. It’s only temporary, but I can get the bridge set up, no problem.”

“Do it.”

Yellow insect-like wings stretched out of the purple mare’s sides, and flapped twice before she launched herself across the gap, wings buzzing like a bee. She landed on the other side and tucked her wings back into her body, blinking at the burning sensation of a partial transformation. She pulled the bridge rope up to the mounting post and started tying it when a voice from behind her, closer to the castle, interrupted her focus on her magic.

“That was a pretty flippin’ sweet trick there. How long can you do that for?”

“A couple of minutes, why?”

“We would like for you to join our team, the Shadowbolts!”

“Alright, lemme just tie up this rope here, and let my friends know.”

“No. You have to come with us, right now, if you want to accept our offer.”

“Honestly, as much as I’d love to join you, I can’t. I need to help my family back on the farm, especially my little sister. See, she’s getting to that age where she’s starting to get curious about things, like why she suddenly has wings.”

“What in Tartarus are you talking about?”

“Oh, I would have thought that a team, such as yourself, would have done research on possible recruits. If you had, then you would know I’m not a normal Unicorn,” green fire licked back along her body, revealing a chitinous shell, and she darted forward, stabbing at the Pegasi as her wings lifted her into the air. A glide was easy. Hardly took any energy, but actively flying, that made her have to drop her cover. The Pegasi vanished, and she dropped back down, tying the ropes up as she recharged her magic to re-cast the disguise. It started, her chitin changed to purple, and the blue patterning of her mane appeared on her fin, but she remained a Changeling as the others started crossing. None of them knew about her. She had remained hidden for her entire life, with her family. The Blueberry family were entirely Changelings.

The first across was Kajiik, who moved right up to her. He sniffed at her throat, then kept walking, “Well, what took you so long, Blueberry?”

He acted like he didn’t even notice the chitin, but she figured it was just the light, and kept trying to recharge enough to finish the disguise, though the lack of love energy this deep in the forest made it difficult.
__
The castle towered over them as Kajiik led them into the throne room, where the stones had been seen last. It was a long shot that they were still there, but the book said each one weighed a significant amount, and they didn’t smell of food anyway, so they ought to still be sitting on the dirt on the floor.

There they were, too. Five stones sitting on the raised dais in the middle. He reached for the nearest one, to collect them all, when a cloud of purple smoke swirled into the room and formed on the dais, close enough that he could smell the moondust.

He lunged back as she stomped, but the stones shattered into dust at the impact. His voice darkened as he began inscribing a pattern on the ground. He finished it just as Nightmare Moon started charging at him, “I’ll distract her! Figure something out!”

The ring flared a brilliant white as Nightmare Moon charged over it, and he reached up, grabbing blue steel armor in his teeth as she teleported away from the Scry of the sun. The air disrupted the chalk and the sun flare went out as quickly as it came.

“Everypony, grab the fragments. We’ll figure this out. Kajiik’s got enough chalk and knows enough combat spells to hold his own for a few minutes,” Iron Hoof started collecting the stones. He didn’t know a huge amount of magic, but there were some spells he knew intimately, thanks to being in the room during Kajiik’s studies. One of those was the Beacon spell on his armor. It could be called with a specific rune, or sent to with another. He suspected that the latter was what his charge would do. “Ok, we need a ring, here. Use the shards and your bodies. It needs to be a perfect circle,” he started carefully laying out an imprisonment spell ring in the dust, pouring some on the ponies he was with, “That means wings opposed. Horns opposed. When they appear, Kajiik will land across from me, and we’ll trap Nightmare Moon.”

“How do you know it’ll work?”

Iron Hoof sighed, “I have no idea.”

With a flicker, the two ponies, still locked in combat, landed in the circle. Kajiik threw himself backwards, landing perfectly in the circle. A pattern stitched into his tunic fell into position and the circle flared white. It pinned Nightmare Moon in the middle.

She dropped to her haunches, “Alright. You’ve caught me. But the moment one of you tires, I’ll be free again. You don’t have the power to stop me. I destroyed the Elements.”

Kajiit smiled at her, “Did you now?”

At the stares from the others, he smiled wider, “You destroyed the physical artifacts. Not the essence. See, all six are here.” More stares of confusion joined the monster.

“Barkskin, for refusing to leave a pony behind, even when he ordered you to, you represent the Element of Loyalty,” shards of crushed stone formed around her neck, making a perfect duplicate of her ‘Cloud on a Stick’ cutie mark.

“Blueberry Jam, for being truthful to yourself, even at the risk of being ostracized for it, you represent the Element of Honesty,” shards of stone formed into a duplicate of her glass-jar cutie mark.

“Iron Hoof, for laying a mortally wounded Manticore to rest,” three gasps burst out, “you represent the Element of Kindness,” his crossed blade cutie mark formed up around his gorget.

“Hammer Soot, for your, err, rather unorthodox method of cooling the raging sea serpent, you represent the Element of Laughter,” even Nightmare Moon cringed watching the burning cog cutie mark form around the Thestral’s neck.

“Fleethoof, for your gift of terror-masks in the forest, at great risk to yourself, you represent the Element of Generosity,” her balloon animal cutie mark formed from another pile of stones. The imprisonment spell circle was almost broken completely through.

Nightmare Moon laughed, “You’re still missing one!”

“Yes. It took me a few minutes to realize what the last was. In unity, we made it through the forest, we imprisoned you. Fellowship is the answer. For bringing this group together from a group of scared fillies in the library, I represented the Element of Fellowship.” The remaining shards formed around his neck as the circle broke. Beams of brilliantly colored light shot into the middle, bathing Nightmare Moon in rainbow shades.

Comments

[Dementia Ravenmane]

Oh, oh god...
images.sodahead.com/polls/001298967/i_think_im_gonna_be_sick_poster_p228783514344068814t5ta_400_answer_2_xlarge.jpeg

I didn't even know it was humanly possible to write something like this. There's no redeeming qualities for any of the protagonists, really. They're all a bunch of assholes whom are impossible to appreciate. If you want to write mentally deranged characters, look at Daemon of Decay on FiMFiction or American McGee, they can do it while keeping the characters interesting.

The Elements of Harmony are poorly tacked on and make no goddamn sense whatsoever with their corresponding bearers. Especially Laughter, that one wasn't even Chinese bootleg levels of awful, it was far worse.

Next time: put some actual effort into making nuanced, interesting and deep characters. Because what you have now is a bunch of murderous cardboard cutouts that aren't intriguing in the slightest.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go get back what hope in humanity I lost while reading this.
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[Imperator Chiashi Zane]

5352733 They're supposed to be. This is almost entirely (with the exception of some dialogue) straight out of a D&D campaign. I have yet to meet a character in those that has redeeming qualities.

Also, Psychotic laughter is still laughter. And the characters will get deeper over time.

[Dragonborne Fox]

5354727 Sir, may I point out to you that the bar on your story has all red and no green? Shouldn't that indicate that something is wrong here?

[Imperator Chiashi Zane]

5359924 Probably. At this point, I'm kind of hoping it gets more. After all, the popular box isn't just for liked stories. If I can get a few more readers wondering after the trainwreck implied by the red bar, it's more readers.

But really, I'm writing this for my friend, who is the DM of the campaign. (I play Hammer Soot, FYI)