City of Guilds

by donceluzza

Performers

City of Guilds
Chapter 10: Performers

The trap was sprung, and Borborygmos found himself being pelted from all sides by blinding flashes and small spears of light. After that initial wave had finished and the brute was stumbling, blinded, a second wave of Boros archers took to firing into his back, merely annoying Borborygmos. Trixie summoned a group of wailing ghosts and wraiths that began circling the beast. The long-dead souls began pelting the Cyclops with fire and slashing at him with blades.

Shining began charging the Shackles and watched as the Cyclops regained his sight long enough to slam his massive fist into the wall behind him. The shockwave shook Shining and caused many of the archers to lose their balance and fall underneath Borborygmos’s heel. Then one of the Boros made a split-second decision and fired a hostile beam of light straight at Borborygmos’s eye.

A large serving dish flew in the beam’s way and was blasted to smithereens. Pinkie screamed at the captain, inadvertently giving away his position to the angry Cyclops. “You said that he would be brought in for questioning, not killed or even seriously hurt! That was the deal!” This brought Borborygmos sight down upon Shining’s hiding place, and the Cyclops wound up a punch aimed straight at the captain. Shining finished preparing the Shackles and attempted to use them, only for the Cyclops to be knocked aside. One of Trixie’s conjurations was instead grabbed by several blue tendrils of mana and was wrapped by the massive Shackles. Trixie destroyed her servant and the Shackles fell to the ground.

Borborygmos, now fully recovered from the initial assault, snarled at the blue unicorn next to the Shackles. Shining jumped from the rafters in front of Borborygmos and fired a blinding beam at the creature, blinding it momentarily. The brutish Cyclops stomped around, forcing the Boros to scatter from their initial ambush positions. “I had him!” Shining yelled at Trixie.

“And he had you! We came here for a victory, not a draw!” she yelled back. The blue unicorn grabbed the Shackles in her magic and mentally commanded her remaining spirits to usher the angry crowd back towards the stage. “Trixie suggests a switching of roles.” Shining nodded and charged at Borborygmos, firing more flaming bursts at the creature.

“Come on, you big brute, let’s take this outside.” Shining fired lightning bolts at the Cyclops, making use of the contained enclosure.

Trixie giggled behind his back, “’You big brute,’ really?”

“Not the time, Trixie!” Shining kept firing at the Cyclops’s eye, but a single stomp of the mighty monster’s foot to the ground sent him flying back. Borborygmos flew an arm back and smashed the wall behind him, stepping out into the Ravnican evening. He stood at the ready, prepared for Shining to run out after him. Shining smiled and charged his horn. The unicorn teleported onto the top of the building and fired another blinding beam the Borborygmos.

The Cyclops was able to avoid much of the blast, only losing his vision for a moment. This moment was enough for Shining, however, as he leapt from the theater to the nearby Rakdos barracks. Borborygmos swung his massive fist at Shining’s previous location, stopping just short when his vision cleared.

The giant creature let out a furious roar and adjusted his aim, punching the side of the other building. The shock shook Shining but he shot another blast of lightning at Borborygmos’s already smoldering fur. The blasts seemed to do little more than anger the already quite angry Borborygmos. The Cyclops patted his back, the sheer force of which put out the accumulating fires. Shining saw his chance, and a crazy, risky, and amazingly stupid idea, but he went for it. Shining jumped on Borborygmos’s head, using his magic to summon a flaming lasso to wrap around one of his horns.

---

Twilight simply stared at the earth pony in front of her as time seemed to slow down. As the mare looked up from her kill, Twilight noted that her eyes were blank, with no pupils. The dagger being carried by the mystery mare was jet black and seemed to have weird inscriptions on the side. The long cloak she wore obscured much of her, leaving only her head visible. But with a quick glance Twilight noticed a small signet on the base of hilt of the mare’s dagger…

“Dimir…” she muttered slowly.

The mare leapt from her victim and straight at Twilight. The unicorn quickly erected a barrier the size of the hall, which the mare stopped just short of. Twilight grinned, but the mare simply smirked back at her. Twilight watched as the mare seemed to simply melt into the ground. In a state of shock, Twilight lowered the barrier and tapped her hoof repeatedly on the patch of metal where her opponent used to be standing. “Earth pony… magic?” Before she could answer that question, she heard a light tapping and turned to see the vanishing mare charging at her again.

“Eep!” Twilight threw up another smaller barrier, but again the mare stopped just short of it and adjusted herself. She leapt to the left using her right legs to bounce off of the vents and straight at Twilight. The unicorn jumped back, only some of her hair was cut by the dagger, she teleported behind the attacker and started running. Twilight had only been running for about a minute when her attacker jumped out only a few feet in front of her. She quickly shot lightning at the charging mare, who used her back legs to move herself out of the way of the blast, although some caught her cloak.

The mare adjusted her head slightly and leapt out of her cloak and faded once again into the darkness. Twilight stopped dead, gasping for breath as she turned around and around searching for the attacker. The purple unicorn grasped at as much blue mana as she could and scanned for any magical residue. She managed to calm her breathing and closed her eyes. In a state of forced sensory deprivation she would be able to sense and see nothing but mana.

She waited for only a few moments before some of the blue mana shifted, almost as if a small wormhole was conjured in a spot next to her. Twilight opened her eyes and bucked in the direction of the hole. Her kick connected to the mare, who flew back a few feet before flipping back onto her hooves. The purple unicorn quickly turned and got a good look at her without the cloak. The dark blue fur she had seen already, but what was interesting was the girl’s cutie mark. One could barely notice where it started, as part of it was a small black cloak, and seemingly coming from inside that was the undeniable hilt of a dagger.

“Who are you? Why did you kill Vex?” The pieces all fell into place. “You’re the killer?” Twilight got it; of course she had managed to kill Scootaloo and Myczil. With her weird teleportation she could come right up behind them and slit their throat without them reacting. The mare once again smirked at Twilight and melted into a dark hole in the ground. Once again Twilight started scanning for magic residue, now knowing exactly what to look for. After waiting for a full minute she realized that her opponent was nowhere to be seen.

Twilight paced back and forth in the hall checking around every corner. The pony that was attacking her, Twilight knew that she, wouldn’t just give up on her. “Okay, so she’s an Earth pony who can teleport for some reason.” Twilight gulped and continued muttering to herself. “She killed Vex and more than likely she was the one who killed Scootaloo and Myczil. More than likely, if she is their killer, she was just about to drag him off to the Promenade when I showed up. She won’t stop hunting me until I’m dead. I’m a witness after all, and now that I know that she’s a pony…” Twilight shuddered to think about what Celestia would do if she found out about this. Any thoughts to her allowing Pinkie a free pass would be gone completely.

Twilight stopped and held her breath, listening closely. All the purple unicorn could do was wait, her magic primed. The vents spewing steam created a consistent harmony of sound. Twilight magically scanned the floor for any vibrations and felt them from the next hallway. She primed her horn with a powerful stun spell. The spell could put the mare in a coma for a few days, but at this point that would be better than making the spell less powerful just to be able to question her quicker.

The mare jumped around the corner, and Twilight shot off her spell. But once again the mare’s reflexes proved too good, as she swung the blade at the spell, using the blade as a shield. Once she landed she leapt again at Twilight, all within the blink of an eye. Faced with very few alternatives, Twilight jumped to her side, shoving her body against the steaming hot vents. The mare missed her mark; the purple unicorn peeled herself from the vents, a shriek of pain filling the tunnels. She tried to quickly fire off a blast at the mare, but her target ran off into the room where Vex was located.

Twilight rushed back, only to find the room was completely deserted. “She teleported.” Twilight smiled a little; as much damage as she had done to herself, she had proved a new fact about her teleportation. It wasn’t completely immediate, and considering she felt the need to hide in order to teleport, it could more than likely be interrupted. “If I can get outside, then I’ll have the advantage.” As long as she was in the Mana Coil facility, she was tightly constricted in terms of where she could go and whether or not she could dodge her attacker’s strikes. But out in the open, where she could unleash a little storm magic on the shadowy mare… Twilight started running off in the direction of the exit, ignoring the searing pain in her side.

---

Borborygmos swung himself wildly around, trying to dislodge the pony on his head. He grabbed at his fur, but Shining merely hopped to his back, tethered by the flaming lasso attached to one of his horns. Borborygmos reached back, only for Shining to swing to his front, biting fur as a way of stopping. The unicorn launched another blinding spell at the Cyclops’s eye, but the beast shut it at the last moment, lowering its effectiveness.

Borborygmos opened his eye, his sight reduced to that of someone with their contacts in wrong. Thinking fast, he ran at the building in front of him, slamming into it at full force. Shining bounded upwards and gripped the Cyclops’s horn. He jumped off and landed on top of the performance hall. The white unicorn fired off another blinding beam at the Cyclops. Borborygmos simply turned his head, causing the blast to hit the back of his head ineffectively.

The Cyclops kept his head low, avoiding any surprise attacks from the persistent unicorn. He noticed the Boros attack squad leaving the building. A sinister grin spread across his face as he rushed forward and grabbed one of the men, bringing him up to his mouth. Searing pain spread through Borborygmos’s back as Shining landed in front of him, firing blasts of light into his face all the way. Borborygmos staggered back, dropping his prey. The massive beast grabbed a large tree trunk and let out an ear-piercing scream. While Shining grunted, his face contorted in pain, he looked up only just moments before the tree collided with him.

While Shining was sent careening backwards by a large tree, Trixie exited the performance hall and began firing her own blinding beams at the Cyclops. Trixie fired the Shackles at Borborygmos, who began screaming and pressing against the closing restraints. As the Shackles began to twist and close in on the brute, he continued to push against them. Trixie stepped back defensively and summoned her dark spear, only for one large beam of light to blast the Cyclops right in the eye, causing him to submit to the Shackles.

Trixie looked behind her to the tree that slammed into Shining. The unicorn was laying there, blood dripping from his snout and nose, one of his legs contorted so that it pointed straight to the sky, but he was alive. “Shining! How?”

“I managed to throw up a small shield before it hit me. Not big enough to do anything more than soften the blow, but I only broke one leg rather than all four so… that’s a plus.” Shining began to sink into unconsciousness as Trixie started shouting for a medic, and the troops began to approach the captured Cyclops.

---

Twilight collapsed against a wall, completely drained, gasping for air. By now the pain in her side from the burns was a dull throb, possibly because of the adrenaline rush. Her eyes darted distressingly back and forth, searching for any sign of her pursuer. The people of Ravnica spoke of the horrors that the Dimir were capable of… and now Twilight was beginning to understand why. This Dimir was a pony like she was, which meant that she had to have been brought here the same as them, and in only a year, she was this powerful.

Twilight’s breathing steadied, and she began to pull blue and red mana from the area. She began to mix together elements in the air, summoning a weird. The weirds were an Izzet creation of humanoid shape formed from the combination of two opposite forces, like fire and water. As the weird was finished, it stood back against the wall opposite to Twilight. “Scout forward, keep checking behind you, anything that isn’t me you attack.” The weird nodded in understanding and began moving forward into the tunnel with Twilight following behind it slowly.

The two eventually reached a junction that split into two roads ahead. Twilight lit her horn and channeled blue magic through the weird, ushering it down the path that led to the surface. The weird began moving slowly forward, stopping every few steps to check behind itself for any sight of its creator’s unseen nemesis. The Dimir pony leapt from the ceiling and stabbed its black dagger into the weird, which tumbled over dead.

Twilight leapt from the shadows and jumped for the mare. The assassin noted this and another her seemed to run out of herself. Twilight leapt on top of the original and sprayed fire at it. The body that Twilight had jumped onto dissolved, but the other body that had seemingly jumped straight out of it disappeared into shadows. “Clone…” The purple mare grinned a little, she had used a spell to make the Weird look like her, a clone spell variant, but her opponent used the same trick against her.

A noise from further down the tunnel alerted Twilight. Considering how far away the mare was teleporting, she seemed scared. “This is probably the first time that her prey has put up this much of a fight,” Twilight thought. She started running down the corridor as fast as she could, hoping that if she could get far enough that the mare wouldn’t be able to track her.

Even as her breathing became raspy and her legs burned in pain from overexertion, she kept running, she was just a minute away from the exit. The mare dropped from the ceiling only a foot away from Twilight, who inwardly cursed herself. “The sound, she was following the sound of my hooves,” she thought. The purple mare threw up a blue barrier around her neck, where she assumed the assailant would aim. Sure enough, the shadowy mare thrust her black dagger at Twilight’s throat just as the barrier spell went up. The blade bounced right off, knocking the mare back somewhat.

Twilight just kept running, inches away from her goal. Finally close enough to the exit, she teleported for the street. Since arriving on Ravnica her pony-related magic had diminished, albeit not entirely. She materialized a foot off the ground, as she didn’t have much time to prep the spell. The purple mare tumbled onto the street, rolling into an Izzet scientist. “Help!” she squeaked. “Get me back to Nivix… quickly… have to warn…” The scientist nodded and started shouting into the nearby crowd for a Boros to give them a ride to Nivix. Twilight looked in the direction of the entrance grate and saw the cover open slightly before closing again. Content that she had evaded her pursuer Twilight, allowed her eyes to close.

Author's Note:

Borborygmos, Father of Scognor 4GGRR
Legendary Creature - Cyclops

Trample, haste

1: Borborygmos gets +4/-4 until end of turn

7/5

Comments

[SCMzer0]

great chapter nice read.

[donceluzza]

3831497 I didn't want any of them to be guileless because that way there would be one pony, and with the exception of the Dimir all of them are characters featured on the show, that could act as a lens into the guild to make the story feel more natural.

In terms of the changes that you suggested, I like the unique way that you think of Rainbow Dash, but I thought that in the end, being a captain of the guard, that Shining would fit more. In terms of AJ I had thought of the whole "dead parents, turns to necromancy" thing before thinking of anything else.

I do like it when people tell me their ideas for the guilds that the ponies would join. It's a pretty fun thought exercise, and I like that my story made people think so much.

[donceluzza]

3829666 I have received numerous criticisms along the same line so I would like to address this. The reason that I choose One year instead of Two is a simple plot reason... if it was two I would have to explain how the ponies managed to survive on their own for that long. While I could have made it so that they had been in the guilds for all that time I felt that it would be more interesting if they had only been there for one, just so that one would assume that they still kind of want to go home, at least in some cases, whereas in two you could probably see them growing alright with their current situation.

I do appreciate people citing the things that bug them about the story because in some cases that is just that I am a weird guy, but this one is purposeful and one i deliberated over quite a bit.

Still thank you for your comments, hopefully more will come soon.

[Evergrand Storyteller]

What happened 6 weeks ago that made every MTG writer up and vanish?

[donceluzza]

4979401 I've actually been trying to adjust to a new job and my new semester at school. And recently got my wisdom teeth taken out, I will try and work on a new chapter and probably a new story sometime soon

(Planning a new MTG/MLP universe and a new fix within that universe that will start by retconning one of the worst things to happen in MTG recently)

however I am seriously hopped up on pain meds right now... also I have been playing Dynasty Warriors. Which has similarly taken up large portions of my time.

[Evergrand Storyteller]

4980064 It's not just you though basically 6 weeks ago everyone writing mtg just stopped existing its weird, aliens?

[donceluzza]

4987352 That or the death of Elspeth threw them into a deep painful sleep. Where they will eventually be reborn as creatures of pure rage...

[Secundum]

Any chance of this being revived?

[Vigriff]