Slowly, one wobbly hoof after another, Rainbow Dash shuffled out of the tent. The twilight above shone dull and dismal through the urban haze of the abandoned city. Nevertheless, Rainbow found herself squinting as she peered around, searching for her companions.
As it turned out, she didn't have to look far. As the lofty platform came into focus, so did five familiar figures—trotting closer.
Flynn gulped. Leaning forward, he was the first to speak, "Rainbow Dash...?"
Rainbow took a deep breath, coiling her wings by her side. "Lookie. Flynn lives."
"There! See?!" Flynn turned to scowl at Logan. "I told you the venom didn't rot her brain."
"Not as far as we can tell..." Logan's eyes narrowed.
Flynn held a hoof up to Logan's figure. Patiently.
Logan sighed, reached into a satchel, and produced a bit that he slapped into Flynn's fetlock.
"Jee..." Rainbow Dash droned. "How touching."
"It's not as trivial as it looks," Logan said. "That's the only bit we have on the Dark Side. It's worth a mountain of gold."
"Here's hoping you win it back in another bet."
"Seeing as how you're still alive, I probably will." Logan smiled and trotted until he towered over the mare. "Welcome back to the land of the living, Missy."
Rainbow playfully punched his forelimb. "Holding up the fort here, Big Show?"
"You can count on me."
"The spiders are the ones setting up a defense perimeter..." Flynn breathed onto the coin, polished it, and smirked at the petite mare. "But go on. Let him dream."
"Bald-ass douche canoe..." Logan muttered into the twilight.
"At least I've been putting myself to good use these past two weeks!" Flynn grinned. "I've been studying the ancient technology lying around these platforms and you have no idea the kind of discoveries I've made!"
"Save the briefing for another time," Rainbow sputtered, limping down the line of Heraldites. "I don't want to slip back into another coma." She stopped at a hairy wyvern. "Heya, Keps."
"Harrk!" The spectacled companion saluted with a smile. "Grreat to have you back, Rrainbow One."
"Thanks for all the healing broths," Rainbow Dash said. "It's... a shame I threw most of it up."
"Yes, well, accorrding to Merrula, you fairred quite well."
"Tell that to my migraine." Rainbow playfully fluffed his hairy mane and shuffled past Ariel. "Hey girl."
"Feeling better, Rainbow?"
"Better enough."
Ariel weathered a weary breath. "I told the messengers of Abaddon that you were awake. I suspect they'll be sending one of the Merulas up here to speak with you."
"Good. Cuz I've got lots of questions to ask."
"You didn't figure them all out from Abaddon's song?" Flynn asked.
Ariel snapped at him. "Will you give her some space, Flynn?! For Goddess' sake! It's a miracle she stopped freaking out like she did upon waking!"
"It's okay, Ariel," Rainbow muttered, trotting along. "You don't have to tell everypony you kissed me."
"Eeep!" Ariel blushed heavily.
"Wait... what?" Logan's eyes darted. "Who kissed who?"
Rainbow didn't respond. She was standing before Wildcard at this point.
At last, the silent griffin looked at her. Twin black goggles reflected her haggard face. Then—with a beak smile—he held a metal talon out.
Rainbow took one look at the arm, ignored it, and leaned forward to engulf the Desperado in a dear hug.
Wildcard—clearly surprised—simply patted her back and nodded.
The two parted ways, with Rainbow breathing through a tired smile. "It's okay, Jordan. I know you were worried. You don't have to thank me for that."
"The way you talk," Flynn remarked, "It's as if you've made a habit out of experiencing comas in the past."
"Coming back from the dead is an art," Rainbow said. She looked at Wildcard again. "The only thing that sucks is that I never went to school for it."
With slow, deliberate swipes of his fingers, Wildcard hand-signed something before Rainbow.
"I... uh..." Rainbow looked at Kepler. "Sorry, I'm a bit rusty... and groggy. He said something about hair?"
"He states that yourr hairr has grrown considerrably long," Kepler remarked with a tusked grin. "And he would be rright."
"Yes, well..." Rainbow brushed a hoof through her spectral bangs. "...some sins take longer than others to be forgotten." Her eyes narrowed at the group as she spoke in a soft, warm tone. "I'm... really really lucky to have you guys... y'know that, right?" She gulped. "I can't imagine how stupidly sucky it must have been to be waiting here for so long... not knowing if I would wake up."
"We had Merrula to give us assurrrance," Kepler explained. "And during my ministrations I could tell that you werre simply dealing with a temporrary spell."
"Still... it couldn't have been easy..."
"We're the Job Squad," Flynn said with a huff. "'Easy' means we're doing it wrong."
Logan chuckled at that.
"... ... ..." Rainbow Dash scanned the urban horizon. "... ... ...where is Seraphimus?" One ear twitched, then the other. "Is she... I mean did she—?"
"She's around..." Logan shrugged. "...buzzing about."
Rainbow's brow furrowed. "But... I-I thought she was dead-set on splitting for lonely pockets of the Curve—"
"So did we," Ariel said with a nod. But... turns out she's still hanging about." She gestured lazily into the air. "She flies around for hours, comes back to check to see if you've recovered or not... and then rinses and repeats."
"Should I be flattered?" Rainbow's voice cracked.
"That griffin is batshit insane," Flynn wheezed. "I don't know what keeps her around, honestly."
Wildcard hand-signed, and this time Rainbow read it: "She is probably searching for answers."
"Mmmmm..." Logan nodded. "She's not the only one..." His eyes traced towards Rainbow.
Rainbow Dash took a deep breath, facing the Herald as a whole. "I wish I could give you more, everypony. But... I-I simply don't have more to give."
Wildcard gestured again: "The Spider Queen spoke to you. I heard everything."
"Yeah, well, did you see the stuff that I saw?!" Rainbow rasped. "Did you feel the song in your veins?"
Wildcard was merely silent.
"What was the experrience like?" Kepler asked.
Rainbow gazed off across the spires of the empty city. "Friggin' scary as heck... at least at first. Then... as time went on... it felt like being out-of-my-body..." Rainbow smirked aside. "Believe you me... I'm not exactly new to crazy metaphysical fart-brainage... but this was just so... so..."
"Spidery?"Ariel suggested.
Rainbow blinked. "I was gonna say anticlimactic."
Ariel shrugged. "Seems to come leg-in-leg."
"What do you mean?"
"Just that... come on, Rainbow!" Ariel gestured dramatically. "These are giant friggin' spiders we're talking about!"
"Amazingly gifted, perrceptive, and meticulously melodic spiders," Kepler added.
"Whatever. They're still big squirmy things with big squirmy brains working on the same squirmy Song for eons and eons..." Ariel grimaced at Rainbow Dash. "Weren't you going on and on before about how Abaddon could very well be senile?"
"She has a very thorough mind!" Rainbow stated somewhat defensively. She felt a tinge of dizziness and had to steady herself against Wildcard's supportive talon. "So... l-long as it's got a thorough st-story to tell." Rainbow sighed. "... ... ...one she's been dwelling on for a very very long time, it would seem."
"Then it's a bust," Logan declared. "She wasted all of our time and your sanity for nothing."
"Not exactly. I know about the Shards now."
The Herald stirred anxiously.
"Ariel was trying to explain that to us yesterday," Flynn remarked. His mechanical eye rotated in and out with contemplative poise. "Turns out... the Divine Endrax had an even grander plan beyond death?"
"It wasn't enough that she gave her life to block the entrances to the Midnight Armory," Rainbow Dash said. "The three friggin' armies haven't been able to make her corpse budge. I doubt we can manage any better. However—when she died—she purposefully discarded three enchanted horns from her very own skull. They each fell into the hooves of the three different factions..."
"Lemme guess..." Logan folded his forelimbs with a knowing nod. "...it gave them something else to fight over."
"A distrraction!" Kepler declared.
"More like an obsession," Rainbow Dash said. "One that has wasted more lives than the previous half of the war... and in a shorter timespan as well..."
"It's a mirracle that any of the arrmies arre capable of standing to this day!" Kepler added.
"And that's the scary part." Rainbow looked at the group as a whole. "These three horn pieces—these Shards of Endrax—are required to disenchant the spell binding the Divine's corpse to the Midnight Armory."
"You sure of that?" Flynn remarked.
Wildcard briskly hand-signed: "I heard the Spider Queen say it herself."
"And I saw it." Rainbow frowned. "I saw the frightening possibility for any of the fragile factions to crumble under the right pressure... allowing either of their nemeses to scoop up their Shard, combine it with the power from the one they already have, and turn the tide of war in their favor."
"By then... they will have become an unstoppable force," Ariel muttered. "Harmonic Prism or bust."
"If that's the case..." Flynn grimace. "...then that could happen any time!"
"And when they acquirre the gift of the alicorrns, all we've worrked forr will be lost." He pointed a wing-talon at Rainbow. "All that you have flowned forr... would be nothing. Alas... the fate of Urrohrringrr would go to rruin."
Rainbow stood tall. "Not unless we get to the Shards first." And she stared patiently at the eyes and faces of her companions.
Silence hung tensely over the Herald.
Ariel bit her lip. She looked at Logan and Flynn.
Kepler took his spectacles off and nervously rubbed them clean.
At last it was Wildcard who "broke" the quiet with a series of gestures.
Flynn grumbled. "Yeah, Doubleyoo, and if Bard was still here, he'd say the same thing. That's what I both loved and hated about you Desperadoes." His teeth showed. "You were a bunch of optimistic jackasses!"
"Baldy..." Logan sighed.
"I always knew this entire campaign of ours amounted to a suicide mission... but how..." He flailed his forelimbs before his muzzle. "Tell me... how in Mortuana's name are we expected to just march right into these murderous nihilistic assholes' lairs and slip back out with the very diamonds of their militant desire?!"
"Forr all we know, we could be the forrce that tips the scales," Kepler said. "We could strrategically inserrt ourrselves into theirr rranks, make out with the prrize, and stand by while the confused factions fall all overr one anotherr like dominoes!"
"Yeah?! Like... how?!" Flynn face-hoofed, stifling a groan. "Honestly... I'm trying to be hopeful about this... but we'd need an army for such a friggin' thing!"
Ariel pointed at distant webs. "The Winter Children of Abaddon—"
"—are stuck here because the Bloodwings have made mince-meat out of their ailing numbers throughout the rest of the Dark Side," Logan grumbled in a somber voice. "They're the arachnid kings of this domain, but their venomous ballet dancing ain't worth shit beyond the city limits." He looked lethargically at Rainbow. "I hate to say it, but Baldy's right. So far—with all we've seen and witnessed—there's only one way to pursue these 'Shards of Endrax' if we actually wanted them... and that's on our own."
"And on top of that...!" Flynn waved in the air, spitting. "We don't even know where in the Hell they are!"
"... ... ... !" Rainbow Dash spun to look at her tent.
Wildcard saw it. His feathers instantly perched.
"What is it...?" Ariel asked with a murmur.
"Hold up..." Rainbow trotted towards the tent. Halfway through, her grogginess got the best of her, and she tripped.
Wildcard flew over to help balance her. She patted his talon and pointed into the tent.
"Please, Jordan. If you could. My b-backpack from Equestria."
Wildcard nod-nod-nodded. Fwoosh! Fwoosh! In two blinks, he shot into the canvas structure and returned with the stachel dangling from his metal grasp. The loyal griffin held the item up before Rainbow.
Rainbow took it. She reached deep inside, and when she drew her hoof back out she was cradling a pearlescent sphere in her fetlock.
"The dragon sphere?" Ariel asked.
Rainbow took Axan's mysterious gift. Slowly—with precise movements—she rotated and turned it around.
Flynn rubbed his muzzle, watching intently.
At last, there was a faint flicker of scarlet light across the edge of the sphere... followed by a slightly brighter one situated perpendicular to the first. Finally—after more than a little bit of fumbling—Rainbow got the sphere positioned in such a way to register a third signal, this one puslating with an intense crimson glow.
Logan craned his neck. From his perspective, the beacon of light within the giant marble resembled a compass needle. His gaze traced to where it pointed in a straight line towards the edge of the City.
"My starrs and garrterrs..." Kepler exhaled. "...it all makes sense now."
"If those Shards are the only parts of Axan's sister that are left living—so to speak..."
"...then her stone is likely pointing us to where the three of them are currently located," Ariel finished.
"Where's this bright one pointing?" Rainbow dumbly asked.
Wildcard gestured: "Omega."
"But... who, then?" Ariel stammered. "Which faction is it?"
Rainbow bit her lip. Her ruby eyes reflected the shimmering band within the stone. "I've got a pretty dang good guess who."
Logan sighed. "The Bloodwings." His tail flicked. "Buck me..."
"Even still, Rainbow..." Flynn winced. "An army of six? How... how could we even pretend to approach them?"
"Fighting is simply out of the option," Kepler said, shaking his hairy head. "Therre's farr too few of us. As diplomats—perrhaps—we could win ourrselves an opporrtunity to simply distrract them! But... I-I fail to see how six strrangers frrom the 'Penumbrral Edge' could convince them to rrelinquish theirr Shard!"
"... ... ..." Rainbow Dash looked up from the stone. "Not an army of six." She stared firmly at the group. "But a army of seven..."
Flynn and Ariel instantly winced.
Logan looked at Wildcard.
Goggles locked on Rainbow, Wildcard slowly gestured: "She stopped being the Commander of anything a long time ago."
Rainbow nodded. "That's the first comforting thing I've 'heard' since waking up." She shoved the dragon stone back into her weathered saddlebag. "Enough time has gone by. I have to speak to her."
"But..." Ariel shrugged. "...there's no telling where—"
"Fluttershy, remember?" Rainbow stepped briskly down the platform street and began flexing her forelimbs. "If Merula shows up while I'm gone, have her leave a message."
"Just listen for my screams," Flynn droned.
Melodies.
I guess it's time for this suicide squad to go ape shit on this fetch quest
And of course, it's the fucking Bloodwings we have to get the first shard from!
The Harmonic Prism! That's what the bloody thing's called. I was writing a comment yesterday but couldn't recall the name of it for the life of me. And I didn't just go back a few chapters to search for references becaue it was 4 in the morning and I was tired. But here we go.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo!!!!!!!!! The story I don/t remember that's in the featured box a lot that I don't read because it is longer the my waking hours can sustain. So anypony in the know tell me what happening .
A magical ball that's a compass? Where have I heard of that before...
i.pinimg.com/originals/f1/0a/58/f10a58415e17cad738edb35f2b7ae67f.jpg
Is writing going to appear on it next? Does it stop working if they stop being harmonious??
It's like Dragon Ball. Sort of. There's even a dragon ball involved!
Poor Flynn.
How would he handle Crisaders Tech spiders?
Or the WWW Spider?
I think honestly the Bloodwings will be the easiest one to get it from.
I've been thinking. Once we've got all 3 shards and gain access to the armory, what's to keep the factions from still charging in? Short of their joining RD (which seems unlikely), or their destruction (which is unlike our heroes), I figure at that point all three armies may just try to bring the fighting inside.
That got me to thinking. Unlikely as it is, what if Endrax isn't dead? What if she instead cast a spell that rendered her comatose and invincible until her crown is reformed? Her return would certainly give our heroes enough time to make it inside, as well as help procure an escape route, should there be no other way out from inside the armory.
Well that's one mystery solved. The egg hunt begins!
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Rainbow Dash Flies East
Teasing aside, I thought that Axan's dragon stone lead to something important. Of course, knowing where something is is one thing, actually getting to it is a whole different problem. One that likely requires an...unconventional solution. Now it looks like Rainbow will be talking to Seraphimus now, hope it is a more productive talk than the last few. Also have to wonder what the Spider Queen told her specifically. Guess we will find out soon enough.
...well.. Dash's saddlebags have Luna's mark on them right?
That should make it slightly easier for them to ingratiate themselves into their ranks.
Working with the Bloodwings to take out the Nightshard and Tchern's hive, then she could make up some bullshit about how she's touched with "The Blessing of the Nightmare" and only she can enter the sarcophagus.
...or she could just gank the shards when they've all been collected and hightail to the sarcophagus before anyone know's what's going on.
I predict character death!
-Through the path long forgotten, into the darkness long begotten. Ofolrodi.
The impossible becomes plausible with our heroes finding a lead on where to go on this treasure hunt from hell. But will Rainbow be able to convince Seraphimus to stick with the rest of the Herald?
Be here for our next episode "Conversations with the Stubborn" or "With Seven You Get Eyeroll!"
Coming up; Tsunderebird.
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Ahem. A bit of wisdom imparted directly from Luna regarding the Bloodwings, and one of the last things communicated between her and Dash:
It's a ghost of a chance at working, but far better leverage than what they have against Tchern or the shard. Which is to say, none.
We are about to start the next part of our quest
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Just go read the first book already
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Way too much to explain, you'll just need to read it from the start as it was intended! The chapters in these fics (it's a series) are small enough that it's a nice thing to read on lunchbreaks.
Invoke the "Blood of Luna" to open communication with the Bloodwings.
Invoke the name of Chrysalis to open communication with the Flux.
Invoke the Element of Harmony to open communication with the Night Shard.
In each case, there will be fighting, but it will at least each faction will be focused on taking the Herald alive for interrogation instead of outright hunting for Rainbow Dash's blood.
If all else fails, invoke Discord for long enough to tableflip the unwinnable scenario.
I wonder if Discord got a chance to experience the venom-vision?
Time to see what the Murder Bird has been up to these past weeks.
One Does Not Simply Fly East
Murder bird is currently on a murder break
Aww I was hoping the mutant Changelings would be first...
-in-leg-in-leg-in-leg-in-leg-in-leg-in-leg.
Clearly the rest of the next four books is going to look like the first minute of this video.
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Thanks!!! I do have this on my bucket list to read but @ my age not sure I can read it all before I kick the bucket...
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I knooow. I need to find a hobby that I can do when reading. This story does not lend itself to my normal activity I do when reading some stories.
i'm so pumped for this
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Which is?
(Insert obvious Boromir joke here)
Just a thought of mine, but isn't removing a shard from a faction equally disturbing for the power balance in this conflict? If one side could devastate the others with two shards because of their innate powers, then losing the access to said shard probably takes a faction out of the equation.
Unless they find a crazy way to acquire all three at the same time.
8758267 I’ve been playing a lot of Empire at War Forces of Corruption Mods, and have been experimenting with creating my own, while waiting for Austraeoh to start updating again.
. . . Walk into the Armory.
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I’m still waiting for Legacy to update.
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I re read it while waiting. I notice there either was edits, or my memories are of another place.
Flynn screm
inb4 Rainbow needs to smooch the hell outta that crown
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Take the blue pill.
Wake up and smell the east farts.
Yikes, well, at least the Bloodwings are the most familiar of the bunch.
Yes! Murder wife is joining the party permanent like!
You're a savage, Rainbow.
Eee! What about her coat? Is it floofy?
Is the prize Rainbow, because in that case Ariel is in.
Oh, you better believe I caught the "Flynn lives" joke in there.
ayyyyy. Gotta collect the glowy boi
So, we need to collect three Dragonball and then we get our wish? Sounds simple enough.
Time to meet the Ice Queen
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What an irony she has become.
Seraphimus wss the only real ice queen in all of rhobredden.
"one does not simply steal the three shards of Endrax from tbe three factions."
Alright, so the Bloodwings are up first.
IC what you did with the title.
Lemme say - things are starting to get good. Curious on where the hiatus began in the plot