The glowing figures of the Wraths swelled rapidly, and Glittershell realized that they were charging well in advance of the mass of their slower, shambling thralls. Military matters were mostly a mystery to the young orange transmare, so she wasn't quite sure why they might want or not want to attack in this matter, but she knew she had to be ready to avoid their paralytic grasps.

Glittershell's immediate concern was one of the Roneos, who was heading right for her. She prepped, just as she might have for a tough ball game. She inhaled, exhaled. She set aside fear and pain and hate -- that last being easy, as she didn't actually hate Roneo, certainly not like she did Gladstone -- and felt the calm and peace flood through her.

Everything seemed to slow down.

Glittershell was living in the now, and she could plainly feel it unfold.

Roneo's long blue mane streamed to his sides as he galloped straight for her. His hooves were pounding off the ground -- Glittershell remembered that the wraiths moved faster that way than they could air-walking, and Roneo plainly wanted to come on as fast as possible. His mane made a nice contrast with his creamy-yellow coat, and Glittershell thought the Wraith stallion looked terribly handsome.

A moment later, Roneo's beauty went away, and he was merely terrible. A wave of transformation started at his muzzle and swiftly swept down his form, leaving it a half-charred skeletal horror, hide and flesh seared quite off the left side of its face, which he must have exposed as he pressed the right side in to embrace Starlet when Nightmare Moon had slain him, over a thousand years ago. Deep blue witchfires blazed in the empty sockets of his skull, and erupted to bathe the whole gruesome form in lambent cold flame; naked jaws gaped impossibly wide, to emit a bloodcurdling hissing scream.

Glittershell trembled at the sights and sounds of the oncoming Wraith. Yet, she was not as frightened now, as she had when she had first beheld such creatures. She had, after all, faced the wraiths more than once now -- fled from them, fought them, even talked with them. Their Death Aspects were hideous, yes, but it was only an appearance. It was their chill touches that could harm her, and the malice in their hearts that made them a menace. And she felt no real malice toward Roneo: had he not been a Wraith, she felt certain he would not have been her foe.

All this flashed through her mind, a sudden realization in the instant before she and Roneo clashed. Then, there was no time for anything but battle, for Glittershell and Roneo came together, rearing and sidestepping.

Roneo rose above Glittershell, the Earth Pony Wraith stallion built both broader and taller than the slender, teenaged Unicorn transmare. His hooves flashed at her as he tried to bear her back under his own body, trapping her so that he could win the fight in a single paralytic motion.

Had Glittershell tried to hold her ground, she would have been doomed; overcome by his greater bulk. But as she reared she sidestepped; a tricky maneuver in a fight, but one she had learned as part of dancing. Glittershell dodged to her right; as Roneo came down, she lashed out with her hooves, catching the Wraith on the chin, rocking and turning his skull away from her. Roneo staggered away from her, to his own right, and Glittershell followed up on her attack, pounding Roneo's barrel with her hooves, then leaping back before Roneo could strike in retaliation.

Roneo whirled to face her, and Glittershell drew back. She did not want to get within his deadly grasp.

"You hurt me!" Roneo hissed, disbelievingly. "How?"

"Zecora gave me this amulet," Glittershell said proudly, tapping it where it lay against her chest. "It makes us real to each other."

"Oh," said Roneo, digesting this news. "Well, that means I can still fight you -- I just have to fight harder!"

So saying, he leaped at Glittershell again.

The dance continued. Glittershell ducked, dodged and weaved. Now and then, she was able to get a blow in, but it was harder now that Roneo was being more cautious. And when she struck, she simply lacked the strength to do serious damage to her larger foe. She dared not stay close to him, lest he paralyze her.

For his part, Roneo's caution made it possible for him to keep Glittershell from really harming her. But the price he paid for this was that it was difficult for him to strike her either.

This did not mean that Glittershell escaped entirely unscathed. Each time she struck Roneo, a deathly chill shocked up from her hooves, painfully reminding her of the ghastly nature of her foe. Twice, Roneo's own hooves scraped over Glittershell's hide, bruising her but slightly; harming her worse with the wraith's paralytic touch.

Once, though, Roneo caught Glittershell on the left side of her barrel with a solid hoof-strike.

That blow almost ended the fight, then and there. Glittershell staggered, almost fell; stepped rapidly back; avoiding Roneo's follow-up strikes. A chill, colder by far than the worst winter she had ever known, flared within her, turning each breath into agony. Cold fog puffed out of her mouth with each panting exhalation.

A gray mist passed across her vision; the world around her seemed to tremble. Had she not known that giving up would mean a gruesome fate: death, and worse than death, she would have lain down right there, and let Roneo have her.

Roneo grinned in satisfaction, and advanced on her. His deep blue witchfires bored into her own eyes; into her own soul.

"Thou needest not fight," he said. "Gladstone shall not have thee. Look, in the hurly-burly, if I slay thee none can fault me for what chances. Thou shalt be bound to me, not Gladstone, and I shall do no worse than have thee join mine own Crew."

He smiled at her in a manner probably intended to be reassuring. It might have been more so if he had not remained in his horrid Death Aspect, and hence seemed a grinning charred corpse.

"T'will not be so bad," he continued. "Thou'rt a brave and doughty wench: I like thee, and thou knowest I shall not molest thee, as my love belongs to another. What sayest thou?"

For a moment, bruised and battered and chilled and exhausted as she was, Glittershell was actually tempted by his offer. I could just stop fighting and let him kill me, she thought. It would be all over then. I wouldn't have to fight any more.

But then, as she thought this, something deep within her rebelled against the idea. If I give up Iet them win. Besides, I want to see new places with Snips; I don't want to have to haunt this place forever. I want to be on stage. I want to sing. I want to show the world Glittershell.

I want to live!

With this, the will rose up renewed within her, and strength surged back into her body.

"No!" she cried. "I will live!"

So saying, she reared and lashed out with her forehooves. It was not a serious attack, more of an emphatic gesture of defiance -- but it made her point.

Roneo backstepped, glaring at her.

"Thou choosest to fight, then. So be it!"

He flung himself at her with renewed ferocity.

So the fight continued.

Glittershell held her own, but only at the price of complete attention to Roneo. That fixation let her stay just one step ahead of him, dodging and weaving aside from his blows. She had only the vaguest idea of what was going on outside her own little duel: mostly, she knew just enough to avoid stepping into the path of Starlet, who was similarly duelling Snips; or the other Roneo, whom Zecora was fending off from Glittershell's right.

Across the field behind the Wraiths, Glittershell saw the thralls once again shambling forward. The dance'll be harder when they reach us, she realized. That thought did not alarm her: it simply was; another thing to be taken into account in pacing her dance. Glittershell was in a zone now where she did not worry, she just did.

She danced some more. And then, the thralls were upon her.

These were Starlet's Girl Posse, and Glittershell recognized all of them personally. Of course, they also recognized her -- and some of them wanted revenge.

The first warning Glittershell had that she was now in more danger was a flash of motion overhead, a flash that she did not even have time to consciously register, but to which she reacted almost by reflex. Glittershell flung herself to the right, and a stinking light-gray mass, dark mane trailing behind, swooped past her, shrieking in disappointment and rage at failing to snatch her up in the creature's forelegs. Putrid white-gray feathers fluttered over Glittershell as Rooftop beat her decay-raddled wings, churning the air to regain altitude. The flightfield of the undead Pegasus pulsed over Glittershell's horn, nauseating her with its unwholesome emanations.

Had Roneo struck at that moment, it would have been all up for Glittershell. But the Wraith was almost as surprised as was the young transmare herself at Rooftop's sudden stoop, and recoiled from the sudden onset of the Pegasus thrall.

Now it's harder, Glittershell noted, sidestepping left and keeping an eye on both her foes. There was still no fear; no room for fear in the difficult act of coordination she must now perform.

Roneo, recovered from his brief surprise, charged at Glittershell. He reared, and his hooves flashed at her face and neck. She ducked and weaved; herself striking out to hit him in the left shoulder; knocking him off balance and buying her a moment of relief.

And none too soon! For at that moment Glittershell glanced to her left, her attention perhaps attracted by a flash of motion in her peripheral vision, and she saw the terrible visage of Rooftop coming in for another attack. She flung herself backward at the last moment, too fast for Rooftop to check her trajectory, and the Pegasus thrall crashed right into Roneo.

Energy crackled between them at the touch, surprising Glittershell. She was no deep student of magic, even though she had enjoyed the benefits of some tutelage from Twilight Sparkle herself; Glittershell did not really grasp the theory, and she had failed to understand the significance of much of what she had seen and heard from Ruby Gift. She had been on the receiving end of the Wraiths' chilling touches; the ache in her right hoof told her plainly that it was dangerous to even touch them in return, yet somehow she persisted in conceiving of this touch as purely a conscious attack.

It therefore did not occur to her that the Wraiths actually needed to refrain from draining the life energy from those they touched. Nor did she fully realize that what had happened in Rooftop's inadvertent collision with Roneo was that, caught unawares, Roneo had accidentally sucked out life force from her.

This of course did not kill Rooftop; she had not actually been alive for some three and a half decades. Nor did it drain enough of her energy to de-animate her. But it did greatly weaken her; she fell back from Roneo and collapsed into a groaning heap on the ground; unable to do more than wiggle her limbs weakly.

Roneo, of course, was not weakened by this encounter; quite the opposite. He had taken into himself some of Rooftop's strength; though knocked back onto his haunches, he swiftly sprang back up onto all four hooves.

He looked down at the moaning Pegasus thrall in some dismay.

"Sorry," he told Rooftop. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

A low sound of misery, that swiftly tapered off into exhaustion, was Rooftop's only reply.

For Glittershell, of course, this was a welcome moment of respite, during which she stepped back and surveyed the field.

Snips was holding his own surprisingly well against Starlet. She was fast, but Snips was compact and slippery; the lovely Wraith repeatedly scoring glancing strikes on Glittershell's friend, eliciting terrified yelps but doing little real harm: she could not get hold of him long enough to properly drain his life. Glittershell thought of leaping to his aid, but she also saw that the moment she did so Romeo would attack from her right flank. So she simply waited, making sure that she was there if Snips really needed her.

To her right, Zecora fought the second Roneo. They were well-matched; Zecora perhaps faster and more expert, but deliberately fighting on the defensive. Glittershell wasn't sure why: she wished the Zebra shaman would simply fight harder and put that Roneo down for the count, as she had already done to Gladstone. Still, Zecora was her leader, and Glittershell figured she had a good reason for her tactics.

To Zecora's right, Apple Bloom and Ermine battled the third Roneo. That Roneo was clearly having the worst of it: Ermine was a fast, fearless and very aggressive fighter, her long knife flashing to repeatedly score the Wraith's hide. Had Roneo been merely equine, he would have gone down very quickly: as it was, Roneo kept being driven back, only to return to the fight again and again, undeterred by the near-certainty that he would suffer further harm.

Briefly, Glittershell felt a greet surge of sympathy for Roneo. You're a brave stallion, she thought. Too bad you're trying to kill me.

In contrast, Apple Bloom was hanging back, screened by Ermine's furious fight. She was working frantically on some bottles, shoving some sort of complicated arrangement of small flasks and Stoppers, connected to dangling strings, into the mouths of the larger bottles. Glittershell supposed these were more grenadoes of some sort.

Behind Starlet and the Roneos, Glittershell could see the mass of thralls moving up. Rooftop alone was for the moment not much of a threat, but soon the living equines would have to fight the thralls as well as their Wraith masters.

Then Romeo was upon her once more, and all she could do was resume the struggle for her life.

Already, Glittershell found her fight constrained by the presence of Rooftop. Though the Pegasus thrall had not yet struggled back to her hooves, let alone regain the air, she had once again raised her hard head, and her dark eyes blazed at Glittershell, full of hate. Clearly, Rooftop was gathering her strength to re-enter the fray, and Glittershell dare not step within reach of her hooves and jaws.

So, Glittershell fell back, and so too -- though she did not realize this consciously -- did Snips on her left, and Zecora on her right. So it was that the little line of the living was driven back several steps; pushed back in together within the corner of the village wall. So it was that the fighting room which was one of the most crucial resources of Zecora's band was gradually eroded.

Glittershell, of course, but dimly comprehended the tactics of the fight. But she had a good natural sense of space and motion, and she knew that this was a bad development. The dance needed room to do, and Glittershell's room was running out.

As the living equines were forced back, they were pushed closer together, almost shoulder to shoulder. Likewise, the Wraiths were Wraiths were drawn in closer together, and Glittershell had to step lively to avoid Roneo's paralytic touch. More than once, Glittershell winced from the sting of a glancing contact.

The fight moved faster and faster. It was no longer possible for Glittershell to keep clear of Roneo's hooves. Her hide froze as she lost life force to one touch after another; it became harder and harder to breathe; her sight started to dim. In the back of her mind, she began to really worry that she might not get out of this alive.

Then, it got worse.

Suddenly -- or so it seemed to Glittershell -- familiar and wholly unwelcome faces appeared right behind Roneo. First came a familiar creamy-white Unicorn; decayed of course like all the thralls, but clearly once fair of face and form, even fairer before Glittershell had used the unicorn's own club to beat her about the head. The Unicorn mare's eye lights blazed a lovely light blue in utter hatred. Her horn glowed, and a club rose in its aura. She grinned cruelly at Glittershell, her expression alight with malign determination.

She still holds a grudge Glittershell realized sadly. I was just defending myself. I wish I could make her see it ...

There was simply no time for conversation; not even the simple banter one might expect before battle. It was all Glittershell could do to duck under the viciously-swung club and cannonball into the white Unicorn thrall's chest, her own hooves lashing out to sweep the thrall's back legs out from under her as the thrall reared to try to front-kick her; then roll to the side to avoid being even temporarily crap as the undead Unicorn shrieked and toppled.

The move put Glittershell behind the enemy line, and she desperately rolled back to her hooves, just in time to be kicked back to the ground by Roneo. The Wraith's hoof caught her on her right shoulder, and solidly, chilling the joint and slowing her foreleg. As she struggled to rise, she stumbled; fortunately in such a manner that she ducked under Roneo's attempt to grab her.

From behind her she heard little jingling bells, and remembered what that mean. She had no idea if Merry Bells would go easy on her this time, and knew she couldn't count on it. With a tremendous effort, Glittershell just managed to make it to her hooves, then sidestep before Roneo could knock her back down. There were foes all around her; the Wraith, now backed up by the Unicorn thrall on his right, while a terrible stench signaled the arrival of the bloated, horribly decomposed caramel-coated Earth Pony Glittershell had met earlier. Glancing to her left, Glittershell saw that Snips was retreating before the advance of Starlet and Merry Bells. On Glittershell's right, Zecora was fighting hard against the second Roneo and a team of Skeletal Guards.

Things now looked very bad.

A moment later, they got much worse.

Snips screamed. It was a shriek of agony and terror such as Glittershell had never before heard from her friend, and she had certainly heard Snips scream in pain and fear before.

Snips was down on his left side, hooves weakly thrashing. Starlet stood over him, one hoof holding him down. The air steamed with the exhalations of the short blue stallion; rime crackled over Snips' coat from the point of contact of Starlet's hoof. It seemed clear that, in the next moment, Starlet would slay him.

All other considerations were cast aside. Concerned now with Roneo and the thralls only as so many obstacles, Gittershell flung herself to the rescue, darting past the resurgent white Unicorn thrall, and leaping over the club she swung in her aura in an attempt to break Gittershell's legs; past Merry Bells, who made absolutely no attempt to check her. Without pausing, Glittershell charged at Starlet, leaping and slamming both hooves hard into the Wraith mare's side.

Starlet yelped and went tumbling over on her side, doing a complete roll.

Glittershell gazed down at her friend.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"N-n-no," Snips admitted, his teeth chattering. "C-c-can't get up ... so c-c-cold ..."

"Don't worry," said Glittershell. "I'll keep you safe!"

She felt a surge of confidence. She was sure that she could not be defeated, fighting for the llfe of Snips!

For a moment, Gittershell's courage was wholly restored.

For a moment.

Then, Roneo hit her from behind.

Glittershell caught the motion in her peripheral vision at the last instant, and began to twist to the side, but she reacted just a little too late.

Roneo slammed into Glittershell, coming down hard on her withers and knocking her clean off her hooves. The young transmare went over onto her left side, and rolled all the way onto her back. Roneo stayed with her, his forehooves pinning her down, his greater weight rendering her struggles useless. He lowered his barrel on her, enfolding her in his chill embrace, and glared at her, his charred skull face and blazing eyes mere inches from her own.

"Never," he hissed at her, "never do harm to my love."

"She -- she was gonna kill Snipsy!" Glittershell blurted out, before she could reflect upon her situation.

Roneo snarled, and for a moment Glittershell feared he meant to bite off her face. Then, his features relaxed, flesh and hide returning to them until he was once again handsome, and he smiled at her.

"Why -- so she was," he admitted. "And of course just as I would ward mine own love -- so wouldst thou."

Did she love Snips that way? It was hard to tell. Almost as long as she could remember, Snips had been a part of her life: her companion in adventure, her best friend. The thought of a world without Snips was horribly bleak, and Glittershell knew that she would do anything, risk anything, without a second thought to save her best friend.

Compared to that emotion a drunken kiss was a small thing, even if it were her first one. A beautiful thing, but still pale by comparison to her loyalty to her closest companion.

She did not think all this in so many words, and still less would she have said all this on the battlefield to her captor -- even though she suspected that she and Roneo understood each other rather better than was compatible with any true enmity.

"Y-y-yes," replied Glittershell, shivering with cold. "He's been my best pal since we were small. Please -- please don't hurt him."

Roneo's ears drooped.

"Thou knowest we must slay ye both. But be not afraid. It shall be swift, and as free of pain as we can make it. And after, we shall all be friends --"

Glittershell was never sure what Roneo had meant to say next, for in that instant a blur of yellow and white, spraying spittle and flashing a blur of steel, slammed into Roneo and knocked him off her supine form. The blur was shrieking almost incoherently; a sort of primal screech, in the midst of which Glittershell could just barely make out the badly-distorted words "cutie-colt."

Matching well both her names, Ermine Lightning was moving almost too fast for Glittershell to clearly make out more than the general outline of her body, but the glint of steel, the blue aura of Zecora's energies trailing, was obviously her hunting-knife. Each time that blessed blade struck, it sliced through Roneo's spectral substance, and he cried out in pain, his internal energies spattering out dark-blue from his form, as if it were a version of the blood that had flowed in his veins over a thousand years ago. Ermine whooped madly as the chill ectoplasm sprayed into her own sharp-muzzled face.

Had Roneo still been a living Pony, Ermine's vicious onslaught might well have killed him. As it was, the handsome Wraith fell before Glitteshell, severely weakened and badly beset. His form flickered.

Glittershell remembered Ruby telling her that if a Wraith was sufficiently harmed, he would be temporarily banished from the mortal world, until he rose again the next evening, brought back by the Curse. She wondered if this was about to happen to Roneo.

Indeed, exactly that might have happened had Roneo been alone.

But he was not.

Starlet swept down on Ermine with the same sort of blinding speed that Glittershell had just seen from Ermine herself.

"Look --" Glittershell started to say by way of warning, but before she could finish the phrase, Ermine must have glimpsed Starlet's motion, for she whirled to meet the charge, her ectoplasm-dripping knife at the ready.

The two combatants flowed together with such speed that Glittershell could not clearly distinguish their individual actions. Ermine's knife flashed, and Starlet swept under and inside it, and Ermine sidestepped and returned to the attack. Now and again, one or the other of the combatants managed to land a blow, accompanied by a gasp or scream; these only minor hurts, which could not decide a strife fought in such deadly earnest.

Glittershell struggled to rise and resume the fray. But Roneo's cold had seeped deeply into her muscles and bones; when she tried to stand it was all she could do to weakly waggle her limbs. A great weariness threatened to drag her down, and she knew she sank close to collapse.

She was dimly aware of the rest of the battle.

Snips, at her side, was also trying -- and failing -- to rise.

The thralls advanced on the two fallen Ponies. There was not a thing either of them could do to defend themselves against even the weakest of those shambling horrors. As Glittershell watched helplessly, the grim form of Rooftop rose above those of three of her sisters-in-service, grinning wickedly at the young transmare, her eyelights flaring with an unspoken promise of future pain.

Glittershell heard a choked gasp from her left; she turned her head to see Ermine Lightning fall. Starlet had defeated the young moonshiner: her berserk quickness had proven no match for Starlet's superior spectral speed. The Wraith shrieked in triumph, standing over Ermine's fallen form; the moonshiner filly seeming very small and helpless without her animating passions; pale, and shivering with a literally-deathly chill.

She's gonna die too, Glittershell realized. All cause of me. The thought made her very sad, but there was nothing now she could do to save her.

Glittershell and Snips gazed at each other. The stocky blue stallion's teeth were clenched in determination as he tried to get back up onto his hooves. He, too, had been partly-drained by Starlet; he, too, was in no shape for battle. Snips just barely managed to rise up on trembling legs before his strength gave out; he collapsed on his belly. He regarded Glittershell with an expression of shame and sorrow.

"I ... can't do it ..." wheezed Snails. "My legs won't ..."

"It's ... all right," gasped Glittershell. "You done ... all you can." With a tremendous effort, she stretched out her right hoof, gently touched Snips' cheek. It was the sort of physical contact Snips normally didn't like from her, but right now her friend made no protest. Her eyes were burning in her vision wavering, she hoped that she wasn't sobbing uncontrollably right in front of her best friend, but very much feared that she was doing just that.

Snips didn't know that she was a mare and in the last moments of their free lives she didn't want him to see her as any less the stallion. This was in part because she was a mare, which didn't really make sense to her, but then again a lot of things didn't make sense to her which she knew to be true. This didn't make them any less true.

She wanted to say more to Snips -- much more -- but their time had run out.

Suddenly, several things happened very quickly.

One explosion, then another, resounded from the right. Apple Bloom had managed to get more grenadoes into the fight. The thralls to the right of Zecora's postion fell back; the Roneo whom Zecora herself was fighting must have been badly distracted, or she landed a flurry of blows with her blessed staff on that Wraith, knocking him down.

Starlet hissed in horror, and leaped across the field in a single smooth motion to ward her beloved.

Zecora whirled to meet Starlet's onrush, and Wraith and Zebra clashed in a flurry of swift strikes and counters. Starlet had the speed, but Zecora was not slow either, and she had the superior reach and skill. Both were wounded, to about the same degree. They were, roughly, well-matched.

The thralls still in the fight mostly gave the two combatants a wide berth. When they strayed too close, Zecora downed them with sudden, seemingly-effortless staff-strokes. Zecora took advantage of their caution, positioning herself to guard all three of her fallen comrades, while her apprentice Apple Bloom in turn guarded Zecora's rear from attack.

Glittershell saw this all -- indeed benefited from it, yet even she could not fully appreciate what an incredible feat of martial arts she was witnessing. For, while Glittershell's natural speed and grace made her a good fighter, she lacked formal combat training. She knew that Zecora was fighting well, but not just how exceptionally well.

Glittershell neither grasped exactly what she was seeing, nor the price that Zecora was paying to protect her friends. She knew nothing of the Order of the Harmony: or of its chapter in far-off exotic Zebrica, where a sub-clan of elite warrior-alchemist-poets vowed to live their entire lives as epic poetry, attuning themselves through strange disciplines to the very rhyme and meter of the Universe, to the Cosmic Harmony. They pledged their lives to fight against the very same Evil Stars that leered down upon the battlefield right now: the stars of the Curse of Sunney Towne, of the Night Shadows who lusted after the life and light of our own world.

Glittershell did not fully understand, but she appreciated. She saw that Zecora was running great risks to protect her own life, and the lives of her friends, and she knew beyond any doubt the Zebra's great goodness and worth. Forever after, Glittershell would remember that moment, when her life was saved by the fact that somepony else -- not even her best friend -- thought it worth fighting for.

On went the deadly duel: Starlet coming at Zecora with supernal speed, and the Zebra in turn fighting with incredible skill, her staff trailing and sparking its blessed blue fire.

More than once, the thralls tried to interfere.

Rooftop took advantage of Zecora's momentary position near Ermine to dive in on Glittershell, eyes alight with her lust for vengeance. Zecora seemed unaware of the attack of the undead Pegasus until almost the last moment, when she sidestepped, and swung her staff with punishing force to knock Rooftop right out of the air, as if Zecora were playing some grotesque game of hoofball. Rooftop squawked indignantly, and when spiraling away to make an undignified, face-first crash-landing.

Glittershell winced at the sight. She would not have liked to be in Rooftop's place.

It also struck her that Zecora would be really good at hoofball.

As the battle continued, as if by seeming accident Zecora took down one after another of the Girl Posse. This was in part because they were the most aggressive against the Zebra, attempting as they were to act in support of their mistress.

The shambling, half-broken caramel-coated thing that had once been an Earth Pony mare blundered too close to Zecora, at a moment when the Zebra knocked Starlet back, and the thrall went down to two vicious, well-placed strikes, blattng out a stench that made Glittershell and Snips gag in physical revulsion.

Merry Bells, trying to ward Starlet from a flank attack, was battered badly about the forelimbs, and went down, looking sad and broken. Glittershell was sorry to see that.

Finally, the once-lovely Unicorn mare took a hard strike to the head, and fell down all in a heap. The Girl Posse was out of action.

Meanwhile, Apple Bloom maneuvered to keep any other thralls clear of her own mistress. She had acquired a small mace from somepony and was wielding it in her mouth while bucking with all four hooves at any thrall who approached her too closely. Bloomie entirely lacked Zecora's finesse, but was holding her own on sheer spunk.

Suddenly, Zecora stumbled.

Glittershell and Snips gasped in horror as Starlet surged forward to take advantage of the Zebra's momentary misstep, and finish her.

It was a ruse! Zecora nimbly dodged Starlet's onrush, using her staff like a fifth leg, then delivered her own strike, a double back kick to the head that's sent the Wraith reeling back, dazed by the hard blow, her form momentarily flickering.

For that instant, Starlet was completely open. Zecora showed her no mercy, following up with a devastating combination of staff-strikes to the head and withers.

Knocked unconscious on her hooves , Starlet toppled.

A wail of dismay rose from the remaining thralls. Bereft of leadership, their line wavered, and began stumbling backward. Behind they left a shambles of their own fallen; the twitching undead corpses of the thralls of Sunney Towne. They had not gained the release of any true death; they were but temporarily incapacitated: too badly damaged to continue the fight for now. It was a retreat in very poor order.

Battered and exhausted -- but triumphant -- Zecora leaned on her staff and gazed defiantly to the north.

There stood Grey Hoof, grim and hostile: all trace of his former joviality gone. His skull-face snarled; his dark eyes blazed with hate; his black mane billowed in the rising wind, seeming to merge with the lowering black clouds close above the battlefield. In those clouds could be plainly seen the malign winking yellow lights that were the eyes of the Curse that brooded gigantically down upon Sunney Towne.

Glittershell sensed the dark magic that boiled off him as a nauseous wrongness in her horn. Due to her hometown and her adventurous way of life, Glittershell was more familiar with the presence of terrifying cosmic evil and overwhelming power than was the case with most young Unicorns: whether stallions, mares, or something uncomfortably in between. Nevertheless, she had rarely sensed anything as foul as the emanations from Grey Hoof at this moment. It was far worse even than anything she had ever sensed from him before.

Able neither to run nor to fight, all Glittershell could do was tremble before his dread regard.

Zecora, though, stood tall and unafraid before his fell power.

"I have laid your minions low!" she declared in a clear and ringing voice, somehow easily audible above the howling of the wind. "I charge you to let us go!"

Then Grey Hoof did smile; a smile that had in it nothing of good cheer or fellowship. And he laughed: a dreadful hollow sound.

"Thou hast indeed defeated some of mine own family and followers," he admitted. "But thou hast not overcome me, nor shalt thou. For I am the Master-Wraith, the Emissary of a power beyond thine own feeble comprehension. I wield a might from beyond the World. I am the castellan of what thou in thy little mind dost call the Evil Stars: against me, thine own Earthborn strength shall avail thee not!"

Through all this Zecora remained remarkably calm, though Glittershell thought that the Zebra seemed to shudder slightly when Grey Hoof claimed to serve the 'Evil Stars.' Her response, though, was simply to stand at the ready with her staff.

Grey Hoof smiled still more broadly, and stepped forward. He moved slowly, barely ambling, and yet from one moment to the next he approached rapidly, his form swelling with terrifying speed. It was as if Glittershell were watching a film that had been badly edited.

Applebloom stepped up to stand on Zecora's right.

Zecora glanced at her, thought for a moment, and then said soberly:

"If you fight him, 'tis your doom. "Get behind me, Apple Bloom."

Apple Bloom bit her lip, nodded, and stepped back, to stand behind her mentor.

Then, Grey Hoof was upon them.