The Battle for Vanhoover had officially begun.
That was how Sandbar thought of it as he led the charge, short sword clenched tightly in his jaw. In front of him, the fish-monsters – “sahuagin,” Lex had called them – tried to ready themselves, but even through the driving rain the light spell that Cozy had cast on his and everypony else’s armor let Sandbar see that scaly creatures were caught off-guard, having spread themselves too thin to easily repel the mass of ponies rushing towards them. It was enough to make the corners of his mouth turn up. Let’s see how you like it!
The scar on his neck from where one of those things had very nearly torn his throat out less than two days ago still ached. But neither the scar nor the ache bothered him very much; the doctors had assured him that the latter would fade with time and he thought the former was actually pretty cool. A sailor should always have something like that – impressive without being ugly, and had a good story behind it – to impress the ladies, he’d always thought.
The memory of how he’d gotten it, however, had haunted him. The sudden rush of confusion, terror, and pain that he’d felt as one of those things had dragged him into the water and bit his neck had left him shaking ever since it happened. Although he felt sure that, like with the soreness, it would fade with time, less than forty-eight hours wasn’t nearly long enough to come to grips with what had happened. Up until a minute ago, he had been trembling in his ill-fitting armor at the thought of confronting the monsters that had done that to him.
But then, just before the doors were opened, Sonata had started singing.
He’d heard her sing before, of course. She had given an impromptu one-mare concert after they’d cast off from Tall Tale, where she’d proven that she sounded as great as she looked. She’d also had several good lines in their improvised number when they’d all been cleaning the warehouse together. So Sandbar hadn’t been surprised to find himself instantly taken when she’d started to sing a fast-paced tune just now. What had surprised him was just how much her song had affected him. Almost as soon as he heard the first note, his nervousness had vanished, replaced with a heady rush of exhilaration. Suddenly charging into the middle of an army of those sahuagin-things didn’t seem scary; it seemed exciting!
Giving a frenzied cry, Sandbar ran at the closest sahuagin full-tilt, giving a wild swing of his sword as he did so. The creature, which had been in profile to him when they’d begun their charge, tried to correct its footing so that it could bring its spear up to parry the attack, but wasn’t able to shift its posture in time. Sandbar’s blade slid past its guard to open up a deep gash on its chest, and the sahuagin gave a roar of pain as it frantically threw itself backwards, moving parallel to the water’s edge as it tried to put some distance between itself and this new threat.
For a moment Sandbar was ready to chase after it, caught up in the rush of being able to strike back against the monsters that had hurt him so badly. But he’d only taken a single step when he felt a clang against his armor, causing him to jump in nervous tension and swing his head around to see what had hit him.
The sight that greeted him wasn’t that of another monster, but his old friend Ocean Spray, pulling his mace back from where he’d tapped the end of it against Sandbar’s armor. The realization made the latter pony frown. “What are you doing?” he yelled, raising his voice to make himself heard over the downpour.
“What’re you doing?” shouted Ocean Spray in return. Flapping his wings in agitation, he pointed towards the pier. “We have to keep moving, remember? We need to stay together and fight defensively until we can get into position!”
Sandbar flushed, and was about to reply, only for another sahuagin to come running at them from the opposite direction. “Poh-nees!” it snarled, lunging for them with claws extended. Caught unaware, Ocean Spray started to swing his mace, but not before the creature raked its claws over his side. But the dark crystal armor easily withstood the blow, leaving its wearer unharmed.
Giving a curse, Ocean Spray hefted his mace again, bringing it down heavily, but the sahuagin darted to its right, avoiding the blow…only for Sandbar’s sword to pierce its side. Giving a shriek of rage, it turned towards him, leaning forward as it bared its teeth. But before he was bitten for a second time, Ocean Spray’s mace came down on the thing’s head, making a horrible splat as it knocked the creature to the ground, where it shuddered once and then lay still.
“What happened to fighting defensively?” grinned Sandbar.
Ocean Spray opened his mouth to respond, but his words were lost as the battlefield was suddenly illuminated by lightning, the accompanying thunder arriving almost instantly. As though the flash had been a signal, the rain picked up, and the wind began to blow harder. It was nothing short of miraculous, realized Sandbar, that they could still hear Sonata singing over it. A moment later something occurred to him, and he looked at Ocean Spray. “Can you do something about this storm?”
“Are you kidding me?!” yelled his pegasus friend. “I don’t think the Wonderbolts could do something about this storm! We’d need an entire town’s worth of pegasi to take care of one this intense!”
“Then we’ll-, whoa!” Hastily falling back as a crossbow bolt flew over his head, Sandbar looked to his left, further down the wharf, where two more sahuagin were coming to fill in for their fallen comrade. Behind them trailed a pony-sized creature that looked like a lobster with a scorpion’s tail, while nearby three foal-sized creatures that looked like eel-lobster hybrids were skittering forward as well.
“We need to keep moving!” yelled Ocean Spray. “Let’s go!” He didn’t wait for an answer as tucked his wings close to his body – knowing better than to try flying in such dangerous conditions – and ran towards the piers. Sandbar followed behind him a moment later.
“Never give up! Never give in! Don’t stop trying until you win!” sang Sonata, projecting her voice as loudly as she could to make herself heard over the storm and the din of battle. Unlike her spellcasting, which only required her to speak the words out loud, her singing required that people actually hear it to be effective. Although the effects of her song – currently set to evoke aggression – would last for a little bit even after she stopped, that was a limit she didn’t want to push. So she kept vocalizing as much as she could, slowly moving forward behind the charging ponies.
Close by her, Lex and Aria advanced at a sedate pace, the former leaning heavily against the latter. “I still don’t see why I needed to be here,” groused Aria, looking around nervously.
“Shut up and keep going,” growled Lex. Like Aria, he was also taking in the battlefield. The initial charge had gone well, but that was because the sahuagin were spread out along the wharf. Now that the ponies had revealed themselves – their presence impossible to miss thanks to the light their armor was giving off – they were rushing towards them from all sides. It wouldn’t be very long before they were completely surrounded.
“Keep moving!” he yelled, trying to make himself audible to everypony around him. “Stay close and keep them away from us!” It utterly galled him to give that order; he was firmly of the opinion that he was supposed to be the one protecting everypony else, rather than the other way around. But there was no other choice if they wanted to win this. Instead, he took another shaky step forward, succeeding only because Aria was there to support him.
They were making progress, but it was slow going. The weather was steadily growing worse, and it was beginning to impede their forward motion. The only upshot was that it seemed to be hindering their enemies as much as it was them, but that made no sense. Did that kraken not realize that it was making it harder for its own troops to fight? Or did it just not care either way? Although Aria had described the creature as cunning and devious, Lex couldn’t see what it was trying to accomplish by making the weather this hostile.
But ultimately that didn’t matter. What mattered was that they get closer to the thing. Luckily that last burst of lightning had revealed it to still be in the harbor, near the end of the piers. Now if it just remained there until they could close the gap…
Shouts from ahead of him drew Lex’s attention back to their immediate surroundings. In front of them, he could see that their advance had suddenly come to a halt, and felt a surge of panic-fueled frustration. No! They had to keep moving! “Do not stop!” he hollered. “Whatever’s happening, DO NOT STOP!”
But the ponies in front of him didn’t continue to march. Just as he was about to yell at them again, Lex suddenly saw why, and his voice caught in his throat. There were more enemies between them and the water’s edge…but this time it wasn’t one of the sahuagin or their lobster-creatures.
Directly ahead of them, undulating as it slowly wriggled forward, was a twenty-foot long three-eyed fish, waving four long tentacles around.
Tlerekithres watched the battle with aplomb, massive tentacles wriggling in a gesture of amusement that only another kraken would have recognized. The ponies, contrary to everything he’d expected, had not only been hiding in a building right near the water’s edge, but were also making no attempt to hide themselves as they fought with his slaves. Quite the contrary, their magical lighting was causing them to stand out unmistakably. Even more curious, they were apparently eschewing any sort of escape attempt, and instead making a straight line right for him!
It was quite obvious that they intended to challenge him directly, and just the thought was so amusing that he couldn’t help but ease up on the force of the wind ever so slightly. It was still a howling gale, but not quite so bad that the ponies couldn’t move through it, all the better to let them play out whatever farce they were so intent on. On the off-chance that they were able to fight their way through his slaves, Tlerekithres couldn’t help but wonder what exactly they were planning on doing. It wasn’t as though they had any idea what they were up against, after all.
Or did they? Eyes narrowing just slightly as he spotted one of his slaves near the center of their configuration, Tlerekithres revised his opinion of the situation just slightly. If that feckless creature – “Aria,” she had called herself, though the sahuagin had simply dubbed her “the Cripple” due to her ruined voice – had informed them about his nature, then they might actually have a viable plan. But for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine what it was. He was utterly immune to any and all poisons, the most numbing of cold, and any sort of magic designed to affect the mind. And of course, his body was a natural war machine, being far larger and stronger than any other creature he had ever encountered. The idea that these ponies could possibly hurt him was not only ridiculous, it was unthinkable.
Which made the prospect of finding out what they intended to do all the more intriguing…