//------------------------------// // Chapter 14 - Assaults // Story: The Mare that eats The Monsters // by Skijarama //------------------------------// Twilight felt her blood run cold as the sounds of fighting began to sound overhead, muffled by the sounds of the speeding train and the walls separating her from the conflict. The Lunar guards that Luna had assigned to accompany the train had engaged the fiends that had been tailing the train and already, it sounded horrific. A blood curdling scream sounded over her head, growing steadily louder. The voice went silent as the roof of the train cart suddenly indented down towards her, a horrific, sickening crunch accompanying the abrupt stop of the guard’s voice. Alarmed and panicked screams were starting to sound all throughout the train. Twilight felt a cold sweat blanket her body to accompany the uncontrollable shivers she was experiencing. She stumbled slightly, memories of that first attack bubbling freely to the forefront of her mind. She began to hyperventilate, leaning against the wall and putting a hoof to her head. Somewhere, the wall of one of the carts was peeled away with a loud metallic shriek. Ponies screamed. Get a hold of yourself! Twilight shook her head rapidly before making sure she still had her saber. Finding it still in it’s scabbard, she swiftly drew it out with her magic and then proceeded to the next cart. One of the fiends had just breached that one, leaving an opening for other fiends to exploit. The door swung open and she cringed. A pony mare had just been pinned down, the fiend atop her sinking it’s unnaturally sharp teeth into her ribs and drawing a dying wheeze out of her. Everypony else was quickly scrambling away, holding their weapons between themselves and the creature. It was similar in shape and size to a duck, though bulkier and less agile looking. With an infuriated shout, Twilight brought the blade of her saber down on the back of its neck while testing its skin with telekenisis. Thankfully, she could grasp it with magic. With a grunt, she hefted the partially disabled creature into the air and then hurled it out of the train through the very hole it made, making sure she dragged it on the ground for a moment before letting it go. She went to shout out instructions, but another fiend, one of the hummingbird look alikes, stabbed its long beak down through the roof and began to peel away the metal. Acting fast, Twilight thrust the tip of her saber up into its belly as soon as it was visible. The creature let out a pained shriek before Twilight twisted the saber in its gut. With a grimace, she pulled the weapon out in a sideways slice, disemboweling the fiend and letting its corpse be lifted away by it's own wings. “Everypony stay focused!” She shouted out at the panicking ponies before charging to the next cart. Applejack and Rarity should be in that one. Please be safe, please be safe… she prayed in her mind. Throwing open the door to the next compartment revealed Applejack stepping off of the fresh corpse of a rather large fiend, a horrified expression on her face. She had just strangled it to death with rope. “Ah… Ah’ve never… ah…” she babbled incoherently, stumbling back. The fiend bore an incredible resemblance to a pony; almost identical, save for its teeth. “Ah ain’t never killed somepony... “ Twilight looked around for a moment, trying to spot Rarity. Turning her gaze to the corpse, she relaxed only slightly as Rarity rolled it off of her and dragged herself out, looking similarly traumatized, mumbling incoherently to herself and hyperventilating. Even with what they knew and had already seen… being here when it happened was still more than they could handle. “Applejack, Rarity, are you two okay?” Twilight asked quickly, glancing over her friends for any wounds that needed treatment. “Ah’ll live…” Applejack mumbled out her response, her eyes boring into the fiend’s corpse disbelievingly. Twilight approached and rested a hoof sympathetically on her friend’s shoulder. “It wasn’t a pony, Applejack… it’s okay…” she said softly, trying to comfort the distraught farmer as best as she was able. Rarity hissed in pain from where she was. Twilight turned and winced at the sight of Rarity’s left hind leg. It was swollen around the knee joint. “It hurts! Sweet Celestia, it hurts!” Rarity gasped out, tears coming to her eyes. “Let me look-” Twilight had to cut off her sentence early. Another fiend, this one with six legs instead of four, crawled into the cart from the hole in the wall as if it were an insect. It hissed and pounced for a still stunned Applejack, “Look out!” Applejack turned and shouted in alarm, the fiend digging its teeth into her left forehoof before tackling her into one of the seating booths. “Aaagh! Twi! Help!” Applejack cried out, struggling for her life. Twilight wasted no time in yanking the creature off of her friend with telekenisis before swiping the blade of her saber across its front. Blood pooled from the fresh wound before she blasted it out of the train with a high-powered blunt-force spell. Twilight looked at Applejack’s foreleg and grimaced. It was pretty bad. “Hang on, hold still.” Twilight muttered, trying to focus on a healing spell to stop the bleeding. Outside the train, Twilight could still hear the Lunar guards fighting the fiends. She could also hear Rainbow Dash helping them out, by quickly shooting from one target to the next for hit-and-run attacks. It was creating distractions that gave the thestrals a significant advantage. Then, she heard the prismatic mare utter a scream that almost sent everypony in the car into a panic. “LET GO OF FLUTTERSHY!” Twilight fed more power into her spell, quickly patching up Applejacks wound in what she hoped was a sufficient manner before galloping to peer outside. Gazing down the train, her eyes widened in horror. Fluttershy was being forcefully yanked from one of the other carts further down, tears in her eyes and screaming in pure, unrelenting terror. “HELP!” She screamed. Suddenly, the fiend itself was pulled back inside the train. Fluttershy dropped out of it’s grasp, slumping into a frightened, shivering heap on the floor, watching fearfully as something happened that Twilight couldn’t see. A fresh spray of blood erupted from within, coating Fluttershy’s face and causing her to faint. Drifter showed herself, fresh blood dripping down her face around her mouth. She glanced down the train at Twilight and nodded before carefully pulling Fluttershy’s limp form away from the hole in the wall. “Fall back! There are too many here! FALL BA-” The lieutenant didn’t get to finish what he was saying. A fiend of impressive size, built like a snake, slithered forth and clamped it’s jaws down upon his head. His agonized, terrified scream was cut short almost as soon as he started as the teeth clamped down, severing the top of his head from the rest of his body. Blood gushed free from the mutilated stump, the corpse slumping to the ground and twitching with reflex aftershocks. There was no other way to describe it other than absolute hell. A private let out terrified cries as he was forcefully dragged out of the central street by another fiend, his weapon out of reach and his efforts of melee resistance completely useless. He screamed out for help before going silent, his life cut short. Nearby, a pegasus pony in lightweight armor shot down into an upwards swinging arc, the spears aimed forward from his sides skewering a tall, bipedal fiend just as it was about to pounce upon one of his companions. “Somepony send for reinforcements!” Another soldier shouted out over the chaotic din of the slaughtering ground they found themselves in. “No time! Fall back to the bridge!” Another pony shot back, ducking away from the sharpened claws of a fiend that pursued him. He attempted to counter with the claymore he held in his yellow magical aura, bringing the massive sword down towards the beast in what he hoped would be a killing strike. The fiend sidestepped his swing before lunging, it’s claws slicing across his face, destroying his eyes and pulling a horrific howl from him before the fiend turned and finished him with a fatal bite to the neck, severing his spine. A tall, bulky, heavily armored earth pony charged towards that very fiend, the immense weight of his armor allowing him to topple it. After only a moment of struggling, he reared back and brought down his hooves, covered in steel, pointed studs, onto the fiend’s head, killing it swiftly. The chaos and brutality of it all was practically identical across all of Canterlot. Celestia grit her teeth as one of her royal guards was pinned down and practically torn to pieces by the writhing ball of snakes that made up the fiend atop him. With a snarl, Celestia’s horn lit in a golden light before a beam of raw sunfire reduced the fiend to less even than ashes. This is insanity… Celestia thought before shifting her weight to avoid on oncoming fiend’s lunge. Her eyes lit up with a white glow before a beam of magic shot from her horn and sliced the creature in half, cauterizing the wound. There are so many of them... “Tia!” Came Luna’s voice from overhead in a distressed shout. Celestia looked up, seeing her younger sister struggling to keep a flying fiend off of her, grappling with it and losing ground. Her magic seemed to slide uselessly off of it… Celestia felt fury burning in her gut. With an enraged roar, she plucked a halberd from the stones and hurled it up to the fiend. It looked down just in time to receive the blade in the throat, blood spraying free, painting Luna in a thin layer of crimson specks. She grimaced before swooping down to stand next to her sister. “Thank you, Sister.” “Have you seen Horizon yet?” Celestia asked, brushing off her sister’s gratitude without even realizing it. Luna frowned but shook her head. “I’m afraid not, Tia. He’ll be easy enough to spot, I assume.” Luna replied with a shake of her head. Her eyes narrowed before going dark, her horn lighting up. Celestia turned and watched as shadowy arms of magic ripped up from the ground around a fiend that was about to plunge its claws into Celestia’s spine, spearing it in several places before pulling it down into the shadowy portal. “Thank you.” Celestia said with a thankful nod towards her sister. “I said I won’t let you die and I meant it.” Luna replied firmly before moving to re engage a group of fiends that were currently locked in combat with a squad of Lunar guards. Celestia turned to engage another group of enemies as well, then froze. Lumen… There he was, atop a building not far away. He looked down on the scene of violence indifferently before the blue orbs settled on Celestia. They locked gazes for what felt like an eternity. His eyes spoke more than words ever could. It was time to end this. Horizon turned and vanished from sight, stepping away to what was presumably an isolated location for their duel… Celestia glanced back towards Luna before taking off with a flap of her wings, pulling the halberd along with her. Indeed, Horizon awaited her in the center of of the main Canterlot plaza at the core of the city. This area was practically untouched. No blood, no corpses, not even any signs of chaos or that anything was out of the ordinary. Celestia came to a landing and looked up at Horizon, trepidation in her posture. “Here we are, then.” he said simply. “Yes… here we are.” “This is to be an end for both of us, you understand?” “Of course I understand… one of us will die, and the other will have to live with the consequences.” Horizon nodded solemnly before giving a low, respectful bow. “Live or die tonight, I will miss you in the morning, Tia.” “And I, you.” Celestia replied sadly, giving her own bow. The whole world seemed to fall still and impossibly silent... Celestia looked up to Horizon, meeting his gaze once more, peering as deeply as she could for anything that she could use to save him from the nightmare he had wrapped himself up in. When she saw what she was looking for, she smiled softly. I will save you, Horizon… no matter what it takes, I will do it to set you free… Without another word, they charged.