//------------------------------// // Chapter 14: The Last Full Measure [Part 1] // Story: Pride Goeth // by Zurock //------------------------------// Prideheart stretched his profile over Bookworm to hide her from the three terrible heckhounds looming atop the next terrace. The beast standing in the center was the largest of them. Protruding from his head were two forward-facing, long, pinpoint-sharp horns, and above his ferocious grin was a pair of uneven eyes. One glowed brightly like a blazing coal, the same as all heckhounds. But the other eye was recognizably bruised, swollen, and dimmed. "Stand down, pup!" Prideheart commanded Kerby. Unlike their last standoff at the quarry, where the stallion had used every deceit and delay at his disposal, this time there were no games to play. "Oh, no no no," Kerby hissed. He hardly bothered to affect his false civility, and he couldn't even begin to savor how delicious and evil his fortune was. "I'm not one to look a gift pony in the mouth! We were just on our way to have some fun with the village, and you—oh-ho-ho, you—I was hoping I would find you there and get the chance to treat you to something special. But now—!" The large heckhound snorted an order at his lesser cohorts, and both leapt down from the ledge. Each began staking out positions around the ponies, stalking slowly and growling menacingly. "—now," Kerby said, "this is like having dessert before the main course!" Once they were in place, the other two heckhounds stopped and stood ready. All they needed was the order to pounce. Prideheart bent and shifted every which way in response to the hounds on either side of him, always ensuring that Bookworm was completely shielded from them. But no matter how stout and stalwart he appeared on the outside, on the inside he was already on fire. Time was so desperately little, and solutions were so preciously lacking. With every spare moment, he frantically searched for an escape for the filly. Suddenly Bookworm yelled at the heckhounds. Her head poked out from behind the stallion's cloak despite his efforts. Amazingly she was more mystified and offended by the hounds' presence than outright frightened. She accused them, "You can't be on this side of the river!" "'Can't?' Bahahaha!" scoffed Kerby. "You can't swim through the water!" she shouted. The large heckhound sneered, "No. But we ripped up some of those blasted cart tracks and built a bridge to cross over!" "Oh!" gasped Bookworm. "I don't remember Star Swirl writing that they could do stuff like that." Fearfully Prideheart shuffled about, trying to keep the eager, ignorant filly back, and it brought a wicked grin to Kerby's snout. The monster's huge paws gripped the terrace edge so that he could lean far over it, and small wisps of fire shot from his nostrils. "Putting together that crude bridge was a little tedious," he poked at Prideheart with a devilish sort of delight, "but so very worth it! You have only yourself to blame for this, you know! Your lucky escape yesterday made me rethink my plan. Those pathetic little ponies in the village would be more ready for us because of your warning, so I thought we might keep the element of surprise by lighting a fire on their tails instead!" In his chest, Prideheart's heart sank. Hailstone hadn't been wrong in her count of the attackers, as he had first thought. Heckhounds had been missing because that large force was the diversion. The real threat was this smaller strike team which he and Bookworm had bumped into purely on accident. A surprise attack on Stony Nook from behind by these few but critical heckhounds would easily be a brutal, breaking blow to the whole defense. Likewise, Crumble Pie had been right to have feared the hounds' ingenuity: they had quickly found a way to have crossed the river. Her sole mistake had been in assuming that the heckhounds would have done so only as part of a chase, and not as part of a fiendish play to outmatch the town's ill-equipped defenders. Really, the only pony in all of this who had been truly, awfully wrong had been Prideheart himself. Kerby had invented this diabolical scheme to bypass Stony Nook's defense only because of Prideheart's actions; only because he had made that stupid, futile effort to have stopped them at the quarry; only because he hadn't acted soundly and snuck a safe warning back to Stony Nook like he should have done; because he had been an self-deluding ideologue instead of a selfless protector. The village, and every last pony who lived there, would have been better off had he never intruded upon their innocent home with his worthless, cursed self. Bookworm especially so. "Ooo, we gotta stop'em, mister!" the filly squeaked from behind Prideheart. The stallion shivered. "Come on!" she said. "This time there's only three of them!" "Ha ha ha!!" Kerby was nearly defeated by a fitful of hard chortles. He savored his own sarcasm, "Yes! Only three of us! Your odds are so much better this time!" The massive heckhound stretched his neck; his spine gave a thick crack at the very end of each twist. He pulled his shoulders, rolling them, and he lowered his head to inspect the deadly sharpness of his horns. Below, his minions prepared themselves as well, scratching their claws ready against the dirt. Prideheart dug his hooves in. He said to Bookworm, "I will stand and fight. You must flee. Bring warning back to Stony Nook." "No, mister!" the filly was again disgusted and distraught by his outright dismissal of her. Especially so after she had helped him at the quarry and all they had spoken about while floating down the river. "You cannot stay!" Prideheart despaired. He knew full well how hopeless retreat was. Even if he fought his very hardest and somehow managed to hold all three heckhounds at bay until he had not the faintest twitch of life left in him, it would never have given Bookworm enough of a lead to escape safely. There wasn't any way for such a little filly to outrun those enormous, agile monsters. Angrily Bookworm pouted at him, still as grumpy and childish as if she were being denied an afterschool treat, "No! We gotta stop'em! We're the heroes!" "Bahaha haha!!" Again Kerby wailed with laughter so uncontrollable that his convulsions nearly tumbled him off the terrace. Eventually he settled into a chuckle of pure, sadistic joy. "So," the brutish heckhound taunted Prideheart, "what do you do now, 'hero?' There's no sheds for you to duck out of! No trestles to dive through! No rocks to climb! No carts to roll off in! No boats to float away on." His final threat he hissed with exceptional enmity, spitting his hatred for water. But the words perked Prideheart's ears up. They turned away from the heckhound... and towards the loud gushing of the river coming from below the nearby cliff. "Bookworm!" Prideheart urgently murmured to the filly. "Escape into the river! Dive! Dive and swim to Stony Nook!" Well done, old fool. From this risky height, toss down a filly young and tender? Crash her into running rapids? Let a hungry current swallow her and see if she survives? Such is the best hope to be found for her? 'Hero' indeed! Cursed! Despicable! Villainous! What sickening jealousy! All these dangers he had dragged her into, and only so that he could have indulged in her adoring company! How ironic that she, a real hero when compared to him, might now die for the pitiful sake of his own damned comfort! "... Go," he softly pleaded with her. "But mister-!" "Go!" Prideheart started to push backwards, shoving the filly towards the cliff while still keeping between her and the heckhounds. Kerby, usually one very pleased to play with his food before a meal, didn't have the patience to tolerate another screwup. He snorted at his minions, cutting their leashes. Bookworm was squirming and protesting against Prideheart's pushes when, very suddenly, she felt him stop. All she saw were streaks black as ash and blurs bright as fire plunge into him, howling as they came. Their wind stumbled her. In front of her unfolded a dizzying tangle of action, too wild to catch clearly. Cloak beat about; dust kicked up; flashes sparked; red splashed. The filly heard more than she saw: a rip; a crack; a slam; a slice. Meanwhile, Kerby casually descended from the ledge, walking down a pile of stones as if he were out for a pleasant afternoon stroll. He hummed a tune as he ambled, though not loudly. The melody was borrowed; something he had many times overheard the eternally suffering prisoners of Tartarus sing to ease their endless labors in the fire; an elegy the condemned used to soften their sorrows. Yet Kerby brought the tune up several steps, humming it as a joyful ode to agony, far too jaunty for the violent clash just a few paces away from him. The ridiculous sight of such a happy-go-lucky monster was out-of-place enough that Bookworm threw a confused glance his way. He gave her back a neighborly smile: large, merry, and spread very wide to show off the full breadth of his fangs. Another hard crack echoed through the air. Bookworm looked back to see both of the other heckhounds on the ground, thrown down, though they weren't wounded in any way. Quickly they leapt back to their paws, no less vicious with their snarls. Prideheart, by contrast, looked worse than before. Charred marks were mottled across his cloak, and a long tear now ran down the garment near his tail. Along the pony's neck was a fresh red line; not a cut deep enough to be spraying blood, but against his white fur the mark glowed as a crust of ooze formed over it. Prideheart staggered while balancing himself. "Mister–!" the filly called. "The river!" The stallion very nearly bowled Bookworm over as he once again shoved her, almost ready to seize her and throw her from the cliff himself. If only the uninterrupted chance had been there. Howling again, the two heckhounds charged. Prideheart surprised them by suddenly pivoting and blitzing them first. Yet even with that advantage, the heavy heckhound he rammed into wasn't taken down. The beast caught the blow dead on and staggered back two steps only to rebound immediately and repay the favor to Prideheart, hurtling the pony towards the other hound. Fast swipes followed. Jaws snapped. Fires flashed. Driven between the two aggressive heckhounds, the only saving grace for Prideheart was the inefficiency of their teamwork. Each monster tried individually to snare him, and so they often crowded each other out. In their frustration they occasionally pressed, tugged, pushed, and nipped between themselves. Bit by bit the chaotic whirlwind of a battle spun nearer to the cliff edge and the river below. And nearer to Bookworm, who still hadn't retreated. The swinging door pounded against the building's stone face. The shop bell rang sharply, like a glass pane being shattered by a pitched stone. Out rushed Mrs. Totaler, balancing on her back the case of Cloudsdale Rainwater Mead. She skid to a stop in the middle of the street, her sense of direction momentarily wheeling like an aimless spinner from all the adrenaline, but she found her way quickly and bolted down a nearby alley. Her gallop jangled the bottles on her back, playing the choppy melody of a wind chime in a storm. She emerged next to the riverbank. Hailstone was there trying to tie together a single cloud from the few shreds of fluffy moisture she had scraped out of the starving blue sky. She wasn't having much success. All the wispy threads looked more like a ball of badly frayed yarn. The bundle of raggedy cotton was scarcely any larger than the pegasus herself, even when inflated by gusts of air. Hailstone darted everywhere, tying crude knots between cloud whiffs until she was crosseyed, and hammering scrawny puffs into place with smashes of her hooves, but the torn and mutilated cloud showed little hope that it wouldn't just burst apart the very instant that it was splashed with a drop of water. "Right then," Mrs. Totaler announced herself, throwing down the case of mead and ripping open the top, "how do we do this?" "Just start pouring!" Hailstone instructed, knee-deep in her angry work. "How many?" "All of'em!" The bartender grabbed the first bottle. She popped and spit the cork with her teeth, and she plugged the open bottle right into the top of the weedy cloud. "Then what?" she asked. "Pray it soaks in enough to make it a raincloud," answered Hailstone. No matter how frantically the pegasus worked, progress never seemed to move forward. Every knot tied tight only pulled loose a thread somewhere else. Every forceful stomp only knocked free a puff of cloud elsewhere. Meanwhile, the shimmering mead drizzled through the loose cloud, running down the white branches of fluff. Here and there the mead managed to soak in, leaving behind uneven dark splotches. Slowly they spread, beginning the cloud's transformation. But then a leak sprung from the bottom of the cloud. Then several more. Golden streams of mead spilled onto the earth below, and the cloud's color-change halted. It stayed a messy mix of pure, snowy white spotted here and there by ugly gray. "It ain't holding much," warned Mrs. Totaler. "Are you sure that's rainwater?" "Well that's what it says in the name!" "That's great!" Hailstone beat her sarcastic frustration into the cloud, trying to plug some extra puffiness into the infinite holes which the mead was filtering through. Elsewhere, Crumble Pie hadn't been able to slow down the townponies' wasteful panic. She couldn't have held them back any better than she could have dammed a waterfall all by herself. Bucketful after squandered bucketful was launched over the wall, every shot a miss. The heckhounds below danced through the falling tide as easily as a frog's dry ballet over lily pads. Whenever the gray mare actually brought a shaky calm to some ponies, chaos erupted again the very instant that she left. Every stretch of the wall was in crisis, but there was only one of her to prevent any given portion from buckling. And then the inevitable finally happened. The first crack. Frightful shouts came from near the wall's center, where it sat over the road. The ponies there stood about in utter confusion and despair, searching through their sea of empty buckets, but they had at last drained them all. In the sky, the overworked pegasi were going to be too little, too late with a fresh delivery. The townsponies' cries of alarm were delicious dinner bells to the heckhounds below. No sooner had the first hopeless shout gone up did one of the monsters appear on the parapet, licking his lips at the free feast before him. He let out a howl, calling for every one of his hungry comrades to come join him. Mayor Desk Job just happened to be the designated bell-pony on that section of wall. It was her job to ring a bell to signal everypony else that there had been a breach. Her eyes went wide at the fearsome sight of the heckhound ready to pounce. His howl pierced her ears and threw them down in fright. She nearly slipped and fell onto the street as she backed away in terror. But despite her petrification, she stayed true to her duty. Her magic hoisted her bell, preparing to ring it for all that she was worth. It would be a knell of defeat. A knell for defenses to be flung down and for everypony to fly for their lives. A knell to abandon Stony Nook. Crumble Pie knew that a unified retreat was everypony's best chance to survive now that the line had been broken. If heckhounds flooded in then they'd only surround any poor pony left behind to defend. But standing next to the gray mare was Scrolldozer. As the mayor lifted the bell up, Crumble Pie saw Scrolldozer's heart sink down. He was pulled low, almost to the stone floor of the wall, by a lodestone of despondence which chained itself to his very soul. In his weeping eyes, behind the hopelessness and powerlessness, beyond his living death, the gray mare saw into his dark imagination: a vivid, horrible scene of his forlorn daughter returning to a Stony Nook empty and burning... if the heckhounds didn't sniff her out and devour her first. To save the townsponies was to forsake Bookworm. It infuriated Crumble Pie. No; not her dear friend, who again had imperiled the whole town because of his love for his daughter. No; not the heckhounds, not even as heinous, and cruel, and deserving of hatred as they had been. No; not her own beloved townsponies, who hadn't been able to pace themselves under intense and fearful pressure. She was outraged that there was even a choice to be made at all! She loved everypony! She loved them all! Who was she to choose between them? Who was she to choose who gets thrown to the hounds? Choose! "Grab the bell," she suddenly ordered Scrolldozer. When he flinched in surprise, she only repeated more forcefully, "Grab the bell! Don't let her ring it!" Though worried, he didn't question. Desk Job shut her eyes and waved her magic as hard she could, but there came no shrieking dings or bellowing dongs. She popped her eyes open to see the bell floating free of her control, glowing instead the color of Scrolldozer's mightier magic. Ponies screamed and scattered as the heckhound came down from the parapet. The monster set his sights upon the mayor who, paralyzed by terror, continued to vainly swing her empty magic. The beast snarled and charged. And he caught the full brunt of Crumble Pie's attack. The gray mare drilled herself into his shoulder, plowing through him and spinning him into the air; saving the mayor in the same way as Crumble Pie herself had been saved by Prideheart yesterday. The heckhound picked himself up quickly from the hit. He barked and roared, savage as ever, but all his ferocity did him little good when Crumble Pie fearlessly cracked the bell over his skull. Down below at the base of the wall, the gathering crowd of heckhounds leapt back as the first hound crashed into the ground in front of them. Dancing through his eyes was a masquerade of stars, swinging and swaying to the chimes which echoed through his head, and on the top of his noggin was a very nasty lump. The broken bell followed him down, striking the lump with a dull ping. "Crumble Pie!" Desk Job gasped. The gray mare grimaced as she stepped down from the parapet and stretched her crunched spine. She had tossed some very big rocks before, but lobbing that heckhound had been a backbreaking effort. "Just run," she told the mayor. "But Crumble Pie-!" "Run, or go help somewhere else, or-, or-... I'll hold it here. I'm not going to let anypony get hurt. I choose me." Trepidatiously Desk Job backed off, and she shared a worried look with Scrolldozer. But they pulled back and left the gray mare as the last pony on that portion of the wall. Crumble Pie staggered a step or two away from the parapet, still bending and twisting her back to restore it to fighting shape. Her eyes focused intensely on the new paws clawing and clasping their way over the lip. "No you don't," she ground her teeth at the coming heckhounds. "Not my family. Not while I'm alive." Bookworm politely shuffled aside so that the whirling melee could pass her by, dragging along with her the explosive charge still slung around her. The battle was a symphony of exciting action; each epic crescendo sent a thrilling shiver through her. When a hit struck, she squealed. When the titans clashed and the earth shook, she bounced into the air. And whenever a fighter thrown down rose back up again to keep the story going, she cheered. She didn't flee; she couldn't have! Just the opposite: she tried to keep herself as close to the action as possible. This was, after all, the electrifying climax of the story! Though something was odd. An incongruity bothered her just under the surface of her awareness. Sometimes, between all the blurs and the drama, she caught clean glimpses of Prideheart's face, and the contortions of pain which twisted it. She remembered the same feeling from the night before, when she had seen Prideheart deliriously stumble out of the boat. The troubling scenes were something quite unlike the invincible heroes of her beloved storybooks. One of Prideheart's better-timed bucks managed to stagger a heckhound straight into his sibling, and both monsters stumbled. The sibling underneath angrily shoved the first heckhound off, who snarled and snapped back in retaliation, and then suddenly both hounds took to aggressively roughhousing with each other instead of preying on the weary stallion. Prideheart sagged, depleted. He was out of breath and clutching at his wounded knee, the injury awoken and complaining boldly even under the comfort of the knee brace. A second long rip had appeared down the side of his cloak, and likewise a new red mark across his cheek as well. Some of the hairs on his mane and tail had been crisped, bleeding thin trails of smoke like a charred candle wick. Facing two heckhounds was already a dangerous proposition, but his third enemy was his own debilitating pain and exhaustion, growing stronger as the battle wore on. There came a blistering bark from the sidelines – Kerby still watched the fight insidiously – and his harsh command immediately whipped the two bickering heckhounds to attention. They swooped towards Prideheart, though again each competed to get ahead of the other. Bookworm at last decided to play her part. Clamping her teeth down on the strap of the explosive charge, she rushed the nearest heckhound and lashed it at his thigh. It was again mimicry of her hero, and the way he had swung his canteen about as a weapon. Her hard swing bopped the charge against the hound's leg harmlessly; a pillow more than a club. Regardless, the hound halted, dumbfounded by the filly's blind courage. The charge struck him again (a soft pat on the cheek), and this time his response wasn't quite so nonplussed. His fangs flashed, hot slobber sprayed out from his growl, and his jaws opened before Bookworm's face. From Kerby came a single, sharp, dominating snarl. It interrupted the lesser heckhound and turned him cold. Ears down, neck low, and short tail tucked into his butt, the cowering hound looked shamefully to his master for what he had done wrong. The alpha pointed at Prideheart, the pony very busy battling the other heckhound one-on-one. To make sure his worthless little cur got the point, Kerby made a nasty and threatening gesture with his horns. Browbeaten and afraid, the lesser heckhound slunk away from the filly, leaving her unharmed. Bookworm blinked at Kerby, yet again so confused by him. And again he answered with a smile, friendly in its own delectably evil way. Prideheart scarcely evaded the heckhound's relentless swings. A darting duck, a swift step, a last-moment turn; each of his dodges had less speed than the one before, inching him closer to catching a brutal blow. Yet the stallion had quickly noticed that his assailant was now alone. At the right moment, the pony stepped back and dressed himself in an exaggerated smile of relief. "Ah, this is well," he needled the heckhound he was engaged with. Each word he greased with excessive pity. "I am left to deal with the easy one. I see your brother quite thinks you need the practice." Though there had been no buck or kick, the heckhound flinched. Then, perfectly timed, he was knocked roughly aside as his sibling came barreling through to attack Prideheart. The sibling didn't get so much as a swing or chomp in before he was thrust off balance by his now-riled brother. The brother then angled himself to attack Prideheart instead, only to be likewise pushed aside in turn. Brother nipped at sibling's shins; sibling pressed a paw onto brother's face. Each heckhound wanted to hold back the other and get the first bite, until finally they stopped caring about Prideheart altogether. Like naughty puppies fighting over a quickly forgotten treat, they rolled over each other, growling selfishly while ripping fur. Kerby again tried to command them back to attention, but this time one bossy snarl wasn't enough. The humongous heckhound reached deeper and let out a truly terrifying yowl. The punch of it triggered a long-ingrained reflex in both hounds and they immediately ceased their bickering, cowering where they stood... ... which was right at the cliff edge. Ideal placement for Prideheart's shoulder charge. The heckhound he struck wobbled backwards and lost his hind legs over the precipice. His front paws fleetingly scratched at the rocks before he tumbled over the rest of the way. Sploosh! The hungry river swallowed the heckhound with a bubbling sizzle before belching out a satisfied cloud of dark smoke. The other heckhound, showing no concern over his defeated sibling, snapped at Prideheart and snatched the pony's cloak just shy of the neck. Scrunching the folds of sturdy cloth between his fangs, he thrashed violently this way and that way, every one of his sudden whips an effort to throw the stallion to the ground. Kerby also didn't seem terribly concerned with the watery fate of his disposable minion. There wasn't one crease of a frown or even one winking glance of displeasure from him. But it did signal to him that the time to stand aside and enjoy the show had passed. His thick neck weaved through a slow, hard circle. Shoulders and hips pops as he rolled them. Each individual toe on his paws he stretched until the claw sprung out, and then he inspected their sharpness. Satisfied, he licked the corners of his slavering mouth and waltzed happily towards the tug-of-war between his hound and Prideheart. Bookworm rushed to intercept him. Still adopting the methods of her hero, she plowed her shoulder into the huge beast's foreleg and bounced right off like a tiny rubber ball. Undeterred, she took up her improvised club and batted the explosive charge at him, slapping him with the same tender breeze of a paper fan. For his part, Kerby didn't even look down at her. He slowed just enough to slide a gentle paw under her chin and toss her lightly onto her back, and then he walked on. Prideheart's balance barely held. The heavy thrashing of the heckhound was almost unendurable thanks to the pony's wounded knee. It had no strength left with which to brace, and being down one leg left Prideheart jealously guarding what little solid footing he had, leaving him no space to mount a counterattack. All the furious wrenching had also created a fresh tear in the cloak, and each savage pull widened it more, one snapping thread at a time. It worried the stallion. If the cloak sheared completely, the resulting whiplash would certainly be far worse for him in his haggard condition than for the vigorous hound. But Prideheart, his face so close to the monster's own, keenly took note of the heckhound's gradual descent into raw canine instincts. Out of the hound's nostrils spewed jets of crisp smoke, chugging like a train charging full-speed down its unbending track. Power seeped from the whips left and right; more and more he poured everything into a hammer which slammed straight backwards. In the hound's mind, the fight had stopped being about wrestling a pony down and had turned into a tugging contest over a prize bone. Suddenly Prideheart changed. He abandoned completely his defense and instead matched the competitive aggression of the heckhound, snatching the collar of his cloak in his teeth and giving a fierce growl. He fought for his garment. But unlike the hound, he deliberately pulled at a slight angle. The heckhound obeyed his age-old instincts and moved reciprocally, always correcting himself into a straight line with the pony. And so, inch by inch, the fighters spun in place. They turned like a slow wheel until Prideheart abruptly braked and straightened himself out. At the same moment, he seemed to lose his energy. His growls faded. His hooves began to slip. Folds of fraying cloak jumped free from his teeth, one at a time. It fed the heckhound's hunger for victory. The monster flew into a greater frenzy. He pulled hard, stepping backwards and winning ground. He pulled hard, stepping backwards and tearing the cloak. He pulled hard, stepping backwards and dragging Prideheart with him. And he pulled hard, blindly stepping backwards right over the edge of the cliff. The hound and cloak acted like an anchor chained to Prideheart's neck; he nearly spilled over the cliff as well. Gravity snapped the cloak taut, and finally it was too much weight for the wounded garment. There was a fast, straight, clothy scream, and a fat strip which ran neck to hoof peeled free. Still caught in the heckhound's jaws, the strip of cloak waved and flapped like a victory streamer as it plunged towards the river with its winner. Splish! Sizzle! Prideheart had to allow the world some time to stop tilting before he was able to take steady steps away from the cliff. The moment to breathe gave him a chance to check himself out, and when he looked down at his damaged cloak he was struck by passing melancholy. There was a sad sort of amusement to seeing the irreparable end his cloak had come to after forty long years of use and dedicated maintenance. He had first worn shortly after he had been burned by the dragon. The winds of the long road away from Canterlot had been blocked by it; the weather and snow of the Pearl Peaks had been sloughed off by it; the crystalline glow of Dryearth Forest had been kept back by it, always providing him a personal darkness to hide in. Anywhere the sun had shone its terrible light, the cloak had been his shadow. But no more. Now, through the many cuts and tears and holes which the heckhounds had made in the cloak, splotches of Prideheart's white fur had been revealed, almost shimmering in the sunlight. In front, the newest and largest tear left his whole leg standing open in the light. Skin bruised by the difficult mountain trail, with a shape swollen from fatigue, and bones riddled by age, and a form slouched with despair; yet still the muscles were hard with heroic strength. All the distracting thoughts, Prideheart threw away. Bookworm was still under threat! There was one last heckhound. He quickly whirled around. And immediately the tip of his snout bumped into Kerby's burning, wet nose. The tremendous heckhound wore the most sinister grin. Before the pony could blink, a monstrous paw caught the side of the his face and cast him to ground. Kerby needed nothing more than his one enormous paw to keep the pony pinned, like a tiger holding a mouse trapped by the tail. He crushed his weight upon Prideheart's cheek, absorbing the stallion's struggling kicks with relaxing ease. "Hey!" Bookworm threw herself at Kerby another time, ramming his leg ineffectually. She tried to pull it off Prideheart; to push it; to twist it. She wailed her hooves against it, grunting and huffing. All to no effect whatsoever. Kerby didn't need to raise his paw from the stallion. With just a simple shake to jar the filly loose and a single step sideways, he punched his great bulk into her, swatting her away. It took him by sudden surprise when Prideheart came back with inexplicable power. His immense paw was knocked off by a startling hoof smash, and the pony was instantly upright before the heckhound could even finish stumbling. Angered, but with a snort that was still more dismissive than anything, Kerby lashed out with his other paw. Prideheart didn't even dodge the swipe. He didn't shift or flinch. His own thinner, scrawny leg came up and deflected the blow, bouncing the flying paw back. The complete ineffectiveness of his attack left Kerby stunned. He stayed agape with disbelief long enough to be speared in the chest by the pony. The hit to his ribs had him groaning, but halfway through it morphed into a furious growl. He wedged a leg between himself and the stallion dug into his chest, and he shoved the pony back. He hissed, "Tiresome, diseased, old—OUFH!" Again and without hesitation, Prideheart had plunged himself into the monster. Kerby went to once more pry the pony off, more enraged and forceful than before, yet this time it was like trying to pull the tangles out of tar-soaked fur. No matter how strongly he pushed, his pitifully smaller enemy stayed stuck to him, and eventually the pony even managed to drive his paw to the ground and lock it there. Infuriated, Kerby forwent tossing the pony away and instead brought a snarl so close to Prideheart's face that the pony's head sat between the monster's jutting horns. Pressed snout-to-snout, they locked eyes. An eye of fiery coal against an eye of shimmering gold. An eye squinted and swollen against an eye poisoned and rotten. From within Kerby's vicious scowl, back in the depths of his throat, came a crackling light. Pops of flame started to spritz through the foam oozing over his teeth. It was a shame for the outraged beast that he was the second heckhound to try and belch a fireball directly into Prideheart's face. The pony dodged low, well ahead of Kerby's attack. For a brief moment the large hound thought he had perhaps scorched Prideheart clear out of existence. However, from below he suddenly found his weight being twisted before it was dropped, and he slammed into the earth on his shoulder and back. A hoof stabbed into the soft center of his throat and held it closed, turning growls into gasps and licks of fire into sputtering embers. The light of his unhurt eye began to gutter when he felt the core of his throat rub against his spine. His fallen weight had trapped one of his paws, but with his other paw he clasped Prideheart's leg. He clamped it right over the pony's knee brace, piercing his claw-tips through the fabric and into Prideheart's skin, and he went to rip away the leg squeezing his throat. Only he was again left utterly thunderstruck by how his raging brute strength still wasn't enough to overwhelm the pony's old bones. He pulled, and he tore, and he wrenched, but the pony's leg held. Splashed with grit, dashed in blood, with his cloak torn and ripped, Prideheart nonetheless towered heroically above the defeated villain. "Stand down, pup!" "Yahoo!" Bookworm cheered and bounced and hooted and frolicked. She couldn't have imagined a more stupendous climax to such an epic story! "You did it, mister! That was amazing! You're the best hero!" The hero raised his good eye up at her. There stood the beautiful filly. Unharmed, perfect, and pristine save for a smattering of dust on her. Not a scratch. She had the brightest smile he had ever remembered, and he returned it in kind. For once – for once, after all these long years – he really did feel like a hero. He looked back at the subdued heckhound. Kerby was no longer struggling. All his fight had fled; even his gasping and sputtering. Besides the thin wheezes which passed through his nose, he was unnervingly cold and silent. But a smirk crept up his lips. Prideheart was too late to notice that the monster had been leering so fixedly on the pony's obvious knee brace. The motion was like that of a nail being driven fully into a board with one solid blow. Hammered directly on his kneecap, Prideheart's wounded knee folded in a way it wasn't supposed to. The pony screamed as he collapsed. The devastating pain ripped through his shoulder and spread itself across him, prickling and fierce even to the furthest ends of his body, but his injured leg itself didn't feel to be there anymore. When he looked, he saw it dangling limp from him, now configured in some confusing shape he couldn't recognize. Kerby stood, taking in a full and coarse breath before he exhaled a gout of fresh flame. The sight of the pony, crumpled and broken, hit him with a pleasure so deliciously malicious that he shivered right down to his wagging tail. He took a step forward. Quickly Prideheart turned up and pressed all his strength into his legs, trying to stand. But before his wounded leg even touched the ground – when it so much as twinged – he let out another cry of pain and fell back down. Kerby stopped. "Good," he said to the immobilized stallion. And then he began to turn aside. Away. Towards Bookworm. "Stay right there and watch."