He sat there, blade at his side, staring down his adversary, as they sat inside of the museum. He was a warrior, a pony who was trained in the old and forgotten ways to not only defend himself, but also to protect others from danger. As an earth pony, his physique was strong; but against this enemy? He didn't know if he could win.
The posh, upper-class unicorn standing in front of him, levitating four separate swords, was filing a hoof with some sort of weird thingy. The unicorn clearly had no appreciation of the culture inside of this museum; all the artistry behind the arms and armor, all of the legend behind the paintings.
Though the warrior wore four combat-weighted horseshoes, designed to add an impact to his already-hard punches, he knew that against magic, he was at a severe disadvantage. Typically, his counter to more swords is to match the number of swords that the enemy is wielding.
One sword he could handle; he could wield his own in his hoof like a pro.
Two swords he could deal with; dual-wielding was a feat he was trained with, as he was ambidextrous.
Three swords was a struggle, but not exactly impossible. Between standing on only his hind hooves, and carrying two swords; one per arm; his dentist hated it when he triple-wielded, but his mouth was the only place that the third sword would go.
But four?
Even if he had four swords to counter the unicorn, there was no way he could win in a fair fight.
"So," the unicorn said, putting his file away; "What shall it be?"
As the warrior shifted, he prepared to draw his sword, a weapon with an unusually wide blade designed for blocking. Though it sacrificed the durability greatly, it would certainly substitute for a shield.
"You know I'm not coming back to Equestria," the warrior said. "I'm not wanted there. My head is on the guillotine; the princesses personally witnessed me murder someone. I'm a dead man if I go there."
"I can't accept no for an answer, and you know it." The unicorn stood on all four hooves and pointed all four swords at him.
There goes the sucker-punch opportunity. The warrior had only thought of it for a moment, and the thought was disintegrated by the four swords angrily threatening him. Should he go to stab the unicorn in the face, the unicorn would stab him in four different places. And given his telekinesis, he would do so unharmed.
"Two ponies come into this battle; only one will survive." As the warrior draws his sword while saying this, he performs a ceremonial salute. The unicorn clearly has some honor, otherwise he would've forced the warrior's hoof. Dropped the ceiling on him; used his own sword to slit his throat; lifted him fifty feet off the ground and dropped him.
Teleported a small grain of sand into his heart, causing it to tear itself apart with no way of getting rid of the grain of sand.
"If only one of us will survive," the unicorn says, "Then you might as well off yourself now. I just got this suit drycleaned yesterday; I'd hate to get your blood on it."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I am Caesar.
I am the unicorn that's about to do battle with this earth pony, named Blood Knight. Such an interesting name; I cannot think of what kind of bullying he got when he was younger because of it.
Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, and Luna's new alter-ego, Tsuki Hime Sama, requested that I assist them in capturing Blood Knight. They need someone of his caliber to go into the Everfree Forest, where a portal is currently located. Monsters are coming out of this portal, and they're terrorizing Ponyville.
Closing this portal is not within my skills, but what is within my skills is fighting monsters. Unfortunately, some of these monsters happen to be quite difficult to defeat singularly. Imps, for example, tend to be dangerous little buggers, but they're small, so they don't pose a threat, right? Yeah, a tiny little shit that you can't hit because it's so tiny, that you need to hit because it's throwing fireballs and lightning bolts, definitely isn't a threat.
Imagine the horror when I teleported to the portal, began summoning my blades, and realized I was outnumbered. And by "Outnumbered", I used a counting spell and found no fewer than 12,368 imps. And there weren't just imps.
I simply grabbed Princess Twilight, who was with me at the time, and teleported away before they realized we were there.
From what I understand, Blood Knight is a criminal on the run. If we capture him, he'll be ruthless, Vicious, a force multiplier that'll demolish any army we send after him.
So far, he's nothing but a single earth pony. I don't see what the princesses see in him.
"If only one of us will survive, then you might as well off yourself now. I just got this suit drycleaned yesterday; I'd hate to get your blood on it."
Truth be told, this suit could use the smell of spilled mud-blood.
"Really? And are you saying that you won't be bleeding as well?"
Oh, he is going down.
I lunge forward with one of my swords; he parries it, and goes in for the next strike. I attempt to stab him with another, but ultimately, it takes not my third, but my fourth sword to stop him. The tip of his sword stopped within an inch of my face.
I charge a spell into my hoof and reach out and tap his sword. His entire body is sent backwards with such force that he should drop his sword.
He doesn't.
"Hah!" He leaps up suddenly and brings his sword down! Reflexively, I block, and use up all four of my swords.
I need more swords.
"Hyah! Hyah! Yayayayayah!" As he swings his sword furiously, I find myself backing up, in order to avoid getting hit with his blade. He's probably tiring himself out, so I just let him do so. He's also singularly focused on me.
I summon two more swords from behind his back and use them to slash him.
"Gah!" He stumbles forward, before making an impossible leap to the side and then backwards. He checks himself; he has a bloody X on his back.
"Give up. You'll never win."
Truth be told, I don't want to kill anyone. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. I've accidentally killed someone while training them on how to use a sword; that's the day I stopped using sharp swords in practice. I am not a murderer.
"You're going to take me into a place where I'm going to die no matter what! If I run, you'll just drag me kicking and screaming! I can't let you do this, I must kill you to survive!"
Corner a mouse, and even lions will cower when it goes berserk.
I've got to make sure he has a way out. But I also can't let him take it; I have to create an invisible, self-imposed cage that causes him to stay here of his own accord, and not because he doesn't think he can leave.
As I'm planning this, he screams and charges. I swing one of my swords, two of my swords, three and four finally succeed in deflecting his charge by just a centimeter. After he misses, he stops, turns around, and kicks me across the face.
I am sent sprawling on the dirty brick floor. I can taste iron; is he feeding me his sword? No, I'm just bleeding. I put my hoof to my mouth, since my entire face is in numb. I'm missing a few teeth.
That does it. Fuck escape routes. Fuck mice, fuck lions, fuck everything. This bastard is going down.
I stand up and begin summoning swords. At first, he's moving menacingly towards me, getting ready to attack. When he sees how many swords I'm bringing in, the look on his face is priceless.
Sixteen. The number of swords I'm using is now 16. He's now fighting 16 swords, which honestly isn't even half the number of swords I own, it's just the maximum I can effectively use. If I swung in unison, I could wield my entire collection of 57 swords all at once; I would also be wielding them in the most inefficient and ineffective way possible.
I only need sixteen swords to beat him.
I close my eyes, and I cast another spell, one that allows me to experience the area in my mind.
I am the paintings on the walls; they are each at least a century old, and some have collected more dust than others due to their paints.
I am the ants crawling inside of the walls.
I am the mildew that they're deliberately avoiding.
I am the wasp nest that's being built in the ceiling.
I am the ceiling the wasp nest is clinging to.
I am the walls that house the ants and the mildew and everything else.
I am Caesar, the unicorn duelist who specializes in one-on-one combat.
I am Blood Knight, the earth pony who, just moments after realizing that four swords is too much, is shitting himself at the sight of the square of that. I am Blood Knight, the earth pony who surprisingly thinks in those terms.
I am Scar, the sword that Blood Knight is going to use to protect himself against my sixteen swords.
Let the storm begin.
And so, with a single thought, it does; Blood takes an underhoofed grip of his sword and holds it up. Five swords; six swords; seven swords, and eventually ten of the swords I sent to impale him all are deflected with his constantly-moving blade. However, he simply cannot deflect them all.
Schrk, schrk, schrk, schrk, tang, schrk. Five of the sixteen swords manage to place small nicks in his flesh, and as he takes these hits, he slows down and blocks fewer. Eventually, he starts to take them all, and then-
Boot to the head.
My spell is disrupted as he delivers a painful blow directly to my horn. He wasn't slowing down with each cut; he was ignoring them, allowing me to get a few hits in while I focused on cutting him to ribbons. With that one boot to my horn, my telekinesis spell is momentarily disrupted, and with a loud, repetitive clang, all sixteen swords meet Gravity, have an argument, and are forced to the ground as they lose the argument.
Myself, I find that my tailbone is getting quite bruised, as is the rest of my face.
Before I can recover from the stun, he takes his sword into a typical overhoofed grip and slashes at me. I don't even have time to block; my thick suit is all that saves me. It'll cost several thousand bits just to get this fixed properly, but it saved my life.
He swings again, but this time, with a roll, I cause him to miss. I swing my hind hoof at the back of his leg; the back of his leg is made of steel, and I let out a groan as I hurt my leg. He reaches down with his hoof and picks me up by my forehead; I pull a single dagger out, pretend it's a seed, pretend that his pelvis is the ground, and plant the seed into the ground.
He groans and throws me down, before advancing once again. Does he not see that I just stabbed him through his pelvic bone?! That should hurt something fierce! He swings again; I just barely let my shoulder take it. I raise my uninjured leg up and kick the sword out of his hoof; he responds by kicking my leg out of position. We engage in a kicking contest, and I win only because he has a dagger in his pelvis and doesn't realize it yet.
I pull out another dagger and aim to slash his chest. I end up losing it in his leg. What is with me and losing daggers in this bastard?!
I hope I didn't hit him in the femoral artery.
~~~~~
I am Caesar, and dead men tell no tales.
He's going to keep coming after me if I let him go. The princesses will want me because he'll tell them about my teeth. The only reason I'm even alive right now is because I've been running; if I allow him to run now, they'll find my trail and they'll catch me.
I'll be dead before I can see Celestia's beautiful sun again.
She hates me, but I love her. It breaks my heart to admit that my tradition as a warrior of Equestria has ruined any chances of me expressing my patriotism by returning there.
The coward unicorn pulls out a dagger and aims to slash me in the chest with it. I kick it out of his hoof and reach to punch him in the face. My hoof winds up punching him in the throat, and right then and there I realize that these hoof weights have a sharp part on them.
With this one punch, I wind up slitting his throat. The blue unicorn's eyes go wide and a hoof goes to his neck as he struggles to keep himself from collapsing.
The loss of blood pressure causes him to collapse.
"May you rest in peace," I say. I momentarily sheathe my sword, and then I draw it once again, in a special draw-swing that uses the sheathe to accelerate the swing to greater than normal speeds.
I painlessly decapitate him. He would've died in six agonizing minutes if nobody saved him; I don't have the sewing skills to save him, and there's nobody around who can. I just saved him from six minutes of agony.
...
Correction. I thought there was nobody around who could save him, but I just heard a couple of female voices coming this way.
"I think I heard their swords clashing! This way, sister!"
I realize that we have company.
PAIN
OH CELESTIA THE PAIN
I feel the source of the PAIN OH WHY and realize that THERE'S A FREAKING DAGGER IN MY PELVIS.
HOLY CRAP THERE'S A DAGGER IN MY LEG! I DIDN'T DEFLECT IT, I STABBED MYSELF WITH IT! AHHHHHH
This pain cripples me. I hold my sword in my right hoof, and use the left to support myself against the wall.
I slowly unscrew the pommel of my sword and throw it. It's cheap; it can be replaced.
"I heard something! This way!"
I made them think I went left.
I decide to go right, hide behind an armor stand, and sit there.
I see the blue alicorn go by first, before watching the white one follow suit. I begin walking towards the emergency exit.
OH CRAP CELESTIA SHIT-EATING FUCKING GOD-DAMN THE PAIN
I take a step with my right leg; my pelvis FREAKING SCREAMS IN MY EAR THAT IT HAS A DAGGER IN IT. I take a step with my right leg; I HAVE A DAGGER IN MY LEG.
Some people commit suicide by slitting their legs; I hope that this isn't how I die.
I trip the fire alarm, getting blue ink on myself. I don't care that I'm marked; I've created a distraction. I slowly drift towards the fire exit. The world is getting blurry. I push it open.
I see the sky. The sun is beautiful today.
As I stare at the sun, I sheathe my sword and walk on three hooves, limping on the left hoof that got cut while in the fight. I see a pretty busy road; I attempt to cross the road.
My legs give out at the worst possible time, as I fall onto the pavement right in the middle of the road.
My numb ears hear a muffled, blaring horn as several cars narrowly miss me. I see one that most likely isn't going to stop.
Yup. This is how I die. In the end, I'm just roadkill.
I black out before the giant truck runs me over.