//------------------------------// // Chapter 19 - At The Foundation of Bloody Skies // Story: The Fiend that heralds Dark Skies // by Skijarama //------------------------------//     Once the trees fell, it had all become a blur. Turn, duck, slash, rise, block, stab. Shining Armor felt most functional thoughts fade into the back of his mind as instinct and reflex took over. The carefully practiced movements, hammered into his muscle-memory from years of drills and training excersizes, worked from his mind into his muscles. Another fiend was felled by his blade, blood dribbling from it’s maw as it fell into the snow beneath him.       His muscles burned, becoming desperate for even a second of rest, just a moment of reprieve, but none came. He kept moving through the motions, slicing, blocking and dodging with every fiend that came at him. He felt blood splatter against his face from another slaughtered enemy. His eyes twitched reflexively as the crimson substance painted his coat red dangerously close to his eyes.       Then the world went blurry. His muscles were jarred and white-hot pain filled his system, especially around his right shoulder. He cried out, hurling through the air with his ears ringing and his eyes filled with blinding bright light. Snow, ash and debris fell over him, smothering parts of his body. Now he could lay still and actually catch his breath.       As the violent rush faded, his mind refocused. Twily… gotta catch up to Twily. He thought, heaving himself to his hooves. His legs wobbled under his weight and he almost fell. Something was painting warm lines down his right foreleg. He threw out a forehoof to catch himself on a tree next to him, but cried out and fell over at the screaming pain from his shoulder. He looked and gasped. There was a lengthy piece of raw, charred wood jutting from his shoulder, sinking in deeper after he fell.       “Your highness!” somepony shouted. Shining Armor looked to see several of the crystal ponies he had brought with him charging for his location. The one in the front, a unicorn mare, came to a halt by his side and grimaced. “Oh dear, hold on.” she said simply, grabbing Shining  by the back of his neck and his good forehoof. Her horn lit up with pink light, as did the wood in his shoulder.       Her magic gave a pull, drawing the wooden intruder from his body with a bone-chilling squelch. Shining screamed out before gasping rapidly, seemingly unable to form a coherent thought through the pain. The mare grimaced and tightened her grip on him.       “Please, hold still! You two, keep the fiends off us while I heal him!” she barked before returning her attention to shining armor.       “Twily… Luna, D-drifter! I g-gotta get back t-to them!” Shining stuttered through clenched teeth, hissing and groaning in pain.       “We’ll get you to them, but you can’t move in your condition Please, hold still as well as you can, okay?” The medic replied, lighting her horn up and quickly eyeing the wound once it was illuminated. “Oh, that’s bad…”       “Just get me moving again, dammit!” Shining snapped at her before slamming his eyes shut and huffing out several pained breaths.       “If I do this too fast, you may lose your leg afterword-”       “GET ME MOVING!” Shining shouted at her, his eyes opening to reveal the fury and determination burning in them. “I am not letting my Sister go into that mountain alone!”       “...Seek a doctor the minute we’re done here.” The medic relented, lighting up her horn and setting a healing spell into motion. Shining groaned once more while the skin and muscle began to stitch itself back together,       “We’ve got company!” one of the other crystal ponies shouted out in alarm. He raised his spear and thrust at the fiend that was charging him. It weaved around the thrust effortlessly, bending and twisting like a snake before ploughing into his, it’s teeth sinking into his throat.       “SHIT!” His friend cried out before bringing his own spear into the creature’s head with a sickening crunch. It slumped over, dead. Shining Armor winced a moment later.       “Okay, can you move it without too much pain?” The medic asked, stepping back with her spell completed. Shining tested the limb and nodded grimly. He didn’t get to speak a response though. The medic turned and shrieked in horror when a fiend pounced at her. It’s shape was like a pony, if said pony were stretched like taffy into a lanky and twitchy creature.       She shielded her face with a foreleg, expecting these moments to be her last. When no impact came, she looked past her leg to see that Shining Armor had tackled the fiend and was now pulling his sword of magic from it’s corpse with a grimace. He glanced back at the medic with a small smile and nod. “It’ll do.”         Moonrise Drifter swore mentally upon seeing Skeintooth hurl himself at her once again. His speed was just as remarkable as ever, and it was making it hard to keep up with him consistently. She quickly rolled to the side to evade the assault, kicking up snow behind her as she came back to a standing position. Skeintooth turned on her and snarled viciously.       The two stood for a moment, eyeing each other and waiting for the other to make a move. All around them, the battle seemed to be nothing more than dull background noise, not even worth paying attention to. Skeintooth pawed at the snow, digging trenches in the surface and licking his coiled teeth hungrily.       “Cannibal half-sister is being extra elusive today…” Skeintooth mused, beginning to slowly walk around her. She mirrored the motion, circling him just as cautiously.       “I know better than to let you hit me after last time.” She replied simply, her claws drumming in the snow with every step. Her lips twitched in anticipation.       “Good… the prey that learns is Skeintooth’s favorite…” the fiend replied in a low, hungry voice. The spines all along his back quivered with the thrill of the hunt and struggle.       “Really? I always found them more annoying, frankly.” Drifter shot back with the faintest hint of a smirk playing at her lips. Her claws clicked and scraped along a stone jutting from the snow in her slow, methodical stride. “Harder to kill my target if it has enough sense to pay attention.”       “Cannibal half-sister must not like the thrill of the hunt, then…” Skeintooth mused, narrowing his eyes dangerously.       “I like having fun and I like excitement. I just don’t like dying…” Drifter stated before very briefly glancing to her left. Her eyes returned to Skeintooth, who was already shooting towards her at breakneck speeds.  With a grunt of effort, she kicked away, giving herself a boost with a flap of her wings and sailed past Skeintooth. He snapped at her as she passed, but came up short.       Drifter’s leap took her directly into the path of an airborne fiend that was en route to assault a group of ponies tending to their wounded. She sunk the claws on her good foreleg into its spine, as well as her teeth before turning around in mid air, carrying the wailing fiend with her. Skeintooth was once more in pursuit, bouncing through the air for her with his claws outstretched and jaw wide open. Growling venemously out through her full mouth, Drifter shot forward, holding the paralyzed fiend in front of her before using their momentum to send it flying at Skeintooth’s face.       He didn’t even hesitate in swatting the miserable fiend down, not slowing in his advance at all as he did so. But the use of his claws to bat aside the irritating distraction was all Drifter needed. Before he could bring his claws up to grab at her, she shot past his reach and sunk the claws on all of her hooves into his underside. Blood sprayed free, painting the snow beneath him crimson in long streaks and splotches.       Drifter quickly righted herself once she was past him, landing on her hooves and turning around to glare at Skeintooth. The large fiend was screaming and roaring in pain. His tail twitched and writhed like a whip, the rest of his body thrashing in discomfort. He turned his gaze on her, a furious red glow coming over his usually blank eyes. “Skeintooth will MURDER YOU!” he screamed.       “Bring it!” Drifter shot back, her own eyes glowing orange in response.       The furious, twisted shriek that tore from Skeintooth’s lungs was enough to silence the battlefield around them for several dozen yards. Drifter gasped and clutched at her ears, groaning in a great deal of discomfort. Her ears swiftly muffled all other sounds in favor of ringing loudly. Her vision went fuzzy for a second from the strain on her mind imposed by the air-rippling sound.       That second was all Skeintooth needed. He tackled Drifter with bone-crushing force, carrying her along with his head before stopping and bringing one of his claws up and down to slam her into the snow-covered ground. The impact kicked up a great deal of snow and knocked the wind out of Drifter. She gasped, a small trickle of blood spurting up from her mouth at the same time.       Skeintooth then lifted his other leg before bringing it down onto Drifter like a hammer. The ground dented under her, and white-hot pain exploded inside her chest. Several sickening snaps could be heard and her vision exploded into red and white. She screamed. Skeintooth struck her again and she screamed louder.       “Yes, scream for Skeintooth! Weep and howl for help like the helpless prey you are! Be afraid! BE AFRAID FOR SKEINTOOTH!” Skeintooth began chanting as he struck her again. Drifter tried feebly to roll away, but with the horrific damage her ribs were accumulating, she could barely breathe, much less move.       Is this it? This can’t be it, can it? I can’t die here! We have to stop Horizon and I have to get back to Palmwood and Wonderboom! I promised them! I can’t die here… I can’t… Drifter thought to herself. She tried to move, but could barely find any strength. She could feel her instincts giving up, believing she was finished and just… waiting for the end to come.       Then, however, her muddled senses became dimly aware of something warm and wet suddenly splattering across her face and a dull, muffled gurgling sound above her. Something heavy collapsed onto her and a pained wheeze left her lungs. With the relentless onslaught on her body ended, her senses gradually began to refocus.       Skeintooth lay atop her, nearly motionless and gasping raggedly for breath, his eyes flicking around in terror. A glowing lavender sword made of raw magic was sticking out of the back of his neck.       “D-drifter! You okay?!” Came Shining Armor’s voice. Drifter looked and saw him stumbling towards her, a clear and definite limp in his movements.       “I… will live…” Drifter replied shallowly, carefully easing herself out from under Skeintooth’s paralyzed form. She hissed and panted as pain exploded across her mauled chest from the movement. “Ack! Gah, but… n-no, I am n-not o-okay!”       Shining came to a stop next to her. He eyed Skeintooth with contempt and pulled his sword from the fiend’s spine, making sure the cord was well and truly severed on the way out. Drifter took a second to catch her breath before slowly rising to her hooves.       “Thank you…” she muttered breathlessly, clutching a hoof to her chest and leaning against Shining for support. He accommodated her as well as his own wounded state would allow.       “You’re welcome… but he’s still alive.” He said bitterly, lifting his sword to hover over Skeintooth’s eye. “Let’s fix that.”       “Wait!” Drifter suddenly blurted, reaching out and grabbing his shoulder with her forehoof to get his attention. He eyes her incredulously until she spoke again. “...let me do it. I think I earned it.”       Shining simply nodded and pulled his sword away. Drifter then pushed off of him and stumbled towards Skeintooth. His lips and face twitched, his eyes showing with pure, unrelenting terror as the realization dawned on him; he was about to die, and there was nothing he could do to change that. Drifter saw the look in his eyes and scowled.       She sat down in front of him, mouth near his ear. “You’re scared. I can see it i your eyes. I can smell it in the air.” She let the claws on her hoof extend again and let them rest gently above his eyes, leaning closer to his ear. “You are terrified of the death that you can’t stop. You are about to die and you know it; but you don’t want to. It’s a pretty horrible feeling, isn’t it?”       Skeintooth’s eyes merely looked at her pleadingly, his nostrils flaring rapidly in a desperate effort to breath.       “Well, take a second and let that feeling sink in. The way you’re feeling right now?” Drifter tightened her grip on his face, her claws digging into the first layers of flesh, drawing small amounts of blood. The muscles twitched in pain, but otherwise Skeintooth offered no response. “Is exactly how countless ponies have felt in their last moments because of you fiends.” She leaned in and whispered her next words to him venomously. “For the last one thousand years, Horizon has made you fiends kill, murder and torture innocent ponies… and they all felt just like this.” Drifter let her claws out of his skin and rested their tips on his throat.       Skeintooth’s eyes widened.       And then she slit his throat.       Drifter sat back and looked over her handiwork uneasily. Shining Armor slowly trotted to her side and reached out to grasp her shoulder. For a moment, they were silent. When another explosion of the battle around them went off, he gently helped her to stand up. “Come on. We’ve gotta get to Twilight and Luna.” he said softly.       “Y-yeah… okay, come on. Let’s-”       A sudden, deathly chill silenced her. Everything abruptly went quiet as pony and fiend alike stopped fighting and looked up to the peak of the mountain. They had felt it too, then. Drifter felt her ears pin themselves back against her head on their own. A reflexive reaction to whatever had just happened up there.       A faint blue glow could be seen at the summit of Mount Eclipse, pulsing gently against the darkness of the sky behind it.