//------------------------------//
// Chapter 32: Against the Skeletal Guard 
// Story: Fools and Drunks 
// by Jordan179 
//------------------------------//

Glittershell gazed at the advancing thralls.

Their step was slow and slogging, to be sure -- but it was also steady and relentless, and with each hoof-fall the undead drew nearer to the little line of living equines.  The Skeletal Guards outnumbered Zecora and her four Ponies several times, and Glittershell could see that, despite the superior speed of the living, they would soon be hard-pressed.  Though the undead warriors were for the most part unarmed, they scarcely needed weapons, to overcome the small band and drag them off to fates far worse than death.

Yet, Glittershell was oddly-calm as she faced the foe.

Some of this was due to the enormously-cheering presence of Zecora, tall and alien and friendly, and obviously herself unafraid.  Some of this was due to Snips at her right hoof.  Glittershell could never be too scared if Snips was with her -- they had been through too many dangers together and emerged unscathed.

But a lot of it was just Glittershell's own nature.  She had a task before her -- to fight for her friends, and survive.  When Glittershell had something clear and simple to do, she just relaxed into it:  she did not worry too much.  She would just do her best to follow Zecora's orders, and do her best to win and to survive.

"Hold the line, for a time," said Zecora.  "Make our stand, 'til I command, then back we fall, to the corner wall."  Her voice was low and calm, yet penetrating.  Glittershell had no trouble hearing every word of it, in that oddly-thrilling Zebrican accent.  Zecora pointed with one hoof at the last, and Glittershell saw what the Zebra meant by 'the corner wall' -- the place where the wall behind them met the wall to the right of them.  There, they could fight without fear of the thralls getting around the ends of their line.  Even Glittershell could see why that would be important.

"Ma'am," asked Apple Bloom calmly, "Kin Ah start chuckin' mah flasks?"

"From us keep them clear," answered Zecora, "Go to it, my dear!"

Apple Bloom nodded, pulled a string loose from the flask, and tossed it at the cluster of Skeletal Guards opposite Zecora.

Glittershell noticed that the flask was fizzing and glowing even more brightly as it flew through the air.

Bravesword, near the target point, looked at it and sidestepped, shouting "Ware grenadoezz!!!"

While he was in the midst of saying this, the flask shattered upon the hard-packed ground.

The bomb went off in a flash of blue light.

The contents sprayed everywhere.

Most of them went onto Bravesword and the two guards nearest him, though some struck Zecora, and a couple of drops spattered Glittershell.  The fluid smelled vaguely like ozone, but caused the living equines no apparent harm -- this seemed like a lot of trouble to go to pop what amounted to an alchemical water balloon.

Then, Glittershell saw the effect it had on the thralls.

Bravesword staggered backward.  He had at the last moment thrown up a foreleg to ward his face, and that had saved him from severe injury, but all over his front and his two forelegs, little blue lightnings and fires played over his hide.  The sergeant's putrid flesh hissed with steam, and some of it actually sloughed away from the touch of the fluid.

Poor Bravesword, Glittershell thought.  That must really hurt.  She knew he was their foe, and that they had to fight him to survive, but she wished that it were somehow possible to do so without really hurting the gallant guard leader.

One of the guards was faring much worse.  He had made the mistake of looking right at the small bomb as it went off, and it had caught him full in the face.  What remained of his facial flesh was sliding off his bones, and he fell shrieking and scrabbling at his own skull, clearly in no condition to continue fighting.

The other guard had looked away but had gotten a spray of the fluid all over his side.  That side steamed and he howled in misery, running in a circle in a futile attempt to avoid the source of pain.

Apple Bloom stared in horror at what her weapon had wrought.  "Ah ... Ah didn't know ...  Ah wouldn't have ..." she began.

"War is hell," said Zecora, calm and clear.  "And you do well.  To save us all, on them your flasks must fall."

For a moment Apple Bloom remained stricken by indecision.  Then, something firmed in her expression:  she set her jaw, snorted, nodded to the Zebra ... and tossed her second flask.  

This one was a long lob, right over their front to the left flank.  It hit the Skeletal Guards advancing on Glittershell and Snails, spraying them with the curious blue-glowing substance, which seemed harmless to the living, yet effective enough against the undead.  This second flask did not land very near to any particular Guard, but stung several of them, causing the thralls to hiss and stagger as they tried to wipe and shake the alchemical potion from their hides, putting their line into disarray.

Apple Bloom had time to toss a third one, this time right at a burly Guard who was advancing on her personally.  It blew up right on the muzzle of that thrall, who had been too slow to protect his face.  The Guardthrall shrieked in anguish -- Glittershell thought she heard him scream "My eyes!" which was strange because he hadn't any -- and fell onto the ground, his head wreathed in blue flames, clearly out of the fight.

The fiery fates Bloomie's bombs were inflicting on the Skeletal Guards were gruesome.  Glittershell might have been horrified by them, were it not for three considerations.  The first was that the last half-day had been one long horror-tale (save for her nap in Ruby's Sanctum, which would have been eerie enough by normal standards, but was quite restful in comparison).  The second was that the blue flames were burning up her enemies; the very same Ponies who were trying to drag her off to a fate literally worse than death.

The third was that she was facing a physical challenge, and as always, such relaxed her wonderfully.  It was not that she enjoyed life-threatening danger.  It was that such a situation did not give her the luxury of too much in the way of emotional reactions.  Those, she might indulge in later.

This was good, given how often her outings with Snips led to her finding herself in such situations.

The Skeletal Guards were still advancing, though their line was disrupted by four of them stopped in their tracks and four more delayed by the blue flames.  The remainder slowed slightly, a bit leery of approaching Ponies who had shown the ability to harm them.  For a moment, it looked as if their line might waver and break.

Then Bravesword brushed off the last of the blue fire, taking with it much of the remaining flesh on his front.  Blue steam rose from his body.  His jawbone worked; he raised his sword, and shouted "Charge!  Charge and close!"

The dead surged forward, and suddenly Glittershell was very busy.

It was far from her first life-or-death encounter, but it was her first experience of anything like true battle, with multiple combatants on both sides.  More commonly she and Snips would run from danger, or briefly fight one or a few foes.  But here there was nowhere to run, and she was part of five against dozens of enemies.

All was confusion; the flow of time seemed to slow and speed up without rhyme or reason.  First a rather scrawny thrall ran at her, hissing and rearing, and she saw him all as a problem in motion and spun on her forelegs and double-bucked him backward, feeling rotten flesh spatter and bones crack before her hard-driven hind hooves; completed the spin so that she kicked off against the ground and stood firm once again facing the foe.  It was rather like a dance move, quick and almost-instinctive, and she was encouraged that she had the hang of it now, since her earlier fights with Roneo's Crew and Starlet's Posse, and it really didn't seem that much harder than any other dance.

Now there were two more enemy-partners coming at her, one from the left and one from the right, and suddenly the dance seemed much more complex.  She wasn't sure what to do and hesitated a brief moment that might have been fatal, had she been alone.

But she wasn't alone; she had never been alone in a fix like this since the first day she had met her best friend.  Snips came barrelling up on her right and flung himself against the thrall rearing up on that side.  He caught that skeletal horror in the pit of his belly with two forehooves and his head; a move that would have sent a living foe down gasping for breath and did knock the hooves of the undead creature out from under him, which unfortunately meant that it fell right on Snips.

Glittershell's moves were all improvision and instinct and rhythm as she spun to kick the left-side guard staggering sideways, and used the leverage she got from him to fling herself on the right-side guard, who was fumbling for a firm hold on the squirming Snips.  She tumbled that guard over and Snips rolled to his feet; Glittershell then sprang back to face the left-side guard, who was already shambling back forward, even as the first, scrawny foe, despite having suffered injuries sufficient to put a living Pony out for the rest of the fight, was already struggling to his hooves once more.

And that was the way of the fight.  Snips and Glittershell, young and strong and agile, moved far faster than their undead foe, time and time again landing blows on the thralls and then darting back out before their shambling enemies could lay a hoof on them.  If either of them had been armed they might have cut a path of destruction through the thralls; even if the thralls had been armed, it would not have improved the accuracy of the undead.

In this, Snips and Glittershell were very much helped by their strong lifelong friendship.  Faced with death and worse than death, the fires of their friendship flared high, and their deep mutual understanding allowed them to communicate without the need for speech, each of them coordinating their actions perfectly with the other.

More than once, one of them would have been struck from behind by a thrall, only to be saved by the sudden intervention of the other.  More than once, they arranged their motions to strike devastating combined blows and down a single unfortunate foe.  Their advantages of life and friendship were overwhelming at any given moment.

Yet, as the fight wore on, the advantages of Snips and Glittershell began to fail.  For despite their youth and strength and speed, and despite their friendship, they were but mortal Ponies.  Though they were essentially fearless due to their love for one another, they did know exhaustion and pain.  As time passed, breathing became harder; their hearts pounded; their swift motions began to slow.  They began to feel pain; both from the bruisings they had gotten in their previous encounters with Roneo's Crew and Starlet's Posse, and from the new injuries they received in the ongoing battle.  Now and then they winced, and their dance of life and death became less fluid.

Snips and Glittershell found that the undead were not as easily exhausted as were the living.  The thralls moved slowly, mechanically, but almost tirelessly.  They could be hurt, but they did not feel as much pain as did mortals, and they healed those hurts more rapidly -- at least on their home ground, though the two young friends did not know enough of necromancy to realize why this gave the Skeletal Guards such an advantage.

Short of breaking major bones, which was difficult to do with bare hooves alone, it was very hard to put the thralls down for the count.  Time and again, Snips and Glittershell struck blows which would have crippled or at least stunned living Ponies, only to find the Skeletal Guards merely dazed or pushed out of position by them.  It was a nightmare of fighting against both long odds and a foe who would not stay down, no matter what they did.

Indeed, the two young Unicorns might well have themselves gone down, had it not been for the fact that the Skeletal Guards were not truly tireless nor immune to injury.  Though un-mortal, they nevertheless expended energy to move and fight, and that energy had a source, and that source was limited.  Though un-dead, still they had physical forms, and those physical forms could be battered and even broken.  Though they could recover from hurts faster than living Ponies, while they stood on their own soil, still that recovery took energy and time.

So it was that their little corner of the fight had lulls, just as might have had a fight against living foes; lulls that came after Snips and Glittershell managed to land an exceptionally-effective series of blows and found themselves facing a few standing Skeletal Guards entirely on the defensive, while the others recovered behind their protection.  It were those lulls that saved the two living friends.

During those lulls, Snips and Glittershells stood side by side, sometimes leaning a bit against each other, gulping in huge breaths of precious, life-giving air -- no matter that it reeked of death! -- gasping and panting, and wordlessly wondering how long their fight could go on.  For all the stolid courage of Snips and the athletic calm of Glittershell, still they were sapient beings, and still they knew that they could not keep this up forever.  Unless somepony saved them, they must flag and fail, and go down to a dreadful death and worse than death.

Sometimes during these lulls they could see what was going on elsewhere in the fight.  Zecora danced and whirled and kicked with her hooves and spun her glowing shamanic staff, forcing the thralls to give her a wide berth, punishing them with bone-cracking blows whenever they tried to press her.  Once, they saw her directly duelling Bravesword, their weapons flashing in complicated parries and thrusts, both their bodies marred by multiple wounds.

Little Ermine Lightning snarled and slashed with her knife, cleaving rotting flesh and cutting tendons, a living sawmill which even the undead clearly feared.  Apple Bloom ran and dodged, sometimes striking with her hooves.  Occasionally she would get clear and lob one of her flasks into a knot of the guards.  She fought to keep clear Ermine's flanks, for the young moonshiner-Pony often ignored her own safety in the fury of her attacks.  Between them, they made a good fighting-team. 

Seeing these things would give Snips and Glittershell hope, and infuse them with the courage they needed to look at one another, draw determined breaths, and wade back into the fight.  They had to do this, because if they waited too long, enough of the thralls would recover at the same time to make a concerted rush, and they knew that might give their foe a fatal advantage.

One time that was exactly what happened, and it very nearly worked.  A whole line of thralls charged Snips and Glittershell, catching them half by surprise.  Snips went down under two big Guards and Glittershell, with greater strength than she had known she possessed, hauled one off by main force, and kicked the second in the face while Snips got free.  She started to turn to stand by her friend ...

... and two thralls she had not realized were close enough grabbed her from behind.  She felt their cold hooves and forelegs curling around all of her limbs, and struggled to no avail as they lifted her off the ground. Two more closed on her.  In a moment they would have her completely overpowered, and bear her away to Gladstone ...

... and a short stout blur of blue stallion charged back into the fray, shrieking in incoherent fury, moving faster than Glittershell could see even in her adrenal rush of fear, screaming something about "Friend!  Won't let you --"

It shouldn't have worked, but such was his speed that he pounded one thrall repeatedly in the face, breaking bones and forcing the undead creature to guard its head or have it bucked right off its neck, in the process losing its grasp of Glittershell's forelegs.  Glitterhsell reached out and grabbed that thrall by the barrel, not because she particularly wanted to hold him, but rather to get a grip on something, a grip which she used to buck her own barrel and hind hooves wildly.

She had only a vague confused notion of exactly where were her foes, but more than once she felt her hooves crack into bone or squish into rotten flesh.  Snips bounded about beneath her, far too fast for the thralls to touch him, and lashed out at one after another target.   Glittershell felt her horn vibrate to nearby casting, and heard the snick of telekinetic shears closing on something, as a Skeletal Guard gave a hissing shriek.  Then it happened again.

Glittershell was never sure exactly why this worked, but suddenly all four of her limbs were free, and after a quick glimpse to see that Snips was also free, the two friends bolted back and then wheeled around to face their foe.  They saw that several of the Skeletal Guard were down; one of them staring stupidly at its severed forelegs; others simply standing and glaring, and they knew that they had won free -- for now.

They leaned one against the other, panting.

"Snips," gasped Glittershell, looking fondly down at her short blue friend, "you saved me.  Again.  That trick with the shears is awesome!"  Then she had to stop speaking, for the effort had exhausted her wind.

"Yeah," said Snips.  "Pretty ... cool."  He seemed even more blown than her.  "Takes ... effort."  Little lightnings played over his horn.

"Your ... horn's blown." Glittershell said.  Twilight Sparkle had more than once told her the right word for it -- overchanneled -- but at this moment, it was all Glittershell could do to say anything at all.

"Yeah," Snips repeated.  "Effort."  His voice trailed off into gasps.

Glittershell eyed the enemy.  The one whose forelegs had been cut off was just sitting there, looking at its severed limbs with what she had to assume was misery.  Another was struggling to rise.  Two of the downed ones had already gotten to their hooves.

She gathered herself for the effort of speech.

"Snipsy," she began, "you know we may not make it out of this one?"

Snips nodded once, ears drooping. Then he set his jaw and looked at her, thick eyebrows scowling over his dark eyes.  "We'll make it," he promised.  "I'll watch out for you ..."  He wheezed, coughed.  He continued.  "You'll ... watch out ... for me."  

"There's something ..." Glittershell said.  "Something I never ... told you."

Snips looked at the enemy, and Glittershell followed his gaze.Only the mutilated one was still down. The rest of them were standing in line, almost ready to go again.

"Better ... say it fast," said Snips.  He didn't need to explain why.  They both knew.

"You know Gladstone and everypony else in Sunney Towne thinks I'm a mare?"

Snips nodded.

"Well," Glittershell said, gulping.   "You see ..."  She felt a sudden fear.  A lot was riding on what she said next.  Her future might be short, but she didn't want Snips to hate her at the end of it.  "That's because I --"

"Oh, horse apples!" gasped Snips, his attention drawn by a motion above the Skeletal Guards.

"What --?" began Glittershell, annoyed by Snips interrupting her when she was about to tell him her most important special secret.

That annoyance vanished like raindrops on red-hot iron, when she saw what had drawn her friend's attention.

"Enough play!" roared Gladstone, rising above the fight, his hooves treading the empty air.  His eyes locked on Glittershell's, and icy fear filled her soul.

Gladstone glanced at Bravesword.

"Guard Leader, stop rutting around and take them!" commanded the brown Wraith.

"Charge!" shouted Bravesword.  "All along the line, charge home!"

Once again, the Skeletal Guard surged forward.

Snips stepped up, ready to meet the challenge.

Glittershell wanted to join him, to fight again by the side of her friend.  But ... she could not take her eyes off Gladstone.

He smiled at her, in a manner she might have mistaken as affable, had she not known him.  His orange mane blew in a spectral wind, and light flashed in his yellow eyes.

Then suddenly he swooped down upon her!

He was fast, far faster than his Skeletal Guard thralls, and his yellow witchfires blazed in a face shifting rapidly from seeming flesh to naked skull.

She knew she had to dodge, to run, but she could do nothing. To her own great shame, she was frozen in fear.

Then it was too late.

He was upon her, a rushing cold wind and a stench of death, and as she reared back in terror to avoid his touch, he swept forward and rammed her with both hooves, blows from which an instant deadly chill burned into her.  His great weight bore her back, and she fell upon the ground, and his hooves pressed her backward upon the hard-packed earth.

When she tried to struggle, the cold flared into her, and she knew that it was his fell touch, the paralytic touch of the Wraith which she had felt before, and that in this position he could cripple or kill her with but a small effort of will.

She cast her eyes about desperately for hope of help, but there was none.  Snips was surrounded by Skeletal Guards, and though he cried "Snailsy!" and fought like a Pony possessed, he could not this time break their ring.  Zecora was once again duelling Braveheart, and two other thralls at the same time, and it would be worth her life to glance aside from this fight.

"There is no hope for thee," Gladstone said, grinning cruelly down at her.  "I said thou wouldst be mine, and so thou shalt, and this shall be, in the fulness of time.  Once thou art dead and a thrall, thou shalt have much time, and so shall I, to complete our trysting."

All hope was gone.  Soon all life would be gone.

Soon, she would be undead.