//------------------------------//
// Chapter 33:  A Brief Respite 
// Story: Fools and Drunks 
// by Jordan179 
//------------------------------//

Glittershell lay helpless, pinned on her back to the ground by Gladstone, a piercing cold radiating from his hooves, a chill which she knew might at any moment become paralyzing.  Snips was surrounded, going down under attack from a whole squad of Skeletal Guards.  The situation of the two young Unicorns seemed hopeless.

A moment later, there came a flurry of blows and cries from Glittershell's right.  She turned her head, and saw Skeletal Guards beaten back, downed by Zecora's hard-driven staff.  As she watched, Bravesword himself was struck repeatedly, and fell.

Free for the moment of foes, the mystic Zebra whirled and charged straight at Gladstone, the elaborately-carven knob at the end of her staff trailing blue fire.  On her flanks followed Ermine and Apple Bloom, galloping too rapidly to be grabbed by the shambling skeletal thralls.

Gladstone snarled at her.  "Thou shalt not take my prey!" he cried.

For a moment he was distracted, and Glittershell might have done something, but before she could move, he looked back down at her and suddenly clouted her hard, right to the side of her skull.  Fireworks exploded behind her eyes and she slumped, dazed.





Glittershell's head was all a cold confusion.  The deathly chill of Gladstone's touch was within her head.  Moving her muscles, and even seeing straight, were both very difficult.  Wow, she thought.  Now I know what a real 'brain freeze' feels like.  I'll never look at ice cream the same way again!

There were sounds of a battle to her right; Glittershell managed to focus her cold-burning eyes and beheld Gladstone and Zecora rearing up and fighting one another.  Gladstone swooped from side to side, up and down, making use of his ability to walk the wind; Zecora remained calm and met his attacks with swift motions of her staff.  The Zebra's left foreleg was marred by rime, and her face bruised in consequence either of this or earlier encounters, but she did not seem much slowed by her injuries.  As for Gladstone, there were strange rents torn in his spectral substance, small wounds that glowed the same blue as Zecora's magelight and that seeped yellow-specked darkness.

At her flanks fought Apple Bloom and Ermine Lightning.  Bloomie, on Zecora's far side, seemed to be out of potion-bombs, but gave a good account of herself with flashing hard-driven hooves; Ermine slashed and stabbed with her knife.  They kept the Spectral Guards from overwhelming Zecora.

Right between Glittershell and a mass of Skeletal Guards fought Snips.  He darted and bucked and squirmed away from counterattacks.  Now and then his horn flared, and his telekinetic shears cut into the exposed limb of a thrall.  He fought with a fury and determination that Glittershell had never seen from her friend; his goal was clearly to keep the foe from Glittershell herself.  Glittershell was moved to see this:  it was in a way more meaningful than might have been any spoken declaration of love.

Snips is fighting so hard for me, Glittershell realized.  He kept the thralls from grabbing me while I was conked out.  He's fighting twice as hard, because he has to fight for me as well.

The thought first warmed, and then shamed Glittershell.  He's risking his life looking out for me, while I'm just lying here.  Determination surged through her.  I gotta get up and fight by his side!

She struggled to her hooves.

This was easier said than done, for Glittershell was wobbly, groggy, and -- as she found when she rolled over onto her hooves -- seriously nauseous.  Getting beat up by Gladstone really sucks,  she decided, as she coughed up her last stinging bile.  And it don't get any better the second time!  Pushing past her urge to puke more, muscles trembling with the force of her effort, Glittershell managed to rise, lifting first her rump and then her forward end, standing upon shaking limbs.

Her rise did not go unnoticed.

Gladstone glared at her.

Glittershell was not sure just what roused such a personal hostility.  Though Apple Bloom had called Gladstone a bully, and Glittershell knew from personal experience that bullies often got mad when anypony they'd marked as their victim simply refused to do what the bully told them.

Glittershell sure wasn't gonna let Gladstone make her his sex slave, or whatever other horrible things he wanted to do to her, so she guessed that Gladstone was just going to be mad at her -- it couldn't be helped.

Gladstone immediately suffered for his wrath.  For, in that moment that his attention was drawn to Glittershell, it was off Zecora -- and that was an error the Zebra exploited.  First, her sidestrike rocked the Wraith's head, sending the black glowing goo he used instead of flesh and blood splattering, then she brought her staff round in an arc that smashed down on the top of that head.  Gladstone's witchfire flared and went out; the Wraith toppled.

With Gladstone's fall, a great hissing cry of horror arose from his thralls; they fell back in disarray.  Not all of them, though --  Glittershell looked to the right, and saw Bravesword surge to his hooves, stumbling toward Gladstone in a desperate attempt to succor his captain.

Apple Bloom and Ermine saw this as well, and stepped forward to block the big thrall.  Bloomie reared and kicked at him with her forehooves, while Ermine darted in beneath to slash at his legs with her fighting knife, trying to hamstring him.  Bravesword was a doughty fighter, even against two foes, but had no choice but to sidestep and lash out with his own hooves to keep the two smaller Ponies back from him.  Bravesword was unable to reach Gladstone, and his fellows clearly lacked the will to try.

Zecora raised her staff once more, readying to strike the finishing blow ...

... and a glowing green form flashed forward to interpose herself between the Zebra and her fallen foe.

"Mercy!" Three Leaf pleaded.  "I am a healer, foe to none!  I would but tend to the fallen, and ... and I am his mother!"

Her words plainly moved Zecora, and the battle-lust faded from the Zebra's eyes.

"I shall spare your son," Zecora told Three Leaf, "if he harms no one.  I will bind him with my light, and make him quit this fight."

"Agreed," said the green Wraith.  "Prithee, though, please do him no more harm."

"Unharm-ed he shall be," Zecora promised.  "Now stand back -- in his lee."

Three Leaf drifted back a bit, and Zecora withdrew a small pouch from her saddlebags.  She sprinkled a tiny portion of glowing white powder from it over the fallen Wraith, shook her staff, and intoned a brief chant in her own tongue.  

Gladstone's witchlights flickered back on.

"Bound now you are," Zecora told him, "that my friends and I, you cannot mar."

Glittershell felt a magic surge in her horn, as that last statement completed the spell.

Gladstone must have felt it too, for he snarled and surged to his hooves.  Anger flamed in his eyesockets, and he flung himself at Zecora, attempting to attack her.

To no avail.  As he thrust himself forward, his whole form seized up and stopped, unable to obey his desires.

"You are bound," Zecora told him.  "As you've just found."  There might have been just a hint of smugness in her accompanying smile.

Gladstone whirled and glared at Three Leaf.  "Mother!" he protested.  "You allowed her to bind me!"

"That I did," Three Leaf admitted, "for fear that if I did not, she would have harmed thee worse."

"How so?" demanded Gladstone.  "I be a Wraith!  A being beyond life, a creature of walking death, remorseless and invincible!  He raised one hoof high, shaking it at the overcast heavens.  "I be no weak little colt!  I cannot be defeat --"

Abruptly, his strength gave out.  Gladstone trembled, swayed, and might have fallen, had not Three Leaf somehow borne him up under her.  The healer did not seem to be actually touching her son; instead, she maneuvered beneath him and lifted him by means of the telekinesis which all the Wraiths seemed to possess.

"O yes, of a certain," Three Leaf told him, clucking gently at her son.  "Thou'rt a big, fierce Wraith; terror to all the lands.  None deny this.  Only now thou'rt hurt, and need healing.  Let thy mother tend to thee."

Gladstone grumbled, but was plainly in no condition to dispute her.

Three Leaf bore Gladstone back to the rear, and the Skeletal Guard fell back in dismay.  Bravesword ran about shouting orders, bringing what order he could to the retreat, but there was plainly no real fight left in Gladstone's other thralls.

Ermine, laughing madly, would have thrown herself forward to harry their retreat, but Zecora reined her in.

"No," the Zebra told the young moonshiner.  "Gladstone's thralls you must not pursue; their threat's put down.  There's too much risk to you; and the fight's not done in town."

Ermine looked disappointed, but yielded to her leader's authority.

The five mortal equines now had some respite, as the Skeletal Guards withdrew, and Gladstone was gone for what Glittershell devoutly hoped was at least the rest of the fight.  None believed the fight was truly over, but it was good to be able to stand and rest for a moment.

Dark clouds roiled ominously, gathering overhead over what now resembled the blackened, burned, rotting remnant of a town.  The structures around them looked as if they could barely endure another hour; yet Glittershell saw the gates and walls of Sunney Towne still stood high, and still -- despite their surface seeming of decay -- terribly solid.

"Watch the foe," Zecora told her four followers.  "see what they do.  I shall try to find the way through."  She turned to minutely examine the gate and wall.

While the Zebra worked at the wall, the mortal Ponies watched the foe.  As the clouds gathered overhead, the square darkened.  The thralls were shadowy, skeletal figures at the far end, clustering around the glowing forms of their Wraith masters.  

The living Ponies could just make out Grey Hoof having some sort of conference with the others, but not what they were saying.  Nopony felt like trying to go to the other end of the square and listen more closely.

"Ah reckon we're in a passel o'troubles, as mah Granny would say," commented Apple Bloom.  "There's no denyin' that."

"I'm so sorry," said Glittershell, ducking her head in shame, ears down.  It was one thing for Snips and her to get in a fix -- that was almost a normal part of their lives -- but they'd dragged in Apple Bloom, Zecora, and even Ermine Lightning as well.

"Yeah -- we kinda all screwed up," admitted Snips.

Apple Bloom stared at the stocky blue stallion strangely, and looked as if she were about to say something, but then thought better of it. 

"Mah main point," the short yellow Apple mare said, her intelligent orange eyes gazing deeply into first Snips', then Glittershell's,  "is that this is no time for blame, and even less for fear.  It's our lives on the line now, and mebbe even our souls, so we've just gotta be fight, and fight hard to win.  Win an' live."

"Wow," blurted out Glittershell.  "You sound so much like your sister."  She was in awe at the force of Bloomie's personality.  I wanna be brave like you, she thought, and with that thought, felt less frightened.

"Thanks -- I think --" replied Apple Bloom, with a slight giggle.  "Now, here's the good news.  All we gotta do is hold out a bit longer.  Reason is, Zecora's not the only one who knows we're in trouble.  There's help on the way.  And for that -- both me an' Zecora, and that other help -- you have one Pony to thank."

Glittershell's ears and eyebrows raised questioningly.

Apple Bloom stepped aside, and pointed her nose at Ermine Lightning.  That worthy eeped, reddened and tried to hide her sharp little face under one foreleg and her own yellow mane, suddenly transformed from fierce berserker into blushing young maiden.

"She thought you two might get into trouble when she heard you weren't listening to her Pappy's warnings back in Lightning Hollow," continued Apple Bloom.  "She decided, all on her lonesome, to track you and make sure that you were okay.  She prolly woulda come with you and saved you from ever coming in here, if you hadn't had more than an hour's head start.  That was real nice of her, seeing that she'd only just met you today."

Ermine looked out from under her mane, gazed full at Glittershell.  "I couldn't let the cutie-colt get hurt!" she blurted out.  Then, realizing what she'd just said in front of everypony, she flushed even more furiously and resumed hiding.

Glittershell was not sure how to take this statement, though it of course didn't wholly surprise her.  She knew that there was at least one very important thing Ermine didn't know about her, most importantly that she was a "her," but this didn't seem like a very good time or place for such a conversation.

Especially since, as far as she knew, none of her four living companions knew that about her.  And, also, it seemed more than a bit mean to tell Ermine that she had risked her life on a serious mistake.

"That's not all she did," said Apple Bloom.  "She spent the whole evening and night and early morning tracking you.  Slept out in the woods."

Ermine laughed.  It was a surprisingly delicate laugh for such a fierce little creature.  "Aw, that ain't nothin'," she told them.  "Ah sleep out in the woods a lot.  Live more'n half my life out o'doors."

"She reached the turnoff to Sunny Towne around midday," Apple Bloom said.  "When she saw where you'd gone, she feared you'd both been kilt.  But she knew there was a chance you weren't.  So she went to the one good person she knew lived nearby. Mah mistress in alchemy.  Zecora."

The aforementioned Zebra was tossing powders against the bar of the gate, muttering incantations, and trying to lift the bar.  She was having absolutely no luck.  She then looked up the gate's surface, looked back at her four followers, and then got a discouraged look.

"Ah was there, which is why Ah'm here now.  Good thing too, or this rescue party'd be one weaker.  But the thing is, Zecora got off a message to someone else ..."

"Apple Bloom, my dear," asked Zecora.  "Please come to me, over here."  The tone was polite, but the urgency was real.

"Sorry," said Bloomie, "tell you later."  She trotted over to the Zebra.

Glittershell was disappointed not to know just whom Zecora had contacted, whom they were counting upon to save them, if they could just hold out long enough for rescue.  But she was cheered to know that there really was someone from whom they could hope for rescue; moreover, that Bloomie seemed confident that there would be a 'later" in which she could reveal the matter. 

Apple Bloom's presence was, as always, very reassuring.  Bloomie was brave and smart and nice, and Glittershell knew that -- even when things looked bad -- Apple Bloom almost always knew what to do so that everypony wouuld be okay.

Glittershell very much wanted everypony to be okay.  Right now, things seemed very far from okay.  They had beaten Gladstone, which was for obvious personal reasons a great relief to Glittershell, but they were still trapped in Sunney Towne, and the other Wraiths were preparing to attack them.  She could plainly see them doing so at the other end of the square, where they glowed ominously in the increasing gloom.

If they fell to the Wraiths, Glittershell didn't know if she'd ever get the chance to say some things again.  So she had to say them now.

She smiled at Ermine.

"Thank you, Miss Ermine," Glittershell said.  "You brought us help when we really needed it.  You are a true friend."  And, before she could think twice about it, she reached out and hugged the sharp-faced filly.

The thanks were Glittershell's duty; the Ponies she respected as models of manners:  Rarity, Cheerilee, and Princess Twilight; all of them would have told her that it was correct to give thanks when another Pony did one a great favor. And Ermine Lightning had done Glittershell one of the greatest favors she'd ever known.

The hug was impulsive, an act of affection coming entirely from Glittershell's heart.  Nopony had ever told her to do this, though affection was entirely natural to Equestrian Ponies, and the young mare had marked the kindly behavior of Twilight and her friends.

It surprised Ermine.  At first she gasped at the sudden physical contact:  then she sighed happily and returned the hug, clutching Glittershell firmly and happily.

And, if perhaps Ermine hugged Glittershell all the more happily because she thought of the one she hugged not as a slightly-older young mare named Glittershell, but rather a late-adolescent colt named Snails:  that was a subtlety of distinction beyond both any normal quick reasoning of the young Carrot's, but also beyond that called for by their dire situation.  They were probably both about to die:  Glittershell was not so young and innocent that she did not know this.  What harm did she do by giving some affection to one who had put her own life at risk to save her own?  "Later" was not necessarily a consideration for either of them, not right now.

Glittershell let Ermine go, and saw the love shining in those slightly-mad purple eyes, and hoped that what she was seeing was friendship.  Which of course it in part was, for love and friendship are strongly linked emotions.

Glittershell turned to Snips.  "You too, Snipsy," she said.  "I can't think of anypony better to have with me at ... a time like this."  She reached out for the stocky blue colt with one long foreleg.

Snips protested grumpily, but let Glittershell hug him as well.

"Same here, Snailsy," he said.  "You're the best pal anypony's ever had."

"Shitfire," said Ermine, evenly.  She elongated her vowels, so it came out more like 'sheetfahr.'

They both turned to look at her.

Ermine gestured with her fighting knife.  "They're shakin' out.  Not long now."

Glittershell followed her motion.  He could see that Grey Hoof had leaped over the long table, and was standing before it in the village square.  An orangish-white glow, trailing her reddish-orange mane, drifted out to the right of the Master-Wraith who was her father; on the other side, the dark-blue glow that Glittershell knew to be a disturbingly-handsome stallion who had been dead more than a thousand years flared brightly.

Roneo would want to lead his own thralls; to stand with his beloved Starlet; to back up the father of his betrothed.  A normal Pony would have had to choose one of those options; Roneo was not quite so constrained.  As Glittershell watched, the single bluish-white glow split into three slightly-duller glows, one of which drifted to Grey Hoof's left, one of which remained with him, and one of which went prancing off to join Starlet.

"Did one o' those Wraiths just become three?" asked Ermine.

Glittershell nodded.  "Yes.  He does that."

"Guess I'm gonna have to cut him up three times over, then," the sharp-faced filly commented calmly.  "Ain't letting nothin' hurt you, Snails."

Glittershell felt simultaneously warmed and unnerved by Ermine's sentiment.

"Miss Zecora!" he called back at the Zebra.  "They're forming another line!"

This was exactly the case.  Shambling shapes, some of which Glittershell was sure he would recognize if they came a bit closer, formed up on Starlet and one of the Roneos.  Others, whom he could see even from this distance were Skeletal Guards, did the same on Grey Hoof.  He definitely made out the burly form of Bravesword there.

Zecora turned to see this, and Glittershell was shocked at the briefly frightened look in her eyes.  Then, it was replaced by her usual cool stoicism.  "Gate and wall will not give way," she announced.  "We must fight again, or lose the day."

Snips spat on and hoofed the ground.  "I'm ready for round two," he said.

Glittershell nodded, followed in short order by Ermine and Apple Bloom.

Zecora smiled.  If there was something grim about that smile, Glittershell did not think the others noticed.  "Snails, Apple Bloom, on left and right stay close to me," she said.  "Snips, Ermine, the ends you shall be."  She indicated a line with her right hoof.  "From here to here," she said.  "Turning our flanks shall we not have to fear."

They formed the line as indicated, five living equines against five wraiths and perhaps twenty or so shambling thralls.  Long odds, still longer than they had been before, but these were the only odds; the only option they had aside from surrender to a dreadful fate.

"Thank you, Apple Bloom," said Glittershell.  "For being here for me."

"Aw," said the young yellow mare, waving a hoof dismissively and favoring Glittershell with a quick smile.  "What kind of Apple would Ah be if Ah wasn't there for mah friends?"

"You're an amazing Apple," Glittershell told her.

Finally he looked at Zecora.  The Zebra was stretching her limbs, one leg at a time, in what must have been some sort of warmup exercise.  She still bore bruises and patches of dead hair, from her earlier fight with the thralls, and Gladstone.

She was hurt, but not enough yet for it slow her down.  And -- remembering her earlier wiles and her displays of agility -- Glittershell wondered if she was really as trapped in here as were the rest of them.

"Thank you, Miss Zecora," Glittershell said softly.  "For coming here to save me.  And ..." she lowered her tone further, "... for sticking around."

"Oho," said Zecora, also very softly.  "you have seen.  You are not quite the fool you seem."

"Heh," said Glittershell, laughing in honest good cheer.  "If I was that dumb, I'd forget how to walk and fall down!"

"Yes," she said.  "it is not too tall.  I ... perhaps you, perhaps Ermine ... could scale the wall."

Glittershell looked at her best friend, and his very short legs.  "What about Snips?  Or Bloomie?"

"We might get away," said Zecora, very low and even, "but they would die this day."

Glittershell said no more.  Nothing more needed to be said, not between mares like herself and Zecora.  There were some prices too heavy to pay even for one's own life.  She only nodded, firmed her jaw, and turned toward the foe.

Grey Hoof shouted.

It was no normal shout -- nothing like that could have come from any normal equine throat.  It rippled the clouds, which curdled overhead, blotting out what remaining little light there was.  Darkness fell on the village square, darkness relieved only by the sickly glows from the forms of the Wraiths and the witchfire eyes of their thralls.

Or were the clouds completely dark?  Glittershell thought he could see little lights moving in them, lights that gave no illumination to anything below them.  Little yellow lights, that might have been the stars of a dying firmament, or many, many hateful eyes, who had gathered to watch and joy in the destruction of equine lives.

For a moment Glittershell stared in horror at the leering eyes of the Curse of Sunney Towne.  For a moment, a cold terror gripped her heart, and she bethought herself of the possibility of attempting to swarm up the wall behind her, even if in doing so she delivered up Snips to dreadful eternal torment.

But only for a moment.

For Zecora cried out an incantation in her own tongue, an incantation whose alien phrases meant nothing to Glittershell, but which she could tell still rhymed. And she stamped the lower end of her staff against the ground, and the upper end flared light blue, a flare which unlike the witchlights and the hateful eyes illuminated the band of five living equines who stood shoulder to shoulder against the encroaching Night.

"Our lives you may try to take," she shouted at the Wraiths of Sunney Towne.  "But our spirits, you shall not break!"

And Zecora's blue light flared even brighter, and against that flash the Wraiths and thralls alike quailed.  And, for a moment, Glittershell seemed to see a crystalline Tree, strange beyond measure, yet as close to Ponies as their own hearts.

Only for a moment, but Glittershell somehow knew that all on that field, living and undead alike, had seen the same thing.

Grey Hoof hissed and recoiled, rearing and kicking at the air. Then he roared out his hatred.

"Are we of all beings to tremble before these phantasms of an alien witch?  Stand by me, brave Sunney Towners!  Gallop, charge and trample!

"Crush them all!"

The undead threw themselves forward.

And Glittershell readied herself for her last fight.