Discord rippled out of existence, and in his place came Twilight Sparkle—screaming.
"Chaos!" She gnashed her teeth, floating upside down over Rainbow Dash. Her ghostly horn strobed wildly. "All around us!"
"Dashie!" Pinkie yelped as banshee shrieks doubled, tripled, quadrupled. "They're skittering in from all directions—!" She disappeared at the end of her exclamation, and a wall of teeth and claws came rushing through, hopping from one floating rock to another.
"Hressssssssh—!"
"Wildcard!" Rainbow shouted, twirling to narrowly dodge a serrated swipe or two. "Keep moving—!" Her eyes flickered red on yellow. She gasped—stumbling and sprawling chest-first across a rotating boulder. On its third spin, she swung past the advancing beasts.
"Hressshaaaa!" Two pounced on her, digging in with their claws.
Perching briefly on a passing rock, Wildcard reached back with Bard's bo-staff stretched at full length.
Rainbow clasped onto the metal tip with her teeth and clenched tight as—Swooosh!—the Desperado yanked her off the boulder and out from under the pouncing cretins. Cl-Clankkk! Their claws made sparks and nothing else. The rest of the pack stampeded through the floating array—some slipping and falling towards the crater's heart far below with blood-curdling wails.
Rainbow caught up with Wildcard and the two flew in tight formation, ascending through the upper half of the levitating mineral field. Their path was a zig-zagging affair, whipping over and under sporadic boulders and chunks of dimly-glowing rocks. Patches of starlight shimmered from overhead. Shadows broke the illumination, and that's how the two realized that there were hopscotching creatures outpacing them from high above. Sure enough—in the next few milliseconds to scream by—a gaggle of bloodthirsty beasts dove down from above, willfully pinballing between boulders until they came within pouncing distance.
"HRESSH!"
"Above—!" Rainbow yelped.
Schiiiiing! Wildcard was already rolling over her body. Nimbly, he twirled upside down and faced the incoming dive with a vicious twirl of Bard's staff.
Wh-Wh-Whap! The Desperado successfully fended off three creatures. A second wave came rushing in. At precisely that moment, Wildcard and Rainbow skirted past a smattering of tiny rocks. Holding his breath, the griffin batted several of them up at the descending creatures.
Ponk! Pl-Plonk! The ricocheted off a skull or two. Some of the pouncing monsters went limp in free-fall.
"Httt!" Rainbow Dash grabbed one body, spun, and slammed it like a club into a fresh wave of attackers. Thonkk!
The impacted corpses ragdolled off each other and twirled down through the mess of rocks. Within seconds, more and more pale bodies streaked through the two fliers' peripheral.
Wildcard sucked his breath in. In mid-twirl, he faced Rainbow Dash for one-and-a-half seconds...just long enough to hand-sign a single expression: "MANY."
"Down!" Rainbow shouted, already angling her wings. More bodies closed in, framed by fangs and claws. "Speed up! Lose them in the plunge—!"
Sw-Swisssssssh! Wildcard plunged, joined swiftly by the prismatic pegasus. More and more beasts hopped from rock to rock, keeping up with them. Rainbow's vision fractured, and she teared from the closing proximity to the chaotic heart of the crater.
Around this point, Discord reappeared, cradling a ghostly box of popcorn. "Hah!" He munched liberally, watching with casual glee. "This part's for the trailer!"
"Hresssssssh!"
"Hressshaaa!"
Desperately, Rainbow and Wildcard plunged down through the sea of boulders. The friction from their dual flight upset the balance of the multitudinous structures, and several of the larger chunks of rocks collided with one another. This filled the air with bombastic blasts of thunder, and several powdery explosions of rock filled the air behind them. The chaos monsters burst through the debris, streaking after their targets while leaving waves of vaporous chalk behind. As more and more got close to the pair, Rainbow and Wildcard joined forelimbs. With combined muscle, they spun to dodge the attacks, then leaned on each other in mid-plunge so that they could exchange wild swipes at their pursuing foe. As a result, savagely punched and bucked creatures flew backwards, knocking into more boulders as the rocks collided with greater and greater frequency, leading to a chain reaction that reduced the upper half of the floating array to wild shrapnel and calcified mist.
Nevertheless, the stampede didn't let up. For every floating boulder, there were twice as many creatures hopping and scrambling across the structures with gravity-defying agility. Rainbow and Wildcard resorted to mimicking their pursuers' tricks, and soon they were interrupting their own flight to gallop briskly across the tops and undersides of numerous rocks. At one point or another, they scampered parallel to one another with their backs facing. One creature took a swipe at Rainbow, and Wildcard swung his staff directly upwards to block it at the last second. As a second creature lunged at Wildcard's bloody backside, Rainbow kicked off her rock, flipped, jump kicked across a third creature, then landed on the second attacker before it could land on the Desperado's figure. Rejoined, the two outjumped a group plunge and kicked the boulder behind them upon exiting. The rock in question flew off course—carrying four shrieking creatures into a boulder behind it. The resulting explosion sent a dozen pale bodies falling violently towards the crater's belly below.
Rainbow Dash and Wildcard outflew the explosion. As they descended a further level, an enormous boulder to their right rotated around, revealing multiple creatures lying in ambush. They shrieked and coiled their muscles to leap at the two's flank. Right at that precise moment, a metal glaive flew in, decapitated two of the beasts, and bounced back into Ariel's nimble grip. Rainbow and Wildcard had inevitably reunited with the rest of the Herald. Cruising clumsily behind the two, Flynn steered the craft in and around enormous boulders while Ariel flung the glaive again with a warrior's scream. More black blood and pale sinew lit the air. A vicious wave of attackers came from the left flank, but Kepler was ready for them with a pair of smoking jars being tossed at full strength. Some of the creatures dodged, but most ate flames as the alchemic concoction burst in a brilliant fireball. The explosion rocked the wagon—which performed an actual barrel roll as it threaded the fresh debris sailing outward from Kepler's ordinance.
Defying gravity—a gift of the chaos metal itself—the Heraldites kept upright in the wagon the entire time. Even as it was still spinning through the sea of boulders, Logan and Seraphimus capitalized on the moment by swinging their blades at the disoriented beasts. Bodies flew past them from Kepler's explosion, only to be sliced into bloody slivers. Seraphimus shouted, pointing her rapier at a fresh wave of monsters charging up the rear of the twirling wagon. Logan saw them and—just as they were passing under the belly of a large boulder—he stuck the blade of his axe up and sliiiiiiiiiced into the dusty surface of the giant rocks. This spilled a thick cloud of dust into the pursuing creatures, choking and blinding the whole lot of them. Some of them nevertheless pounced on through, shrieking for all their ravenous strength. Ariel rolled across the twirling wagon and stopped with a heavy toss of her glaive. She lost the Emeraldinian weapon entirely this time, not that she minded; it skewered a beast down the center and knocked two more off balance so that they were reduced to bloody paste against the adjacent rocks. The pouncing attackers leftover were finished swiftly by Seraphimus and her rapier.
At long last, Flynn gained control of the twirling pitch of the wagon. He channeled a fresh wave of mana into his horn, evening the vessel with the curved horizon. It was then that he realized that he was seeing the horizon—unimpeded by floating rocks.
"A clearing!" Flynn hollered, sweating profusely. He looked wildly over his shoulder. "We're almost in the clear!"
Seraphimus cooly nodded ahead of the craft. "Tell that to your leader."
"Huh?" Logan did a double-take.
"Rainbow!" Ariel hollered, wincing.
The Herald could see that Rainbow's flight was wavering. Her wings went slack and her muscles rippled. The pendant around her neck dimmed noticeably.
"The chaos metal!" Kepler exclaimed, grasping tight to his spectacles as the vehicle rattled. "She is farr too close to the wagon!"
"Slow us down, baldy!" Logan spat.
"I can't!" Flynn stammered. "Not at this rate!"
"Dammit—"
"Do we wanna clear this shit or don't we?!" Flynn snapped. More banshee shrieks sounded off behind them, growing closer. "As long as we're in this mess, they can still catch up!"
"Wildcard!" Ariel shouted, leaning over the front edge of the wagon. "Grab her and dive! Wait for us to pass—!"
Wildcard was already flying into Rainbow Dash. She was shivering—eyes rolling back—by the time he made contact. Whump! Hugging her tight, the Desperado coiled his wings and dropped like an anvil. Together, they both plunged towards the arid stone beyond the Curveside edge of the crater.
"Can you at least give us some lift, Flynn?!" Logan exclaimed.
"Yes I can—!" Flynn shouted: "Y'hnyrr H'jnor!"
The front half of the wagon tilted upwards as its runes fluctuated. The craft flew past the last of the boulders while simultaneously—
Swooooooooooosh!
—gliding just over the bodies of Wildcard and Rainbow Dash.
"Rnnnghhh... gnngh..." Rainbow clenched her teeth as two bloody spots formed along her forehead.
Wildcard panted and panted, holding Rainbow tight as the two sailed towards the dead earth below. Bodies were leaping—flailing—behind them, falling by the weight of their teeth and claws. Wildcard outflew the meat, spreading his wings at the last second. Two bodies streaked past him. Four. Then a fifth—
"Hressssh!"
—the falling beast tackled his backside hard.
"!!!" Wildcard jolted forward. The weight of the monster threw him sideways into a feathery corkscrew. Physics ripped Rainbow Dash from the Desperado's grip, and soon the two of them were falling in opposite directions.
"Mmmfnnngh!" Rainbow's eyes stopped changing color in time to grasp the horrible situation at hoof. She squeaked inwardly as the world flew up at her. She flapped her wings at the last second, but all it managed to do was make her topple over. So she spun with the motion, hoping against hope that by the time she struck the ground she would be incorporating enough momentum to safely—
WHUMP!