//------------------------------//
// The Best Web Site 
// Story: Ofolrodi 
// by Imploding Colon 
//------------------------------//

"Oh you've got to be kidding me!!!" Ariel could be heard shouting beneath the salvos of banshee shrieks accompanying the descending charge above.

Rainbow grunted as she was helped up to her hooves by Big Show's strong fetlock.  "Grnngh..."  She shook all over like a puppy, loosening the last drops of troll blood.  "Somepony please tell Ariel this is no joke."

"Pony the buck up, sweetcheeks!" Logan grunted.  He trotted over and dislodged his axe from the limp, crumpled beast to the side.  "We're officially stuck between a rock and a smellier place!  Baldy—"

"Working on it!"  Flynn snarled, his horn strobing wildly.  He growled aside.  "Kepler—"

"Thymmk!!!" the wyvern shouted into the wagon.

Vrmmmmmmmmm!  The runic stones lit up in a bright circle.  Within seconds, the chaos metal was activated.

Wildcard swung his claws savagely through the air.

"What he said!" Ariel's voice cracked as she armed herself with a sword and helmet.  "Go go go go go—!"

Between the leaping trolls and the vibrating metal strips, the air was ripe with chaos.  Ripples echoed in Rainbow's direction, and Discord's merry figure materialized in full force, hovering over her with a dumb grin.

"So, allow me to guess..."  He aimed a "camera" at the ancient spires all around and took several noisy "photographs."  "...you just waltzed into a big creepy city built in ancient times and just happened to accidentally awake some big lurking evil, hmmm?"

Rainbow gnashed her teeth as she galloped Curveside, looking all around for a solid route amongst the myriad of platforms.  "Now's not the time, Discord."

He shrugged and took more flash-photography.  "When is it ever the time?  It's always 'Discord!  I'm busy fighting a giant earthworm!'  Or 'Discord!  I gotta sit off to the side and brood while the rest of my corporeal companions gorge themselves on fresh meat!'"

"Flynn!  Kepler!"  Rainbow hollered over her shoulder.  Her teeth shook from the combined cacophony of banshee shrieks and violin music.  The air shook as if with a massive heartbeat.  "This way!" she motioned at the distant glowing wagon.  "I think if we take the left bridge at the nearest fork, it'll take us closer to the city's edge—!"

Discord floated straight down, blocking Rainbow's line of sight with his suspicious smirk.  "If I didn't know better, Sparky, I'd say you were throwing yourself into dumb, chaotic situations just to shake me off."

"Grnnngh...!"  Rainbow craned her neck left and right to look past his ghostly figure.  "Wildcard!  Ariel!  I need you two to take wing and help me look for a safe escape route—!"

"OooOooOooooh!"  After the latest camera flash, Discord sported black pigtails and a bright pink schoolgirl outfit.  "Austraeoh-chaaaaan!  Why must you be such a tease?!  Stupid buckup!"  He-she blinked, and then Discord looked aside at his-her right hand.  "The correct cultural term is 'buckup,' right?"

His right limb transformed into a felt blue pegasus hand-puppet sporting a ninja headband.  "Rrrrrrgh!  I am blinded by pain and rage!  Rrrrrgh—my destiny!!!"

"Logan—!"  Rainbow turned, brow furrowed.

An angry hand puppet flew into her face, wielding shuriken.  "BELIEVE IT!"

Growling, Rainbow punched a phasing hoof through it, then spat:  "Big Show!  Get to the wagon and kill anything that moves to you!"

"Awesome!"  The platform shook as Logan galloped back to the chaos-driven vehicle.  "Something I'm good at!"

Ariel and Wildcard streaked overhead.  The female pegasus' shouting voice barely made a dent in the rising bedlam.  "Rainbow!  It looks like some of the trolls made it ahead of us somehow!"

Wildcard gestured at a distance.  "Surrounded!"

"Crud..."  Rainbow gnashed her teeth.  She flew to a stop at a platform's edge and reluctantly looked down into the urban miasma.  She saw countless darting, skittering shadows—accompanied by the rising tumult of scratching violin strings.  "Below us... above us... before and behind..."

Swoooosh!  Seraphimus flew to a hovering stop beside her.  "We must choose a direction and fight through it."

"Sera—"

The griffin's eyes narrowed.  "We do not need to stay here until one group is the victor.  We are obviously outnumbered, so we must pick a direction to escape through and force a path thereabouts."

Discord descended until he hovered parallel to her.  "Hrmmmm..."  He scratched his chin, examining the former Commander.  "...so you listen to the dark and brooding type, huh?  Here..."  He waved a talon over his face, and suddenly he was sporting pale white feathers and extra-dark eyeshadow around charcoal brown pupils.  "Am I doing it right?"

Rainbow's eyes rolled.  "Don't have friggin' time for this..."

Seraphimus raised an eyecrest.  "Your group is in peril.  What is there to afford?"

"She thinks she's got a tortured heart?!?"  Discord reached deep into his chicken breast and pulled out an inky-black thing that pulsed and oozed through his paw pads. "My past is darker and blacker!  Rrrrrrgh!  Dead puppies and the inevitable heat death of the universe!!!"

"Shut up... just..."  Rainbow clenched her skull amidst the shrieks and strings and chaos.  "...I c-can't deal."

Seraphimus took a calm breath.  "Whoever... whatever it is that's talking to you right now, push them away.  Focus on the situation at hoof, or you will never get through it."

Rainbow glanced up at her, eyes flickered red-on-yellow.  "Does this mean you believe...?"

Seraphimus' eyes reflected the flickering.  Nevertheless, she breathed slowly and said, "I believe... that our best avenue of escape..."  She turned and pointed behind her.  "...is across that suspended street.  There are less structures looming above it, which will give us a respite from the trolls descending from overhead."

Discord floated past her, lying in a rickety coffin.  "It's not 'across the street,' it's 'down the alley,' you sheepherded pleb—"

Swooosh!  Rainbow Dash flew through the gothic dragonequus in a windy burst.  "Works for me!"  She cupped her fetlocks around her muzzle and hollered to the group.  "Everypony!"  She motioned wildly with her forelimb.  "To that bridge over there!  Quick as greased lightning!"

"Verrily, Rrainbow One!" Kepler shouted from a distance.  He and Flynn steered the wagon towards the spot in question.  "Prreparre yourrselves, brrotherrs!  Ourr enemies apprroach—"

"Hresssssssssh!"  A pair of trolls landed on the platform behind them and bounded after the wagon.

"Approach this!"  Logan hollered, swinging his axe low from where he sat on the back of the vehicle.  THUNK!  His blade embedded into the torso of one troll.  Still-swinging, he smacked the other chaotic creature with the twitching body of its companion.  Both corpses went sailing off the platform's edge and into the source of the rising violin strings.  "Hey!  Rainbow!"  Logan shouted over his shoulder as more and more trolls landed on the platform behind them.  "What should we do if our new friends arrive from below?!"

"Swing harder!" Rainbow shouted.  She flew high, joining Ariel and Wildcard's glide.  "Dudes!  You see a way out of here?!"

"Bad news, Rainbow," Ariel said, gulping.  "We're barely one-third of the way through the city where we're currently at."

"Fudge!" Rainbow hissed.

"Come on, Sparky..."  Discord levitated upwards to join them.  "You've flown east long enough. Surely by now you would have found an 'M' rating—"

Rainbow ignored him.  "What if we double-backed and returned to the mountain?"

"And end up swimming neck-deep in trolls?!"  Ariel grimaced.  "The only reason we're here to begin with is because we needed a way to escape them!"

Wildcard swiftly gestured something.

Rainbow blinked, sweating.  "I... I-I can't... My head's not f-fast enough!  What did he say?"

"We can't just fly out of here, Wildcard!" Ariel retorted.  "Without those supplies, we're as good as dead!  Dead and naked!"

"If we have to, then so be it," Rainbow grunted.

"But—"

"I'm not going to lose the Herald just to defend a chaos wagon full of junk!" Rainbow's voice cracked.

"HRESSSSSSSHAAA!"

"Look out!" Ariel shrieked as three bodies pounced from above.

With a mute grunt, Wildcard stabbed his way through the group.  His bo-staff punctured one troll's neck, and then the Desperado twirled his weapon to deflect the other two.  Soon, a dozen more trolls were leaping down from a looming balcony above.  The griffin spun Bard's weapon in a fan, fending them off as the three were forced to descend.

They soon joined the wagon on the long metallic bridge that Seraphimus had pointed out earlier.  Flynn grinded the carriage to a halt as his natural eye reflected a line of chaotic beasts stampeding inward from Curveside.  Seraphimus was already flying towards the far end of the bridge, and soon Kepler brazenly joined her, armed with a netted bag full of alchemic concoctions.

"Harrk!"  Kepler's spectacles glinted as he juggled the first of many glass grenades.  "We must simply clearr a path towarrds ourr objective, orr else we will be overrrun."

"We are already overrun, wyvern," Seraphimus said in a steely tone.  She squared off with the shrieking, taunting trolls, sizing them up.  "Allow me to do the path-clearing."

"Yourr zeal is rrefrreshing, Commanderr, albeit belated."

"Rainbow!" Ariel spontaneously yelped.

"Ah jeez..."  Flynn winced from the top of the wagon...

...because Rainbow had gone limp.  Less than ten seconds after landing in the middle of the bridge, her body succumbed to the proximity of the wagon's chaos metals.  She sprawled across the metal, her forehead bleeding in two places as her eyes rolled back yellow and red.

"Grnkkkt... just... j-just..."  Rainbow hissed, trying to keep sane and conscious.  "...k-keep a d-distance..."

Ariel landed and held her tight.  "Damn it!"  She frowned at Flynn.  "Can't you cut the juice on that shit—?"

"We'll be dead in the water if I do!" Flynn exclaimed, looking about nervously.  "Just punch through the Curveside onslaught and we'll move this thing outta here—"

"Too late!" Logan hollered, raising his axe to fend off a full wave of pale flesh rushing from Edgeside.  "Balls out!  Time to shout!"

"Wyvern, prepare your first volley," Seraphimus snarled, then flew full-force at the smaller band of trolls guarding the Curveside half of the bridge.  Swoooosh!

"Wait!" Kepler yelped, glasses rattling.  "I might injurre you in the prrocess—"

"Yaaaaaaaaaaugh!"  Seraphimus nevertheless threw herself at the enemy.  She was less than ten feet away from clashing with their fanged maws when—

Schiiiiiing!  Wildcard came up from behind with Bard's staff.  He threw his former Commander into a vice grip with the weapon and flew backwards with the surly griffin in tow.

"Rrrnnngh!"  Seraphimus thrashed and snarled.  "Verlaxion's sleet, Jordan!  Do you want your caravan to make a safe exit or—?"

He whistled shrilly.  With a metal talon, he pointed at the platform's edge.

Seraphimus' charcoal eyes reflected several narrow shadows darting up from below.  Sw-Sw-Sw-Swiiiiish!  They threaded towards the sky with alarming speed.  The starlight above was interrupted by spindly limbs, and then they twinkled just like normal again—as if nothing had ever crossed their paths.

The melody in the wind shifted, like violins mutating to dark cellos.

Logan and Flynn blinked.  The stallions looked over their shoulders as even more shadows shot skyward between them and the trolls.

"Uhhhh... Baldy...?"  Logan exhaled out the side of his muzzle.  "...what just—?"

Thw-Thw-Thw-Thwissssh!  Four silken spheres shot out of the urbanscape from opposite angles, contacting the corners of the wagon with astronomically pinpoint accuracy.  Th-Th-Th-Thunk!  The undercarriage was instantly covered in thick silk and slime.  The lunar runes dimmed.  The chaos metals overloaded.  And—CLUNK!—the hovercraft fell hard to the bridge like an enormous brick.

"Auugh!"  Flynn jolted, his horn fluctuating.  "Sh-shit!"

Within seconds, Discord fizzled out of view.  "Awwwwwww..."  He pouted, fang glinting.  "...and I wanted to watch, too—"

As soon as he vanished, Twilight Sparkle and the others gasped into existence.

"Rainbow Dash!"

"Dashie!"

"Sugarcube!"

"Guhhhh—!"  Rainbow sucked breath into her lungs.  She lay against Ariel's embrace, squinting past twin trails of blood.  "Luna p-poop...!"

"Rainbow..."  Fluttershy hovered closer with an anxious expression.  "Uhm... they're here."

Rainbow bit her lip.  Cello strings rocked the air, converging into a deep bass vibration.  Her ruby eyes darted all around.

Wildcard's and Seraphimus' eyes were locked on the dormant wagon as they struggled with one another.  So—when the first Curveside trolls leapt—they could only flinch.

"HRESSSSSSSSSSSSS—"  Three trolls stopped dead in mid-air, their limbs frozen in place.  They shook and quivered and thrashed, eerily resembling insects drowning on the surface of a pond.

Identically—on the Edgeside of the bridge—several trolls had mirrored their brothers.  Now—at the apex of their pounce—they flailed in the air, shaking and quivering from unseen restraints.

"What..."  Ariel blinked.

"...the Hell?" Logan finished.

Twirling about, Kepler narrowed his eyes.  He reached into his bandolier and produced a flare, striking it.  Fwoomb!  He held the bright torch up towards the Curveside of the bridge.

Slowly—from bottom to top—the wyvern's light revealed dozens of hair-thin silk strands holding the leaping trolls at bay.  The strings came from an unseen source below and attached to something just as unseen high above.  As Kepler observed this, his light glinted off hairy abdomens and marble-black eyes that suddenly materialized in the background.  Bulbous bodies descended from the starlight, spread needle-like legs, and clasped them all around the dumbstruck trolls.  The chaos beasts scarcely let-loose muffled shrieks before—Thwoooooooosh!—one by one they were airlifted into the nebulous urbanscape overhead.

This abduction happened swiftly—on all sides—increasing at an alarming rate.  Logan and Flynn spun to see that the Edgeside trolls were thinning rapidly.  A few of them caught wise to what was happening, and they scampered off with panicked shrieks—only to be yanked off by hundreds of hairy legs and claws from the edges of the Herald's peripheral vision.

The entire ambush happened nightmarishly quick.  Within the naked span of fifteen seconds, the trolls had all vanished, leaving only the unfortunate few stuck to the webbing.  There was an awkward moment of stillness—during which the bass rumbling from below peaked with clicking percussion.  Then—

"Hresssssssh!"

"Hreshaaaa-aaa-aaa!"

"Hressssssssssssh!"

Hundreds upon hundreds of trolls simultaneously fell—flailing—down into the depths of the city from above.  It was a veritable precipitation of pallid flesh and glinting claws.  Rainbow and the others watched—muzzles agape—as the wave of creatures entered their cone of vision then vanished from beyond view.  At some point, their screaming ceased.  Nopony could hear the expected thuds of their bodies striking the ground, and that was the most frightening thing.

Until what happened next.

The bass rumbling ceased.  In its place, the melodic violin strings returned.  All across the length of the bridge—both Alpha and Omega sides—hooked legs clasped, the size of elephant trunks and covered with coarse hairs.  The music undulated—practically yodeling—as hundreds of bulbous bodies lifted into view, with rows of pearl-black eyes reflecting the tiny figures of the Herald stranded on the platform.

"Uhhhhhhhhhm..."  Rarity sweated nervously, clinging to Fluttershy.

"Quick!"  Pinkie Pie flailed.  "Somepony find a dancing pig!"