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// CH. 20 Uncountable Spider Legs 
// Story: The Last Changeling Queen 
// by Atuhor Name 
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Uncountable Spider Legs



Naudia was astonished by the number of corrupted changelings and nightmares brought to bear against them. She didn’t have much time to be astonished, of course; there were just too many of them, and her concentration had to be split between the monsters around her and trying to protect Twilight.

Twilight’s horn was shining like a beacon to ward off the horrible abominations that came at them from all directions, but the drain on her was increasing. The strain on her magic was mostly caused by the other ancillary spells she was having to use to keep her horn from literally catching fire, as flashlight spells weren’t designed to work on this kind of level or duration.

Still, they were holding them back. Nightmares and changelings both were falling in large numbers, dwarfed only by the astonishing number of those that remained. Their only salvation was that there was only so much room to attack Naudia and Twilight from.

Above them and all around them, circling them as if they were inside a cave made of flesh, was a horde of abominations. Nightmares, cloaked in shadows with shapes Naudia didn’t want to think about, corrupted changelings as an amorphous goo that stacked to form a dome, blotting out the red moon and the dead sun. These, however, were just the ones keeping them where they were at. Periodically, something huge would burst through and attack Naudia and Twilight, be it a truly vile nightmare or an unthinkable creature made up of multiple corrupted changelings.

They were getting more and more frequent by the second.

“I can’t keep this up forever, Naudia!” Twilight shouted above the din. Naudia could only just hear her over the sounds of an angry army all around them.

“You should be activating that failsafe right about now!” Naudia shouted back.

“It’s charging up, should be done in less than a minute.” At that moment, Twilight was eternally grateful that it charged up automatically, or else they would not have had enough time to activate it in the first place. Even with her level of magic, they would not have the time against this army.

However, stressful as it was, they were confident they could hold out for plenty of time, possibly even minutes after the device was ready.

“I hope the rest of them can see this and know to get back underground.” Naudia commented as a giant pony-looking corrupted changeling burned away before her.

“We have to depend on them to do their part and adapt, same as they have to trust us to use the failsafe.” Twilight shouted back. “If one of them comes bursting in here, that’s how we’ll know things are going wrong.”

Then, a horrible monster fell down from the roof above, cracking the pavement with its hugeness. Even the walls of corrupted changelings cringed back. It resembled some horrible cross between a tarantula, a house centipede, and some sort of grub. Hundreds of long hairy legs stuck out of either side of its bulbous, almost gelatinous, body. It had two dead black eyes and mandibles large enough to bite a pony in half, and just below them it had two angry-looking spikes that dripped something noxious, on the end of two stubby legs.

Twilight and Naudia could do nothing but stare at this new horror, this nameless aberration that stood head and shoulders above all others. It didn’t even roar, or chitter, or anything before it charged at them.

Twilight’s light spell didn’t do anything to it other than burn it, and with all those layers of grub fat that wasn’t going to do much. This monster was clearly to the point where it would have survived contact with direct sunlight. It was a self-sustaining nightmare.

Twilight was bowled over and kicked simultaneously in the head and the barrel by a rock hard chitinous leg. She was sent flying to the side, dazed. Fortunately, her changeling paper armor prevented too much damage. Naudia had a better time, buzzing her wings away from the monster, but that only drew its attention like a cat, and she had to fly even farther away leading the monster around like a snake.

“Naudia, get to me! The failsafe is ready!” Twilight shouted, having recovered a bit.

However, there was the aberration in-between them.

Twilight managed to get its attention by using a very concentrated blast of light to break one of its legs and it turned to face her, mandibles chittering in anger. Naudia was only just able to snatch Twilight out of the way before it barreled through and smashed into the wall of corrupted changelings; distending the wall, but not breaking through.

As soon as Twilight was snatched up by Naudia, she activated the failsafe: the teleport spell charging up to a bright crescendo before…

nothing.

“What?” Twilight was too shocked for words.

“Twilight, Look!”

All around them, the wall of corrupted changelings was covered in glowing lines of power that shone bright, but were already fading.

“A teleport trap! I’ve never heard of a temporary one executed on this kind of scale before. But that does give me an idea!” Twilight, despite the situation, was awed by this feat of magic.

“We’ve still got to get out of here, and also deal with that thing.”

“I’ve got an idea. If we can hurt it enough we can set it on fire! That should solve at least some of our problems.”

The aberration was looking at them with unfriendly eyes, its pea brain working hard to figure out what to do next against its flying target. Then it bent its titanic body upwards and lifted its front half far into the air. A quick glance from Naudia was enough to tell her that there wasn’t anywhere in this cage that it couldn’t reach.

“Perfect! We need to start breaking its back legs. I need you to start casting light spells at them. aim for the joints of the ones holding it up in front!” Twilight said, breaking free from Naudia’s grip and landing on the ground with a gallop.

“TWILIGHT!” Naudia shouted as one of the monster’s enormous legs bore down on her.

But Twilight was no longer there.

Frantically Naudia scanned for what she hoped wasn’t a flattened purple unicorn. This also seemed to mystify the aberration just as much.

Naudia found Twilight  on the other side of the monster, charging up a spell and aiming at the frontmost leg still on the ground. There was a flash and it broke, sending the aberration to the ground again, Naudia noticed that even neighboring legs were weakened by that flash, and took her chance while the monster was screeching in pain.

With terrible momentum, Naudia activated her chitin and slammed into one of the legs that, weakened by Twilight’s magic, also broke, with a disgusting crunchy SNAP.

The beast screeched again, this time in anger, and turned to face them, still plenty able to move with its multitude of spare hairy spider legs, even with three of them flaccid and broken.

Back in the air again, Twilight and Naudia re-evaluated their plan, with the breathing room they had with the aberration less able to stand up.

“I need you to throw me at it.” Twilight said.

“What?! No way.”

“I need to cast that same spell inside of it, you need to time it so that it goes off inside and I have enough time to cast a teleport spell out of there.” Twilight stated.

“Twilight, that’s insane!”

“We aren’t getting anywhere just breaking its legs, it’s got too many of them. We need to attack it where it’s vulnerable. It’s either that or inside its mouth somehow, and that is NOT an option.”

Reluctantly Naudia agreed. So on the next pass over the monster, Twilight started charging up her horn and Naudia made a dive at it. Twilight kept her eyes closed the entire time, trusting Naudia to do her part. Just as the shine of Twilight’s horn reached its peak, Naudia let go and Twilight flew like a missile straight into the side of the aberration, vanishing completely inside.

Seconds passed and nothing happened.

Then the monster screeched in pain, as the hole Twilight left stabbing into it erupted in a great gout of flame. Naudia could only stare, dumbstruck in horror from the ground, as the monster began to catch fire in many different places at once. Writhing and screeching, the monster actually rolled onto its back to try and put out the fires; however, that wasn’t enough. It did not take long for the legs to fold up to its belly and lay still.

“Come on! We need to roll it against the wall of corrupted changelings and break out that way!” said a freshly teleported Twilight beside her.

Naudia almost hugged her, but she was covered in soot and… unspeakable bug fluids. And she SMELLED. Despite her apparent calm demeanor, Naudia could feel Twilight’s emotions. Suffice it to say that Twilight on the outside was calm and collected, but the Twilight on the inside was a mess of pinprick eyes, unruly hair and grating teeth.

Reluctantly, Naudia charged her magic up to push the burning bug. Even from this distance, it didn’t smell right. It was burning quite fast now, and the smoke was starting to gather high up in the “cage.” Naudia noted that the corrupted changelings didn’t like it any more than the nightmares did.

“When we get through, just start running. We can’t let them cage us in like this. I’ll have the failsafe spell charging again, and we just need to hold out until then.” Twilight instructed.

With that, the horrible monster began to roll, pushed along by their magic, gaining speed and momentum. With an earth-shaking CRASH, the flaming aberration crashed into the corrupted changelings that made up the wall, and that was enough to break through.

Naudia, wings tired and love reserves running lower than she liked, grabbed Twilight and burst through the flames and out into the city. Even though her skin crawled touching Twilight, she held on with all her might.

Only to be blasted out of the sky moments after bursting out into the city.

On the ground, disoriented and confused, part of her paper armor scraped off by the impact, she made out a figure that buzzed down on insectile wings and landed before her.

“Daughter dearest, that wasn’t very nice.”

Naudia tried to focus on the figure in front of her, the instigator of this entire conflict and the leader of all the corrupted changelings. She didn’t need to, she knew who it was, but she had to confirm, to see for herself.

“You’ve put our invasion plan back by a least a week. It’s not easy to put together something like that, you know.”

“Chrysalis.” There standing before her, broken horn, patches of black fur showing through, and with a crescent moon cutie mark, was Nightmare Chrysalis. “How could you turn your back on us?”

“Oooh, I should be asking the same of you, Naudia.”