//------------------------------// // XLVI - I'd Like to Buy a Bowel // Story: A Beginner's Guide to Heroism // by LoyalLiar //------------------------------// XLVI I'd Like to Buy a Bowel Gale swung Procellarum at Wintershimmer; his waxy horn flared and caught the blade in pale golden magic before she could even make contact.  As the shape of a natural horn melted away to form a candlecorn’s signature candle, the form of the old wizard rolled over onto his hooves. Celestia’s horn lit; unlike Gale’s attack, the goddess’ magic took a firm hold on Wintershimmer’s attention.  I don’t know what spell she had meant to weave, only that Wintershimmer’s magic flared on his own and that a moment later Celestia abandoned her spell. “I’m surprised, Lady Celestia.”  Wintershimmer somehow fit a sneer into his voice.  “All the stories I’ve heard of you tell me you are slow to act.  Assassination never seemed to fit into the character you’ve created for yourself.” Wintershimmer paced forward, actually brushing against me as he walked to the center of the room. “In the interest of following the old rules, is there anything the three of you wish to discuss?  Or shall we abandon pleasantries and set about killing one another?” I took a deep breath, readied myself for him to abandon this proposed parley mid-sentence.  “Where’s Silhouette?” “What motivation could I possibly have to answer that?” Wintershimmer snarled in frustration.  “If the best questions you have are to ask me ‘how’ I—” The attack came suddenly; Wintershimmer left not even time for a breath. It was Celestia’s horn that flared when I felt the now-familiar chill on the back of my neck, and her defiant wing that spread out, separating us from Wintershimmer in some manner of barrier. “So be it, Wintershimmer,” the goddess announced. “Are we safe?” Gale asked.  “From the whole ‘soul stealing’ thing?” Celestia nodded without turning away from Wintershimmer.  “Though I would not let your guard down.” The dead archmage extended a hoof to his left, almost mirroring Celestia’s earlier motion with her wing, and his horn flared up.  Out of the pile of assorted artifacts in the room, the spine and skull of a dragon flew into his grip. And then it began. Celestia lowered her head and violently thrust her horn in Wintershimmer’s direction.  A beam of true fire—pegasus magic—erupted from the appendage. Wintershimmer’s horn lit, reaching into the pile of treasures around the room, and he casually threw a sizeable rug in front of the burst.  Celestia’s flame pierced the fabric as if it weren’t there, but behind it, Wintershimmer was simply gone. “Behind you!” Gale shouted, and I saw her hurl three of her stunning bolts as I turned.  All three collided with Wintershimmer, who made not even a trivial effort to block them; against his molten wax body, the magic simply had no effect.  Procellarum, however, he once again stopped. This time, the blade spun in place, keeping all Gale’s momentum as it thrusted toward Celestia. In a show of speed that seemed impossible for a pony of her size, Celestia stepped toward the point of the oncoming blade, and at the last second, tilted her head to avoid it.  Before Wintershimmer could redirect the attack, her teeth wrapped around the handle, and the powerful muscles of her neck were more than enough to overpower Wintershimmer’s telekinetic grip. Wintershimmer saw no need to give her a chance to reply.  He lowered his staff toward us, and the empty eyes of the draconic skull erupted in purple light.  The toothy maw below them opened. “Miasma’s Toxin!” I shouted, focusing my magic into my horn and throwing up an airtight hemispherical shield around us.  It barely came fast enough; no sooner had the blue dome rumbled into being then the dead dragon exhaled a cloud of purple smoke.  My guard held strong against it; I felt just how strong I had made it as my shoulders and neck suddenly protested at the effort of holding up my body.  I was out a spell already. “It causes necrosis.” “What?” Gale asked, grabbing her sword from Celestia. “It rots flesh.” Celestia explained.  “Clearly it doesn’t do the same to wax.”  She then took a deep breath of the clean air within my shield and spread her wings.  Before my eyes, the mists of Wintershimmer’s staff began to gather together into a tight ball of brilliant purple. Wintershimmer was hardly one to wait, even if he stood almost perfectly still.  His horn ignited, and a solid arc of his gold magic began tracing its way up the side of my shield. Wanting for a better idea of how to disrupt his magic, I reached out with my magic past the shield and found the largest object I could see that I hoped wouldn’t flare my horn.  The book was heavier than I’d expected, and I grunted as I lifted it into the air. Celestia’s magic crushed the orb of purple gas, and she turned her attention toward Wintershimmer just as his spell began cracking open my shield.  The magic buckled and crumbled like porcelain under the slow but constant pressure, and Celestia waited for the gap to be wide enough to cast through. I hurled my book into the side of Wintershimmer’s head.  The wax around his left eye deformed into a misshapen glob, doing no permanent or meaningful damage, but briefly taking his vision.  In the opening, I lowered my shoulder and slammed into the part of the shield Wintershimmer had already weakened. “Celestia, now!” Another piercing lance of flame tore from Celestia’s horn, and I caught a glimpse of what looked like purple fire leaking from the corners of her eyes as the attack struck Wintershimmer’s body.  Wax melted, and after just a second of prolonged exposure, the shape of a pony collapsed into a puddle a mere leg’s reach from my muzzle. I got halfway into ‘that was an illusion’ before Wintershimmer once more took the offensive.  “That was a—” isn’t a terribly useful warning, but it served as enough of a warning for Gale to toss up a wall of magic as a shield and for Celestia’s wings to flap once, hurling her well clear of the scything golden blade of magic that swept across the room, casually bisecting a full suit of steel armor against the far wall. “How did he do that?” Gale asked. Celestia hurled a beam of her own magic toward the old wizard, and with the unnatural agility that comes from a lack of a real skeleton, Wintershimmer leapt clear of the attack.  His horn fired off another slashing beam at Celestia, who stopped it with a shield. “He cast two spells at once,” I explained, running up to Gale’s side and taking cover behind her ward.  The wide beam of Wintershimmer’s attack danced across it, sending cracks through the shield “You can always tell whether or not a wizard is doing magic, but if you have the focus to do two spells at once, you can use an obvious one to hide a more subtle one.” “Great.  So how do we beat that?” I responded not with a helpful answer, but by tackling Gale.  A moment later, her rose magic wall shattered from another of Wintershimmer’s bladelike attacks, its golden arc passing just over my back.  “If I knew that I would have already done it.” “Focus,” Celestia hissed at us, not angrily but out of a clear focus on Wintershimmer.  When one of her brutal beams of raw arcane power failed to touch the elusive wax archmage, the immortal spread her wings and hurled out a literal wall of fire that put Cyclone to shame. Wintershimmer hurled up a golden shield of his own, and then winced as the fire left it buckling and rippling.  Even through his shield, the heat was affecting him; rivulets of wax dribbled down the crests of his bony cheeks.  The candle that was his horn flared and flashed, and I could see fatigue begin to pull at the waxy body, even through the flames and the shield that separated us. “I give you this chance to surrender, Wintershimmer,” Celestia shouted over the conflagration.  “I will give you Tartarus instead of destroying you.” Wintershimmer shook his head.  “Why would I surrender? I’m not even here.  You’ll only destroy a disposable body. Did Coil not explain?”  And then he turned to me. “Do you even understand, colt?” “I don’t—”  My words were cut off when Wintershimmer’s candle suddenly flared up, and Celestia screamed in agony and collapsed to the floor.  Whatever he had cast, it cost the waxy mage his shield, though that seemed not to matter. Celestia’s flames faded as quickly as the shield. “What did you do to her?” Gale shouted, running to the goddess’ side.  Celestia writhed on the ground, clutching her brow with both her wings.  “Morty, what did he do?” Wintershimmer brought a waxen hoof to his brow, pulling away a few sticky strands of wax and flicking them dismissively to the floor.  Then he readied his staff again. “It’s an illusion,” I shouted, sliding over to Celestia’s side.  “I’ve seen it before. Celestia, shake it off. The pain isn’t real.” “I can’t—” Celestia replied.  “Luna, help!” “She’s not here. “I am certain you will all see her soon.”  The mouth of Wintershimmer’s staff opened once again.  “Goodbye, Coil.” Groaning in frustration more than any other emotion, I closed my eyes and lit my horn, pushing back the surge of fatigue long enough at least to focus on the world that didn’t exist. Wintershimmer’s illusion was cunning in its simplicity and in its tenacity; my horn perceived it as a tiny serpent wrapped around Celestia’s mind, biting fiercely into her sense of pain without going through the usual channels of touch or sight or sound.  Celestia’s magic flailed against the spell-creature, but every time she pulled on it the fangs dug further into her and left more searing venom flowing through her mind. With the impending threat of Miasma’s Toxin corroding the flesh from our bones, I didn’t have time for the subtlety of coaxing out the fangs.  I grabbed onto the middle of the snake with my magic and ripped it in half. Away from the mental image of the spell, my physical ears heard the alicorn scream in even greater pain, but I didn’t have time to express sympathy. With another yank, the already disintegrating spell lost its final hold on Celestia’s mind, and my own focus slipped back to my physical body just quickly enough to stop me losing my balance completely. “Shield! Now!” I shouted, and the words seemed to steal the air from my lungs. Celestia’s magic could not have come quickly enough.  The purple gas again swept across the floor of the room toward us, and it was only with a split second to spare that glimmering magic protected us from harm in a cramped dome of magic. “That’s two…” I muttered to Celestia as I fell to my knees beside her.  “Gale, if that happens again, stun her.” “Are you insane?  Can’t we just put up something to stop… whatever the fuck that was?  Like you did with the soul spell?” “I can only only keep up so many wards and still fight.”  Celestia panted from some combination of exertion and the trauma she felt.  “Stunning will work. I’m too big for you to knock unconscious, but a stunning spell will spare me enough of the pain to help myself.  I didn’t realize he was that gifted an illusionist.” She shook her head, and rose fully to her hooves again and glared at Wintershimmer.  He wings spread. The lethal purple gas began to once more gathered into a ball. Wintershimmer didn’t seem inclined to let the attack end as simply.  I heard the pop of teleportation when he vanished, though it caught me completely by surprise when the candlecorn appeared inside Celestia’s shield, well within hoof’s reach. What happened next was too chaotic to perfectly describe, but I shall do my best.  I lashed out with a hoof for his face, and Gale launched the same attack with Procellarum.  Once more he demonstrated the unnatural agility of a body unrestricted by bones, with his waxy form literally parting to let the magical blade pass through him completely.  A shoulder of his formal jacket would have fallen to the floor had I not caught it with my punch, which ineffectually sunk into his waxy body. Rather than counter either of us, Wintershimmer’s focus lay on Celestia.  Instead than wielding gas, he thrust his staff forward like a spear toward Celestia’s side.  A dragonic maw bit into her side, and blood dripped down the shining white mare’s flesh. In reply, gasping as she moved, Celestia braced herself with her forelegs and bucked with both her hind limbs.  The force was like nothing I had ever seen; with a crack of thunder that left my ears ringing and put Tempest’s punches to shame, she bucked Wintershimmer’s head clean off. Of course, on a body of wax, such a wound is really only a delay.  In the time that it took Wintershimmer to recover his shape, Celestia moved quickly.  Her good wing finished the work of disposing of the gas outside our cramped shield. Her horn pulled the draconic skull from her side, and then turned the weapon on its owner. When the spine suddenly turned of its own accord, redirecting toward Gale’s neck, we all gasped.  A mere second from tearing out her throat, Celestia’s eyes began to leak those same ominous purple flames, and the staff winked out of existence.  A moment later, it clattered to the floor outside the shield. “It’s alive?”  I shouted. “All this time, you had an undead dragon?” Wintershimmer gave a wet, gloopy laugh.  It was made all the more disturbing by the fact that, though his head had reformed, he still lacked what anypony could honestly call a face.  Then he vanished in another pop of teleportation. My eyes turned to the room outside our shield, but I saw nothing amidst the clutter. “Damn it!  Get out here!” Gale shouted over the fading ringing in my ears. I gritted my teeth.  “Shouting at him isn’t going to help.” “Apparently, fucking stabbing him isn’t either!  What good are the magic swords again, smartass?” “Focus,” Celestia chided at us, before moaning in obvious pain and adjusting her bloodied wing.  “Gale, I need your help now. I need you to hold my wing open.” “Won’t that hurt?” “A lot less than rotting to death,” Celestia responded through gritted teeth.  “The fire is working. That’s why he’s doing everything he can to interrupt me from using my pegasus magic, and why he went for my wing instead of taking the chance that maybe he could catch my throat and kill me.” “Alright…”  Gale swallowed heavily.  “Well… sorry?” And then her horn lit up, and the hiss of pain through Celestia’s clenched teeth conveyed a far worse agony.  Slowly, white feathers extended. The dome around us dropped, and Celestia’s wings burst into flame, though they unleashed no wall of fire into the room.  “Morty, ideas?” the goddess asked. I swallowed hard.  “Umm… like I mentioned, the room is magically sealed, so he hasn’t teleported out through the walls.  He’s in here somewhere… I wish I’d brought Angel. I can toss up a shield with my last spell for Gale and I; I’ll pass out, but if you just bake the entire room, that might work.” “I don’t think it’s a good idea to lose you.  You know his tricks better than I do. Let’s start walking around the room, slowly.” Almost as soon as Celestia finished the thought, I heard a distinct pop of teleportation, and my head flicked toward Gale.  Wintershimmer had appeared behind her, his wax horn flaming and pointed toward her. It happened in an instant.  Celestia pumped her good wing, but the force wasn’t enough to put Wintershimmer in her reach.  With no better option, her horn flared, and she fired a spell toward the wax mage. He actually dared to smile, only adding to his skull-like appearance, and released the spell he’d been preparing: trivial telekinesis.  Gale gasped in shock as she was thrown into the path of Celestia’s oncoming beam of pure power. I dove for Gale.  I know I didn’t have time to think, because the smart move would have been to hurl up a shield and let myself pass out.  But instead I hurled Gale out of the way, and put myself in harms way in her stead. The blast pierced through my barrel, just in front of my hip, and the first thing I lost was my sense of up.  It was sudden. One moment I was leaping into the air to catch Gale, then next I was falling toward what my mind told me was the ceiling.  And I just lay there, at Wintershimmer’s hooves, because I found that I couldn’t force myself to stand up. “Morty…” somepony shouted.  There were more words. I’m certain of that.  But hearing seemed to go with the first dribble of blood that emptied out of the hole burned clear through my body, slowly at first but then with a sudden urgency until the world was silent.  I could still tell Gale was speaking, though my ears insisted I wasn’t hearing anything. Was it magic? Or just my mind refusing to accept unconsciousness before I bled to death? The filly is your weakness, goddess.  Perhaps two inches in front of my eyes, the spinal tip of Wintershimmer’s staff pressed against the floor.  Still, I should thank you for fulfilling my prophecy. I promised him that the Equestrians would kill him, just as they did Solemn Vow. Just go.  Let me tend to him, and I won’t follow you.  Somehow, my mind told me Celestia was speaking. Maybe the lack of profanity? Above me, Wintershimmer’s jaw twisted into a grim smile.  I realized he was laughing some time later. That’s the best deal you have to offer?  No, I don’t think so. I want you. Me? Your body.  Or whatever magic gives you immortality and the power over the sun.  Give me that and you can have the colt. Fuck you, bastard!  She’s going to kill you, and— Silence, filly!  Wintershimmer snapped the lower end of his staff through the air with magical force, and a moment later, I saw Gale’s head come into my field of view as it collided with the floor, bleeding from her brow.  I can see you’re gifted at fighting monsters, Celestia, but you shouldn’t have tried to fight a wizard. Gale pushed herself away from Wintershimmer, and the wizard seemed utterly unconcerned with stopping her.  His focus remained on Celestia. You are a monster, Wintershimmer. In a few moments, I’ll be a god.  Or as close to one as you have ever been.  So tell me: will you surrender to save Coil and the filly, or will I kill all three of you and take what I want from your corpse? Color started to join my sense of sound in leaving the world; I knew it was there, but my eyes insisted everything I saw was gray.  Somewhere in the murk and grit of it, Gale was pulling herself along the floor toward the far wall. I wondered what for; the door out was behind me somewhere. How do I know you’ll keep your end? You don’t.  And I’m not interested in taking the effort to convince you.  At this stage, I’m only hoping to save myself the annoyance of finishing our duel.  I will attack the Princess first. You’re too attached or too sentimental to let that happen. I’ve already shown you can’t save her and still protect yourself.  Without Coil, there’s nopony to save you when I exploit that opening. I tried to say something clever, but a pithy retort requires an intact diaphragm as well as a considerable volume of blood, both of which I was presently missing.  Instead, what I let out was a pathetic sort of painful groan. Nevertheless, I lit my horn. Wintershimmer looked down at me, and must have seen a pathetic dying colt whose horn couldn’t even flare up into a final moment of defiance.  The blue magic on my head flickered and died and rose again, wispy and weak. He didn’t see Gale gesturing toward me with a hoof. I grit my teeth and focused as hard as I could on the simplest spell a unicorn ever learns.  Telekinesis grabbed the handle of Procellarum and I somehow managed to limply fling it at Wintershimmer without my horn flaring.  The wax mage avoided it much as he had before, splitting in half and allowing the blade to fly clear through him. That was your last gasp, Coil?  A disappointing, if accurate, summary of your quality as a pupil. Yeah!  He’s a fucking hero!  Gale lifted Procellarum with her magic, and as Wintershimmer turned, brought it down on a padlock of solid lodestone.  Scraps of molten metal fell from the cutting edge of the magic blade, and a moment later, the cage to which the lock was attached swung open. My ears insist that I didn’t hear the cry of the phoenix, but it must have been magnificent.  Then the room was drenched in gray flames, with only Celestia’s magic shielding me from a fiery death. I hadn’t heard her approach, but I felt the heat of her breath on my ear as she whispered.  You’re going to be okay. It seemed to take forever, but in a moment, it was over.  The fire ended, Celestia’s shield gave way, and darkness pressed at the edges of my vision.  Gale rushed to my side, and Wintershimmer’s phoenix perched on Celestia’s shoulder, watching me below.  The candlecorn was gone; only a puddle of wax on the floor remained. Gale, stun him. Why? Regrowing that much of his chest is going to be painful.  I’d rather spare him that. Gale nodded and lit her horn.  But before she launched the magic into me, she leaned down and placed her lips against mine.  My lips told me I didn’t feel a thing, but I slipped into oblivion happy.