Chapter 6: To Run No More
“Do you really think we’re in that much trouble?”
The kitchen in the Golden Oaks library was fairly large given the treehouse’s size, but Destroyah still had to keep her head pretty low to avoid scraping the ceiling. She and Ditzy Doo were alone in the kitchen while Ditzy fixed up some dinner. The door was closed but Destroyah’s keen ears could still hear the two fillies in the main library room, the pair organizing some of the library shelves that Ditzy had asked them to.
Destroyah didn’t look at Ditzy after the pegasus had asked her question, instead giving a thoughtful glance out the kitchen window, where beyond the rooftops of Ponyville she could see the patchy edge of Whitetail Woods. Ditzy had written and sent the letter updating Xenilla and Duchess Chrysalis on the situation already, but it would take Ponyville's mail service until tomorrow to get it to Canterlot, and Destroyah couldn’t help feeling a growing sense of agitation. Her instincts were warning her, but she had no clear threat yet to act against. A part of her considered she might be acting paranoid, but she'd learned to trust her gut when it told her danger was inbound.
“Best case scenario I’m being pointlessly worried over nothing and we give the locals a few days to calm down before bringing Jeog back into town. Worst case, however? We might have a fight on our hands sooner rather than later. It's only a matter of time before word about Jeog being here leaks out from a gossiping traveler or merchant. If Ki Seong catches any of those rumors I don't think it'd take her long to come straight here.”
“Hooves. Fight on our hooves,” Ditzy said, waggling one of her limbs at Destroyah, who rolled her eyes.
“Right, I keep forgetting. Still think its weird you guys use the term ‘everypony’ when you have creatures living in Equestria that aren't ponies. Colloquialisms are weird. Point is, if this Ki Seong is out there, still hunting Jeog, we’re on a ticking timer before she inevitably makes her way to Ponyville. When that happens I want to be ready for it.”
She paused, considering, “It might even be better to convince Jeog to relocate to somewhere less populated. Somewhere we can effectively hide her.”
“I’m not certain that would be for the best,” Ditzy replied, not looking away from her cooking, “The connection she shares with Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon is not something I’d wish to place undue strain on by separating them for an extended period. I imagine Jeog may become far less cooperative without the fillies being nearby.”
“You’re not wrong,” Destroyah admitted, eyes roving over the quiet little homes of the town outside the window, “At the same time I have to look at the safety of the ponies living here and consider the repercussions of a brawl with a vengeance driven demon hunter occurring in town square.”
Ditzy solemnly nodded as she stirred the ladle in a pot of soup, “A wise train of thought, and one I share. That being said, I believe it would be a mistake to send Jeog away. As dangerous as this unfortunate kirin may be, I believe Jeog herself could be even more dangerous if left in this state of mental and emotional confusion. Her species seems disinclined towards moral conscience, and this is a rare opportunity to teach one of her kind a sense of... harmony. As a Bearer for an Element of Harmony I don’t think I can ignore a chance to help another creature, especially one so confused and in need of guidance.”
Destroyah couldn’t help but chuckle warmly, grinning down at the small, bookish pegasus. “I just can’t get over how optimistic you ponies are. Sure, you get the herd mentality sometimes. I’ve seen ponies panic and get gripped by fear a lot since I got here, but despite all that there’s an real tough and endlessly hopeful core to you little candy-colored miracles. Makes me kind of glad me and Xenilla got zapped here. Especially the cheif.”
“Sir Xenilla? Why do you say that?”
A heavy look crossed Destoryah’s face, eyes no longer seeing the kitchen, “I just think he needed this place. Don’t get me wrong, he’s an incredibly capable leader and has never once wavered in this duty he’s saddled himself with to protect the Earth. But the war we were fighting over there, I think it was slowly wearing him down. Breaking down the good parts of him. Forcing him to make harder compromises and choices, while every setback or failure would eat away at him just a bit more. I was starting to get worried. Still am, but since we got here I’ve been seeing... something blossoming anew in him. Not sure if its just the way this world is, or the way you ponies are, or if I’m just imagining it all, but I think being here is helping smooth over some of the rough edges in the guy. That’s all. Suppose its not crazy the same might be true for Jeog, or even this Ki Seong.”
“Equestria is the place for second chances,” Ditzy Doo said, then blinked, as if surprised, “Huh, I usually don’t quote the Duchess like that.”
“That one of her turns of phrase?”
“Yes, it's not our Duchess’ way to give up on anypony, or anyone for that matter.”
It was a good thought, although Destroyah knew from her own experiences that there were some monsters out there that couldn’t be so easily reasoned with. She was all for second chances, but wasn’t so certain it was quite that simple when it came to the likes of Battra Lea or Godzilla. Somewhere out there in the world those two were likely plotting their next move against Equestria, and who knew how many innocent lives would be put in danger? Or lost? They’d come so damn close to ending the King of the Monsters after Raiga’s tussle with him outside Manehattan, but the bastard had managed to get away. Destroyah somehow doubted the harmonizing nature, whatever one wanted to call it, of Equestria was having much effect on him. Probably less on Battra.
Much as I’m glad Xen being here is doing him some good, I wish it hadn’t come with the price of bringing Earth’s worst monsters over here with us. But me and Xen will do what we’ve always done, and face those beasts every time they rear their ugly heads. And with Raiga to back us up we just might be able to keep this world from getting razed by a mutated psychopathic dinosaur and the nihilistic moth from hell.
Her musings were interrupted as her eyes caught sight of a small, light green form galloping full tilt down the street towards the library. Usually seeing a filly running around Ponyville’s streets was pretty normal, but Destroyah could see the distress in the filly’s gait, and a moment later saw the terror on the little pony’s face as well. A cold feeling hit Destroyah’s gut.
“Ditzy, look outside,” was all Destroyah said, and her tone alone immediately got Ditzy Doo’s full attention and upon spotting the filly rapidly approaching the library her own expression went still. The pair of them didn’t even need to exchange looks, they merely went straight for the door out into the main library.
Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon both gave the adults odd looks as Destroyah and Ditzy Doo reached the library’s entrance and flung the doors open, a mere second before Gentle Leaf came galloping in. The filly had twigs and leaves stuck in her mane, and her face was covered in a sheen of sweat, her tiny chest heaving in exhausted and frightened gasps.
“Gentle Leaf? What’s wrong?” Diamond Tiara asked and she and Silver Spoon joined the two adults around the panting Gentle Leaf, who seemed to be gasping for air and trying to move her lips to form words.
Destroyah leaned down, a gentle look on her face as she said, “Take it easy there, kid. Just breathe. You’re safe now.”
Ditzy Doo was examining Gentle Leaf from tail to snout, eyes smooth and unblinking behind her glasses, “She’s uninjured, save for a few scraps from branches. She must have run without stopping. Her pupils are dilated. Something’s given her a serious fright.”
“It’s okay,” Destroyah said in a soothing voice, one of her massive hooves extending to give the softest of comforting touches to Gentle Leaf’s withers, “Take a minute to catch your breath and then tell us what happened.”
Those warning instincts were revving up into overdrive inside Destroyah, but she let none of it show on her face, maintaining the calming mask for Gentle Leaf’s sake. She didn’t actually know the filly much at all, although she’d eaten at the filly’s parent’s restaurant once while she’d still been in Ponyville. She’d just assumed Gentle Leaf was the quiet, shy type, so she was rather surprised when Diamond Tiara quickly said.
“Destroyah, Gentle Leaf... she’s mute. She can’t tell us what’s scared her. Gentle Leaf, could you write it out for us?”
Gentle Leaf shook her head, her whole body shaking as the filly seemed to draw in as much breath as she could and then with her eyes clenched shut with concentration and force of will she spoke in a quiet voice, “They... got her!”
Everypony blinked, some in shock at hearing Gentle Leaf speak, Destroyah in grim realization of what the filly was likely talking about. Ditzy Doo, ever one to confirm things, frowned and asked, “Who? Please, if you can, elaborate.”
It took Gentle Leaf another minute, having to force each word out with a voice clearly unused to ever uttering a sound, but she described what she’d seen. Spotting Jeog heading home into the Whitetail Woods. The shadows she’d seen following after the fox-like creature. When Gentle Leaf got to the part where she had to describe the crazed looking kirin and the bizarre monstrous looking Changeling that had beaten Jeog into the ground and dragged her into the cabin, Gentle Leaf barely got the words out past her shaking and tears and curled up into a ball on the floor.
“I’m sorry... I tried to run here as fast as... as I could....”
Destroyah put a comforting hoof on Gentle Leaf’s head, “You did exactly the right thing. You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. Now stay here with Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. I’m going to go... take care of things.”
Ditzy Doo looked up at Destroyah with an even stare, “I should go with you-”
“No,” Destroyah said with a shake of her head, “This isn’t a fight you need to be in Ditzy. One of that pair is Battra, and that’s bad news on every level. It's far too dangerous.”
Ditzy Doo, despite being a third Destroyah’s size, somehow managed to make herself look as if she was staring at Destroyah at head level, “I’m not as fragile as I look, Lady Destroyah. And since Battra is present it’s all the more important I join you. If she has obtained the means to assume her true, kaiju form then you’ll need me present with my Element to aid you in assuming your own. Am I wrong?”
Destroyah grimaced, letting out a soft grunt of defeat, “No, you’re not wrong. Again. Guess you’re coming after all. Let’s just really hope Battra doesn’t have any tricks that’ll let her go big. She’s bad enough at our current size.”
“Wait, what about us?” Diamond Tiara asked, pointing at her and Silver Spoon. Destroyah shot the fillies a stern look.
“You’re staying here and looking after Gentle Leaf,” she held up a hoof before Diamond Tiara could say another word, “No ‘buts’. You fillies stay here.”
She softened her tone and expression just slightly as she looked both Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon in the eyes, “Don’t worry. I’ll bring her back, safe and sound.”
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If pain could be a river, then Jeog was drowning in it, swept away by a constant current of agony that flowed through every inch of her. Her throat was raw and hoarse from screaming, despite her best attempts at silence. The pain was simply too much, even keeping her thoughts straight was a challenge.
She was bound to the ceiling of her cabin by a simple length of rope that was wrapped around a ceiling beam and then tied around the wrists of her front paws, leaving her dangling just slightly. Her size was enough that her hind legs still touched the ground, but not enough to really stand in a stable manner. The rope wouldn’t be much of a problem, but it was the iron, the cursed, horrific iron piercing her flesh that weakened and immobilized her. That, and the potent binding talisman that Ki Seong had placed on Jeog’s body, the long rectangles of parchment blazing with magical symbols.
At first Jeog wasn’t certain why Ki Seong hadn’t simply killed her already. The kirin had beaten Jeog, unleashed her fury for the first few minutes, but that had soon subsided into more deliberate, if no less painful action. On some basic level Jeog understood Ki Seong’s need. Pain called to pain, and this had been a long time coming. Yet the kirin’s actions seemed focused beyond just causing Jeog to suffer. Certainly the long, iron needles that Ki Seong inserted into Jeog at various places were beyond searing in the pain they caused, but they weren’t causing much actual damage. In fact each needle seemed to be placed shallowly, and if Jeog could just get the iron out of her, then she’d be able to move again. Furthermore, even with her pain fogged mind, she realized the needles were being jabbed into her flesh not at random, but with purpose. This purpose became gradually more clear as Ki Seong used the edge of her spear to cut a red line across her own fetlock, and used the oozing blood to draw lines connecting the needles, forming a pattern on Jeog’s body. Some kind of mystic symbol that Jeog didn’t recognize beyond realizing it was akin to others she'd seen hunters like Ki Seong use, albeit somehow more jagged and... wrong looking.
As she hung there, panting for breath, no longer able to do more than whimper from the pain, the tall and darkly shadowed form of the creature that’d assisted Ki Seong emerged into what little light came in from the cabin windows. Jeog had no idea what manner of creature this female was, only that she was tall, bore a resemblance between a nightmare insectoid and a pony, and she held gleaming eyes that held no warmth even as they radiated amusement.
“Why, I do think she’s done screaming. I’m rather impressed with how much pain you could inflict in a short span of time, Ki Seong. You’ve got quite the gift for this. It’s a shame Cadance isn’t here. She’d have enjoyed such an exquisite show.”
Ki Seong, who was to Jeog’s left and slightly behind the battered gumiho, spoke in a low snarl, “I’m not doing this to amuse you. The ritual symbol is complete. The gumiho’s flow of chi is being redirected to the proper channels, and blocked where needed so that it all pools in the correct location. We can begin harvesting the beads.”
“Oh good. I don’t suppose you’d allow me the honor of making the first cut?” Battra asked ina sickly sweet tone, and Ki Seong’s eyes fumed with barely contained hatred, to which Battra only smiled and held up a hoof, “Fine then, have at it. I swear, I need to teach you to enjoy these moments. You should be smiling, dear. After all, this is what you’ve been waiting for all this time. Savor it.”
“I am not a monster like you...” Ki Seong said, although there was a quiet, doubtful note running through its otherwise resolved tone. Battra’s smile just deepened.
“All in due time,” Battra whispered, and Jeog wasn’t sure Ki Seong actually heard it as the kirin went and gripped Jeog with a strong force of telekinetic magic.
She could feel the magic yanking her nine tails outward, spreading them out like a fan. For a moment Jeog couldn’t fathom what Ki Seong was doing, but then she saw that long, heavy bladed spear float up behind her and felt the burning iron edge of it touch the base of her left most tail. Ki Seong use her magic to force Jeog’s head to turn, craning the gumiho’s neck so it was uncomfortably bent but able now to see Ki Seong’s spear poised over one of Jeog’s tails. Ki Seong’s golden eyes stabbed into Jeog, her voice a silken rasp.
“I want you to think of him, beast. You took Cho Yon from me. I want your last thoughts to be of him, and regretting you ever decided to poison his life with your presence.”
With those words Ki Seong’s magic intensified. The blood connecting the needles of iron glowed with sanguine light, tinting the cabin crimson. A sensation of utter queasiness and cold sickness spread through Jeog, starting at the center of the blood symbol and then extending through her until it focused into a gangrenous feeling at the base of her nine tails.
Then Ki Seong struck with her spear, and the feeling that exploded through Jeog couldn’t even be properly described as pain. As one of her tails was cut from her and was held aloft in Ki Seong’s golden magical aura, Jeog could only open her mouth in a silent cry that went past agony. She could feel the portion of her that’d just been cut away, not just physically, but the raw and ragged tear in the fabric of her being.
A gumiho’s tails were the core of what they were. Jeog’s magic, her power, perhaps her very ‘soul’ stemmed from those tails. She hung there, silently twitching, eyes wide and unseeing as her body and mind tried and failed to comprehend the loss they’d just experienced.
Meanwhile Ki Seong held the severed, blue tinted gray tail aloft and examined it. There was no satisfaction in her eyes. In fact the kirin looked more tired and frustrated than triumphant as she scoffed under her breath and approached Battra, who also gave the tail a curious look.
“So does it change on its own or do we have to-?” Battra began, but paused as the severed tail started to become immolated in azure foxfire. The blue flames danced and flickered like the convulsions of a dying animal, then swirled together into a tight ball. In moments the flames crystallized, taking solid form into a shining blue orb no larger than an eyeball. Its color gleamed with an ever shifting spectrum of infinite blues.
“It’s beautiful...” Ki Seong whispered, then shook herself, face grim once more as she held the bead towards Battra with her magic, “As agreed, one fox-bead is yours. The rest are mine.”
“Ah, so honorable of you to give me the first one,” Battra said as she took the bead with her own magic and held it up to her eye for a closer look, “Not afraid I’ll abandon you now that I have what I want?”
Ki Seong met Battra’s gaze with her own flat, unmoved stare, “Now that our business is concluded I couldn’t care less what you decide to do. Stay and watch, go and never bother me again. It makes no difference to me. Perhaps next time we meet I’ll simply kill you.”
“That would be an interesting misadventure, and one I might find briefly amusing. You do have potential, young Ki Seong. Perhaps I’ll stay and watch a time longer, just in case,” Battra said with a thick, tar-like laugh. She floated the fox-bead to her hoof and then, as if the air had become water, the bead vanished into a ripple in the air. “I’ll keep this tucked away for now. You said all one has to do is swallow it?”
Ki Seong shrugged, “That is what the legends claim. Whomever swallows a gumiho’s fox-bead gains forbidden knowledge of the spiritual realms. Feel free to test it out yourself.”
“I think I’ll wait until I’ve had time to properly examine it in detail,” Battra said, turning her piercing yellow on orange eyes towards Jeog, “Shall we finish up here, then?”
Ki Seong sighed, glancing back at Jeog with no less hatred, but with a weight of exhaustion seeming to bend her shoulders as she turned, spear at the read. “Yes... I... I just want this over with.”
Jeog had recovered enough of her senses by now that she was more fully aware of her surroundings, and her sharp ears picked up a noise fast approaching. The sound of vast, leathery wings cutting the air. Whether they heard it, or sensed the approach in some other manner, both Battra and Ki Seong instantly turned towards the door just a scant moment before the wooden barrier shattered into dozens of kindling pieces from the impact of a massive, dark red form barreling through it and landing with enough impact to shade the entire cabin.
Destroyah took the scene in with a single glance, the smokey glow of raw micro-oxygen already burning between the fangs of her maw.
“Step away from the fox,” the hulking mare said in an iron clad voice.
Ki Seong’s eyes were wide for a split second, merely taking in Destroyah’s massive form up close, but soon turned into golden pits of spite as she bore her spear at the kaiju.
“Nothing will keep me from finishing this beast off. I have no qualms adding another monster to the list of those slain by this spear.”
“Always a pleasure to see you, Destroyah,” said Battra, taking a smooth and slinking step forward, the horn of her spiked orange crown lighting up with power that was not Equestrian magic, but fueled by the raw destructive mana of the kaiju within. “How’s Xenilla? Is the poor dear still grieving over that... oh, what was her name? Titanosomething?”
Destroyah’s eyes flashed dangerously, the only warning she gave before unleashing a powerful torrent of micro-oxygen in a writhing stream towards Battra. Clearly anticipating this Battra didn’t hesitate a single instant in lowering her head and sending out a blinding and chaotically twisting beam of deadly purple energy.
For a second the cabin was lit up by a flash of clashing powers, micro-oxygen born of one of mankind’s greatest scientific achievements smashing against the purest manifestation of Earth’s primal forces of destruction. It was a clash that could last only for a moment before the two potent beams canceled each other out in a unconstrained wave of force that blew out the cabin windows and sent arcs of energy tearing into the walls, scorching through the wood and ripping several chunks clean out of the wall. Dust was kicked up in a brief smoke cloud, obscuring Battra and Ki Seong from view for an instant, but only as long as it took for Ki Seong herself to come barreling out of the dust cloud at full speed.
The kirin rushed in low, almost too fast for Destroyah to track with her eyes. Ki Seong’s grip on her spear changed in an eyeblink from her magical aura to both her front hooves as she used her hind legs to surge upwards while swinging the spear up in an uppercutting arc that would have cleaved right into Destroyah’s chest if the kaiju hadn’t immediately stepped back and blocked the top of the spear’s shaft with her left hoof.
Destroyah hadn’t been underestimating Ki Seong. From Jeog’s story she knew this mare was expertly trained for combat. She’d seen the way Ki Seong had fought during the flashback at Cho Yon’s temple. However she wasn’t prepared for just how much stronger Ki Seong was compared to the kirin’s deceptively delicate frame.
With the consumed power of Yogoe blood fueling her muscles Ki Seong’s spear strike shoved Destroyah back half a dozen yards, even after being blocked. Destoryah could feel the momentary numbness in her hoof from the strength of the blow but had no time to contemplate the source of Ki Seong’s unnatural strength as the kirin exploded from the cabin entrance like a spinning, steel twister.
For a few seconds defense was all Destroyah focused on as Ki Seong’s whirling assault pressed like a bladed hurricane. Ki Seong switched from hefty slashes to instant thrusts in the blink of an eye, trying to keep Destroyah off balance. However despite her size Destroyah was no slow behemoth, and she was the survivor of countless battles. Instinct blended with hard earned experience as Destroyah put up a precise and rugged defense against Ki Seong’s attacks, using both her hooves and her large but tough wings to parry and redirect the spear seeking to slash and pierce her.
Even so she was giving ground, slowly being forced back away from the cabin, step by step.
Battra slid from the cabin’s broken doorway like an oily shadow, still all vicious smiles and pleasant tone, “I shouldn’t be surprised you’d come for the little fox, Destroyah. You and Xenilla do so love to pick up strays who are even more lost and helpless than you and he are.”
“Are you going to fight?” Destroyah asked while swiftly ducking a high blow from Ki Seong’s flashing spear, “Or just run your mouth, you insufferable hag?”
Battra hissed out a sigh while narrowing her eyes to molten slits, “When this is over, the thing I’ll miss most about you is your wit.”
With that the Earth’s Vengeance, the destructive incarnation of the Mothra species created solely to wipe the Earth clean of life, wasted no more words and threw herself into the fray alongside Ki Seong. She used her flaring black and orange wings to skim along the ground and tried to body slam into Destroyah.
Destroyah managed to leap aside from the attack, but at that moment Ki Seong took advantage of the distraction. Her mane shivered to unnatural life as it flew outward and wrapped its wire hard tendrils around one of Destroyah’s hind legs. The move took Serizawa’s Legacy completely off guard, for in her rushed and panicked state Gentle Leaf had forgotten to say anything about Ki Seong’s unusual powers when hastily telling of what she'd seen.
With remarkable force the hair was able to yank Destroyah off her hooves, tumbling the huge mare onto her side. Battra, still skimming the ground, turned around fast and with her horned crown flashing, discharged a crackling blast of mana.
The mana stream slammed into Destroyah, causing dirt to erupt from the ground and sparks to burst in Destroyah’s eyes as the energy painfully writhed over her body. However she was nothing if not a titan of resilience, even in pony form, and with a smirk at Ki Seong, who’s mane was still wrapped around her hind leg, Destoryah kicked with that leg with all the force she could muster.
Ki Seong was sent flying towards the treeline, her mane letting go of Destroyah in the process. She would have slammed right into one of the trees, but with expert control of her body and spear she planted the spear in the ground and whipped herself around, altering her momentum to skid along the ground and come running right back at Destroyah, who’d gotten her hooves under her.
With careful aim Destoryah belched forth a blast of micro-oxygen at the kirin, aiming for the ground at Ki Seong’s hooves more than at the kirin herself. The blast sent up a huge geyser of dirt, temporarily blinding Ki Seong. Destoryah rushed to take advantage, but was halted by Battra’s diving form, who this time managed to plow into Destoryah hooves first and between the Changeling Queen’s own impressive mass and her momentum combined was able to tackle Destroyah into, then through, a nearby tree.
Destroyah rolled with the bow, battered but not really injured much yet. Battra’s beams were painful, yes, and getting slammed through a tree wasn’t good for her health either, but Destroyah retained much of her kaiju form’s toughness even in her present body, so it’d take awhile for Battra and Ki Seong to wear her down.
The moment her body stopped rolling across the ground Destroyah sprang to her hooves, and quickly looked to where the tree had fallen, snapping multiple branches on the way down. Battra was still airborne, glaring death down at Destroyah. First figuratively, and then literally as Battra’s eyes sparked with malevolent mana the same way her horn did. Destroyah bolted into a gallop as eye beams of violet lightning flared from Battra’s eyes. The ground was annihilated in a path following Destroyah’s headlong run, but she managed to stay ahead of the beams and reached the fallen tree. She rolled over it, then with deft hooves kicked it up, then bucked back with both hind legs. Kaiju born might sent the tree flying at Battra at high speed, and while her eye beams blew the tree into splinters, chunks of the wood battered her and momentarily blinded her.
This distracted Battra just long enough for Destroyah to aim and fire a beam of micro-oxygen that hit Battra’ square in the chest. Sparks flew and Battra dropped from the sky, but Destroyah knew such a blow wouldn’t be enough to do more than stun Battra for a few moments. She’d have to hit Battra a lot harder to put the bug down for good, and she charged up another micro-oxygen blast to start doing exactly that when the air shimmered beside her.
Destroyah barely dodged in time, and even then only to make the slash from Ki Seong’s spear create a shallow cut on her side rather than the deep gash it would have otherwise opened. Ki Seong’s body flickered into view after another moment of a strange, rippling distortion in the air, and as she appeared her mane was writhing around her like a nest of snakes.
“Got a lot of tricks up your sleeve, don’t you?” Destroyah said, cracking her neck, “Just what did you sacrifice to get them?”
Ki Seong, for just a moment, had a shamed look on her face, but it was swiftly replaced by rage as she advanced on Destroyah, spear poised to strike in her magical aura.
“I’ve sacrificed more than you’ll ever understand in order to gain the powers I needed to hunt the Jeog down and end it’s blighted existence. I’m not going to let another monster like you stand in my way, let alone judge me!”
Rather than strike with her spear, as Destroyah had been expecting and was prepared for, the dark cloak around Ki Seong billowed under the kirin’s magic, and suddenly an ornate crossbow covered in gearwork appeared and took aim. Destoryah muttered a curse under her breath and threw herself to the side as a bolt, covered in flames, was fired and nearly struck her head. Instead it missed her by a scant inch and exploded a tree’s trunk clean in half several dozen paces away.
Meanwhile Battra had recovered, and with a deep throated snarl that didn’t sound like it could come from an equine’s throat she fired a spearing beam of mana from her horn, catching Destroyah in the back.
Destroyah bit back a cry of pain and whirled around so that she could keep both Battra and Ki Seong in view. She sidestepped another crossbow bolt, but the magical explosion of flame from its detonation still buffeted her and made it that much harder to avoid Battra’s next blast, which grazed Destroyah’s right wing.
Dealing with any one of these two would have been a challenge, but taking on both at the same time was making it so that Destroyah couldn’t focus on one without exposing herself to the other’s attacks. It was all she could do to keep them from overwhelming her, let alone mount a counterattack. But that was fine, because she’d succeeded in her intent, which had been to draw these two away from the cabin.
Now all she had to do was keep their attention long enough for Ditzy Doo to free Jeog.
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Despite the combination of torture, exhaustion, iron weakening her and making each motion a fresh batch of agony, and the loss of one of her tails leaving her feeling weaker than ever, Jeog was still frantically struggling to move. If she could just get her teeth around the rope binding her she could... could... do what? Fall to the ground in a useless heap? Ki Seong’s binding talisman still covered her, and the iron needles boring into her would still making walking, let alone fighting, impossible.
Fighting? The thought felt like a stray flame across a dark void, but Jeog snatched at it. She had so many reasons to want to flee, not the least of which was that her instincts were pounding away in pure panic within her to just get away from that which was threatening her very existence. What could be more important than preserving her own life?
But Destroyah...!
The thought grew from a spec of flame to something brighter and hotter, and it was like a pull in her chest, a yearning that made no sense to any rational part of Jeog’s instincts, but it was there now, real and clear in its intent. She wanted to go help Destroyah. Why? Jeog knew how deadly Ki Seong was. Running made so much more sense. But there the feeling was, yanking on her insides, fueling her struggle to bend her head just enough to try and get the rope within her jaws.
But she couldn’t reach it. Frustration tore a growl from her throat. Perhaps if she could use her foxfire? But that too was impossible. The moment she tried to summon her innate magic the talisman binding her flared to golden life and stifled her power like wet blankets over a smoldering fire. Jeog was helpless, and could do nothing but hang there and listen to the sounds of battle outside the cabin, a part of her she didn’t understand hoping for Destroyah to win, not because Jeog was as good as dead if Destroyah didn’t, but because the idea of Destroyah sharing Jeog’s fate pained her.
Destoryah had come to help her. She’d been trying to teach Jeog things. The same as Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon...
The same as Cho Yon.
“Arrrgh...stupid... rope... grrrr...”
Again she tried to bend enough to get her teeth around the rope. So close, but just a hairsbreadth short! Then, to Jeog’s shock, a familiar cool and collected voice spoke right next to her.
“Allow me.”
Ditzy Doo, hovering up on her wings, used a small carving knife taken from one of the cabin’s many junk piles and severed the rope, spilling Jeog down to the floor in a heap. Ditzy Doo landed quickly, bending over the gumiho while discarding the knife. Barely restrained concern and horror painted the mare’s face behind her glasses as Ditzy Doo took in the sight of Jeog and what had been done to the gumiho.
“Such barbarousness... I can hardly fathom it. Jeog, can you move?”
Breathing heavily, Jeog managed to gasp, “Iron... get it out...”
Ditzy Doo gulped as she looked at the iron needles protruding from Jeog. There were large ones piercing Jeog’s shoulder, arms, and legs, while a set of much smaller needles formed an odd pattern, connected by a trail of dry blood, to form a symbol that Ditzy imagined was part of some magic ritual. Jeog’s body didn’t so much bleed as it appeared to spill small wisps of blue flame from around the edges of the needles. Gingerly Ditzy reached down to the first of the larger iron needles, and gave Jeog a worried, confirming look first. At the gumiho’s slight nod, Ditzy took a deep breath and yanked the needle out.
Jeog whimpered, but said in a rough breath, “All of them... quickly.”
Ditzy worked faster, wincing each time she heard a cry of pain from Jeog, but she didn’t stop until the last needle clattered to the cabin floor. With that done Jeog took in a deep breath and said in a stronger voice, “Talisman next. Rip them off. Hurry!”
That took less time than the needles as Ditzy moved in a gray blur, teeth snatching off the paper talisman one after another. With each removed seal Jeog felt portions of her body growing warmer and less numb. Her magic was still weakened and her body aching in pain, but strength was flowing back into her limbs in a tingling rush and she was finally able to stand on her paws. She shook, trembled, swayed, but then steadied herself with a fierce shake of her head and a hot growl.
Ditzy looked at her, then winced at the sound of harsh explosions from outside. “You have to go, while Destroyah is still holding them off.”
For a split second the notion tempted her. She was hurt. Diminished. The spot where one of her tails had been severed didn’t merely cause pain, but felt like a hollow space that reached deep into her center. Every instinct told her to flee. To get as far away from this place as possible. If she stayed, she risked a very strong likelihood of death, especially in her weakened state.
But the pull was still there. She didn’t understand it, but it was there. Instinct said she had to run. Something else, something just out of of her reach to name, but still undeniably now a part of her, said she wanted to go help Destroyah.
“No,” she said, “I’m not running.”
She darted out of the cabin, but remembered that Ki Seong had placed warding talisman all around it so she pulled up short. She could see through the trees in the distance the flash of flames and otherworldly beams exploding and streaking back and forth, along with the occasional glimpse of Destroyah, Ki Seong, and Battra all throwing themselves into pitched battle with one another. Jeog couldn’t see much detail from this distance, but she smelled blood in the air. More than one of the combatants were injured.
Ditzy Doo flew out of the cabin and landed beside Jeog, her own eyes calmly controlled behind her glasses, “Are you certain of this? You’re in poor condition to fight, and we came to save you, not watch you get killed.”
An impatient snarl tore itself from Jeog’s lips, her remaining eight tails lashing behind her, “If I run this will never end. The Hunter... Ki Seong will not stop. Not as long as I live. So either I die fighting... or...”
Or what? Was there only one other way this ended? Jeog didn’t know. But she did know that she was done running. She was not going to flee from Ki Seong, or the past they shared, any longer. One way or another it all ended here, today, in this forest.
“Please,” she said, bouncing her paw off the warding shield the talisman created, “I have to finish this.”
Ditzy hesitated for only a moment before taking a heavy breath and reached down to remove the nearest talisman and break the warding circle. The moment the mystical barrier was broken Jeog moved, turning into a streaking gray phantom who ran towards the battle ahead. And whether she’d find death, salvation, or just an ending to a tale too long in the telling, she did not know.
But she’d run away from it no more.
----------
Little pink legs carved a narrow groove in the library floor as Diamond Tiara continued to pace, eyes barely leaving the front door. With each pass she let out a small grunt of building frustration and worry, culminating in a final outcry as she made her hundredth circuit.
“Aaaugh! I can’t take this! What’s happening out there!? Is Jeog alright? Is Ditzy Doo? Is Destroyah? If only... if only we weren’t foals.”
“Yes, because then we could get in the way as adults. Far better than getting in the way as foals,” said Silver Spoon, who was looking through one of the many books on Carrean Yogoe. She looked up with eyes that were no less worried than Diamond’s, however, and despite her words softened her tone, “I feel the same way, Diamond. If I thought we could actually help in some way, I'd even be right there with you. But we don't have a way to help, and you heard Destroyah.”
“I know. And she’s right, we’d only make things worse by going out there. We couldn't even help. But that doesn't’ make this easier!”
Diamond resumed her pacing, but slower now, hanging her head as she continued to wonder what might be happening in Whitetail Woods. She knew quite well that Destroyah was strong, but that doesn't guarantee anything with the likes of Battra around. She held no doubt that Destroyah and Ditzy would do everything they could to save Jeog and fend off Battra and Ki Seong, but who knew what that monster and crazy kirin might have done to Jeog in the meantime!?
And all she could do was pace around her and wait! She’d never felt so useless in her life.
“Diamond, you’re going to rub your hooves raw on that floor,” Silver Spoon said, “Just try to relax.”
“How can I do that? How can you? I’m literally sweating rivers right now, but you’re so calm!”
“I’m not calm. I’m composed. There’s a difference.” Silver Spoon nervously adjusted her glasses, “Besides, this is Destroyah we’re talking about. She can handle one oversized goth bug and some edgy kirin monster hunter. The kirin isn’t even a kaiju. Sure she has some fancy moves and a bit of magic, but its not like she’s got superpowers.”
“Umm...”
It was a quiet noise, but given Gentle Leaf had hardly made a sound since curling up on one of the library chairs, the small voice of the filly quickly drew Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon’s attention as they both looked over towards. Gulping fearfully now that the attention was on her, Gentle Leaf said, “Th-the... kirin. She, um, she did have... weird powers.”
“Wait, what do you mean she has powers? What powers!?” Diamond Tiara said, rushing up to Gentle Leaf. The other filly flinched away and Diamond Tiara backed off, ears drooped, “S-sorry. But please, what do you know?”
“And why didn’t you say anything sooner?” Silver Spoon added.
“I... I just forgot. I was trying to say e-everything at once and it was still so scary and confusing, then Miss Ditzy and Destroyah left so fast... I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay, I understand what you mean,” Diamond said, “Everything was happening, is happening, so fast. There wasn’t time to think. Now what was this Ki Seong able to do that was so weird?”
With slow hesitance Gentle Leaf lifted a hoof to her mane and stretched it out, wiggling the strands of hair about, “She made her mane move, all creepy and gross. And she was super strong, too. She threw Jeog around like she didn’t weight a thing!”
“Okay, that sounds bad,” Diamond Tiara said, and glanced at Silver Spoon, “Could Ki Seong be using some kind of freaky eastern magic?”
“I don’t think so...” Silver Spoon’s eyes gained a contemplative sheen, and then she swiftly trotted back to the stack of books at her table and started to flip through them. “Here! Look, Gentle Leaf. Did Ki Seong look anything like this?”
Silver Spoon flipped the book around and showed a picture filling one of the pages. It looked like a pony in form, but surrounded by so much ragged, inky black hair that writhed like tendrils around it that the picture resembled more a hairy spider than a proper equine. Gentle Leaf’s eyes shot wide at the sight and she nodded her head in rapid bobs.
“Y-Yes, that’s exactly what she looked like! It was scary...”
“What is that?” Diamond Tiara asked, squinting at the picture as Silver Spoon set the book back on the table.
“A hair demon,” Silver Spoon said, face flushed with fresh worry, “I don’t know how Ki Seong has its powers, but the hair of one of these things is reported to be stronger than steel. And if she has this demon’s powers, who knows what else she might have?”
“Craaaaap!” Diamond Tiara smacked a hoof onto the book, “Then this is way worse than we thought! Destroyah has to fight two super powered monsters? She’s strong, but...”
Diamond trailed off, sitting down and rubbing her face with her hooves, “But there’s still nothing we can do to help.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Silver Spoon said musingly, grabbing another book. Diamond looked at her, and even Gentle Leaf raised her head and peered curiously at the other two fillies.
“Um, are you going to elaborate on that, Spoon...?” Diamond Tiara asked as her friend started rapidly flipping through pages. After a few seconds of quick page turning Silver Spoon stabbed a hoof down onto a page with authority.
“Salt.”
“Salt?’
“Mmmhmm, salt, pure jade, mirrors, cinnamon incense, it's all in here.”
Diamond Tiara’s face became a cloud of bafflement, “Did you hit your head? What are you going on about?”
“Look,” Silver Spoon insisted, turning the book towards Diamond Tiara, “I’ve been reading through these all day and part of yesterday. The Carreans didn’t just catalog info on their monsters, they put down all the different ways to ward them off or weaken them as well. I mean, they’re just old folklore and myths about what were supposed to fight off Yogoe, but I think some of this stuff might actually work!”
Diamond Tiara’s eyes scanned the pages, reading faster and faster as her heart rate skyrocketed up. Most of what she was seeing was pretty basic and somewhat nonsensical, but at the same time what sense did it make for iron to hurt Jeog? If that worked on their gumiho friend, then what else in here might work on a kirin who was part Yogoe now herself?
“But can we find any of this stuff?” she asked hurriedly.
Silver Spoon nodded, already snatching up the book and heading for a door between the kitchen’s entryway and the stairs leading up to the library’s second floor. “Some of it we can scrounge out of the kitchen, and I think we might find a few other things down in the basement. Miss Doo collects all sorts of odds and ends.”
Diamond Tiara started to eagerly follow Silver Spoon, but then paused with hesitation written across her brow, “...Spoon, should we really do this? Weren’t you just saying how it’d be stupid of us to rush out there and try to help?”
Silver Spoon flicked her tail and looked back with a serious stare, “It was stupid when we didn’t have a plan and didn’t know of a way to help. Now? I don't know, but I'm willing to try.”
“Aren’t you the one always telling me not to do risky things though!”
“Yes... yes I am, and nine times out of ten I’m probably right. But this time might be one of the few times where it’s better to take a risk than to do nothing. I mean, if we can’t do this when our friends’ lives are in danger, when is it right to take risks? I thought you’d be all over this, Diamond! You were the one pacing around saying how you want to help.”
Diamond Tiara nodded, biting her lower lip, nearly shaking in place, “I know. I do want to help. I just don’t want to make the same mistakes I have before by being reckless and not listening to the adults. Lady Destroyah told us to stay put. If we run out there and end up making things worse...”
She felt a hoof rest on her shoulder and looked over, blinking, as Gentle Leaf nervously patted her shoulder and managed a small, unsure but encouraging smile.
“If... if we can help, we should. Th-the worst they can do afterward is ground us all for life, and you’re already grounded, so...”
Diamond Tiara thought about it, and her mind could only focus on the overwhelming fact that she knew that people she cared about were in danger. Right or wrong, doing nothing just wasn’t the Diamond Tiara way.
“We are so going to get in trouble for this,” she said, then managed to perk up and put on a determined smile, “But I can live with that. Let’s whip us up an anti-demon arsenal!”
----------
A single, massive bounding leap kept Destroyah a hair’s breadth ahead of a cutting pair of purple beams that ripped apart the landscape where she’d just been standing, Battra circling above for another pass. She then had to whip around and shield herself with her wings as Ki Seong, circling Destroyah at a gallop, fired another crossbow bolt.
Unlike the explosive fire bolts, this one shimmered with a faint green light as it left the crossbow and impacted Destroyah’s wing in a burst of thick, green smog. The smell hit Destroyah like a year’s worth of rancid waste mixed with an exhumed graveyard that had then been set on fire. The toxic gas burned to the touch, but Destroyah’s hide was thick enough to resist the corrosive effect as she charged out of the billowing cloud of green smoke. She held her breath, but her nose stung at the smell and her eyes teared up, obscuring her vision for a moment.
Even so she could hear where Ki Seong was and Destroyah angled her charge to slam into the kirin, who was knocked back into a tree so hard it rattled the trunk, but Ki Seong bounced back with a vicious snarl and spun her spear around in a punishing arc, forcing Destroyah back and to take a shallow cut for her efforts.
Blinking her eyes clear Destroyah jumped upwards as she saw Battra swooping in, spreading her own wings to flap up to meet her airborne foe. Micro-oxygen and destructive mana beams crossed the air as both behemoth mares flew by one another, the energy sparking off their bodies as they both scored painful hits. Battra let out a cry that equal parts indignant rage as it was pain as Destroyah lashed out with her hind legs and kicked one of the Changeling Queen’s wings hard enough to send Battra into a spin that ploughed her into the ground.
That hardly slowed Battra for more than a second, however, as she stomped herself upright just as Destroyah was diving in with the intent to slam right atop the dark bug. Ki Seong, however, intercepted with a magnificently executed flying spin kick that caught Destroyah across the face and sent even the giantess of a mare flying off course and rolling across the ground.
Shaking dirt off herself, Battra grinned, licking her fangs and coating her voice with sweet, sugarly venom, “How much longer do you think you can last, Destroyah? Against the both of us you’ll eventually fall. Why not spare yourself this pain and surrender?”
Destroyah, not bothering to shake the dirt off herself, stood and fixed Battra with a hard stare, “As if you’d accept it even if I had a mind to give it.”
“True, but I’ve been looking forward to this for so long and it’d be a shame to end this so pitifully quick. I want three, four days of enjoying your pain, bare minimum. I’m sure Godzilla would like a turn with you as well. I keep trying to teach him the pleasures of drawing the kill out, but admittedly he really does like to do things the direct way.”
“Quit babbling!” hissed Ki Seong, “Can’t you see she’s just trying to buy time!?”
Without waiting for further comment the kirin’s crossbow flew around in Ki Seong’s magical grip and fired a pair of shots in quick succession towards Destroyah. However the bolts were met in mid-air by a pair of flying azure spheres of dancing flame. The foxfire melted the alchemic components of the bolts, making them detonate early as they exploded between Ki Seong and Destroyah, momentarily obscuring the area with smoke.
However Ki Seong didn’t need to see it to know what had interrupted her attack, and she was already wearing a hateful scowl as the smoke cleared and it was revealed that standing beside Destroyah was the sleek gray form of Jeog. The gumiho’s body was free of Ki Seong’s iron needles and sealing talisman, and her eight remaining tails swayed behind her like a fan, flickering tongues of deep blue foxfire dripping from them.
Her teeth nearly cracked form how hard she clenched her jaw in flaring anger, and Ki Seong’s eyes bored into the gumiho, her own personal demon whose existence plagued her every waking thought. For a second she was unable to do more than just stare with naked hate at Jeog, but the gumiho just stared back with those unfathomable blue eyes, then the fox glanced at Destroyah.
“You’re injured.”
Destroyah shrugged, ignoring the various bleeding cuts, scrapes, and burns covering her body at this point. “I’ve had worse. Way worse. Still, good timing. Should have maybe taken the chance to run, though.”
Jeog shook her head, eyes returning to Ki Seong, “There is no more running.”
“For the record I did try to convince her otherwise, but she wasn’t having any of it,” said Ditzy Doo, flying down to land gracefully next to the pair.
Destroya blinked at the spectacled pegasus, “You good to fight? Never seen you in a scrap before.”
Ditzy dusted off her forelimbs and hovered up on smooth flaps of her wings, adopting a boxer’s stance with her fore hooves held up. “Two time lightweight boxing champion of both my last two years in college. I can hold my own.”
Destoryah turned her attention back to Battra and Ki Seong with a rueful grin, “Works for me.”
With a murderous and ice cold glower filling her features Battra looked at the trio arrayed before her and said in an acid tone, “I do believe you’re right, Ki Seong. The time for talking and taunts has ended. Do you care about getting your remaining eight fox beads?”
Ki Seong’s voice was a husky, bloodthirsty growl, her eyes never leaving Jeog’s.
“No.”
“Good,” Battra said, wings flaring out and becoming covered in a sheet of crackling violet energy arcs, “Then we kill them all.”
They all moved at once, like drawn magnets, straight towards one another like the collision of two oncoming thunderheads. In the immediate clash there was a tumultuous frenzy of chaos between the five combatants. Battra’s wings discharged a storm of violent, purple electricity, smashing into Destroyah only to find a streak of gray motion faster than the wind itself tearing a claw across the kaiju’s chest, drawing sparks and blood alike. Ki Seong whirled her spear like a tornado, forcing the smokey blur that was Jeog away from Battra while her crossbow aimed at Destroyah, only for Ditzy Doo to fly in and knock the weapon aside at the last second. Destroyah heaved herself between Battra and Ki Seong, slamming out with both wings and hooves like a living battering ram, forcing the pair to back up to avoid a pummeling.
Ki Seong took aim at Ditzy Doo, only to find a sudden, thick fog billowing out around her. She saw a flicker of ghostly movement behind her and side stepped the slashing claws of Jeog, the kirin issuing forth a feral growl of her own as she yanked a clay pellet from her bandolier and threw it into the fog, bursting iron dust across the foggy illusion and scattering it, only to find Destroyah barreling down on her from the direction Jeog had gone. Destroyah’s heavy hooves met with Ki Seong’s whirling spear, the two clashing strength to strength with such force the ground cratered under them.
Battra bent to take to the air, only to find orbs of will o’ wisp, blue foxfire dancing in the air above her as Jeog made a soaring leap, twisting in mid-air to swish her eight tails back and forth until the air was alight with azure flames that descended on Battra. With a contemptuous sneer Battra buffeted the incoming flames, only to find the first wave were in fact illusions and the real bolts slammed into her a second later. The foxfire burned at Battra’s hide, but she was resilient well beyond mortal means and Jeog’s foxfire was weakened by the loss of one of her tails. The flames hurt, but did little lasting damage, and Battra unleashed a wide sweeping arc of both thin but powerful eye rays and a crackling bolt of power from the horn of her crown. The deadly energy assault tore apart the forest around her and managed to graze Jeog, who’d been camouflaging herself as best she could with blurring illusions.
As Jeog gasped in pain she dove up a tree, scrambling with remarkable climbing speed as Battra’s beams cut through the tree. As the massive pine fell Jeog ran along its falling trunk and jumped off at just the right moment to avoid another energy bolt from Battra’s crown, which splintered the tree to kindling. Her jump wasn’t random, however, and in fact was timed to allow Ditzy Doo to offer a hoof for Jeog to grab. Without needing words Ditzy Doo nodded down towards where Ki Seong and Destroyah were still exchanging a storm of blows that were wreaking a good portion of the clearing, and Jeog grinned.
Ditzy Doo flew over the pair and air dropped Jeog right towards Ki Seong’s back. Ki Seong responded just in time to narrowly avoid getting the full brunt of all of Jeog’s claws at once, but a passing swipe still cut a deep laceration on the kirin’s shoulder, drawing blood. Ki Seong responded with an immediate lash of her tail, the black strands of hair on its end extending like a whip that cracked across Jeog’s face and sent her sprawling. Ki Seong’s mane then came alive, writhing upwards to grasp at Ditzy Doo, who’d been coming around to dive on the kirin.
Caught by surprise, Ditzy reeled back from the grasping strands of demonic hair, but was soon caught around the barrel, hooves, and neck. As Ki Seong’s hair constricted around the pegasus Destroyah charged in, mouth agape with the tell-tale glow of micro-oxygen. As the beam of lethal energy fired Ki Seong flipped to the side with a wild display of agility, bringing her crossbow around while she was still in the air and firing a bolt at Destroyah that was marked by a pale yellow glow. This bolt burst in mid-flight into a spray of thick yellow goo that splattered onto Destroayah’s legs and instantly hardened, rooting the massive mare in place.
Meanwhile Ki Seong continued to try and strangle Ditzy Doo as Battra advanced on the now immobile Destroyah, grinned with wicked intent as her horn, wings, and eyes all lit up violet.
Before Ditzy could be strangled or Destroyah blasted, a wall of brilliant blue flame sprang up and cut towards both Battra and Ki Seong. Jeog’s tails were all raised above her in a wide fan, each tail blazing with as much foxfire as she could muster. She felt the strain sucking the very lifeforce out of her body, which was essentially made up of the very magical essence she was draining to create her foxfire. She’d never summoned so much up at once before, and the heat scalded the air. Battra turned her energy assault upon the wall of flame, while Ki Seong swore profusely and rolled aside. Her spear flashed, severing a part of her mane that’d caught fire from the wall, which in turn freed Ditzy Doo who fell to the ground in a coughing heap.
Rays, bolts, and a storm of lightning-like purple energy shredded into the wall of thick foxfire, tearing through it like paper. As hot as the flames were, even using as much power as Jeog could muster, there was simply no contest against the raw might of the mana stored in a being born to eradicate all life in a biosphere. The ground was similar torn apart in a deep furrow of explosions heading straight for Jeog, who in a streak of motion dove aside. She was still thrown by the passing shockwave of energy. With unnatural flexibility customary to her race, the gumiho righted herself while tumbling through the air and managed to snag a passing tree with a claw, flipping around and back to the ground on all four paws.
She saw Ditzy Doo, still coughing from her near choking experience, and from the haze of smoke that now coated the battlefield Ki Seong appeared like a maddened wraith. Ditzy didn’t have time to react, even as Jeog shouted in warning. A savage kick from Ki Seong smashed right into Ditzy’s side, audibly breaking ribs and sending the pony sprawling.
Ki Seong raised her crossbow, clearly intent on finishing the pegasus off, but a raw beam of micro-oxygen flew across the field and smashed the crossbow to pieces. Jeog’s wall of flame may not have stopped Battra, but it had bought Destroyah critical moments to free herself from the hardened goo that had trapped her, and seeing the wounded Ditzy down for the count, Destoryah’s eyes flared with vengeful fire.
However Battra took to the air, her body still coated in flares of violet energy, and she sent another barrage of power cascading down into the clearing, forcing Destroyah to also take to the sky in order to avoid the explosive rain of energy. For a moment Destroyah and Jeog exchanged looks. Jeog was now the only one on the ground facing Ki Seong, while Destroyah was squaring off with Battra in the air. No words passed between the two, only the briefest of looks, and a solemn nod from Jeog.
The intent was clear. She’d finish things with Ki Seong on the ground, as long as Destroyah could deal with Battra in the sky. Destroyah nodded back, approving the plan, and silently telling her battle companions not to dare lose.
Ki Seong noticed the exchange, and only wore her own dour, grim expression as she kicked aside the fragments of her destroyed crossbow and brought her spear to bear on Jeog.
Jeog met the eyes of her foe, resolute, and charged with the swiftness of a loosed arrow.
In the sky, Destroyah mirrored Jeog’s move, streaking towards Battra like a red comet.
----------
Distant thunder rocked through Ditzy’s thoughts, which were thick and slow as tar as she regained consciousness. Pain lacerated her chest, and with calm analysis one part of her mind categorized her injuries as severe, if not fatal. Multiple broken ribs, likely a minor concussion. And with blearily blinking eyes she saw her vision was beyond blurred, and a casual hoof search found broken glasses laying nearby.
She was out of the fight, certainly. Perhaps trying to engage in melee with super-powered beings had been a rather foolhardy venture. Element of Wisdom indeed. Well, self recrimination could wait until she’d extricated herself to a safe distance. Her vision was blurred, but she could hear the sounds of fighting, which were intense enough to clue her in that Jeog and Destroyah were both still battling it out with Ki Seong and Battra. She could gauge that much based on the fact that one set of combat sounds emanated from high above, while another came from somewhere much closer on the ground.
Grinding her teeth against the pain, Ditzy started to slowly drag herself towards what she hoped was the opposite treeline. Every motion was an exercise in resisting agony, but Ditzy was nothing if not rational and compartmentalized her pain as best she could while focusing on moving one more inch at a time. She might risk worsening her injuries, but she wanted to get out of the area of battle, lest one of their unscrupulous foes consider taking advantage of her state and grab a hostage.
She just started to feel the brush of bushes around her body when she lost the last of her stamina and couldn’t drag herself any further. Still, this should be enough to keep her out of the way.
“There they are! I hope we’re not too late.”
Ditzy’s eyes widened, even as she felt a wave of dizziness crash over her from both exhaustion and pain. That was Diamond Tiara’s voice! What were those fool foals doing there!? She tried to raise her head, but found she couldn’t. The voice came from nearby, however, and was joined by another, Silver Spoons.
“Not too late to help,” this was followed by a rattle of what sounded like something metal and a grunt, “Assuming any of this stuff works.”
“If it doesn’t... well let’s just hope it does. C’mon, we need to find a good spot to hide until we see an opening. I think that’s Lady Destroyah in the sky. Oh no, that must mean Jeog’s fighting the other one alone! We gotta hurry!”
No blast it, you have to be anywhere but here! Ditzy thought, but even as she tried to speak she found her voice came out as a hoarse croak rather than any kind of commanding tone, and the foals’ voices quickly receded to the distance.
“Ugh... oh for... Tanaka’s sake... to borrow a phrase...”
Ditzy fell into a deep lake of unconsciousness.
----------
She’d quickly lost sight of Jeog and Ki Seong, but Destoryah couldn’t have afforded the pair any mind at this point anyway. Battra Lea wasn’t the kind of foe one takes their eyes off of if one wanted to keep all their organs intact.
On hindsight, taking to the air to battle Battra on the wing probably hadn’t been the smartest of decisions. Battra was faster and more maneuverable than Destoryah was, and her specialty was ranged attacks. Destroyah knew she was tough enough to absorb a lot of punishment, but eventually Battra was going to wear her down unless she could find a way to pin the damn moth down and land some solid blows. Battra was no glass cannon, but if it came to a raw trade of damage Destroyah knew the death bug would crack first!
The problem was hitting her.
Peals of Battra’s irritatingly smug laughter filled the sky as she flew in swift circles around Destroyah’s slower, more cumbersome maneuvers.
“Truth be told I’m quite happy things have turned out this way, Destroyah. You really deserve the kind of end only I can craft for you,” Battra pulled a fast wing-over, evading one of Destoryah’s hastily aimed micro-oxygen beams, while returning fire with a precise rake of her violet eye beams that burned a bleeding line along Destroyah’s flank. “Slow. Deliberate. Piece by piece. The way any foundation should be torn out. You are his foundation, you realize? Without you, his tenuous grip on whatever is still left of his resolve and sanity will begin its final decay.”
Battra sighed with anticipating pleasure, “I can’t wait to see it. He might fall hard enough to even switch sides! Imagine that! Terra’s greatest defender, broken and serving the very brother he’s hated for so long. The irony just makes me shiver.”
Destroyah shook her head, carefully watching Battra’s motions as the Changeling Queen circled her. They were easily a hundred feet up by now, and still ascending above the Everfree’s verdant ocean below. A few puffy clouds marked the sky, still above them.
“I already knew you were crazy, but that’s a special kind of imagination you’ve got. The chief might feel the strain of this long war, but if you really think you can crack his resolve, you haven’t been paying attention to the guy.”
“Oh I rather think I know his nature better than you, child. You’re still so young, I forget how naive your optimism is. But I’ve observed his brother and him both for longer than you’ve been a part of his merry, ever dwindling band of Defenders, and let me tell you...those two brothers are far more alike than they’ll ever admit.”
Destroyah, as much in a spike of sudden anger as in anticipating of Battras sudden bank and swooping move to get behind her, rolled over and bent her neck to aim backwards across her belly. She fired a swath of flaring micro-oxygen as Battra closed in, clearly catching the other kaiju by surprise. Still, Battra’s ability to turn on a dime saved her from taking the brunt of the blast, the micro-oxygen grazing her wing in a shower of sparks but not connecting solidly enough to do more than cause Battra to screech in annoyance.
Damn, so close! Keep her talking! Destroyah thought, noticing that when Battra Lea got on a good monologue she started to lose some of her battle awareness.
“Alike!? One’s a psychopathic murderer who thinks the world owes him something just because he had a few tough breaks! The other is doing everything he can to save a world he wasn’t even born on and to protect a species that would just as soon rather he didn’t exist, all because he’s got a sense of duty higher than the very stars he came from! Don’t even try to compare them, you self-absorbed, nihilistic, Nietzsche fangirl!”
Battra began a hard climb, the central spike of her crown charged with purple arcs of lightning that shot down at Destroyah as she tried to chase Battra upwards. Destroyah banked hard to avoid the bolts coming her way, but again her slower maneuverability was making things rough as arcs of lightning struck her several times, shedding more blood with each hit.
“Mock as you will, but you know that ultimately this isn’t a war you can win. Things fall apart so much more easily than they hold together, because that’s the nature of things. I only exist to ensure the world follows its proper, natural course.”
“Oh blow it out your tailpipe! You’re just jealous that you were born to a cause that’s got no future, so you take all that vitriol and spew it back at a world you can’t stand is still trucking along despite your best efforts to make it fail. Guess what? Terra still stands, and so does Equestria. How does it feel to fail at your born purpose on two worlds, Battra Lea?”
Battra swung around and spread her dark wings, the volcanic orange stripings within the wings flaring bright as a storm of purple energy coalesced around her. Battra’s eyes turned to pure violet fury and her crown transformed into a swirling halo of destructive energy. Her voice boomed like the thunder of a wrathful goddess.
“I have not failed yet, whelp! The ruination of Equestria is merely a warm up to what will be Terra’s fate. The cycle of destruction must be maintained! Come, Serizawa’s Legacy, come and feel the end that awaits all at the completion of nature’s cycle!”
What descended upon Destroyah made Battra’s previous displays of power seem like a flip lighter next to a blow torch. Eyes, crown, wings, all discharged a furious tsunami of life ending power in a torrent of deep violet energy. For a second the sky was splattered with the dark purple bruise of death light, Battra forming the darkest corona at the center of the storm of destruction.
Had she been in her true kaiju form such a unleashing of power likely would’ve have flattened several square miles of Everfree Forest. Even at a distance residents of Ponyville looked to the sky in uneasy fear, wondering if what they were seeing was a random storm, or something far worse.
Certainly few things living could survive such a cascade of energy.
Few living things could boast to possess the raw durability of Destroyah.
This is by far one of the stupidest plans I’ve ever had, Destroyah thought grimly as she flapped her massive wings and soared right into the torrent of Battra’s attack, But hopefully that’s why it’ll work!
Destroyah was no stranger to pain. She’d suffered near fatal injuries defeating Godzilla the first time they met. That’s how she knew she could take almost anything Battra threw at her, as long as she didn’t take it for too long. That didn't mean this was going to be pleasant, however.
She smashed into the barrage of energy discharging from Battra like a crazed salmon leaping up a waterfall. Her body sparked and charred from the deadly river that surged around her, causing unimaginable pain to shoot through every inch of Destroyah’s body. She clenched her jaw tight, and even then still let out ragged yell of pain as the wave of power she was flying through tore into her. Yet the determined mare flew on, hooves outstretched, fanged teeth grinding, eyes never losing focus upon their target high above. She couldn't take too much of this kind of punishment, but she could withstand enough, because while discharging all this potent energy Battra Lea wasn't moving. Destroyah shoved all the pain to the back of her mind, putting all her will into gaining more and more speed and momentum as she streaked towards her immobile and unwitting foe.
Finally, she burst through the wave of energy, body smoking and bleeding, and collided with a very surprised looking Battra. Destroyah’s hooves impacted squarely with Battra’s chest with an impact that sent a small shockwave billowing out around them, scattering a nearby cloud.
Absolutely stunned by the blow, Battra just hung in mid-air for a moment, trying to remember how lungs worked. That gave Destroyah ample time to cock her hoof back and deliver a punishing haymaker across Battra’s face, sending blood and spittle flying and spinning Battra around like a top.
While Battra was still in a daze Destroyah clamped her hooves around the Changeling Queen, grabbing her in a crushing bear hug and then brought her wide row of fangs to bear.
Battra’s screech cut the air as Destroyah bit straight into the joint between shoulder and neck, drawing forth brackish orange blood. Destroyah was about to rend the wound open wider, but Battra’s body suddenly flared from head to tail with intense purple light and suddenly Destroyah found herself chomping down on nothing but air.
A teleport spell? Destoryah thought, but then her body was wracked by a barrage of thin, purple rays, dozens of them, from all sides. The beams were much smaller than what Battra had fired earlier, but there were so many they were impossible to dodge and still cut painful lines across Destroyah's now heavily wounded body. She then heard Battra’s voice let out a chorus of rasping laughs, dozens upon dozens of tiny voices laughing in dark humor.
“Bold move. It’s been too long since we’ve felt a decent jolt of pain. But this contest is over.”
Clearing her head with a rough shake, Destroyah looked around her to see that she was surrounded by a veritable swarm of miniature Battras. They swirled around her like a cloud of ash, their voices all speaking at the same time to join together in a high pitched choir.
“And wounded as you are you’ll soon fall to my thousands of... hey, stop laughing!”
Destoryah couldn’t help it, she tried to keep the explosive laughter inside by covering her mouth with her hooves, but the deep, gutteral whoops came out, regardless.
“Bw-bw-bwahaaha! I can’t...hahah! I can’t take... Pffft, you’re so... so tiny and squeaky! Bwhahaahah! Can I keep one of you as a pet? I wanna put you in a little bonnet and have a tea party Snnnrkk!”
“Do not mock the incarnation of death!”
“HAHAHAH! Oh my, oh my Daiei, please stop talking. It hurts to laugh!”
Dozens of wrathful eyes narrowed, and Destroyah realized that as funny as squeaky little Battra voices were, there was little humor to be found in the dozens of small death lasers that now blasted in at her. Swearing under her breath Destroyah beat her wings fast and started trying to evade the beams, but soon found that doing so was all but impossible. Battra, or rather now the dozens of mini-Battras, swarmed her like a nest of wasps. While each beam was nothing more than a painful sting, the fact that there was an unending barrage of dozens of them was swiftly mounting the pain on Destroyah’s already battered body.
Destroyah let out several micro-oxygen blasts, sweeping the atomizing beams back and forth. However if Battra had been swift in her normal state, her miniaturized selves were even quicker and more elusive. Every one of Destroyah’s blasts seemed to strike only air, clearing away a few Battra’s, only for them to return a split second later and resume their barrage of tiny beams.
If this keeps up I’m just as dead as if I let her hammer me for too long with that giant blast. Need to even this playing field. Need to be able to catch these little bastards all at once!
Destroyah thought furiously for a new plan. And she found one. She didn’t like the plan one bit, because it wasn’t something she willingly did often. It was a massive pain in the butt. That said, she couldn’t think of another way to deal with this. If it worked, she could probably beat Battra. However she’d be in no position to go help Jeog, at least not any time soon.
As more beams tore small but painful wounds over her body, Destoryah realized she really didn’t have any choice.
Turning hard, she streaked for one of the nearest clouds, and threw herself into it headlong. The Battra swarm followed her in, content to fire their miniature rays blindly, confident they could hit Destroyah a few times even while blinded by the cloud. What they couldn’t see, and certainly didn’t realize, was that Destroyah was using the cloud’s obscuring presence to hide what she was doing while flying out the other side.
Battra might have sensed it a second too late. Her senses were attuned to the mana of Terran born creatures, and she likely felt the sudden, unusual division of Destroyah’s essence as they flew through the cloud. But Battra wouldn’t have understood, nor fully realized the truth until her swarm of miniature selves flew out of the cloud not surrounding a single Destroyah...
But now contending with a sudden swarm of juvenile Destroyah’s that burst out of the cloud like a flock of birds snapping at their prey. Each Destroyah wasn’t an exact copy of the original, like the mini-Battra’s were, but rather younger adolescent versions of the adult form. And like eager teenagers, eyes gleaming with the joy of the hunt, they threw themselves into their foes with reckless abandon.
The air exploded into a melee of catastrophic chaos. Juvenile Destroyahs barreled through suddenly shocked and frightful mini-Battras. Burping beams of micro-oxygen the Destroyah’s rolled over the swarm in a disorganized but effective mess, scattering the small dark moths in a sudden panic. Their advantage of maneuverability was largely lost now, and the advantage of surprise allowed the small, now quite agile Destroyahs to keep pace with those either fleeing or trying to fight back.
A major factor was that the Battras, ultimately, were controlled by a single consciousness, and now that Battra was taken off guard her focus was as scattered as her miniature selves, slowing their response. Meanwhile the Destoryahs were essentially each an independent mind, allowing them to zero in on their targets far more effectively. And happily.
“Oh yeah, get ‘em! Smack the bugs!”
“Lookit ‘em run! Get back here!”
“I got this one! I got this one!”
“Hahaha! Fear me tiny insects for I am become death, destroyer of dumb!”
Under the sudden and devastating assault the miniature Battra’s all started to convert into motes of swift moving purple light, all coalescing back together a few dozen meters away back into the form of the full sized Battra. She was sporting now numerous cuts and bruises accumulated from the Destroyah swarm, along with her previous injuries, and was looking much the worse for wear.
The adolescent Destoryah’s charged after her, and Battra considered them for a moment. She then glanced down at the Everfree Forest far below, where she imagined Ki Seong was still battling her nemesis.
A shame to abandon such a promising recruit, but if the kirin survived then Battra Lea imagined another day might come when the opportunity to further turn that one towards her own ends might arise.
Besides, she did have a prize already claimed in the foxbead nestled safely in a magical sub-pocket.
“Yes, I think I’m done here...” Battra muttered, giving the oncoming swarm of Destroyah’s one last glare. “We will finish this another time.”
Tapping into her knowledge of Equestrian magic now, Battra’s horn lit up orange and her body vanished in a pop of brilliant light, teleporting far, far away.
The swarm of adolescent Destoryah’s all halted in a tangled mass, bumping off each other as they stared at where Battra just was.
“Awwww man! I wanted to smack her around some more!”
“Totally! What a wimp!”
“... I’m bored now. You guys wanna go play something else?”
“Nope! You guys need to listen up to me, and start getting in line!”
The last was said by a Destroyah that was slightly larger and older than the other juveniles. This was the one where Destroyah had kept the majority of her personality and memories. This was one of the reasons she hated having to divide herself. Unlike Battra, who could keep all her components under one will, Destroyah had to divide her memories, thoughts, and personality among her divided selves. It’d taken a lot of practice to keep them all to the point where they could still think clearly and still more or less act like her, but they were still all independent and kind of ornery.
“Aww, do we gotta?” asked one, “You haven’t done this in forever! I wanna play!”
The other’s chimed in, echoing each other, “We wanna play!”
The older Destroyah let out a sigh and said firmly, “No time for that! C’mon, no bellyaching and get in line! We need to reassemble so we can go help our friends!”
“Ugh, laaaaame!”
Despite the complaints the other adolescents did comply, flying over to form a hovering line that the main Destroyah could fly up to and touch one at a time. Each touch created a burst of energy as she absorbed the one she touched, adding another bit of herself to the growing whole. However she’d divided herself into dozens of juveniles, and it’d take time to fully reassemble herself and become whole again.
Minutes that she wasn’t sure Jeog had.
Just hang in there fox gal, and don’t you dare die!
----------
An avalanche of savage iron sought to rend Jeog limb from limb, a tide she threw herself into evading with all the primal speed and agility her supernatural body could offer her. The horrible pain of her injuries faded into the background roar of combat instinct as she struggled to stay just a pace ahead of Ki Seong’s spinning spear of iron forged death.
Jeog ducked and dived, bounced off of trees and branches while Ki Seong pursued her with relentless focus. The spear, coated in Ki Seong’s golden magic, struck with the speed of a cobra, its heavy blade severing branches and thick tree trunks with equal ease, leaving a pathway of shattered forest in the two combatants’ wake.
Not solely on defense, Jeog sought every opening she could find to sneak in an attack. She’d hastily craft any illusions she could think of, baring Ki Seong’s path with walls, surprising her with the sudden appearance of a bear, or making the ground seem to come alive with grasping skeletal hooves. Yet Ki Seong was having none of it. Every time Jeog sent out an illusion the kirin would either barrel through it or throw a clay orb of iron dust to scatter the foxfire making up the illusions.
Even if such tricks wouldn’t work in full, however, they still provided enough distraction for Jeog to turn on her foe and swipe with her claws. She targeted the kirin’s legs, hoping for a hamstringing blow that would cripple Ki Seong, but the kirin was more than ready for such attacks. Her mane would billow out like a cloud of ink, striking even where she wasn’t looking to block Jeog’s claws, and nearly catching Jeog’s arm before she managed to burn some of the silken steel mane away with a jet of foxfire.
Ki Seong moved in, leading with her spear but also rearing up on her hind legs and launch into a brutal hoof strike right beside the magically flying spear. Jeog twisted away, bending away from the deadly iron, but not quite far enough to evade Ki Seong’s hooves. The blows backed by ogre strength rocked Jeog off her paws and sent her sprawling. She flipped over and darted away just in time to avoid a powerful spear thrust that split a small boulder just behind where Jeog was.
Slipping to the side of the advancing kirin Jeog swiped her tails, flinging a half dozen bolts of flickering blue foxfire at Ki Seong. The kirin whipped her spear round and spun it in front of her, the blur of iron dismantling the bolts of foxfire as easily as if they were sprays of water, the iron dispelling the supernatural flames. But the moment Ki Seong looked beyond the vanishing motes of fire she saw that Jeog was no longer where she’d been, but instead had used the moment to become invisible.
Ki Seong snorted, as two could play at that game, and tapped into her own demonic power to shift into her own invisible state. A brief game of cat and mouse ensued. Ki Seong could smell Jeog with her potent sense of scent, and knew the gumiho hadn’t simply run away but was trying to stalk her. Ki Seong in turn slowly and deliberately moved to try to get behind the illusion cloaked Jeog.
Removing one of her last iron clay bombs, Ki Seong targeted the area where she smelled the thickest level of the gumiho’s scent, and threw. The bomb shattered, spraying iron dust in a gray cloud... but no Jeog appeared. Frowning, Ki Seong only saw that the spot she’d hit had a low hanging branch that was covered in a thick matting of gray fur that was now dissipating into blue fire.
She baited the spot! Ki Seong realized, just as she also realized her motion of throwing the bomb had likely created enough distortion in her own invisibility to mark her location.
Ki Seong grunted in pain as a weight landed on her back, Jeog’s claws digging in as she grasped at the kirin, snarling. Ki Seong didn’t hesitate, throwing an elbow back to smash Jeog across the face, but the gumiho took the bow and snapped at Ki Seong’s neck. She got her spear around, using the haft to catch the blow, forcing Jeog’s jaws back as she turned around and slammed her back, gumiho and all, into the nearest tree.
Jeog yelped at the blow, but held on firm. Ki Seong smashed back again, almost dislodging Jeog, but not before the gumiho’s fangs flashed once more, this time clamping around Ki Seong’s right horn. Ki Seong’s eyes widened and she focused to bring her spear flying back around to try and impale the gumiho, but Jeog’s jaws crunched down with full force and there was a cracking sound like a splitting log and Ki Seong screamed.
Pain and fury lent extra strength to Ki Seong’s hooves as she rammed one into Jeog’s gut and sent the gumiho flying away like a tossed rag doll. However as Jeog went she took a good half of Ki Seong’s right horn with her, and broken horn sputtering sparks of gold magic. Her magical aura flickered erratically, her spear dropping from the air to clatter to the ground between her and where Jeog landed.
Unreal, stabbing pain rushed through her skull, Ki Seong dazed by the sudden loss of one of her horns. She forced herself to think through the pain and focus on Jeog, who was spitting out the broken half of Ki Seong’s horn. Both eyed the spear that lay between them, and moved at the same time.
Ki Seong was just a shade faster, snatching up her spear with her hooves now, rearing up to her hind legs to spin the spear around and catching the leaping Jeog with a hefty blow that threw the gumiho back once again, this time knocking her in a rolling sprawl right by the side of the old cabin that Jeog had called home all these years.
Hoping to finish the beast quickly, Ki Seong advanced fast, grabbing one of her very last weapons, another clay bomb, this one filled with a similar flaming alchemic mixture to her crossbow bolts. She kicked the jar at Jeog as the gumiho struggled to stand. Once more Jeog’s own unnaturally swift reflexes and speed saved her as she dove away from the clay jar, which splashed thick green liquid across the side of the cabin that ignited in a sheet of flames.
“There’s nowhere left to go,” Ki Seong promised with a ragged, heavy breath that betrayed her own exhaustion, the long battle finally making even her endurance flag.
Jeog, looking no less beaten, battered, and at the edge of her endurance, turned to face Ki Seong with unfaltering eyes of blue.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Ki Seong came in hard and fast, slicing down with her spear. Jeog leaped over the blow, landing on the haft with her hind legs and slashing down with both claws. Spinning like a jade pinwheel, Ki Seong let the claws graze her in order to yank her spear out from under Jeog and land an explosive snap kick that crunched the gumiho into the side of the cabin. The flames were starting to spread, licking the edge of the roof now. Ki Seong’s spear flashed forward, almost skewering Jeog’s head, but the gumiho ducked down at the last second and raked out with her legs, catching one of Ki Seong’s and cutting deep red lines across it. The kirin ignored the pain of the blow, already blinded by so much that the cuts on her leg hardly registered, and she battered Jeog with another kick that rolled Jeog across the ground towards the front of the cabin.
Ki Seong jumped, spear grasped in both fore hooves as she drove it down towards Jeog, whose eight tails all sprang up at once. Azure foxfire pooled through each tail, Jeog dredging up what felt like the last scraps of mystic power she had left. The flames formed into a single, large orb of pulsing blue fire that Jeog flung upwards at the descending Ki Seong.
Ki Seong hit the ball of fire dead on, spear first.
And she burst right through it, blue flames clinging to her hide and hair as she fell towards Jeog with single minded focus.
Jeog tried to evade, and in doing so spared herself from being impaled through the back, but Ki Seong’s spear still caught her left front leg and pinned it to the earth, the iron eating away at Jeog’s flesh. She couldn’t help but howl. Ki Seong yanked the spear free, drawing it back for a killing blow.
Then something smacked into the side of her face, bursting in a cloud of white dust. It was a bag of salt, falling to the ground and leaving Ki Seong blinking in mild surprise. Jeog too was surprised, not just by the salt bag, but by who threw it.
“Uh-oh, uh, Silver, the salt didn’t work!” Diamond Tiara said, scrambling to grab something from a large sack she’d dragged with her. Next to her Silver Spoon and Gentle Leaf both stood with panicked but determined looks mixing on their faces.
“T-Try the copper pots! Gentle Leaf, go for the rosemary!” Silver Spoon said while flipping through a book quickly, eyes scanning the pages.
Ki Seong just blinked at the foals as if she was seeing another illusion, but she could smell the ponies clearly and the bag of salt had felt perfectly real.
“What are you children doing here!? This is no place for you!” she bellowed, glaring back at Jeog, who was trying to stand, but having difficulty with her injured leg. “Again you drag innocents to defend yourself, beast!? Children, now!?”
Jeog shook her head, looking with wild desperation at the foals, “No, they cannot be here! It is dangerous! Run!”’
Diamond Tiara shook her head as she grabbed out a pair of copper pots from her bag and started banging them together, her eyes filled with a fiery resolve. “We can’t leave you to be killed! You’re our friend!”
Ki Seong’s eyes narrowed, flinching at the annoying banging, but not understanding...
Wait, her early days of training came rushing back to her. Ki Seong remembered lessons on various ways to drive out spirits and other Yogoe. Most of them were pure folk foolishness, like the banging of copper pots to make spirits flee an area. Other such folktales held truth to them, however. Salt could be used to repel certain demons, but why would these foals be using it on her?
Silver Spoon pulled out a mirror and flashed it as Ki Seong, scratching a nail over it. The sound was annoying, but no bane to the kirin. She almost laughed at this idiocy, frowning in irritation as Gentle Leaf threw a clump of rosemary at her, followed by a string of garlic.
“Cease this at once,” she growled in utterly fed-up annoyance, walking towards the foals with menace, “You children do not understand what you’re meddling with! This beast is friend to none, and has merely confused your minds with her-”
“Shut up! You don’t know a single thing about her!” Diamond Tiara shouted, dropping the copper pots and taking out a glass vial filled with some kind of green powder, “Now just go away!”
Diamond flung the vial, and with a scornful scowl Ki Seong swiped at it with her hoof. The glass broke and disgorged a cloud of green powder around the kirin. Unlike all the other foal’s folk remedies, this had an immediate effect. In shocked surprise Ki Seong yelped in pain as the powder clung to her and sizzled with wisps of smoke. She batted at her limb, trying to remove the powder, and coughed and sputtered as some of it got into her nose, burning all the way.
It took her a second to recognize what the powder was.
Jade. One of the purest stones in Carrean folklore, and an almost universal bane of Yogoe-kind, right behind iron. Not all Yogoe feared jade, just as not all of them feared iron, but for those that were affected, the touch of jade was agony.
Ki Seong growled and shook herself, trying to clear as much of the powdered jade was possible, and felt sick to her stomach as she felt her body tremble with waves of cold.
“Whoa, did that work?” Diamond Tiara said, eyes wide.
“I think so. That was the powdered jade, wasn’t it?” Silver Spoon gulped, “We, uh, only had one of those didn’t we?”
“I’m kind of surprised Miss Doo even had any. What does she use it for?”
Gentle Leaf licked her lips nervously, “She, uh, doesn’t look like she’s dropping, guys. I-in fact I think she’s looks kinda...mad.”
Indeed, Ki Seong was furious. The powdered jade hurt, and she felt it sapping her strength, but there hadn't been nearly enough in that tiny vial to stop her. And now her wrath was focused upon the three tiny ponies that had interfered with her hunt! The gumiho would be dead already if not for them! When children misbehave, they needed to be taught a lesson.
Her mane quivered and moved. It wasn’t nearly as fast or as strong as before, moving like sickly snakes rather than swift vipers, and Ki Seong felt her blood burn inside her as the jade railed against the demon power within. Even so, the black tendrils of mane still moved fast enough to grasp at the foals, who all scampered to try and get away.
Silver Spoon and Gentle Leaf were wrapped up in coils of living mane, Diamond Tiara only barely escaping by ducking behind a tree.
With a deep grimace Ki Seong debated what to do with the children, but then a gray form barreled into her from the side. Jeog, even with one horribly injured leg, still had the strength to move and clawed at Ki Seong’s face.
“No! No more of hurting others! It is me you are here for!”
Ki Seong rolled with the blow, her face raked with shallow, bleeding cuts, but she swung back with a titanic, two hooved buck to the chest that sent Jeog sprawling back to the ground, flat on her back. Finally seeing a chance to end things, Ki Seong spun her spear around and rushed in, starting a downward swing that would cut the gumiho in two.
A swift pink blur threw herself in the way, hooves out.
“Stop!”
All slowed. Ki Seong blinked in shock at Diamond Tiara standing right between Jeog and the descending spear, but she’d put too much momentum behind a blow meant to cut her foe in half for her to be able to pull back. She could all but see the same desperation on the young pony’s face as she’d seen on Cho Yon’s so long ago, and the horror of what she’d done that night rushed through her even as she knew she couldn’t possibly stop in time.
For Jeog time seemed to slow even further. For her the image of Cho Yon interposed over Diamond Tiara was as real as a slap to the face, and such a maelstrom of emotions thundered inside her that she felt like she might literally be torn apart by them. So much fear and pain tried to keep her chained to the ground, yet an all encompassing need to protect the filly in front of her was pulling her towards motion.
Jeog couldn’t understand why Diamond Tiara, or Cho Yon, would do something like this! Why were they willing to give up their short, mortal lives to try and save her? What pushed them to such irrational actions!? Didn’t they understand how important their lives where!?
“I’m not talking about a muscle pumping blood in the chest. I’m talking about something you can’t see. Something that only exists here, between people.”
Cho Yon’s words were as real to Jeog as if he was standing right there, saying them again. She could see him, holding out his hoof between herself and Diamond Tiara, his words an echo from the past that rang with utmost clarity.
"It’s something you feel between yourself and another. A warmth and pull that draws you to each other. A heart isn’t a thing, its a feeling. Makes you want to be around that person, protect them, see them smile.”
A heart. Not something one possesses alone, but something born between two people. Draws them to one another. Makes their lives matter to each other, more than their own.
Sense crashed through Jeog like a waterfall of cold, awakening water, or the warmth of the sun finally cresting the ridge to bring dawn. In the span of nanoseconds realization and understanding snapped into place, and every one of Cho Yon’s actions and words over the long gone years suddenly were bathed in new light.
And so too were Diamond Tiara’s. This little filly who when all sense and rationality would say she ought to have been fearful of the fox she met in the forest, she chose to befriend her instead. And slowly, bit by bit, whether she’d been aware of it or not, Jeog and Diamond Tiara had formed that same connection Cho Yon had shown her long ago in Carrea. A connection that Jeog finally could see and name as ‘the heart’.
She could feel her heart, and Diamond Tiara’s, as the warm, shining bond between them. A feeling that pushed aside pain, breathed new strength into her limbs, and made Jeog move as she’d never moved before...
No, not Jeog.
That was a name she’d hidden behind, because she’d been too afraid to be what Cho Yon had seen her as all along.
When Ki Seong’s blade sliced down upon nothing, the kirin blinked, partly in shock, and partly in relief. She’d had no desire to harm the child, but what had happened? It took her a second for her mind to reconstruct the event as she looked up from her spear. Jeog stood not far away, Diamond Tiara held by the scruff of her mane in the gumiho’s mouth like a mother fox might snatch up its cub.
In a last ditch burst of speed Jeog had actually used her tails to yank Diamond Tiara away from Ki Seong’s spear while springing away with a nearly impossible arm stand with the one uninjured paw she had left, and had flipped both herself and the filly out of harm's way. All within the span of a split second. Ki Seong’s mind briefly boggled at the speed and agility such a move had displayed, but soon shoved such unneeded feelings aside as she took up a fighting stance once again.
The nagging doubt in the back of her mind that asked why the gumiho would save the young pony bit at Ki Seong’s resolve, and she growled it away. A trick. It had to be a trick. The beast just wanted to keep its living shield around, that was all.
Diamond Tiara, shaking, glanced back at Jeog in surprise as the gumiho set her down.
“J-Jeog? I...”
A soft grayish blue paw patted her head gently and then just as softly pushed the filly to the side.
“You don’t have to explain, Diamond Tiara. I see it now.”
The gumiho smiled, eyes shining at the filly, “I see what he was showing me, our hearts. And... call me Chingu.”
“Chingu?” Diamond Tiara tilted her head, then a slow smile spread on her own face, “Yes, Chingu.”
Ki Seong spat, holding her spear before her, “What nonsense is this? Chingu? Is that supposed to be another, twisted gumiho joke, Jeog?”
Chingu turned to face the kirin, for what she knew would be the last time, and she took a deep breath. She then rose up onto her hind legs, and despite the pain lancing through her badly wounded left arm, she spread them out in a familiar stance.
The stance was familiar to Ki Seong as well, because she let out a small, choked gasp at the sight of it. The Way of the Open Heart. The notion filled Ki Seong with dark, bubbling bile, her eyes turning to golden edged razors.
“You dare...? You dare to pervert his art against me!? Is there no depth you won’t sink to!?”
“You’ve come for an ending, Ki Seong,” Chingu said, not in boast nor in threat, but in simple calm statement, “So let’s end it.”
That was all the invitation Ki Seong needed. Her broken horn still bleeding spurts of gold magic, her body slick with darker blood, the kirin moved in. She lacked the same power and speed from before, both the toll of battle and the jade weakening her, but her determination was no less than the gumiho’s before her, and so she rushed in with a powerful straight thrust that still had potent killing potential.
Chingu flowed into motion. Her own body was no less bereft of stamina now than Ki Seong’s, and just as wounded, but the Way of the Open Heart was not an art of hard motions requiring much from its user. It instead used its opponent’s strength and momentum against them. Chingu had learned the forms well enough from Cho Yon, she’d merely lacked the emotional understanding to grasp what lay at the center of the martial art.
Knowing one’s own heart, the heart of one’s opponent, and the connection between them that made those hearts what they were.
She could feel Ki Seong’s heart. The kirin’s pain, so far beyond the wounds on her body, was written over every inch of Ki Seong’s face.
Chingu tried not to be distracted by it as she sidestepped the spear thrust, using a simple turn of her paw to push the spear aside and let its force bypass her as she twirled away.
Ki Seong growled and advanced, spear now becoming a whirling blur as she stepped into the forms of her own martial art. The Iron Flower was a powerful technique, building momentum with every swing. Few could stand against it’s constant barrage of twirling slices and swift thrusts. Yet like a raging firestorm breaking upon an ocean tide, Ki Seong’s fiery strikes were meeting with nothing solid. Chingu moved like mist, using only the minimalist of motions to bend away from the blows or redirection them with subtle and swift blocks.
Ki Seong tried to grasp at Chingu with her mane, the black strands coiling out slowly due to the jade still burning inside the kirin. Chingu hopped over the grasping tendrils of mane, flipping over Ki Seong so that her back was to the cabin. By now the cabin’s east wall was covered in fire, and almost half the roof now was, too, bathing both gumiho and kirin in a flickering curtain of orange.
“He was mine!” Ki Seong shouted as she turned, resuming her furious assault, spear reflecting the firelight, “The first real light I ever had in my life! You took him away!”
Deadly iron breeze by Chingu’s face as she ducked back, leading Ki Seong closer to the cabin. The kirin’s movements were growing less disciplined and focused as emotion raged across her face. Chingu felt ever more the radiating suffering of this creature in front of her. Less and less did Ki Seong look like the powerful, relentless, and unstoppable Hunter, and more did she look like the wounded, battered, and mourning lost soul she truly was.
Where Jeog might have just continued to see an enemy, Chingu saw something different.
“We both lost Cho Yon,” she said as she bent around one of Ki Seong’s swings, turning to grab the spear’s haft and directing its blade into the ground, “But he’s not gone! He left his heart behind, with us! Can’t you see it?”
A feral snarl ripped from Ki Seong’s throat as she tore the spear free of the earth, sending dirt flying as she powered a hoof strike past Chingu’s defenses, knocking the gumiho back until she was almost up against the burning cabin’s door. The interior of the cabin was still free of fire, but smoke and firelight was starting to pour through the broken windows.
“See it!? See what!? You killed him! Made him shield you! That bolt was meant for you! I didn’t mean to...” her eyes closed in pain and she let out a guttural noise of mixed agony and rage, “It’s all your fault!”
Eyes snapping back open with furious focus, Ki Seong lunged for Chingu, another powerful overhead chop that could easily bisect what it struck. Chingu was still until the last second, where she stepped into the blow and turned her body to tuck it up against Ki Seong’s chest as she hooked her good arm through Ki Seong’s extended leg. Then using all of the power behind Ki Seong’s strike, Chingu bent forward and threw with her shoulder. Ki Seong went flipping end over end, flying through the broken doorway into the cabin and crashing into the far wall hard enough to shake the whole cabin and make a few embers drip down from the ceiling.
Chingu followed her in, stepping into the smokey, stifling confines of the flaming cabin.
Outside Silver Spoon and Gentle Leaf had both joined Diamond Tiara, the three fillies staring with wide eyed, breathless tension as they watched the gumiho stride into the cabin, the flames already starting to chew through the roof. Whether the cabin had minutes or seconds before it became an inferno was anyone’s guess, but Diamond Tiara could hardly breath, fearing for her friend, but knowing she couldn’t do any more now but hope.
Within the cabin’s shadowy confines, Ki Seong rolled to her hooves, gasping for breath, eyes watering both from the sting of smoke and the rawness of emotions kept tightly locked away for too long.
“It was you... it was you...” she kept saying, even as her mind repeated the same phrase in a guilty echo, with an entirely different meaning.
”It was you... it was you...”
Chingu faced her, still keeping her stance steady, “What does it matter who it was? We both hurt. We both cared. He cared. Isn’t that enough?”
“NO!”
Desperation fueled her as she surged towards Chingu. One spear slash came close enough to cut a trail of leaking blue flame from Chingu’s shoulder, despite her best efforts to roll aside. Another smashed floorboards as the gumiho leaped away. Ki Seong’s mane twisted and struck like hungry vipers, and flicks of Chingu’s tail sent small flickers of foxfire to meet them, burning the strands away. All the while the cabin grew hotter, the smoke thicker, and the hellish light of the flames curtained the interior as the walls and ceiling became coated with tongues of flame.
Chingu’s instincts were boiling over with fear of the deadly fire. If she let the flames touch her they’d scour her away. Yet she couldn’t flee. Not until this was over.
Back and forth they went like blood stained phantoms, each fighting on only the last flickering coals of strength they had left. Every blow, every dodge, was slower than the last, yet filled with ever more desperation. Even using the Way of the Open Heart wasn’t enough for Chingu to avoid every twist and turn of Ki Seong’s spear, yet the kirin stumbled now like a drunkard, beyond all limits of exhaustion as she tried to slay the foe she’d pursued, blamed, and hated for so long.
At last Ki Seong saw Chingu trip on a splatter of Ki Seong’s own blood, and thought it an opening. In truth Chingu tripped on purpose, a final feint to end things once and for all. Ki Seong thrust with all her remaining might. Chingu ducked and turned, her eight tails coiling out to grasp the spear and push it upwards. The spear impacted with the ceiling, embedding there up to the end of the blade. At the same time Chingu kicked back with her hind legs, catching Ki Seong across the face and dropping the kirin to the floor.
Breathing heavily Chingu stumbled around, intending to pounce on the kirin, but Ki Seong, while dazed, wasn’t done.
With a sputtering flare of golden magic from her broken horn, her one still intact horn covered in an overflow of aura, Ki Seong started to tug her spear free of the ceiling. The cabin groaned at the effort. Chingu saw cracks forming along the flame coated ceiling beams above Ki Seong.
“Wait, you’re-” Chingu began to shout, but Ki Seong spat blood and roared a wordless shout of denial and rage as she rose to her hooves and her magic surged, ripping the spear free of the cabin ceiling.
In so doing she tore away an entire chunk, nearly a third, of the ceiling's supports and a large portion of it collapsed in a flaming heap. Most of it fell onto nothing, but one of the larger ceiling beams struck Ki Seong across the back and head, pinning her under a portion of flaming debris. The spear fell, striking the floor and planting itself there.
For a second Chingu just stood there, stunned. Ki Seong wasn’t moving, and it took Chingu a second more to realize the kirin was out cold, but still breathing. Not likely for long, however, as not only were the flames of the debris starting to reach for the kirin, but the moan of cracking wood from above signaled the entire cabin would become a pyre at any moment.
The doorway was open and clear, however, and Chingu could easily escape joining Ki Seong in a fiery death. All she had to do was... leave her there to face her fate.
Ki Seong had hunted Chingu relentlessly for years. Many had been hurt, even killed, in that single minded Hunter’s quest for vengeance. She’d killed Cho Yon. She almost killed Diamond Tiara. She might continue to try to kill Chingu, if she was allowed to live.
All Chingu had to do was remember the way Cho Yon looked at Ki Seong, the way he spoke of her, the way he’d died not just for Chingu’s sake but in many ways for Ki Seong’s as well. She knew Cho Yon’s heart, and what he would want her to do.
Going against her every fear and instinct she rushed to the fallen kirin’s side. The flames scorched at her as she gripped the ceiling beam and began to haul it up. The weight was almost beyond her, and the feeling of fire eating away at her flesh was near maddening in its pain, but she bent herself to the task, knowing she had seconds to spare. Slowly the ceiling beam lifted, inch by inch, until enough space was available that Chingu could reach down with her jaws and grip Ki Seong’s mane. With agonizing slowness she was able to drag Ki Seong free of the debris. She almost collapsed, then, her endurance pushed past all reason.
Flames were dropping down from above now, some striking Chingu and burning her further, ripping away at her, but she kept her jaw’s grip firm on Ki Seong’s mane and forced her dead legs to move. In a jerking shuffle she pulled Ki Seong towards the door, even as hungry fingers of fire consumed the walls and made the cabin start to sag inward. The heat was unbearable. The pain indescribable. All Chingu could see was the fire, and the doorway ahead, so close yet feeling miles away.
And just when Chingu’s strength was about to fail her, when she could feel her consciousness slipping away, just a bare foot away from the opening to freedom... a massive crimson pair of hooves reached through and grabbed both her and Ki Seong, lifting them up and through the doorway in a titanic yank.
Bursting free of the cabin, Destroyah pulled the burned and smoking kirin and gumiho away from the inferno just as the cabin finally collapsed into a roaring tower of smoke and flame. She dragged the pair a good distance away, where a horrified and frightened trio of fillies waited.
“Oh no! No, no, no! Please tell me she’s okay!” shouted Diamond Tiara.
“Give me some space, let me check them,” Destroyah said, quickly bending over the pair with a critical eye, “Tanaka and Daiei both, but you’re damned insane, Jeog!”
Still conscious, if only just barely, Chingu managed a tiny smile past the waves of pain covering her, “Chingu now... just Chingu. The other one?”
Destroyah, not looking up from her examinations, cracked a small grin of her own, “Kicked her butt, sent her running. Just another day on the job. Now just hush up and take a breather while I make sure you’re not as crispy as you look.”
“I’m...I’m okay,” Chingu said, trying to rise but wincing and letting out a light whimper, “But I shall do as you say.”
“Good girl. You learn fast.”
“Wh-what about her?” Gentle Leaf asked, nodding towards Ki Seong, who hadn’t so much as stirred an inch. Between her wounds from the battle and the burns marking her coat, the kirin could easily have been mistaken for a corpse if not for the slow rise and fall of her chest.
Destroyah had been examining the kirin as much as Chingu, and after a moment said, “Hard to say until I get her somewhere with medical supplies, but she’ll probably live. I don’t suppose any of you fillies brought some rope in your bag of tricks?”
There was a potent look in Destroyah’s eyes that told the three fillies that they would have words later over the fact that they’d come out here when Destroyah had expressly told them not to, but for now the present need to clean up the crisis and deal with wounded surpassed all other issues. Silver Spoon adjusted her glasses nervously and said, “Y-yeah, I think so.”
Minutes later Ki Seong, still unconscious, was bound up as tightly as could be with rope, and was carefully slung onto Destroyah’s back, alongside Chingu who rode there with her legs curled up and her tails genty swishing behind her. A search of the area had revealed Ditzy Doo unconscious in the bushes, and the fillies carried her between them on the slow walk back to Ponyville.
Diamond Tiara looked at Chingu, the filly’s legs trembling with relief now that it was all over. Chingu shared the feeling, the two not needing to say anything to both feel a collective weight falling from them. Still, Chingu glanced back at the burning ruin of the cabin that had once been her home. She thought she might feel some loss, there, but instead, with every step away from that place where she’d hidden herself as Jeog for so long, she felt lighter and lighter.
That cabin had been where Jeog had run from the past and hid from the world.
Chingu had no need of it. Not anymore.
From now on there would be neither running, nor hiding. Just living.