As she tore her knife from the skull of the latest ghoul she’d killed, Fencer took a half-second to wipe the sweat and grime from her face before it could run into her eyes, not wanting to be blinded at a critical moment.
Even that brief respite cost her. Three more ghouls – a unicorn and two earth ponies – were already rushing at her, just the latest in an endless supply of the vicious, snarling monsters. Behind them were two more, hurrying to join the fray, and at the edge of her vision she saw another slip past Severance, the newcomer’s eyes already locked onto her.
Dimly, she realized that they were replenishing their numbers faster than she could kill them, but that thought failed to make her do anything except snort in derision. Six-to-one or sixty-to-one or six hundred-to-one, I don’t care! The only thing that mattered now was ending it, killing as many of these creatures as she could before they finally took her down. At least this way I’ll have done something good before I die.
Rushing at the trio of ghouls charging at her, Fencer leaped into the air just before the closest one reached her. Placing her fore-hooves on the back of its head as it leaned in to bite her, she pushed off of it as she jumped, vaulting over the creature entirely. Even as she did, she spat out her knife, telekinetically grabbing it before it fell more than an inch and flinging it as hard as she could at the leftmost of the two ghouls that were now directly in front of her. The effort made her injured horn ache, but it paid off as the blade flew through the air almost too fast to follow and sank into the knee of the undead pony’s left foreleg, causing it to collapse and veer into the undead pony right next to it, the two of them going down in a tangle of limbs and screeched curses.
Without pausing, Fencer immediately lowered her head to the ground and kicked backward, bucking blindly. Sure enough, she felt her back legs hit something and collapse it inward as a satisfying crunch reached her ears. Even as she pulled her legs back from the ghoul whose skull she’d just crushed, she was already looking toward the pair of undead ponies she’d knocked over, intent on finishing them off before they could get back up. But she didn’t have a chance as the other two ghouls that had been approaching her from behind – the unicorn and the remaining earth pony from the three that had initially charged at her – moved in to attack.
Luckily for her, both ghouls had their voices raised in shrieks of hunger, giving away their positions as they moved in to attack. It was enough warning for Fencer to immediately abandon her plans to go after the fallen ghouls and instead follow through with her buck, turning it into a leap backward as she pushed off the ground with her forelegs. Barely managing to part her back legs enough to plant them on either side of the ghoul whose head she’d just caved in, she followed through with the motion, rearing back so that she was standing upright instead of on all fours.
Her sudden hop backward happened so quickly that the pair of ghouls were unable to compensate in time. Filthy hooves lashed out and hit nothing but empty air as their momentum carried them forward, leaving the two struggling to reposition themselves to deal with the mare that had somehow slipped by them by mere inches a second time. Both snarled, knowing that if they could just catch her, just grab her and drive her to the ground and pummel her into paralysis, they’d finally have their meal!
But Fencer had no intention of allowing them to do so. Still standing on her hind legs, she gave a cry as she raised both of her forelegs high and brought them down as hard as she could on the cranium of the earth pony ghoul on her right, driving its head down…right onto the horn of the unicorn ghoul, having yanked its head around with her telekinesis simultaneously. The horn immediately sank up through the other ghoul’s chin, puncturing the roof of its mouth, and lodging in its brain, making the earth pony ghoul sputter and flail reflexively for a moment before it went still, falling to the ground and pinning its companion under it, the unicorn ghoul thrashing as it tried to free itself.
Not wanting to waste another opportunity, Fencer raised her forelegs again to stomp on the fallen ghoul’s head…only to be bodily tackled by the most recent ghoul to have joined the fight, the thing having rushed past the pair she’d downed with her knife and who were now back on their hooves and following closely behind it. Turning her head away from the teeth which were suddenly right in her face, Fencer grimaced as she hit the ground hard. Fortunately, the undead pony’s emaciated body didn’t give it as much mass as a living pony would have had, but she still grunted with effort as she pressed her forelegs to the thing’s chest, trying to keep it from biting her as she pulled her back legs up and under it.
Heaving with effort, she kicked out a second later, knocking the ghoul off of her and immediately twisting around to get her hooves back under her. But she hadn’t quite made it when two more ghouls – one of them limping slightly – threw themselves at her. Not gonna make it!
The thought was frustrated, rather than fearful. She’d known when she’d gone out there that she wouldn’t survive going up against so many of those things on her own. But that hadn’t discouraged her; quite the opposite, in fact. After all the terrible things she’d done – getting her father killed when he’d saved her from the first ghouls they’d met, turning herself into a monster as predatory as those things in the name of survival, and then getting Turbo killed in her misguided attempt to atone for her actions – death was what she deserved. All she wanted now was to drag as many of these things down with her as she possibly could.
It was for that reason alone that she concentrated as hard as she could as the pair of ghouls closed in, her horn glowing as a matching aura appeared around the undead ponies. Even with how gaunt their bodies were, she knew she couldn’t stop even one of them; telekinesis was proportional to physical strength, and that had never been her strong suit. But if she could just deflect them a little bit then she might be able to reorient her center of gravity and regain the initiative. It was with that hope, of knocking them slightly off-balance or breaking their momentum, that she telekinetically shoved the ghouls as hard as she could.
Her surprise was complete when she knocked them several dozen feet backward.
It wasn’t a controlled flight by any means, the pair of undead tumbling end over end through the air to go crashing to the ground over sixty feet away from her, leaving Fencer momentarily stupefied. What had just happened? Had she done that? How? Where had that strength come from?
…and how long had there been gemstones flying around her head?
Incredible, thought Lex in amazement. I had no idea it would work this well!
In the minute since he’d empowered the gemstones and transferred them to Garden Gate, she had become a one-mare army, tearing through the ghouls unstoppably while not being hit once. Although Lex knew that some of her heightened combat ability – possibly a significant amount of it – was due to Sonata’s magic (particularly since she had started singing again), it was undeniable that the three gems orbiting her head had augmented Garden Gate on every level by a considerable margin. It was enough that he was starting to have real hope that maybe, just maybe, she’d be able to see this through to the end…if the gems’ increased power lasted that long.
Utilizing the open-ended spell contained in Xiriel’s scroll had, despite all of the potential complications and pitfalls, done exactly what Lex had directed it to do…mostly. In the immediate aftermath of his stating that he wanted sufficient magic to augment the gems, he’d felt a rush of power filling him. It hadn’t been overly much, nor had it eased his injuries in any way; rather, it was like he’d drawn additional energy through the magical channels in his body without straining himself, and had simply been waiting to expend it. But at the same time, he’d immediately known that there hadn’t been enough for all five gems, the energy he’d gained being sufficient to enhance no more than three of them.
That hadn’t troubled him for more than an instant, however. Neither the scarlet and blue sphere, with its embedded knowledge regarding the operation of enchanted objects, nor the clear spindle’s ability to sustain the user without air were particularly helpful under the current circumstances. That made it easy to figure out which of the remaining gems to enhance.
The act of augmenting the gems had been surprisingly easy, enough so that he’d found himself wondering why he’d never thought to do this before. With the magical channels already embedded into the objects, the additional energy he’d fed into them hadn’t needed to be manually directed. While he’d still had to feed it in at a steady rate to avoid overloading the existing enchantments, the entire process had taken barely a few seconds for each gem.
As soon as the process had finished, he’d transferred the gems to Garden Gate, letting her reap their benefits. It had galled him to have to rely on the mare he’d so badly misjudged to save everypony now, but there was no other feasible choice; utilizing the scroll had exacerbated his injuries to the point where he could barely move. Even telekinetically moving the gems over to Garden Gate and releasing them to orbit her had been an act of monumental difficulty, forcing him to move each one individually, rather than all at once. Sonata had volunteered to take them to her, of course, but Lex had forbade it, knowing that she would only have made herself a target in the process. Instead, he’d ordered her to resume her singing, intent on giving Garden every possible advantage.
Even so, those advantages appeared to be considerable. From what he could tell, the dusty rose prism was granting Garden Gate some sort of subconscious situational awareness, rather than just some minor insight regarding incoming attacks. Likewise, the sheer physical coordination that she was displaying could only be because of the pale green prism. Normally it would have marginally stabilized her central nervous system in order to improve her physical reactions, but this was an order of magnitude greater, as though it were optimizing all of her body's neuromuscular transmissions. And the orange prism...it normally provided a slight improvement to the recipient's magical control, but the display of telekinetic power she'd just evidenced made it plain that its current effects were no longer "slight" in any regard.
Of course, all of those were temporary effects. The additional energy that was heightening the gemstones would eventually be used up, with the only question being when. Not having had enough time to have done any tests, there was no way Lex could be certain, but it was axiomatic that the more power the gems were displaying now, the faster they'd use it up. Which means they'll likely be depleted after a few minutes, he realized, feeling his enthusiasm dwindle. With how endless the ghouls had been, it was anypony's guess whether the gems would run out before they did.
If that happened, then Garden Gate's chances of outlasting them would fall dramatically, and so would their odds of survival.