“TO ARMS!” the commanding officer of the griffon guards shouted. They all drew their weapons and faced the foes before them.
The silhouette’s true forms were nothing short of ghastly. Before them were presumably griffon prisoners who were once incarcerated on the island, but their bodies were horribly deformed, perhaps even mutated by the dark purple magic. Their beaks had grown rows of razor-sharp teeth, their wings were more bat-like and were shadows of their true nature, their tails had growths on the ends, one of them resembling a mace while the other was blade-like, and their overall build made it seem as though they had taken some kind of hellish steroid. Their torsos and arms even glowed in some areas as though the purple magic animating them had been tattooed onto them.
“Jeez! What did they feed these guys!?” Tidal Wave exclaimed.
Just then, the light cracks in the ground faded out, and more of the demented griffons burst out of the ground!
“Oh, crap…” Spiral muttered.
“They’re gonna eat the dirt they just crawled out of once I maim them!” Bullseye shouted. She fired an explosive arrow at the two monsters they’d initially seen, but one of them of them purposefully swallowed it and managed to exhale the explosion back at them, knocking them all off their feet.
“Argh! The f***!?” Bullseye exclaimed.
Valkyrie immediately activated her Valhalla. The golden light flaring from her artifact surged into her sword, and she flung a huge sword beam at the demonized griffons. Shockingly, they managed to brave the attack, but they were distracted enough that Quantum Tech and Spiral Galaxy could start blasting them and everyone could start charging towards them.
Learning from her prior mistake, Bullseye opted to just use her bows melee capabilities. She was no swordsman like Valkyrie or Air Slash, but her bow had enough bladed ends built into it that she could get fairly creative with her offensive.
One of the demon griffons tried to swoop down from above, but she rammed her bow by one of its limb-end blades into its upper throat and then sucker punched it by her spiked hoof guard. The deformed demon then tried swinging its bladed tail at her, but she parried it; it then tried swiping her with its claw, but she flipped over it and used her momentum to fly behind it and jam her bow into the back of its neck and try and drive down into the ground, but the mutation apparently granted it enhanced physical strength, and it took the normally fatal stab wound like a flea bite. It grabbed her started violently dragging her across the ground.
Bullseye was helpless to break from the beasts grasp until Crazylocks body slammed into it, causing it to let go of
Bullseye and crash into the dirt. She then slammed her spiked pigtails into its head, easily bludgeoning a nasty crater into it. “IT WASN’T HER TURN TO EAT DIRT, YOU FLUFFY PUPPY PARAKEET!”
Just as she staggered to her hooves, Bullseye noticed another demon griffon rushing Crazylocks from behind her. By pure instinct, she nocked an arrow back and fired, striking it right in the eye and causing to horrifically shriek in agony as it fell writhing to the ground. She soared over to it and put it out of its misery by jamming her bow’s blade into the softer front of its neck.
“Thanks, Crazylocks.” Bullseye said.
“Don’t thank me yet! We’ve still got deadly hugs to give!” Crazylocks said before flying back into the fray.
The griffon guards were doing well to hold their own against the fiends. Having a fierce captain like Frigg certainly did wonders for their capabilities in the art of war, but they found themselves at even odds with the demons. One of the guards wielding mace found himself in a strange duel with one of them since its tail had been mutated to have a mace at the tip, so they rallied continuously until the guard ducked under a tail swipe which allowed him to thrust his mace into the beast’s buttocks. As the beast staggered, a fellow guard seized the opportunity and swiftly severed its head with her sword.
Tidal Wave managed to lure a few of them towards the shoreline, and he hailed bolts of water down onto them enough that was able to safely form a huge blade of water onto his lance and swipe at them. They were certainly fazed by the aquatic onslaught, but not enough that they halted their advance towards him; their resilience had certainly been established. He decided to go all out and envelop himself in a waterspout and jet around the small horde, trapping them in the vortex. He jumped out of the little storm and formed multiple water javelins that he then launched into the vortex all at once at high velocity.
Just before the javelins could pierce the raging waterspout, a massive surge of purple lightning blasted the vortex apart and dispelled the javelins, and the sheer force of the blasted blew Tidal Wave off his feet. “GYAAHH!!!”
Tidal Wave looked up and saw the demons sparking violently as they ferociously growled at him, and then one of them vomited a beam of the dark magic right at him. The energy itself sounded it was screaming as it surged through the air. He used his water powers to jet away from the beam as it left a wake of destruction in its path. The accompanying demons soon followed suit, and Tidal Wave was practically skipping across hot coal. He quickly leapt into the ocean and surrounded himself in a huge cocoon of water, and he pressurized the water as much as he could before the beams of dark magic could hit him. When the time was right, he fired his high-pressure water fast enough that it blasted the demons out of the sky and nearly shred right through them. Griffon guards on the ground finished them off.
Not far from him was Valkyrie. The Valhalla had cast an inferno of holy light all around that gave her the boost she needed to match the might of these monsters. Her shield blocked the blasts of dark lightning, and she used this to her advantage and protected her fellow comrades as she did what she could to beat back the beasts. She found herself locked in a fierce duel with two of the demonized griffon, but they had used the evil purple magic to form huge claws around their fore talons. Even in her empowered state, Valkyrie struggled to parry their fierce swipes, and their bloodcurdling shriek-like howls were difficult to tune out.
“Don’t know your savior when you see her, huh?” Valkyrie shouted. The two demons soared and spiraled around each other with great coordination as they charged towards her. She tried to thrust her sword into them, but they broke off at the last second and flew behind her. They then breathed their dark magic which struck her just before she could turn to block it. “AAAHHH!!!” Her ancestral light offered a good deal of protection against the dark blaze, but it almost felt as though it was eating away at her very being; she brushed it off quickly. “Alright! You asked for it!!”
Valkyrie focused her willpower into her Valhalla, and the sacred talisman began to erupt with more of its holy light. As she did, her two assailants as well as a few more of them soared towards her to attack. When they were close enough, Valkyrie unleashed her fury.
“<CAAAAAWWWW!!!!>”
An explosion of light hit them like a ton of bricks and blew them into the ground so hard that they were knocked unconscious. A few were even unlucky enough to be impaled by sharp, thick branches or large, pointy rocks from the fallen wall debris. One more straggler tried to charge her, but she quickly bashed it in the head with her tiny hammer and followed up with an upward thrust through its neck; its corpse limply fell back to the dirt. Valkyrie lightly sighed as she watched it crumble upon impact. “Sorry, guys. Best thing I could do for you…”
Elsewhere was Shrapnel backing up a couple of the guards, one carrying a sword and the other carrying a warhammer. His sheer bulk allowed him to match the enhanced strength of the demonized griffons, but consequently caused them to have a great mobility advantage over him. Thankfully, the guards accompanying him helped him compensate for this weakness by staying airborne and letting him go on the offensive while they shielded him.
Shrapnel caught one of the demons in his mouth and thrashed it around before chucking it into another. The targeted demon flew out of the way and used its momentum to try and swipe at the wooden titan with an enlarged claw. The guard with the warhammer struck it just right under the chin and sent it flying. On the other side of him was the sword-wielding guard dueling with another beast before Shrapnel smacked the demon to the ground with his paw, allowing the sword guard to plunge his blade into his opponent’s neck. The cycle repeated for another moment or so.
In the confusion of Shrapnel ravaging the demons and his new guard buddies picking up his slack, they failed to noticed that one of them from off in the distance had chucked a massive rock right at them. Shrapnel was about to grab his comrades and drag them out of them way when a familiar blast of electromagnetic energy obliterated the rock.
“Not a very safe choice for a fetch toy, wouldn’t you say?” Quantum Tech sassed as she fixed her glasses. Shrapnel let out a thankful bark and his company gave her a salute.
The small scientist herself made a point of keeping her distance while she blasted away at the demon horde. Beside her providing cover fire was Spiral Galaxy; her gravity blasts kept the horde off their balance while everyone went about their business, and when she had the chance, she fired nova blasts and magically generated meteors at their foes.
Quantum Tech had set her mech’s combat system to autopilot while she ran some scans on their unexpected company. Not entirely to her surprise, the dark energy they possessed was indeed magic, but she couldn’t immediately identify what kind it was. However, she did notice that the unknown magic’s influence seemed to extend from much further within the island. If what Zebota said was true about the island having a ‘consciousness’, then these monsters could called its antibodies, at least that the best conclusion she could draw at this point.
Just as she reassumed manual control of her weapons, she noticed a demon griffon charging towards her ready to swipe her with enlarged claws. She quickly erected her force field, but the demon hit it with enough force to nearly deplete its integrity and knock Quantum’s mech back, causing alarms to go off inside her cockpit. “Oh, Celestia!!” She activated her beam sabers and parried the next claw swipe, staggering the demon for just long enough for her turrets to lock onto it and hail magic blasts into its face.
Spiral Galaxy followed up with a nova beam that blew it back into the rest of the horde, and she took the opportunity to seal the deal for all of them. She launched a cosmic bolt that travel into the center of the demon horde and exploded into a black hole. The beasts struggled against the intense gravity, but most of them were swallowed by its vortex before Spiral had to close it so that none of the wildlife or any of her teammates went with them.
The few remaining demon griffons retreated back into the darkness of the ruined prison, and the group managed to catch their breath after a moment. “Ok. Step one- confirm that something bad is here: check…” Valkyrie muttered as she powered down.
“Is anyone hurt?” one of the griffons asked aloud.
“I don’t think any of us are seriously injured, but some of us sustained minor gashes and bruises from getting hit by that weird magic.” One of them answered.
“Maybe we should check with Greensprout just to make sure it’s not gonna curse us our something.” Tidal Wave suggested. “I don’t wanna end up….having whatever happened to them happen to us.”
“As much as I hate to wimp out and let some prey escape me, I think water-boy’s right.” Bullseye admitted.
“Yeah! Can’t those slimy weasels see a girl trying to cut down on psychotic episodes here!? Ugh! The nerve of some monsters…” Crazylocks blurted.
“Is that a good idea, Quantum Tech?” Spiral asked.
“In all honesty, yes.” Quantum answered. “My readings of the energy are lacking, but what I did manage to gather is a tad…disturbing. Risking prolonged exposure to this substance without properly understanding it would be foolhardy.”
Valkyrie sighed. “If it helps…” she grumbled.
Though reluctant to have to retreat so early into their venture, the group made their way back to base camp quickly but carefully. Fortunately, no one was showing any symptoms of negative effects from the dark magic. What did linger was the horrific encounter. The foals were pretty used to horrors of virtually all kinds at this point, but it was still profoundly jarring to see something so evil at play in such a foreboding or otherwise unassuming place.
The closer they got to their ship, the more sounds of fighting could be heard. When they were sure that something was amiss, they hastened their approach until they happened upon a terrifying scene.
The other group had not retreated to the Jotun, but it was under attack by not a demon griffon, but a humongous spider as big as Ponyville’s schoolhouse that had flame in the same hue as the demon magic burning from its joint and abdomen, and it looked anything but natural.
The spider spewed purple flames from its mouth as Turf War did his damnedest to hold it back with Greensprout backing him up with healing. However, they noticed that a good chunk of the griffon guards had been trapped in purple web sacs obviously courtesy of their pest. The rest tried to hit it while it was distracted, but its high mobility let it evade most hits, and each hit hat did connect was parried away by on its exaggeratedly clawed limbs. Needless to say, the situation looked dire.
Bullseye drew her bow with a vicious smile on her face. “Ask and you shall receive, it looks like.”
As Quantum’s group approached the fray, Turf War kept whatever pressure he could apply going. “C’mon, b****! I got a big enough boot to squash you right here!” He smacked away its limb down the ground and chopped into it with the axe side of his hammer, nearly severing it and causing the arachnid atrocity to shriek in agony. He kept his shield up to block the hellfire.
“Please don’t get reckless, Turf War!” Greensprout called out. She buffed him with a vitality pulse and any griffon guards who came to her before flying back to their foe.
“Yeah, yeah. I gotch you!” Turf War replied. Suddenly, the spider shot a strand of web silk that caught onto his shield and the hoof that held it. “OH, S***!” His terror maximized when he realized that he couldn’t break free, and the spider started pulling him towards its mouth. “OH, F*** NO!!”
“TURF WAR!!!” Greensprout shouted.
Turf War pulled against it with all his might, but it was a match of tug-of-war he was slowly losing. Just as he thought he was spider chow, something whizzed through the air and severed the silk strand, causing him and the spider to tumble back, the former more so than the latter.
When he looked up, Turf War was delighted to see Bullseye and co. ready to help them. “Good lookin’ out, homegirl!”
Bullseye flicked her nose. “I’m just getting warmed up!” she declared. She then faced the demon spider. “Hey, ugly!” The distraught demon looked her way with its mouth opened, angrily bearing its silk-drenched maw. “GET WRECKED!!” She fired an ice arrow into its gaping maw.
For a second, the beast chocked on the ammo before it took effect. The sheer amount of hellfire around its body certainly slowed the freezing effect, but its movements noticeably more sluggish.
“Hey! That’s my job!” From above them called out a voice, and when they looked up, Frostbite could be seen diving towards the beast. When he was close enough, he exhaled a barrage of ice shards that disturbed it enough to cause it to cover its body, giving the icy drake a chance to swipe it with his tail, which had an ice blade frozen onto it.
It didn’t do a lot of damage, so Frostbite retreated….and regrouped with the rest of his comrades who now too stood ready to finish off the fiend.