She runs.
She does some fighting too, but her capacity for that is limited right now.
So she mostly just runs.
She’d caught the things by surprise when, after they finished their dreadful curse, she had risen back to her hooves and beheaded the nearest one.
There had been only one reason she had let them complete that curse.
It gave her painstakingly-crafted spellwork time to activate completely unhindered, to teleport her army to safety.
It should have taken her too. She’s not sure why it didn’t, but she suspects the curse interfered with it somehow.
Whatever. She has until the storage crystals in her armor run out, or until she starves to death, whichever comes first. Even with their acceleration spells, she’s still faster. Stronger.
By her sister, is she glad she’s a pony- and thence, able to take advantage of hundreds of years of magic research. Thousands of years.
She slashes through three more. She knows they’ve confirmed she’s cursed; if they try draining her any more, the thaumic backlash of separating a pony with the entirety of their lifeforce could wipe out their entire army.
Especially a pony as powerful as she.
So they must resort to physical attacks. Old-fashioned swordplay.
At this rate, her armor will run out of magic before she starves. She’s pretty sure they got her fairly thoroughly- by her best guess, she’s got about three hours to the starvation barrier.
They’re forming up. Forcing her to slow down, spend more time slaughtering than running. At this rate, she’ll never make it.
Something shiny in the corner of her eye catches her attention. She glances momentarily in that direction, before resuming her fight. It looked like a Guard- though why any of the pegasi would be leaving a trail like that, she has no idea. Unless they’re trying to show off- possibly trying to scare the Centaurs away.
Which won’t work, unless there’s a huge number of them.
The very next moment, her world turns on its head. The very ground beneath her hooves heaves from the force of whatever those pegasi are doing.
Two ripples pass through the air, one from either side. They’re so fast she nearly misses them, smashing into each other right where she is.
She feels the massive pressure next; those pegasi must have been suicide bombers… that didn’t know she was here. She feels the magic in her armor draining away, protecting her from the crushing forces.
Then the pressure shifts, and gets under her wings- which had been extended, to allow her to use the blades affixed to the leading edge of each. Her pegasus magic is completely absent- but this massive pressure doesn’t seem to care. She tenses her muscles, drawing even more on her armor’s power, as she forces her wings out- and the pressure waves carry her into the air. Right on time for a third wave to hit from behind, propelling her rapidly forwards and away from the centaurs.
Even without her pegasus magic, thanks to the size of her wings and her armor’s magic, she should at least be able to control her descent. So long as the Centaurs don’t turn her into a pincushion first- but, when she glances back down as she glides away, it seems they won’t be doing that. Centaurs aren’t normally capable of flight- and the ones that aren’t airborne are busy fleeing the fireballs those pegasi left behind.
Then, as she reaches the peak of her flight path, she sees something coming, behind that hill. It’s… huge. She traces the disappearing smoke trails from the dive-bombing pegasi; they must have come from this thing, moving right about directly upwards when they left, before curving smoothly down.
Perhaps they weren’t pegasi after all?
The Centaurs will be able to see this thing any moment now; it’s rising quickly over the hill.
She’s not sure why that one big pipe thing is angled slightly off from straight forwards.
… Correction: She now knows what happened at Fort Flurry. She rides the shockwave from this blast higher still, glancing behind only once the glare died down to verify that the entire army has been defeated with a single blow.
It has.
The… thing continues moving, positioning itself at the base of her trajectory. She still has enough control authority in her wings to avoid it, but she expects she lacks the strength- and remaining thaumic power- to survive on her own to reach the nearest fort, Fort Dash.
So, she redirects herself, to land on its front.
As soon as she lands, it begins moving, turning to move back the way it had come- at a noticeably reduced pace.
She watches the ice in front of it. It’s traveling in a northwesterly direction, unless she misses her guess; worst case scenario, at least she’ll be closer to Fort Dash than if she hadn’t ridden it.
She’s beginning to contemplate leaping off to glide to the ground, find a snack, and start walking for Fort Dash, when she sees something in the distance. It’s glinting gently in her sister’s sunlight- but it’s shape is clear to her. She can see the turrets on the walls- and from this elevated vantage point, the Royal Equestrian Flag flying from the top of the flagpole in front of the main building. The same flag every pony-held fort flies.
And, judging by the destruction her conveyance demonstrated on the Centaurs that were attacking her but isn’t demonstrating here, it hasn’t been infiltrated by the enemy. She waits until her conveyance comes up close before jumping off, gliding her way over the walls to land in front of the single building. As she went, she glanced back; her conveyance appears to be stopping abreast of the base, as well.
Then she takes a look around.
There are no ponies in evidence.
The storage crystals in her armor are running low, too.
She hopes they’re all inside, for… whatever it is’ turn at watching the gates.
So she walks to the front of the building, where the door is.
The door slides open smoothly and suddenly as she reaches it, without requiring her to touch it at all. Calm, white light flows down from a couple of bars on the ceiling as she enters the small, empty room, walking to the door on the other side.
Once she’s inside, the doors… cycle, for lack of a better word. The one behind her closed just as quickly as it had opened, then the one in front of her promptly demonstrated similar speed in its opening.
Then her eyes widen.
In one of the far corners of the room lie several fragments of what could only have been a Fort Crystal. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem the base was wiped out- she saw no bodies outside, and the pile of armor in here is completely unworn, if somewhat badly damaged. There’s also a unicorn in the room, with a mint green coat, a blue-and-white striped mane, and no cutie mark, sitting at the glowing table and looking up at her.
“Welcome to Fort Hope,” the unicorn states. “I see you’ve already met Hope?”
“Hope?” she asks.
“Yeah- she’s the moving mountain outside, and she’s building us this base.” A sigh, glancing at the crystal fragments. “After the Fort Crystal disaster last night, we’ve had to leave all guard duty to her and remove all our armor, so… Um, I’m Private Strings; Privates Verbal and Dust- Earth and Pegasus- are in the back, with Sergeant Stone- pegasus- and both Honesty and Kindness.”
A voice floats back from behind the curtain she’d gestured towards. “Uh, Strings? Who’re you talking to?”
She raises her eyebrows. “Is that everypony?”
“That’s everypony Hope’s been able to save so far,” Private Strings answers, before a hoof pushes the curtain aside, making way for a pony behind it- who Strings smiles at. “Glad you could join us, Sergeant.”
The Sergeant promptly collapses to the floor in shock, before struggling back to his hooves and out from under the curtain. “P-Princess!” he exclaims, bowing.
A few whats and huhs sound from behind the curtain, shortly followed by a quick sequence of oofs.
She looks back down at Strings. “You knew I was coming?” she asks.
Strings nods. “Yep.” She then drags her forehooves across the surface of the table in front of her- and the glowing map floating above it moves with, zooming in to show a depiction of the crater.
A little symbol appears above the crater- no, three symbols. A Centaur, two of those strange pipe-like things demonstrated to have been used at Fort Flurry crossed in an X, then her own head and chest, complete with armor.
“Huh, that’s new,” Strings mutters, looking closer at the three chained symbols.