-Fizzle-
Okay we weren’t dead and we were getting on the airship, but we were not without our casualties. We didn’t have long before the thestrals noticed that we survived. I had one pertinent question to ask Jade who seemed to not dislike Bahamut after what he did to us.
“Jade, do you have any idea what ‘yol toor shul’ means?” Because that’s been in my head for the last few minutes and it’s something I don’t think I could forget, but for the life of me I didn’t understand why those words were there after we survived.
“Nope, but I don’t think it’s anything to worry about, I got ‘wuld nah kest’ in my head personally. It’s likely a side effect of surviving Bahamut’s attack.” Watching Jade carry our limping badly injured mom whose right arm was broken limp mess was kind of hard. It was worse to see Jacky was carrying a near dead Sugar with a completely blackened horn, we were hurting badly and I wasn’t talking about my head injury. “I still like him though!”
“How can you still like him after that?!” It beggared belief that Jade still liked Bahamut after he attacked us and seriously injured not only mom, but Sugar too! Not only that, she stopped me from using my magic before the attack came… she probably saved my life again, but I was more than a bit angry with her over it.
“Because he destroyed all the darkness cannons on the mountain around the monastery!” Jade made me freeze up in disbelief, but I hadn’t exactly looked back as we quickly boarded the thankfully intact airship in the crevice. Not after Bahamut practically erased all the snow on the part of the mountain and took a bit of the peak while he was at it. There was a small visible strip of snow back where we put up our defenses. “He certainly cares about balance after all, we won’t be hit by any of those on the way out.”
“If you hadn’t ‘fo krah diin’ dearie, we need to get moving!” Velvet shouted at us. Why was she still following us again? She could have easily started on her way home at any time after bringing Snickers back to Jade. “You know, before they find out that we’re still alive?”
“Jacky… get to work… on the balloon.” Mom was a complete mess, I don’t know how she was still awake in her condition. She stumbled away from a surprised looking Jade, who had been holding her up, and towards Daring. She was starting to cough a lot too, I didn’t like the flecks of red on her left hand. “Daring can I… borrow the gunbai for a second?”
Daring hoofed the gunbai over to mom’s left hand, we were definitely building a hospital first chance when we got back home and she needed a really good unicorn doctor for her right arm.
“Hold on to something…” Mom moved towards the front of the Airship, she looked back to make sure we were all onboard and it was quite crowded with Velvet, RC and Bumble here. Daring doesn’t spring for large airships, because she usually doesn’t need them. She swung the gunbai down once and soon the snow started shifting. “I’m going… to lie down, give Sugar… to me please. Try not to make this too… bumpy.”
Mom took Sugar from Jacky and limped her way into the cabin. A worried Snickers followed them in cooing sadly as she hovered around mom.
It was seconds later that airship started sliding down hill on top of a slowly building avalanche, we were beginning to pick up some real speed. Jacky immediately started getting to work on getting the airship airborne before we hit the edge of the mountain in the distance.
“What is that?” Jade pointed out something in the distance. It obviously looked like a thestral glowing with the power of darkness encompassing his body. “I think that might Hollow, he looks pretty pissed off that I sucker punched him so hard.”
Gee, you think? There was a swarm of thestrals forming up behind the cultist leader and they were heading our way.
“Daring, RC, Bumble, form up on me. We need to hold them off! I’m tired of them having air superiority.” With a flick of her wrist I saw that Jade was holding two feathers of Celestia in her left paw. “Everyone else protect Jacky and help her get the airship airborne like yesterday!”
One feather dissolved and Jade directed the energy into her body, two weak looking wings made of light popped out of her back. They were so faint I could barely even see them, it was because it was nighttime and this cast was weaker when it was dark. I wouldn’t fly on those if I were her in any case.
She stuffed the other feather in her right ear and it started glowing, but didn’t that sustain… oh of course! The self-sustain… absorb sunlight, protect from darkness. Hollow certainly looked like a nightmare right now with those glowing red eyes and permeating dark miasma coming off of him.
Jade probably wouldn’t be able to do anything to him otherwise, but with the glowing feather the wings hovering above her back solidified and hardened. I take it she was also redirecting the sunlight in the feather to the wings? Well the feathers sunlight charge wouldn’t last very long in that case.
“Sweet it worked, solar powered feather for the win!” She didn’t know the other feather would increase the strength of the wings outside of direct sunlight? Ugh, Jade, you’re an idiot! A very brilliant beautiful math challenged one no less. “We’ll try to keep them off of the airship.”
Jade took off and the three winged ponies just stared after her in shock, after a second they all scrambled to follow after her. Blade tapped me and pointed to Jacky who was doing all the work by herself. I rushed over to assist Jacky, but the airship jumped when it hit something and it sent Jacky overboard with a plank of wood.
I blinked in shock as I watched Jacky precariously balanced on the bit of wood riding it in the sliding snow. It was still one of those days huh?
“Velvet, we need some help over here!” She could get Jacky back onboard in quick… I started snickering at my thoughts. She was already on a board. I didn’t think I could still laugh with how horrible things were going.
-Jade-
Darn it, this wasn’t going to be an easy fight. No one said life was ever easy and I had to keep in mind how long these wings lasted. I also had to keep in mind how sunlight was in the feather while I was charging my wings with it.
I was flying towards a swarm of thestrals. I was outnumbered and outgunned, as long as Fizzle stayed safe I could care less about myself. Daring was supposed to survive this right? Don’t know about RC or Bumble, but they seem like some of Prime’s best given how well they fight.
The distance closed and I held up my left hand and fired a magic missile, okay I was already drained and that just let me know how tired I was.
Okay hold back on the magic missiles, unless I direly needed to use one. The missile I had fired took out a thestrals wing and sent them spiraling into two more.
“Fire!” The thestrals followed Hollow’s orders immediately, I held up the shield I took from mom with my right arm and multiple bolts deflected off of it as I changed my profile to fit behind it. I couldn’t sustain the feather and the shield at the same time, so I was relying on my wits here.
After the swarm of crossbow bolts bounced off the shield and left my right arm somewhat numb, a crossbow bolt flew past me and it bounced off the aura Hollow had going for him.
I looked back to see a look of shock on RC’s face. The shot had been dead on for Hollow’s hear… if he had one that is. It didn’t do a thing to him, a look of determination crossed her face as she loaded another crossbow bolt and Bumble the yellow striped thestral flicked out his wings blades matching his friends look.
Hollow just chuckled darkly, because that power he had going to his head right now was pretty badass. It was unfortunate that it was the evil kind of badass. Prime might have been gaining the will of the people, but he was still understaffed and was definitely not well armed enough to handle this guy. We had allies, but they weren’t going to do much since most of them were noncombatants.
“You’re not going to be able to beat Hollow like this!” Screaming Star cackled loudly as he directed his troops as a well-oiled unit to spread out and take aim as they approached, this is probably why Hollow didn’t mind the assassination attempts. Screaming was pretty good at directing his soldiers.
“We’ll see about that!” I called back. The distance between us was closing fast and if I could stall long enough then we can get our airship airborne. Even then we wouldn’t escape or get very far with all these thestrals attacking it.
“Please tell me you have a plan, because I don’t think I can take on nearly that many thestrals.” Hovering right next to me Daring had five crossbow bolts in her helmet. The legends about the helmet were true, it really does attract projectiles! “Also need I remind you about the injuries? This seems pretty suicidal.”
“Oh trust me I do have a plan, be prepared to hit them hard and fast. I want you guys to cover your eyes when I shout ‘Fill Life’.” I’ve recently figured out that Celestia’s feathers were far more useful than me and mom had previously thought. “I’m about to show them why I’m called a sun priest and that it isn’t just some fancy moniker.”
In fact I got the idea from Bahamut, I wasn’t going to stay made at the guy like the others. He was just doing his job after all, so no hard feelings from me despite him injuring mom and Sugar pretty badly. Though I could go for another taco.
I waited for them to get a little close before I started, RC, Bumble and Daring stayed with me.
“Do you seriously think yourself invincible just because a crossbow bolt bounced off you Hollow? Well let me ‘Fill Life’, with illumination!” Let’s see, I was aware that Hollow and his ilk had been trapped underground for a while and that they all had pretty good night vision. Well what would happen if they were to get hit with a solar flare via sunlight funneled to my left hand and blasted outwards in the form of a cast? Redirecting sunlight was what the feather did, we just never thought about redirecting the sunlight inside the feather itself.
Here’s mud in your eyes jerks! A bright flash filled the area and thanks to my warning, Daring, RC and Bumble had avoided being blinded by it. The seventy or so screeching thestrals clutching at their eyes, including Hollow and Screaming, were not as lucky as they saw the sun for a brief instance.
A lot of them were going to be blind and disoriented for a while.
“Holy flap!” Well, what did you expect Daring? I’m a sun priest and doing things with sunlight was likely one of my things… I could make it a thing.
The feather in my right ear was drained from doing that and the wings on my back faded slightly, so I better not do that a second time unless I really needed to or else I wouldn’t be able to fly very well.
“Come on, go, go, GO!” I swooped into the swarm of disoriented thestrals and was followed by Bumble and a second later Daring. “Hit as many of them as you can fast and hard, then start flying back for the airship!”
I pulled my knife from my hip and started to slash my way through a few thestrals wings, Daring Do just slapped their wings with her hooves and whip.
The real star of the minutes of free attacks I bought us was Bumble who put a good forty of them down with barely two swooping sweeps of his bladed wings, he was flying like a butterfly and hitting like a Hercules beetle.
RC stayed back and managed to lightly injure Hollow with a shot across the back. He looked to be recovering a lot faster than the others… because of course he was. Darkness protected his eyes, but it couldn’t protect itself from the light.
Bumble, having dealt with a large number of thestrals in such a short amount of time, let it go to his head as he angled for Hollow. I would have shouted a warning, but it was already too late.
Hollow grabbed him out of the air by the throat with his right hoof and started choking him, he struggled to attack Hollow’s leg with his wing blades and hooves, but it wasn’t doing anything.
“Insect…” Hollow stopped flapping his wings entirely and hovered there. With the sweeping edge of his left wing, he gouged out a chunk of the struggling Bumble’s throat in a bloody display and tossed his body away.
“No!” A horrified RC swooped down to catch him.
“Get him some help, we’ll take it from here!” I received a reluctant look from RC as she held Bumble’s body close to herself, after a moment she finally nodded and started flying off. I fired a magic missile at Hollow’s face and he flinched when it hit him “Come on Daring!”
“Send some men after her Screaming… make sure they know I’ll be displeased if she gets away.” Hollow turned towards the directions we were fleeing, Screaming immediately sent the few thestrals that were still flying after RC. “I will not let their insufferable minor victory go unpunished.”
He spread out both his wings and shot after the sun priest, with darkness coalescing around him and one goal on his mind. Revenge against those who thought they could stop him!
- Fizzle -
“Incoming, it looks like Jade dealt them a pretty nasty blow!” Even as I said that, I had watched as hollow grab Bumble and then… yeah that was not going to be a pretty thing for me to remember. “RC and Bumble are out, Bumble might be…”
My voice hitched, it looked really bad and I didn’t want to believe it. I decided not to voice my thought.
“Mountain edge coming, how many are still coming after us?” We had gotten Jacky back onboard the airship with the help of Velvet creating ramps to launch her off of, it took three attempts and ate up quite a bit of time.
Hopefully Jacky could fill the balloon on the way down, because we were about to go off the cliffs edge.
“Quite a few, they still have at least ten or so coming at us. That’s including ‘darkness glowing’ Hollow Heart and Screaming Star.” I could pull together magic for a single burst if needed, but I’m quite sure Jade wouldn’t want me to do that with a head injury.
“I’ll work faster.” You better work faster Jacky!