Even if they were down a member, the Battle Foals had never felt stronger than they did now, going to face a would-be god of death. Some of them were more experienced than the others, and perhaps a little braver, but they knew enough that every move they made had to have a purpose from now on. Right now, their purpose was to show Nidhogg that he wasn’t invincible right before they gave him a hooves-on demonstration.
They came across the hallway wall separating them from the prison’s courtyard, and Turf War brazenly smashed a hole through it, allowing him and his comrades entry. Grass and small trees burning black flames offered miniscule obstacles for the foals to circumvent, but the entire area was very open and spacious enough to give them room to fight the beast inside the dark cloud swirling directly above them.
“STOP COWERING AWAY IN YOUR CLOUD, NIDHOGG, AND COME DOWN HERE AND FIGHT US!!” Fire Fight bellowed, his horn burning like his dragon’s will.
For a brief moment, nothing happened; but they could almost feel Nidhogg mustering the will to come of his evil shell and face them, as if the cloud itself took a deep breath before a pair of demonic purple eyes pierced through the black veil of horrible mist. “Hmph. Even in the very eye of my storm you still persist… Very well.”
Suddenly, a stream of mist floated down to and touched the ground like a tornado. It congregated into a smaller but thicker cloud that slowly morphed into a serpentine image. Its body arced up and down like a wave, forming from tail to head and growing horrific claws. Any dorsal fins along his back, tail and the membranes of his wings appeared as bright, hellish purple flames that violently spewed like fireworks; and his head was more defined in its features, making Nidhogg appear as a truly organic entity. He was big enough to snake halfway across one of the prison walls.
“I suppose if you want all the bugs squashed right, one must do it themselves.” Nidhogg’s eyes viciously gleamed as he glared down as his unwelcomed guests.
The Battle Foals remained undaunted. They’d come too far to give up now, and the threat of Nidhogg was all too real. With their weapons drawn and their wills ignited, they began their clash against the dark lord.
Spiral Galaxy made the first move by conjuring a proton star just at the tip of her horn and fired a blast of light at Nidhogg’s head. The draconic devil slithered his serpentine body in such a way that Spiral’s blast thread the needle like an arrow through multiple rings, dodging it like a pro; he then used his momentum to fling a flurry of dark flames across the courtyard. Frostbite exhaled blizzards to put them out, and Tidal Wave summoned a powerful gush of groundwater from below their feet and went to work.
Nidhogg moved to quickly for any of them to land a calculated attack, but Kickback had other ideas; he noticed that there was a considerable of loose and unstable debris along the walls, such as rocks hanging by overgrown vines, metal bars partially ripped off, etc. When the sinister serpent was about to pass under a particularly large rock, he shot out the vine, and the rock crashed atop Nidhogg like a ton of bricks. He proudly fixed his hat, but the boulder suddenly glowed a black aura and shattered apart like glass as the beast effortlessly snaked out.
As he emerged, Turf War sprinted up to him and viciously smacked the drake’s knee with his hammer, causing Nidhogg to stagger which left him vulnerable. Fire Fight, Shadow Shroud, Air Slash, Crazylocks, Zebota and Shrapnel, Bullseye, Tidal Wave, Frostbite and Greensprout all joined their badmouthing bastion to begin their assault.
Quantum Tech had her force field erected while remaining far away so she could pop the dark dragon with her railguns and magic turrets while Spiral Galaxy and Kickback got about midway towards their foe and unleashed their fire.
Bullseye volleyed a golden arrow above Nidhogg which unleashed a nasty cascade of golden arrows down upon him, which did little to faze him. Nidhogg retaliated by exhaling a torrent of dark fire towards his attacker, but Frostbite managed to at least keep it at bay with his ice fire, but his sheer power was overwhelming. Fire Fight then unleashed his own inferno by engulfing himself in a mighty blaze and using his momentum to fling it at the beast like a solar flare.
Shockingly, Nidhogg absorbed the massive blaze into his wings and blackened it all! He then blasted it across the ground, forcing everyone who wasn’t airborne to jump, allowing the dark beast to whip around and smack them away with his huge tail.
“GUYS!” Spiral shouted. She quickly used her gravity magic to catch everyone and gently let them down.
Meanwhile, Frostbite, Air Slash, Bullseye and Crazylocks, who all managed to dodge the nasty blow took their chance. “THAT WAS A BAD MOVE, F***NUT!!” Bullseye shouted.
The berserk bowpony impaled the serpent’s body with her bladed bow and ran in it across his body without a hint of mercy. Despite what was brutally lethal damage, Nidhogg barely flinched at all. In fact, he softly chuckled. “What a waste of such valiant effort.” He taunted. He flicked his wings and sent a surge of fire down his body towards Bullseye.
Just as she was about to crisp, Frostbite blasted the blaze back with a smothering cloud of frigid wind and started running his claws along the beast’s body against Bullseye’s path. When the two met they swooped away from their foe just before he forcefully whipped his slithery body in a failed attempt to smack them away.
Air Slash and Crazylocks took their turn next. They both soared just above Nidhogg’s head, and Air Slash took Crazylocks by the hoof. “CANNONBALL!!!!” She retracted her wings as the samurai swung her around and powerfully tossed her downward, causing her to strike his head with meteoritic force. He let out an agonized screech. Crazylocks then quickly sprouted her horn and enveloped herself in a coat of magic that Quantum Tech noticed had similar properties to her electromagnetic blasts. Suddenly, a mass of fallen rocks and boulders with iron bars sticking out magnetized around and formed a cocoon around her, and Air Slash was yanked to the top of it from holding onto his swords.
“WHAA!!” Though surprised at first, he quickly realized what his crazed comrade was up to and poised his swords accordingly.
Crazylocks released her magnetic, causing the cocoon to violently burst into two halves that each barrowed into Nidhogg’s wings, causing him great agony and his reflexes to raise his tail, which Air Slash was sent flying towards; he swiftly spun around with his swords held out, turning him into an airborne blender that pureed the tip of Nidhogg’s tail. All three impacts caused the purple hellfire to disperse to the point where they were nearly smothered.
“HE’S OPEN! ATTACK!!” Fire Fight ordered as he and everyone else got up.
Zebota stayed back and clutched his glowing brooch, fervently reciting an aggressive incantation. “Roho ya mama mkubwa, binti zake, watumishi wake, hapa sauti yangu na kujibu simu yangu! Kuzuia pigo hii juu ya mwili wako haki hivyo huenda zisafishwe!”
A huge and complex glyph of light erupted from beneath him and Shrapnel, and the earth beneath everyone suddenly began trembling as if the whole island were about to explode. Areas of the ground around Nidhogg burst with great magnitude as gigantic roots snaked out from below and entangled the demonic drake, holding him down as he struggled to break free in his weakened state.
“I must maintain this hold on him!” Zebota called out as he focused on his spell. Everyone wordlessly understood, including his wooden titan charging their foe, his ferality unleashed.
“<HOOOOOWWWWLLLL!!!!!>”
Even when overwhelmed by fire punches, flurries of slashes, cosmo blasts, electro blasts, electrified bullets, blasts of ice, and being a mauled by a huge timberwolf, Nidhogg proved to be resilient even by the standards of dragons. However, Greensprout took a deep breath before bravely facing the head of the beast and channeled the full force of her Gaia Root. Just as with his conjured pawns, a normally restorative, warm energy proved malignant to a lord of the undead, and said lord began wailing in excruciation. It was unclear whether or not it weakened him overall, but the damage had to be real.
In the midst of the brutal assault, some of Nidhogg’s strength must have returned to him, and his hellish maw opened wide.
“<RAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!>”
A blood-curdling, guttural roar that sounded as though it had resounded from hell itself rocked the battlefield, and a mighty explosion suddenly rocked the ramparts outside the prison walls where the griffons struggled against their cursed opponents. A massive cloud of dark fire spiraling in a terrifying inferno surged from the outside and prompted the foals to scatter as smothered Nidhogg, who began absorbing it along with his dark cloud.
“You….. insipid….. PARASITES!!!!!”
The accursed inferno blasted from Nidhogg, forcing the roots off of him, but the dark blaze consumed the roots….and infected them. Enveloped in unholy flames, the roots released their grip on the dark dragon and assumed a more horrific appearance; they blackened and glowing a piercing yellow from cracks that formed along them, and they threateningly snaked in place like giant serpents waiting to strike the foals.
“Oh, s***…” Turf War muttered.
As if that wasn’t enough, Nidhogg’s flame wings had rekindled and were even more intense than before, some of his scales had spiked up like nightmarish porcupine quills, and his body overall became far more corporeal than ethereal, making him appear as if he had been completed in a way.
Zebota, still within his earth glyph, struggled against the dark magic that had taken ahold of his roots. “Nrgh!... I…. won’t…. let you… corrupt… the earth!!!” Despite his efforts appearing to be fruitless, he endured anyway, driven by willpower alone.
“Hah! You seriously think we’re scared just because you got a little upgrade!?” Frostbite taunted.
Nidhogg’s only reply was allowing the rogue roots to lash down at them, slamming into the ground and causing dark shockwaves to resound across the battlefield before snaking high into the air, each flap of his wings flaring his hellfire.
“RRRGGGGHHH!!!! You may have forced me to gather my strength prematurely, but this should be plenty…” Nidhogg hissed. “I could simply corrupt the lot of you… BUT I THINK I’LL INSTEAD SEE YOU BURN TO DEATH!!!!!”
The Battle Foals could swear that the sky itself imploded as Nidhogg inhaled, and they prepared to put up every defense possible against an assuredly explosive exhalation. When the demonic drake blasted a megaton of fire from his mouth, they were ready to take action….until a mass of golden light spiraled above them, shielding them from the hellish inferno.
“WHAT!?!?”
When the light dispersed, the foals were more than delighted to see Valkyrie, engulfed in the light of the Valhalla. The heroic griffonlet looked down to her elated comrades. “Having trouble? Tch. Figures…”
“Valkyrie!?” Fire Fight said, surprised to see her. “But what about-”
“Mr. Serpent-of-Eden here sucked them all up just like we thought. He’s about to finish his meal with huge course of
hero’s might shoved down his throat!” Valkyrie declared.
Bullseye flew up next to her, smirking deviously with her bow drawn. “I like the way you think, bird-brain.” She fired a light arrow above the corrupted root, which did little to faze them, but definitely got their attention, because one of them shot into the air towards them.
Before it could strike, it was viciously severed seemingly out of nowhere until their eyes were taken from the falling limb to Captain Frigg, who faced up at Nidhogg with dauntless fury. “PLAYIN’ YER TRUMP CARD A SMIDGE EARLY, AREN’T WE, YA OVERGROWN STRING O’ LICORICE!?” Her entire battalion of griffon soldiers soon horded the skies around the arena, their weapons drawn and their wills ignited.
Air Slash, Frostbite and Crazylocks soon joined them; the former had his swords pointed towards the beast. “YOUR END DRAWS NEAR, WICKED BEAST!”
“I believe those are my words.” Nidhogg smugly replied. He suddenly fired his numerous spiked quill scales from his body like missiles and started vomiting hellfire in torrents as he flew around, prompting the griffon soldiers to maneuver through the in desperate attempts to dodge.
Meanwhile on the ground, the foals helpless to get aloft on their own could only dodge out the way of the hail of projectiles while those capable fired towards Nidhogg. Tidal Wave created cushions of water above them all to block the unholy flares while Spiral Galaxy used her gravity manipulation to redirect the scales away from everyone.
Zebota continued to struggle against the thrashing roots, trying desperately to purge the corruption that Nidhogg had infected them with….until he felt a soothing warmth radiate throughout his body. “Huh?” When he looked, there was Greensprout channeling her Gaia Root into him, and he could feel its power resonating with his own. He gave smile of grateful confidence. “Thank you, friend.”
“You’re welcome, brother. Now do what you must!” Greensprout said.
Zebota took a deep breath and gathered all of his focus. His attunement with the natural world combined with Greensprout’s spiritual healing mana mixed like peanut butter and jelly, and he was able to burn away the corrupted spawns before any more hell broke loose. The little emissary of nature felt very proud of himself for having cleansed such a plague, and the little monk helping him could sense his gratitude.
Greensprout then walked up to Fire Fight. “I… I must be the one. I’m the only one who can hurt him.” She said. A hint of fear could be detected under humble gusto.
“We know, Greensprout, but it’s one thing after another with this guy.” Fire Fight said.
“I have to admit that he’s quite proficient at compensating for his weaknesses!” Shroud said as she observed the chaos above them. The griffons and aerial Battle Foals fought valiantly as Nidhogg spewed his flames and whipped around his gigantic body, just barely managing to hold him back with their combined might and abilities.
Suddenly, a small group of the griffons swooped down to them and lowered themselves. “Hop on! We’ll get you into the air so you can fight him.” One of them said.
“We’ll catch you if you fall, so don’t worry!” Another said.
While the others were pretty nervous, namely Tidal Wave, Turf War immediately complied, ready for action. “ HELL YEAH, Yo’ boy goin’ for a fly! I’ll open a can o’ whoop-a** on this dude even if he ten-thousand miles high!”
Inspired by their friend’s courage, some of them complied. Quantum Tech, Spiral, and Zebota and Shrapnel opted to provide support from below. “Shrapnel, defend us if this reviling serpent rears its head upon this ground!” Zebota ordered. His titan fiercely roared, assuring his compliance. He then focused his brooch again and caused glyphs to appear underneath his other two comrades, who felt surges of energy empower them.
“Whoooaaa! Thanks, Zebota!” Spiral said.
“Energy levels at maximum charge. Energy levels at maximum charge.” Quantum’s mech indicated, and the little brainiac confidently fixed her glasses as she looked towards her striped ally, who nodded back.
“Taking aim…. Firing!!” Quantum carefully aimed her shots before blasting her railguns and magic turrets at their foe.
Spiral took a deep breath and concentrated all of her stress into her horn, an overflow of cosmo magic ready to obliterate if need be. “You’ve got this, Spiral. You’re in control…” she mumbled to herself.
High above, the struggling air force were shocked that none of them had sustained serious injuries, and they held their own. The carried foals held on tight as they soared just below the clouds, ready to fight Nidhogg. Their carriers promised to act as vehicles so that they could focus on their offensive.
Their flying comrades joined them. “Finally decided to haul a** up here, huh?” Bullseye huffed before firing an arrow towards Nidhogg.
“It’s about time! This life-sized taffy puppy plushie really needs a diaper change!” Crazylocks blurted.
“I need to get to his head! If I channel the Gaia Root enough, I can fell him!” Greensprout said.
Air Slash flew next to her, and she could see the obvious worry in his eyes behind that warrior’s fire. He took a deep breath. “We will do what we must.” He said calmly. Greensprout smiled and reached over to peck his cheek.
Frostbite cracked his knuckles. “I think I smell a frozen barbecue!”
“We’ll try to open up Nidhogg for attack. Greensprout, jump on him the second you get the chance! We’ll do everything we can to keep you safe.” Fire Fight said.
Greensprout nodded. “Thank you. I stand ready.” Before they all took off, she casted a vitality pulse that gave everyone a little boost.
“IF YOU WEE SWABS R’ DONE WITH YER PEP RALLY, I SUGGEST YA FOCUS ON SMITIN’ THE BASTARD!!” Frigg called out. With no further delay, the foals continued their air raid against the vile Nidhogg and his hellfire.