//------------------------------// // Chapter thirty eight, Shadows on The Range: The Moon. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Outside Haven’s Patch, Arizona- “Uh… Calloway… did you have plans for something like that?!” I pointed a hoof at the monster as it opened its mouth and six bladed tongues popped out as it roared, that along with the four tentacles extending from its neck made for a horrifying monster. The cattle around us started backing up in fear of the barely visible beast. The alien roar didn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard before, I’ve heard a hydra before and that didn’t send chills down back. There was something just so unnatural about it. The large worm monster was barely visible in the light and the shadow it was casting was almost enough to overpower the candle barrier on its own, its two large malevolent red eyes glared at the center of our defensive line. I kind of wished I couldn’t see it and the fear I was feeling was starting to get to me. I swept my eyes around to make sure a shadow wasn’t leaping at me as I backed up towards Paprika and Velvet. I felt safer being nearer to them. -Calloway- “Oh my… that’s… that’s pretty big.” I so wished Maggie were here, she’d have taken it head on and it would be me and Grace supporting her to make sure she didn’t bite off more cud than she could possibly chew. Lesser shadows and shadows strong enough to survive the candles were easy enough to keep out of town, but that? That thing could certainly devastate Haven’s Patch all by itself. That is if it were a real tatzelwurm and could burrow, then we wouldn’t be able to keep it from going under us. The monster then did some rather queer to me, it dug its head into the shadow horde and took a number of them into its mouth, what could it be… oh no! “Montana go tell Colorado to send some cows to set up fireworks aimed in this direction, they are to immediately start firing them nonstop!” I had a hunch as to what that greater shadow was about to do with all the lesser shadows it just took into itself. “They should know what their target is.” “I’ll go get right on it ma’am, but what is it doing?” Montana stopped to ask and I might as well tell him quickly to make him move faster. “It’s going to start spitting lesser shadows over the candles and into the town, have all our noncombatants gather at the center of town in a more defensible position!” I barely finished my sentence when he ran off into town like his butt was on fire. The dark moon shining over this town was as foreboding as the large snake like monster inhaled. “Velvet stop it from exhaling! We need more flare candles! I know it may be dangerous, but we need to start putting them everywhere in the streets!” Some of our defenders broke off to go do that while others held the line at the barrier keeping the lesser shadows out. We will quickly run out of jars to throw at this rate. -Velvet- How was I going to… oh right! I immediately lifted the large ice block that was used as a wall against the spider shadow in my magic and, with Tinsel’s assistance, I launched it spinning at the monsters chin as it was about to exhale. Its mouth was forcefully closed as soon as it started exhaling shadows into the air and we could all hear it loudly groaning as it started spilling tons of shadows onto the ground. It had still managed to spit a few shadows beyond the front line, only for a few cattle to smash some jars near where they landed before they could get into town. “I don’t know how many times we can do that! Also we’re leaving a lot of busted glass on the ground, that can’t be very safe at all.” I think Tinsel was becoming tired as I continued to take aim and fire shard after ice shard. My magic was being taxed by quite a bit and I was making sure to slow down so I didn’t burn myself out like I did during the whole circus escapade. I did not want to go through another painful burning fever. “Take a break Tinsel, I can keep us safe for the time being.” Tinsel squeaked in disapproval, but sat down at the back of my neck and hugged tightly against me. “We can clean up the glass later, keep fighting!” There was a few questions Calloway could answer for me, so I fell back and launched another flurry of hailstones into the Shadow Horde. She was busy tackling five shadows on her own and I iced them by sending a row of spikes up through them. “Why isn’t that large scary one coming through the barrier?” I extended a blade of ice from my hoof and slashed three shadows apart with several quick swings. I separated the blade from my hoof, grabbed it and threw it like a javelin into the heart of a charging tiger shadow. “I don’t think the candles, would do a thing to stop it and it must be aware of that.” “If these things are intelligent, then it’s possibly waiting for us to use up our supplies and for all the other shadows to soften us up before it makes its move. It’s taking up lesser shadows again!” I turned back to look and in the dim light I could see an army of red eyes get swept up by the large monstrous shadow that was barely visible in the darkness swarming around the town. “We need to stop it!” Were we all yelling just because of all the dynamite going off? The explosives were very effective weapons in this situation, but oh my precious ears were never going to stop ringing for a solid week after this. I had no doubt that we would all survive this, but in what state has yet to be decided. “I’m not going to be able to stop it this time, I need time to create a large enough ice wall by myself to throw at it. I’m not a water focused ice magic user! Also Tinsel is not an ice sprite that is trained for extensive combat, he needs to rest before he can start assisting me again.” I knew ice sprites were not meant for prolonged combat assistance, though I couldn’t say Tinsel hadn’t tried his best to keep aiding me. “Well someone has to do something, we cannot let them get a large enough number of shadows into the town to weaken the candles from this side of them or else they’ll swarm us!” Which was going to be hard Calloway, as I wasn’t going to be given enough time to prepare a wall with multiple shadows coming at me personally and Tinsel needing to rest. The little darling was brave and willing in wanting to continue, but I wasn’t going to let him burn himself out like that. The only reason why the shadow monsters that could survive the light weren’t taking out the candles is because they had better targets to take care of, the defenders of Haven’s Patch that had an absurd amount of dynamite and jars to throw. The lesser shadows could slowly inch their way forward and slowly snuff out the candles on their own. The shadows that could get through were going to prevent me from hitting the large worm shadow with anything to stop it from spewing shadows all over the town. Paprika and Arizona were doing their best, but there were still so many of them still coming. “I got this, cover me Velvet!” Turning to Arizona to see what she was doing, she was twirling a lasso over her head. Did she really think she could hit it from this distance or stop that shadow from spewing more over the town? Paprika was flailing her fur in every direction to sweep them away from Arizona and I quickly joined in with swift hoof strikes and fired several icicles into as many of the approaching threats that I could manage. “I don’t mean to demean you on this Arizona, but do you seriously think you can actually nail it from this distance?” I stared at the jar in the rope as Arizona swung it in a wide arc over her head, the rope was beginning to pick up speed and it wouldn’t be long before she got it going really fast. “I can try, I don’t necessarily need to get this in its mouth for this to work.” Arizona was waiting for the proper moment to launch the phosphorus flare bomb. “I just need to hit whatever starts coming out of it!” “That’s an idea worthy of Maggie herself, I wholeheartedly approve if it works!” Calloway stated as she calmly thrust her hoof through and out the back of a crocodile shaped shadow leaping for her with its mouth wide open. She thrust her other hoof into it and ripped it in half. The shadow dissolved before it could close its mouth around her head, she snorted and shook her head while smiling and then adjusted her hat. “It’ll work… you can do this Arizona. You’ve got more muscles than just the ones in your limbs, now use them!” Listening to Arizona working herself up, I fought back a large shadow mantis. It’s bladed arms deflected my ice shards and I had to block it and hold it off with a lance of ice, I couldn’t help but think if Arizona misses then things were going to get rather hectic in Haven’s Patch. “Open up and take your medicine!” Arizona loosed the jar and a few shadows tried to jump for it, but it was flying far too fast for them to stop it as it shot towards the large worm shadow opening its mouth. The large shadow monster just looked like it got a mouthful of light as the jar smashed against the fourteenth or thirtieth shadow to come out of its mouth. The shadows that had passed by the jar were immediately eliminated and the worm was just left harmlessly spewing gaseous darkness into the air, as all the lesser shadows died upon coming out of its mouth as the bright sphere of light fell towards the ground. “Nice shot Arizona, but I really did not need to see what the large shadow fully looks like.” In the light from the jar Arizona hit it with, we could all fully see it now. It was less terrifying in the light for something that was pitch black, shaped like a tatzelwurm and had two large red eyes. It was fairly hideous and less frightening than it was a second ago. It quickly went back to being barely visible and it covered the mote of light near it with its body, snuffing it out immediately. The fear and terror came back almost immediately as if it was just forcefully rammed into me, it made me realize these feelings of fear weren’t quite mine. “Do you have anything to block out magical effects?” I turned to Calloway who was tossing another dynamite stick into the horde that was surrounding the town. “I think that large one is somehow causing us to fear it when we can’t see it.” All the lesser shadows were doing now was blocking sight of the regular ones before they passed beyond the candles, they weren’t nearly as effective at anything else until they could swarm us after wearing the light out on the candles and they were close to doing that until the cattle started putting up new candles behind the old ones. “Well that explains why some of my people are becoming so scared, even while they are mostly safe in the light.” She saw my look and she put a hoof to her chest, given there was a lull in the fighting near us it was safe to talk. Looking around there were multiple cattle with moderate to severe injuries depending on the shadow monsters they had to face, a lot of the bulls were barely standing and had taken some serious injuries. “I’m used to the idea of fear and danger, things like this monster can’t scare me that easily! In fact, I’ve seen scarier and have been in far more dangerous situations than this! Good shot Arizona, we need to keep hitting them!” “I’m more surprised none of the cattle have broken rank and run off thanks to the fear effect.” I could see that every cow and bull still fighting back efficiently even if they were frightened. I idly slapped a wolf shadow away from myself and watched as it was trampled by bull. “That’s one of the reasons why I’m the mayor of Haven’s Patch, our bonds are too strong to let a little thing like fear scare us off from supporting each other! They see my leadership skills as strong, fair and supportive. I show no fear in the face of these monsters and like one massive herd, they follow my example and this is the strength of the cows!” She lit a stick of dynamite and hurled it into the shadows. “That and I’m willing to be on the front lines beside them instead of behind all of them. Know that leading from the front is quite dangerous, especially if the leader is taken out early. They will not allow me or each other to fall, we always stand united!” “Yeah I can see that, but that large shadow doesn’t need to lead from the front.” I bashed a shadow with a buff ice statue of myself rising up from the ground sending the inky blackness splattering everywhere before it dissolved. “What’s it doing now?” “It’s taking up some of the larger shadows, we can’t use a jar to stop those!” Calloway was keeping her cool pretty well despite the next volley of shadow based artillery couldn’t be stopped with a longshot jar fling this time. “Let me think of something…” In the middle of gathering some large shadows a loud whistling noise pierced the air and a colorful explosion ripped apart a mass of lesser shadows. I looked up and saw various fireworks being launched into the horde surrounding the town, but most of them were aimed at the large shadow peppering it with small explosions making small bits of darkness rise off it with each hit. “Never mind, it looks like Colorado came through for us.” Calloway smiled as Montana and Dakota came rushing forward. “Ma’am the sun is finally rising!” Montana yelled in excitement as he charged forward with the larger quiet blue bull at his side. Looking up at the moon, the glowing darkness was gone. As soon as the sunlight filtered across the town and the army of shadows, most of the shadows evaporated leaving only one large shadow a few hundred moderately big ones. “Right, the situation has changed drastically in our favor.” The rockets weren’t randomly firing anymore they were all aimed at the remaining shadows and stopped aiming at the large monster, the fireworks hadn’t done much damage to it anyway. “Montana gather all able bodied cattle. We must launch a counter attack, we cannot let any shadows escape to anywhere else! I need someone to go out and keep their attention!” “We’ll do it, let’s do this thing!” Arizona started charging forward. We followed.