//------------------------------// // Chapter thirty eight, Shadows on The Range: The Sun. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -The Range, Arizona- A good ninety or more percent of the Shadow Horde were lesser shadows, so as soon as the sun came up they had all perished immediately upon contact with sunlight. Thus charging the numerous remaining shadows still standing was a totally practical thing to do, with just an alpaca and a reindeer for backup. I grabbed a charging bear shadow by its swinging paw. I swung it around using its own momentum and chucked it at the large retreating worm with quite a bit of my strength put behind it. Paprika leapt onto a shadow to my left and hugged it to the ground, I heard a soft popping noise and a disappointed alpaca sigh. The shadows were apparently too frail for Paprika to hug, that didn’t mean she would stop trying as she leapt for the next one that started immediately showing fear at the alpacas happy countenance. I should really get her a plush toy after all this. Also, only someone like Paprika could make fearless shadow monsters fear her. To my right, Velvet was firing several shards of ice that ripped through several of the remaining shadows that could survive in sunlight. They couldn’t stay cohesive for very long under such an onslaught. The bear I had thrown smashed into the worm and splattered into bits of evaporating shadow monster, which certainly earned its attention and ire as it turned its gaze to me. It glared at me with malevolent eyes and I glared right back into them, I wasn’t afraid of it! A hurled stick of dynamite passed by us and destroyed a shadow salamander coming right for me. “Like I was going to let the daughter of one of my dearest friends go out to face this monster without some help!” Calloway shouted as she caught up with us. She was running out of dynamite and the jars she had were rendered practically useless now given the sun could do the job for us, but she was one tough lady and looked ready to get into a fight. The worm shadow roared and swung one of its four tentacles for me, I leapt over one as it tried to wrap around me and had to roll away as another slammed down on my position. The two other tentacles were being kept busy by Paprika when she suddenly jumped up onto them to distract it from attacking me a third time. She was hugging one and then leapt off onto the other when it threatened to smash her to a pulp. “Velvet, could you make a sharp weapon and throw it toward me when I need you to?!” I ducked under the next swing of a tentacle when the monster could focus on me. I started rapidly hopping backwards as several bladed tongues struck out at me, only to hit the ground and kick up some dust. “Yes, just tell me when and where you need it, Tinsel should be rested enough to do that much!” Velvet sliced a panther shaped shadow in half with a blade of ice. Swinging around in a corkscrew fashion, Velvet let the blade go and sent it flying through an anaconda sized shadow, cleaving a large portion of it in half vertically. “Give it to me when I’m high above the worm shadow!” I struck at the tentacle slapping at me with my hooves knocking it back and the force of the deflection sent me rolling backwards. My hooves hurt a bit after that, so I was not doing that again, evasion was the way to go with this thing. As I came to a stop, I could see that Paprika was still being a nuisance for it and she was actually in a good position for my plan. “Paprika I need you to slingshot me high up into the air!” Paprika turned to me with a curious look as she leapt out of the way of the maw of the tatzelwurm shadow, making it bite itself. It let out an unappreciative scream and Paprika was now on its top left tentacle. Paprika thrust her hoof out towards me sending a long wad of fur out while the monster was distracted. I leapt up to grab it with my hooves, only to find the wad of fur wrapping around them. My eyes widened as Paprika heaved me upwards towards her, as I reached her the wad of fluff released me sending me spinning high into the air. -Velvet- “Tinsel!” At my call, Tinsel squeaked as he gathered moisture to form a blade. I shaped it and compacted it down to be strong enough to handle a few rough impacts, as an afterthought I actually put a handle on it since it wasn’t going to be me using it. I wrapped the blade in a tight band of frosty winds and waited for Arizona to hit her apex, I sent the blade flying at her and hoped my aim wasn’t off. Tinsel squeaked loudly in warning and, looking behind me, I was about to be bitten in the hind legs by a shadow monster. I leapt forward and bucked out backwards taking the chasing monster’s head off and it faded from existence as its body fell over. I turned to see the ice blade nearly hit Arizona, she barely avoided getting skewered and managed to partially grab the blade. As she fell she fumbled with the blade for a bit, it was made of solid ice after all, she still managed to get a good grip on it with her hooves and fell right towards the monsters open mouth. She narrowly avoided taking a bladed tongue through her torso and skidded down the top of that tongue on two legs. She started to run down it while swinging the blade to slicing off a quarter of one of its tongues and, while the large shadow monster was cringing in pain, she sliced another bladed tongue down to half its length. Arizona crouched down and kicked off while pulling the ice blade high over her head in both her hooves and when she swung downwards she turned into a living saw blade. She came down on the beast’s top right tentacle and after several revolutions, she cleaved straight through it down onto the next one which was also swiftly sliced away. Both tentacles and cut tongues bled darkness after being cut away and the cut away bits eventually evaporated, the stumps that were left behind eventually sealed themselves off and stopped spewing darkness into the air. Tinsel cried out another warning and I ducked, and thrust my right hoof above me driving a spike of ice into the belly of a shadow monster. With a grunt I made the ice flower outwards and the shadow exploded violently. This reminded me that Prancer’s techniques were quite lethal if you ever got impaled on her ice. I turned back to the worm and saw darkness bleeding off its belly, Arizona on the ground next to it clutching at her right shoulder. The ice blade must have finally broke when she ripped it through the worms belly and one of those bladed tongues must have clipped her. All the tongues went down to strike down Arizona, I tried to move forward and was cut off by another shadow monster. Paprika had at some point leapt off the monster to go hug the shadows coming to help out the larger problem we were focusing on. -Calloway- “Arizona!” The tongue’s struck out, only for a rope to wrap around all the tongues, damaged or not, then pulled them entirely off course. The worm tried to pull them back, but the rope held fast. “No need to fear Mrs. C, Colorado Kid is here to save my adoptive niece and the day! All with a song in my heart, my wonderful guitar playing... and an infinite amount of rope at my beck and call.” That young Holstein bull friend of Montana and Dakota, bless his soul, had arrived in the nick of time to save Arizona and was keeping the tongues pinned as their blades had all gotten caught up on his rope. “You better keep those tongues pinned Colorado, no horsing around!” I ran over to the shadows trying to get at Colorado and trampled my through three of them, then I ripped another one to shreds with a devastating sweep of my horns. I’ve still got it after all this time, makes me feel young again. “Ma’am these monsters tried to wreck our town, so you better believe I’m not going to screw around on something as important as this-ngghh...” Colorado dug in his hooves and held tightly to the rope and kept pulling as the worm bucked trying to lift the small bull into the air. The worm was either trying to free itself or kill Arizona, because it raised its two remaining left tentacles and lashed out for Arizona as she was getting up and seemed to be recovering from the shock of her injury. Only those blows couldn’t land either as the blue and ever so large bull that was Dakota charged on to the scene to catch and take a hold of both the tentacles with barely a grunt of effort to show for it. He started pulling them in the opposite direction that Colorado was pulling the bladed tongues. The large worm started to struggled and thrash and Colorado almost lost his grip on the rope several times. A number of bulls suddenly stampeded in and started attacking the other shadows, I saw Velvet managed to get to the left side of the beast and was shouting something to the reinforcements. They started to cover her as she started producing something made of ice. Mrs. Paca picked up Arizona and gleefully bounced away as the worm surged forward and tried to crush the cow with its chin. The worm tried to pull back now and continued its violent thrashing, it was trying to break free of Dakota and Colorado’s grip on it. Dakota wasn’t having problems holding the tentacles against his body, but Colorado was started to falter fiercely. I lunged forward and grabbed onto the rope and added my weight onto it, the shadow worm thrashed and tried to pull us into the air. “Calloway, do you have any dynamite, we need to stun it and pull its tentacles and tongues into line with Velvet’s next attack.” Nodding as Arizona came up next to me, she grabbed the rope and pulled. “Well get to it then, I’ve got this! Thanks for the help dude.” “No problem, but I’m Colorado Kid not dude, Dakota’s last name is Dude though!” He grinned at Arizona, she rolled her eyes at him. I moved towards the creatures open mouth and pulled out one of my last three sticks of dynamite. It tried to bring its tail around to sweep away the cattle pinning it down. A rope caught its tail and pulled it back the other way, I could faintly see the gold glimmer of Montana’s fur and his hat. “Let’s finish this rodeo!” Montana shouted out loudly, for we would be gladly doing that soon enough. It seems all three of the boys were here and they were managing to keep this monstrosity pinned as it thrashed about. I lit a stick of dynamite and threw it into the wailing open mouth as the beast thrashed, it didn’t get down the throat before it explode and a portion of its face ripped apart. Lighting another stick as Colorado, Arizona and Dakota made some head way into pulling its tongues and tentacles back. I threw the explosive at the throat again and hit a jackpot as the explosion ripped a hole into the back of its neck. Darkness started leaking out of the wound in massive amounts. “Why isn’t it dead yet!” Arizona screamed. Even I was surprised to see it still active, despite having a large hole spewing disappearing black smoke out of it. -Paprika- I was helping Mr. Blue Bull, I was pulling my fluff tightly around the tentacles. I could see Arizona across from me doing the same thing with the tongues. To my right I saw Velvet floating a large double bladed axe head in the air and was spinning it really, really fast. “I’ve just about had it with this worm monster on this dry plain and my floof is positively crying out for me to cleanse it!” Velvet let loose a rage filled shout and the sharp axe of ice flashed through the tentacles the tongues and off into the distance through several shadow monsters without stopping. “Arizona, Paprika, form up in front of the worm, let’s show this monster that it should absolutely be the one fearing us! All shadow monsters shall know our names, Velvet, Arizona and Paprika!” I pulled my fluff back from the melting tentacles and hopped my way over to the front of the worm, hugging the very few shadows that were left to a pulp as I did so. Arizona was smashing her way through the shadows and Velvet was galloping to meet up with us in the center in front of the crying shadow monster that was spewing out more darkness than ever. “Arizona grab Paprika by the hind legs and lift her above you, Paprika form as long a sword as you can out of you fur and I’ll coat it with my ice to create a sharp enough blade to fell this thing once and for all!” Considering what Velvet was asking us to do, I nodded and lifted my rear legs to Arizona who stood up on her hind legs and lifted me up. I concentrated and massed my fur above my head as Arizona started leaning back… I was a sword handle now? Neat! As Arizona leaned my whole body back, Velvet started coating my sword shaped fur in ice and the blade started taking shape. “It’s getting whatever senses it has back. So hurry up your slowpoke, cute little fluffy butt, Velvet!” The worm shook its head it’s one good red eye narrowed as the other one just took a dynamite stick to it thanks to Calloway. “Well now Arizona… you should know that you just can’t rush perfection… by the way, it’s ready!” At Velvet’s words Arizona’s muscles bulged. All my fur felt pretty weird being frozen like this, the scary shadow monster worm lunged forward turning its head sideways to bite down on us. I felt my whole body get swung forward and... pain! -Calloway- I watched as the three combined their talents and the blade came down as the monster was closing its mouth on the four of them. An explosion of dust erupted high into the air. Once it cleared, the monster was no longer moving as its two halves began quickly dissolving. Revealing both Arizona and Velvet kneeling over Paprika. I looked to the other bulls to see them being led by Sheriff Montana, he started to cleanup all of the remaining shadow monsters. -Arizona- “Paprika!” I held the alpaca in my hooves and Velvet defrosted her fur, so we could wrap it around her wound. Had I been a second later with swinging her, Paprika could have died. Instead she was bleeding out on the ground and unconscious. “Is this what we’re going up against Velvet?” My voice wavered a bit. “She’ll be fine Arizona." Velvet still looked worried for her. "Paprika has survived worse.”