//------------------------------// // Chapter thirty eight, Shadows on The Range: The Shadow Fighters rise. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Three days later, Haven’s Patch, Calloway’s home, Arizona- So the remaining flailing portions of the stumpy tongues missed me when I sliced the shadow worm in half. I would be more impressed personally if those stumpy bladed tongues hadn’t shredded through Paprika, that’s where we quickly learned she is really quite defenseless without her fur. That is the major weakness of any fluffmancer, without their defensive fluff adaptations they only have their bodies to rely on. Separate a fluffmancer from all of their fluff and they lose about of seventy percent of their combat effectiveness. Paprika is lucky that she is an exceedingly healthy and strong alpaca. She would live, but she was pretty badly injured. I’ve hardly left Paprika’s side since getting her hurt like that. Even as angry as Velvet was at Paprika for getting us hitched without our knowledge, I knew she couldn’t bring herself to want anything more than for our Paprika to heal quickly. My personal injuries was some bruising and a gash in my shoulder from where one of the greater shadow’s tongues struck me. As for Velvet, she avoided any serious injury and paced herself pretty well. She came out of the fight just bruised and exhausted. Tinsel was kind of blaming himself for not being a strong enough Ice Sprite to aid all of us with everything we needed. He wanted to protect and help all of us with every ounce of his tiny and fragile body. Even with his big heart he could only do so much, like temporarily make up for any of Velvet’s failings in ice magic and he had done his best throughout all the fighting. The worst part about all of it? That was only the shadow monsters leaking into our world, a leak! A tiny spot in a dam full of water squirting barely a percentage of the numbers that the Shadow Horde truly had. In example we only faced the one greater shadow, the true Shadow Horde had hundreds to possibly thousands of those. Lower on the scale of sunlight survivors, the normal shadow monsters below the greater shadows possibly ranged from hundred thousand to a million by comparison. As for the lesser shadows, they probably outmatched the total population of living entities on this entire world, even if light ultimately destroys them so easily if they aren’t careful. The seal to the Shadow Horde was still there, but quite frankly if it ever broke then how were we supposed to win against those kinds of numbers? It took a town full of willing and able cows to handle a small leak of the Shadow Horde, said shadows had even almost succeeded in breaking through the barrier and into the town proper! It was hard to reconcile with what we were dealing with, what my mom set out to search for. Where was she now, where is the lambkin’s key? Speaking of… I held up the cow’s key to the seal, the blade of it ended with a curled hoof and it was my responsibility since Calloway gave it to me. It glowed faintly as I held it and it felt right for me to do so. I had asked about why mom left the key behind and Calloway didn’t have an answer, all that Calloway knew was that Maggie wanted the lambkin’s key for some reason. The cow’s key was in this very town, why didn’t she want this key specifically when it was so close to home? So many questions, so many answer and very little in the way of figuring out how to save the world from a brewing crisis that will take a few more years to come to a head when the seal eventually broke. I know I might even be willing to take on the horde of shadow monsters, but I was absolutely close to being literally drop dead terrified of the idea of facing so many of those monsters at once. Just knowing that Velvet and Paprika would be at my side if I chose to charge them all head on helped, I knew I wouldn’t be going into that darkness alone at any rate. Once Paprika healed up, we’d be heading for the longma city colloquially known by many as ‘The Volcano’ which was somewhat near the dragon lands. Didn’t honestly know where the Kirin live and they were similar to longma. Longma and Kirin were very different even if both were capable of wielding fire, happened to be pony hybrids and quite powerful. The major differences came in appearance and abilities therein. Kirin were fluffier magically inclined dragon unicorn hybrids. Usually Kirin were known for friendlier dispositions if emotionally reticent, but turned into their powerful combat forms called Nirik when made angry. Kirin sometimes had problems controlling their negative emotions, but said emotions boosted their magical abilities astronomically. Longma were more like dragon pegasus hybrids, they were physically strong and could fly on wings made of pure fire. They were basically pony sized dragons that could control and empower flames like reindeer could shape and generate ice. It wasn’t hard to guess why Longma and Reindeer had such a large rivalry going between them. Didn’t know why Kirin weren’t part of the tribes, but they apparently preferred their quiet isolation. The disposition of longma was that they didn’t hold back on their emotions and even reveled in them sometimes, but they often tried to keep themselves quite disciplined with martial arts and other physical or militaristic activities. As such they were passionate and honorable beings most of the time, but sometimes their haughtier dragon sides kind of take the stage and that was where things tended to go south for everyone involved. Jade would have been a good teacher, she knew so much about so many things and I remembered a lot of the incredible things she told us that existed in this world. I was currently feeling that bleakness without her cheerful disposition to brighten things up, she would have had a plan to deal with the Shadow Horde by now. “Arizona…” Jerking back and looking to Velvet, I couldn’t help but think that my own thoughts were getting to me. “Are you feeling okay? I brought food. We can’t be good wives if we don’t take care of ourselves, especially when our powerful and caring snuggle monster is on the mend.” “So you’re okay with the way she kind of forcefully married us, then didn’t mention it to us for weeks?” Had to be asked, I was not exactly quite in the right mood or mindset to talk at the moment. Velvet just placed some warm food down next to me. “Paprika thinks we can make it work, and you think it could work out, so I’m the odd one out of the three of us as I’m a bit of a traditionalist where marriage is concerned.” Velvet sat down and took a bite out of a bread roll while looking to our favorite alpaca laying there on the bed wrapped in bandages. Paprika didn’t have much of her fur on her at the moment and we still had her fluff waiting for her take it back up. Tinsel and Velvet cleaned it up, it was either that or Paprika grows her fluff out again from scratch. “I’m still not okay with it, but I’m willing to at least give it a chance. The problem is, I still want to be treated wonderfully by a partner. You’re a lot better at that then Paprika is, I don’t think she quite understands how to be romantic. Paprika understands how to love though, and she does it so freely.” “Where’s Tinsel?” The Ice Sprite was usually by our sides. If not Velvet or me, then at least sitting protectively next to Paprika. “He’s gotten it into his head that he needs to train himself to assist us all better. It’s really adorable to watch, but as far as I can tell he’s currently trying to learn how to fly.” Velvet looked at the ceiling while releasing a sigh. “Ice Sprites can do that, but I don’t think he’ll get it anytime…” Something smacked into a nearby window and it startled us to see Tinsel as he started to slowly slide down the glass. We heard his tiny little squeak of panic as he fell away from the window. “Soon… well now, it seems like we have a little prodigy among us.” It must be taking all of Velvet’s willpower to not just rush out there and check on the little dude after he just smacked bodily into the window like that. She just daintily dipped her roll into the soup she brought and then took another bite out of it. “Hope he doesn’t burn himself out doing that, the poor dear doesn’t need to push himself quite that hard. He’s quite insistent on it and I can’t very well deny him on this.” “He worships you Velvet, he see’s anything bad happening to you as a failing on his part to protect you.” I was sent an upset look by Velvet, she shook her head sadly at me. “It’s not just me, he also loves the two of you as well. He’s still very much innocent and childlike despite that sense of purpose though.” Velvet lowered head. “He’s basically our child and he see us as wanting for protection. So if anything, we’re failing him.” I quietly dug into my food at that little tidbit and we spent the next ten minutes or so in silence. “So… uh… I saw you using some of Prancer’s and Clause’s moves out there.” This would be treading into dangerous territory, but we needed to get that elephant out of our systems. “I thought you would have brought up me almost impaling you with the ice sword I made.” Snorting at Velvet’s look of worry, I actually gave her a smile and a quirked eyebrow. “Yes, I’ve started learning all of my parent’s moves, except for Black Blizzard. Don’t think I’ll ever need that really. Only now I have to get them all down to a science if we’re going to be fighting more of those shadow monsters, we’ll need everything we can get our hooves on to survive them after all.” “That’s what you’re worried about? I forgave you for that after I had a sword in my hooves and was about to fall into that things mouth. I’m not exactly good with weapons, but it helped a lot while it lasted.” Yeah, before I broke it and took a hit to the shoulder. I glanced at my bandages. “You and Paprika can do so many magical and awesome things. All I have is brute strength and an unending amount of rope, which I’ve recently discovered is not entirely unique to me alone.” Colorado Kid is an interesting bull, he had the same magical rope generating power I did and I couldn’t help but think of my adoptive uncle as more of a cousin after witnessing it. That guy came out of left field, scrawnier than both Sheriff Montana and that really buff and hunky Dakota Dude, he had still almost held those bladed tongues down on his own. “Arizona, you sliced the worm in half, you did so without throwing out all of your muscles again.” Where was Velvet going with that? “That’s above flipping a freaking elephant over your body in terms of power and it proves you’re only getting stronger! Do you even realize how absurd you are, you are five times stronger than most bulls while at half their size at best!” She took a calming breath. “Look, I like fighting you because you can just stand up to everything I’ve ever thrown at you. The only thing that’s ever really stopped you was Shocking Awe and that’s only because your muscles were used against you.” Go on Velvet, tell me something we don’t know already. “If he didn’t hit you with lightning, you would have tanked everything Ogres and Oubliettes style! Arizona you are an incredible cow, you should never doubt that for even a second! Are you a quitter Arizona Arid Paca La Perm, do you even know the meaning of quit?!” I stayed silent for a moment. “Don’t honestly know how to respond to that Fluff Butt, but are you willing actually to take on an army of killer shadows worse than what we just recently went through?” There were still cows and bulls that were still trying to recover from their many grievous injuries, but the people of Haven’s Patch were all very sturdily built. “I’m actually scared Velvet! Me, the tough girl, the brawn, the boneheaded masculine one, a cow that should know no fear! What we saw was only a leak Velvet, one that was closed up as soon as Celestia raised the sun!” “It’s okay to be scared my Beautiful Bovine, because in sickness or health we will fight for this wondrous world we live in together!” It wasn’t long after velvet said that and took up one of my hooves, when all the light in the room suddenly shifted about. Looking out the window, the town looked to have changed locations. “I don’t think I want the world to be swamped with those monsters and I’ll fight them to the last, beyond all limits! Also that teleportation felt really weird, just a blink and now the whole town is somewhere else. I could actually feel the disturbing amount of magic that went into that.” We finished our meal and spent some more quality time together. Even shared a kiss and cuddled next to the softly breathing, bed bound and bandaged alpaca. “I still want a wedding ceremony you beastly lovable creature...” Velvet made me snort, and I started giggling as I pressed my face into her floof. She had said that in a ludicrously airy and upper crust tone. “Thought that’d cheer you up.” Us versus another world, all while looking for my mother? I actually started to believe that we could accomplish that. -Two months later, Haven’s Patch, Velvet- It took a while for Paprika to recover, but she was just about ready to leave. Arizona was talking to her adoptive uncles, Montana, Dakota and Colorado. They were all very nice bulls and were part of law enforcement around here, they knew and looked up to Arizona’s father and now they looked to her as a role model despite being older than she was. Paprika pounced on top of me forcing me to the ground giggling, she was happy to be up and moving around again. Tinsel was clinging to the top of Paprika's head with a bright smile, before he took to the air and floated around us cheerfully squeaking out happily. “We’re going to gather the other key holders and we’ll be, The Shadow Fighters!” Arizona declared to her uncles. Montana rubbed her head affectionately. “Hope you can achieve that goal, we’re also heading out. We have to get the news to the lambkin, alpaca, reindeer, longma and the unicorns of light, to keep them informed of the situation and warn them of the coming danger.” He pulled out an envelope and hoofed it over to Arizona. “Do me a favor and get this letter to the longma princess, we'll take care of the rest.” “Sure thing uncle Montana!” Arizona was now officially a member to three herds. One of those was ours. This is where our group begins, 'The Shadow Fighters'!