//------------------------------// // Victory and Consequences. (Chapter 9. The First Mission, part 7) // Story: Meta Gamer in Equestria: The Blight of Bane. // by reflective vagrant //------------------------------// The rest of the party was caught by surprise, but time almost seemed to slow for me as my brain went into a fight or flight overdrive. A single arrow flew through Fluttershy's mane and harmlessly behind her, but I beat every other arrow to the punch. I transformed into a bear, tackled her right as she started to react to the arrow with a look of shock, and carried her behind the biggest piece of cover I felt I could reach. Shoving her down behind cover on the far side of the path, I shielded her the rest of the way with my own form, doing my best to shrink behind the moderate sized bolder myself. She was safe, but only as long as I could hold out being her shield. Many arrows tinked off the bolder and flew over us harmlessly, but a few met their mark and sank deep into my back. I gritted my fangs and willed myself to stay hunkered down to protect her while giving my borrowed body the order to dip into the well of energy intended for spells to heal itself. I had to make sure I could withstand the rest of the punishment that was sure to come. And then I heard it. The sweet sound of the griffin's war cry and the unicorn calling out "Figiptevsoz hipvit!" My team was taking up arms. The wound around the arrow seemed to close up as best it could with the arrow still lodged inside, but just as it healed, two more arrows found their way through the bears hide to repeat the process all over again. After a while, fewer arrows were shot my way. Nevertheless, one of them managed to hit me so hard that I dropped out of bear form with an arrow shallowly lodged in my shoulder. I had a brief moment of panic while the other arrows fell around me. I realized that was the first time I had been forced out by the form taking too much damage, but since I was still alive, I had to keep fighting and chew on it later. Still, oh sweet mother of mercy did that arrow sting in my real flesh! With the second use of my transformation, my bear body was back up just in time to let another arrow hit it. Only a few arrows came at me after that. Two more embedded themselves in me, with one smacking across the hide without damage. The diminished number of arrows were good, because I could feel the well of energy I was using to heal my bear form dwindling. Finally, things went quiet but I refused to move just yet. Fluttershy called out from underneath me but besides making sure she wasn't suffocating, which she wasn't, I still didn't move. It ultimately took a stick being poked at me to lift my head up and snarl at the griffin, who was using the bolder as partial cover. After he backed up, I looked around to see the enemies strewn about the place, some with heads smashed in, others with limbs missing and two of them lying flat on the path with about half a dozen shattered bolts embedded into each of them. A second look around showed Tempest coming towards me with the two emblems of her armor now detached, circling around her in the air and shielding her on their own. I finally got up and let Fluttershy out from underneath me. When I transformed back the arrows stuck in me as a bear fell again, but the arrow in my real shoulder came back along side my real form and almost made me keel over from not being ready for the sudden increase in pain. "How in the pits of Tartarus did you know they were after you!?" Tempest burst at me as soon as I was back in normal form. "I thought you were being a coward when you hid, but they never stopped shooting at you, even when we were right on them." I knelt down to let Scraps pull out the arrow, pressed my amulet and briefly said "be careful," before answering Tempest. "They weren't after me. They were after Fluttershy. Or more specifically, our 'yellow healer.' And-Gah!" Scraps pulled the arrow out nice and clean, but it still hurt. Fluttershy came up and started treating my shoulder as I continued. "I knew because my amulet did its job and translated what the leader was yelling." "What leader?" Speaks with Talons pipped in while in the middle of salvaging the darts that didn't leave their hiding places. "These were all just more of those walking corpses. I didn't see any leader." Fluttershy paused in her treatment when she saw the two warriors doubting me, Tempest giving me her suspicious eye squinting again. With a shake of my head, I reasserted myself. "I can't make you believe me, but that's my answer." Fluttershy got their attention with a meek but loud enough, "Excuse me." With a few quick movements, she managed to get her treatment to a stopping point and moved to stand in front of me. With a brave face but shaky knees, she spoke, "My mane had an arrow pass through it right before Moss protected me." She lifted her mane for the others to see the severed ends of hair. "I was several yards away from him, so it couldn't have been an accident. I don't know who he heard, but I'm thankful that he heard them." Tempest looked at the break in Fluttershy's mane, then over to where she was standing before the fight. She must have seen something because she nodded and turned back. "Targeting healers first is a low, but effective, tactic. I do also recall briefly hearing a voice say something that I couldn't make out. Being the only one not looking like a fighter, they may have deduced that you were a medic on their own while we were getting ready. Choosing a strategy of attack would explain why they didn't attack us right away." * * * With the enemy wiped out, the others got back to collecting themselves and getting ready to go home while Fluttershy took a few more minutes to get me patched up. With my body starting to numb the pain, I felt a little sick from coming down off the adrenaline high. She backed up to talk once she finished with my shoulder. "Moss, are you feeling alright?" Fluttershy asked. I nodded and pressed on my amulet. "I'm a little nauseous now that the situation is over and my body is letting itself feel the after effects of all the stress. I'll be fine though." I shifted myself to a kneeling position to better look her in the eyes and get ready to stand. "I'm just glad you're alright. You've helped me so much that I don't know what I'd do without your kindness in my life." As I stood up, I could hear laughter from the same voice as before. "A small setback, but nothing more." I heard the voice speak in a cold and confident tone. Something about how it sounded made me feel uneasy. "Nevertheless, those months of planning have now proven fruitless, thanks to your interference." Tempest was searching frantically for the source of the voice with no luck as the rest of us were just scared. Fluttershy spoke up, "That almost sounds like the squirrel from before." "I think a repayment of this debt is only right. You took something from me. Now I will take something from you, and thanks to my observations, I know exactly what to take." Suddenly, a flash of movement between me and Fluttershy appeared and I saw what looked like what I could only describe as a ten inch demon with a pouch almost as big as him slung over its shoulder. It turned around to reveal a long, sharp piece of flint in its hand and an amulet around its neck. "I so look forward to meeting you in person some day, champion." With a smug grin, he waved at me. "Bye!" I could finally see what I felt off with on the voice this entire time but I didn't have time to process it. The creature turned back around to run and went invisible just as I saw Fluttershy drop to the ground in my peripheral vision. I was horrified at what I saw when I turned to her. Fluttershy's throat had a deep gash cut straight across it, bleeding out. I dropped to the ground beside her as the rest of the team did... something. I had no idea what. My mind was solely focused on the look of helplessness on Fluttershy's scared face. My hands hovered inches above the wound, unsure of what to do. Our last potion was gone and I knew of no normal way to fix something like this. My ears were filled with the sound of my heartbeat and I could barely hear my whimper of "H-help..." Her breathing became shallow. My hands started shaking and my throat was dry. My voice cracked, but I painfully forced my vocal cords to finish. "He-elp!" The light started fading from her eyes. Tears were flowing down my face as I forced my raw throat to call out again, "Somebody! Anybody! Please-" As I spoke my next word, I felt an imposing presence looking down upon me, suffocating me with its disdain from every direction at once. "-Heeeelp!!" Just as fast as the presence came, it was gone. I also felt the last big chunk of energy I had left in my well was gone along with it. Not that I cared. I collapsed to sob over her body but found a hoof kicking me in the chest and forcing me back to where I was before. The rest of Fluttershy's hooves joined the first in a spasm as I heard her cough up blood. My mind ground to a halt when I heard her cough turn into a deep gasp for breath. A pool of blood still stained the ground where her neck was, but no more was coming from the gash, because there was no gash. Other than the blood smeared all over it, her throat looked normal at a glance. She breathed deeply, carefully moving her head with no signs of pain. The light in her eyes was back, but the rest of her face was confused. "What happened?" My hand went to her neck, carefully examining the area for any sign of the wound. It looked like there was a small bit of scar tissue, but I could only see when I pulled back the fir with my thumb. Even then, the tissue looked like it had been healed for some time. "I have no idea," I answered her with a smile and a failing whisper, "But you're alive." I carefully threw my arms around her in a hug as she sat up, throwing out one last painful cry before my voice finally failed me. "Hallelujah! You're alive!" I held her for only a few seconds before I suddenly had to let go of her, turning away to vomit. Fluttershy weakly leaned towards me and rubbed my back. "And your body just reached its limit too. I think it's time to go home now." * * * We sat there in the same spot for about twenty minutes with nobody around except for the Speaker, who only stared at us from the root passage in shock. We barely had the energy to sit there after all the shock, much less do something useful. So we just sat there and rested. When the rest of the team came back, Tempest had a look of remorse while Scraps was gazing into the pouch that the ten inch demon had with him. "The creature got away, but I know what it was after," She called out in an unusually melancholy tone, "Where going to have to go back and get that chest. It's dangerous." Scraps then opened the pouch and revealed it to have the same effect as the chest with being bigger on the inside. "It has folded space magic placed within it, just like the chest. If one were to be placed inside the other, a portal to the cosmic plain would have been created from their mutual destruction. If they had managed to get this to the crash site where the local rift is sealed on our end, it would have torn the seal open instead." She took a deep breath. "If that happened, the enemy would have another way to get to our world and we'd have a war on two fronts instead of one. We need to get back and report this to the princesses. The allied nations need to redouble their defenses around the other rifts." The Speaker came up and went right to Speaks with Talons and tried to speak. Before he could, Tempest stopped him with a raised hoof and had Scraps pour out the pouch. A little over dozen or so intricately carved transparent whistles came pouring out as she asked, "Do you recognize these things?" My heart sank as I nodded. I ushered Tempest in close and answered in a raspy wispier. "Night callers. They're what were reanimating and controlling the corpses. But even one was rare in the stories. So who are we up against for them to have so many?" Tempest gave a grim answer, "The army of a god that surely has had time to gather many treasures." Once Tempest dropped her hoof and gave the Speaker her attention, he spoke with great anger. "Do what you must, pony," he told Tempest, "You will have no resistance from the Fey with retrieving the chest and we will be happy to coordinate with your people to guard the Everfree rift. We have agreed to work with our neighbors to end this mutual threat and we will send the griffin warrior as our formal liaison. But first I must share something I have discovered about the beast-kin." He turned his anger towards me as he continued, "He is a wielder of quintessence. The magic from the gods. Our enemy's magic. There is no mistaking it. My Fey eyes saw his magic flare as he cried out and then I heard him declare his allegiance, clear as day." He looked squarely at me. "'Praise ye Jah!' he said." My eyes went wide at yet another realization. My amulet didn't just translate every language to English for me. It also translated every language I spoke to Equestrian. Praise ye god. That was the literal meaning of Hallelujah. "The high counsel has reached a unanimous decision. The beast-kin is here by banished from Far Everfree and placed in the custody of our nearest militarized ally, Equestria. He is no brethren to the Fey! He is the follower of a god!"