-The plains, Arizona-
We stopped at the edge of the darkness and took in some air before we took the plunge. The shadows started coming out at us into the sunlight and we wouldn’t simply stand still for them.
We would make our way towards that mountain and we would reach the Shadow Horde Seal before it completely broke.
I was the first to charge them and meet them head on, I’d certainly remember my first attack this day as it was the beginning of a very long battle.
I whipped out a rope that ripped through the neck of the shadow snake that tried to leap at me. It seemed like an auspicious start to a very long battle to have a shadow snake’s head and body fly by you in two quickly dissolving pieces.
I grabbed a second rope from under my bandana with my other hoof and started to whip them around horizontally and through the mass of the oncoming horde. There were just so many of them that they threatened to overwhelm us even as we were just entering the shade of the clouds swirling around the mountain the seal was being kept in.
That’s when Tianhuo swept down and started to light the grass on fire to our far right, that would take a load of the fighting off of Paprika and make it easier for her.
I couldn’t focus on that at the moment as I had to keep pressing forward and swinging the ropes in wide sweeping arcs to clear the way.
-Velvet-
I followed Arizona on the left and into the shade, the first thing I did was create a single shard of ice and then I started rapidly firing icicles from it.
I was weighing the cost of magic versus the amount of damage I can do with said magic. I was going to pace myself here, because to do otherwise would be a very bad idea even with Tinsel supporting my efforts.
Every icicle fired from the one levitated shard pierced at least fifty to seventy shadows deep into the oncoming horde. I could fire hundreds of piercing shots like this in seconds and would be able to successfully hold my side of the battlefield.
I just hoped Arizona didn’t push too far forward too fast. We needed to stay in formation and watch each other’s backs. I will have to make a second shard to fire from eventually just to cover everything coming at us, Tinsel and I could only cover so much area around us by ourselves after all.
At least Tianhuo was lighting the surrounding grass on fire and that was giving us a good amount of breathing room moving forward.
A large dark beam of energy arc overhead and blasted a large hole in the shadow horde in the area that Arizona was pushing towards, surprisingly the grass was untouched by the blast of dark energy and it allowed my cow to press forward swinging her ropes with wild reckless abandon.
Arizona had not taken the news about her mother being dimensionally displaced very well and was using that fury for a good cause. It was probably cathartic for her. I was quite worried about my favorite punching bag as she never wanted to discuss her feeling with Paprika or me.
Oleander wasn’t much of a physical fighter close up and would rather whack someone with Fred’s near indestructible book body, but her long range support was quite exquisitely powerful. I wondered what Fred will look like or do when released from the book.
I certainly had my doubts about relying on a self-professed demon to aid us, among a few other things on top of that.
Tianhuo created another line of burning grass that quickly made a corridor for us to travel down. The plains were ablaze as those fires spread outwards, they were dealing with the majority of our enemy for the moment.
The second the shadows put out the fires or managed to drain the light from them was the second we would start getting swarmed from all side. As long as Tianhuo kept up the pressure, then we wouldn’t have to worry about the lesser shadows being big problems.
Just because we were going to have an easier time pressing forward, it did not mean we should drop our guard. They could eventually move around the fires to come up behind us instead of coming at us from the front.
I aimed my ice shots more towards the front given Tianhuo was sweeping the shadow monsters off of our sides. She was ripping through a massive number of shadows just by being a living fireball and ramming herself through them physically at high speeds.
I took a moment to look back to see if Pom was alright. I saw a shadow wolf going for her neck as she was on her back up on Big Mama’s back, she lashed out in a panicked manner with one her rear legs and drove it straight through the monsters neck and made it burst into motes of shadow.
I was scared to learn that there were some already getting behind us, some of those shadows were definitely faster than others as I could see several more shadow wolves being shredded by the teeth and claws of Pom’s beloved beasties.
I turned back to the front and took a calming breath, Ollie was the center of our moving formation and she was needed to close the leak off. After that we could fight the remaining shadows and eventually reach the seal to do what we came here to do.
Tinsel was watching our surroundings and would alert me if something seriously needed my attention.
-Paprika-
Arizona and Velvet were doing good jobs and so was I, there weren’t many problems coming my way that I couldn’t knock back or take out simply thanks to Tianhuo making a lot of fire. Then a shadow wolf leapt towards me.
The emaciated shadow wolf looked like it needed love. Shadows monsters weren’t nice, but I’m sure if I gave it some love, then they’d help us out!
Launching my fluff out at the wolf I wrapped it up and dragged into my loving embrace and gave it a big hug! I did so without destroying it and I slowly felt something starting to shift in the struggling shadow wolf in my grip.
I pecked its forehead with a kiss and it started turning bright pink. Once it completely turned pink, it licked my face with a glowing tongue of pure light and then I released it while grinning. It no longer looked emaciated and started attacking the other shadow wolves with affectionate gestures and every friendly gesture started causing them to start turning pink too.
That was really weird, but the pink shadow wolves were at least pretty. I wondered if I could do that with the bigger shadow monsters…
-Oleander-
“Fred, please tell me that you just saw that!” I just saw Paprika turn one of the shadow monsters into… something else… something that horrified the very world itself.
It wasn’t quite a shadow anymore and the sight of it was very disturbing. What had Paprika done to that shadow monster and why did it look so bright and cheerful when she let it go? Well whatever Paprika did, it was apparently highly infectious as other nearby monsters slowly started turning pink as well.
The shadow monsters quickly seemed to be quite intent on trying to stop the, for lack of better words, corrupted affection monsters from spreading. They seemed so intent on that more so than the one who corrupted them in the first place, said alpaca continued on fighting the shadow monsters that weren’t busy trying to stop what looked like a creepy growing plague of overly friendly shadow monsters.
Paprika started hugging and kissing more of the shadow monsters, only they didn’t turn. Either they had some level of ability to resist whatever it was Paprika was doing to them, or she was limited in how often she could perform that action. Paprika eventually just went back to beating them up.
I was broken out of my distraction by Fred answering me.
“Did you say something Ollie? WE’RE KIND OF IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING IF YOU HADN’T NOTICED!” While Fred was right, I was close to being quite hysterical that nobody else saw what Paprika had just done.
I mean, seriously?!
“How close are we Fred?” I returned my focus to Fred extending a large claw from the book and smashing it down on a number of shadows trying to get through between Arizona and Velvet. I went back to reading and flipping through several more pages inside Fred, I was almost ready to free Fred for some fun. I glanced behind me and saw Pom’s group was doing splendidly, well splendidly for a disorganized mess going on back there. “I need an estimate here!”
“We’re getting close enough Ollie, BUT THEIR NUMBERS ARE INCREASING BY THE SECOND!” As Fred spoke, I picked up my pace to keep up with Arizona, Velvet and Paprika’s forward momentum. Every once in a while Fred would lash out with a mass of darkness. “WE NEED TIME FOR SETUP, they are most certainly not going to give that to us on a silver platter.”
Those three were scarily effective at fighting armies alone for varying reasons, a few more pages and… yes I was ready to let Fred out for some ‘fun’. I fired off a few ‘fel sparks’ from my horn to push back any shadows that got by my friends and then, given enough room, I let Fred out to play.
“No, but you might, Liber… Libertas… Daemonium!” I felt the dark magic spill through my body, but the corruptive influence was negligible as it really couldn’t touch me with enjoyment from the rush of power that came with it.
Out of the book exploded raw power, that raw power took a form of a giant white skull like the one adorning the book. Its four eyes flared with red energy and the center of its forehead was a gem shaped hole with the ominous color of purple inside, the underside of the four horned skull was supported by a mass of writhing black tendrils and the skull grinned slightly.
“No hurting our friends! Also please clear a path Fred.” It paid to be polite and I lost nothing by doing so with Fred.
“With pleasure Ollie, please follow me and prepare the necessary spell.” The fact that he didn’t need to use the demonic tone spoke much about how terrifying he was to everything else around him just by being present, he was mostly like a big eldritch teddy bear for me.
Said best friend, my demonic plush toy, surged forward and carve a humongous swath through the shadow monsters within seconds.
“Ollie, is that a permanent thing?” Arizona decided to ask in a vaguely frightened tone, given the suddenly large lull in the action thanks to my rampaging companion.
“No, he can only be out for a short amount of time, we have thirty minutes at best and five or less minutes at the worst!” I could clearly see that Fred wasn’t wasting the limited time he had, both Velvet and Tianhuo flinched at his sudden decimation of the shadow horde in front of us. Nobody here was even close to being within his range of power, even as limited as it was, he was all the evils of Tartarus personified and unleashed upon the planet of Equus. “After a certain amount of time for the book to cool down, I’ll need time to build up to unleash him upon the world like this again. Let’s stop talking and start moving forward while Fred is giving us the opportunity to do so!”
I started galloping forward in the big open field left behind in Fred’s wake of ripping and tearing tentacles going every which way. He was worse than a force of nature and he was reveling in taking apart our enemies.
The only one seemingly unaffected by Fred’s powerful visage was… Paprika. Even Arizona seemed wary of Fred’s fully freed form. There might be some truth to Paprika’s title being ‘The Demon’ as a fighter.
I didn’t see any pink shadow monsters so I put that out of my mind, because that wasn’t the thing I had to focus on right now. I needed to get into position to seal off that leak so we can even get into the mountain to seal ‘the seal’ on the Shadow Horde.
-Ten minutes later, Pom-
My heart was thundering, I was so scared. I didn’t think I could run away now without dying. The only way was forward, fighting for my life and a better tomorrow.
Fred was probably one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever witnessed next to Skelly, I was mostly glad he was on our, or at least Ollie’s, side.
Paprika seemed perfectly happy to keep hugging, cuddling and smacking shadow monsters around. Aside from Ollie, Paprika was the only one that didn’t seem bothered by Fred’s full presence.
I was knocked from Big Mama’s back and found my windpipe constricted, my four puppies quickly came to my aid immediately tearing apart the shadow octopus that tried to strangle me.
One of my puppies nuzzled against me whining, I gently patted his head and slowly got up to keep moving forward. I said we would keep up and I meant it, my beasties were likely to get seriously hurt if I didn’t. They were all pushing their limits and not just for me, but for all my friends as well.
Big Mama slowed down as did all my beasties.
I started to charge forward, weakly at first, and then tempered my nerves to release a bark like that of an angry puppy. Sure it was weak and could barely be heard over the din of destruction that was the Fred-pocalypse going on in front of us, but it was still a challenge to the Shadow Horde all the same.
Apparently my beasties approved of my stupidity in the face of overwhelming odds as they started to become fiercer and rallied around me far more tightly.
As far as being a lambkin goes, my species would consider this outright challenging of the present danger as horrendously, lethally and utterly stupid. According to my friends who told me of some of their stranger adventures, this was just a Tuesday and you shouldn’t be thinking about what happened on Monday.
I was just here for my friends, they are the ones that would do all the save the world stuff. I’d prefer it if the spotlight was never on me at all during all this. I eventually had to draw a line somewhere on my cowardice and this would be where I was doing that... making one humongous line to cross.
Bravest or dumbest lambkin to ever exist, I don’t care!
-Hollow Heart-
“Hmph… the longma might be a challenge, the lambkin however… pathetic.” I started to move forward. “Everyone else… they might be... 'fun'.”
That demon could only be free for so long. To think that something of such dark power would fight for ‘the light’, it was completely disgusting.
I spread my wings and took off to face these wretches that thought they could surpass the darkness and stop the oncoming tide.
I’d show them all how wrong they were.