-Plains outside the mountain, Arizona-
Okay, Tianhuo and Ollie were down, Velvet is pushing herself hard and even Paprika is hard pressed to hold the shadow monsters back with a rapid fire series of cuddle attacks when the leak was closed.
Just because we closed the leak, that didn’t mean we were finished here. Not by a long shot.
There were just so many shadow monsters attacking us that we wouldn’t run out for the next three hours if we had stayed back there and fought them all. I was quite scared for my life here and so were the others, I couldn’t even take out the bear that clawed me up badly.
Pom started putting up a serious fight once Ollie went down and I had never seen the lambkin so focused, she twisted the head off a cougar shadow with a single blow. That shadow monster only popped after the surprised looking head completed its full three hundred and sixty degree rotation.
We were currently on the run, but it was not away from where we needed to be at least. We were actually riding towards the mountain where the seal is said to be as we needed to finish the job we came here to do.
With the leak sealed, we rode under the moonlight.
I also never thought I would be riding on a Cu Sith named ‘Soul Ripper’ today. Awesome things all around, provided that we survived the next few minutes.
Pom was in the middle of the pack with all the injured being carried on Big Mama’s back with me at her side to protect our injured, leading was Paprika on the small Cerberus that was plowing a path for us with its three heads spewing as much fire as they could. Behind us Velvet was holding them off of our butts while riding the dire wolf. The rest of Pom’s menagerie were closing the formation tightly around the two of us.
“How are you doing back there Velvet!” I’m actually fairly worried, because she looked to be flagging quite badly.
“I’m dirty, I’m tired, my floof is devastated and I’m using my spit as ammunition here, HOW DO YOU THINK I’M DOING ARID!” She inhaled through her nose and turned her head to quickly spit out an icicle into the swarm behind us, after going through several shadows the bear took it in the head and kept going.
The next icicle hit a leg and made it fall over, that wouldn’t slow that beast down for long. If I couldn’t destroy the shadow bear, then Velvet wouldn't either, what was that thing made of? It was almost indestructible with how durable it was for a shadow monster.
Didn’t honestly know how many of them Velvet just took down after that, given there were just so many of those things and they were all entirely solely concentrated on us.
So yeah, Velvet’s angry and flagging. She’s going to hit her limit and conk out like Ollie did if she keeps this up.
We were almost at the mountain and it wouldn’t be much longer, just a few hundred more feet to go with a horde of shadows descending upon us from all angles. Easy to handle right?
Why didn’t the five tribes and the unicorns of light send armies out to help us with this!?
This is clearly why most of the previous key bearers didn’t survive the sealing! You only needed to find the bearers. After giving them the keys, at least one of them needed to survive to make it to the sealing point with all the keys on hoof to succeed in the sealing.
This was what Sunburst told us about the keys when we met him in Moss Cow a few weeks back, the guy was attractive to look at even if he would come off as scruffy to others.
Even if am married to a lovable alpaca and a beautiful reindeer, that doesn’t mean I can’t look at a nice bull and find them attractive. We haven’t really discussed this and it hasn’t come up much, but I wasn’t going to worry about something like that at a time like this.
We might be breaking a world record if none of us died doing this, my large bleeding claw wounds might eventually make me a statistic though. With a blink things became very dark in the looming shadows of the mountain, the entrance didn’t have any shadows guarding it at all and Pom was leading the charge so it was her decision of what to do next.
“Paprika, Arizona, Velvet, hop off! Cerby, turn around and start covering the entrance! Big Mama, you and the injured stay with me! Everyone else make sure they don’t get at Cerby’s sides!” The canines followed Pom’s orders and quickly blockaded the entrance with the Cerberus. Pom turned to us and a panting Velvet who got off of the dire wolf, she was listing from side to side as she tried to gain her balance. “We need a torch, or something, to see what ahead!”
The timber wolf came over to Pom and dug its mouth into its own body, then pulled free a solid hunk of wood and dropped it in front of her.
“Thank you Mr. Birch, but you don’t have…” The timber wolf insistently pushed the chunk of wood at the lambkin. The mass of shadows slammed into the continuous walls of fire behind us as each head of the Cerberus took turns spewing as much as they could before inhaling. Pom looked at all the canine blockading the entrance. “Well… if you’re sure…”
The timber wolf barked and the moved back to the choke point at the entrance of the cave. Aside from the injured on Big Mama, it seemed we were going on hoof from here on.
“Right I’m going to need…” Pom started off only to become silent when I made my way over to her and started wrapping one end of the chunk of wood in cloth rope, then I wrapped some actual rope around that.
My rope magic was far less intensive or costly, but wasn’t nearly as useful as the other kinds of magic we had at our disposal. I scraped the ropes roughly against the wall and the makeshift torch lit on fire.
When you compared it to Velvet constantly firing ice and Tianhuo blasting fire in all directions, my magic was simply about utility. Ropes didn’t seem as grand, but it got the job done in a pinch. At least I recovered whatever I lost if I brought the rope back up under my bandana. Velvet and Tianhuo had to expend themselves to use what they had.
“Well… let’s get moving before my beasties get seriously hurt holding the shadow monster back!” Pom took the torch and bravely started moving forward.
“Nng… what… hit me… everything hurts.” Pom gave a bright cheerful smile to the strapped down Tianhuo as she passed by Big Mama. “Pom?”
“Oh thank goodness you’re okay, that large snake shadow almost got you. Oh and we’re almost there!” Pom said excitedly as she started leading the way, she turned back to the canines watching the entrance. “Please, don’t get hurt and stay safe, back up if you need to!”
Pom received several barks and a mournful sounding howl from the coyote. The lambkin nodded and her face gained a fairly determined, if grim, look.
She turned forward and started to move quickly, we followed her lead.
I grunted, running with my injuries was only exacerbating them and my breathing was becoming worse with each hoof we moved forward.
“Arizona, are you okay, Do we need to stop to bandage up your wounds?” Pom asked worriedly as we continued forward.
“She’ll be fine Pom, getting mauled by a shadow bear won’t stop our wife!” Velvet was surprisingly confident and haughty, I wasn’t feeling it. “We need to focus on getting to the seal!”
“I’m fine, don’t worry about me.” Sure these injuries were excruciating, but I could keep going. “It’s not… that bad…. ugh.”
Pom quickly made her way back towards me when I fell over and she passed Paprika the torch, soon I was moved onto Big Mama next to Tianhuo, Ollie, Fred, the puppies and Tinsel. Velvet surprisingly was allowed to keep walking despite her being quite tired, Pom was up here with us and busy tending to my wounds.
Big Mama was really quite strong to keep carrying all this weight. In fact, she was one of the few that hadn’t been injured during all the fighting. I had to give her credit, the Canis Major absolutely knew what she was doing when it came to fighting and she was still going strong despite all the weight we were putting on her back.
Paprika was leading us down the dark tunnel and we eventually came to a wide open grotto with a small source of light. There was a strange glowing orb with red and purple swirls. Said orb was horribly cracked and was far bigger than Big Mama, the shell cracked further as we approached.
“There, that should keep you for a bit.” Ignoring the sound of Pom tying off another bandage, she looked up and gasped at the light the orb was giving off.
Hopping off, she stood next to Big Mama staring at the phenomenon before us.
The swirling stuff beneath the orb was probably the sealed off portal. Paprika put out the torch as we got closer. She passed the wood back to a slightly distracted Pom who held onto it as we moved forward.
“So this is what the fuss was all about, this is the seal then… heh… we made it… we did it!” Velvet didn’t look as hot as she trotted forward, she was likely already in fever territory and needed rest.
“Let’s go finish this!” Pom shouted, only for Velvet to falter. “I’ve got you Velvet...”
Pom ran over to brace a falling Velvet, I got up and crawled off of Big Mama to help her.
Paprika whined at us in concern.
“We’re going to be okay Paps, can you try and wake Ollie up?” Nodding to me, Paprika climbed up onto Big Mama’s back and started to pry Oleander free. The book clamping onto her mane opened up and we heard Fred’s voice.
“Please tell me you can wake her up…” We all heard how worried Fred was, it seemed noble demons do exist.
“I too can get off, I’ve still got three working legs.” Yeah and a shattered collar bone, stop sounding so calm about it Tian! “I can now see why most of the previous key bearers had low survival rates. Without you here Pom, we would have surely failed.”
“You mean without my beasties here, they are currently doing all the work while we sit here gabbing!” What a time for Pom to grow a spine. Her beasties were fighting the Shadow Horde by themselves and it was quite understandable that she was terrified for them.
“Meep!” We turned to Paprika who was holding Fred and had Ollie laid over her back, we all approached the badly cracked seal. Paprika carefully laid Ollie next to it and Pom tried to wake her while Paprika placed Fred next to her head.
A few minutes later Olleander finally came to, she was quite exhausted though.
“Where…” Cutting of Ollie before she could ask, I decided to tell her what’s going on.
“We’re next to the seal, now what?!” I watched as Ollie slowly got her hooves under her and turned to the cracking seal surrounding the portal.
“We… hold our keys aloft… how is everyone?” Ollie asked as she weakly took Fred in her right hoof.
“We’re all still alive Ollie and I’m glad to see that you’re up, BUT WE DON’T KNOW HOW LONG POM’S BEASTIES CAN HOLD THE ENTRANCE!” Smiling at the sound of Fred’s dark voice, Oleander opened the book to pull her key from within his pages. She held it up.
Each one of my friends and family held their key aloft and the seal shattered, but the portal stayed dormant as energy from each key flowed into the portal.
I looked down at the key I held, but I bit my lips and didn’t hold it up.
Soon all the darkness in the room was sucked into the portal, leaving nothing but light in its wake as it grew brighter. We heard a loud shrieking noise and soon shadows started to getting pulled through the air from the tunnel and into the portal, thousands of them whizzed by our heads at insane speeds until all that was left was just us and the portal.
“Arizona why are you hesitating?!” Ollie turned to me with a surprised look on her face. The rest of Pom’s beasties came running into the room and stopped, they were all okay if injured to varying degrees.
No causalities… that’s… surprisingly good news.
I took one long look at the portal… I considered my options. Hold up the key and finish this mess or do something drastic.
Considering who I am… I wanted to do something drastic.
Sunburst had said that this portal could be connected to other realms… it was time to see if that was true.
I concentrated on my mother, hoping the portal took me there.
It was a chance I was willing to take, nobody else would have to.
“I’m going through that portal… and I’m going to seal it from the other side!” Nobody could stop me in time as my hooves carried me forward and I lunged through the glowing portal hearing the shouts of my name behind me.
-Velvet-
“Darn it Arizona, you do not just leave your loving wives behind like this!” I soon followed after her by kicking off the floor into the air.
I grabbed Tinsel off of Big Mama’s back as I passed by, then kicked off the air launching myself straight into the portal.
-Paprika-
“Meep!” I chased after the loves of my life, I was always going to be at their sides in sickness or health.
No matter where they went, no matter what they do, I’d always love and cherish them!
-Tianhuo-
“I am sorry Pom, but I am honor bound to help them.” I held my key tightly in my right hoof and ignited my wings, with a single flap I went through the portal.
-Oleander-
“Ollie… what are you… wait!” Fred stated as I slowly got myself up to a gallop and leapt through the portal as well.
I would see Tianhuo get back to Pom and that we’d all make it back to Equestria alive!
-Pom-
My beasties came over to us and they all saw me standing before the vortex that swallowed all of my friends, still holding my glowing key aloft.
I looked to Big Mama.
Looking to me, she let out a questioning bark.
I sighed.
“Look…” I said turning to stand in front of Big Mama and my other beasties. “You all know I’m far too scared to… I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
Big Mama looked surprised when I turned and immediately charged for the portal.
She was the only one that had reacted quickly enough to follow me, given I felt all but five of my familiar bonds snapping as I went through.
The sudden pain seemed endless.
-Tenko-
“Kyuu?!?” The portal collapsed and blinked out of existence.
Leader gone, now what?