//------------------------------//
// Chapter 46: Oh, Death. 
// Story: Brightly Lit 
// by Penalt 
//------------------------------//

Shield Maiden looked into the cyan eyes of the huge pony who lay at her hooves, and in that moment she felt something leap from the fallen equine to her.  Whether it was magic, power, trust or even just her imagination Shield Maiden would never be able to tell.  What she did know was that in that instant all of her fears and worries vanished as her purpose manifested itself.  A call for help had been made, and the Shield Maiden was there to defend and protect.

    “Darter, Skylark,” the unicorn snapped out, words now quick and business-like.  “Get out there, see what we’re dealing with.  Iron Hoof and Seeker, help Foxfire and Iron Heart get everyone out.  This building could collapse at any minute.  Medevac, help this pony here and tend to anyone else injured.”

    The other four Power Ponies reacted to their leader’s commands without a moment of thought.  Their coordination born of crises past that they had dealt with as a team and as friends.  The other three named ponies, took a moment or two to react before they too leaped to obey.  

The two pegasi zoomed through out the hole in the wall, Darter in the lead, as Shield Maiden reinforced the building’s groaning timbers with walls of orange magic.  Seeker and her parents began dragging ponies toward the exit, Foxfire using her magic to grab several at once.  In the meantime, Medevac drew her sensitive wings across the body of the pony lying on the floor.

“Shield Maiden, I don’t recognize her,” Medevac commented, moving with professional speed to check for hidden injuries, “and I haven’t seen gear like this on any other pony.”

“Might be ‘cause of whatever super sized the spell,” Shield Maiden replied, bending over the barely conscious pony.  “Hey lady?  What’s your name, lady?”

“L-Luna,” the princess managed to groan out, “from ‘Questria.”

“Questria?” Medevac asked, checking Luna’s head again.  “There are signs of a concussion, so she might not be thinking straight.”

“Okay, well we better get her someplace sa—” Shield Maiden began before Skylark’s rapid return interrupted her.  

“We gotta go,” Skylark burst out, hovering a few feet above the slowly evacuating crowd.  

“What’s wrong?” her leader asked, only to be answered by Darter’s even faster arrival.

“Quick, put your shield up over everybody!” the grey pegasus shouted, and Shield Maiden complied just as something huge and white stripped the roof and the rest of the far wall off of the town hall.

“All the little mice in one place,” gloated the huge form of the Godwindigo, looming over the combined assemblage.  “Hello witch.  I wonder, should I eat you in front of your daughters, or them in front of you.”

“Dora Godwinson?” Foxfire asked, eyes wide, as she recognized the voice.  “Oh Lord and Lady, what have you done to yourself?”

“Nothing more than you did,” the huge creature snarled.  “I’ll give you more mercy than you gave my nephew though.  Give yourself to me, and I’ll keep you safe at my breast with the other one.  I’ll even let your children live.  It’s you I want more than anyone else.”

Rearing up to its full three story height, the now vaguely equine creature of ice and spirit, gestured toward its chest.  There, encased in ice, was the glowing form of another winged unicorn, similar to the one that was laying on the floor by Medevac and Shield Maiden.  

“Don’t,” Iron Heart said, stopping his lady as she took a step toward the creature.  “Even if you do what it asks, there’s nothing to stop it from just wrecking the town anyway.”

Foxfire didn’t hear him.  She didn’t register his words, or his hoof against her front leg.  What she heard instead was the voice of someone she had heard once before.  The voice of her vision, the voice of Foxfire, Queen of Brightly and the Lands Beyond.  This time though, the voice was not giving a warning, or advice.

 “Do not yield to this thing of ice and hate.  It is beneath you.  It is beneath Us.  Take my gift of power and show no mercy,” demanded her vision self.  It’s voice was her own, but with a hard edge that had never passed her lips. “The power, the power, the never-ending call to power.  Open to the darkness, little unicorn.  Open yourself to the true power of magic and receive my majesty.” 

    “Who ARE you?” Foxfire asked just as Iron Heart shook her body, and with it, the vision out from her mind’s eye.

    “C’mon, we’ve got to get everyone out of here,” Iron Heart yelled, breaking the strange inner communion Foxfire had experienced as she came back to the here and now.

    At that moment the sound of a distant helicopter began to be heard, and everyone paused for a moment.  Even the huge form of Godwindigo turned toward the approaching craft, then began to move off towards it.

    “Holy!” yelled out the Cormorant’s co-pilot, seeing a huge white thing come towards them as they neared the school where they had originally intended to land.  “What is that?”

    “I don’t know,” replied the pilot, as he pulled on his controls to bring the helicopter into a climbing bank.  “But we are outta here.”

    “Not so fast, little bird,” called the Godwindigo, as it hurled another spear of hypothermic hate at the fleeing craft.  “Not when you have who I think you might have onboard.”

    The pilot almost pulled off another feat of aerial legerdemain, almost.  He saw the frozen missile as it hurlted towards them, and threw the helicopter into a corkscrew-like motion, trying to roll the aircraft around the axis of the incoming threat.  The pilot had almost no time to react, but even so he managed to avoid a direct hit.  Sadly, the grazing strike that did occur was more than enough to freeze the Cormorant’s engines solid.

    “What hit us?” the flight engineer shouted, as alarms blared and hooted at him.  “Both engines out.  Zero engine temp, zero oil temp.  ZERO!”

    “Autorotate!” commanded the pilot, “Everyone hang on, we’re going down.”

    Autorotation is a procedure that every helicopter pilot is trained in, but hopes to never use in earnest.  By throwing the aircraft’s main rotor into neutral, a skilled pilot can use the air travelling over the free spinning blades as lift and bring the craft down safely.  It is however, the last gasp of a helicopter’s airworthiness, and the only way to get a broken ship down mostly in one piece.  
    
    “Quick, everypony,” commanded Shield Maiden, back in the wreck of the town hall.  “Let’s get everyone out of here while it’s looking the other way.”

    “Right!” Darter replied, snapping a salute as every able-bodied pony helped evacuate the ruins of the building. 

    “We aren’t going to make it, are we?” Seeker whispered to her sister about half a minute later, as she looked around them.  “There’s still a lot of ponies here.”

    Shield Maiden tried not to let her despair show.  The Godwindigo had moved away to finish off the helicopter, but the unicorn knew it was only a matter of time until the monster returned.  By her count, there were still over a hundred ponies still in the building, most of whom could barely sit up yet.  

    “We’ll do our best,” she replied, smiling a sad smile at her sister.  “That’s all we can—”

    “Need a hand?” called a voice from above, and the sisters looked up to see where the call had come from.  

    Hovering several meters up, a pair of bat ponies beat their leathery wings to keep in place.  A shadowy form floated behind the two, its shape roughly equine, but not quite solid.  Golden eyes met blue and green, and recognition bloomed alongside of hope.

    “Father Addison?” Shield Maiden asked.  “Is that you?”

    “It sure is,” the bat-winged pony said, his smile wide, “and I brought my congregation with me.  Could you use about forty able-bodied ponies?”

    “We sure could!” Iron Hoof shouted, just coming back in to drag out another barely moving pony.  

    “You heard the kids, folks!” Addison shouted, and a veritable flood of leathery wings surged past him and his wife.  

    “How?” Shield Maiden asked, eyes wide.  “How are they all able to move?  My spell doesn’t do that.”

    “The spell from your book might not,” Natasha Adamschek said, as she landed and gave Shield Maiden a hug.  “But when my A.A. finished his prayer there was a burst of rainbow light from him and all of a sudden we were cute little bat ponies again.”

    “Yeah, you two’ve already been ponies,” Darter butted in, as he came back to help someone else out of the building.  “You already know how to do pony stuff, but what about everyone else?”

    “I think that’s because of our friend,” Addison replied, landing and flicking his chin toward the amorphous equine shape behind him.  “Recognize them?”

    “Is that—” Shield Maiden began to ask before her sister broke in.

    “It’s the good fairy!” Seeker shouted, running over to, and then through the not quite there form of the Tantabus.

    “Careful there,” Natasha Addison cautioned, while the greatly accelerated evacuation continued around them.  “The Night Horse isn’t really all the way back yet.”

    “What?” Iron Hoof asked, as he shyly extended a hoof in greeting towards the being that had saved his life.

    “It took us awhile, but we finally figured out what happened,” Father Addison commented, watching his parishioners with pride as they worked.  “The Night Horse didn’t really die, at least not all the way.  It sort of melted itself into Mrs. Adamschek and myself.  That’s what changed us in the first place.”

    “Duh, we know,” Darter replied, rolling his eyes.  “Hurry it up, we don’t have much time.”

“Well, the Night Horse has been living inside of us ever since,” Father Addison said, quirking an eyebrow a bit at Darter’s usual speaking before thinking.  “When that… whatever it was hit, she saw a chance to step back out into the real world.  Problem is, that in doing so it spread the power of being a bat pony to everyone who happened to be in the church at the time.”

“That still doesn’t explain how they can all move around like normal already,” Skylark complained, finally speaking up out of frustration.  

“Shared magic used to pay a debt,” Foxfire answered, as she and Iron Heart hoisted the huge dark blue pony up between them.  “The Night Horse was living off of the Adamschek’s life force, so it shared the magic and its abilities with them to repay them for their gift.  I hope you weren’t doing anything in particular at the time, Father.”

“Just the Lord’s Prayer,” Natasha replied, as she came back for a second load of evacuees.  “Why?”

“Oh dear.  Father, you better be careful with that prayer from now on,” Foxfire answered, turning for the street door.  “A prayer is an invocation to a higher power, just like a spell is.”

“You mean, the Lord’s Prayer is now a spell??” Addison asked, incredulous.  “A spell to do what?”

“To make bat ponies!” Shield Maiden laughed, and all her friends were laughing with her.  “You can make bat ponies, like Mom and me can make the other kinds.”

“Oh, oh my,” Natasha said, about to add something else before the sound of an arctic gale followed by a chilling laugh refocused everyone’s attention.

“It just did something over by the school,” Skylark called down, having popped up to take a look.  “I think it’s starting to come back!”

“This is the last load,” Foxfire called back, just as she got her burden out of what was left of the building.  “I’ll rejoin you as soon as I can.”

“Dshark… “ the big blue pony against Foxfire garbled.  “Somber mews, dun liss.”

“What’s she saying?” Foxfire asked Iron Heart, who was actually supporting most of the winged unicorn’s weight.  “I can’t make it out.”

“No idea,” Iron Heart replied, as they made their way out into the street.   The thirty or forty bat ponies of Father Addison’s congregation seemed to be everywhere, helping other new ponies off the street and getting them into the cafe.  “How far do you think Shield Maiden’s spell spread?”

“No way to tell.  She covered the town at least,” Foxfire said, just as Luna again tried to bring her reeling mind and voice under control.

“Cha-dow,” Luna managed to say, head throbbing as she tried to focus her whirling vision on the unicorn supporting her.  “In you.  Lice.  Puh… power. Keep fam’lee.”  It was too much and Luna’s mind simply gave up the fight and shut down.  

“Oof,” Iron Heart grunted, as he managed to carry the big pony the rest of the way to the cafe that was serving as the drop off point for every pony who had been brought out from the town hall.  “What do you think she was trying to say?”

“No idea,” Foxfire said with a shrug as she helped lay the big pony down, “but she seemed really worried about something.”

 Looking around, she could see other new ponies who were in various states of being able to work their new bodies.  Some were doing quite well, as evidenced by a pegasus and regular pony slowly working their way up the stairs.  For the most part though, the vast majority of the transformed townsfolk had barely learned to use one limb at a time.  Never mind all four at once, or even both wings, in the case of the pegasi.

“Look, there’s the kids,” Iron Heart stated, as the furred five who had started it all left the town hall at long last.  “Just in time too.”

“WELL, THAT TAKES CARE OF THE PRIME MINISTER,” came the thunderous sound from Godwindigo, as it began to make its way up from the school grounds at the far end of town.  “He’ll keep in cold storage until I’m ready for him.”

The creature was easily the height of a five story building now, and had become the pale blue-white of arctic snows.  Its head was fully horse-like in shape, but instead of hooves, its legs ended in clawed hands and legs.  Godwindigo took slow, easy, upright steps along Brightly’s main road back toward the Power Ponies.  With every confident stride it would stop and throw out a handful of those spears of terrible cold, freezing four or five helpless ponies and reveling in their fear and despair.

“What are we gonna do?” Seeker asked, as the five gathered together to face their huge foe.  “That thing’s huge!”

“We hit it with everything we’ve got,” Darter replied, taking to the air.  “C’mon Skylark.  I’ll distract it, you drop something big on it.”

“Wait!” cried Shield Maiden, but it was too late.  Darter had lived up to his name, darting ahead with lightning speed.  Skylark was slower, but just as deaf to her leader as her brother was.  Her wings smote the air as she clawed her way upwards, a fallen roof beam clutched in her hooves.

“What do we do?” Iron Hoof asked, confused.

“We set up a place for them to run back to,” Shield Maiden replied, looking around for ideas.  “You and Seeker start getting together a barricade and maybe some stuff to kick at that thing.  Let’s set up closer to it and away from all the pe-ponies, in the cafe.”

“What do you want us to do?” Medevac asked, from the open doorway to the eatery.  “I’m not much in a fight, but I can help.”

“We need you, Iron Hoof and Foxfire to be our backup if we can’t hold it off,” the young unicorn commanded.  “Keep every pony there safe.”

“Got it,” Medevac acknowledged, ducking back inside.

“INSECTS!” roared Godwindigo, as Darter made a spiraling attack run that ended with his hoof punching an icy eye.  

The stinging impact blinded the hateful creature from the greater danger that was Skylark lining up what amounted to a bombing run.  As Godwindigo turned and blew a freezing wind toward Darter, Skylark released her spear-like bomb from almost a hundred meters in the air.  A few seconds later, twenty-eight jagged feet of four by four hit the side of the creature with the kinetic impact of a small tank.

“I FELT THAT!” Godwindigo shouted, more surprised than hurt.  The spear hadn’t penetrated its permafrost pelt, but the blow had stung the creature and its pride.  “Maybe this will teach you!”

    Winds colder than the deepest regions of the far north blasted out from Godwindigo’s mouth, even as it hurled another cluster of snowy slivers up at Skylark.  The pegasus dodged the ice speeding towards her, only to curve into the cone of deadly cold.  With a cry of frozen shock Skylark tried to veer away, but the blast had frozen her entire left wing into immobility and she plummeted from the sky.

    “Skylark!” cried Darter, and the air around him shrieked in outrage as he curved around and rocketed toward his falling sister.  The being of hate and cold might not possess familial love, but it understood the emotion, and had another set of missiles ready to go.  It hurled them with all its might at the retreating form of the charcoal-grey pony.  Darter was so fast that he nearly out flew the second clawful of ice spears that were hurled in his wake. 

    Even his incredible speed wasn’t enough though, and just as he managed to reach Skylark, one of the ice spears clipped his rear hoof and sent him tumbling through the air.  Only the enhanced reflexes of his pegasus form enabled him to grab onto and hold his sister.  As luck would have it, the combined momentum of the two out of control fliers hurled them in a ballistic arc back toward their ground bound friends.

    “We’ve got you!” Shield Maiden cried, and setting actions to words formed an orange curving slide to catch her friends.  The curved shield did its work to protect Darter and Skylark from the cruel kiss of the earth, and the last portion of their momentum was eaten up by the waiting backs and hooves of Iron Hoof and Seeker.

    “You guys okay?” Seeker asked, her voice full of worry for the brother and sister.  One of Darter’s rear legs was entirely coated in an inch thick sheath of immovable ice, as was Skylark’s left wing.  

    “Just a little f-frozen,” Darter gasped out, trying to free his limb from its cold prison.  “Help a pony out will ya?”
    
    Seeker and Iron Hoof both started pounding at the ice, and they had made good progress before a cold shadow eclipsed the sun.  

    “Time to put you all on ice!” laughed Godwindigo, blowing a twenty meter long stream of directed hyperborean wind at the five ponies who defied it.  

    “No way!” Shield Maiden roared back, creating an angled shield that directed the cold off and away toward the ruined town hall.

    Long seconds passed, while the river of frozen air continued to hurtle down on the brave quintet.  The yellow unicorn was doing her best, and while her best was better than most, it wasn’t enough.  Inch by inch her shield was forced further and further back, the sub-arctic chill leaking through until Shield Maiden and her four companions were buried up to the fetlocks in a layer of ice that coated them and the street around them.

    “Now,” Godwindigo declared, with a satisfied smile as it stopped its numbing gale, “you’re mine.  No one can save you.  Your town won’t help you.  Your parents can’t help you.”

    “We’ll never surrender!” Iron Hoof yelled.  He alone of the five was able to break a hoof free of the chilling shackles that gripped him and his friends.  “You can’t freeze the whole town!”

    “Can’t I?” gloated the algid entity.  “Just wa—”

    <CRACK>

    The 7.62mm rifle bullet hit the side of Godwindigo’s head, chipping off a piece of ice and all eyes turned toward the roof of the hotel that lay behind and to the left of the Power Ponies’ position.  There, poking out over the roof of the building was the long barrel of a military rifle, and holding that rifle was a pegasus with an ice blue mane with a regular pony at his side.

    “How the hell did you manage to pull the trigger?” Wilcox asked MacCrae, as the latter worked the bolt action of the Colt C19 and dropped in another NATO standard round.  “Or hold a bullet?”

    “It’s like you told me,” MacCrae said, as he lined up another shot.  “Don’t think about what you’re doing, just do it.  Muscle memory works.”

    It had taken the pair all this time to make their way across the street, through the cafe, and up to MacCrae’s room to retrieve his service rifle.  More time was taken to make it up the last flight of stairs, and for Wilcox to learn that wooden doors stood little chance against hooves.  The door to the roof surrendering after a brief struggle. 

    The duo had just managed to limp and crawl their way the last few body lengths into a good firing position in time for MacCrae’s first shot to make the monster in the street pause on the cusp of its ultimate triumph.  

    “Try for an eye this time,” Wilcox advised.  “I don’t think your last shot did more than get its attention.”  

    “Right,” MacCrae said, and lining up the rifle’s iron sights he squeezed off his second shot.  

    A second 147 grain bullet struck Godwindigo, but lack of familiarity with his new body had MacCrae again missing a vital spot, striking the ridge over her right eye this time and breaking off another bit of ice.  The frozen fiend hadn’t been harmed at all by the shots, but it was outraged that anything would even try to defy it at this point.  

    “Impudent little ponies,” it snarled, lifting its gaze from the five ponies it had trapped in fifteen centimeters of ice, to the two up on the roof.  “Feel the bite of winter.”

    The being of ice and hatred unleashed another blast of arctic breath, this time at the rooftop of the hotel.  As the Power Ponies watched in shock, they saw a solid meter of ice and snow coat the impromptu sniper nest, burying their new allies in frigid fallout.

    “Back whence you came, spawn of the pit,” called out yet another voice, drawing Godwindigo’s attention in a third direction.

    Rising from the right of the Power Ponies, from the ruins of the town hall came twenty or so dark-furred bat ponies.  Their leathery wings smiting the air as they spread out in a V-formation to face the enemy of their home, and in their lead was Father Addison and his wife.

    “I’ve put down dozens of ponies today,” Godwindigo boasted, turning away from the frosty devastation it had wrought.  “They are mine now.  Their power, their despair, their everything.  What can you do that they couldn’t?”

    “We can do this!” Natasha shouted, rearing vertically in the air to spread her wings wide.  “LUX SUM MUNDI!”

    “ARRGH!” wordlessly bellowed Godwindigo, as a brilliant shaft of light lanced outward from Natasha and her husband.  The golden beam struck the frozen fiend full in the face, blinding it.  A pale blue-white limb arced out trying to smite down the good father and his flock, but they easily back winged out of reach.

    “There is nothing to fear in the night,” Father Addison declared, as Godwindigo blinked furiously to clear its vision.  “NOCTE!”

    This time, the shaft emanating from the bat ponies wasn’t one of brilliant light, but of impenetrable darkness.  Night came forth from the bat ponies to flow around their enemy, and blind the creature with its darkness.  Frustrated and confused, Godwindigo began to flail around, doing terrific damage to the buildings along Brightly’s main street.  

    “Did we do it right?” Addison asked over his shoulder, to where the spectral form of the Night Horse hovered.  

    The being whose essence had merged with the priest and his partner nodded its assent and Addison felt a flow of warm affection and congratulations from the Tantabus.  Turning his attention back to his now literal flock he called out, “Everyone, spread out and hit it from all sides.  If we keep it off balance, we might be able to push it out of town.”

    “Food!  You are all food!” Godwindigo yelled, as the bat pony swarm unleashed pulses of light and darkness.  Bright flares alternated with blankets of fog.  The music of phantom lullabies attempted to lull the being into unwariness and jarring alarm calls made the creature flinch away from those it had sought to consume.  

    “We need to leave,” part of Godwindigo’s mind said, to the other part.  “We have what we came for.  We have food for months to come.”

    “No!” the other part screeched angrily.  “Why run now when we can have it all?  I’ll show you what we can do!”

    “It’s leaving!” Shield Maiden shouted, as the giant ice thing staggered out of the flashing cloud around it.  “The bat ponies are kicking it out!”

    “Yay!” cheered Seeker, as Iron Hoof broke her out.  “Kick it in the butt.”

    The celebration was premature.  A creature the size of Godwindigo should not have been able to move with the speed of the wind, but move it did.  It bounced up and spun like an animate tornado, spreading its talons wide and spraying freezing sleet out in wide arcs.  Caught by surprise, over half of the bat ponies found themselves as little more than falling ice cubes when the spraying sleet froze them in mid-air.

 Clutching onto the night fliers sudden fear and despair, the ancient force of cruel hunger and shattered friendships drew the falling bats into itself, fueling it to even greater power, strength and size.  The Power Ponies felt their spirits drop as their wintery foe turned back toward them.

“What are we gonna do?” Skylark asked, voice trembling.

“We stand and fight,” Shield Maiden declared.  Her confident voice bolstering her friends flagging spirits.  “Seeker, we need a target.  Does it have a weak spot?”

“Not really,” the younger pony replied.  “But there is a big pony with lots of power stuck inside of it, right near its heart.  If we could get that pony out…”

“Right,” Shield Maiden interrupted, as the enemy drew itself up and prepared to attack once more.  “You heard my sister, guys.  Let’s carve a hole into that thing and get that pony out.”

“I... am Godwindigo,” the creature announced, from the far side of Miner’s Memorial Park.  “Give me the little witch and her daughters.  The rest of you can go.”

“Combo shot!” Shield Maiden called out, and in response the Power Ponies moved as an instinctive team and pushed their abilities to their limits.  Skylark lifted up another roof beam from the fallen town hall and then let it fall.  As the body thick piece of wood fell, Darter called forth weather in the form of lightning to strike the timber.

“Now!” Seeker commanded, at just the right moment for Iron Hoof to buck the massive flaming missile forward.  Outward it arced, and Godwindigo grunted in pain as the improvised arrow struck home against its chest.

“Just lay down and die already!” Godwindigo screamed, its outrage powering its riposte of a dozen ice spears. Shield Maiden had learned from her first experience defending against the lances of ice, so instead of simply blocking the incoming glacial shafts, she instead batted them away in the same way a fencer will knock aside an incoming lunge.

“Let’s hit it again,” Shield Maiden ordered, and the four fired another shot that combined all of their abilities into a single blast.  Still smarting from the first blow that had truly hurt it this day, Godwindigo swung an arm around to block the second massive flaming arrow.  It succeeded, but only by sacrificing a good sized chunk of its arm.  

Wounded a second time, both halves of the Godwindigo gave up any pretense of mercy or being merciful.  Clawed hands swung back and forth, releasing several of the frozen spears it had been using to great effect that day with each swing.  Shield Maiden was up to the task of defence however, and split her single large shield into three whirling bucklers of force that parried shot after shot after shot.

While Shield Maiden was busy with defence, the rest of the Power Ponies unleashed a hefty offense with a flurry of smaller missiles made up of bits of wood, stone and metal.  None of the smaller projectiles had anywhere near the sheer force of impact of the first pair of bolts, but the Power Ponies were unleashing them at a rate of fire that made their sub-zero enemy hesitate to close the distance.  

Sensing that they were beginning to get the upper hand, the ponies doubled and then tripled their rate of fire.  Increasingly large numbers of chunks of ice were being broken off of the creature, but then it happened.  

Flesh, blood, magic, and will can only go so far, however.  You can only push your limits so much before the universe says, “Hold, enough.”  So it was with the Power Ponies.  Even with their heartfelt abilities, pushed to the outmost in the best of causes, they began to tire and paused for breath.  

It was in that breath that the Godwindigo struck back in earnest.

Stepping a gargantuan pace forward, the combined entity again fired a large salvo of the freezing spears that it favored.  Shield Maiden saw them coming and managed to deflect every single bit of ice in the salvo.  But what she didn’t see was the second volley that the Power Ponies enemy had lobbed in a high, nearly invisible arc.  Using the first attack as cover for the second.

“Is that the best you—” Darter started to taunt, when one of the high flung missiles slammed down to earth beside him.  

Before any of the ponies could react, other similar spears of frozen power landed all around them.  In the twinkling of an eye the frozen power of Godwindigo was unleashed in a torrent of ultimate cold.  Freezing the five furry friends into blocks of ice that encased them from the necks down.  In the space of a few breaths they had gone from driving the creature back, to being captured by it.

“Now you are mine!” Godwindigo gloated.  “One last chance, witch.  Come out or I will pull your little defenders into myself and make them part of me, like all the others who have fed my hunger this day.”