-In the Jungle, Oleander-
“Okay… admittedly… maybe Dispel was ready for you Fred.” I’m a bit shocked, at least Pom was keeping them off of me, but Fred was back in the book having done very little damage to Dispel Grace personally.
Dispel’s tenacity was to be commended, he was certainly competent at handling someone with at least a college level degree in dark magic such as myself. That he could stand up to Fred was fairly frightening.
“I’M AS SHOCKED AS YOU ARE, he’s surprisingly competent and managed to hold me off pretty well.” Fred’s book reflected his battered form given it now had two bandages with evil grinning faces printed on them on his cover. I thought they were cute. “At least I knocked out a good number of his minions while I was out and about, BUT HOW ARE WE GOING TO DEAL WITH HIM NOW? It’ll take quite a while to charge me up again Ollie and you know the limitations I have.”
“Like your dark magic would win against me and my unfathomable holy powers, I’d say your companion is far more capable than you are when dealing with my might!” Well now, Dispel didn’t have to go for such a low blow. Although Pom was holding her own admirably with help from her puppies and the ever lovable Major Mother.
“I don’t honestly know how to feel about that compliment….” You know Pom, you’re quite capable if you stopped and looked at your actions. “Also Ollie is a good pony and what you consider bad is not entirely right! Though sometimes you might actually have a point about something… right or wrong, I’m sticking by Ollie’s side as her friend!”
Pom managed to keep a number of thirty or so reviving pummeled Perun Paladins off my back with just herself and five canines. I think that deserves at least some form of acknowledgment considering four of those canines are still barely puppies. Not to mention she and her pack destroyed a number of Teatime’s golems that still littered the general surroundings as well.
Does Pom honestly not realize how amazing she actually is? Since Maggie and Velvet ran off to help the others, I would have been at a large disadvantage had she not stayed to watch my back. She is braver then she might currently think she is, if she is willing to go this far for a friend like me.
I don’t even consider myself entirely great at the whole friendship thing sometimes, but Pom makes me feel like I am with the support she’s giving me.
“While your prowess is commendable, you will die by your friend!” Dispel started charging his sword up, but something howled distracting all of us.
The pupils of Pom’s eyes shrunk and she reached up to her chest with her right hoof.
“Another familiar, really? Like I didn’t have enough of them before I left Equestria!” What came out of the jungle was something large and covered in a mass of vines, it soon shook them off and revealed itself to be something far smaller than it was previously thought to be.
It was a very odd and definitely not natural. In fact, Dispel looked like he hated it on the principle that it seemed to like Pom the second it was near her.
It was a three dimensional mass of pink shaped like a wolf with dark pink eyes. It seemed to look around and then bounded over to Pom to stick out what looked like a tentacle where its tongue should be, then it slapped that across Pom’s confused face.
“I have no idea what this thing is, but it’s definitely a beastie of mine now…. why me?” Pom whined with a solemn downtrodden mood, she gave a weak smile as tears filled her eyes. “Also, I can feel all my beasties again too. They’ve been doing okay for the most part, but I can feel their longing for me. I’ll have to go searching for them once we’re done here, can’t have them wandering into the jungle to be attacked by wild animals.”
A crescent beam of energy flew towards us while I was distracted and the pink wolf blob thing leapt in the way of the holy energy for me. It didn’t take damage from the crescent beam and even seemed to just absorb it.
“I find myself at a loss, an unholy abomination suddenly joins with you and it can take holy energies!?” The pink wolf shape mass made something that sounded like a growling noise at Dispel Grace, it was comparable to a squeaky toy being chewed on by a normal dog. “No matter, I will deal with this thing later. You will not win this day dark one!”
The thing was kind of cute, now if only the glowing mass of pink shaped like a wolf wasn’t so vaguely familiar to me for some reason. I know I’ve seen this thing somewhere before, I feel a sense of dread just by looking at it.
“Ollie, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you exactly what it is I think we’re seeing here.” Fred seemed certain about that and I trusted him on that. He bumped me out of the way of a vertical beam of holy energy. “Whatever created that thing has to be absurdly powerful as to be unstoppable, NOW LET’S JUST GET BACK TO FIGHTING THE PONY THAT JUST ATTACKED YOU TWICE WHILE WE WERE DISTRACTED!”
-Inside the jungle base, Daring-
“Me…” I heard the yelp and turned to see that the alpaca was in trouble.
She was finally knocked out by three of the Perun Paladins working together in a concerted effort to deal with her hug happy assaults and they were all wielding heavy blunt weapons, it took quite a few blows and at least three direct cannonballs to the head to finally knock her out of action.
What was she exactly made of that her injuries were still so light?
I swooped down and grabbed her by one of her front hooves to drag her away from them before they could injure her any further, avoiding several cannon shots from the nearby airship. The only operational cannons after our dragon and longma dealt with the Perun Paladins manning the ones on the buildings.
The reindeer statue obviously wasn’t too pleased about the alpaca being down, as it sent a block of ice at the paladins a second later. I looked back and grimaced at the sight of them being sent flying in an explosion filled with pointy bits of ice.
I turned back to see the reindeer statue being clamped onto by the centipede of metal crabs and was now in trouble.
I had to get the alpaca to safety first, then I’d get back into the thick of it. It was nice to have so many competent allies on this one, otherwise I would have to sneak into the pyramid by myself and possibly deal with all these guys on the way out.
-Jungle, Pom-
I ducked under the glaive swinging for me and stepped forwards once while launching my left hoof forward in a jab, my reach was fairly good considering the length of my legs and my hoof connected with the armored pony’s chest sending them sliding back.
Two of my puppies chose that moment to ram the pony in the chest and then dive bomb their head from above after hovering up high into the air with their tail. I saw a surge of light heading for me and I cowered while covering the two puppies at my side.
“Eep…” My new beastie, of which I didn’t have a name for, just saved me from being hit by the wave energy by jumping in front of me and my puppies.
“Some knight you are, targeting my friends back when she isn’t your opponent.” Ollie seemed angry, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her really angry though. With her dark magic, I would think I’d be able to tell when she’s really angry, especially if she does the four glowing eyed thing when she fires off a spell or is building up dark magic.
Ollie went to move forward, only for Arizona to come crashing onto the scene and into Dispel back first with an impressive amount of force. She looked pretty bloodied and bruised, I was kind of worried about her if I didn’t know she’d just tough it out.
“Okay, so I might have to actually take you seriously, how shocking.” Arizona rolled onto her hooves immediately and wiped her nose and rotated her head. Several cracking noises could be heard as she shifted her body, Shocking Awe flew down from the trees glaring at her. “Uh… what did I hit?”
“You hit Dispel, but I think there’s something wrong with that.” Ollie pointed to the pile of armor that was empty and the helmet that was separated from it, there wasn’t a pony inside the completely empty armor at all.
Shocking landed and looked in the direction of Dispel’s armor with a curious tilt of his head. Suddenly the helmet started to shift and slowly something small pulled itself out of the helmet and tumbled onto its back. It was an earth pony, one that was the size of a breezy.
“This… actually explains very little… what the buck dude?! Were you always like this, I expected you to be jacked and buff, maybe somewhat handsome and sweat stained, with how much you ran around in that armor.” Shocking started receiving a glare from the tiny pony with a neon pink mane and tail, said tiny pony dusted off his dark blue coat. “I thought you’d be bigger under that bulky, gaudy armor of yours, but you’re really freaking tiny!”
“My mother was a breezy… don’t you dare start looking down on me for finding out about my horrible secret!” Shouldn’t someone point out to Dispel the impossibility of a female breezy and a normal sized… no, I don’t think any of us wanted to seriously think about the logistics of it too hard.
“It’d kind of hard not to.” Shocking stated with a smirk. “To think I thought the amazing amoeba udders here was small.”
“Out of curiosity, how did you move that armor around?” Is everyone really just going to stop fighting to hear the answer to Arizona’s question? I’m certainly okay with that, but this was seriously weird.
“Like this.” Raising both his front hooves to the sky, Dispel glowed and a mass of energy pulsed out of his form as he rose up in the air. The golden mass of pulsing energy started to solidify and take the shape of a pony with glaring blue orbs.
“That’s kind of…” Shocking started to say, before Arizona turned and sucker punched him in the skull with explosive force that sent flames blasting off her hoof.
I thought Shocking did kind of have that coming, especially after he insensitively called attention to Arizona’s udders… or lack thereof. Shocking bounced limply off a tree and was incapable of fighting.
Arizona was hit by a crescent wave of energy seconds later that cut a large gash in her side. It was launched from Dispel’s swiping hoof. When Dispel launched that wave of energy, his form shrunk a bit.
Arizona started clutching at her wound and grit her teeth as she laid on her side and I immediately moved forward to protect her from the Perun Paladins trying to take advantage while she was down.
As I waded into the paladins with my puppies and two larger canines, I noted that none of the paladins seemed particularly surprised to see that Dispel was an earth pony that was only slightly larger than a grape.
Just as I was finished smacking a paladin away from Arizona, Oleander blocked of a wave of light from Dispel by unleashing a counter wave of darkness from Fred. She turned to me sharply.
“Pom… please get Arizona out of here and help her find medical aid.” Not wanting to complain to Ollie that I was leaving her open to being surrounded with only Fred to aid her, I grabbed Arizona and did as she asked by jumping onto Big Mama.
“Are you okay Arizona?” I looked down at her as we rode away.
“I’m just peachy, not that the huge gash in my side is painful in any given way, shape or form.” She grunted and just held her side. “That Dispel guy is far more dangerous than Shocking is, my hide is tough and that attack cut right into me.”
-Oleander-
I opened the book and Fred sent a shadowy claw straight for Dispel Grace who batted it away with his bare hoof of raw holy energy, he rolled to the side and picked up his overcompensating sword to start charging it with energy.
As he did so I simply battered the last two Perun Paladins that were still capable of fighting by swinging Fred around in a wide arc at them. Once stunned, I unleashed small bolts of darkness at them that sent them sprawling.
“You are brimming with power, I can also see why you wear the armor now… you can’t keep it all from bleeding off or under control without the armor can you?” He was losing quite a lot of energy trying to hold that shape, but he was still charging quite a lot of power to his sword.
“What I have should be enough for you, I will use all of it!” Dispel shouted as his glowing form started to shrink as his sword grew brighter.
“Let us trade attacks then! How about a spell I hold close to my heart?” I started to flip Fred to the correct page and read the lines I haven’t use in a while, a barrier wasn’t going to stop his next attack and I wasn’t going to need one. “Though I know I should be fairly wary, I still hold onto a power that is fairly scary, this spell cast from the shadows I let loose… dark recluse, dark recluse, DARK RECLUSE!”
-Clearing-
The clash of like and dark happened as it has done many times across the ages of many a history, in a brilliant display that could be seen from miles on end.
The light and darkness spiraled destructively into the sky and then... petered out.
There was no sign of either Oleander or Dispel Grace after the clash, only the unconscious numerous Perun Paladins and Shocking Awe.
-At the edge of the base, behind another instant wall, Kuril-
"They're, thankfully, almost out of paladins!" I knew the golems were still causing numerous issues. For instance, Velvet was still trying to deal with the combined mechanical menace with the magical barrier.
Teatime’s airship was our biggest problem and the injuries were mounting on everyone, except Fluttershy.
In that vein, Fluttershy and I were taking care of Paprika now after one too many cannonballs to the head.
Paprika was a tough alpaca, considering the cannonballs took more damage than she did from the collisions. She was quite addled once we managed to rouse her, she thought she was a clown that was also somehow a popular country singer that only played the banjo.
Don’t know where the Paprika got the banjo from or learned how to play it. We learned from a fairly injured Arizona that, to her knowledge, Paprika only knew how to effectively play a pan flute.