-Outside the city of the moon, day seven, Jade-
I moved the flag up and down as I stepped across sand and some patches of dirt as we marched towards the front gate of the city, they were running out of things to throw at us and wouldn’t dare come out with the forces we have gathered now.
They believed we couldn’t do a single thing to the walls, but they were about to find out that we didn’t need to. Since what we were doing was having an entirely unseen effect on them.
The sun was blistering hot this morning and I was glad for having cloak in this heat. The sound of the drum beat at my rear and thousands of paws, hooves and what have you were stepping in time to the rhythm of the beat.
I was so sick and tired of sand, the heat and the freezing cold nights without a warm body cuddling up to mine. Not that Sandy wasn’t willing, she certainly was, but I wasn’t looking for romance for fairly obvious reasons.
My friend Sandy the jackal was still ready to cover me with a shield just in case they had anything left, I did say we needed all the priestesses for the end of this and that included me. Really it was all basically theatrics, smoke and mirrors, hiding what we were really doing.
Nobody here likely understood the importance of the marching trail we created around the city, exactly the same as it has been for the past six days,
Compared to the amount of projectiles Anubis’s forces wasted on us, the damage was minimal and the majority of the various factions of anugypt were gathering for this last day to march around the city seven times to create an ever widening spiral.
Each breath I take sent fire into my lungs, I was taking a step for each beat and I eventually passed the city gate, I was already beginning to sweat and I had to pass the gate six more times and stop in front of it on the seventh lap.
As we made our first turn around the corner of the city, I saw out of the corner of my eye the jackals on the walls silently watching us with glowing green eyes. They stared at us and our march as we stalked around towards the back of the city and back around the side were we saw our incredibly long marching line.
Taking a hand off the flag I took a sip of water from a flask, that stuff was far more precious than gold out here. Quite literally, gold had no purpose other than to be ostentatious or used in electrum based regalia. I was only going to drink water on the last leg before we turned towards the gate.
None of the jackals on the walls watching us made a move to throw anything, they didn’t make a move to stop us by opening the gate to come out to attack. They only sat there and watched us march in time to each of my steps, which echoed was more than one hundred thousand times over as the ground shook.
I couldn’t help but think of the idea that it was like a snake coming upon its own body after wrapping around a tree. The marchers looked to their left and saw me marching toward them and the line shifted outwards by the time I reached the corner and thus the spiral began.
I thought about how I moved all the pieces in the game against King Anubis, Baast was the head of the war and I was the hidden ace in the hole that would end it after months of battles and skirmishes with what seemed like endless numbers of possessed jackals.
We drew most of Anubis’s ire to ourselves, given that Baast had stolen his mystical bone of the undead that was understandable. While many went off to secure other portions of anugypt to drive him further and further north until he could no longer run. The thing possessing Anubis was without a doubt angry that it couldn’t use the powers of the underworld without the literal skeleton key that was a bone.
Said bone was currently sealed in the ark of the testimony, hopefully the angels of death thing wouldn’t happen and that Anubis could disarm the bone after he was brought back to his senses. Otherwise opening it could kill us all if we were to look into the open dog house, the reason why Baast didn’t want anyone seeing the bone is that it would kill mortals for trying to wield it.
I wasn’t trying to wield its power, I just wanted inside the box for the so called ‘ritual’ we were doing. She relented when I said that I nor anyone else needed to touch the bone and the box would be sealed off by Cheerful Dye immediately after it was in place.
None of what was going to happened wouldn’t be possible without the cows and their supply lines giving us plenty of food and water, enough to survive off of if this went horribly wrong. Otherwise it was meant for the jackals that looked like they were getting more emaciated as time and fighting went on.
The parasite controlling Anubis wasn’t a tactical genius, but it still tried to make sure it had living troops to wield since it couldn’t currently use undead ones.
The ponies we had with us were not of the three tribes that would eventually go to where equestria would be settled down and rooted. Most of the ponies in ancient anugypt were earth or unicorn ponies, oddly very little in the way of winged ponies.
Flying ponies might have ended this war far sooner. If I heard about a solitary ring and a volcano, I would do math so hard to end everything!
I wondered if sphinxes gave ponies wings to fly with, pegasus ponies did sometimes have cat like traits… my musings on this would continue as we passed the city gate once more. Ponies were a minority around here.
The second lap went fairly well, the spiral started to become bigger as we started our way into the third lap.
I knew Anubis wasn’t a bad guy, but he was a fairly cold god. Most death gods are like that given what said job entails and Anubis is supposed to be impartial and fair.
I was becoming a bit tired by the fourth lap, we had the city entirely surrounded.
I thought of how the flail-tails were lucky that Baast, on Discords need to amuse himself, pretty much saved Anugypt from being destroyed by an army of the undead. Being chaotic neutral like Discord was, I could see why he wanted life to continue around here.
The undead wouldn’t have been as fun to toy with for Discord, mostly since everything he does is to get an emotional reaction out of someone. Never was there a being that wanted or craved attention more than Discord, he was fairly lonely guy once you thought about it. Fluttershy will be one of the few beings to ever actually give him the kind of attention he wanted without him needing to act up.
I understood chaos better than most, it had an order all of its own. Order is when everything made sense, chaos is when everything made nonsense. I liked nonsense as much as making sense. I can never really see myself as chaotic heroic, possibly chaotic good or chaotic neutral if I was going to think in O&O terms.
We were now into the fifth lap.
I started to think about all the head injuries we gave the jackals, but there was only so many ways we could free the possessed which were usually jackals. There were a few possessed pony thralls and the rare occasional cow, flail-tails were immune and I think Baast at least provided that much defensive ability for us felines.
On a related note, Baast was certainly upset that I couldn’t do heart songs on demand and that the song I sang was kind of a one-time deal that required specific circumstances and for someone to gain a rhythm to work with.
We were slowly moving into our sixth lap.
Those at the front of the line were getting tired, and those at the very distant back of it wouldn’t have to really walk that far. The fact that we were still marching spoke of our endurance, despite being winged by several high speed rocks over the last few days we were still doing mostly fine.
Cheerful was shifting her rump as she raised and lower her left and right paw in a rhythm, she wasn’t the only drum playing in this marching mass. The noise of our marching steps as we surrounded the city was becoming deafening and the ground shook with each move I made.
I just concentrated putting one foot in front of the other, tracing over my steps from the previous lap. It wouldn’t be long before we were into our seventh lap and the bobbing of the flag I held was starting to tilt slightly as I wilted.
This was a lot harder than I thought it would be, but I still kept going into the seventh and final lap. Around me every flail-tail, jackal, cow and pony were becoming quite tense as this lap began.
It wouldn’t be long before those walls collapsed, just a little more walking. I was sweating pretty badly and I took as much water into my mouth as I willing to use. I’m glad I’m not one to do calculations when it comes to creating plans, because I could not have actually foreseen anything happening on this day.
The plan revolved around playing to myths of a past life and I was about to see if I could recreate it. Of the many interesting things to know about history, the geography of the city of the moon was rather important to making this work. At least I hoped it worked because…
“Stop.” I said simply and planted the flag and the wind blew as I turned towards the city gates. Every single being in the marching line continued to march into position at the end of our long spiraling line. I was panting a bit from the heat and sucking in as much air as I could. “I really need to catch my breath, before we get to the next part.”
“So is now when the walls are supposedly going to fall?” Baast asked looking the least tired out of all of us. Divinity still benefited a goddess, even in a mortal shell.
“Please, tell me it’s going to happen soon, my fur is positively a mess with sweat.” Following that soft spoken sentence, Clarity then shouted. “I may be the most active princess of the sands, but I do not appreciate smelling like the backside of a camel!”
“Do you really think you can bring down these walls!?” A voice shouted out to us, we looked up to see a jackal general gazing blankly down at us, glowing eyes like all the other possessed jackals on the wall. “King Anubis will not be stopped here today, you cannot possibly siege us forever!”
I glanced at Sandy with her tongue lolling out of her mouth as she panted, the heat was really getting to all of us. It’s a good thing we didn’t have to move anymore.
“We don’t need to siege you!” I shouted back, I then turned to Sandy. “Get the priestesses together and tell Cheerful to break out the horns I had her make. We have one last pertinent thing to do, oh and start spreading the word that everyone needs to start shouting ‘We Believe’ as loudly as they can when we play those horns. Baast get ready to see a miracle.”
“If you can make one happen, you’re boon is assured. I’ll even make you a pharaoh and work for you if you can end the war this day.” Well, be prepared to be surprised when you have to make good on that Baast. “Can’t say the chaos hasn’t been fun, but…”
I didn’t answer her, but I made my way forward towards the gate as a male flail-tail guard from Clarity’s court came up to me to give me a horn. I took it and nodded to him and motioned for him to back up. Coming up to my left were Clarity, Grassy and Quiet, on my right were Bright, Cheerful and Brash.
I didn’t say a word, I lifted the long carved horn up to my lips and inhaled through my nose. The six with me watched as I did so and mimicked my actions, I blew as hard as I could.
I was tired, sweaty, sand was in awful places, I wanted to hug a fluffy unicorn or chimera that were nowhere near this time or place, but I had done all I could to make this work. The sound of the seven horns made my ears twitch as did the sudden rise of voices building after we lowered the horns.
“We believe!” One anugyptian started, of course it would be Fez that was the one to do it.
From all walks of life, they started shouting it and soon they were all doing it as one. I looked to Baast.
“You too Baast! We believe!” It took a full minute of shouting this shaking the city of the moon, screaming ourselves raw and Baast actually joined in too.
Slowly the noise died down and it all became quiet once everyone was tired of shouting.
“What was that in effort of? Just saying ‘We Believe’ makes no sense whatsoever!” The jackal general on the wall shouted. “Whatever you’ve planned it is obviously not going to…”
The jackal general was cut off as something shook, the sands on the ground shifted and the entire world rumbled slightly.
My eyes went wide.
“Maybe I should have paid homage to the hungry orange cat and dumb dog… everyone move away from the city!” I planted the flag and ran with my horn in hand. “It’s happening!”
-Overhead view of the ‘city of the moon’-
A spiral started to quickly spread outwards away from the city of the moon. The entire world shook, it was as if a localize earthquake rumbled throughout the city. The location the city was built on wasn’t exactly stable ground.
The streets throughout the city started cracking and the streets started to raise and lower, the walls were starting to shift and crumble and, in a suddenly explosive manner, the city was engulfed in a huge dust cloud that swept outwards from the city.
-Jade-
I coughed and hacked as I stood up, the sand and dust was beginning to settle and I moved my away up to Baast who was staring at something with wide eyes and a dropped jaw.
“Paying homage to gods of comedy might have been a bit much…” I was staring at the aftermath of it, was it actually my fault or literally the city's? “Not what I expected to happen.”
“No kidding.” Baast said in a blank manner as she continued to stare blankly ahead. “What did you expect to happen?”
“The destruction of the walls.” I stated plainly.
“Well you achieved that…” Baast continued to stare. “And destroyed more than three fourths of the city as well.”