//------------------------------// // Chapter Sixty Eight, Pharaoh Emerald, of cake: Flour. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Present Day, Airship Mauled, Fizzle- “I was completely horrified by what I had done… I was just expected the walls to collapse.” Jade looked fairly upset about having done that. “I didn’t mean to hurt just about every single jackal in the city.” “On the bright side, we didn’t have much fighting to do.” Looking to Baast as she stretched out on the table, I tilted my head questioningly at her. She licked at the back of one of her paws. “With the collapse of most of the city, Anubis wasn’t capable of running and his army was mostly decimated in the collapse. He still had a few jackals and some unicorns active with him in one of the few buildings that didn’t collapse. There were also a few in the streets that were still active, but they weren’t going to stop us or do much to an untouched army.” “Yes, you just heard Baast, despite the cities near total destruction… not a single being from our side had so much as a cold from being next to an entire city collapsing a few feet into the ground.” It seems my cuddle kitty was a bit sad and needed some love. “Aside from some mild eye irritation from all that dust being kicked up, our side hadn’t been scratched in the slightest in the aftermath of the city collapsing.” “Come on Jade, stop sulking. You’re not the only one that has ruined a city… or two…” I still felt guilty about the Mount Aris invasion and hippogriffs still give me dirty looks even now, but they weren’t willing to try me. I could still beat the feathers off them if they wanted a fight. I actually knew how Jade likely felt about this and wanted to comfort her. “You were just doing the best that you could Jade. Not that you were ever going to be perfectly innocent with the whole stealing the nails and the things that they once held down thing with you and mom, but you’re not exactly irredeemable. Not to me anyway, I’ve done a few things that were just as bad as that.” I got closer to my snuggle kitty and started to run my hoof over her ears. “Yeah… you might want to rethink that thought after I’m done telling you about everything that happened to me.” Despite Jade saying this, I still didn’t stop petting her and she started purring. Music to my ears. “You think you’ve done some bad things… you have yet to actually hear some of the things I’ve done. The city of the moon collapsing was one of those things I’m not ever going to forget.” Commander Tempest was behind me and I now had my loves back within hugging range of my hooves, Maries and Jade being alive and moderately healthy made me a happy pony. Grubber could joke about me being a hard ass all he wants, I’m perfectly happy to settle with just having Jade and Maries in my life again. Sure the last few years were emotionally traumatizing, but I really no longer felt like I needed my horn restored to be happy. I’m eternally thankful to have met Twilight Sparkle. “I am Fortitude, the fantastically fragrant!” Everyone turned to our favorite yak that smells like death warmed over and then froze the underworld afterwards because it was that bad. Fortitude wanted our attention, he had the floor while I petted my favorite snuggle kitty’s ears. “Friend Jade, is there a specific reason the city collapsed? I believe Oleander said something about it being the location?” “It was a number of things, though faith was definitely a large part of why it happened.” Purred Jade as I wrapped my left hoof around her waist and continued to be openly affectionate. “Chances are, if we did not do everything that we did, then that wouldn’t have happened. Given the hilly terrain, what are the chances that the entire city would suddenly sinkhole?” “Not likely by my estimates, what you did should have had only an effect on the outer walls at the most. They were built too tall on unstable terrain.” I answered swiftly, running the math through my head. What Jade did was in fact a literal miracle, not like she doesn’t pull enough of those out of her rear end being a sun priestess… it was just after that thought that I realized something. “Mom… does Fluttershy’s song from the tree of Harmony make an eerie amount of sense to you now?” “It actually does come to think of it...” Mom turned to stare at a slightly shy Fluttershy as she offered fish jerky to Jade. Despite her complaints that she eats too much of it, Jade still took the offered confection ripped a chunk out of it. “We don’t blame you Fluttershy, it’s just that vague messages really don’t help much and tend to be clearer in hindsight. That hindsight is occurring to us now.” “Before we get back into things, aside from the interesting tidbit that the flag Jade planted went entirely untouched despite being practically point blank to the destruction of the whole city. I actually looked up the god’s of comedy that Jade spoke of…” As soon as Baast said this, Jade sat up while stopping my hoof from petting her and her ears were now twitching alertly. “Did you actually find them?” There was something fairly curious about Jade’s tone on this. “Actually, surprisingly enough, yes. Well at least one of them, though I’ve never actually heard of him before you paid homage to him. Lumber Storage, the best equivalent of what I could decipher his name to be from all the horribly spoken hieroglyphics, was a fairly amiable god. Didn’t meet the other one though as he was out at the time, something about a scarlet noble?” Baast rubbed her head with her left paw looking like she had a migraine remembering this. “Anyway, Lumber spoke in horribly written hieroglyphics which was impossibly odd, and it made him really quite hard to understand clearly.” “When you say he spoke in hieroglyphics…” Tianhuo slowly put out there, she was obviously going to return to Huoshan after she was done listening to Jade’s story. We couldn’t keep Tianhuo here forever, she had to get back to a job and the place that she loved. I knew the feeling of being away from a place I wanted to be for so long, and she was taking it far better than any of us had. “I mean literally every time he opened his beak and spoke, his words came out as a visible set of floating hieroglyphics that were really hard to understand…” Baast put her right paw under her chin and prodded at her left ear with her other paw. “It was like…” “It was written by a chicken and scratched out to be fairly illegible, but still somewhat recognizable as something approaching a language?” Jade said with hint of amusement in her tone. “Yes, that’s it exactly, and it was really charmingly annoying!” Baast pointed to Jade with a bit of exuberance. “He was a fairly odd god, but he was at least jovial about life and the ideals of friendship. At least from what I could understand of him.” Jade snorted loudly and seemed to be trying to contain herself about something, Snickers flew over from where she had finished eating some food and landed on my nose with a smile. “Coo?” Snickers hugged my nose with her flippers. “Yes, I’m happy to see you’re feeling better Snickers.” A smile crossed my lips. The flying turtle was doing much better now that Jade was back. “So, I believe we were at the collapse of a civilization in the middle of a war? It kind of reminds me that you’re ‘The Collateral Cat’astrophe’ Jade.” “Yes, but this wasn't comic and actually history of a somewhat lost civilization.” Given that there are no history books about it, I’m fairly certain that Jade had something to do with it being lost. “How exactly did it become lost anyway?” I asked and Baast grinned at me. “Well given enough time and years, a goddess can make just about anything fade into the background of history until it’s found again.” Okay Baast just made something crawl down my spine, it felt like someone was waving several red flags at me just now. I probably don’t want to ask how Baast managed that, but apparently it didn’t affect the relationship between jackals and flail-tails too badly after the war. Considering they are still around in this day and age and are apparently strong allies, something fairly positive came of whatever Jade did a long time ago. -A long time ago, Ancient Anugypt, outside the recently collapsed city of the moon, Jade- “Everyone start rescuing those poor jackals, we need to dig them out of the rubble and help them out!” It was fairly obvious to me where Anubis currently was and while they were performing disaster relief, I would seek to stop this issue once and for all. “While you do that, I will be busy facing down Anubis!” The walls were totaled and the entire city sunk down a few feet, there was not going to be a problem getting into the city for anyone. I ran forward and Baast started getting the orders relayed once she snapped out of her stupor. I could clearly see our army on the far side of the broken city, I also saw one of the few parts of the city that wasn’t a large pile of rubble. It was fairly obvious where Anubis was, because the building he was occupying was glowing a sinister green color. I got to the demolished gate and ran down a piece of rubble heading towards where Anubis awaits. Thanks to the destruction, the jagged broken streets were horrible to traverse. I had to jump, climb and sprint through the rubble. I stopped to rescue a poor jackal pup in imminent danger of being crushed by a bit of building that was quickly losing its integrity and kept moving further into the city leaving him behind. “Stay!” Honestly, I couldn’t take the kid with me and it was safer for him to be on his own at the moment. I was about to get into the fight with a death god whose king of the jackals, I just hoped the forces moving into the city eventually got him help. At some point I was getting close and was in an alleyway between two half collapse structures, I near got cleaved from shoulder to hip by a bladed spear as a jackal jumped from the top of the structures and swung for me. I quickly jumped back as she struck the ground, it was a possessed Jackal and I was ready for them. A yoyo technically didn’t count as a singular object in magical alchemy terms, but the string and the wood that made up both parts of it were strengthened in a manner comparable to Jacky’s bow. Well it was kind of exactly like her bow given I made it from the same materials, the green string from my hair and the wood painstakingly give its carved shape. I dodged to the right as the jackal took a stab at me with the spear and launched the yoyo to the left at an angle. I didn’t have a fancy name for my weapon, but I had a few tricks I could do with. One such trick was bouncing it off solid surfaces, for when it hit the wall it rebounded into the right side of the jackals face and I quickly tugged on the string before it could slacken too much. The jackal twisted the spear so the blade was pointed at me and swung it. Catching the yo-yo, I launched it at the right wall this time as I ducked under the attack and it bounced straight up in the jackals chin making her stumble back a bit after the blade clanged against the wall. Once I reeled in the yo-yo, I flicked the crook I took up in my right hand upwards to wrap around the shaft of the spear from my crouched position. I stood up, stepped back while yanking the jackal towards me, I then stepped forward the stumbling jackal while raising my right forearm and I bashed her in the throat making her lose her grip on the spear. I was hoping to gain enough momentum to clothesline her, but that didn’t pan out. “Sorry about this!” I hooked my left foot behind her right leg and then shoulder bashed her face. Having been too busy grasping at her throat to defend herself, the jackal went down harshly and was thankfully unconscious as soon as her head struck the ground. I stopped to check and see if she was okay, snapped the end off of the bladed spear for a makeshift knife and then I moved on. What made this encounter important is that it was the first fight since I ran into the city and I had covered most of the distance to the building Anubis was in. A possessed jackal that wasn’t pinned by rubble or was injured enough to stop being possessed. It had been creepy how silent the city had been up until that moment of combat and it had been an ambush. Speaking of ambushes, two streets later I exited an alleyway looking left and right into an open street. I was getting closer to the building that Anubis occupied when I was blocked by several more possessed jackals out in the open. I moved out towards the three male jackals on my left, they were on the way to my destination. Once they took notice of me, they started slowly approaching me head on and I was ready to take them on when Sand Shroud finally caught up to me. “Lookout!” Sandy had blocked the spear coming at my back using the heavy shield on held in her left hand. Having deflected the blade to the side with her shield, she took up a position behind me, stepped forward and twisted her arm while performing an underhanded swing. Her blunt one handed baton sized chunk of wood went into the jackal’s head at an upward angle. She took him out with a single solid swing and a painful sounding noise. “Are you okay Jade?” “Thanks, it’s nice to have someone that has my back, even if it’s your king I’m going to fight!” There were not many active possessed, but I still hadn’t seen where that one had come from despite having looked in that direction as I exited the alley. “Also wouldn’t you be happier digging the injured out the rubble?” “That thing is currently no king of mine, while I would like to save my people in the rubble. I would prefer to save them all from being influenced further.” Sandy move up to my side while holding her shield and baton at the ready. I stowed my crook and prepped my yoyo, once they got close enough I swung the yoyo out on a wide sweeping arc. It went between the legs of the left jackal, hooked around to between the legs of the right one and back to me. I grabbed the spinning yoyo with my right hand and jerked backwards, all three jackals went down as the yoyo’s string left them open for Sandy.