//------------------------------//
// Chapter the Seventeenth: Cold Shoulder 
// Story: Failure, Eternally Retold, Part Two: Nature's Blessings 
// by Kiernan 
//------------------------------//

Kai trod across the floor to the bodies that were laid out neatly. They were dressed in fine clothing, and now that he was closer, they smelled less like dead bodies. There was still a stench, but they certainly smelled better. It was as if they had been coated with a deodourizer and a perfume

A door swung open on the north side of the room. A young-looking mare carried a lifeless body on her back, all dressed up fancy, like the ones Kai was standing next to. She trudged toward him through the shallow water that covered the floor, stopping before she reached him. A cursory examination showed that, while she was a unicorn, her horn was broken, leaving a jagged nub on her forehead. She was completely blind, feeling around with her hooves as she moved. She was also missing a hefty chunk of her left ear. She placed the body on the floor next to the others, arranging it in the same manner as those fallen.

As she turned and made her way to one of the other bodies, Twilight took a few steps toward her. Since the opening of the door, the only sound and movement had come from the mare, but with Twilight about to offer her aid, the mare jumped backward. "You're back!" Splashing some water on her face, the mare surrounded herself in a spheroid of water, with multiple tendrils emanating from it. "I won't hold back this time!" 

Twilight only narrowly missed being impaled by ice spikes being flung from one of the many waving tentacles. "Wait! we're not--" She had to jump out of the way as another tentacle almost came down on top of her.

Fluttershy flew up to the mare. "We don't want to fight! We just wa--" She ducked out of the way as a tentacle came for her face, but as it flew past, it hit her mane and wrapped around it, flinging the poor pegasus around until Kai flew up and severed the tentacle. As the tendril rained back to the floor, it turned back into ordinary water. 

"Looks like we don't have much choice," grumbled Nik, picking up a spear that had been embedded in one of the dead bodies. As soon as he did, a tendril wrapped around his ankle and pulled him into the air. 

Fluttershy returned to the mare. "Please, stop fighting us!" She dodged out of the way of a tentacle. "We don't want to hurt you, in fact, the opposite!"

Kai slipped through the air, slashing the tentacle that had claimed Nik's leg, and catching the falling human and righting him before lowering him to the ground. "Keep on your feet, Nik."

Twilight had shifted to a quite clever tactic, deftly dodging away from the tentacles, having multiple after her at once, and teleporting short distances whenever she was surrounded. It was great for keeping the tentacles distracted. 

Every time a tentacle would be dealt with, the mare in the center made a new one to replace it. Kai was on top of lopping them off, and also fairly swift at batting away the shards of ice raining down around everypony. He'd taken a few minor glances from them as well as having been hit multiple times by the tentacles. He was doing a decent job of keeping the others from being hit, but it wasn't doing any favours for his own body. 

"We really just want to talk," insisted Fluttershy. "Maybe help you give your friends a more timely sendoff, or at least give them some kind of memorial service?"

"And then finish the job you started on me!?" growled the mare, punching Fluttershy in the gut, not with a tentacle, but with her own hoof. "You may have blinded me, but I see you for what you are! You murdered my family!" As her rage boiled over, the ice chunks turned to blasts of hot steam.

Kai changed up his strategy from hitting away the ice to blowing away the steam with his wings. It was less effective, but he didn't have much in the way of options. 

Twilight was also less able to counter this. She had multiple welts and scalding burns from being hit with a blast of steam, and the moisture in the air was making it more difficult to breathe.

"We're not the villains you think we are," pleaded Fluttershy. "I beg that you let us explain ourselves. If you'd only listen to us fo--" she was cut off as a rod of ice connected with her wing, knocking her aside and temporarily ceasing the function of said wing.

Seeing Fluttershy fall toward the floor with no way to stop her impact sent Kai into a panic. The world around him seemed to slow as he changed direction faster than he ever had and propelled himself toward her. As he passed the mare in the water orb, his own wing hit her with such force that it knocked her out of the bubble and onto the floor, but he barely noticed. He was too busy turning upside down and wrapping his arms around Fluttershy's chest in an attempt to cushion the blow.

As their bodies touched down, the pain in Kai's shoulder suddenly shot up to the highest level it had been through this entire trip. He hadn't considered his own landing, he just wanted to be sure Fluttershy wasn't injured any further. This thoughtlessness had led to him landing squarely on that very shoulder, and the loud snap that followed echoed throughout the entire dome.

All was quiet as Twilight ran up to the mare and pinned her up against the wall, away from the water. "We didn't come to fight you; we don't mean any harm. But we don't want you to hurt us, either. It's very obvious that you've just had a traumatic incident befall you, and we'd like to do what we can to make it easier for you. Will you let us help you?"

The mare had shocked her diaphragm upon landing, and her breath has been taken away. She was gasping for air and had trouble standing on her own. The fact that she was helpless, and the ponies that had been just moments ago trying to stop the fighting were offering to aid her, in stark contrast to killing her while she was easy prey, led her to believe that she was in the wrong, here. 

"Okay," she wheezed. "I think I'm ready to believe you, now..."