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// Chapter 25:  Battle 
// Story: The Boy Who Disappeared 
// by computerneek 
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For as much as she had told Blueblood to get the sleep that he needed, Flurry couldn’t sleep that night.  When Discord had come to Day Court a few days before, he’d told her that they had found a magic-dense area, but not enough of them had reached it for him to facilitate communications.
Except, those visions suggested the existence of a prior communications link- and all she had to do was figure out how to work it.
She was just too excited to sleep.
Then, she froze.  She had been pacing back and forth across the foot of her mother’s bed- she still slept in the same room- but she’d heard one of the two guards outside speak.
“What-?”
It had been a fledgling alarmed question…  and had cut off with the sharpness of a knife.
She slipped over to the balcony doors, pushed one ajar, and peeked outside.  She couldn’t see anypony out there- not even the guards on the towers.
There were supposed to be guards there at all times, with searchlights and everything.  Gleaming Shield had seen to it.
She pulled the door closed once again, turned the latch, and turned to face the main entrance to the room, horn priming.  She was sure she could evade a few attacks outside, as she fled the area, but she wasn’t sure there would be only a few made- and she wanted to be sure that at least the Guards knew where she was.
The door crept open…  and a bolt of scarlet light shot in, to where it struck her pillow.  As it was flying, Flurry used her pre-charged horn to cast a quick magesight spell- the one Twilight usually used whenever she was teaching her magic, in fact- and memorized the magic matrix in the spell bolt.  Then she focused on the door again.
“There, I think that got her,” she heard somepony mutter.  “Bed’s empty.”
“Hangon,” another muttered.  “That bed’s still made.  She wasn’t in it.”
She ran over the spells she knew in her head.  She knew she knew more than most unicorns, but she also knew that she didn’t know enough to be a spellsmith to any real degree.
She would be firing directly towards the heart of the Castle.  She didn’t want to just vent her power at them as she’d done in the past; the beam it made was immensely destructive and was nearly impossible for even Twilight to stop (they’d tested), but that was exactly the point.  If she used it, she’d very likely topple the castle and almost certainly slaughter numerous innocents.
She did know a couple of shield spells.  One was a simple hardened air barrier, useless against magic bolts- but the other was a deflection barrier.  It was, in fact, the only way Twilight had found to stop her beam attacks- but she knew it had its limits, even with as much power as she could feed it.  And that wasn’t even considering that it was directional.
Finally, she selected a quick magic bolt spell as her attack.  If she overpowered it by a couple orders of magnitude, it would go from hardly breaking a vase to shattering a hallway- and its occupants- without jeopardizing too much more of the castle.
“Now, are you sure it’s been long enough for that immunity to wear off?”
Flurry scowled.  It sounded like she was vulnerable to whatever that spell was once again- and she didn’t know why she had come back.
She needed to avoid getting hit by that one as well.
“Oh yes,” the first pony muttered again.  “Should have worn off almost a month ago.  Now-!”  The door swung open.
Flurry caught only the barest of glimpses of a small hallway of stallions, dressed up in black catsuits and masks to disguise their identities, before the first bolt had snapped across the room and fairly exploded in the front of the party.  She fired three times before switching to her shield.  Unlike Twilight, she had yet to learn multicasting.
Exactly as expected, the hallway just outside her room had been shattered.  The stench of blood flowed into her mother’s room, but she ignored it.  She couldn’t see anypony, though she had heard the panicked screams in the hallway when her first shots had hit home, and none of them sounded like the staff.
She heard somepony cuss.  “She must be awake.”
“Go figure,” another grumbled.
“Ready?”  A third.
“Yup.”  The first.  “Three.  Two.  One.”
She was ready for them.  They leaped out, around the corner, straight into a series of deadly magic bolts.
There was another cuss word.  “She’s smarter than that, you idiot.  You told her when you were-!”
The hole was wide enough she could tell which way the words were coming from, so she’d fired through the wall and, presumably, hit him.  The castle gave a rumble, and she saw extra debris falling from the ceiling in the scar.
She winced.  She must’ve hit something structural.
Then one leaped out and shot at her.
She dodged his spell easily- his aim was too wide- and took him with her return fire.
There was a sudden boom somewhere downstairs, and the castle shook even more violently than it did from her blows.
More ponies leaped out to shoot at her.  She shot most of them before they got their spells off, and dodged the last one’s shot before taking him out too.
There was another, even louder boom from downstairs, and she felt the castle definitely starting to list.
It was time to go.
She picked a brief pause in the increasing flow of attackers to fire a bolt backwards at the balcony doors, blowing them clean off their hinges.  She needed an escape route, and didn’t have time to open them properly.
“Princess!”
That was Gleaming Shield’s voice, from outside.  It sounded like she was flying some distance away from the castle.
Her wings flashed up and, as the next attacker emerged, she drove her wings down, and shot out into the night.
Once outside, she spotted Gleaming Shield, who was moving erratically at some distance, and moved towards her.  The mare was in full battle dress, not the showy ‘guard dress’ the Guard normally used, and there was blood all down her sword and spattered on her midnight blue armor.  There were even some scorched spots where powerful spells had struck.
“There’s too many,” Gleaming informed her as she drew close.
Flurry glanced back at the castle, just in time to spot three massive thaumic beams blazing simultaneously out one side of the castle, looking like they originated from the same point on the other side- and the central tower’s subsequent drop into the new abyss.
Then, she saw them.  Dark shapes, rising up all around the castle, underneath them, closing in around them.  She took a deep breath.  Gleaming was looking at them as well, readying her blade.
“Ponyville,” Flurry muttered, before she twisted in midair and shot off in the direction of Ponyville.
Gleaming followed her.  “Most are just pegasi,” she informed her.  “Some are pulling chariots for unicorns.”
She glanced back at the approaching army, and swept a thaumic beam across them before deploying her shield behind her.  “I’ll take them out as soon as I know where they are,” she told Gleaming.  “You do what you can.”
A magic bolt slammed against her shield.  She unleashed another beam attack on its source.
Gleaming, meanwhile, was already gone.  Flurry wasn’t a very fast flier, and the attacking pegasi were getting close.  She fired a couple of beams at some of the attack parties, but the pegasi were pretty good at dodging her attacks when they weren’t towing unicorns.
Very suddenly, there was a shower of light from ahead.  She glanced forwards, before turning to use the hardened air barrier to block an attacking pegasus.
Moments later, the lightstorm- which so happened to be the Wonderbolts, led by none other than Rainbow Dash- came thundering in at full Rainboom, in full battle dress to a mare, in what Flurry recognized as assault formation.  Seconds after they arrived, Gleaming returned to Flurry’s side, completely unharmed despite the fresh blood spatters and scorch marks all over her armor and sword.
“Boost!” Gleaming barked.
Immediately, the Wonderbolts withdrew, still at Rainboom velocity, and grabbed both Flurry and Gleaming to pull them towards Ponyville with them.
When she glanced back, past Rainbow’s prismatic mane and contrail, Flurry could see why.  The entire battlefield was quickly becoming overshadowed by glowing, neon blue clouds, which were teeming with green lighting and hailing chocolate anvils.
There were also bolts of bright green light zooming in on the attackers from a much larger black cloud that was floating off to the side of Ponyville.  The Changelings from the Ponyville Hive, which had been mentioned during the discussions with the Changeling leaders and finally revealed to ponies just a couple days earlier.
The Wonderbolts hailed down on the pavement in front of the Castle of Friendship, though Rainbow and Lightning Dust- who had Flurry and Gleaming respectively- slowed down to allow their charges to land themselves before they did.
Once back down to a slow velocity, Flurry glided down to a quick landing and looked back at the ongoing battle.  There were now bright pink cotton candy dragons swooping around, breathing white-hot fire on the rogues.  A couple of them were instead breathing a steaming liquid which froze anything it touched- and made for spectacular explosions whenever a fire-breathing one picked a frozen target.
She looked around at the Wonderbolts, and at Gleaming Shield.  “Thanks,” she began.  “Did we lose anypony?”
“All Wonderbolts accounted for,” Rainbow announced, before looking at Gleaming.
Gleaming shook her head.  “Lots of Royal Guards lost inside the Castle.  Most in decorative dress.  Blueblood sacrificed himself to allow me to get my battle dress.”
Flurry heaved a sigh.  “Whelp.  Is it okay if I move into the Castle of Friendship for the time being, or no?”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Rainbow informed her.  “Twilight usually let ponies stay over whenever they like- and any more, it’s only Spike and Starlight living there.”
She blinked, and tilted her head.  “Starlight?  Wasn’t that Twilight’s student?”
“Yes,” Rainbow nodded simply.
“I’ll have to-!”
Very suddenly, the doors to the Castle of Friendship slammed open, and a light purple pony stepped out, surrounded by a multitude of charged magical weapons and primed attack spells.  “Who dares break the peace?” she called.
Rainbow pointed a hoof.  “Them.”
The mare looked.  “Well they better not come any closer,” she growled, before she looked back down at them, taking a deep breath as her weapons stood down.  “You’re right on time, Princess.”