//------------------------------// // Countenance // Story: Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot // by Equimorto //------------------------------// "You heard that too, right?" Pinkie Pie asked. Applejack silently nodded, trying to see if she heard the sound a second time. She did not have to wait long for that to happen. It was low, but not too distant. A deep rumble like the earth quaking, slightly metallic maybe. It came from the direction they were heading towards. "Did you see what it might be?" she asked to Pinkie. Pinkie shook her head. "I can try to look again, but I wouldn't want to be spotted." She leaned against a wall, placing her ear to it to see if the sound carried differently through the building. The ground wasn't actually shaking, but they couldn't rule out the possibility of it coming from below. "Got it." Applejack looked past a corner. The street was clear, but things didn't feel safe. It was even too clear, maybe. Soldiers were avoiding that part of town, and she wondered if it wouldn't have been wiser to do the same. She looked to Pinkie, who seemed to be having the same kind of thoughts. "Should we go around and find a different way in?" Pinkie thought about it, but eventually shook her head at that. "That would take too long, and it's too likely we'd get spotted. This is the best way we have." She looked down the same road Applejack was looking at and grit her teeth in nervousness. "If we blow up we blow up, I guess." Quite understandably, Applejack wasn't too enthusiastic about the possibility. She looked back to the unicorn. "How good are you with teleportation spells?" "Good enough for us three and a couple hundred metres away without landing inside a wall," he answered. "I can't guarantee where we'll end up but we can hope the whole way we came is still empty." Applejack nodded. "Good enough," she said. If it wasn't, she reasoned, then things were so bad they may as well have given up. She turned to Pinkie again. "How far are we still?" "Three buildings over," Pinkie replied. Her eyes were narrowed, her brow furrowed deep in thought. "There should already be soldiers here." "At this point it might be safer to go forward." Applejack stopped as she heard the sound again. It was a little louder. "Do you think we could do a frontal charge?" "No." Pinkie looked at the small group of constructs accompanying them. "But we might be able to use them as a distraction. At this point they're not enough to protect us in a full on confrontation, we might as well play it like that." Applejack looked to the unicorn again. "How good are you with armour spells?" "No one's good with armour spells," he replied, "there's a reason we still use metal ones. But I'm probably above average with shields." "Global average or Royal Guard average?" asked Applejack. "Global." "He can make something that kinda looks like a shield," said Applejack more quietly as she turned back to Pinkie. Halfway through the motion however a thought struck her, and she instead looked to the stallion again. "How good are you with flashy illusion spells?"