//------------------------------//
// Radiate 
// Story: Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot 
// by Equimorto 
//------------------------------//

Applejack fell to the ground first, then so did the unicorn and Pinkie Pie. In the time it took for the three of them to fall, so too did many of the soldiers around the area, all those not wearing helms around their heads or other, heavier forms of protection. The illusions the unicorn had cast shattered. The constructs, however, though they slowed their charge and looked dazes despite their lack of features, were not fully incapacitated. The more heavily armoured guards, seeing that, charged at them, including the one closest to the machine, the one who had activated it. Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and the unicorn were left temporarily unguarded as the non-incapacitated soldiers closest to them also moved to help against the featureless ponies still charging forward.
It didn't matter much that no one was keeping their eyes on them however, as they could barely move their bodies and certainly not themselves. Applejack, the closest to the machine, felt her head throb and her blood pulsing inside her eyes, blurring her vision. Her ears became filled with an indistinct buzzing on top of the machine's own sound, and her muscles twitched and tensed outside of her control. Her jaws clenched and saliva dripped down the corner of her mouth and onto her helm and the ground.
The unicorn, a little farther away but not much, was doing only slightly better. No blindness or deafness, but his stomach churned and he would have vomited had his last meal happen later than it had. His muscles too tensed uncomfortably, digging the side of his head and one of his shoulders into the ground against his will. Meanwhile he could barely feel his hind legs, and all his hooves had gone limp.
Pinkie, the one farthest away and perhaps the one better equipped to resist the machine, was still just as immobilised as the other two. She tried, rather defiantly, to move forward despite her conditions, but at best she could wiggle around in place and all she achieved was knocking loose a couple pieces of her armour. She audibly grunted, trying still to free herself somehow, but it was to no avail.
They were not the only ones in those conditions. They were the minority in fact. The enemy soldiers just as painfully locked to the ground as they were outnumbered them, and their conditions weren't any better. All around the crossroad were ponies lying on the ground, occasionally grunting in pain, some twitching helplessly in a futile attempt to shield their ears or get away from there.
The mutated ones were fairing better. They looked bothered too, occasionally throwing hateful glances at the machine before being redirected by those soldiers who remained unaffected by its activation, but aside from perhaps some stiffness in their motions and occasional snarl of annoyance they were still able to easily move around and fight.
Unfortunately for the constructs. Though not even the combined efforts of soldiers and mutated ponies was enough to so much as put a scratch on their shells, and though even the machine blaring at full force only slightly hindered their mobility, they were still outnumbered and outmatched in terms of power. They put up a fight, even stunned a couple of armoured soldiers and left them almost motionless on the ground just as they'd left the less protected ones, but eventually they were disarmed, knocked down and immobilised, by magic or by sheer mass of bindings. There appeared to be some rather skilled sorcerers among the heavily armoured soldiers.
With the constructs dealt with, the enemies began to turn their attention towards the other intruders. Walking among their less fortunate peers, not even considering deactivating the machine before they were done with the ponies who'd tried to attack them, a couple of unicorns in heavy armour made their way to Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and the stallion with them.