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

It was mayhem as soon as the creatures walked past the camouflage spell. Sunburst's first reaction was to put up a barrier on the opposite side, to prevent the creatures still there from rushing in too, but in the time it took him to do that everything else had already started to unravel.
Ponies were screaming, running back and forth with no direction other than away from the monsters, some putting up shields the creatures tore through without even trying, some attempting to fly and being pushed back by the wind. He focused on protecting them, a small group at a time. He put up shields around all of them, transparent cubes of crystal with enough air inside, too strong for the creatures to break. It wasn't a good solution, it came with a number of secondary issues, but at that moment the immediate safety of everyone involved was his only priority.
He heard a scream and his eyes snapped towards its source. Starlight was defending herself and Trixie, but her spells slid uselessly against the creature targeting them, barely able to push it back as it approached. Her shield shattered instantly as soon as the creature touched it. Trixie was next to her, frozen in fear on the ground. She'd been the one to scream.
Something snapped inside Sunburst, roughly at the same time as he created a shield around the two unicorns and saved them. They were the last ones left unprotected, except for him. He'd managed to act quickly enough, helped by only having to cover for one side. He could hear the creatures past the first wall he'd put up beating against it, but that didn't matter. He stared down the one who'd attacked Starlight and Trixie, still uselessly trying to break through the barrier around them.
He fired his horn at it. Not particularly strongly, but obnoxiously. Loudly, visually loud as well, enough to be sure he'd get the creature's attention. It worked, and a short moment after being harmlessly struck in the side of the head by a bolt of his magic the mutated pony turned towards him. Then it charged.
Sunburst stared it down. He stared at it as it ran towards him, as time felt like it was stretching out around them, as everything else seemed to disappear and there were only him, the creature, and the distance between them. He stared at the malformed limbs and at the roots growing over the body running towards him. He stared at those emptied eyes as dark as the snuffed out consciousness and mind behind them. He stared at the overgrown claws at the end of its arm as they swung towards him, until they were centimetres from his face.
Sunburst stared at the wall in front of him, at the cubic structure of deep black pieces put together like bricks without the need for anything between them to hold them together. He stared at the dark blue liquid, sap or blood he wasn't sure, that oozed out of the fissures between the different parts of the construction he'd entombed the creature inside of. Then he stopped staring and turned aside, and began to head towards the nearest mutant.