Diary Sunset Shimmer
With the magical seal broken, the way into the ancient temple in the center of gem gnoll territory was open. It was here that we had been told about the Gnoll King was keeping the Orb of Mathias, a magical artifact that was connected to the amulet he was wearing, allowing him to teleport to safety at any time. If we destroyed the orb, that would trap the king so he could be killed by the combined armies of Taralos and the Tribes of the Turves. We entered the temple through a trapdoor in the floor that had been covered by a red velvet rug.
We entered a fabulous room, dominated by a massive bed and littered with gems of all sorts and sizes, as well as many interesting and exotic looking items. There was a large door to both the East and West, both with heavy bars on the side. There was also a staircase to the north leading up. In the center of his room stood a small stone plinth dominated by a large glass sphere built into it. The sphere was crackling with silvery energy and glowing slightly. This had to be the orb of Mathias.
Before dealing with the orb, we decided to look around the room, where we found both a magical greatsword which Silverwing happily equipped, and a magical chain shirt that Night’s Blessing equipped. Cozy had her eyes on a magical headband made of silver with attached orange gemstones that possessed an enchantment to increase her already incredible charisma further. Cozy also acquired a pair of goggles that greatly improved perception. I personally took a cloak with powerful protective enchantments, and Cipher acquired a pair of horseshoes that increased his speed. We also made sure to get as many gemstones as we could. This was probably the Gnoll’s Kings personal treasure hoard.
Now it was time to deal with the orb, it appeared like smashing it would be a simple matter, Cozy ordered Silverwing to smash it with his newly acquired greatsword. But soon as his sword made contact with the orb, the plinth beneath the orb shuddered and creaked and then began to move. Folding itself into the shape of a humanoid golem, with the orb where its head should have been, lightning crackling from its fists. It seemed like the Gnoll King had one last line of defense for the orb. I could also hear gnolls shouting from upstairs. As well as shouting coming from both sets of doors on our floor, the doors suddenly began to shake as gnolls on the other side was pounding on them. The bars on the doors were holding them for now, but we needed to be quick.
The golem acted with incredible speed, boosted by the lightning that surged through it. Silverwing managed to dodge one of the golem’s fists, but the other one hit him square in the jaw, Cipher took the opportunity to sliding behind the golem and hit a vulnerable spot, sending it reeling. Night’s Blessing tried to take the opportunity to strike at it, but even her magical sword has trouble piercing its thick armor. Cozy tried giving us a rallying speech, telling us what we could do this, she had such magnificence in her voice that it was hard not to feel inspired. Silverwing, inspired by her words took his sword and struck at the golem, which was heavy enough to penetrate its armor, the golem was still standing, but it wouldn’t stand too many more hits like that. Twilight tried firing a bolt of force at it, but it seemed like the golem was warded against magic, so it just bounced off its armor like it was nothing. Cozy pointed out that it might not be a good idea to not use magic against it after witnessing this useless display. But I wondered if enchanting my ally’s weapons would work, so I cast a spell that encased Silverwing’s weapon in the holy light of Sarenrae. Shadow Chaser, like Night’s Blessing couldn’t inflict the necessary force to pierce the armor.
A group of gnolls now came running down the stairs, blocking our only exit. One of them attacked Shadow Chaser who managed to fend them off and another attacked Twilight, wounding her with their spear. The golem gave Silverwing a beating, but under the berserk rage he was under he just shrugged off the wounds like they were nothing. Cozy cast a spell on Silverwing that seems to make him even more of a raging berserker, Silverwing swung his light-enhanced sword at the golem, inflicting massive damage, it seemed like magical enhancements were still effective. Another blow like this and the golem would go down. But Silverwing seemed badly hurt by the golem, so I decided to run up to him and patch up his wounds with my glowing horn. Twilight seems to be getting overwhelmed by gnolls, so she positioned herself to have all gnolls in a straight line in front of her and then her eyes started to glow with green and purple energy, I recognized this kind of magic, dark magic, the last time I have seen any version of Twilight use this kind of magic was during my last encounter with Midnight. This didn’t bode well, but Twilight did manage to use the dark magic to summon a bolt of dark lightning, striking all the gnolls by the stairs, killing them instantly. Despite the corrupting nature of dark magic, I had to admit it was effective. Yet seeing her use it still concerned me. After taking another pummeling from the golem, Silverwing managed to finish it off and Cipher climbed up on its head and destroyed the orb.
As the orb was destroyed, there was a massive crackling sound as part of the ceiling fell, the wall by one of the doors buckled and fell down and the floor beneath us shook. Giant cracks appeared everywhere, looking down I could see lightning blazing throughout the room below us. We could no longer go back the way we came. The only way forward was up the staircase, and we had to act fast as gnolls came pouring out of the hole in the wall. There seem to be an endless tide of them, there was no way we could fight them all.
Shadow Chaser placed himself by the foot of the stairs, gesturing to us to get behind him:
“I can hold them off, you need to leave, NOW! Don’t worry about me, without my family, I have nothing left to live for, but with my final act I will make these gnolls pay for what they did to my family. Don’t protest, you don’t have time, LEAVE NOW!”
I opened my mouth as to protest his decision, but Cozy looked at me and told me:
“He is right, his sacrifice will buy us time, but if we linger here, we will all die. We need to go.”
I decided to listen to her, and we ran up the stairs as quickly as we could, I could hear the fighting from downstairs, sounded like Shadow Chaser took down gnoll after gnoll but I knew he would eventually be overwhelmed. But he was doing a good job of buying us time, blocking the stairs, which meant that if the gnolls wanted to get at us, they first needed to get past him.
The spiral staircase soon opened onto the roof of the temple. I saw a stone dome extending away from us in every direction, the entire structure was shaking and rocking around as if it was caught in an earthquake. Two landmarks around us could offer us a potential escape route, one would mean scrambling down some stairs and running across the courtyard, but the walls around the courtyard were full of gnolls using ranged weapons. Alternatively, we could make our way across the roof of the shaking building, out of range of the bows of the gnolls. I turned to the Knight Commander, asking her which way we should go. Cozy didn’t hesitate making a decision, she told us we needed to make our way across the roofs, as the majority of our number could fly anyway.
The path across the roof required us to jump several gaps, Silverwing decided to carry me on his back while he flew across, Twilight teleported across the gaps and Cozy led the way, flying. Eventually we managed on a path towards the docks, Silverwing put me down. On the way we could see a tall statue of what looked like a bearded dwarf, however the gnolls had heavily vandalized the statue with graffiti, we made our way down a set of stairs leading down between the statue’s feet, a heavy steel door standing open in this courtyard. Cozy ordered Silverwing to close the door behind us in order to slow down the gnolls. The docks at the bottom of the stairs were empty of gem gnolls, and there were several empty boats waiting for us. It was an underground river, as we still seem to be in some kind of cave complex.
We quickly hurried down to one of the boats and got on it as quickly as possible and took it down the river, the boat swept across a turn and came out into an open pool. I could see an exit ahead, but it was blocked by a solid iron gate, fortunately there was a winch next to the gate that must have been used to raise it.
Positioning our boat next to the winch, Silverwing climbed up on the gate and started pulling it. As he reached the winch, I could hear an angry roar and I saw the largest gem gnoll I have ever seen lurching towards Silverwing. The creature didn’t seem to be armed, but it did have long claws that seemed more than capable of ripping us to shreds. As Silverwing was unable to defend himself while pulling the winch, Night’s Blessing jumped out of the boat, positioning herself between the giant gem gnoll and Silverwing. The rest of us provided support from the boat. This creature almost looked as if a gem gnoll had been crossbred with a troll.
Cipher’s horn lit up with an aura of darkness, sending a ray at the giant gem gnoll, cursing it. The gem gnoll attempted to attack Night’s Blessing with its giant claws, she nimbly dodged one of the claws while the other inflicted a massive gash on her stomach. This didn’t stop Night’s Blessing from continuing to fight. Inflicting a wound on the gem gnoll in return. I decided to summon one of my most powerful spells and blasted the gnoll with a blast of holy energy, Twilight fired a blast of energy from her horn in tandem with mine, a blast of concussive force it seemed, as it instantly knocked out the gem gnoll. But it didn’t seem like it killed it. But while the creature was knocked out, Silverwing finished raising the gate and we were able to continue forward.
As we floated down the river, I finally got the chance to catch my breath and let my brain catch up on everything that had happened. I could feel the sting of remorse as I thought about the grisly fate Shadow Chaser must’ve met at the hands of the gnolls, he was fighting so many of them, and the building was about to collapse on his head. There was no way he survived that. I at the very least will always remember his sacrifice, and I hope that Cozy will also remember what he did for all of us. I could feel a single tear streaming down my face. Twilight noticed it and told me that while she didn’t know Shadow Chaser that well, she too felt the loss of a companion. Silverwing joined us in solidarity telling us that Shadow Chaser’s bravery would forever live on in the history books of Taralos. This only left Cozy and Cipher. Cozy sighed and told me that she would deliver a speech during Shadow Chaser’s funeral that would bring justice to his sacrifice. Cipher remained just as inscrutable as always.
We came across more gem gnoll settlements as our boat continued down the river, but we seemed to have since outrun the alarm, and we avoided any undue attention by keeping our heads down. Finally, after what felt like a full day on the underground river, we finally emerged in daylight once again, as we entered the open ocean. Before us was a welcome sight, an entire ship crewed by ponies. This was probably the rescue crew general Moonshadow had sent to retrieve us. The boat picked us up as we got closer, and he took us back to Moonshadow’s camp. We were welcomed as heroes into the general’s tent where we also met up with Queen Regent Scarlet Lance. The Queen Regent told us how the battle had gone. While the combined forces of Taralos and the tribes had suffered some casualties, their alliance had allowed them to crush the gem gnoll forces, while if they had remained divided, they would have almost surely lost. The Gem Gnoll King, without his teleportation device had been slain in battle by a combined effort of Queen Regent Scarlet Lance herself and Dawn Rising. Night’s Blessing told them that she was proud of her partner’s accomplishment. Even if she did make clear we deserved at least half the credit for the death of the king as we were the ones who destroyed the orb. The death of the king had ended the war and it was all thanks to us, both our efforts in destroying the Orb of Mathias and in establishing the alliance between the clans and Taralos.
The Queen Regent as reward for our services knighted both Twilight Sparkle and Night’s Blessing making her the first knight of Taralos from the Turves clans. We were all given medals for our exceptional service to the kingdom. Cozy kept her promise and convinced the rest of the work camp to hold a requiem for Shadow Chaser. While we didn’t have a body, we erected a symbolic grave on the site of the final battle between our forces and the gem gnoll army. Cozy Glow, as promised delivered a speech that managed to move even the most hardened warrior:
“I didn’t know Shadow Chaser for very long, but for a short time I did know him he had been an exceptional companion and warrior in the service of Taralos. The little I do know about his personal life is that he was once a father with a beautiful wife and foals, this life of his was cut tragically short when gem gnolls butchered his village, including the rest of his family. He was the only one who survived. I heard that Shadow Chaser gave himself to the Moon Princess in order to make sure what happened to him wouldn’t happen to other families. Ever since that day he had been a dedicated Defender of this glorious kingdom, not only a foe to the gem gnolls, but a defender of the weak and helpless. While he may no longer be with us, know this, his death was not in vain. His sacrifice allowed the rest of us to escape the heart of gem gnoll territory alive. I will personally never forget this sacrifice. And I assure you, The Defenders of Taralos will continue his legacy of protecting the innocent, and to protect Taralos from any threat, within or without.”
The crowd cheered as Cozy finished her speech. I wondered if what she said was genuine, in any case, I would hold her to that. For I too wanted the Defenders of Taralos to be a force for good in this world. When we got back to the capital, we were welcomed as heroes, for even the common people knew of what we had accomplished. Cozy was clearly enjoying every moment of glory and attention, and for that matter so did I. I feel like we had more than earned our place as heroes of Taralos. Twilight however was a little bit more withdrawn, after the festivities were over, she told me there was something she wanted to discuss with me. She took me to the royal library so we could have some privacy. When we got there, she told me about what she noticed with Cipher, he had made sure to pick up every single dose of poison from the Dark Creepers and the Dark Stalker, but he didn’t use a single dose this entire time we had been fighting. She suspected that maybe he intended to use them on someone else. I told her that she didn’t have evidence for such a thing, but that I would keep my eyes open. But one thing Twilight told me he did in fact worry me:
“Whatever Cipher is planning; I suspect Cozy Glow has something to do with it. Your faith in her will be your downfall, Sunset.”