“Y’know, Ah’m startin’ ta feel pretty bad for the trees ‘round there,” Applejack bemoaned as Twilight and her posse made their way across the water. “First it was those ones up in the Floria place, an’ now even the apple trees are takin’ a beatin’!”
Cadance took a sip of her coffee. “So this isn’t the first time you’ve seen them encounter sapient trees?”
“Last time there were two!” Rainbow provided.
“Though it wasn’t any of the…creatures?” Rarity considered. “I’m not entirely sure what else to refer to them as, but it seems somehow insulting to their general intelligence.”
Discord’s popcorn crunched. “‘People’ is the generally accepted term, from what I know.”
Rarity nodded. “It wasn’t any of the people down there today; Sunset was the one who ran into the two trees on Floria.”
Shining nodded in understanding. “I presume she took to using her fire to attack?”
“Eyup,” Applejack affirmed. “Ah actually wanted ta ask, didya happen ta know Sunset? Ah don’t quite know if the timin’ adds up, but she was the Princess’s personal student.”
“She disappeared under a year into my tenure as Guard Captain,” Shining explained. “But we did spar once, though from my understanding Princess Celestia did not care for that happening.”
Cadance giggled. “Auntie Celestia can get really overprotective at times.” She poked Shining in the side. “Remember when we started dating?”
Shining scoffed and rolled his eyes. “How could I forget? She completely circumvented me in the chain of command and had multiple guards watching us at all times, and I think there were a few intelligence officers tailing us as well. Plus, I saw Mom and Dad watching us with binoculars on at least three separate rooftops.”
“Yer pretty good at the whole Guard thing, huh?” Applejack noted.
Cadance grinned and wrapped a foreleg around her husband. “Well, there’s a reason he was the youngest Guard Captain in two centuries!”
“Barely,” Shining countered. “I was twenty, but Captain Ironlock from fifty years ago was only a month older than I was when I was promoted.”
“Just let me gas you up on this one, dear.”
“Speaking of,” Fluttershy softly cut in. “Where is Sunset?”
Shining frowned. “I know that, before you all got here, Twily said something about her visiting someplace called Orange Ocean?”
“Oh, I think she went there to talk to Meta Knight about that book she found,” Discord elaborated, tossing more popcorn into his mouth.
Rarity furrowed her eyebrows. “I thought they were enemies?”
“My recording cut off before the explanation, but Meta Knight was acting in defense of the planet as a whole,” Discord explained, grinning at the confused expressions of most of the room. “They’ve made a whole defense league, even!”
Shining cleared his throat. “Does it have a name?”
Discord laughed. “They keep bringing up that it doesn’t have one, but never get around to naming it!”
Pinkie, who up until now had mostly been focused on the screen, turned her attention to Discord. “Hey, Discord?” she said. “Why do you keep going with popcorn for these things? Isn’t that kinda…” she smirked, “predictable?”
Discord offered her his bowl. “Check again, Miss Pie.”
Pinie blinked. “Are these…pretzels shaped like popcorn?”
“And they taste like marshmallows!” Discord added. “Would you like some?”
“Would I!”
She slammed her face into the bowl.
Whispy’s root bridge, thankfully, managed to last long enough for the makeshift group of adventurers to make their way to Big Forest. The final leg was a bit more difficult, with the apple tree’s roots thinning out the further they got, but it was entirely manageable.
They ran into another intense feeling of apathy as they stepped onto the island, though, and stumbled for a moment. It seemed like they’d gotten to the end of the bridge at just the right time, too, because immediately following the feeling, Whispy’s roots retracted. Twilight figured that the apathy had hit him, too.
She shook her head to clear it. She couldn’t lose hope, not now. Saving Spike was still her top priority.
Bandee grunted as he used his spear to prop himself up. “That’s four,” he said. “There’s only three Bridges left.”
Twilight narrowed her eyes. “What happens if it destroys all seven?”
Bandee shrugged. “Honestly, I have no idea.” He twirled his spear a bit, which Twilight was beginning to pick up on being a bit of a nervous habit of his. “I don’t think it would just immediately take away everyone’s emotions or something, but it would definitely make whatever took Spike a hell of a lot stronger.”
Twilight shuddered. That…thing that she’d fought back at the castle had still gotten away from her, and at this rate it was going to be in a far stronger form when they caught up to it.
She looked around and smiled a bit. This time, though, she wasn’t going in alone. “We’ll get through it,” she assured. “No matter what, we’ll save Spike.”
Kirby raised a leaf skyward with a grin and shouted what he must have aimed to be an inspiring “YAH!” before rushing into the underbrush, with Gooey not far behind.
Dedede blinked. “So uh, we going after him?”
“I’ve gotta wonder if the lil’ ankle biter even knows where he’s goin’” Rick added.
“Kirby really has a knack for running right towards the danger,” Bandee said as they got moving. “And also, I’ve been here before. That is the way towards where the next Rainbow Bridge should be.”
“I wanted to ask,” Twilight piped up, “why have you come here before?”
Bandana Dee gestured towards the King.
“Well y’see,” Dedede started, “there’s a couple of ancient castles ‘round these parts that I wanted to check out after I declared myself King.”
“He felt threatened by their presence,” Bandee stage whispered to Twilight.
That got a small giggle out of her.
Dedede pouted. “Hey, it was a legitimate concern! Who knows who else might declare themselves a ruler and threaten my claim to Dreamland!”
“Didya find any drongos out there when ya checked?” Rick asked.
Bandee made a good approximation of raising an eyebrow, especially given that he didn’t have any. “Well, they were uninhabited, and seem like they have been for a long time.”
“I’ve been kicking around renovating them, though,” Dedede added. “I’ve had some guys coming down every so often to restore the one over on Iceberg. Might be a good vacation spot.”
Rick laughed. “‘Course a penguin’d chose someplace like that for a vacay.”
“Come to think of it,” Twilight mentioned, “what is the geography of Popstar even like? Your library back at the castle was…” she mentally searched for the most appropriate word, “lacking.”
“Well,” Rick piped up, “ya’ve got seven o’ these Rainbow Islands: Grass Land, Big Forest, Ripple Field, Iceberg, Red Canyon, Cloudy Park, and the southernmost one is the Dark Castle.”
“And quite a ways further south of the Rainbow Islands are the Popopo Islands,” Bandee pitched in. “They’re tropical, and an excellent vacation spot!”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Wait, I want to focus on the statement before that. You literally call one of the islands ‘Dark Castle?’”
Rick shrugged. “It’s dark and it has a castle covering the entire island.”
Twilight was about to complain, before remembering that she lived in a town called Ponyville and was friends with an apple farmer named Applejack. She promptly decided that maybe on-the-nose naming conventions weren’t something worth mentioning and let the subject drop.
“‘Sides, that castle’s not got much in it,” Dedede added. “It’s way worse off than the one on Iceberg.”
“That’s fair enough, I suppose,” Twilight said. “Still-”
She cut herself off as the sound of a branch breaking hit her ears. She swiveled them forward and stopped entirely. “Did you all hear that?”
There were a series of nods, and Twilight looked around for the source. The conversation had distracted her earlier, but like on Grass Land, the area around them was eerily quiet. Unlike before, though, the local wildlife didn’t seem to be planning an ambush.
Above them, just below the canopy, sat a Bronto Burt. Twilight had initially thought, back when Bandee had originally been translating Dedede’s library for her, that the species would be similar to parasprites from her homeworld, but had quickly been proven wrong. They were relatively simple creatures, at least compared to the rest of Dreamland’s native population, and bore no malice. Usually they would be flying about, but this one seemed…peculiar.
It sat alone on the branch, seeming almost dejected. On a closer look, though Twilight found that it was less dejection and more boredom. It just didn’t seem to care about the world around it, even when she flew up and waved a hoof in front of its face.
The alicorn frowned. “Now what is going on…” she wondered aloud.
Before she could ponder it further, though, a shadow passed over her vision and her eyes widened. Hurriedly, she landed just as the large tree branch that had been flying at her would have hit her. Thankfully it passed right over her head, impacting the branch the Bronto Burt was sitting on with a sharp crack. They both fell to the ground, though Twilight caught the Popstarian creature in her telekinesis and set it on a different tree.
It didn’t seem to care enough to try and save itself from the fall.
“What in the world was that?” Dedede exclaimed.
“And where’d the blokes get off to?” Rick added.
A second shadow passed over them, and the group looked up to see a large, dark purple owl. The underside of its wings and the feathers on its belly were white, but the main thing that drew Twilight’s attention was its bright yellow talons. It was holding a cloth bag, which was squirming from movement inside of it.
Bandee took a step back and readied his spear. “I think we know where Kirby and Gooey got off to, now.”
Rick narrowed his eyes. “Crikey! That’s Coo! I almost didn’t recognize ‘im with his feathers bein’ darker!”
“You know him?” Twilight asked.
“He pops over to Grass Land every now and again,” Rick answered.
Before he could elaborate further, though, Coo screeched and dove at the group. As he swooped over them, he raised his wings and a stream of sharpened purple feathers shot out at them. The group immediately scattered, and the sharp objects thankfully all missed, though they did spear quite deeply into the dirt below them.
Coo attacked next with what looked almost like sharpened air, somehow. He waved the talon that wasn’t holding the cloth bag, sending a wave of some sort directly at Twilight, and following it up with a dive at her.
That was a mistake on his part, though. Twilight quickly summoned a shield midair to block the atmokinetic attack, successfully preventing it from reaching her. Then, with Coo close by, she grabbed him in her telekinesis.
Or at least, she tried to. It almost felt like her magical grasp just slid off of him, and while it could have been a trick of the light, she swore that she saw his feathers grow a shade darker as it did. But her magic was able to grab hold of the cloth bag in Coo’s talon, ripping it from his grasp and freeing the trapped Kirby and Gooey.
They tumbled to the ground, Kirby looking around for a moment before bouncing back up to his feet. He’d lost his leaf ability, which Twilight figured was the only reason that Coo was able to keep him in the bag that long in the first place. He looked back up at the owl with a steely–and frankly quite annoyed–expression, though Gooey simply maintained its dopey grin.
It was getting to be a bit disconcerting, if Twilight really took a moment to reflect on it.
But that was neither here nor there, at the moment. Kirby was already responding to Coo’s retaliatory strike, which was another douse of feathers. Of course, Kirby being Kirby, he ate the attack, gaining a pair of feathered wings of his own–a copy ability that Twilight distinctly remembered seeing him use back on the Halberd. He wasted no time taking off, rocketing towards Coo far faster than he could hover.
The owl attempted to retreat, but quickly found himself unable to ascend any further due to the forest’s thick canopy. To avoid getting rammed by Kirby, he swooped down underneath him. Unfortunately for Coo, this put him right in the line of fire of Dedede, who’d jumped up to his height. The penguin slammed his hammer down on the other bird, sending Coo crashing into the ground with a squawk. Twilight trotted up to him, focusing her telekinesis to make sure he actually stayed in her grip this time. She grunted at the uptick of effort as Coo squirmed, and her attention was diverted upward at the faint purple glow that was coming not from her horn, but from her Element.
Coo writhed as she approached, his feathers getting lighter the closer she got. His eyes, which Twilight had previously assumed to be naturally black, brightened to a chocolate brown. The owl gave a woozy blink, before he stopped struggling and coughed up a small mote of darkness.
The approximately spherical thing made of negative space was extremely small, no bigger than a marble. Even a meter or so away, Twilight could feel the magic around it. Or, perhaps more accurately, she could feel the lack of any discernible magic. Even Sombra’s dark magic, powered by hate and rage, had had a distinct feeling to it, just like all forms of magic that Twilight had encountered before. From this, however…
She felt nothing.
It did seem to have some modicum of self-preservation, though, as it immediately tried to flee the scene. It didn’t get far, only a few meters or so, before the Element of Magic–which at this point was acting entirely independently of Twilight’s input–fired a violet magical beam at it. Instantly, the piece of darkness was vaporized, though the ground where the beam hit was entirely untouched. There was no scream of pain or terror. One moment the thing that had possessed Coo was there, the next it was not.
The glow from her Element died down, and Twilight curiously disengaged the sticking charm to levitate it off of her head and get a closer look at it. Visually, though, nothing had changed, so she quickly popped the tiara back on and reapplied the charm just as Coo was getting to his talons.
He groaned and rubbed a temple with a wing. “Bloody hell, what hit me?”
There was a crash as Dedede landed back on the ground and twirled his weapon. “A hammer,” he provided.
“Should I just be getting used to the talking animals, now?” Twilight asked.
She was ignored.
“Well, thank you for beating the devil out of me, there,” Coo replied. He winced and did his best to rub his back. “Could’ve done without the bodily harm, though.”
“Kirby, mate?” Rick asked. “Couldya check ‘round here for any fruits?” He nodded at the owl. “Looks like Coo could do with a healin’.”
Kirby grinned, flapped his wings, and took off for the canopy.
“Well, chaps and chapesses,” Coo said, “do any of you have an explanation for what came over me?”
Twilight frowned. “Earlier today, something possessed my little brother, and we’ve been chasing it. But…” she trailed off for a moment, parsing her thoughts. “All it’s done before now is make people irrationally angry and apathetic, but you’re the first person other than Spike that it’s actively possessed.”
“Stars above,” Bandee breathed, “what if there’s more than one?”
Twilight shook her head. “The one that was possessing Coo here was really small, so I think it’s just a matter of it growing more powerful with every Bridge it destroys.”
Coo’s eyes widened. “It’s destroying the Rainbow Bridges?” He blinked. “Well, that explains the sudden apathetic feelings I’ve been getting.”
Everyone winced as yet another wave of apathy washed over them.
“That’s five,” Bandana Dee dejectedly said. “There’s only two Bridges left.”
Dedede sighed. “It’s gotten powerful enough to possess at a distance and now there’s creatures that don’t care enough to even move. What in the world are we supposed to do?”
Twilight took a deep breath and focused on saving Spike. “We press on,” she said. “Like Bandee said, there’s only two bridges left, so it quite literally can’t get much worse than it already is.”
“Oi, mate,” Rick said, “ya don’t wanna jinx it.”
“How do you stay so focused, anyway?” Dedede asked. “Does it have anything to do with the trinket you’re wearing?”
“The Element of Magic?” Twilight considered that for a moment. “It might help, seeing how it reacts to the thing that possessed Spike, but I don’t think it’s everything.” She reached up and tapped it with a hoof. “See, it’s not glowing right now.”
“So what is your secret, then?” Coo asked.
Twilight shrugged. “I’ve just been giving myself a goal to focus on. For me it’s saving my brother.”
Coo nodded. “By the by, I do believe that I am at a disadvantage. I do not know any of your names other than Rick’s.”
Twilight blinked. “Oh! I’m Princess Twilight of Equestria, but-”
Coo gasped. “Why, I didn’t realize that I was in the presence of royalty! If I wasn’t so injured I’d attempt a bow!”
Dedede cleared his throat, but before he could mention his own royal status, Kirby dropped out of the trees with seven oranges. “Food!” he excitedly declared.
Everyone grabbed one of the fruits and ate their fill. Satisfied and feeling much better about the state of things, they began trekking forward again. Though as Coo took to the air to fly alongside Kirby, Twilight gave a forlorn sigh.
“You alright?” Bandee asked her.
“Yeah, I’m just…” she trailed off. “Thinking about home. I have a pet owl back there. I wonder how he’s doing.”
“Sunburst!”
“Yeah, Starlight?”
“Twilight’s demon owl left a dead mouse on the floor again!”
“You know, I’m starting to think that Owlowiscious doesn’t like us very much.”
“Who?”
“You, you featherbrained waste of space!”
“Who?”
“I just said y–Celestia damn it to Tartarus.”
There was a suppressed chuckle.
“You aren’t helping, Sunburst.”
Owls couldn’t grin, or even look smug in the first place, but Owlowiscious definitely looked like he was trying his hardest to do both.
The rest of their trek through Big Forest, although taking another quarter hour or so, passed without much event. It seemed like their enemy had banked on just possessing Coo for this island, and most of the rest of the wildlife didn’t care enough to engage. It might’ve been easier than their fight through Grass Land, but Twilight wasn’t sure if she preferred the eerie silence it resulted in.
Rick had attempted to make some small talk at one point, but no one was really feeling it anymore.
At some point, though, the monotony of trees was broken up as they entered a clearing. On the opposite side of it from the group was a massive tree with a large hole in it. How the tree was still alive–or even if it was–Twilight was unsure. As she glanced around, she noted two other large trees bearing the same structure, but as intriguing as that was she was mostly focused on the first one. Or, more specifically, at the absolutely massive Nruff, a piglike creature, slumbering at its base.
Then Dedede entered the clearing.
“These gosh darned plants get everywhere!” he loudly complained, brushing a heap of sticks off of his robe.
“We are in a forest, Your Majesty,” Bandee unhelpfully replied.
The Nruff snorted and blinked its eyes open. With a start, it jolted its attention towards the group and let out a low growl. Nruffs were usually rather unthreatening creatures, but this one was far larger than most, standing tall enough to rival Dedede and probably weighing over twice as much. Its tusks were short, sharp, and trowel-shaped, meant to be used as digging tools to forage for food. But they could absolutely serve as daggers in a pinch.
The Nruff let out a massive, high-pitched squeal. From around the underbrush several smaller piglike creatures–Nellies, if Twilight was remembering correctly–ran into the clearing and turned towards the group. Nellies, while quite similar to Nruffs, were not the same species. They were smaller, faster, had shorter tusks, and were generally a more social species than Nruffs. Not that it seemed like this particular Nruff cared about the standard social relationships between species.
The Nruff squealed again, and the Nellies all charged.
Dedede’s hammer was swinging before the first Nelly even reached him. It came down directly in front of it, but it still ran directly into the hammer’s head and knocked itself out, and the second to reach him took the full force of his hammer’s swing. It was launched a considerable ways, landing somewhere back in the underbrush.
Kirby and Gooey both took to the air, out of the Nellies’ range. It seemed like they hoped to take them out with ranged attacks, but the sheer number of them was overwhelming. For every Nelly they knocked out or delayed–be it by Kirby with his feathers or by Gooey with its weird darkness laser–two more seemed to show up. Soon, they piled on top of each other to reach the two of them, and they were buried under a pile of furry pigs.
Rick and Coo weren’t faring much better. The hamster had rolled into a ball and gained a rocky sheen over his fur, making it effectively impenetrable to the Nellies. But instead they continually ran into him full-force, bouncing him around like a soccer ball. Coo, much like Kirby and Gooey, was trying to take potshots at the swarm of pigs. He was at least doing marginally better, flying high enough that the Nellies couldn’t reach him. Any time they tried to pile their way up there, he quickly destabilized the structure with one of his cutters, but his range was limiting him to low-power shots with his feathers otherwise. It wasn’t really doing much to thin the horde.
Twilight and Bandana Dee wound up performing the best against the Nellies after them. She had a rotating set of shields she was using to block the Nellies as they ran towards her, and any that got past those shields were quickly dispatched by Bandee. It was a bit strange that the pigs were running fast enough to knock themselves out, but as she’d seen on Grass Land, it seemed that whatever powers were at work here actively subverted a creature’s normal rational function.
At least with the amount of practical work she had been getting with her shields lately, Twilight had been refining hers to be almost as good as her brother’s. At least, she hoped so.
Shining frowned as five of the pig-things swarmed Twilight at once. Taking the three individual floating shields she’d been using, she expanded them and placed them sequentially. The pigs crashed through the first with quite a bit of effort and the second with considerably less, but thankfully knocked themselves out on the third.
“That was sloppy,” the former Guard Captain commented.
“Well it worked!” Rainbow protested.
“Barely,” Shining said. “She set up the three shields in the opposite order than she should’ve, since she was dedicated to using multiple at all.” He shrugged. “Personally, I find that dumping a bunch of power into one shield is easier, but that can have diminishing returns after a bit. But if you’re using multiple shields, you want the strongest one to be the innermost one.”
“That is the one that those pigs knocked themselves out on, is it not?” Rarity asked.
Shining shook his head. “I was paying attention to how much strain those shields breaking was putting on Twilight. She made the outermost one the strongest and just lucked out that they sustained enough damage to knock themselves out on the other two.”
“Hey,” Pinkie pointed out, “I just wanna say, you seem pretty calm about everything!” She tilted her head. “If we hadn’t seen Twilight take on the Halberd, we’d all be freaking out!”
Applejack cleared her throat and gestured to Fluttershy, who was sniffling into a handkerchief that Discord provided. “Those poor, poor little piggies…”
“Flutters always freaks out,” Rainbow retorted. “For, y’know, a Fluttershy definition of ‘freaking out.’”
“What exactly is the Halberd?” Cadance asked. “I know about the weapon, but I can just hear the capitalization there.”
“Oh, just the battleship that Twilight, Sunset, Kirby, and Bandee boarded and took down!” Pinkie cheerily stated.
Shining blinked. “I think I’ll want to see that recording later.” He shook his head and took a sip of his coffee. “Anyway, to answer your question, Miss Pie, you never knew Twily as a teen.”
Rick’s world was still spinning, but it finally felt like he was not. Uncoiling himself, he looked up at Dedede, who’d caught him in his off hand. “Thanks for that, mate,” he said. “Think I’ll avoid bein’ a stone for now.”
Dedede just grunted in reply, hammering another Nelly into unconsciousness. He looked like he could keep going, but the exhaustion was starting to be a bit visible. Frowning at that, Rick decided to step in.
The next Nelly that approached them found itself aflame. It squealed a bit before rushing into the underbrush, and a short while later a splash echoed out as it jumped into the ocean.
They were immediately swarmed by more Nellies, though, and neither Dedede nor Rick would be able to deal with all of the dozen that were attacking them. Just as they’d consigned themselves to taking some hits, the ground under the Nellies erupted.
Kirby, dressed in a fursuit, dug out of the ground and swiped at the Nelly nearest to him with a powerful set of claws. It squealed and ran off, and the puffball switched targets to the next.
“Ya seen that ability yet?” Rick asked Dedede.
“Nope.”
A ways over in the clearing, the Nelly pile on top of Gooey exploded as it fired four of its lasers at once, and Coo picked off the still-conscious ones from the pile from above. As Dedede hit the last of them with his hammer, he looked around to see that Twilight and Bandee had finished theirs off too.
He wiped some sweat from his brow. “Is that it?”
It was not it.
Everyone had forgotten about the Nruff in the chaos.
It roared and charged at Kirby, but he quickly burrowed into the ground before it reached him. Rick curled up and rolled away, but Dedede was hit by the full force of the charging boar, bodily launching him a solid five meters back into the underbrush.
“Your Majesty!” Bandana Dee shouted, rushing over to where his king had landed. “Are you alright?”
Dedede pushed himself back to his feet with a groan and took off his cap, a smattering of leaves falling out of it. “I’m fine,” he snapped. “Just a bit annoyed.”
The Nruff, meanwhile, disappeared into the hole of one of the trees. Twilight narrowed her eyes at it, but it didn’t come back out.
Then the ground behind her rumbled, and she barely turned around in time to shield an attack from the Nruff. It had reappeared out of the hole of one of the other trees, and the attack had caught her by surprise. Its dagger-like tusk dug into the shield, which cracked around it. It shattered soon after, but it had given Twilight just enough time to take to the air and fly away.
Then the Nruff disappeared into another hole, and they had to play the guessing game again.
This time, it appeared in such a way that it caught Rick by surprise, slamming him into another tree and running away again before they could retaliate.
Coo huffed from the air. “Such cowardly hit-and-run tactics. How uncouth.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “And us flying to stay out of range is…”
“Strategic, my dear,” Coo grinned. Twilight wasn’t sure how that was possible with a beak. “Do keep up.”
Clearly, though, they still needed a strategy to retaliate. If they kept going like this, their ground-bound allies would just keep taking hit after hit. Even as they watched, Kirby just barely managed to avoid another strike from the Nruff with a quick dash to the side.
Twilight’s eyes traced over the battlefield, flicking over the view of unconscious Nellies until they landed on the recovering Rick. He was getting back to his feet, but his positioning still gave her an idea.
“Coo,” she began, and the owl snapped to attention, “next time the Nruff runs into a hole, grab Rick, have him curl up and turn into a rock or whatever it is that he does, and clog one of the holes.”
Coo nodded and flapped over to Rick. The Nruff’s next pass–this one aiming for Gooey, an attempt that entirely failed as it just floated up above the charging boar–ended in the same tree it had been sleeping under before the fight started. With a shout, Coo hurled Rick at the hole, the hamster surrounding himself in rock and wedging himself in the gap. At the same time, Twilight shielded a second hole, the one furthest from Dedede.
The king seemed to figure out what was going on just in time, as now the Nruff only had one option. It raced out of the hole, but this time, they were ready for it. A jet of flame jutted out from Dedede’s hammer as he brought it down on the Nruff’s face at the same time that Kirby swiped at its side with his claws. For good measure, Twilight swooped down and cast a sleeping spell–it wouldn’t have worked earlier on with the Nruff as hale as it had been, but a few good hits were enough to make it vulnerable.
The alicorn panted as she landed. “Now I think that’s it.”
With a pop, Rick unstuck himself from the hole and carefully stepped over a few Nellies. “Well, that was a right mess.”
They took a moment to recover, but no longer than that. “Which way to the ocean?” Twilight asked snappily. “We’re already set back, so we need to move.”
Rick pointed towards the smoldering remains of some underbrush that had been set alight by the flaming Nelly earlier. “Thataway.”
A few seconds later, and the group was on the cliff’s edge over the water. The wind had picked up significantly, and the ocean below them was visibly churning. Looking up, Twilight winced at the sky. It was rather overcast, and looked like it would start raining at any point. Any hope of possibly flying all the way to–she mentally scoffed–Dark Castle was shot with that; her inexperience with flying would not help her at all with wet wings.
The next island, Ripple Field, was visible, at least. It looked less like an island, though, and more like a series of sandbars. But it was near sea level, for once, and would at least be easy to get to.
“I’m not liking the weather,” Twilight eventually stated, “but I can levitate Rick and Bandana Dee while the rest of us fly, at least.”
“You won’t need to worry about Rick, Your Highness,” Coo said. “I can carry the big lug.”
Twilight glanced at Bandee, and at his nod, picked him up in her telekinesis. She flared her wings, and the entire assemblage took off for Ripple Field.