//------------------------------//
// 22 - The Battle of Evergreen Falls I 
// Story: Evergreen Falls 
// by Meep the Changeling 
//------------------------------//

Raven Inkwell - 19th of Harvestide (Nightmare Night), 4 EoH
Young Moon’s Hunting Lodge - Hackamore Valley

Raven sat back in the main hall of Young Moon’s, still in shock that this remote touristy-rustic building half an hour from town was the best place to coordinate the full audit. Princess Luna had used her position as Commander in Chief to get the General Interior Janissaries, the Secret Monster Intelligence League of Equestria, and the Crown Intelligence Association to send their independent surveillance and security teams over and set up a full joint operations command center.

Said center would ordinarily have been composed entirely of field deployable portable kits and base stations, but fortunately for quick deployment, most of the ancient scrying wards Luna had erected still worked at or beyond modern operational specifications. All that needed to be done was patch a few holes in the grid, and install some folding crystal display units for ponies other than Luna to use the old system.

Even that had been greatly eased by Luna’s old sorcery. Within the Lodge’s grounds, mana didn’t seem to run out, generators remained topped up. Fires within hearths burned all through the night and day. These and many other conveniences made running the audit from the lodge incredibly convenient.

Shame it doesn’t have intact data conduits like Luna’s old bedroom, Raven mused as she set down a faxed report from one of the lab clearing teams.

That being said, it’s nice to see her taking the investigation seriously, but calling three military branches in for this… Luna certainly prefers to swing the hammer hard when she’s outraged.

Shame this all finished being booted up and connected an hour ago. We could have used this kit way sooner. Raven mused as she turned her attention to display panel six.

The portable display unit was a very bulky, olive green, box-like structure. Similar to the crystal-tube monitors seen in Minocian computers, though much more crude and bulkley due to having controls ment for hooves and a stamp on the bottom reading [Made in Equestria].

Raven pressed down on the display’s transmit button, allowing the device to cast a two-way messenger spell between it and the location it was scrying.

“Gamma Six,” Raven said calmly. “We felt a tremor from the east. Did Object 109 detonate?”

“Negative, Command,” the STF squad leader reported immediately. “We’re still here and the building is still standing.”

“Wait, why can a roll of toilet paper explode?” One of the squad members asked.

“Cuz some mage bucked up making it infinite, it has infinite mass, but ISN’T a black hole! Read the bucking hazard docs, dumbass!” Another snapped.

Raven flinched slightly. The stress of working while the Princesses battled a monster nearby was certainly getting to her men.

“Gamma Six, ensure the object is secured and locked down. Move its stasis bubble to backup power supply B-11, then clear the area.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Raven let go of the button and turned to the other displays. Each of them were set to track and follow one of her squads, or one of the local security forces. I should have set one up to watch Luna. I would like to know what’s going on.

Raven’s quick turn drew her attention to Primary Source. Several of Grape’s treasonous underlings were still on the loose, and fearing a retaliatory murder, Raven had allowed the wizard to remain with her and her bodyguards. After all, he had the necessary clearances. Everypony at the Trottingham Mage’s Library did.

Raven’s eyes lit up as an idea came to her. “Master Wizard, did the medicine Princess Cadence’s assistant bring you clear your head?”

Source nodded slowly. “Yes, ma’am. Are you in need of assistance with your monitoring?”

“In a sense,” Raven agreed, gesturing to the east. “I think both of us could rest easier if we know what the tremors were. Can you scry the Princesses for me?”

“I can,” he said, slowly frowning. “However, it is never a good idea to use an Alicorn as a scrying anchor. It’s dangerous… Usually because they know when you’re doing it.”

“I think they’ll understand given the present situation,” Raven said, politely dismissing his warning.

“Wait a moment,” Source said, smiling as an idea struck him. “That Fluttershy mare is present. I’ll use her as the target.”

Raven nodded, remaining silent to allow the wizard to cast his spell. Source closed his eyes to focus for a moment then casted a simple remote viewing charm and relayed it to a projected illusion in lieu of his mind’s eye.

The illusion unfolded from a thin ray of light into a three dimensional view of the interior of a small cinder block structure, now full of holes and home to a very much distressed yellow pegasus busily reloading her bracergun with her free hoof and typing away on her laptop with a wing tip. Source flinched at the sight of an operation’s tech-girl in such dire peril, and zoomed the view out until it was occupied by the quarry.

“I don’t like that… Not one bit.”

With the scrying view created, Source sized the illusion to a nice two meter cube and placed it in an open area of the room so Raven could walk around it and view it from several angles. Spell completed, Source opened his eyes, fixed the spell to last for ten minutes, then stopped feeding it energy.

“I’ve given it ten minutes, any more and I fear I will not have the energy needed to defend myself, should it come to that. It has the standard controls, of course.”

Raven nodded understandingly and started to peer at the illusion, lighting her horn to interface with the viewfinder.

Suddenly, everyone could see dozens of large oily-shadow tentacles jutting up from the stone. They flailed, slammed, and grasped at anything which came closer to them, often stabbing tip first into the ground to re-emerge elsewhere if nothing was in their reach. Cadence was currently sitting within a dome-shield she’d erected over a group of maybe twenty wounded SkyTech employees of the original five dozen, straining visibly under the thrashing darkness, her horn’s aura blazing as she resisted ten of the tentacles’ synchronized slams to give the few ponies with first aid training time to patch up the wounded.

The employees still able to move had gotten up out of the pit, taking positions on the rim to fire down into the tentacles. Occasionally, their bright purple energy bolts would cut one of the tentacles down. The dead tentacles thrashed like a lizard’s shed tail, then would burst into shadow-imitations of monstrous creatures of all kinds.

Raven knew the spidery-pony-ish-shaped robot had to be piloted by Enox. She was stuck on defense, much like Cadence, though was a little more proactive about it. She moved in half-circles along a perimeter around the shield bubble and shot-up cinder block communications shed which seemed to be the group’s tertiary field HQ. Her mech fired dozens of beams of light every second, its fire focused mostly on the spawned creatures, effectively working to mop up the spilled evil from each kill.

Raven frowned, focusing intently on the illusion to study the strategic situation in as much detail as she could.

A new tentacle spawns every sixteen seconds. They beat one every seventeen seconds. They spawn their constituent creatures twelve seconds later, and they are cleared away after about forty eight seconds from emergence in total. Cadance is losing about a tenth of a percent of her shield reserve a second and slowly rising. The entity isn’t clever or cunning, but it will win via attrition at this rate in… Under seventeen minutes.

Raven bit her lip, “Where’s Luna?” She asked, tracking across the battlefield a third time searching for the Princess.

“Up,” Source commented, too intensely focused on the image before them to make full conversation.

Raven turned her attention to the air, immediately seeing Princess Luna engaged with a large leathery winged creature that Raven could only describe as a sphere with a mouth and bird wings but with membranes instead of feathers. The Princess had drawn on her nightmare form to do battle with the beast, and was currently locked in a beam-war with the whatever-the-buck.

And visibly losing. They need help. Now. I have to do something.

Raven took a deep breath and looked over her shoulder to the displays. She’d ordered the audit suspended when the battle had picked up. Some of them had to be finished locking down their objects by now.

Raven turned to her radio base station, picked up the hoof set and began to speak. “Attention all STF and Evergreen Falls Security Forces. If you have completed securing your full list of Objects and Entities, proceed with all free non-watchpost units to the quarry and engage the enemy from cover. There are friendlies in the pit who could use a coordinated escape vector. Medics, be prepared for your squads to handle heavy casualties in need of treatment during evac.”

Raven put down the hoof set.

“They won't make it in time,” Source commented, still very focused.

Raven glanced at the image of Luna. “She’ll hold for at least ten minutes.”

“They have seventeen seconds,” Source said adamantly. “Look at the ground. Focus on the thaumic current. Something big is casting.”

Raven snapped her full attention to the pit and opened her mind to the magic. I had no idea anypony could show manaflow in a scried— “Oh dear Celestia…” Raven gasped as she observed the spell-in-progress.

It was truly colossal, with a matrix too complex for her to understand and at least six and a half Sols of power across the pending spell.

“Conjuration? No, evocation,” Source said analytically, then snapped out of his academic trance and dove under a table with a cry of “DUCK!”

Raven, having more than one brain cell, dove for cover and cast a shield spell over the whole table. She looked up from under the table, doing her best to see the illusion, to have an idea of when she should reinforce her shield.

A bright orange light welled up from the cracks in the pit’s floor. The light clashed and sparked against the tentacles and Cadence’s shield alike as it flowed from the ground and coalesced into a dozen points of light distributed evenly across the pit.

What kind of explosion is—

The centermost point of light swelled outwards, taking the vague shape of an alicorn, though parts of it sparked and fizzled in and out of existence. It hissed and sparked for a moment before speaking in a booming voice as if using a megaphone, its declaration loud enough to hear over the hills despite the illusion lacking sound.

“Public brawling anti-permitted in civic sky room. Separate its components.”

Source flinched. “Oh no…”

“They woke up the ruin’s city mind…” Raven winced.

Raven watched as Luna looked down from her beam-of-war, nearly getting hit as shock overwhelmed her. The beam sliced past her head, singed the fur on her cheek and vanished out of scrying range. The ground jolted underhoof a second later. Luna dropped altitude to dodge the monster’s follow up strike, twisted her head downwards, and shouted something using the Royal Canterlot Voice given how wide her mouth opened. The city-mind replied almost instantly.

“Situation second assessment. Assault in forward motion. Arresting aggressor…”

The other points of light manifested into their own separate avatars and began to fire energy bursts into the shadow-creatures many tentacles.

“Oh, good.” Source corrected.

Raven let a few moments play out, tracking the battle in her mind’s eye while examining the field as best she could. “It’s still not enough. Look, a new tentacle spawns every sixteen seconds. They beat one every thirteen and a half now, and mop up the creatures it bursts into every—”

Raven stopped talking as she took note of Enox’s ship hovering over the battlefield at the top of the illusion. She scrambled out from under the table and grabbed her personal CARE issued radio and quickly tuned it into the frequency Enox had been told to keep open at all times in case CARE needed her.

“Enox, get your ship in play. You need air support,” Raven ordered firmly, hoping she wouldn’t distract the alien too much.

Her radio crackled and hissed as Enox grunted with effort for several long moments before answering. “Bad time to chat,” she said at last.

Raven turned her attention to the illusion, quickly finding Enox. She was engaged in melee with a creature which looked quite unimaginatively like a porcupine. Almost literally like somepony had taken a photograph of an ordinary porcupine, desaturated it, turned the contrast till it was almost pure black, then scaled it up to the size of a horse and given it quilled spines for claws.

Enox’s mech had its leg blades out, kicking to both parry and attack the shadow-porcupine’s stabbing quills. At the same time her weapons pods were facing to the right, firing at some of the other shadow beasts threatening Cadence’s shield. Enox guided her mech expertly, stepping with her opponent’s movements in a fashion reminiscent of a fencing expert.

I wonder if she’s formally trained in piloting that? Raven mused for a moment. “Fire into the cluster at the rear of—”

“Can’t!” Enox grunted, catching the beast’s right claw with her left foreleg and wrestling the limb to the ground. “Point defenses overheated. Cooling off. Only the torpedoes are online.”

Raven looked up at the illusion again. “That thing looks like it won’t survive an anti-ship gun.”

Enox jabbed with her mech’s right foreleg, driving the bladed talon on it into the monster’s left eye. It thrashed in agony.

“We wouldn’t either,” Enox reported, growing audibly irritated at being talked to while trying to fight the shadow creatures off. “One-point-five kilos of antimatter per warhead is my minimum dialed yield, Raven. That’s going to make a eight kilometer fireball in atmo. Kindly piss off, this is harder than it loo—”

The shadow-porcupine twisted in its death throes. Finding the strength for one last attack, it slammed its tail into Enox’s cockpit. The spines pierced the battered armor, rupturing it along fatigue lines. Enox’s words were cut off with a wet burbling noise. Her mech went limp as the shadow creature melted into slime like the rest of its fallen kin.

Raven clenched her teeth and closed her eyes.

“BUCK!” She turned and punched the wall as hard as she could, cracking her hoof as well as the wooden facade.

The radio crackled. “Raven,” Princess Cadence said calmly. “We need reinforcements now. All you can get. She was holding off two thirds of them for me. Alternatively, get these wounded out from under me within the next minute, and then please, remain off this channel. We have this, even if it doesn't look like it.”

“Understood… And… I’m sorry,” Raven whispered into the radio, setting it down then returning to the command center’s main broadcast terminal. “Support fire has gone down. Any available battle casters, get to the pit. Now. This is a royal order.”

That was my fault…