Melee, Luna reflected, is a relative thing. Ball lightning formed around her and bounded away, burning holes through the augmented tarp. She called up an aura of fear, hoping these things, these sergals, could feel fear. As she dove blindly through the tarp, startling the tall, brown specimen who hadn't known she was coming, she began to wonder if they could.
The brown sergal was two halves now, and she saw the ground was the bright brown of forgotten blood. There had been infighting of the most serious nature, as just to her right there was a disemboweled pale brown sergal, blank eyes staring upward, accompanied by bare, gnawed-on ribs also pointing up. Cannibals!
Two sergals pointed and tried to zap her. Having no experience with magic they just slammed away with raw power; tiring and ineffective. The lesser casters' bolts fizzled on her shield as she kicked one way and slashed another.
Feeling an oafish draw of the regent's power, she flared her wings and hovered as Jack created a localized earthquake, knocking about half the crowd off their feet. The quake continued to rumble as Celestia's shield, made as much of heat energy as force burned through the simple cloth that carried their spell. Where she landed there was only burlap bags, so she had to leap forward to find someone to slash.
The nearest caster gave himself away by trying to levitate Luna's force sword to the ground. He made a guess about a shield spell, but it was too little too late as her sword impaled him. She threw another ball of lightning and then changed directions to help Celly. A thrown double sword clattered as it was diverted by her shield. She heard the twang of bowstring, and while she had never heard such before she poured energy into the physical protections of her shield, which was suddenly under strain from forty tiny wooden spears impacting all at once. Clever cannibals.
The quake finally settled and was replaced by a shockwave a hundred feet in front of them. Jack had substituted magic for experience, casting an incredibly broad 'push' spell, slowing his heedless drop from space and crushing the skulls of several attackers.
For a moment Luna feared Jack had gone against their pleas, as there was a brilliant flare of fire and heat, but then she realized what happened. It was the awakening of magic within one of the latent casters. His anger had taken physical form but had started deep within himself, killing him and catching several more on fire.
Jack summoned for the cold of space to descend. The fire was instantly quelled as was the breath of four attackers. Also a broken and dismembered diamond dog. Probably just as well but just the same she looked around for more captives. None within fifteen feet of her at least, and as hectic as this battle was she diverted no more attention than that.
Celly had been casting small fireball spells, using her sword for any that ran past their dying friends to get a stab at her. By the pile of bodies, it was a popular technique.
Luna's somewhat scattered thoughts were stopped by sudden shouting. It was Jack, augmenting his voice using magic, but he was speaking in their tongue. With his voice as clear now as it was, she could almost pick out individual words. He was interspersing it with English "I am the prince of this land! I demand you stand down!" followed a time later by "This land only has a place for nonviolent sergals!" The crowd was still running at him, as they were at the princesses. He seemed to be using a push spell to ... rather messily remove their organs by breaking their ribs and shoving their organs out the holes.
She hoped becoming a prince of Equestria wasn't already going to his head. Prince of this land is he, now?
A shorter specimen, nearly red in color, had leapt high and fallen slowly through her shield. Having not screamed its intent to attack she had missed it until the thing's teeth bit hard into her right wing. She summoned lightning to arc across her wing, but that didn't dislodge the determined beast.
Smoke began to erupt from its lower back, quickly turning into a fire a foot across that was already burning through to the ground. Celly had called down an orbital strike. But still it would not let go, even paralyzed and dying the thing managed to break her wing before a precision 'push' spell tore its head apart.
Trying to ignore the gore that covered her rump she quickly made thankful eye contact with the two who had finished this attacker, then went back to throwing ball lightning to bounce among the longbowmen.
Luna had to guess that some of those arrows had stone tips, as perhaps a third of the second volley redirected themselves, seemingly of their own accord, landing in one of the bowsergals. Those with steel tips needn't heed the call of the regent of the rocks; instead they were slowed by Celly's and her own shield spell.
Luna felt the new regent try his hoof at sending. He was making as if to illuminate four places, all under this tent whose magic was quickly fading. Jack shouted "There are four noncombatants. I think they'll surrender."
With that he turned to the thickest of the remaining army and Luna saw the arrows leap out of the fallen bowsergal and spread, faster than she could see, to impale many attackers who seemed not a one of them to honor her fear aura spell. As it was getting late into the afternoon Celly's solar flares were a little weaker, and the next one she tried to burn was a caster who knew he was now a target of magic.
Jumping didn't save him, as Luna watched in awe as Jack grabbed the potential for a small lightning bolt out of a sergal beneath him, and violently threw it into the leaping caster. A double bolt, first by Jack's spell then a reverse bolt as the energized mage ground out into normalcy.
More fire, more lighting, two more surrenders, and more gore than Luna had seen during the war leading to her -- Nightmare Moon she reminded herself -- that mare's banishment. Jack looked unscathed but Luna had three claw marks across her left shoulder, and Celly's right hock was bleeding where some suicidal foal had latched on with a deathbite, not unlike how her own right wing had been broken.
Facing Celly but making sure Jack would hear, she asked "where do we put the new one? It's proper for you to draw power to heal first but would you have me wait for the prince of the land, my Princess Celestia?" Hopefully her needless formality wouldn't completely escape the dusty alicorn prince.
With only a hint of a smirk, and only because Luna knew her sister so well as to see it, Celestia responded. "No Princess Luna you have been my sister and a co-ruler of Equestria far too long to wait on such a formality, needful as it may be. Only a moment sister."
And with that, she drew power.
Her wounds weren't great, and indeed it was only a few seconds until her body was whole although she was still covered in sweat and blood, and not a few gibbets of sergal flesh.
Luna politely bowed, and not even glancing to watch the prince, drew power. It took longer, as the broken wing was already surrounded by inflammation, and an infection had started at the deepest points of the attacker's tooth marks.
Now she turned, to find the prince had used his 'imported magic' to heal a few scratches, and minor unicorn level levitation to remove the gore from his coat. "Hopefully no one will be mortally wounded, as that process looked complicated." With that he pointed his wingtips to the six still living sergal, and shouted something as he pointed towards the ocean. "Many have fled, princesses. We must find a way to close the door they hold open."
It was the time of the half moon, and she was supposed to raise the moon in the next half hour. A filly's moon, so the young ones could see it, sort of. She actually felt a little bad about the half-moons, like they were half a job. But the fillies across Equestria knew nothing of war, nor should they. Walking through the deepening sand, seeing the fleeing attackers climb aboard the flimsiest raft Luna could envision, she made some guesses about where she would be when it was precisely time.
"I want to raise the moon a little early, Celly. Rather than a little late." Looking back at the horrors of the collapsing tent behind them, she added "Or never."
Celestia sighed, then nodded. "It will make some think that this war is going badly indeed, but others will rejoice in your handiwork. For the fillies, then, Lunadeer. Catch up when you can."
Luna smiled at Celly's contraction of Luna Dear. She had changed in the millenia they'd missed together, but the sisters' love still showed through, and it warmed Luna's heart that in the midst of an invasion Celly could still feel compassion.
A half hour earlier than the schedules of any pony astronomer said should happen, Luna stood, and felt for the extension of herself. That which she was regent of, the moon. Hundreds of miles across, at the very edge of the atmosphere, was a ball of dirt and rock. Far over the ocean, where no one could see it, the moon had slid from one end of the endless waters to the other.
Sometimes she wondered if there was a non-pony regent of the moon. Perhaps there was a continent on the far side of the planet. It would explain why the moon followed a circuit so straight and timely with so few exceptions over the millienia. But she had flown out and looked, and found nothing.
Luna flared her wings out straight, reared up onto hind-legs, and pulled with all her might, setting the great moon on its path through the night sky. The rearing wasn't really necessary but it helped her concentrate. With her eyes closed she never knew if her horn glowed or not, though she assumed it did as hot as it got when she did this.
Momentum imparted, the moon would rise above the horizon within minutes. Luna allowed herself a moment to rest. She couldn't see the six sergal anymore, and those fleeing on rafts were only specks now. She gave herself a good shimmy-shake to loosen her muscles, and launched into the air.
Celestia was circling high overhead. Perhaps hoping they would flee without further ado, there was no solar flares cast upon them. She could see small columns of steam, and realized that Celly was deliberately missing, so they felt pursued without ever being in true danger.
Expending a little magic to catch up, she circled now with her sister. She watched the specks below as the rafts fled quickly, without oar or sail she noted, deeper into the endless water. "They're in a pretty big hurry to go nowhere Celly. What do you think is going on?"
"I see, but I also see a larger raft a little farther out. Something else occurs to me but I don't know what precisely it will mean. A pony can't simply proclaim himself regent. I think a pony could steal regency but not create a now position of power. I'm going to assume these sergals, using pony magic as some of them do, can't either."
Her large wings beat slowly, finding and grabbing currents of still warm air rising from the ocean as the air around and above her cooled in the late afternoon. "What, Celly? I don't see yet. Jack created ... Oh."
Celly nodded, watching the rafts float themselves to the larger raft. "Whatever Jack is, that sergal is too. Luna I'm going to stay up here as backup. Please consider the diplomatic angle if we can't close whatever door their using but mostly, mostly dear sister I want you to observe closely how the two regents fight."
"In case we need to kill Jack, you mean." He was a violent oaf, but by calling for surrender, even getting a few to stand down, he'd shown he was no lover of needless violence. Luna didn't want to know how to kill him. It might translate too easily translate into a way to kill her sister, if she ever fell prey to the darkness within her again.
"Knowledge is power." Celly said flatly. "Lunadeer I won't ever ask you to cast a spell like that. I won't even ask how the spell could be formed. I'll trust your judgment, even if it means I run a small risk that Nightmare Moon"
Luna squeezed her eyes shut, turning sharply away from her elder sister. "Don't say that name." Luna gave a shuddering gasp before finishing her interruption. "As much because she isn't dead, as because she is dead to me."
Luna didn't see the tear fall from Celestia's face. "I'm willing to risk my life to protect the rest of Equestria. And there'll be a little less jealousy if you have a spell like that, that I don't even know if you have. So please, Lunadeer."
Luna steeled herself, and looked back into Celly's pleading face. It had only been one millenia they were separated, and many more they had known each other. Jack was ... an unknown. He meant well today, but as Luna could attest, that could change one day.
"For my Equestria. For the foal's moon. For that feathered oaf below. Watch them and learn, Lunadeer."
Luna nodded, and folded her wings to drop. It wasn't until her head had cleared, now a third of the way down, flaring her wings to slow and circle into a more controlled drop, that Luna realized the tone Celly had used. She'd said "feathered oaf" but ... her voice had said "your boyfriend".
sisters! Sometimes ... Luna sent a quiet message that could be heard as the negation of physical love "Not my boyfriend, you goof." Celly sent back the word happiness. Laugh at me, will she? Luna sighed, and slowed further.
Seeing that half the escapees had dove headfirst into a whirlpool just off one end of the giant raft, she landed on an abandoned smaller raft, which immediately began rocking far in excess of what her weight should have done.
When the raft began to crumble under her hooves she realized there was magic involved. The larger raft, more than sixty feet on a side was just a small jump to reach. While the sergal, a deep orange across her back fading to blood orange feathers, turned sharply and glared at her, nothing happened to the giant raft.
Jack landed, having been herding the fleeing sergal. One saw her and diverted, leaping from fifteen feet away. She brought her shields up but Jack had already done the lighting throwing thing, grabbing energy from one corner of water, arcing it across the raft, through the sergal, into the water not fifteen feet from herself, and back. Repeatedly, fast enough that the lightning arc sounded like a couple of words in the sergal tongue. probably "keep moving"
Luna hadn't planned on actually fighting, so she could concentrate on watching how these two equals, but the last of the non fried sergal had left, and the sergal regent was coming straight for ... either her, or the smoking remains of her compatriot. She kept her shield spell engaged and felt for movement of the higher orders of pony magic. Almost nothing.
Jack was now between Luna and the sergal, who had a pair of designs just above either hip. Three blue wavy lines, and a pale brown line above them. Luna almost choked at the ridiculous image.
Jack laughed when he realized what he was seeing. "You're the regent of small rafts? Truly?" He repeated himself in Sergal, whatever their tongue might be called, but it wasn't necessary.
She responded with her deep, gravelly voice in English. "And of all things that float upon the water. My chieftess asked that I be specific in reaching for this place's magic. On high tide it drowns our land and she feared I would damage it worse by becoming a lord of this land." Her eyes, a deeper yellow than Jack's, narrowed. "Prince of this land."
Jack chuckled, but stopped. "I can see now. You're not a sergal, are you? Why bother having a chieftess. A sergal chieftess of all things. You're here to run from your past, aren't you? You weren't born a sergal."
"Nor was I born hayooman, hayooman." Was that what Jack was, underneath all the body switching? The sergal witch talking again. "You can not kill me. I may not be the greatest mage in all Vilious but I am happy to stay." She tilted her head slightly, looking at Jack with only her right eye.
Luna, shields still up, tried to reason with her. Can monsters be reasoned with? I should know... "You're the one holding the underwater door open! Let go of your will to expand your field of control and your homeland will stop being flooded at all!"
The sergal whipped her head to the other side now, glaring death with her left eye. "You mean nothing to me horse. When you are killed you will die. I will kill you if you speak again."
Jack had a minimal shield up, Luna saw. The sergal had blasted with untrained power, much as the two casters in the tent fight had done. But this was a regent, however small her regency, and she felt her own shield pressed down by the great psychic blast.
As seemed normal, Jack looked unperturbed by the violence. He was casually sauntering over to her. To whisper, right eye turned just enough that he could watch the foreign "god-king" and fortunately for Luna's state of might, she could see her too.
The sergal stood on tiptoe, tail twitching but she stood her ground. Jack began whispering. "My lady? I can take her, but it worries me. For purely private reasons, you understand. May I ask, have I found favor with the Princesses of Equestria?"
Startled, she lost direct eye contact with the sergal witch as she looked at the dust and stone colored alicorn pony before her. mustn't answer too hasty ... that was a formal question after all. She thought of his ability to stop six sergal albeit out of two hundred plus, to choose life. He had not killed, when it would have been simpler to keep killing.
He had reattached Rainbow Dash's wings, and regrown Applejack's hoof at noticeable discomfort and fatigue to himself. All that, after returning from an entirely unrelated trip to the woods, finding ponies he had met briefly, in another body so they wouldn't have thought he owed them aught.
He was, for an Equestrian, very hard, and very cold, but not without compassion. "Yes, my prince. My sister has said as much as I dropped down to assist you directly. May I ask, my prince, why this concerns you now?"
A quick look showed the sergal had stepped to the side, trying to see them both better but not gotten any closer. Yet. She looked about ready to pounce, though Luna knew truthfully very little of their actual body language.
"She may not be hayooman, but she is not here. That is why we both might hop bodies. If I separate her, and I can, I reveal how I could be dislodged, perhaps never to find Equestria again. And I would miss this land, the more so once war is gone from it."
He turned back to the sergal, and drew power. Horn glowing, and she expected the rhythmic wing beats were designed to draw his imported magic. He walked towards the regent of that which floats upon the oceans, and she screamed and leapt, her meager control of power flailing at Prince Jack, regent of the rocks beneath your feet, king under the mountain and immortal god king of the ponies.
Prince of this land, are you then?
Luna cast her own magic, holding the sergal still, midair. She used as little magic as it seemed to take to hold this uncharacteristically weak princess in place. The rest of her concentration was on his spell, though she knew she could see almost nothing of his imported magic.
It was part levitation, part wormhole, in large part a finding spell ... Luna thought he was building to find a wormhole and levitate it here. that won't help at all, dear prince.
Sparks were flying, setting the wooden raft on fire and lighting up the afternoon like summer afternoon. Still Jack had only minimal shields, the sparks visibly singing his feathers, causing his ritualistic wing motions to leave open flames as markers of their passage.
And still the sergal screamed wordlessly in rage and frustration. Luna was forced to walk closer to the center as the edges were beginning to loosen and separate, their master's concentration focused wholly on staying here, where she could commit further violence.
The spell's finale. As it was cast, Jack's wingtips pointed straight at the princess' chest, Luna could see it was aimed at the hinges of a wormhole. Not the one under the sea, as her moon was holding the water level nearly two feet above it's opening. His imported magic seemed to be redirecting the force of his spell ... straight into the sergal's soul.
Can't see a wormhole there so hard to unhook the latch holding it open. Still, this is the knowledge Celly wanted me to have.
The bipedal princess must have known what the spell was doing as now her untrained blast was completely focused, a veritable sun igniting as the two regents battled for enough power to finish.
Looks way too familiar, actually. Will this one return from banishment in a thousand years? Luna's breath caught in her throat, as the sergal's spells dissipated. she's lost. The flare, the draw of power, it was done. Quiet now, Jack had closed the wormhole by disconnecting the princess, wherever she was, and the sergal host, who now fell lifelessly to the rapidly disintegrating raft.
The whirlpool stopped whirling too. Luna had been right; this hole was held open by the princess' eager desire to be master of two worlds. Now she was master of none.
Jack was trying to levitate himself but with the boards and assorted flotsam breaking up, water by itself was hard to levitate -- making his self levitation against water difficult. "Oh for starry night sky would you just ..." Luna grabbed onto his back legs, as they were the highest point right now, and magically augmented the flow of air under her wings. "First flying lesson as soon as I get you above dropping distance."
As she raised him, she tried to explain how to move his wings so he would be able to keep himself aloft. It wouldn't really do, this one lesson, but combined with her dropping him from, say, half a mile up ...
Celly had the biggest grin on her face, as she came around to watch. "Put a sock in it, sister. Jack? We're gonna talk more once we're on the land again. For now I'm gonna drop you. Fly well, prince!"
And with that, she let go.