Chapter 34
The hole in the ground was teeming with activity as the team sat at the cliff’s edge, waiting for our time to descend into hell. Clouds shifted in the distance, moving according to plan. For now, we wait.
“Anyone up for some tic tac toe?” I asked the team, bored of watching the fire spread through the trees below. No one took me up on my challenge. “Story time?” No reply, except Tim’s groan. “Fine then.”
I sat down at the foot of one of the trees behind us and checked over my weapons. I noticed a small scratch on my shotgun, but all was good. When shit hits the invisible fan, I’ll be ready.
“Hey,” a voice interrupted my thoughts. I look up to see Rainbow hanging from the tree.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her. If she wants to join the fight, she outta luck.
“Just wondering what you guys are doing.” She said coolly. Too coolly.
“You want to join us, don’t you,” I said flatly.
“What?! No, no,” She replied quickly. “I mean, if you have any-“
“No,” I tell her.
She fell out of the tree at my answer. “What?!”
“No, your town needs you.”
“I want to fight!”
“Not today.”
She tried to make a convincing argument but soon gave up, opting instead to growl in frustration and fly back. At least she listened, right.
“Andrew,” I jumped up as Sam called me.
Approaching the hole, the clouds in the sky sped over the top of it. “Lightshow in three, two, one.”
The little pegasi in the distance kicked at their clouds but no form of lightning came. Instead the clouds released a torrent of rain down into the hole, reducing flames to nothing. The demons attempts to hit the flyers were coming short and falling back down.
“What’s the point of this?” Cloe asked, slightly upset at the lack of lightning.
“I have no idea,” Tony answered her.
When the rain stopped, the pegasi grabbed their clouds and flew off. When they left the area safely, another set of clouds set themselves up above the demon hole. They stopped perfectly, casting the ground in shadows. As the first pony kicked, the lightning struck the ground.
“That’s brutal,” I said as I watched the display in front of me, finally understanding the rain. The first screech hit our ears 2 seconds later. I looked down the side of the cliff to see that it turns into a steep slope 2 meters down. That’s good.
I turned to the 30 man/woman/pony army. “That’s our cue, let’s move,” I said as I jumped off the cliff. The screams of surprise brought a smile to my face, even when I could barely hear it over the crack of thunder. I knew I wasn’t going to die from fall damage due to the slope but they didn’t know that.
“Come on, do I have to do all the work myself,” I shouted up at the heads looking down at me. No sooner had I said that when they jumped down themselves, many sliding professionally down while others looked cartoonish in their attempts. Silly Timmy.
The slide down soon levelled out, the remaining outer trees cutting our line of sight on the portal and the lightshow above. Standing ready, I looked the tree line in front of me as the rest of the team reached the ground. The first to roll to their hooves were some guys I forgot to ask the names of. The next group consisted of 3 muscular earthlings named Roid Rage, Ground Pound and Jenkins. Sam and his brother followed, sliding on his feet smoothly as Tim rolled next to him. The rest of the team followed them afterwards, all of whom I didn’t know the names of except the humans.
When everyone had corrected their composure, we moved forward. The sight of trees didn’t last long as we neared the hellish centre of the forest. Burnt carcasses and trees soon surrounded us. The burnt remains of trees stopped completely, revealing an expanse of dirt. The few living beings left were quickly silenced.
“They did a good job,” One of the random guardsponies said to his team mates. There is always that one guy…
The portal we were looking for remained intact, unfortunately. It was barely big enough to fit 4 of us in there at the same time. Their forced are basically crippled here. The portal itself was being powered from the other side, so to shut it down will either require a nuke to throw in there or a strike team to go in and turn the power off. The latter it is then.
“Ok, team,” I began to tell them the news. “Good news is this is the source of the enemy army.”
“And the bad news?” Tony asked.
“We have to go in there to turn it off.”
The news hit them all hard. Well most of us, my friends were unfazed by the idea.
“But for now, we wait for the army…”
“We’re here,” Luna shouted from above us, flying next to her sister with the army following them. They lead the charges here?
“That was fast.”
As the army moved around the portal, ensuring that nothing was gonna come out any time soon. The Princesses landed beside us, giving a curt nod as the team bowed before them.
“I assume you heard everything?” I asked the two of them.
“Yes we did,” Celestia answered. “We ate preparing for an attack on whatever resides on the other side.”
“Where do you need us, then?” I asked again.
“We will need you to sneak past whatever line they have set up and destroy the source of this portal.”
“Don’t worry, we got this,” Sam told her.
I thought of a plan as fast as I could. I want us to be in there before the ponies. “Sam, Ana, you stay here and provide sniper support from the portal. Cloe, you help the ponies slay them demons. Tony, you help her.”
They nodded their heads. I still can’t believe that they let me be in charge. “Most kills?” I asked Tim, readying for the fight.
He responded with the loading of his gun and a grin. “You’re on.”
We charged into the breach, ready to take on whatever they can throw at us. What met us was an environment made of stone and fire. The land was suspended in the air, with lava sitting something close to a kilometre below us. Behind us stood some sort of portal device. A UAC logo sat proudly on its bulk. Its power cable trailed off to a massive stone temple in the distance, connected to the makeshift platform of an island by an almost orchestrated battlefield, with several stone huts sitting on the sides with random rocks sitting around for cover. The temple was guarded by one distant figure, which happened to be a giant, mechanical, four-legged spider with a minigun.
“Oh fu-“