//------------------------------// // Single Rainbow all the way Across the Sky // Story: My Little Denarians // by Chengar Qordath //------------------------------// There were really only two appropriate words to sum up how much damage Rainbow Dash had caused. "Holy crap!" By the time we got back to the good old US of A, Rainbow Dash's rampage through the Chicago suburbs had moved around to hitting the country club crowd. The pegasus really knew how to conjure up a storm; lightning was coming down every few seconds, and I could see multiple funnel clouds lashing the area. I could feel the raw unharnessed power of the storm broiling above, and the amount of energy at play was incredible. The thing about weather is that it involves massive amounts of energy, especially stuff like storms. Victor Sells, a warlock who had tried setting up shop in my hometown, had managed to cause all kinds of trouble by tapping into a bit of the weather's power to fuel murder spells that normally just couldn't be done by anything human, and that had just been stealing a bit of power from an existing storm. Rainbow Dash was whipping up a mega-storm out of nothing. Even one of the Faerie Queens would probably have to put in a bit of effort to manage something that extreme. Either Rainbow Dash got to cheat a bit when it came to dealing with the power requirements on account of being from cartoon-land, or Denarian Dash was so powerful I didn't stand a chance against her. Dash had already done plenty of damage; what I could see of the 'burb's commercial district looked like a war zone, and plenty of mansions and villas were in ruins. I was almost tempted to make a brief detour to see if Marcone's compound or the Raith Estate had been hit by Rainbow Dash; it would be such a shame if the local mob boss and vampire clan had their homes torn apart. Now that I thought of it, I wouldn't be surprised if those two were on Dash's target list. The only reason I could think of for Rainbow to hit Chicago was to take down my allies, especially the ones who had caused Nicky trouble in the past. Heck, he might be aiming to bump off or neutralize a lot of my allies specifically to prevent them from snapping me out of Lasciel's mind control. Or maybe he was just a vindictive jerk. For a moment, I was tempted to look up a few of my old contacts. Lara and Marcone, who were sitting right in Dash's current target zone, had an obvious self-interest in helping me out, and if a Denarian was hitting Chicago, odds were Sanya would be close by. A Knight of the Cross was just the kind of ally I could really use when it came to dealing with the Nickleheads. The downside was, dragging other folks into this had the potential to cause all kinds of complications, starting with revealing the fact that I wasn't quite dead. I wouldn't trust Marcone or Lara to keep the fact that I was alive under wraps, and my return from the dead was likely to cause all kinds of complications. I would need to deal with it all sooner or later, but for the moment dealing with it later sounded like an excellent idea. So, just me and Lash, against a corrupted Rainbow Dash. It shouldn't be that hard to pull off, one-on-one I was probably a match for any single Denarian, with the possible exception of Nicky. The tricky part would be finding a way to free Rainbow from the Denarius and whatever mind control Discord had slapped onto her. Now that we were out of cartoon-land and in the real world, I had to work off the assumption that Rainbow Dash could die. It might well not be the case, but assuming she still had cartoon immortality could get me into all kinds of trouble, so better safe than sorry. Normally, I didn’t pull my punches against the Nickleheads, but Rainbow hadn’t been under the coin’s influence long enough to put her past saving. Besides, Discord was still on the loose and presumably working with the Nickleheads, and that meant I needed to keep the only ponies that could use the Elements of Harmony in one piece. Plus, if I killed Rainbow trying to save her, I’d have her fans hunting me down for the rest of my life. Heck, I’d be pretty pissed at myself, since she was one of my favorites out of the main cast. I gave the area one last once-over, and started tossing together a battle plan. “Alright Lash, here’s what we’re gonna do.” I pointed to a large open parking lot outside the ruins of a largish strip mall. “We’re going to need enough room to see her coming, so we’ll set up there. I figure that even with whatever mind control and demonic influence she’s under, if I challenge her, Rainbow Dash will probably show up to fight. Once she’s close enough to the ground that the fall won’t hurt her, whichever ones of us has a better position can slap a binding on her, and then once she’s paralyzed we can make with the saving her. Sound good?” Lash thought the matter over for a moment, and then amended. “We should position ourselves some distance away from each other, so that she can only engage one of us at a time. We should also stick to areas with a clear line of sight; she’s quite fast, so we’ll want enough space to be able to see her coming, though visibility is less than ideal. However, the rain should impede her as much as it does us, and hopefully the wind will also keep her from flying at her best.” “Alright then. Let’s do this.” Fortunately, the storm Rainbow Dash conjured up had already cleared the parking lot of cars; hopefully that was because everyone had gotten out of the way and evacuated. With as bad as these storms Rainbow was putting together were, odds were there had been casualties, but I really didn’t want to think about that. Mind-controlled or not, the idea of a pony with a kill count just seemed wrong. Once Lash and I were in position I slammed my staff into the ground, producing a slight pulse of magical power, and called up into the heavens. “Rainbow Dash! I challenge you!” For a few long, awkward seconds there was no response, and I just stood there in the middle of an empty parking lot, rain pouring down on me. Maybe the whole shouting a challenge thing wasn’t a great idea; with the all the noise this storm was kicking up, my voice probably didn’t carry very far, and odds were Rainbow Dash was a couple miles up in the air, busily messing around with the weather. If I really wanted to catch her attention, I’d probably need to do more than just yell a bit. My attention went back up to the storm as an idea began percolating in my brain. If Rainbow Dash was busy maintaining her storm, then the best way to get her attention would probably be to start messing with the weather. The problem was, I couldn’t really do a whole lot against the raw power of a mega-storm like the one Dash was whipping up, it was just too much energy for me to counter. Like I said before, the amount of energy moving around in the weather is absolutely huge. However, while countering all that energy was out, redirecting energy was a heck of a lot easier than trying to counter it. I redirected energy all the time, like with my gravity manipulation spells. Heck, I'd even drawn power from a storm before. This wasn't really anything new, I was just doing things bigger than before. A lot bigger. Still, the same basic principle applied. All I needed to do was draw on the storm’s power, and then start grounding out all the energy I was stealing from the storm. It was a fairly simple thing to do, conceptually, and stealing power from her storm would definitely catch the weather pony’s attention eventually. I extended my senses up into the storm above, and very cautiously began to tap into the massive amount of energy contained within the thunderclouds. Like I’d hoped, it was ultimately a pretty simple process. Take energy from one place, in this case the clouds, and move it down to me, then ground it out. I was feeling pretty good about myself, right up to the moment when I noticed that I was feeling very tingly. Pop quiz: when you’re in the middle of a storm, how does a large amount of energy usually travel from the clouds down to the ground? I've channeled lightning before, but the thunderbolt I'd used to fry a toad demon a decade and change ago was a tiny little spark compared to the one that hit me this time. My entire world disappeared in a massive flash of light and heat, and the next thing I knew, I was lying flat on my back with Lash was at my side, asking if I was alright. A quick once-over confirmed that all the important parts were still attached, though I’m pretty sure I was rocking the Einstein hairstyle right now. Lesson of the day; don’t mess with the weather if you don’t know what you’re doing. I'd basically turned myself into a huge magical lightning rod, and if I’d been a couple seconds slower in figuring that out I would have been fried extra-crispy. Oops. The good news was, from my position on my back, I could look right up at the hole I’d punched through the storm clouds. I had even managed to stop the rain in the area, which would be a huge help in the upcoming tussle with Rainbow; running water isn’t exactly great for magic. Aside from the part where it almost killed me, my plan had worked flawlessly. For one of my plans, that’s actually pretty good. Sure enough, a few seconds later I saw a familiar pony face looking down at us from the heavens, right through the hole I’d busted through her cloud cover. Rainbow Dash looked less than pleased with us. The corrupted pegasus gave a few flaps of her wings and descended, stopping about fifty feet off the ground, and managing to hover easily despite the heavy gusts of wind. Rainbow Dash looked at the two of us with a nasty, contemptuous smirk that just seemed terribly wrong on the face of one of the innocent little cartoon ponies. A pony from a dimension where sex, blood, and bad language weren’t even allowed to exist shouldn’t have an expression like that on her face. A second later, a pair of glowing green eyes emerged from her forehead, and the Fallen sitting in driver’s seat spoke up in a creepy deep and toneless voice. “Harry Dresden, and his little pet Nephilim too.” I shot a curious glance at Lash. Nephelim? That was definitely something we would need to discuss sometime when we didn’t have a Denarian right in our faces. “Alright demon, here’s the deal. Release the pony and hand over the coin, and I’ll get the coin back into the Church’s custody; and in a couple years you can get out by finding a priest who likes messing with altar boys or something. Otherwise, I hand the coin over to Mab, and you can spend the rest of eternity just being another tool in here arsenal.” That was a bluff; there was no way I would ever willingly give Mab a weapon like one of the Denarii, but the demon didn’t know that. The demon let out a hiss of anger, and for a moment I saw something rippling under Rainbow Dash’s fur. Most of the Denarians had some sort of demonic form they could shapeshift into, odds were whichever coin Rainbow had forced on her would have the same effect. I had no idea how the demonic shapeshifting would work with ponies, but it was a safe bet that the demonically shapeshifted ponies would look all kinds of disturbing and just plain wrong. “As intriguing as your offer is, Dresden, I think I would rather just kill you and the Nephilim.” Demons can be so predictable sometimes. “Before we begin, I have one question for you, Dresden. If you emerge triumphant from our battle, I assume you intend to target the other bearers of the Elements of Harmony, yes?” “Nah, I figured I would just kick back and relax, so you guys could continue along with all your evil schemes without me getting in the way.” Sure, there was no point in denying what my next move would be when it was patently obvious that I had to use the Elements in order to take down Discord, but I can be a stubborn, contrary bastard sometimes. The demonic eyes poking out of Rainbow’s forehead closed, and Rainbow Dash’s real eyes narrowed in anger. “So if I don’t stop you here, you’re gonna go after my friends next?” That time, instead of the demon’s creepy voice it was back to Rainbow’s normal manner of speaking. Great, between the demon and whatever mind magic Discord had worked on her, Rainbow’s perception was twisted around enough that she saw me planning to free her friends as some kind of threat to them. Making the pony who wielded the Element of Loyalty think she had kill me to protect her friends had the potential to be very bad. Before I could work out just how much trouble this new little twist had gotten me into, something slammed into my chest and sent me flying back. Judging by the two roughly circular sore areas on my chest that I’m pretty sure were already developing into nasty bruises, I could make a fair guess Rainbow Dash had just kicked me. She’d been at least a hundred feet away from me, and I hadn’t even seen her move before she hit me. I knew she was fast, but I'd been expecting something a bit more in line with most of the really fast supernatural critters I've gone up against. Humans are slow compared to just about everything else on the spooky side of things, but I've got lots of experience dealing with things that could outrun me. Maybe I'd been just a bit too confident going into this fight. I mean, who would expect that a cute little cartoon pony might be capable of kicking my ass? In hindsight, it was obvious a pony that could break the sound barrier was going to be a hell of a lot faster than anything I'd ever fought before. I’m a fairly potent wizard in a fight, but at the end of the day I’m still more or less human, with things like human eyes and human reaction times. Humans aren’t really designed to deal with something that can move at about a thousand feet per second. If Rainbow Dash was too fast for me to even see properly, she was definitely too fast for me to sit around thinking. I heard a pained grunt from Lash’s direction, and quickly poured all my power into my shield bracelet. Normally I only put up a shield to cover my frontal arc to preserve a bit of magical muscle, but in this case I figured I needed full body coverage; as fast as Rainbow Dash was, I couldn’t afford to leave my back or sides open to attack. An instant later something hit my shield. For an instant, I saw Rainbow Dash, looking at me through my shield, frustration clear on her equine face. Then there was another impact on my shield, and another, and another, until the hits were coming so fast that I couldn’t really tell how many attacks were coming and how where they were hitting. All I could see through my shield was the whirling prismatic blur of Rainbow Dash spinning around me and attacking from every conceivable angle, looking for a weak point in my shield. Despite Rainbow efforts to break through, my shield bracelet held off the assault. For a moment I was actually thinking I had things under control; if Rainbow Dash was just spinning around trying to smash through my shield with brute force, she was staying more or less in one place, and close to the ground. That should give Lash an opportunity to pin the pegasus down, and put an end to the fight. Just when I started feeling good about myself, I noticed something odd about Rainbow’s attacks on my shield bracelet. They were hitting everywhere, including places like the bottom of the feet. I looked down, and instead of the pavement, I just saw the same whirling chromatic blur that surrounded every other place I could see. Either Rainbow Dash had somehow managed to burrow through solid concrete to attack my shield from below, or… Aw crap. A second or so later, the whirling Rainbow blur surrounding me finally ceased, and I got a good view of my surroundings. The ground was an uncomfortable distance away. Rainbow Dash hadn’t just been trying to overload my shield or looking for a weak point, she’d been knocking my shield globe into the air the entire time, but I’d been too disoriented by the speed and ferocity of her assault to even notice what the corrupted pegasus was up to. Rainbow Dash hovered in front of me for a moment, while my body hung weightlessly in the air as the remaining momentum from her attack warred with gravity’s inevitable downward pull. Dash smirked and me. “So long, Dresden.” Then she turned around and used her hind legs to buck me straight down to the ground. Ever since a particularly nasty incident involving an out-of-control elevator and a magical giant killer scorpion, I’ve taken the effects of gravity into account when it comes to putting a shield together. Normally, a shield just has to stop something from hitting you; the problem with gravity is that it’s you that’s moving at lethal velocity, and the ground that’s the stationary object. You have to put the shield together a bit differently when you’re trying to stop yourself, especially since you need to find some way to cushion the impact. The human body does not react well to sudden, abrupt impacts, and doesn’t really differentiate between the ground and the walls of a magical shield when it comes to that kind of thing. I’d tossed together shields to keep myself from getting killed by gravity before, but it’s not exactly the sort of thing I’d really tested a lot, and the last time I’d pulled it off there’d been a lot less down involved in the fall. Sure, in theory I just had to do the same thing I’d done last time, except moreso, but when you’re seconds away from death there’s a big difference between theory and practice. I got a look at just where Rainbow had knocked me towards. The good news was that I had about fifty feet less of falling than could have been the case. The bad news was, that was because I was going to hit a building before I hit the ground. Hopefully, the owner’s insurance policy covered building damage caused by falling wizards. My little shield globe had enough momentum behind it to punch straight through the roof, and then I hit floor itself. Then the roof again, then the floor, then a wall, then the roof one more time, and then a couple more impacts with the floor. Apparently, all those extra layers I’d added to my shield globe made it bouncy. Once I was finally done with my rubber ball imitation, I dropped the shield. All those extra layers I’d put into my shield had done their job; it felt like only half the bones in my body were cracked or broken, which was a step up from being smashed into a thin greasy paste against the concrete. From the looks of things, Rainbow had smashed me into the local mega-market. The journey of Harry the magical bouncing ball had finally ended in the store’s electronics section. Ouch. That was several hundred thousand dollars worth of TVs, computers, and other gadgets I’d just burned out. Oh well, the soulless mega-corp could afford it. Since I didn’t really feel up to managing anything else, I decided to lie down for a bit and think about how much pain I was in. Judging by the fact that no followup attacks were coming, Rainbow probably thought she had me down for the count, and considering how close that attack had come to killing me, I couldn’t really blame her for assuming that. I wanted to get up and try to help Lash, but my body didn’t seem willing to even consider doing something as strenuous as getting up and moving. I was still lying down on the supermarket’s cheap linoleum floor when Lash found me. Lash looked like she’d taken a few hits of her own, though as drenched as she was from being outside in the rain it was hard to tell just how bad her injuries were. She seemed to be up and mobile though, which put her a couple steps above me at the moment. At least I could still feel pain radiating off of every single inch of my body, as opposed to the numbness of paralysis. That was a good sign. Kind of. “That did not go as planned.” Lash commented flatly. “Thank you, Captain Obvious.” I get grumpy when I’m hurting, and considering the life I lead, I spend a lot of time being grumpy. Lash knelt down beside me, and placed a hand over my chest. “Be Healed.” Her words had the same odd echoing quality that they’d held when she used that odd paralysis spell on me back at the hotel room. A moment later, the pain washed away, and I felt downright healthy. That was fairly impressive; magical healing was a very tricky and delicate thing, and pulling off the sort of instantaneous healing Lash had just used on me took a lot of skill and power. At the moment I could hardly complain about Lash having some new magical trick for patching me up, but like that odd Nephilim comment the demon made about her, it was something I made a note to ask about once we had a bit of down time. I sat up, and took stock of the situation. Considering the lack of further attacks for Rainbow, Lash had presumably found a way into the megastore without getting noticed by the pegasus. At least that gave us a bit of time to come up with a new plan. We definitely needed some sort of strategy to stand a chance in this fight; with as fast as Dash was, I couldn’t just improvise and make it up as I went along; once the fight resumed I wouldn’t have time to think. The real problem was taking Rainbow down without killing or severely injuring her. I could come up with a few ways to deal with another of Dash’s high-speed melee attacks, but at the speeds she was moving at even a fairly benign counterattack ran the risk of doing irreparable damage to the pony. That wasn’t an option. I found my eyes wandering the store, on the off chance that there was something here we could use. “So, how’d you get away from Rainbow anyway, Lash?” “I cast a veil, and projected an illusion of myself, beaten, battered, and slain.” So, illusions were an option against Dash. Good to know, though odds were the demon riding in the co-pilot seat could find some way to counter any illusions once he knew what Lash was up to. Considering how lopsided the first round had gone, I’d take any advantage I could get. We needed a bit more of an edge though, something that could really let us turn the tide and shut Rainbow Dash down long enough to free her from the demon’s influence. A moment later, my eyes wandered to one particular area of the store, and a crazy idea popped into my head. I jumped to my feet, and dragged Lash along as I rushed over to that sections of the store. A quick search confirmed that, for once, luck was on my side; they had everything I needed to pull my plan off, and I might even be able to use the same tactic to save the rest of the ponies. I tossed one box to Lash and grabbed the other five, before opening them all up and thrusting the contents into my pockets. From the look Lash was giving me, she obviously thought I’d finally snapped and gone cuckoo for Coco Puffs, but when by the time I was done explaining my plan, she was smiling. That was probably a good sign. The first stage of the plan was simple enough. Lash’s illusion-work had already duped Rainbow Dash once, so there was no reason to think they wouldn’t work again. While the demon had Rainbow Dash under some sort of mind control, Rainbow was still the same pony deep down, and still had the same tendency to make snap judgments and leap before she looked. Impulsive and straightforward people were usually suckers for a good illusion. Someone a bit more calm and prone to thinking things through might wonder why I was suddenly standing right out in the open parking lot, in the perfect position for Rainbow to repeat the last beating she’s given me. Someone like Twilight Sparkle might decide to look a little more closely, and perhaps would have figured out that the Harry Dresden standing out in the open was another one of Lash’s illusions, and the real me was sitting under a veil about fifty feet back from the illusion. Someone a bit more tactically minded might have realized that the storefront of the superstore the illusionary Harry was standing in front of offered several good ambush positions. Lucky for us, we were dealing with Rainbow Dash. The pegasus took one look at the illusionary Dresden, and let out a cry of. “Oh, you didn’t get enough last time, huh? Fine! This time I’ll kick your flank twice as hard!” Then she charged in as fast as she could, and passed through the illusion moving fast enough to have done me some serious damage if I’d actually been standing there. A different pony might have thought there was something wrong when she just shot straight through the illusion, but Rainbow was too worked up to notice a little detail like that. Instead, she just assumed I must have dodged her somehow, and shot back around for another pass. When that attack didn’t connect either, she switched tactics, and attacked from above. When she finally shot straight through the head of the holographic Harry, I could tell from the look on her face that she had finally started putting it together. That half-second of vulnerability while Rainbow hovered halfway through my illusionary double, figuring out what I’d been up to, was when I made my move. “Forzare!” Even though I had her dead-to-rights in a perfect ambush position, Rainbow Dash was still by far the fastest and most agile opponent I’d ever gone up against. Even with only a fraction of a second to act, she still managed to not get hit by the full brunt of my attack. Instead of knocking her silly across the concrete, all I managed to do was knock a few hairs loose from her tail. As soon as I saw the effect of my spell, I brought my shield back up, and an instant later Rainbow Dash began her counterattack. Right before she hit, I tweaked the angle of my shield just a bit, to make sure that her attack knocked me back further into the store. I might not be able to match her speed, but if I played my cards right I could direct her attacks and control where she hit me and in which direction she sent me flying. As soon as she confirmed that I was still in one piece, Rainbow Dash charged into the store after me, intent on finishing the job. As soon as she passed through the doors, Lash made her move, dropping the security gate down behind Dash to trap her inside. There wasn’t time to lock and secure the gate, but it would still keep Rainbow from just flying right back out the doors. Stopping to open the gates back up would take precious seconds of relative immobility that would give me all the time I needed to slap a binding on her. As long as she kept moving Rainbow Dash was still a heck of a lot faster than me, but trapping her indoors cut down on her mobility, and all the shelves and aisles would keep her from having enough room to build up to dangerous amounts of speed. Last time, Lash and I thought we needed open terrain so we could see her coming, but that hadn’t exactly worked out. Yeah, Dash could take advantage of her speed to outflank me and set up ambushes around any blind corner, but at least she wouldn’t be moving so fast that I wouldn’t even be able to see her. I took shelter in the frozen foods section, though judging by the sounds of machines sputtering and dying it was now a couple of hours away from being the thawed foods section. For a moment, I felt just a bit guilty about all the collateral damage I was inflicting on the supermarket. At least I hadn’t burned the entire building down. I must be slipping. Then again, the fight wasn’t even over yet, so there was still plenty of time for that to happen. I spotted a prismatic blur of light as Rainbow shot off deeper into the store. Luckily for me, she ignored Lash and came right for me, but now that she had to move a bit slower to dodge through the aisles and deal with all the normal terrain of a supermarket I had enough time to see her coming. I only had a couple seconds to work with, but that was enough time to try a variation on one a spell that would be all kinds of handy for grounding a flyer. Earth magic normally isn’t my thing, but I’ve gotten a bit better with it over the years. One of the better spells I’d come up with was a gravity manipulation spell that concentrated all the gravity within an area into a single point. For a second, there’s no gravity anywhere within a couple hundred meters, put in the target zone, gravity goes up to a couple hundred times what it normally is. Even a lot of supernaturally tough things don’t like that. Of course, that kind of gravity would kill Dash, and I didn’t want that. Plus, since I’m bad with earth magic, it usually takes me around a minute or so to actually pull the spell off. However, in theory I should be able to a toned-down version of it much more quickly. I didn’t want to hurt Rainbow, just turn up gravity enough to ground her for a bit. For about a quarter second, gravity within about a hundred feet of me doubled, while gravity a bit further away cut out. From the sounds of things clattering, smashing, and falling down, echoing through the store, messing around with gravity in the supermarket had just added more to my collateral damage bill, but at least my toned-down gravity spell didn’t tear holes in the ceiling like the full strength version tended to do. However, the more important part was that Rainbow, caught off guard by gravity doubling, hit the floor face first on the other end of the frozen foods section from me. “No more flying for you, Dash.” I called out. “Those hooves leave the ground, and I’ll just shut you down again.” There was a fair bit of bluff there; like I said, earth magic isn’t really my thing, and trying to use it over and over would wear me out pretty quickly. Hopefully, Rainbow Dash and the Fallen riding shotgun in her brain weren’t aware of that detail. For a moment it looked like Rainbow was about to call my bluff, but then she went still, and I’ve dealt with enough Nickleheads to recognize when the demon was trying to tell its host something. I was a bit tempted to try and slap a binding on Dash while she was distracted, but really, all I needed to do here was stall for time while Lash got the next part of the plan ready. Letting the demon chat with Rainbow ate up time, and any time they spent talking was time I wouldn’t have to spend fighting. After spending a few seconds chatting with her Fallen, Rainbow shot me a smirk of total confidence. “Fine, you wanna do things the hard way? We’ll do things the hard way!” Rainbow Dash began to change. Stupid me, I’d forgotten about the Denarian shapeshifting. Plates of vaguely insectoid bluish-grey carapace grew over her blue fur and her feathered wings transformed into thick, bony spikes. Her mane transformed into a six curved bull horns protruding from her head, one in each color of the rainbow, and beneath the horns she now had a glowing set of Denarian eyes above her normal purple ones, with both sets of eyes sunken deep within the bony ridges of her face. Vicious claws replaced her hooves, and doubled in length and sprouted grew enough spikes to turn me into swiss cheese. Rainbow Dash let out a high-pitched snarl of a battle roar, and I discovered that her mouth had mandibles now. “Holy shit!” A second later, I had my blasting rod pointing right at the thing. “Fuego!” Yeah, breaking out the fire probably wasn’t a good idea when I was trying to save Rainbow from the demon, but if you had been face to face the demonic shrieking insect-thing Rainbow Dash had become, your first instinct would have been to kill it with fire too. The fire washed right over the demon thing, but fortunately for both of us its bony exoskeleton was tough enough to stand up to a bit of wizard’s fire. Good thing I hadn’t mixed any soulfire in with my attack, or I would’ve accidentally killed off one of the Elements of Harmony, and Michael’s daughters would never forgive me. Heck, Michael himself would probably be less than happy with me. Also, the area behind the Dash-thing was on fire now. See, I knew I’d get around to setting the building on fire eventually. Rainbow Abomination glared at with all four of her eyes, and let out a shriek of, “REEE!” that was so loud and high-pitched that I wouldn’t have been surprised if my ears started bleeding. Then, the demon thing took several loping steps forward, and snapped its tail towards me; several of the spikes attached to her detached and came flying right at my head. I brought up a shield to block the attack, but while my attention was on the projectiles, the creature broke into a run, and pounced at me. I jumped to the side and avoided Demon Dash’s claws, but then her tail whipped around and clipped my side. It didn’t hit hard enough to do any real damage through the defensive spells on my new duster, but it did knock me off balance for a second, and that was all the opening the demon needed to swipe at me with its claws. My shield managed to keep it from eviscerating me, and I took a few quick steps back to try and get some more room to maneuver. Unfortunately, Rainbow Abomination was still unnaturally fast, and despite the creature’s size and bulk it easily followed me and kept up the attack. I might be able to buy some breathing room if I turned around and tried to go for a proper run instead of just hopping backwards, but I didn’t think turning my back on this entity was a good idea. It sure would be nice if Lash could get around to finishing up her part of the plan before I wound up in Demon Dash’s stomach. After she’d just about backed me into the produce section, the demon reared up on its hind legs, presumably planning to try smashing through my shield with one big hit instead of wearing it down with a bunch of smaller attacks. That move gave me a short little opening to counter attack, and I took it. “Forzare!” I didn’t hold back very much; considering the exoskeleton Rainbow Abomination had, I probably needed to hit her pretty darn hard just to make an impression. The creature went flying through an entire shelf full of candy, before landing in the bakery section, utterly smushing about a dozen cakes in the process. Pinkie Pie would have been appalled. The demon, now looking slightly less intimidating on account of being covered in bits of cake and frosting, nimbly got back up on its feet, and gave a few flaps of its bony wings, lifting into the air despite the fact that there was no way those wings should be capable of producing lift, especially for such a heavy creature. I hate it when demons cheat. “No you don’t!” Another gravity spell brought the thing down again, this time landing on the cupcakes and donuts. Sorry Pinkie. I aimed a follow-up force spell at the ceiling above the bakery, which I hoped would drop enough debris to pin the thing down until Lash could finish up her part of the plan, but this time it was ready for me. The creature’s tail lashed out, and sent one of the largest chunks of debris flying right at me. I got my shield up in time to avoid getting squashed, but the blunt force of the impact still sent me flying back. The first thing I noticed after landing was that my entire body was now thoroughly drenched in some sort of liquid. A quick sniff confirmed that she’d knocked me back into the alcohol aisle. Oh well, no big loss; store-bought supermarket crap has nothing Mac’s microbrew. I staggered up drunkenly, just in time to see Rainbow Abomination coming after me with a flying pounce. If she actually landed on top of me I’d be squished flatter than a pancake, and that just wouldn’t do at all. “Arctis!” A thick layer of ice covered the creature, and it came crashing to the ground, completely immobilized by its icy prison. “And magic makes it all complete!” I crowed victoriously. “REEEAR!” The creature that had once been Rainbow Dash rebutted, the creature struggled against its icy prison, and within a matter of moment I could see massive cracks developing. “That’s just not fair.” I groaned. Disabling a Denarian without inflicting serious bodily harm upon it was proving to be a much, much more difficult proposition than just killing one outright. As long as the Fallen linked to the coin could feed Dash Hellfire power, I couldn’t wear her down, and none of the evocations I was good with were really suited to disabling and confining something of Rainbow Abomination’s power. Really, the best way to disable a Denarian was to remove the coin, and pulling off something like that in the middle of a heated battle was difficult, especially when I wasn’t even sure where the coin was. “Any time now, Lash…” I growled under my breath. I tried reinforcing the ice making up Rainbow’s temporary prison, but just throwing more ice on top of the existing ice wasn’t doing the job. A couple seconds later, she finally broke free. I immediately tried to freeze her again, but the creature snapped its tail around and caught the blast of ice on that, leaving the rest of its body free to maneuver. “Forzare!” That smacked the creature a good fifty feet back, but within moments it was back on its feet, and charging towards me. I was about to try dodging of blocking the monster’s charge, but about three quarters of the way to me her legs and bone-wings suddenly locked up, sending the beast tumbling unceremoniously to the ground. I let out a sigh of relief. Looks like Lash had finally come through for me. Dash’s tail was still free of the binding, but another quick blast of ice pinned that down. I wasn’t terribly eager about the next part, but I knew it needed to be done; I had to get the coin away from Rainbow, and that meant finding the damned thing. After a moment of reluctant hesitation, I opened my Sight. Under the Sight, Rainbow was back to looking like herself instead of the skeletal insectoid crime against nature I’d been fighting against. However, her normally bright blue fur and rainbow mane were a dull, flat grey. On her flank, just a bit below her cutie mark, there was a small circle of pure black, and thick veins of corruption were slowly spreading out from there to the rest of her body. “Gotcha.” I pointed my staff at the center of the mass of corruption, and carefully focused on my next spell. This time, instead of the usual blast of brute strength, my force spell was a small precise blow, more akin to a chisel than my usual sledgehammer. Rainbow gave a pained roar when I cracked one of the plates of her carapace, and despite her current form I couldn’t help wincing at the thought that I’d just hurt what was, current transformation into a crime against nature aside, a cute little innocent cartoon pony. It took two more taps of my force chisel to finish the job, and the black mass of corruption slowly slid out of Rainbow’s flank. I picked the Denarius up with the sleeve of my duster, and dropped it into one of my pockets. With the coin’s influence gone, that just left Discord’s spell to deal with. I don’t have any particular talent for mental magic but my ex-apprentice Molly does, and all the time I spent training her gave me the chance to pick up a fair bit of it via osmosis. I was no neuromancer, but I had a solid grasp of the basics, and when it came to mind magic usually the trickiest part was spotting it in the first place. Plus, Lash had already told me how she reversed the spell on me, and odds were Discord had used the same binding on Dash that he used on me. People, and evil cartoon critters, tend to be reliably lazy about always using the exact same spells. The key to breaking Discord’s binding was simple. Since it worked by messing around with the victim’s perception of themselves and inverting their value, all you needed to do to reverse it was remind the person of who they really were. Lash having shared brain-space with me for years, probably knew me better than just about anyone else. Hopefully, twenty-six half-hour episodes (minus commercials) had given me a good enough sense of Rainbow Dash to pull off the spell. “Commemini.” I tried to draw out the memories I wanted Rainbow to remember; facing Nightmare Moon, her odd friendship with Pinkie Pie, the (usually) friendly rivalry with Applejack, Fluttershy’s cheering lessons, Twilight Sparkle and the tickets to the Gala, the dress Rarity made for her. In short, her friends. Discord’s spell shattered. See? Friendship really is magic. The grey covering Rainbow faded away, and the pony looked like her old self again. Looking at her with the Sight wasn’t quite as revealing as a Soul Gaze (which I wasn’t even sure if ponies could do), but it still gave a sense of who she was. The brash and confident speedster, who secretly feared not being able to live up to the image she constantly projected, and who cared for her friends far more than she would ever admit. It was definitely one of the more pleasant things I’ve seen with my Sight. When I closed my metaphorical third eye, I saw Rainbow Dash, returned to her normal form. I gave another guilty wince when I saw the thin, lightly bleeding wound on her flank where I’d removed the coin. Cute little cartoon ponies shouldn’t bleed, and they definitely shouldn’t be bleeding because of something I’d done. “You alright Rainbow?” “Fine.” The pegasus answered casually, looking desperately around her strange surroundings. “What happened?” She asked a moment later. “Last thing I remember, we were fighting those Nicklehead guys, and then something went wrong, and next thing I know, I’m here talking to you. Where are my friends? Are they alright?” I dropped down to the floor, and met the pony’s eyes. “You were the first one we managed to find and free, but we will save your friends. I promise you.” “Pinkie Pie Swear?” I don’t think I’d ever heard the pegasus sound so scared and vulnerable, not even during the whole Sonic Rainboom episode. The thought that her friends were in trouble and she might not be able to save them was terrifying. “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.” I promised solemnly.