PLEASE READ AUTHORS NOTES AT THE END. THIS IS INCOMPLETE CHAPTER
”What in Tartarus is this!?” Applejack shouted over the noise, as their doubles tried to lead them to somewhere safe. Their escorts had already fallen behind, after a group of changelings had attacked them.
“Exactly that!” Spike responded, before driving one of his claws into incoming changeling. “It’s Tartarus on Equestria! Come on, get off!” Putting his foot against the now dead changeling, Spike pushed it away.
“I can’t believe there is something like this!” Twilight shouted.
“Better believe, The War had many of this type of battles!” Applejack’s double answered. “Be thankful humans are on our side, instead of trying to kill us!”
In the distance, they saw a dragon wipe out group of human ACES suits, before being attacked by Celestia. It was clear that even with their superior technology, there were still things that could beat humans. In any other situation, local Elements of Harmony would have been relieved to learn that humans weren’t invincible. However, in the current situation, it was not a good thing.
Eventually, they found relatively safe spot in the battlefield. It had lower concentration of enemy changelings, which meant less chance of being attacked. It was by no means calm or completely safe, but there really was no choice available. Two white painted Changelings joined them, panting heavily.
“This is worse than the War of Three Hives.” One of them said, trying to catch his or her breath.
“You OK?” The other changeling asked the ponies, while keeping eye on the black changelings.
“We are in better condition that most out there.” Twilight said, feeling weird for talking to a changeling.
“Right. The Queen said you are the ones who helped her to free the hive and now our job is to protect you until you do... whatever you do.”
“I swear, sometimes it feels like these humans are intentionally shooting us.” The other one said, having finally catched his/her breath.
“This is so weird...” Applejack’s double muttered under her breath. “So, you guys are going to help us?”
“Yes. Queen’s orders. I guess we owe you our gratitude. When that... thing took over the colony, we thought it would bethe end of us.”
“What was it like? I mea- WATCH OUT!” Twilight shouted and dodged. A half melted machine, humans called them APCs, fell where she had been standing seconds minute ago. A dragon roared in triumph, before being taken down by Celestia. She then joined Chrysalis and her changelings in taking down another dragon.
“Uh, Spike? Are going to grow into something like that?” Rainbow Dash asked, switching between the fallen dragon and the burning wreckage.
“Eventually. Unless something forces the growth spurt. You know how dragons don’t grow in stable growth, like ponies?”
“Nope.”
“Oh crap.” One of the changelings muttered.
“What is it?” Applejack’s double asked, before seeing it herself. “Horseapples.”
Humans were running away from their positions. The defense line was collapsing.
“Okay, what do we do?” Spike asked.
“No idea, I mean, yeah, we saw humans retreat during The War, but this is turning into a rout.” Applejack’s double said.
The group watched as more and more humans started to run, some of them very close to their position.One of the humans was running right past of them when he fell down, obvious gunshot through his chest and back, before melting down. The group turned to see Saral pointing her gun at the now dead deserter.
“Who gave you permission to run? Get back into the fight!” She shouted, her voice distorted by the speakers trying to keep up with volume in her voice.
“But Sir! We can’t win! We need to escape!” One of the soldiers tried to reason, only to have Saral shoot him in the face.
“You will fight or you will die. You all signed up as a soldier of humanity, NOW FIGHT LIKE ONE!” Saral shouted, waging her pistol around. “Company! To me! Get back to the fight!”
Apparently, her harsh methods seemed to work as the humans seemed to weigh their options and joined her. In distance, the group saw that Luna had managed to rally another weak point in the line, though it seemed she had done so by inspiring troops, rather than scaring them into submission.
It didn’t take long for Discord to appear.
“ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLEEEEEE!?”
“Yup, that’s Discord alright.” Applejack said.
Discord began to attack the human front right away. He knew that he needed to break that part of the defense, which would leave a gaping hole for his changelings to pour through. He had thought he had succeeded earlier, until Luna and that human general had intervened. Still, despite humans trying to kill him in their panic, he had came prepared. A shield flashed as the projectiles hit futilely. Though he had to credit unicorns, clearly their grasp at magic arrows had grown much better than last time he had fought in such a battle. Still, it was not enough and soon he was laying waste to large parts of the defense line.
“Damn it. Can you take care rest of these dragons!?” Celestia asked Chrysalis.
“I think so.” She answered. “Just go and beat that draconequus.”
Celestia nodded flew towards Discord. He noticed the sun goddess flying towards him and quickly too to the air too.
“So, ready for a final showdown?” Discord asked.
“Always.” Celestia answered and launched a beam against Discord, who answered with his own beam, before dodging to the side. It took few moments for Celestia to orient herself, during which Discord managed to land a hit on her.
“You were never a good with mobile targets! What’s that sound?” Discord asked, before something exploded on his back.
“Reload this thing or get me a new one!” Saral shouted, holding one of the rocket launchers in her hands. One soldier took the launcher she had and handed her a new one. However, before she could take aim, the soldier died as something pierced him.
It took about one second before Sarals brain realized that not only had her subordinate been killed, her legs were no longer attached to her torso. Her brains did not, however, managed to draw connection between her legs being separated from her torso and being dead before they were liquified by a strong surge of magic.
“Right, that takes care of that, so what... What’s that bright light?” Discord muttered and looked over to the light source, hovering above Celestia. “Isn’t a dimensional por... aw crap.”
Another Celestia stepped out of the portal and proceeded to attack Discord. While confusing at first, many of the coalition soldier decided to accept the little luck they were given and concentrated on non-divine creatures on the battlefield. Meanwhile, Luna ran to her sister.
“You’re alright?” She asked.
“Been better, but been worse too. What the Tartarus happened?”
“Well, looks like we have reinforcements in form of your double.” Luna said, looking at the fight going above them.
“Well, I won’t question it. Let’s get there.”
In the distance, The Elements watched as the four divine beings clashed, in a rather lopsided three versus one fight.
“So, Princess managed to get to us?” Rainbow Dash asked. “Awesome.”
“They must have been trying to contact us for some time and then seen the situation, why otherwise would Princess attacked Discord so readily?” Twilight said. “Get ready girls, we need to be ready to strike at the moments notice.”
“Got it.”
“Okey dokey.”
“Alright.”
“If you say so...”
“Ready!”
Girls began to charge up their Elements, while their doubles and Spike focused on making sure that nobody would distract them. Two changelings that had been with them looked over at what was happening and shrugged. They were never really told what was so special about these particular ponies, but they didn’t really care. They got their jobs and it was really they needed. One of them took off to tell where to drive Discord.
“Your, uh, Highness? The Elements are waiting for the mark over there.” The changeling said to one of the sun goddesses, he wasn’t really sure which one this was.
“Are they alright?”
“Yes, little shaken but otherwise OK.”
“I see.” Celestia dodged another blast from Discord. he had clearly picked up few tricks in his time here. “Tell them to be ready, we try to guide him in that direction and keep his attention at us.” The changeling nodded and flew off, while Celestia charged at Discord. Arrival of her double was something that she had not expected, but she was not going to complain.
Now, someone might think that a battle between several creatures that rank at least as demigods would be rather spectacular. Especially if there are four of them. However, as it often happens the battles between gods and demigods were rather dull. Since both sides often had enough power to murder half the planet, battles were decided either by which one could trick other one first into doing a mistake or by outgunning the opposition.
It was pretty clear that thanks to residual chaos magic, Discord outgunned them. While he could not outright kill them, he had a lot more power backing him, he could keep going much longer. Celestia flew next to Luna.
“We need to get him over there and keep his attention to us. The Elements are ready to stone him.”
“Understood.” Luna nodded and took off again. Celestia had already told the plan to her double, who had not really commented, but was clearly trying to push Discord in the right direction. Of course, problem was trying have Discord move in the right direction and not have him realize he was going herded.
“You little... WHY WON’T YOU DIE!” Discord shouted, sending another blast at Celestia. Celestia dodged it, only grimace when the blast hit a group of griffins. While the army itself was now barely holding the line, it could not really take this sort of collateral damage.
“So, Tia, you came after me!” Discord shouted to dimensional traveler. “Did you miss me?”
“You wish!” Celestia’s double returned and fired a beam which Discord deflected with a shield. “I am here to put you down!”
“But my dear sun goddess, did you forget already? YOU CAN’T KILL ME!” Discord shouted.
“I can try!”
“HAH! You never studied metamagic, so I guess you would not understand.” Discord laughed. “What do you think happens when a physical manifestation of an universal constant is destroyed?”
“Shut up, I know your tricks!” Two Celestias joined in an attack and blasted Discord with a beam strong enough to force him to back up.
“You little... nothing but byproducts....” Discord muttered under his breath. “You are kinda idiots, though. Keeping attacking from a single side, where I- WAIT A MINUTE!” Discord quickly flew up and turned around, just in time to dodge a blast from the Elements. “Clever girls...” He muttered
“Damn it! Keep him in place! Do not let him escape!” Celestia shouted. Several ACES suits, pegasis and griffins moved to attack Discord. They did not have hope to actually hurt him, but they could harass him enough to keep him from escaping.
“Quick girls! We need to try again!” Twilight shouted as the Elements began to gather their power again.
“You better hurry, he looks pissed!” A changeling muttered.
“NO! I WILL NOT ACCEPT THIS!” Discord roared, as another pegasis tried to hit him, only to be cut down. With two Celestias and Luna not allowing him to escape, he was starting to worry. If the Elements were allowed to turn him into stone again, all would be lost.
He gathered another ball of magic and send it flying towards the Elements. The changeling that had stayed with the Elements, took off. It flew right at the ball, taking the brunt of its’ power and falling down, burned to crisp. Discord tried to guide the swarm to strike at the location he was, but it was too occupied with everything else. The Dragons were also too busy to come to his aid.
“Well, if I am going down, I won’t go down quietly...” Discord muttered. Dodging another blast from Celestia. Being focused on three goddesses, a griffin managed to sneak up to him and skewer him with a spear.
“HAH! Gotcha!” The griffin said in triumph, before the spear was pulled from his claws.
“You know, if it was that easy, why you think they petrified me?” Discord said, before stabbing the griffin with his own spear. “More the things change, more they stay the same...”
Another blast of magic from Discord and two ACES suits blew up, another one falling down as a flaming wreck while second one had soldiers assisting the pilot out. Discord ignored them, focusing more on fighting Celestias and Luna.
[AAAAAND end. Sorry people :( ]