Raze's Journey Chapter 18
“Hello.”
Greato raised his axe to the being, “What are you?!”
Shining looked at Greato really fast, “Put down the axe, Greato.”
Greato looked at Shining and then the creature standing before them. He lowered the weapon gradually and then put it onto his back.
Shining then looked back at the being, “Ummm... Hello to you, errr...”
The creature smiled, “My name is, Mythic. I already know all of you.”
Mace frowned, “How do you know us already?”
Mythic smiled in an eerie fashion, “I've been watching you all since you arrived at this mountain and I've observed every single action you've all taken since that time.”
Shining arched an eye, “Well, that's unsettling...”
Mythic shook his head, “No, it's not. It's called watching the specimens as they grow from a distance. I was brought up to be tactful when engaging my enemies.”
Greato heard the last word and instantly looked around, “Enemies? Where?!”
Greato turned around as he finally caught on, “You don't mean us, right?”
Mythic turned his back on them and bent down to pick up the glowing sphere, “Of course I was talking about you three, aren't you the ones who came here looking for this object?”
He turned to them with an orange glowing ball in his hand. Shining's eyes widened alongside Mace's and Greato's.
Mace's eyes glowed upon seeing it, “That's exactly what we came here for!”
Mythic looked at Mace and smiled, “Then I shall place it before you.”
He set the ball on the floor before Mace, “Go on and take it...” He trailed off into an uncomfortable silence that continued for a little while.
Mace gulped and smiled, “Well, I guess I'll take it.”
Mythic nodded, “Go on.”
Mace reached out with his magic and just as he did, he found himself being knocked out of the way as a blast of air sent Shining into a wall. Shining hit the floor and so did Mace who was in shock at the moment.
“Oh... I missed. I guess that I won't get that passing grade.” Mythic finished with a cheerful voice.
Greato had been watching the whole time and hadn't seen a single movement from Mythic.
Greato looked at Mythic with a little surprise, 'Was that magic?!'
Mythic turned to Greato, “You seem to be left out! Would you like to play? Or would you rather have the item? I myself, am quite attached to doing both.”
Greato took out his axe and summoned fire around it, “I'll get you for that!”
He charged Greato and swung his axe downward with great magical power only for Mythic to catch it easily. He then flattened out his other palm and stabbed it toward Greato only for a blue shield to be hit instead. The shield cracked upon impact and burst apart, but the deadly attack had still been averted.
Mythic turned to Shining, “You shouldn't get in the way of another person's play time, you might get hurt!”
Shining coughed and red blood spattered onto the floor, “Aghhh... You might have knocked me down for a second, but whatever this is, it's just beginning!”
Mythic looked at Shining with a small smile, “Yes, this is the beginning of my return and you'll have the honors of helping me get back into the spirit of things.”
Greato moved away from Mythic, “Shining, this thing is something else!”
Mace shook his head to clear his mind and immediately began to analyze Mythic with his magic. He saw golden energy all around and inside him. The energy felt very familiar.
“Shining! There's something about his magic! It's Celestia's magic!” Mace yelled as Shining's eyes widened.
“Really?!” Shining saw Mythic give a wider smile.
“Maybe it is, who knows? Maybe it's just my power.” Mythic finished as he started walking over to Shining.
“You're the biggest threat in the room, the other two's magic are just a bit lower than your output, so you're the first one that I shall take revenge on.” Mythic said calmly as Shining backed up from him and summoned a powerful shield.
“Stay back!” Shining commanded as Mythic continued to walk forward.
As soon as Mythic's left foot touched the ground where Shining had been previously a sudden magical disturbance shot from the floor and seemed to surround Mythic's body in a tower of white light.
“Gotcha! Now everyone!” Shining commanded his group as Mace and Greato prepared their attacks by combining lightning into their weapons.
They then brought down both upon Mythic who stopped them with his own golden shield. The weapons broke in half from the amount of force that had been placed upon them.
Mythic pointed his palm at Mace and Greato, “Your weapons must have been enchanted by a lazy magician.”
With that, Greato and Mace were sent flying back by a great magic that they couldn't fight. They landed next to Shining with a thud.
Shining looked down at them and back up at Mythic who had started looking around at the temple walls, “I’m glad you three came when you did, I was starting to lose faith in the idea that I could escape this dusty old temple.”
Shining said nothing while he helped his comrades up. His thinking process was more distressing than the current situation they were in.
‘He just stopped all of us in the span of a minute, I’ve got to figure out something!’ Shining’s inward thoughts were not shown on his rough outside.
Mace and Greato were already on their hooves, but they didn’t move in any direction. They turned to Shining instead, “We need a plan!” They both said at the same time.
Shining nodded, “Yes, I know, but I can only think of one at this point!"
Shining quickly brought them together and whispered his plan to them quickly. Mythic watched them as they finally broke apart.
Shining looked over at Mace, "Do you understand?"
Mace arched his left eye, “But this situation doesn’t seem to call for it! We haven’t even started to really fight! Eve-”
Shining interrupted him, “No, we have to send one of us off and since I’m staying, it’s gotta be one of you.”
Greato nodded, “I’ll stay. Me and you are the strongest magic users here, Shining.”
Mace looked at them in disbelief, "What are you two saying?! I can't abandon you both! We fight together!"
Shining smiled, "You'll be helping us finish the mission by taking the spheres to Celestia! But me and Greato are going to get that last one first!"
Mythic watched them with amusement, "Are you all finished talking amongst yourselves? I'm growing bored over here."
Greato turned to Mythic with a look of fierce determination, "We're about to take away that boredom! So get ready!"
Greato began to charge up his horn as the magic started to surround his legs which revealed glowing chains.
Mythic looked at him with wide eyes, "What's this?"
Greato's magic began to amplify as the chains began to break around his hooves. His muscles grew a bit and his horn extended outward.
An aura of bright fiery red magic surrounded Greato, "I've broken the seal on my real magic power! I was fighting hard before, but now I don't even need the axe, I can create my own!"
Within seconds a big red axe made out of arcane magic appeared behind Greato. It seemed to be aflame with power as the ground broke into smaller pieces around it’s very essence.
Mythic’s eyes narrowed and he smiled, “Are you the only one who can do this?”
Shining smirked, “Nope.”
Shining began to concentrate as his horn sparked with bright blue electricity, ‘C'mon body, you can keep going and break the chains!’
His magic revealed his own chains binding his hoofs, ‘That’s it!’ The chains strained against his magic as his magical aura spread outward.
Mace was preparing to break his own magical chains, but he was shaking. Tears were starting to bud as he realized that he would have to leave his comrades.
Mace watched as Shining’s chains break and his aura eclipsed Greato’s own by a slightly bigger margin. Shining’s muscles appeared to have doubled in size as did his body.
‘His magical might is even stronger than I knew originally!’ Mace thought to himself as Shining began to bring down his power output.
“Sorry, it’s been a while since I’ve had a maximum reserve of magic to tap into like this. I’d say that my body has improved it’s own condition with this power.” Shining said to Mythic who was looking at them with raised eyebrows.
“You’ve both certainly improved your image, I can believe that you’re a captain, Shining Armor. I can also see that Greato is as strong as his ego, but strength alone won’t be enough for this fight. I can tell you now judging how far you both just went, that I can defeat you with sixty percent of my normal abilities.” Mythic said to them both.
Greato frowned, “Guess we best not wait!”
Greato teleported in front of Mythic and swung his axe, “RRRAAAAAAHHHH!” The axe powered by intense magic slammed into the floor and cut through it like butter as the attack grew in size.
Mythic was swallowed in a massive amount of red energy as the attack continued towards the walls which disappeared in an explosion of extreme force that blasted smoke and energy particles into the sky above them.
The smoke was cleared away in an instant by another sweep of Greato’s arcane axe. Greato looked into the sky trying to gauge Mythic’s position, ‘Where is he?!'
"I'm up here!" Mythic stated to Greato.
Greato looked up and saw him with massive golden wings flapping gently on the wind. He also noticed that the orange sphere was in Mythic's right hand.
Greato turned to Shining and noticed that he had a shield up, "Hey, Shining! What happened?!"
Shining let down the barrier, "He was faster than we were in the uptake! He managed to dodge your attack and stopped me instead!"
Greato turned back to Mythic who was coming down for a landing, "Damn... Even at our new strength, he's still too fast."
Mythic grinned as he finally touched the ground of the temple that was now filled with sunlight, "Well, what did you expect? I've been outclassing you both since the beginning, I'd say that putting a large hole into this temple is quite a feat, but it's not going to help you now that I have two battlefields."
Greato smirked, “That attack wasn’t meant to be able to catch a fast target, it was meant to create openings, though it is extremely deadly to most ponies or other creatures. Now I’ll switch the approach.”
Greato began to reshape the red arcane axe into a smaller axe, "This one is built for speed.” Greato finished as the red magic arched around his form.
Mythic looked at the orange sphere in his hand, “What about this thing? Does your group still want it?”
Mythic never got his answer as Greato began to swing the axe around at high speeds. Small slashes of red magic cut through the air toward Mythic who flapped his wings in order to escape the incoming projectiles.
As soon as he found himself farther away from the earth below he began to prepare his own counters, but found that magical orbs had surrounded himself the sky. They glowed a deep blue and sparked with high amounts of electricity.
Mythic looked at them curiously, ‘When did Shining have the time to surround me?’
Mythic noticed that the orbs were gaining energy and his eyes widened, ‘They’re gathering more power from the black clouds!’
The sky was lighting up a the energy charged into the magic orbs grew around him, “NOOOOO!” Lightning connected the orbs as the entirety of the sky was consumed in bright lightning.
The light grew brighter and brighter until the sky was completely covered in it’s shining display. Greato and Shining shielded themselves from the light. It slowly subsided and Shining opened his eyes to see something small glow orange as it fell from the sky.
“There’s the sphere!” Shining reached out with his magic and felt the familiar orb as it floated back to the two guards.
Shining brought it over to Mace and put it inside the carrying bag, “Okay, we got it. You know what to do.”
Mace nodded though somewhat reluctant as he finally broke his chains. The surge of magic made his stomach churn with more uncertainty. Mace summoned the magic despite the feelings going through his mind and with a flash of light, he was gone.
Shining and Greato looked back to make sure that Mace had finally left them. Then they turned back to see a rapidly approaching Mythic. He landed and chunks of rock and dust spewed from the area. Mythic flapped his wings to rid himself of the dust and looked at the two ponies with fiery rage coming from behind his golden eyes.
“That was the last straw!” Mythic finished as he drew his shimmering sword out of it’s sheath.
He swung the giant blade down upon Shining who teleported quickly out of the way. Shining summoned his magic to relay a message to Greato.
‘I don’t have much magical strength after using that last attack! This is do or die and we need to stall for Mace!’ Shining thought over to Greato as he barely dodged another slash.
Greato nodded, ‘Shining, can you try to stop his blade with your magic? I’ve got quite a bit more strength left than you do, so I can try to attack him again?!’ Greato suffered a slight graze on his as he tried to save his magic for the attack.
Shining charged forward only for Mythic to stop him in his tracks, “Sorry, I remember saying this was a play fight and I agreed to play for only so long, but now I’m feeling just fine. I have a Princess to find and no-”
Greato took his chance to strike only for his attack to be stopped by Mythic’s sword which proceeded to cut through the red axe and slice Greato’s throat open. All magic power that had been coming from Greato began to rapidly dissipate as he stumbled back.
“GREATO!” Shining yelled as the final spark of red energy disappeared from around the stumbling Greato.
Shining’s eyes widened as he watched his friend die before him. Greato tripped over his own hoofs as blood poured from the cut jugular. His attempts to breath only brought more pain as his the blood suffocated him. He hit the ground in moments and twitched a bit before finally stopping the continued attempt to live.
Shining felt himself being dropped by Mythic, “Go on, see your friends misery and pain. Let it break you, then I’ll finish the job…”
Shining crawled over to Greato’s body and pushed himself up until he was sitting above the corpse. He looked down on the form as the nerves inside Greato’s body made it twitch.
“No… Why?” Shining’s words were barely above a whisper.
He realized that he was crying by seeing his tears start to drop on the fur of the corpse before him. Soon you could hear a sob and then the tears began to cascade down Shining’s face.
“We were going to make it back!” Shining yelled as he heard footsteps coming from behind him.
They were slow and methodical, Shining turned to see Mythic smiling in a weird fashion. Shining’s facial expression quickly began to change to anger.
“YOU!” Shining exclaimed at the monster walking toward him.
“Yes, me!” Mythic said as he began to speed up slightly.
Shining fired up his horn as his eyes glowed blue. He charged a large blue ball of magic as Mythic stopped. Shining pointed the attack at Mythic.
“YOU’RE GOING TO PAY!” Shining fired the blast at the assailant and it powered forward with an extreme amount of speed.
Mythic threw out his right palm and caught the attack. He then crushed it with his own magic and it exploded inside the golden power as if nothing had happened in the first place.
Shining’s bursting new power rapidly dwindled to nothing as he realized that he would not escape his fate. That’s when Mythic struck, his sword impaled through Shining’s neck and out his back. Shining was already gone when Mythic pulled out the blade.
Shining’s body hit the floor with a thud and all was quiet.
“How fitting.”
Mace finally reached the end of his magical limit, luckily he made it back to the castle grounds in one piece. He fell to the ground with no more energy left to support himself and was quickly brought to the medical wing of the castle.
Celestia had immediately went to the hospital wing to try and get information out of Mace. He was unconscious due to the amount of magic he had used and she would instead end up staying the night.
Her thoughts consisted of two things. Where was Shining and Greato and why did the dragon no longer speak to her? Two things she’d have no choice but to wait to hear about in the morning.
Octavia sighed as she rolled over trying to find a way to find a way to fall asleep, yet she continued to fail in this department.
‘I can’t help but feel that something has went terribly wrong.’
She couldn’t possibly realize how right she was.