“Split up?!” Zetta gasped. The Sacred Hold shook all around her. “Are you serious?!”
“Pathetically, yes.” Rainbow Dash fumbled to strap Luna’s saddlebag back on. Nightshade leaned in to lend a hoof, but the pegasus writhed away from her, frowning as she finished the dizzying task herself. “As much as I need to fetch Kera, none of you ponies deserve to stay stranded on this crumbling rock for any longer. That’s why I suggest that the bulk of us go and jump aboard a Xonan aircraft, and I’ll go find the foal myself.”
“How can you expected to do that on your own?!” Zetta spat. “You’re in no shape to trot a hundred yards, much less fly through this collapsing mess!”
“Yeah!” Zaid exclaimed as he stretched the limp, quivering figure of Khao over his backside. “I love the little scamp and all, but I totally vote for you not becoming floating serpent house fodder!”
“Nnngh…” Khao’s face tensed as she clutched her injured forelimb. “Damned heathens! Damned heathens and apostate masses!”
“That’s uhhhh…” Zaid smiled with a sweating expression. “That’s Heraldese for ‘you got a point there, Brother Zaid!’”
“Do you even know where to look for her?!” Zetta exclaimed.
Rainbow Dash’s eyes fluttered as she teetered heavily to the left. Basso leaned in to support her. As the Ledomaritan prisoners watched nervously, the pegasus shook her muzzle, rubbed her head, and glanced down through the opaque floor with sheer focus.
“Yeah,” Rainbow muttered. Her thin ruby eyes spotted a flickering lavender light several hundred meters through the body of the floating mountain. “I know where she is…”
“She’s gifted with sensitivity for the lavender flame,” Nightshade spoke out loud.
”Ulp!” Rainbow Dash held a hoof over her pale muzzle. She gulped bile down and muttered, “Yeah, some gift…”
“Rainbow, perhaps we could make it to the escape ships without you,” Zetta said. More shaking, rumbling. She frowned as she said, “But you can’t possibly be expected to survive on your own!”
“Yeah!” Zaid squinted. “Won’t getting closer to the book make your head even conkier?!”
“Meh…” Rainbow Dash shook her head and tried to keep her eyes steady. “I’m open to ideas.”
“I think I should accompany her in her sojourn,” Nightshade said.
Rainbow frowned, but refused to look at the madame. “Besides her.”
“Do not pretend that your executive authority gives you the excuse to be ignorant of common sense!” Nightshade snapped. “We both desire the child’s safe return, and it would benefit us in our struggle against the Xonan menace to possess that book. Although I can be of great assistance to you, I fear that I am not strong enough to carry you swiftly and safely through these dark tunnels.”
“Pffft. Yeah?” Rainbow balked. “And I bet you know who is?”
Nightshade was silent. She turned around and looked at Basso. Zaid glanced at Basso. Everypony was staring at Basso.
The stallion blinked curiously. “Who? Zetta?”
”Haaaaaaaaaaaugh!” Roarke charged violently into Zytharros’ armored figure.
“Grggggh!” The warrior took the brunt of her galloping attack. The two flew back into a series of metalwork tools, knocking steel instruments across the stone floor in a loud, cacophonous thud. Briefly wrestling, the two rolled over abandoned chaos strip mold casts. At last, Zytharros bucked his legs out, tossing the Searonese attacker high in the air.
Roarke twirled close to the ceiling.
With gnashing teeth, Zytharros telekinetically hoisted several chunks of debris and flung them at Roarke’s body.
She twirled, fired her rocket thrusters, and soared along the length of the emptied metalworks. Twirling about, she dove low, twirled, and shot straight towards the stallion. With flicks of her forelimbs, her metal-laced hooves extended razor-sharp blades. “Rrrrrrrgh!”
Zytharros took a calm breath, telekinetically stripped his armor, and stepped back. He solidified the blade directly in front of him, closing the glowing blue plates around Roarke’s outstretched hooves.
Roarke gasped, jerking to a stop, anchored.
With a growling shout, Zytharros spun the sword vertically. The twirling motion threw Roarke in a tight circle. Her hooves slipped, and she flew into a series of suspended buckets and mechanical limbs hanging in the corner of the room.
Zytharros’ hooves stomp-stomp-stomped across the floor as he charged, spun like a top, and swung his sword as savagely as he could across the sweaty arena.
With a sharp breath, Roarke jumped back, juked, side-stepped, and reverse-somersaulted. In so doing, she escaped the razor-sharp blows with a hair’s grace. Chunks of metal debris rained down on her. Entire slivers of Xonan factory works rattled loudly onto the floor.
At last, Zytharros shoved her up against a series of smoke-stained glass windows. Roarke tripped and fell on her armored backside. She winced as the soldier rushed towards her, used his sword as a pole-vault, launched high, and came down at her with a murderously violent downswing. “Yaaaaaugh!”
Roarke held her breath and rolled back onto her forward shoulders, performing a hoof-stand. Thunkkkk! The blade embedded into the ground a centimeter’s sneeze from the nape of her neck. When her upper body fell back down, it reclined along the blunt edge of the blade with her rear hooves clasping around the glowing hilt.
“You wanna yell?!” With a grunt, Roarke pulled her entire body up until she was seated upright on the thing. From this position, she grabbed Zytharros’ startled muzzle in the crook of one hoof and aimed at his face with the other. “Do it on the way down!” She punched him once, twice--grabbed him--then threw herself back on the weight of the blade, tossing him savagely through the window. “Haaaaugh!”
Zytharros shrieked like a little filly, but the warbling sound was canceled out by the noise of shattering glass…
...as he plummeted through the window and straight into the central hangar of the Sacred Hold outside. As he flinched and flailed in mid-descent, he spotted an armored body diving out of the factory works and gliding after him.
Roarke wasn’t done with the warrior. Successfully catching up with the stallion, she straddled Zytharros’ body in midair and repeatedly pummeled his helmeted skull. “Rggh! Nnngh! Yrrrghh! Haaaugh!” Zytharros took it and took it, his armorless body spasming beneath her punishing impacts. At last, the two landed across the loading deck. Zytharros limply shoved Roarke off him, but it barely gave him the upper hoof. She rushed him and kicked the stallion aside. Stumbling, Zytharros cast a bleeding look towards the metalworks up above. His horn glowed with bright blue energy.
Roarke rushed him--but jerked to a stop, squinting at his shimmering mana. She turned and looked up in time to see a glint of sharp metal in the corner of her eyes. Gasping, she rolled sideways in time to avoid Zytharros’ blade slicing down and embedding into the ground beside her.
As Roarke got back on her hooves, she saw Zytharros limping towards the blade and leaning on it for a few seconds. The stallion spat a copious amount of blood onto the floor, tilted his head up, and glared at her. His eyes strobed with bright blue light, and the chaos strip around his neck twirled with otherworldly energy. Within seconds, hissing translucent serpents slithered out of his blade and swam menacing circles around his figure.
Roarke clenched her teeth, backing up on anxious hooves. “Typical breeder…” She cracked the joints in her neck. “Bringing snakes to a pony fight.”
Zytharros yanked his blade out from the ground and floated it besides his summoned beasts as he limped angrily towards her.
Meanwhile, several hundred feet away, the Lightning-Bearer floated in its moorings. Several disguised Xonans had spotted Zytharros’ plight and were murmuring in surprise. At least a dozen of them grabbed glowing scimitars and manarifles and prepared to charge onto the loading dock to assist their patron warrior.
At the sound of a loud, abrasive shout, they skidded to a stop in their tracks and looked behind them.
Arcshod stood tall and resolute, glaring at the group. He slowly shook his head.
The Xonans exchanged nervous glances, squirming in their Ledomaritan uniforms. Obediently, they bowed at the commanding officer and trotted reluctantly back to their stations.
Arcshod gave the distant duel between the metal mare and the Xonan warrior a squinting glance. After a few seconds, her smirked, then turned to shout towards the lead helmspony. Xonans passed the order down towards the far end of the ship. Ponies worked the instruments at their stations.
With a loud rumble of engines, the Lightning Bearer undocked and drifted away, cruising towards the mouth of the Hold’s immense hangar entrance.
Zetta, Zaid, and nearly a dozen Ledomaritans galloped briskly down a tight corridor.
“I don’t suppose there’s a chance of using the little pony’s room between here and there, huh?” Zaid panted in mid-run. “It’s been a while since I made sissy. Not sure about How-Now-Browned-Khao, here.”
“Nnnnnghhhhh…” Khao whimpered as her body flopped on his backside.
“You wanna take a leak?” Zetta frowned, stammering for breath. “Do it over the side once we’re a mile away from this collapsing mess!” As if on cue, the mountain rumbled around her. She gritted her teeth and glanced at the dust trailing from the ceiling. “Oh, I really… really hope they find the kid so that I can see Basso again.”
“I don’t get it, Miss Dash,” Basso muttered as he galloped forward on thundering hooves through a dark hallway. “How is it that you can see the book through walls?”
“Stop talking…” Rainbow Dash whimpered from where she was draped over the full length of his backside. “The vibrations are making me wanna upchuck…”
“Let’s simply proceed to our destination,” Nightshade grunted as she galloped after the two. “We’re at a junction, Miss Dash! What direction should we take?”
“Unnngh…” Rainbow squinted over Basso’s hobbling shoulders. “A sharp right. Look for stairs or something, cuz we gotta descend another two levels.”
“If you say so.” Basso turned a corner and approached a tightly sealed stone door. “I still don’t see why you chose to bring me along and not somepony else.”
“The door, if you can, good sir,” Nightshade said.
Basso shrugged his way into the doorframe, smashing through the stone slab as if it was made of paper.
The edge of Nightshade’s lips curved slightly. “Good Basso. Remain curious. It certainly helps the rest of us.”
“If you say so…”
Rainbow Dash’s frowning face winced under falling pebbles. “On second thought, keep talking, buddy,” she muttered. “That way I don’t get to hear her stupid voice…”