A Xonan stallion screamed as a sparkling taser punctured his chest, sending eviscerating webs of electricity through his melting body.
"Hraaaugh!" Shell retracted the weapon, spun about, and twirled the other taser so that it skewered the muzzle of a Xonan charging across the ruined deck of the Lightning Bearer. He pulled the spear out with a spray of blood and kicked the corpse down to the ground.
Arcshod hobbled backwards, hyperventilating.
Shell glanced over his shoulder with a fuming expression. His one eye flickered in tandem with the horn resting in his vest pocket. Snarling, he leapt over a burning stack of rubble and launched both tasers at the Xonan commander.
Arcshod dodged the first two swings, then gripped a metal pole in his muzzle. He twisted his tattooed head from side to side, deflecting the Prime Enforcer's blows as swiftly as he could. Sparks flew, illuminating the slain bodies lying all across the battered dreadnaught's hull.
"What's the matter, Xonan?!" Shell hissed, twirling his tasers like electrified buzz saws on either side of his menacing approach. "Afraid to use your horn?! Suspect that I'll explode you inside out from your own exposed leylines?!" He pressed both tasers to the commander's bludgeon and leaned forward, sneering. "As if I would make this that quick!" He headbutted Arcshod, kicked him in the chest, and side-swiped with one taser.
The sparkling tip sliced into Arcshod's flesh, interrupting the tattoos with a copiously bleeding gash. The stallion let loose a cry and hobbled backwards, bumping into a stack of crates.
"I've lived long enough to know disappointment like a drunken mistress..." Shell sneered as he trotted towards him. "But this exceeds all comprehension." He easily dodged one of Arcshod's panicked jabs, deflected the weapon, and stabbed him in the chest, giving the yelping commander a violent shock. "Why are you holding back?!" he hollered. "Make death sweat!" He jabbed and slashed again, sending the tattooed equine reeling. "What are you made of?!"
Arcshod scrambled, wheezing, and ran up a careening flight of steps towards a higher platform of the collapsed vessel.
Shell gritted his teeth and marched forward—only to collapse suddenly on two bent knees. "Gaaagh!" His face tightened and he leaned forward with a pulsating forehead. He brought a bruised hoof up, feeling the pocket in his vest where a severed horn lay, glowing with otherworldly enchantment. "Mmmgh... I'm sorry that sh-she hurt you, beloved. I swear that the Doctor will never touch your precious bones again..."
Arcshod gazed down, panting in pain and confusion as flames billowed around the two.
"Mmmmgnnghhh... yes... oh yesssss, dear Imre..." Shell tilted his head up. As the horn in his vest stopped glowing, his one eye strobed instead. "I will give you much... much blood..." Pulling himself up by a taser, Shell scraped the weapon across the steps as he climbed up, drawing ash and sparks from the fallen battleship. "What now, cowardly oaf?" Shell licked his lips as he squared off with Arcshod again. "I need your skin to fashion my daughter a kite..."
Arcshod gritted his teeth, juked, and came at Shell from a low angle, slamming the bar across the stallion's face.
Shell simply took the blow, his body barely swaying from the impact. He spat blood onto the deck, wiped his muzzle and smirked the commander's way. "Delicious. Now let me show you the love of Ledo." And he thrusted forward, swinging both weapons savagely at Arcshod's skull.
Splitting the air with a high-pitched whistle, Zaid piloted the managlider towards the dark ravine looming below. By then, the battle had congregated towards the east, where tattooed and non-tattooed equines were relentlessly slaughtering each other in the trenches. Their melee carried a prolonged roar of pain and anguish across the blood-soaked landscape, echoed in brief spurts by the Divine being bombarded by a Heraldite skyship in the west.
"Chaos in stereo!" Zaid hollered as he dipped the ship beneath an exploding patch of flak. "How's that for a notch on the bucket list?!"
"Can it, cheese-eater!" Rainbow Dash grunted as she flew alongside the glider's left wing. "We can make jokes when the job's over!"
"Yeesh, you're the worst supervisor ever."
"Rainbow!" Kera stammered, squinting into the black abyss as the metal walls swallowed them up. "It's so dark down there! How will we even see where we're going?"
"I've got that covered!" Rainbow Dash rubbed her pendant and summoned a ruby glow. "We should be able to see where our hooves go now, at least!"
"That's not good enough!" Nightshade shouted, her voice producing echoes as Zaid dipped them deeper into the ravine. "It'll take more than normal illumination to point us to where we need to go!"
"Then what's your bright idea, Madame Miserable?!"
Nightshade glanced at Kera. "Child, so long as you possess that band on your horn, you control the luminosity of the tome!"
"The crap is that supposed to mean?!" Kera's voice cracked.
"Concentrate. Relax your own leylines," Nightshade said. "I suspect that your suppression field will lower enough to allow the book to act as a beacon."
"But... but..." Kera gulped, hugging the tome harder. "Rainbow Dash might—"
"You are this alleged 'Eljunbyro,' are you not?"
"Uhhh... sure!"
"Then trust in the role that you have to play!" Nightshade shouted as the managlider's engines suddenly echoed all around them. "Relax and let the book illuminate the world around us—"
"Hey, uhm..." Zaid smiled, sweating. "That's a whole lotta wall!"
"Huh?" Nightshade glanced forward. The Madame shrieked. "Blessed Ledo!"
Kera and Zaid shrieked as the managlider hurled its way towards a solid barricade of polished metal.
With a blue blur, Rainbow Dash was suddenly in front of them, pressing her front hooves against the craft. She slapped her wings out, forming air brakes, and halted the vessel within meters of slamming into the metal wall. "Nnnnnnngh!" Gritting her teeth to the breaking point, she forced the craft stop, even going so far as to brace her rear legs against the flat surface of the wall.
At last, the ship hovered in place, and Rainbow helped gently lower the thing to a platform of gold looming directly beneath them. They could see it was colored gold because—
"Whoah..." Kera blinked. The band around her horn shimmered, for her relaxed mind had allowed the lavender glow of the runic tome to intensify magnificently. They could now see the entire machine world within three hundred feet in every direction. "I... I th-thought I had to be relaxed to make that happen!"
Nightshade shuddered, gagging once or twice to hold in her lunch. "I'm inclined not to argue the matter anymore."
"Hey!" Zaid smiled as Rainbow Dash lowered the ship onto solid ground. "You guys remember when I nearly smashed us all against a solid metal wall?! Heheh... funny stuff, am I right?"
Rainbow yanked Zaid out of the vehicle by his mane. "Stick to drama for a while," she grunted into his face before shoving him towards the foal. "Keep close to Kera!" Rainbow twirled over him. "Nightshade—!"
"Right!" Nightshade squinted, spinning around and taking a swift survey of the machine world. "Hmmm... a lot more pendulums than I remembered."
Rainbow winced, feeling the thuds of shell cannons far overhead. "Nightshade, will you—"
"Ah, but of course." Nightshade motioned before galloping off in a random direction. "This way! Do not tary!"
"Come on, guys!" Rainbow Dash shouted as she flew after the unicorn. "It's now or never!"
Zaid planted Kera onto his backside and galloped breathlessly after the two. Kera clung hard to both the book and the stallion's spine. The light followed them like a floating aura of gold and lavender shimmer, and soon they were lost in the depths of the machine.
"Hrrrrrghhh-Gaaah!" Seclorum pushed with all his strength.
At last, Josho slipped, his limbs flailing. He lost his telekinetic grip of the poleaxe and plunged over the cliff's edge.
The veins in the fat stallion's neck pulsated, and he summoned a burst of energy behind him with a remaining ounce of strength. The shockwave propelled him forward, but all he managed to do was grab onto the cliff with the crooks of his hooves.
He dangled loosely, his breath coming in quick, gunshot grunts. The cliff was slippery at best, and he felt himself already sliding down one centimeter at a time. It was hard to hear anything but shell cannons from beyond the pounding noise of his own heartbeats, but soon the shuffle of Seclorum's hooves tickled his senses. Josho looked up in time for his old friend's shadow to cover his face.
"Face it, Josho. We both died long ago," the stallion spoke against his rattling metal braces. "I'm simply doing you a favor. Soon enough, I'll even join you."
Josho frowned. "Go sit on your mother's forehead and rotate," he spat.
Seclorum's nostrils flared. "Ledo, you're fat." And he slammed his hoof over Josho's horn.
Only he didn't, for a floating shield blocked the fatal blow.
"Huh?!" Seclorum looked up, only to have that same shield slam into his metal frame. "Gaaah!"
As Seclorum fell back, Eagle Eye slid into view, anchoring himself with a sword stabbed into the muddy earth. "Leave him alone, you rust bucket!"
"'Rust bucket?'" Josho sputtered, slipping a little more. "That the best you can do, fruit basket?!"
"You're welcome, fatso!" Eagle Eye turned and tugged at Josho's upper body with his horn. "Nnnnnngh!" He pulled the stallion at least halfway up the cliff's edge. "Darn it, after all of that solo hiking, one would think you'd lost a few pounds—"
Josho pointed with his horn over Eagle's shoulder. "Look alive, princess!"
"Huh?!" Eagle spun, then swiftly crossed his weapons. "Whoah!"
Clang! Seclorum's metal-laced fits slammed into Eagle's guard. Sneering, the old stallion swung at him again, grunting.
Eagle jumped, jumped again, and rolled sideways through the mud to dodge the pony's constant attacks. As Seclorum drew him towards the rubble-strewn edge of the plateau, Josho watched nervously, using raw strength to pull the rest of his body up onto even ground.