//------------------------------// // Solar Eclipse // Story: Predatory // by Crazy Laughter //------------------------------// Here you go. Possibly the second to last chapter, plus an epiloque. I would hate to set anything in stone, as my plans as to where and how to end this fic has been destroyed time and time again, by my own imagination. Solar Eclipse With the most powerful healer in Equestria, Princess Celestia herself, tending to the wounded in his squad Kamos could breathe a little easier knowing there would likely be no more casualties in this great failure of an operation. Sure, there was more than enough blame to be thrown around as for letting Fenrir even get this far in his homicidal plans, but Kamos had a responsibility to not lead those under him into undue danger. It had been his hubris that caused him to ignore the Element of Laughter’s potential as a tactical asset and led to whatever deaths came from fighting Fenrir in his own terms.   “Kamos, I’ll leave the rest of the guards here to guard Luna. I’ve given them orders to rush into the caves if the dogs wake up, so I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t pull rank on them.” Kamos looked to the side and saw Regal Poise next to him. The fact he hadn’t been aware of the unicorn approaching him spoke for the severity of his supposed concussion. Kamos glanced behind the upstart colt and saw the conscious elements grouped behind him, along with the earth pony guards and the unicorns, Cerulean Wind being the only pegasi guard in the group.   “Your raiding party is still unwieldy if the dogs do regain consciousness. Leave two more earth ponies up here and the ones you have will not get in each other’s way in the cramped tunnels. You should also leave a few unicorns here to run in with the earth ponies, as they would have to force their way through the whole den in the worst case scenario.” The colt had the common sense not to get insulted by critique and nodded to the ponies behind him. The commanding earth pony officer pointed out two unicorns and two earth ponies that detached from the group and trotted over to them.   “I appreciate the advice, Kamos. I’ll make sure there are no more casualties in this - Uh…” The colt might have realized just what he was going to say in front of a superior officer and one of the princesses, or he might have just been at a loss for words. It didn’t matter either way, Kamos was more than happy to finish the thought.   “I believe the word you are looking for is “clusterfuck”. Fenrir should have been stopped before he even reached Ponyville, but there is more than one pony that is to blame for that oversight.” Kamos turned his attention fully on the armored colt and the enchantment bled away under his gaze. The effect was only apparent to him, but he knew ponies felt him looking them in their real eyes, even if they did not understand it. Kamos had to commend the colt for not breaking eye contact, as he’d seen guards far senior to the colt avert their gaze at the unfamiliar feeling, probably thinking he was using his zebra magic on them or some such excuse.   “Right now you have a duty to bring those three fillies to safety. Whatever blame there is to throw around for this fiasco will be addressed after Fenrir and his machinations have been dealt with and civilians are in no direct danger. It is your duty to make that happen, as it is my duty to ensure Princess Luna’s safety.” Kamos suppressed a cough as he raised a hoof slightly toward Luna’s prone form. Her eyes had drifted closed, but the silvery glow of her horn made it apparent that the alicorn was in the middle of whatever spell she had devised to save the victims of her selfishness.   “Thank you, sir.” The colt said while meeting his eyes without flinching. There was real promise in the colt if he could be so level-headed after watching his brother die. No doubt he would be grieving and unable to think clearly as soon as the situation settled somewhat, but to be able to put that on hold was commendable. The disillusioned guard trotted back over to his unnecessarily large rescue party and had them move toward the entrance to the caves with a few hushed words. Kamos noted the Element of Kindness and a ferret leading the group. There was some credence to those special powers as well, it seemed.   “I wonder what else I have ignored because of my own stubbornness…” Kamos muttered to himself, quietly cursing his more and more obvious concussion as one of his operatives landed next to him. Well, he would probably have called him over a moment later regardless, so there’s no harm done. He turned his head toward the pony ever so slightly and started talking before the pony could utter a word.   “Gather those of you who are still able to fulfill their duties and those who Celestia clears to do so. We should make sure all dogs above ground are restrained. Also, order one of our healers here, if Celestia has no immediate need for them.” The pony jumped into the sky without any further ceremony. Kamos had never really cared for useless ceremony like saluting and those who worked under him knew it and only did it if they were based in the guard, or felt like it. The military minds in Equestria couldn’t grasp the concept that forcing a quadruped to raise one of their legs off the ground impaired their ability to do pretty much anything the following seconds, magic or no magic. Upset an unicorn’s balance and they’ll be too busy on getting their feet under them to stop the knife going into their neck.   “I... Luna... the night… Alicorn… Moon…” Kamos perked his ears as Luna muttered the words weakly. He could not make out the full sentence, but it sounded like Luna had to reassert her identity while she was inside the wolf’s mind. Kamos knew very little about the mechanics of the kind of magic Luna was working with, but he knew more than most. If she was really reaching into Fenrir’s mind to extract the foreign consciousness, then she needed to assert her own identity to differentiate between Fenrir and the other soul.   “I am Luna, Princess of the Night.” This time Kamos could hear Luna whisper the words out, barely disrupting her calm breathing and nearly inaudible. “I am Luna, Alicorn of the Moon and the Night.”   Could Fenrir really have enough of a mental presence to overpower the Princess of the Night? Kamos kept an ear directed towards Luna, as he glanced over at the prone form of the great wolf. Well, Fenrir was the most obvious threat in the real world, but the other soul was the one that had changed Fenrir from a simple beast into a real threat. They could very well have a reason to attack the princess, if not for any other reason than being subjected to Fenrir’s insane anger.   “12 pegasi active as of now, sir. The unicorn healer will arrive shortly.” Kamos flicked an ear towards the pegasi and nodded slightly while keeping his other ear pointed at Luna. Externally terminating the spell would be too dangerous, so he should focus on keeping Luna’s body safe. Repeating Luna’s affirmation of identity could also help her cement herself further.    “Stay silent, as not to awaken the other dogs prematurely. Try and keep the dog’s paws off the ground, as their magic allows them to manipulate it.” The pegasus he was addressing nodded and sped off to relay his instructions to the others. Good underlings were hard to find, but they were invaluable assets, when you actually stumbled on one. He was proud to say that most of the ponies and other races in his network excelled at being excellent underlings and some even showed promise at leading others, if given the proper motivation and training.    “I am Luna, Princess of the Night.” Luna muttered in a strained voice as her wings quivered and her legs fidgeted in her sleep. Kamos shuffled a little closer to his Princess, so he could hear the rest of the mantra clearly. “I am Princess Luna, Alicorn of the Moon and the Night.”   “You are Luna, Princess of the Night.” Kamos said in a clear voice in response to his princess. Luna’s horn shimmered back into life as her face contorted in discomfort. This couldn’t be his fault, could it? He decided to finish the mantra regardless, at least this one time. “You are Princess Luna, Alicorn of the Moon and the Night.”   For a few moments Luna’s features calmed somewhat and her body unwound the tension that had been building up. Kamos noticed these signs and sighed a little in relief, but he also noted that the glow of Luna’s horn had only become brighter. He should probably step back if there was a backlash from the spell coming.   All such idle thoughts of self-preservation were pushed out of his mind as the silvery glow of Luna’s horn suddenly intensified into a flare of white light and obscured the alicorns form for a good 20 seconds. He briefly wondered why he wasn’t in more pain if this was the backlash from the intricate spell Luna had cast, when the light dimmed enough for him to see what had happened. He could feel his underlings stopping what they were doing to stare at what had happened to their monarch of the Night, he couldn’t blame them for it though, as he was also struck speechless for a moment.   Where there had once been an alicorn painted in the colors of the night she ruled over, now there was some kind of elongated ape thing lying on their side. It didn’t have any fur that he could see, apart from places he would rather not let his eyes wander and the head. Kamos stood there in shock, taking in the details of this surprising transformation in numb amazement.   The elongated ape thing had long and muscular hind legs and two shorter forelimbs with less obvious musculature, ending in delicate and long-fingered hands with four fingers and a thumb, curled into loose fists on the ground. Strangely, the breast muscles were abnormally well developed, when looking at the relatively thin forelimbs. The muscle was strangely limp while in rest, though...   Nope, those were teats, definitely the mammaries of this strange form, if the appearance of a dark perky nipple was any indication. Now, Kamos might not be the fairy tale variety of knight in shining armor, but he did assume his knighthood still came with some guidelines of behaviour he should follow. He quickly emptied his cloak of anything overtly poisonous and sharp and slung the dark cloth over the unconscious body of his princess. Luna fidgeted in her sleep and used those dexterous forelimbs to pull the cloak closer and curl up smaller on the ground. Kamos almost missed the mantra she was muttering while she curled up under his cloak, but quickly leaned closer to see what he could learn.   “I am Luna, Princess of the Night.” The strange form of his princess moved one forelimb under her head and kicked at his cloak with those long legs. Kamos idly reasoned the ape must be bipedal for the length of the legs and the relatively dainty forelimbs. “I am Princess Luna, Avatar of the Moon and the NIght.”   “Sir, is this why you called me here? If so, then I don’t think I will be much help.” Kamos snapped his attention from his transformed princess and to the cloaked unicorn next to him. He was well aware that no unicorn in his forces could help Luna out of whatever trouble landed her in such a predicament. He doubted anypony other than Celestia would even know where to start.   “A pegasi will immediately rush to inform Celestia of what transpired here. Whatever she orders is what we will do. Keep restraining the dogs and make sure there is a perimeter around the princess.” Kamos spoke in a calm voice to the dark woods around him. He did not raise his voice, as to not awaken the dogs still not restrained. “And no, I called you here to heal me of the injuries I got in the fight against Fenrir, so if you would.”   There was a crisp “Yes, sir!” from both the unicorn next to him and the pegasi volunteer somewhere among the trees. He would have admonished them from their volume, but his head was hurting enough as it was. They knew the folly of their actions, if any shred of his training had stuck with them.  Spot   “Yes, Sir!” A pony somewhere above ground shouted and jolted Spot awake from his unnatural sleep. He reminded himself to stay still and quiet, even if his first instinct was to jump up and get back to the fight. He remembered being the last dog to succumb to the magical sleep, so the the battle was most likely over. It would not do to alert ponies to himself, wait and strike when it suits you best, is what Fenrir had told them.   He waited for a whole of one minute, which he counted second by second in his head, and opened his eyes when he neither heard or felt ponies moving in the tunnels near him. There was a faint feeling of many hooves striking stone deeper in the den, but no ponies on the level he was in. He put his paws under him and straightened himself from leaning on his spear. he picked it up and noted that it was one of the dragon bone kind. The bone even amplified sound, it seemed.   The small diamond slung the spear on his back on a bit of string he had hastily tied on the pommel before going to sleep and started to carefully make his way through the unusually quiet den. The battle up top was most likely won by the ponies at this point. Waking the rest of the dogs would only cause undue chaos. Chaos he could use to turn the tide if there weren’t two alicorns helping the ponies. The battle had been lost, but the war was far from seeing its last casualty.   “Nothing is true, everything is permitted.” Spot whispered thoughtfully as he nudged a grunt awake carefully. He was deep enough in the caves to be out of hearing range for any pony on the surface and definitely far enough from the group in the den. The ponies were probably going for the three little fillies. Fenrir had specified them to be mostly unharmed, as long as the ponies didn’t use the Elements against him. Spot didn’t know if the Elements were what had knocked his fellow dogs unconscious, but he couldn’t see the point in harming the little ponies if Fenrir had already been beaten.   “Silence, dog. I need you to carry something for me. Stay quiet and follow me. We will not bow to the Light.” The dim-witted dog blinked blearily before straightening his more impressive frame from the ground and grunting an affirmative. Spot grinned at the thoughts whirring in his head. In the past, when they still thought the Light to be absolute, he would have been the first groveling at Celestia’s hooves and begging for mercy, not anymore, never again.   The Dark was no omnipotent deity they were supposed to revere and sacrifice their dim-witted devotion towards. The “Dark” Fenrir had introduced them to was a way of thinking, an ideology, without a god to unnecessarily limit their thoughts and actions into a predetermined mold. The Dark he revered could very well mean something else to another dog, but he wholeheartedly believed that the Light Celestia so obviously represented only brought stagnation and a subservient mindset to his kin. They needed to claw out a place in this world, by any means they could, even if that made the whole world an enemy.   Fenrir had given them the purpose and the means, now it was up to him to carry that creed onto others. Yet, there was something he had to do before that could be possible. Fenrir had lost in his gamble against the Elements, but there were other ways to hurt the Light, means far more direct than what Fenrir had done.   Spot dropped down from the tunnel leading to the old forge deeper in the den than the ones they had cobbled together up above to work on the dragon bone. The more intricate and large metal crafting had to be done here and it was the reason the thing he was looking for was out of the reach of the ponies. He was only a level above the ponies rescuing the three fillies and sound carried well in the caves, so he would have to stay quiet. He grinned from ear to ear as he saw the great shiny cylinder of polished metal sitting on one of the stone work tables. A knocked out forgemaster laying closeby.   “Bitches love cannons...” The forgemaster mumbled as Spot nudged him awake. The dog snapped his eyes open and was up on his paws and clutching a long and heavy wrench in the next second. The old and smart dog relaxed after seeing the two other dogs and his work still undisturbed. Spot bowed respectfully towards the old dog before speaking.   “We need the cannon. How fast can you make it ready to fire.” Spot simply asked, as the old dog stretched his limbs. The old dog’s eyes traveled across his workstation and the materials in the forge for a moment, before he scratched his jaw, obviously contemplating the question carefully.   “If you mix the boom-powder, ten minutes. We have only one of the shells for it, one shot, propped against a tree or rock. No time to make a stand for it, yes?” Spot nodded and tapped the ground with a paw. The old dog put a paw on the ground and felt the ponies in the den below them. “Noisy work, ponies will know. Wake up half the den.”   “We know den, ponies will be busy with the rest of the dogs.” Spot answered after a moment of contemplation. He had hoped to grab the cannon silently, but the rest of the den waking up would have to serve as a distraction instead. The old dog only shrugged before grabbing a fist-sized chunk of metal from the red-hot coals in the forge and starting to pound and twist it into the shape he needed with a hammer and his bare paws. Spot quickly hopped into the adjacent room and started to mix the acrid smelling gunpowder with the grounded up bits of dragon-bone, extremely carefully.   Regal Poise   The group walked gingerly through the den’s tunnels, carefully sidestepping any dogs the found laying on the ground, taking their weapons with them if they could disarm them without waking them. It was unfortunate that most of the dogs tended to snuggle their weapons, but miraculously none of the ones they had decided to disarm had woken up. They still left more than a dozen armed dogs behind, and that was only the tunnels they used to go down towards where the fillies were.   “He thinks we’re getting close.” The quiet pegasus mare whispered to him as the ferret leading them chittered something toward them. Fluttershy kept her head hunched close to the little critter to catch his directions, while Cerulean Wind to her right kept her ears and eyes on a swivel to catch any possible attack before it reached the obviously terrified mare. Regal Poise was walking along on Fluttershy’s left with a quick directional shield halfway charged in his horn. He would stop any possible attack, while the unicorns behind him would incapacitate the attacker, if it was a lone attacker. If they were to be assaulted by a group, the earth ponies would charge the dogs, to give him time to cast a spell to put them back to sleep. His brother had been the magic geek, but he knew some uncommon spells from his time in ambassadorial duties.   “Good.” He curtly answered with a nod. He was aware of the Elements being worried for his change in demeanour and he was pretty sure they could figure out the reason for it. He could feel the anger and dumb-founded sadness over the fact that his brother had died because of the misplaced ire of some eldritch abomination from the literal Tartarus. He knew his brother had died a hero and that accepting the risk of personal harm was part of joining the guard, but he would have rathered for him to live as a coward, rather than die while protecting six naive mares from the dangers of trying to talk down a monster.   “We… We’re all sorry for your loss.” One of the aforementioned mares tentatively said. He probably could have deduced which one from the voice, but he was too preoccupied in not venting his frustration on them to bother. He didn’t turn around, or respond in any way that indicated that he had heard the comment. He was not in the mood to deal with condolences and this was really not the time for them.   “He knows, now’s not the time, though.” Cerulean Wind whispered back to the mares with a disapproving glare toward him. He knew he should at least have the manners to address them himself, but he didn’t trust his temper enough not to blame them for his brother’s death. Starting down that road now would not help anyone involved.   “Uhm… we should maybe stop.” Fluttershy piped into the uncomfortable silence after a few more disorienting turns in the tunnels. Regal Poise snapped his attention to the ferret and saw him bounding this way and that in the dreary and nearly identical stretch of tunnel they were in. He signaled for the group to stop silently and watched the ferret keep going to and fro with his nose to the ground, before stopping in front of a blank piece of wall and tapping on it with a paw confidently.   “Not tah be rude to yer little friend, Fluttershy, but that there’s a wall.” Applejack commented in an annoyed tone. He could understand her worry for her sibling, but her attitude was annoying. He breathed slowly and cleared his throat; his rational mind reminded that he could probably find anything the mares did annoying for a good while.   “The Diamond Dogs have magic that allows them to both dig through the earth and mend it if need be. The sparsity of support columns in these tunnels should be proof enough of that fact.” A part of him admonished him for his tone towards the mare, noting that he could just as well mentioned that the master masons keeping Canterlot castle together employed Diamond Dogs for that reason and that he had seen more than a few working at smithies around Equestria. He didn’t feel that it was fair of him to be so petty when the mare’s sister had come very close to sharing his brother’s fate, but he couldn’t stop his anger from trying to find something, or somepony, to vent it on.   “I will hold a muffling spell in place around the wall. One unicorn and an earth pony guard; make a hole. I will not hear anything while keeping the spell up, so step away from me and keep your ears and eyes open.” The group of guards nodded and led the Element Bearers a little ways back, while the indicated guards stayed behind to break the wall and Cerulean Wind stepped past him to stand guard on the other side of his spell. After a couple of nods between the other guards he closed his eyes and focused on the spell, making sure it spread out to encompass the wall in itself, as the vibrations in the rock could wake up dogs just as effectively as the sound from breaking the wall.   He couldn’t have maintained the spell more than half a minute when he felt a panicked prodding on his side from the side Cerulean Wind was guarding. He opened his eye and slowly turned towards the mare, still keeping focus on the spell. Cerulean Wind was hovering next to him in the cramped tunnel and used a rear hoof to prod him while brandishing her spear with her fore hooves. He edged his head to the side and saw the diamond dog she was so worried about standing at the bend of the tunnel.   He glanced at the two guards working on the wall and saw that the hole was large enough and the two guards were motioning toward the rest of the group to help them grabbing the fillies. He turned back to the diamond dog to see him charging and Cerulean Wind preparing to meet it halfway. Without blinking he poured every ounce of magical energy he had been using to maintain the muffling spell to wrench the spear out of Cerulean Wind’s hooves and to propel it at the charging diamond dog. Sound rushed back to the world and he could hear the spear impaling the dog in the neck with enough force to both stop its charge and for the spearhead to knock the dog’s helmet off. He used the falling dog’s weight to slide the bloodied spear back out through the hole it had made and placed it back in Cerulean Wind’s hooves.   He had just killed another living, thinking and feeling thing. His rational side pondered on the possibility that he might be haunted by that fact in the future, but the rest of him just wondered if Cerulean Wind would be terribly upset if he were to hand the sullied spear back to her. Right at that moment he just knew that he wouldn’t let the dogs take anymore lives and didn’t care if he had to strangle them all personally to do it. After a moment of deliberation, he levitated his own spear to Cerulean Wind.   “Can you use an unicorn spear, or do you want your own back?” Cerulean Wind gave him a strange look before sizing up the shorter and thicker spear. Unicorn spears were made to have more weight behind them and to be more maneuverable through magic via the special wood the pommels were carved out of, but the differences in the build of the spears were minimal just for situations such as this. Cerulean Wind simply nodded and grabbed the spear out of his magical aura.   “Good, let’s try not to wake the foals and move toward the exit. The non-combatants in the middle, standard escort formation, we will engage the dogs only if absolutely necessary.” The rest of the group fell in line behind him in silence, the three fillies miraculously still asleep, despite the howls of the waking dogs and the sound of metal banging against metal in the tunnels around them. Celestia   Kamos’s group of cut-throats and spies had received some rather gruesome and debilitating injuries when they had fought Fenrir and the dogs. She had always had enough power to pour into crude healing spells to get results and now she had a thousand years of experience, so what had been a field hospital full of groaning and suffering ponies had been swiftly turned into a haphazard circle of levitating ponies being bathed in a general anaesthetic and healing spell to keep them stable, while Celestia attended to their injuries one by one. She had no patience for half-measures, even if her sun was not in the sky to continuously restock her reserve of magic.   “The healers at Canterlot would frown upon me doing something like this, so I hope you can keep this between us. It’s hard enough to try and get them to realize that they need more than one unicorn for the spells I show them.” Celestia idly mused as she reconstructed a pegasi’s leg while the stallion was unconscious. There was a murmur of acceptance from the ponies she was healing and the few unicorn healers standing on the sidelines. The unicorn healers of Canterlot had a reputation for being quite arrogant, as a good portion of them came from noble houses.   “I mean, I have nothing against a healthy amount of confidence in my little ponies, but it is both unhealthy for them and their patient if they overestimate themselves. Give me one of those acupuncture needles, would you?” Celestia saw the unicorn closest to her flinch a little, but eventually the pony levitated a long and thin needle to her. She nodded a wordless thank you and poked the needle at the base of the freshly grown limb. She noted with some interest that one half of it was covered in a rubbery substance, so that races other than unicorns could manipulate them. She then levitated the unconscious pony over to the cloaked healers and saw the pony she assumed to be an acupuncture specialist take hold of him with their magic.   “You should make sure that needle stays in for at least four hours. It simply dulls the tingling enough to keep him asleep, but you can add to it if you wish.” Celestia turned back to the ponies floating around her, gently floating down the ones that had been healed while she focused on reconstructing a limb. There were still a few nasty gashes from the diamond dogs’ claws that would be infected if not tended to, but nothing on the scale of a missing limb. Her initial healing magic had already reduced the wounds to not be life threatening, but as long as she was here she might as well heal them to completion.   She was nearly done with this, humming an old melody while Kamos’s unicorns watched in what she presumed to be admiring silence, when one of the pegasi appeared in front of her from the sky. She felt a little proud for not flinching at the pegasi’s sudden appearance and calmly turned her head toward the pony. The pegasi glanced at the few floating ponies, then back to her and then took half a step towards her, as if to say something, but glanced at the floating ponies again.   “Go on, say what you were sent to say. None of your comrades are in any danger if my concentration wavers. I simply decided to heal them to completion, while I was still here.” The pony’s wings relaxed somewhat at this and Celestia saw the pony nod, either to himself, or as thanks to her.   “Something has happened to Princess Luna, your highness. She has been transformed into an unknown form by her own magic. We await your command.” Celestia snapped her head to the pony at the news. She cut off the magic she was using to heal the ponies still floating around her, their wounds comparable to papercuts at that point.   “What was the color of her skin? Did she still have her wings and horn? Is she still unconscious?” Celestia asked with a little more intensity than necessary.   “Princess Luna is still unconscious and seems unharmed. I did not see her close enough to be certain of her physical characteristics, other than she is no longer a pony, nor was she a wolf.” Celestia nodded towards the sky and spread her wings. The pegasi understood the message and took to the sky, leading her back towards where her sister was.   The spell Luna had created placed a mental projection into Fenrir’s mind and body, so killing the beast at this point would hurt her sister immensely, but she was nowhere near as practiced in mental magic to know how to pull her sister out safely. This was bad, very bad. If the human was able to overpower Luna in her own domain, what could she possibly do to help her sister? The transformation was a sign that Luna had failed to separate herself from the mind of the human to a phenomenal degree, possibly even suggesting the human had attacked her with some kind of mental magic to confuse her identity to such a degree.   “Kamos, tell me what you know.” Celestia bellowed out, barely able to stop herself from shouting at the zebra. The solemn zebra turned to her and nodded.    “Princess Luna transformed into this form about 7 minutes ago, she has not asserted her identity via mantra, as she did before, since right after the transformation. The only difference in this mantra from the other two before it was that she called herself the avatar of the moon, rather than an alicorn. No noticeable change on Fenrir.” Celestia nodded curtly and walked up to her sister’s body with a grim frown on her face.   She levitated Kamos’s cloak from Luna’s form and did indeed see a wholly human body under it, no wings, no horn and no tail. Her coloration and body shape was even different than the otherworldly equivalent they knew about, so this meant that the human had forced his own perspective of her human shape onto her sister. The act of such a forceful perversion of her sister’s psyche enraged her and the fact that the human was even capable of it frightened her somewhat.   “Also, the den woke up with five of the Element Bearers still inside. I sent guards inside to clear a path for them, but I thought you should know.” Kamos said after a moment. Celestia very nearly growled in frustration. Why couldn’t anything just go right for once? Luna just wanted to be nice and merciful and now that little misjudgment was shaping up to be quite a political incident, with at least two deaths in her guard and who knows how many among Kamos’s ponies.   “Enough of this.” The air around her crackled as she concentrated on detecting the life forces inside the cave, while gathering her power for what she was about to do. The Elements had retrieved the fillies from wherever the dogs had been keeping them, but they were trapped behind a portion of the tunnel leading above ground the dogs had presumably collapsed to trap them. She concentrated on a point between the ponies and the dogs she felt charging towards them and released her spell, causing an oval portal as tall as her appear before her. The portal only opened on one side, so the charging dogs ran straight into a pure concentration of her magic, incinerating them in the moment they made contact.   “Come, my little ponies, you are safe.” Celestia assured the stunned faces of the rescue team. She could see her guards panting and sweating under their enchantments and she could also see the weight of what the Elements had seen and done taking an effect on them. They universally had bags under their eyes from the stress of having their lives on the line and Rainbow Dash even had some blood on her hooves. She had hoped for her ponies not to be forced to such extremes in order to ensure the lives of those they cared about.   “Thank you, your highness. Things were starting to look rather dire for us.” Regal Poise admitted, as he crossed the threshold of the portal first, the others quickly following behind, wisely avoiding touching the edges.   “The little ones stayed asleep through all this?” Celestia released the spell holding the portal open and it blinked out of existence in a flash. She gazed at the sleeping fillies with tender eyes for a moment, grateful that some of her ponies could still stay innocent a little while longer, after all that had happened. “You know, Luna was the one not terrified of foals when we were young, if you can believe it.”    “No way! But you’re so super-duper motherly!” Pinkie Pie blurted out in a scandalous whisper, either feigning extreme shock to lift the mood, or really finding the thought of their matriarchal ruler to have been terribly uncertain as to what to do with a crying foal at any point in her life.   “I am also thousands of years old, but the thought of foalsitting still terrifies me.” Celestia light-heartedly admitted and was glad to see uncertain smiles on the faces of the ponies in front of her.   “KRA-BOOM!” There was a terribly loud clap of thunder and Celestia found her ears tinning in the aftershock. Well, that was the Everfree for you, a thunderstorm could sneak up on you with all the trees obscuring the sky and all. She hoped the foals hadn’t woken up from the noise. It could very well be possible, if they slept through being carried through a den of howling diamond dogs.   Celestia felt something dropping on her hoof and she snapped out of her momentary stupor. It was a childish thing to freeze when hearing thunder when she should be worrying about the wellbeing of her subjects instead. SHe focused her eyes to the ponies in front of her and saw their mouths moving in what seemed like slow-motion, but she could not hear a word they said, but the tears in their eyes made it very clear that she should. She tried to focus on a spell to heal her ears, but found it hard to form the formula in her mind, despite the fact it should have been easier than breathing for her.   Her suddenly sluggish mind reminded her of what had snapped her out of her stupor and she glanced down at her hooves. She had to squint her eyes as a sudden spell of dizziness blurred her vision, but after a moment she could finally see her royal regalia on the ground, somehow it had broken off and someone had haphazardly painted it red. She tried to chuckle at the no doubt hilarious prank someone was playing on her, but a sudden pain in her neck made her stumble and fall to the ground. She fell on her wing and her legs didn’t fold right under her, but strangely she couldn’t feel much discomfort from it.   Actually she couldn’t feel much of anything, other than the absolutely freezing rain the unpredictable weather of the Everfree had brought with it. The cold felt like it was seeping into her bones and the constant torrent of water made her eyes blurry and darkened the dark of the night even more. She glanced up to the ponies and tried to tell them to get to cover, so that the foals wouldn’t catch a cold, but she just couldn’t find the energy to talk. Alls she could manage was to keep taking shallow breaths and wonder why her neck felt so warm, when the rest of her felt cold.   She was beginning to suspect that it had not been a clap of thunder after all.