The Naga was, to say the least, quite surprised at this turn of events.
That surprise let Raj close the distance and chop an ax into her tail, the whole head sinking through her ivory scales. She let out a bloodcurdling scream of agony and squirmed, slapping him in the stomach with a flex of her muscular body that set him back a step. It shouted at him “Bastard! Miserable, simian bastard!”
Raj chose not to respond and dashed forward, closing on the Naga again. The creature slithered back, still facing him, but writhing its body into a gray blur as it ate up ground to get away from him. Raj chased after, swiping at the waving tail when he managed to get near enough.
The Naga went low into a knot of bushes and slithered out of sight. Rather than wade through it, Raj jinked to the side and ran along it, scanning the dense foliage for flashes of white.
A quick flash of eye-shine alerted him and he twitched his legs, launching himself high. The long serpent sailed from the bush, scales painted a polished black. The Naga sailed underneath him and struck the ground with a soft rustle.
Raj twisted in midair, trying to bring his feet underneath him. He managed it just barely and hit the ground in a slide, dropping to a knee when he knocked against a root.
He caught dim light reflecting off of something glossy and something hard and unyielding slapped him in the face. He let out a pained bark and went flying. He hit a tree chest first and bounced off before falling to the ground in a heap.
His eyes fluttered open to see a black mass descending on him. On instinct he rolled, narrowly evading the Naga's descending tail. The heavy mass slammed the ground hard enough to blast a wave of grit and dust his way.
Raj sprang up and ducked out of the way of the tail's backstroke narrowly enough he felt the edges of the scales catch on his hair. He tracked it back to the main mass of snake some fifteen feet away. He grinned and set himself. The color change threw him for a minute, but he could follow it now.
The Naga hissed and swayed, uncoiling it's tail from where it sat. The wholeness of it wobbled as it lashed out again, whip-crack fast.
Raj followed it and slashed out with his axes in a wide cross, slicing through meat and bone. Hot blood splashed across him and a sizable weight thudded into his stomach. At his feet lay a two-foot section of the Naga's tail.
“My tail!” The creature awakened the night with an earsplitting howl, the stump of her tail gushing blood. She held it in front of her face for a moment and glared mad anger at Rajrishi. “You ruined my tail you barbaric simian!”
Raj replied “Yup.”
The Naga blinked and shook with rage, her scales flickering a deep red for a moment. She writhed and flashed her stump of a tail at Rajrishi in an unfolding thrust.
Raj caught the attack with another of his own and swung down, burying the heads of his axes in her flesh. Before he could draw them out to strike again, the Naga violently pulled her tail back hauling Raj into the air by his axes. Raj let out a short scream as the Naga swung him to the side and flicked her tail, causing Raj to snap out wide and the straps connecting him to his axes to break, sending him spinning into the trunk of an oak tree.
He let out a pitiless groan, forcing himself up to his feet. He rubbed at his sore wrists, astounded that they hadn't broken from being flailed around like that. He looked at the Naga to see it his axes still embedded in its stump. He groused to himself “I have got to stop doing that.”
The Naga bit the axes from her tail and flicked them away into the underbrush. She let out a hissing laugh. “What can you do without your toys?”
Raj raised his guard “Come and find out.”
The Naga opened its mouth, the edges splitting beyond her cheeks until she showed a fanged maw large enough to swallow a beach ball. As fast as thought, she launched herself at Rajrishi, mouth wide and fangs gleaming.
Through some miracle of adrenaline he managed to bring his hands up to guard, catching her jaws in his palms between the knife-like fangs. He leaned back, straining and grunting against the Naga's power. Her tongue darted out and slathered his face in drool as droplets of silver venom leaked onto his chest from fangs as long as his forearm.
Before he could do anything, coils of her body encircled his legs. Swearing, he struggled against it while holding her mouth at bay but she simply readjusted to his efforts. In a moment she was up to his stomach and with a sudden painful squeeze he felt the breath seize from his lungs. A wet chuckle bubbled from her throat as he felt his strength start to fail and her mouth inched closer.
A pencil thick beam of brilliant fire lanced in and burned a jagged line across the side of her head, the scales along it burning into a mottled green. The Naga shrieked madly, writhing and shaking. Raj released her lower jaw and struck upwards, punching her in the roof of her mouth. Her eyes bulged wide from the sudden pain and she uncoiled herself violently, sending Rajrishi spinning away.
Rajrishi hit the ground hard and skidded. He sucked air greedily and rose, hands up and ready. He scanned around and saw the bloody tip of a tail escaping into a hedge and cursed.
A burst of light occurred and a purple unicorn materialized next to him. She looked up at him and asked “Are you okay?”
Like many things Rajrishi had run into in his time in Equestria, he decided to to question it. “I'm fine. That fire was you?”
She nodded “Yeah, basic Searing Ray spell. Here, you dropped this.” she floated one of his dropped axes over to him.
Raj grabbed it from the air. “Thanks. Not sure how useful it'll be, she seemed more annoyed when I cut her tail off than anything else.”
“Naga can regenerate. Anything that doesn't kill them will heal pretty quickly. Except for fire that is.”
“Great. Anything else?”
“They're Chameleochromatic. They can change their hue at will.”
“I think I figured that one out already. I can't follow it any distance because I keep losing track of it. The thing's the size of a house, it shouldn't be able to do that.”
“I have an idea. Hold on.” Light flared over Twilight's horn and she closed her eyes, humming in concentration. Energy gathered and burst out in smoking flares that hung in the air, casting light across a wide area.
“Better.” He said back quickly.
They heard the whisper of scales on foliage nearby and turned to it in time to see a glossy black shape diving at them. Raj jumped on reflex, but the Naga wasn't going for him, it was after Twilight. The little pony realized it at the last second and focused, disappearing in another flash of light. The Naga dove through the area she previously occupied and crashed into the base of a maple tree. Twilight reappeared and instant later and fired a flurry of flaming streaks that alighted her hide and set her into pained screams. Her many eyes settled on Twilight and she reared back to strike.
Raj bounced off a foot and dove at her exposed back, hacking his ax through her hood and hooking on her flesh. Raj looped an arm around her mass, clenching under her mouth and squeezing to close her airway. The Naga started flailing madly, her whole body going into a blurry writhe.
Twilight sparked her horn and continued firing lances of flame. “Hold her still! I can't get a shot.” She shouted.
“Trying!” He yelled back, his voice pitching with chaotic motion. He curled his legs around her body to stay attached and kept squeezing, intent on strangling the snake. The Naga let out pained gasps and hisses in an effort to fight for breath even as she slithered and writhed to avoid Twilight's fire.
The purple pony was too focused however, and didn't see the Naga's mutilated tail sweep in at her until the very last instant. She tried to gather the energy for a teleport but lost the spell when the tail slammed into her broadside. She let out a squeak of pain and flew into the thicket.
“Twilight!” yelled Raj as he watched the purple pony sail off. Growling, he reared back his ax and swung again, chopping into her hood and obliterating her outermost eye. The Naga let out a high-pitched yowl as loud as it was able and started to thrash. In her flailing, she smacked Raj against the trunk of a tree hard enough for him to cry out.
That gave her an idea. The Naga shivered, reared up, and then swung backwards to slam the back of its hood into the ground. Raj let out a scream of pain as he was crushed into the dirt and his arms went limp. The Naga pulled itself out of his grip and turned around, coiling her bulk under herself again. Before Raj could manage to stand the Naga whipped forward, maw wide and fangs bared.
Raj brought his arms up to defend, ax held out. A purple flash scoured his vision and Twilight appeared over him, his head sitting between her forelegs. A warning was forming on his lips when her horn flared brilliantly and the two of them were covered in a dome of violet light.
The Naga couldn't have stopped itself even if it wanted to. It sailed into the shield with enough force the tips of its fangs punched through the dome and hooked on the magical construct. Reflex took over and the rest of the snake's body swung in and wrapped around the dome, trying to constrict it. The coils pressed into it, but the magic held strong as the Naga tried to pull its mouth free from the dome.
Rajrishi looked around at the patternless scales and the gross anatomy of the Naga's mouth pressing into the dome in a kind of haze, not really sure what he was looking at. Over him, Twilight set her hooves and closed her eyes, more energy flowing into and through her horn.
“Never come back.” She whispered, her voice echoing oddly. “Never.”
Her eyes flashed white as the shield evaporated and a swirling mass of lavender light blasted from her horn. The Naga was struck and dragged up by it, pulled through the canopy and carried along a blazing comet of arcane energy off into the sky, shrieking and spitting all the while. The last thing Raj saw of it was a twinkling light disappearing over the horizon.
Twilight shook her head and settled back on her haunches. “Whoo, that was harder than I expected. Took way more out of me.” She blew at the smoke curling off of her horn. “Are you okay Rajrishi?”
He didn't answer her. He just stared at the hole that was now punched in the roof over the forest.
“Rajrishi?” she shook his arm. “Are you...”
Raj started, suddenly forced back into awareness, and sat up “Yeah, yeah I'm fine. That was, that was something else. How...?”
“Magister Sunspot's Arc Wave spell and a basic Bubble Dome over both of us. I added the Geoform Principle to the dome for a little more tensile strength and I amped them both up pretty heavily, to be honest. Still, I was not expecting its fangs to punch through like that. I guess I was more worn out than I expected.” She laughed at little.
“That... that was incredible, right? Not all unicorns can do that?
She cocked her head. "Um, no I don't think they could."
"Glad I had you with me then. I don't think I would have managed without you.”
Twilight looked away, suddenly abashed “You'd have figured something out, I'm sure. Heck, you wouldn't have even gotten into a fight if I wasn't here. The thing wanted to eat me, remember?”
“I don't think I have it in me to be on good terms with something that seems to like eating ponies that much. We would have come to blows eventually, and I'm glad you were here to help.”
“Well, um, your welcome Rajrishi.” She smiled “I hope this means you'll answer a few more of questions?”
Raj laughed “Sure, but let's check on the Arch first. Then I'll tell you whatever you want.” He started toward it and made it about ten steps before he was struck by a sudden vertigo and his balance left him. He slumped to the side, leaning heavily into a tree.
“Rajrishi?” she trotted to his side “What's wrong, are you okay?”
“Fine, just, just coming down from a combat high. Happens all the time.” He palmed his skull and blinked rapidly. “Just need to walk it-” he was interrupted by a sudden need to void his stomach on the forest floor.
“Ugh!” Twilight danced back, her horn sparking a light over them both. “What's wrong?”
Raj finished his messy emesis and sat there, recuperating for a moment. He held up a hand and said “Okay, that was unexpected, I'll admit, but I think-” he was interrupted again by a sudden stream of vomit that refused to cease.
Twilight's expression went grave. “Rajrishi, did the Naga bite you? Bite you at all?”
He wiped with mouth with his wrist and made a few unpleasant groans before muttering back. “No, she didn't.”
“Did any get on you, or exposed to any open cuts? Think hard.”
Raj leaned back. “No, but she dripped some onto my chest.” He looked down at the crisscross of thin scratches on his torso and the thin, metallic glaze covering them. “...oh.”
Twilight's eyes widened “No.” she grabbed at bottle from the pile of possessions in her horngrip and tore the water out of it, forming into into a funnel and started pressure washing his cuts. He leaned back, letting her work and tried to fight down the need to vomit for a third time. Once he was clean Twilight darted forward and spread open one of his cuts, shining her light and peering into it. She froze and backed away, murmuring “No, no, no, no...”
“Twilight, what's wrong?”
“Naga venom. Really dangerous.”
“Venom? Fine, is there an antidote or anything? Maybe some spell?”
“A spell? Right, yes, of course!” Her horn flare and a pulse of magic traveled into his chest.
He jolted with it and clutched to himself, groaning. “Is that, is that supposed to happen?”
Her face fell “It must've fully catalyzed in your bloodstream by now, adrenaline blocked the initial effects but probably heightened the circulation. Nothing to suction out, nothing to amputate...” She started rambling, her gaze somewhere far away.
“Twilight, what's going to happen to me?” Raj asked gravely.
Twilight Sparkle bit her lip and looked him straight on, eyes brimming with tears. “You're going to die.”