Because of his large size and relatively high capacity for independent thought, Sergeant Macintosh was the one to take the Burrow infusion. The party had him dig the tunnel in a spiraling arc upwards, aiming generally towards the room where they’d left the rest of Rarity’s skeletal dragons. They were about fifty feet short and a level too low when they burst out into a massive dimly lit cavern, with glowing mushrooms growing everywhere, and a waterfall at the south end that fed a meandering stream that ended in a marshy pile of odorous waste to the north.
It was also full to the brim with hundreds of kobolds of all sizes, completely surrounding the new tunnel entrance that Sergeant Macintosh had just opened in the floor. For a few seconds, everypony and kobold stared stupidly at each other.
Applejack was the first to react, walking out into the midst of them. “Okay, y’all. You don’t look like the fightin’ sort, so if you surrender and lay down with your claws behind your heads –“
She was answered with a volley of arrows out of the darkness. Most of them went wide, but one planted itself right in her chest, interrupting her speech.
“If that’s the way you want it,” Twilight shouted, pushing past both Applejack and Macintosh and taking a wild swing with her hammer, which somehow failed to connect with anything – the kobolds were unprepared for a fight, but still small and quick.
Rainbow Dash was right behind her, but sailed up over the crowd and zeroed in on the ones with bows. Behind her, Pinkie Pie threw a vial of flaming alchemist’s fire into the crowd, and the screaming started.
The party was swarmed by panicking kobolds – Twilight and Applejack were surrounded by frenzied little lizard-dogs who desperately clawed at their armor, Macintosh could barely hold back the rampaging horde that was trying to escape down the tunnel the party had come out of, and Pinkie and Rainbow Dash were pelted with dozens of rocks and sticks.
“Hey, stop it! Get away from our friends!” cried the air mephits. Several of them hopped onto Macintosh’s shoulders and head, and breathed cones of sand and grit into the crowd surrounding the party, slicing shallow wounds into their scales, a few of kobolds going down as a particularly nasty shard sliced open their throat or chest. The rest of the mephits leapfrogged into the air and breathed on other parts of the crowd from above, spreading pain and death and panic among the screaming masses.
Then the door – where the two bow-wielding kobolds wearing actual armor and armed with actual weapons were standing, next to a fortified barricade that was pointing the wrong way – exploded in flames. The two guards survived, but dozens of unarmed kobolds, desperately trying to climb the barricade to get out of the room, perished in fire. Then Garble burst from the tunnel, landing in the middle of the crowd and crushing a random kobold in his teeth.
Applejack looked around desperately, but there was nowhere to hide that wasn’t full of screaming kobolds. She killed three of the ones closest to her, and tried to join up with Twilight whose second attempt sent a kobold’s head splattering against the ceiling. Nearby, Macintosh lay about him with his lance.
Four air elementals flew from the cave, turning into whirlwinds and sweeping up any kobold too slow to dodge. Dozens of victims splattered against the walls and ceiling, unable to withstand the crushing winds for more than an instant.
Overhead, Pinkie Pie found herself the focus of the archers’ ire, but her ablative barrier kept the arrows from hurting her as she tossed another vial into the crowd, killing another half dozen. Rainbow Dash was more focused, and zeroed in on the actual warriors, shouting “Elemental Fist!” Lightning flashed, and the body of one of the archers flew over the barrier and into the hallway beyond, landing with a thump.
The rest of the kobolds remained berserk, although none of them were getting any closer to Macintosh, Twilight, or Applejack. A few were trapped in close combat, and the rest threw whatever they could get their claws on, but none did much damage. Some of them aimed at the mephits, but the projectiles passed through the small creatures like they were made out of air.
Rarity gave an insane cackle as she flung another fireball into the densest remaining concentration of kobolds, while her pet dragon lashed out with fangs and claws, tearing apart the panicking creatures that tried to run from him.
Rainbow Dash, standing in front of the southern exit to the cavern, spotted several doors opening in the corridor beyond, and a dozen more kobold warriors charged out into the hallway, while arrows from the far end pinged against the stone walls, narrowly missing her. The remaining kobold next to her glanced nervously at the large lever that was positioned between them, behind the barricade, and tried to push her back away from it, prodding at her with his rapier.
“So you don’t want me to pull this, huh?” Rainbow asked, ducking a second stab and grabbing hold of the lever. “Well, let’s see what it does.”
She gave it a yank, and the floor in the tunnel outside dropped away, dumping the kobold reinforcements into an acid-filled pit. As they screamed and splashed into the hissing green liquid, Rainbow let go of the lever, and the floor closed up, cutting off their agonized shrieks.
“Noooo!” screamed the kobold in anger, just before a fiery bomb exploded in his face and his scream turned to something with less words and more clawing helplessly at his face as his eyes melted. He was put out of his misery by a passing elemental slamming him into the wall and breaking his neck, as the quartet of whirlwinds went screaming down the corridor towards the archers at the far end – only to be stopped by a hastily shut door.
Rainbow Dash turned back to look at how the rest of the party was doing, only to see that aside from the seven of them, and the mephits, nothing in the cavern remained alive.
“That was way too easy,” she said, taking cover behind the barricade and peering over the top to watch for anyone else approaching, her claws on the lever that controlled the trap.
What was left of the kobolds’ mushroom farm was a gruesome field of death. Small flames burned from tents or bodies that had been set alight, illuminating dozens – hundreds of shattered corpses, most of which had died in agony. None of them had any armor, or any weapon more dangerous than a sharpened stick. Twilight, Applejack, and Macintosh were knee-deep in a pile of corpses, and covered in kobold blood, and the stench of burning flesh filled the air.
A quick scan of the room’s perimeter revealed that while there was a northern exit, a twisty tunnel which would have connected with the guard room they’d found earlier, it was thoroughly collapsed. The only entrance to the chamber was the hallway that Rainbow Dash was guarding. Behind a gauntlet of traps and all of their warriors, the kobolds’ civilians had thought themselves safe.
They had been wrong, and now they were all dead.
Twilight Sparkle’s face was grim as she took out a sheet of paper and a quill, and checked off ‘Exterminate the Kobolds’ from her list of objectives.
“Oh, Blaze take the lot of them,” Applejack said, her tail dragging in the bloody mud. “Why did they have to go and fight? Not a one of them had the slightest clue what they were doing, and they had to know who we were.”
“Applejack, Applejack, it’s not your fault,” Pinkie Pie said, patting the sulking kitty on the head as her ears flattened. “Kobolds are really, really dumb.”
“No, Pinkie, they ain’t,” Applejack said. “They’re smart as any other folk. I guess they just panicked.”
“They were weak,” Fluttershy said. “Now only the strongest kobolds remain. Maybe you can make peace with them?”
Applejack turned to look at her. “After we killed all their kids and families? You really think they’ll give up now? Now they’ve got nothin’ to lose?”
Fluttershy looked away.
“Here,” Twilight said, looking up at the spot on the ceiling. “Macintosh, if you’re still able to burrow, dig up right here. Everyone else, stand back – the ceiling here looks really unstable.”
They had to cast Reduce Person on Macintosh so that Garble could lift him to the ceiling, but once there it was the work of moments for the ceiling to crumble and drop chunks of rock on both the pony and the skeleton, crushing and burying them. There was a scream of panic as a kobold in the room above tried to grab hold of the crumbling edge of the floor, only to plummet and smack into the pile of rocks, where he lay unmoving. Sparky II, Opal, and Crackle descended in a more dignified manner.
As Macintosh burrowed his way out of the pile of rubble, Fluttershy examined the kobold who’d fallen – the one they’d taken prisoner, the day before. “I think I can save him,” she said.
“Don’t bother,” Applejack spat. “As soon as he finds out we killed his whole tribe, he’ll just kill us as soon as he gets the chance. Nothing we can do to work with any of them now. Might as well let him die not knowing. He’ll be happier that way.”
Fluttershy nodded, and kept watch on the kobold as he slowly bled out onto the rocks.
“How are the mephits holding up?” Twilight asked, as Rarity wove her way through the piles of bodies, bringing up the rear.
“Disturbingly well,” Rarity replied, glancing back at the curious creatures as they laughed and played with the dead bodies and debris. “I’m not sure that they understand what happened.”
“Might be best if we left them here, then,” Twilight said. “We came up behind the kobolds’ lines, but it won’t take them long to switch things around to keep us bottled up in here. We need to find the portal controls before they spring something nasty on us.”
While the party could burrow wherever they wanted, returning to the level above seemed pointless unless they planned to leave immediately. The choice was between burrowing through the west wall to return to the theater, and taking the only existing exit. Since the corridor Rainbow was watching led through what would have been the backstage area of a working theater, it seemed a better bet for finding the control room.
Examining the hallway, Applejack was able to verify that the floor was breakaway and would drop anypony without wings into a pit when triggered, and that she could jam it shut to make the hallway navigable, although she’d have to re-jam it every five feet to be safe. There were also arrow slits in either wall, although only the south wall had doors. A quick stealthy peek through the nearest slit in the north wall showed that it opened up onto the stage. The curtain was still closed, but from this side they could see that there was an arrangement of ropes and pulleys woven through the scaffolding far overhead.
As far as Applejack could tell from looking at it through the narrow slit, everything on stage – including the curtain and hopefully the portal – was controlled from the room at the far end of the hall.
“Is that burrow infusion still working?” Twilight asked.
“Should have a minute or two left,” Pinkie Pie said.
Twilight nodded. “Then I say we forget the pit-trap hallway and use the stage. Burrow through the wall right here, run across the stage to the far end, and burrow right into the control room. If we’re quiet about it, they’ll never know what hit them.”
“Burrowing isn’t really quiet,” Rarity said.
Twilight smirked. “It is if Mac drinks a potion of silence first.” She frowned. “They’re probably watching the hallway. Can we get a cloud of mist to keep them from seeing what’s going on?”
“Of course, darling,” Rarity replied. “Do we want to do any other preparations?”
“Potions for everypony!” Pinkie Pie said, passing out her Shield and Beast Shape infusions. “And then…”
Rarity gestured, and the end of the hallway was obscured by a cloud of mist. Macintosh downed the potion of silence, and vanished into the mist. When they could hear again, the others followed, through the ragged hole torn in the wall.
As soon as the party emerged from the mist, while Macintosh was still halfway across the stage towards the far wall, there was the creak and groaning of a mechanism being triggered, and the entire stage sank twenty feet, leaving them in a large, deep pit. Arrows rained down on Macintosh from arrow slits in the far wall – likely from the control room – and with a clattering, rasping, grating noise, the curtains covering the portal began to open, letting through a dim green glow from a widening gap in the middle.
Rainbow Dash screeched in anger and charged at the kobolds shooting at them, but as an eagle wasn’t any more able to fit through the narrow arrow slits than she would have been as a griffon. The warriors ignored her, firing past her to target Macintosh, whose burrowing infusion was the real threat.
Applejack flew up to the catwalks, grabbed one of the sliding ropes in her teeth, and jammed it into a spinning gear, stopping one half of the curtains from opening any further, at least for the moment. She looked around, but didn’t see anypony else up in the darkness with her.
Fluttershy dashed across the room, keeping out of line of sight of the arrow slits as she prepared to open a larger hole in the wall. Below her, Macintosh tore at the stone at the edge of the pit, but it would take a while for him to burrow up into the control room from that far below.
Twilight looked around, unsure what she could do to help, and Rarity laid a hoof on her shoulder. “Come, we must be closer,” she said, leading the fighter across the stage toward the arrow slits. “Once one of our friends opens a hole, I can get you up there to destroy them all.”
Twilight nodded. “I’ll be ready, then.”
Behind her, spots of darkness appeared in the green glow from the portal, which was still opening, although only at half speed. Kobold-shaped pools of darkness flung themselves from the light onto the dimly lit stage, and silently sped towards the nearest living creature they could spot. The first Twilight – or anypony – knew of their presence was when they dove on her and latched on with chilling claws, draining her strength and leaving her to collapse under the weight of her armor, as she felt pieces of her soul torn away.
She screamed in agony, and suddenly the party realized that the kobolds and their arrows weren’t the biggest threat.
Rainbow Dash pushed off the wall and dove at the shadows, sheathed in lightning as she struck, but while its form was tattered, she couldn’t get a solid hit on a creature with no substance, and it clung to its unlife.
“Close it. Close it!” Twilight shouted, and Applejack tried to comply, but the best she could manage for the moment was to keep it from opening any further – there was still a five foot gap between the curtain edges, plenty of room for more shadows to emerge.
Fluttershy dropped onto Twilight’s back, and cast a ward which she hoped would hide them from the shadows. “Be quiet, and still, and maybe they won’t see us,” she whispered in Twilight’s ear.
There was a *whump* as Pinkie Pie threw a bomb at the shadows – a wave of force passed by Twilight and Fluttershy, but tore into the undead, dispersing the one that Rainbow had already wounded. Rarity’s dragons tried to finish the other two off, but their attacks were sadly non-magical, and passed harmlessly through the undead.
Rarity glowered at the shadows. “OBEY ME!” she cried, and one of them recoiled, struggling in the grip of her will. The other hissed at her, and lunged again at Twilight – but while her body was weak, her mind and her magic were unaffected, and her hammer smashed it to ribbons before it could finish her off. Fluttershy squeaked as her spell was broken.
“Sorry,” Twilight said. “But it wasn’t working, and I don’t think I can take another hit.”
Something much larger than the shadows they’d fought loomed in the portal, but with it only open a crack only another of the smaller shadows could fit through. It flew at Pinkie Pie, but she was able to outmaneuver it and stay away from its claws.
Overhead, Applejack looked around at the ropes and pulleys she’d jammed, and spotted what she needed to do. She grabbed another rope and looped it around a slowly spinning gear, and as the mechanism groaned and creaked from the strain, the curtains slowly began to close.
Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash finished off the new shadow, as an arrow from the kobolds sank into Pinkie’s thigh, blood gushing down her leg as it hit an artery. “We can hold off the shadows! You guys get the kobolds!”
“Okay,” Fluttershy said, and touched her rod of reach spell – and the wall near the arrow slits reshaped slightly, an inch-thick gap appearing around a twenty-foot high section of wall, which slid down to form a ramp. Briefly. Before sliding the rest of the way to the ground and shattering. Still, the kobolds were left exposed.
“Special delivery, one magic unicorn!” Rarity said, cackling, as she pointed a hoof at Twilight, and an invisible force flung the immobilized unicorn right into the midst of the enemies. “Charge!”
Twilight squealed as she flew through the air, “Rarity, whaaaaa –“ but she swing her hammer instinctively at the fanciest looking of the enemies, and it smacked solidly into his chest. He was still moving, so she hit him again, and caught one of his friends on the backswing, as his shattered body flew down onto the stage. The skeletal dragons were right behind her, tearing into the survivors and tearing them apart, their attempts to fight back or escape futile, trapped between Twilight and the phalanx of skeletons.
The huge dark shadow beyond the veil surged at the closing portal, but it shut, just in time. There was a *thud* and the iron-hard curtains rippled, but no more shadows came through.
Rainbow Dash finished off the last of the small shadows with another lightning blow.
“Rainbow! That one was mine!” Rarity complained. The griffon-turned-eagle screeched back at her, and she rolled her eyes. “I suppose I’m better off focusing on more powerful undead. Still, you could have asked.”
“Good work Applejack!” Pinkie Pie shouted up into the rafters. “You really saved our…” she dropped, and skidded to a halt on the still-lowered stage floor, and took a look at her leg. “Wow. That’s really gushing.”
“Then heal it,” Fluttershy said, as she flew into the tunnel Macintosh was still burrowing. She paused at the edge of the silence, and used her rod of reach to close the similar wound she’d spotted on him.
“Fine, make me do everything myself,” Pinkie Pie said, giggling as she took out her wand. “Boop!”
Twilight found the lever to return the stage to ground level, and the party gathered in the control room. Pinkie Pie tried to brew up a remedy to restore Twilight’s strength, but she’d used so many on Applejack that morning that she couldn’t even give the unicorn enough strength to walk.
“I guess I’m riding in Garble again,” Twilight said.
“Or you could take off your armor,” Applejack suggested.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Twilight replied. “It’s the first rule of adventuring – never take off your armor. Except to sleep.”
“And bathe,” Rarity suggested.
Twilight shook her head. “Bathing is inefficient if the party has a wizard capable of casting Prestidigitation.”
“And so is using the chamberpot,” Pinkie Pie said, grinning. “You can go in your armor and nopony will know, then whisk it away with magic later!”
“Huh,” Twilight said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I’m not wiping your bottom for you,” Rarity said. “If normal biological processes are too complicated for you to handle, I’m sure that you’ll be much happier as an undead.”
“Well, I came awfully close just now,” Twilight said. “Shadows, huh.”
“Yeah,” Applejack said. “Shadows.”
“Big shadows,” Pinkie Pie added. “Only the teeny weeny ones got through, but there was a big one waiting.”
“We’re not really prepared to fight shadows, are we,” Twilight said. “We have no defenses, and only a few effective attacks.”
“So… shopping trip?” Pinkie Pie asked.
Twilight nodded. “I don’t think we have any choice.”