We galloped through the streets, eyes fixed on our goal. Splitting up really seemed like our best bet, Applejack had easily the most experience in battle out of any of us. With her and Rainbow Dash securing the town gate, there was no way the Children of the Earth were getting through, at least until the rest of us dealt with the monster and went to join them. We came skidding to a halt as we passed beyond the last of the buildings and entered into the harbour section of Anchorage. It became instantly clear that something was wrong, as the moment we stopped we saw a familiar looking fishing vessel hurtling through the air towards us.
I dived to the side while Twilight teleported and Pinkie cartwheeled to safety. The boat we had travelled to Anchorage on exploded in the street we had just run down, the wreck effectively blocking our exit for the time being. There were dozens of ponies running around the docks, screaming in terror. I tried shouting for them to get to safety, but they were too hysterical to listen. As I tried shouting, I noticed another small boat soaring through the air, flying straight for a pair of ponies who sat huddled together, refusing to move.
I panicked and end up freezing on the spot, I couldn’t bring myself to move, even to rescue them. Luckily a wave of purple magic swept over them like a powerful wind and sent them both toppling across the dock. They both smacked painfully into a building, but it would have been considerably more painful if they had stayed where they were and been crushed by the boat that collided with the ground. Twilight ran up beside me, Pinkie running towards us from the opposite direction.
“We need to get a look at what we’re fighting,” Twilight stated.
“It must be in the water,” Pinkie added.
Nodding, we turned and rushed down one of the long wooden piers to get a better look at this monster the ponies were yelling about. We could only go so far, as the walkway had been ripped apart from about halfway down, but we got far enough that we were able to see what was causing all the trouble. The creature appeared mostly submerged; all we were able to make out was the six great tentacles rising up from the water surface, and the bulbous mantle just about poking out between them all.
The tentacles were easily the width of a couple ponies at their thickest visible point, while the small part of the mantle we were able to see, was still big enough for us all to stand on if we kept close to one another. The flesh of the creature was varying shades of deep ocean blue and dark purple, not that it was easy to see, the tentacles thrashed about so wildly, causing the water to churn about as if it were caught in a violent storm. As we took in the sight of the creature, we noticed that it was slowly encroaching on the dock.
“It’s some kind of tentacle monster!” Pinkie shouted as we shielded ourselves from the water shooting off the waves.
“Actually, those aren’t tentacles,” Twilight pointed out. “Technically they’re arms in the same way an octopus has arms, you can see the suction cups.”
“Technically it’s way easier to just be wrong and call them tentacles,” Pinkie retorted.
“Look, it doesn’t matter!” I shouted over them right before jumping back to avoid a huge wave smashing over the broken end of the walkway. “That thing is getting closer, what do we do to stop it?”
“We take it out of course!” Pinkie said, pulling up her hood and putting on her mask.
“That doesn’t actually answer my…” I began, stopping the moment Pinkie dived into the churning water and disappearing from sight. “Pinkie Pie!”
“Seriously?!” Twilight exclaimed, glaring angrily at the spot where Pinkie disappeared. “Fine, if she wants to get herself killed, I’m not about to stop her. Rarity, I can levitate you close to it and you can do that flail technique you used on Spike.”
“Um, sure…” I replied uncertainly, the idea of hovering over that creature while its tentacles were whipping around with such ferocity wasn’t exactly appealing.
“Don’t worry, I have a very steady horn,” Twilight promised me.
After getting back to a safe distance so Twilight wouldn’t be thrown off by cascades of water, I drew my sword and allowed it to flop, my magic holding onto the pommel and nothing more, just as I had done at Timber. I started giving my rapier a few test swings to try and get the rhythm going, before nodding to Twilight. While I continued to swing my blade around, slowly letting my leash on it get longer, I felt my whole body wrapped in Twilight’s aura. It felt like I had been wrapped in a slightly itchy blanket as my body was picked up and steadily moved out over the water.
It was rather disorienting, feeling so weightless all of a sudden, but I tried not to let it affect me as I started swinging my sword in wider circles. I glanced back briefly to see that Twilight looked perfectly calm, that encouraged me a little as I looked back over the creature that I was now almost over the top of. Twilight finally stopped moving me forward, and instead started bringing me lower so the creature was in range of my swings. I looked over the creature as best as I could while constantly rotating my head at a slight angle, I wondered if it would be more viable to aim for one of the tentacles or the mantle further below.
I settled on the closest tentacle, as I feared while trying to strike the mantle, my sword would get batted away by the tentacle anyway. I had now picked up a good speed in my swing and I was ready to start extending it far enough that it would begin slicing through the tentacle. I slowing drew out the length of my tether, letting the radius of my circle increase a few inches at a time. Finally it was long enough so that when the tentacle came swinging back around in my direction…
I felt my neck snap as my head was tugged forward, there was a blinding pain in my horn and I severed the tether with my sword. The tentacle had come in range, and my sword had connected with it, but rather than slice cleaning through and keep on rotating, it merely glanced off the apparently hard as rock flesh of the creature. Since my head had been tracing the movements of the sword, it got pulled away as my blade was thrown out of motion. As soon as I had let go of the connection, I saw my sword fall and land in the water, disappearing instantly in the convulsing waves.
If I thought at that moment, things couldn’t get worse, I was sorely mistaken. Despite not leaving a mark, the monster still felt my sword, and as a result its tentacles began flailing about even more wildly in an attempt to strike its unknown attacker. The tentacle I had tried to cut hit its mark, catching me right across the midriff, even Twilight had been taken by surprise so her magic hold broke instantly as I was chucked like a ragdoll towards Anchorage. I was high enough that I was flying straight for the roofs of the buildings closest to the water’s edge, but I could feel Twilight desperately trying to get another hold on me and slow me down.
If she hadn’t, I would have been liquefied as soon as I made contact with the roof, but she got me just slow enough that it only hurt… an incredible amount. I felt the slate shatter beneath me as I tore across the roof, my body only stopping when it crashed hard against a brick chimney. I lay there for a moment, my whole body in shock, my eyes wide as I tried to breathe, but found my lungs unresponsive. There was a flash of light as Twilight teleported onto the roof, rushing towards me, her eyes horrified at what she had let happen.
“Oh sweet Celestia!” she exclaimed as she dropped to her knees beside me. “Rarity I’m so sorry, it came out of nowhere and I couldn’t…”
I tried to speak, to tell her it was alright, but my words came out sounding more like dry heaves. Twilight wrapped me in her magic once more, lifting me into the air and stretching my body out, I could feel the rush of air filling my lungs as she cleared my airways. While she held me, giving me time to recover and start breathing on my own, Pinkie Pie leapt up onto the roof behind her.
“Hey Rarity,” she said, not immediately noticing my condition as she held out something. “Look what I found!”
I slowly tilted my head to see that she was holding my rapier; I even forced myself to smile at the sight of it.
“So what happened here?” Pinkie asked as she saw the shattered roof tiles and the cracked chimney before finally looking at the way Twilight was holding me.
“Rarity is injured; you could try to show some concern!” Twilight answered in a furious tone.
“She’s alive, and you’re looking after her,” Pinkie pointed out. “I figured that meant she was in good hooves, but if you don’t have that much faith in your own abilities…”
“Oh shut up!” Twilight snapped. “I’m not in the mood, that thing's body is practically impenetrable by the looks of it.”
“Well if it helps, I found out there’s a whole other part to it hiding below the surface,” Pinkie informed us. “It could be its weak point.”
“How did you find that out?” Twilight asked sceptically.
“This mask lets me breathe under water,” Pinkie explained. “Anyway, if we want to hurt it, that would be our best bet.”
“Alright,” Twilight began as she placed me down on the edge of the roof, giving me a perfect view of the dock and the monster that was now close enough to wrap its front two tentacles around another ship. “I’m going down there; I’ll see what magic it’s vulnerable to.”
“I’ll come with!” Pinkie declared, hopping off the building right after Twilight teleported back down to the pier.
That left me on the side-lines, but with an admittedly great view of the fight. The monster tore the boat apart, most debris disappearing into the water, but two relatively intact halves were clutched in each tentacle. Twilight caught the first half as the creature launched it towards the dock, but as she tried to set it back down safely, Pinkie came diving into it, causing it to explode into a shower of wooden debris.
“Pinkie!” Twilight shouted. “What was that for?!”
“It was already broken,” Pinkie justified with a shrug. “And now I can do this…”
It was only then that Twilight and I noticed the large remains of the boat were still floating in the air, gravity apparently having forgotten all about them. Pinkie leapt up and began kicking them all out towards the monster, so they created about dozen floating platforms of driftwoods and ship remains, leading from the dock all the way out over the water. Pinkie jumped up and began hopping form one to the other, getting close to the monster before leaping in between its thrashing tentacles and landing on its mantle, driving both her daggers down as she did. Just like my sword however, they merely glanced off, leaving Pinkie frozen momentarily in surprise.
“I told you that wouldn’t work!” Twilight shouted as Pinkie blinked off the mantle, just as all six tentacles converged on her position. “Now leave this to me.”
Twilight teleported, appearing on the platform Pinkie had put closest to the monster. Twilight drew her sceptre and began swirling it overhead, dark clouds forming in the sky directly above the monster like a miniature hurricane brimming with electricity. Once the clouds were large enough, Twilight began to focus her magic, drawing all the sparks and trials of lighting to the very centre, where they amalgamated together before finally blasting down in a single pillar of such intense light, that it made the setting sun appear dull in comparison.
The lightning streamed into the monsters back, and an unearthly screech emanated from the depths below it. It definitely seemed to have hurt it, but more than that, it just seemed to have made it even more angry and savage. The tentacles began whipping around faster than ever, leaving no space within their reach untouched. As they flapped about, they managed to shatter most of Pinkie’s platforms into splinters, including the one Twilight had been on, right after she teleported way.
“Well that was great,” Pinkie declared as Twilight appeared next to her. “Now there’s no way we can reach its back.”
“Well at least my attack actually hurt it,” Twilight retorted. “If you had listened to what we told you, then you might have done something more constructive.”
“I gave you those platform, didn’t I?” Pinkie pointed out. “You didn’t make those last very long.”
Twilight opened her mouth to bite back with something, but I had just noticed the second half of the ship rolling through the air towards them.
“Run!” I screamed.
They both glanced up in time to see their doom mere inches from their face. Twilight’s horn flashed, but rather than teleport away, she brought up a pink force field to shield both her and Pinkie form the attack. The ship smashed into the magical wall she had conjured, and while she was clearly thrown off balance by the unexpected force of it, her force field held and the second half of the ship fell apart out of harm's way. I leaned over the edge of the roof as Twilight let her shield spell dissipate, I had had quite enough of their constant fighting and it was time to put an end to it.
“Alright you two, I’ve put up with this long enough!” I shouted down at them. “There’s a time for arguing and fighting among ourselves, but that time is not when a monster is threatening the lives of everypony in this town. You two have got to put aside your differences and work together to beat this thing, you’re both incredibly skilled, and if you combine those skills you could be unstoppable. So please, fight alongside one another, if not for me or for yourselves, then for the ponies in Anchorage, the ones whose lives are depending on us wining this fight.”
There was a moment of awkward silence between the two as my words sank in; they both glanced up at each other apologetically before nodding simultaneously.
“Alright Pinkie,” Twilight began in a much more calm and civil voice. “You think its weak point is beneath the surface, that means we need to find some way of drawing it up.”
“I think I have a plan,” Pinkie replied. “How good are you with ice magic?”
Pinkie quickly explained what she had in mind, I couldn’t quite make it out since I was still so high above and they were no longer shouting at each other. The monster was still approaching the dock, I was starting to panic, but then I looked down and saw Twilight nodding in confirmation before the two ran towards the pier once again.
“Hey Slimy!” Pinkie bellowed as they ran down the walkway. “Over here, I’ve got two friends which a very sharp and I know you’re just dying to meet them!”
The monster seemed to shift slightly as if facing the source of the noise. Once they reached the end of the walkway, or as far as they could get before it was shattered and broken, Pinkie Pie somersaulted off the edge. Before she could land however, Twilight thrust her sceptre out, pointing at the water’s surface directly where Pinkie would land. A jet of fluffy white magic poured out of the orb, as it struck the water it began to freeze instantly, creating a small platform of solid, if rather spikey ice.
Pinkie landed right on the platform and started running towards the monster, Twilight followed along with her sceptre, constantly freezing the water just before Pinkie stepped off the edge of the pathway she had made for her. What resulted was Pinkie running across a narrow bridge of ice that Twilight was constantly forging, from the pier to where the monster was. As Pinkie drew close to the monster she readied her daggers, Twilight meanwhile gave her sceptre a wide sweep, completing the ice bridge all the way up to the monster, but also encasing one of its tentacles within the path itself.
The upper half of the tentacle was still free to writhe about, and the ice encasing the lower half was already cracking against the pressure of it trying to escape, but Pinkie was on it before it could do free itself. She dived forward, pulling back with both daggers before slicing forward in an X motion, shattering both the ice and the frozen limb within. The monster shrieked a second time as the upper half of the tentacle was severed clean off from the rest of the body. The other five immediately retaliated by smashing down on Twilight’s ice path and trying to hit Pinkie.
Pinkie however, after diving through the now destroyed limb and landing on the mantle, quickly hopped to the side, onto a bubble that Twilight had conjured for her. She bounced off it, straight onto another and then another, repeatedly until she was safely back on the pier with Twilight.
“Alright!” Pinkie declared, punching the air with her hoof as she saw the result of their teamwork. “What's next partner?”
I could swear I saw Twilight attempt to subdue a grin as she touched her horn to the orb on her sceptre. As she pulled her head away, a long strand of purple magic hung between them, it reminded me of a string of saliva.
“Take the sceptre,” Twilight instructed, which genuinely took me by surprise.
“I thought only you could use it?” Pinkie pointed out in confusion.
“You don’t have to use it,” Twilight explained. “I’ve already activated the spell, now I need you to carry it for me. If you use your powers to make platforms for us, we can both go out there and…”
“Oh, I get it!” Pinkie declared, bouncing up and down excitedly. “Give me one moment!”
Pinkie rushed off, still holding the sceptre so the magic saliva trail stretched out between them. She hurried over to where the second half of the ship fell, pulling out the largest pieces and throwing them into the air where they hung lazily. After kicking them off into position, she quickly ran back just as Twilight teleported onto the nearest one. The sudden jolt on the sceptre tugged Pinkie through the air where she smoothly glided before landing on a separate platform, the connection maintained. Twilight and Pinkie gave each other a quick nod before they began jumping off in opposite directions around the monster.
“Over here!” Twilight shouted, one of the tentacles crashing down on the platform she had just been standing on.
“Nope, over here!” Pinkie said quickly, getting two tentacles to dive into where she had just been.
They kept this up for a few quick minutes, hopping to one platform, taunting the creature to attract its ire before leaping away at the last second of its retaliation. As they worked, I began to see what Twilight’s plan had been, with each time the tentacles lashed out, they got tangled up one way or another in the connection that Twilight and Pinkie were still trailing between them. Before long, they had created a purple spider web criss-crossing between the remaining five tentacles, it remained loose for the time being.
As the final two platforms were destroyed, both Twilight and Pinkie leapt inwards, landing on the mantle, side by side. With a quick nod from Twilight, Pinkie tugged hard on the sceptre while Twilight pulled back with her horn, this resulted in the magic web drawing tight, and all five tentacles getting tugged inwards over the top of the mantle. They struggled against their bonds, but they quite thoroughly tied together, I could see Twilight and Pinkie flashing a quick smile at one another before a loud, frustrated moan echoed from beneath the water.
As the entire creature began to shake violently beneath them, Pinkie quickly gave Twilight back the sceptre and she tied off the two ends before teleporting them back to the safety of the land. They got away just in time, as the monster chose that moment to begin rising up from the depths, its mantle rearing back to reveal the rest of its body tucked safely underneath. The monster’s body turned out to be quite scrawny, it was still the same blue and purple colours, but its flesh looked considerably spongier.
Its head was right below the hood of its mantle, two glowing yellow eyes peering out from beneath it. It had another two arms attached to the main body, long and spindly, which both split apart near the ends into about a dozen thin tentacles, actual tentacles by the looks of the slightly bulbous tips. The waist of its skinny torso was where it connected with the rear end of the mantle, but that part was still submerged beneath the crashing waves. The five arms Twilight and Pinkie had tied up, as well as the still frozen stump of the sixth one, were all attached to the sides of the mantle, which appeared to be much bigger now that it wasn’t mostly hidden from view.
Now that it was standing tall, it wasted no time in pushing forward to the shore, making much quicker progress now.
“We need to strike now,” Twilight said. “That magic rope won’t hold forever.”
“If you can get me close enough to it I can tear it apart,” Pinkie said as she spun her daggered around her hooves. “Of course, even I might not be fast enough to get out of the way if it retaliates with something unexpected.”
Twilight thought for a moment, I saw her head briefly snap up to me before turning back to Pinkie, smiling as she rubbed her hooves together in glee.
“I have a plan!” she declared. “This is actually something I learned from Rarity.”
I frowned, but just waited for Twilight to demonstrate. Twilight quickly gave Pinkie the run down, and after she nodded excitedly, Twilight wrapped her in a purple aura as she lifted Pinkie off the ground. Once she was high enough in the air, Twilight took a deep breath before switching her hold to Pinkie’s hind legs and nothing else. Pinkie dangled about as the aura surrounded her rear hooves and nothing more, it was then I realised what she was planning, and I wanted to shut my eyes for fear of it going wrong.
Twilight began rotating her head; this caused Pinkie to swing around in a circle by her back legs. It started off slow, but quickly picked up speed as Pinkie began swinging in a wider arc with each new rotation. Pinkie readied her daggers, but I wasn’t able to see much more of what she did, as she quickly became a pink blur with some red and blue thrown in from her outfit. Twilight started making her way closer to the pier, still keeping Pinkie swinging; I blinked in surprise at that. Whenever I did that with my sword, I had remained firmly planted in one position, and yet Twilight was already improving on what I had ‘taught’ her on her first attempt.
Twilight was making her way out along the pier, but the monster had already reached the end of it and was smashing it even more with its arm tentacles. Twilight shouted a word of warning to Pinkie Pie right before she moved her in for the kill. The monster began to raise its arms defensively as it saw the spinning pony coming closer, but as she brushed past it and her daggers slashed into its tentacles, it screeched and pulled back. It was too late for it to retreat however, as Pinkie was moving far too fast and her spin radius was only getting wider. She sliced into the monster's chest over and over again, even as it tried to back up.
I knew something was going to go wrong, but I noticed too late to shout any kind of warning. The monster sucked in through its thin mouth before spewing a powerful jet of water out, catching Pinkie mid swing and flinging her back just as my sword had been. Twilight was quicker at cutting the connection between her and Pinkie than I had been however, so she managed to avoid having her neck broken, particularly as Pinkie was considerably heavier than my sword. As Pinkie was hurled back towards Twilight, she didn’t look distressed in any way; on the contrary, she returned her daggers to their sheath and reached out her hooves towards Twilight.
I never actually found out whether the next part was planned, or if they had made it up on the fly. But as Pinkie reached Twilight, seconds before she would have barrelled into her and done them both some serious damage, she slowed herself down until she was merely drifting through the air at a sloth pace. Twilight reached out and grabbed hold of Pinkie’s hooves with one of her own, while clutching the sceptre with the other. As soon as she did, it was as if all the momentum Pinkie had stored, was suddenly transferred into Twilight.
Pinkie spun Twilight around and she was fired like a bullet towards the monster. It only took Twilight a few seconds to reach the creature, but in that short space of time, its five tentacles had snapped free of their bindings and were rushing in to shield its exposed body. As well as this, Twilight had raised her sceptre high over her head, it was brimming with electricity so that when Twilight reached the monster, rather than crash into it, she swung her sceptre downwards, sending out a literal shockwave.
I was forced to shield my eyes from the blinding light of the attack, but when it was safe to look, I saw that the monster had been cleaved cleanly in two. Each half of the monster dropped slowly in either direction, like a tree that had just been chopped down; none of its limbs were moving as it did. Twilight would have went straight into the water on the other side of the monster, but at the last second she had been caught by a fishing line, cast by Pinkie Pie from a floating palate. I imagined Twilight rolling her eyes before teleporting away, and for second Pinkie was left fishing with nothing before she chucked the rod into the water below and blinked away.
Twilight collected me and brought me down to ground level, where I felt myself able to stand once again. Ponies were already emerging from the safety of their homes and the nearby shops to see if the danger really was over, but I just looked at Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie, beaming at them both.
“Nicely done with the whole spinning me around thing!” Pinkie complimented. “It was so much fun; we need to do it again some time!”
“Don’t tempt me,” Twilight muttered, but she couldn’t keep her smile at bay. “You were pretty good yourself, I hate to admit it, but we really did make a good team.”
“Aw, are you starting to like me?” Pinkie asked, edging up inappropriately close to Twilight.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Twilight said sternly as she pushed Pinkie away from her, but I could see the smile in her eyes even if her mouth managed to hide it. “We still have to help the others.”
My heart skipped a beat at that, I had completely forgotten about the Children of the Earth, I only prayed that we weren’t too late.
“Yeah, let’s go!” Pinkie declared. “Besides, you gave me a great idea for a trap.”
“I… I did?” Twilight stammered, looking confused.
“Yes indeedy!” Pinkie replied as she began bouncing back into the town. “Come on, I’ll explain on the way!”