//------------------------------// // Love and Valor, Ice and Shadow // Story: Winter Storm // by Snake Staff //------------------------------// Shining Armor Sombra lunges forward with surprising speed, curved horn aglow. Cadence and I leap to either side at the very last second before an enormous green fireball cuts through the space we just vacated and obliterates a good chunk of wall down the hallway. The king lands where we just stood and fluidly twists his entire body around towards my wife, hurling several bolts of black lightning at her. I act without conscious thought, causing a pink barrier to encase her in a split second. The lightning crackles uselessly against its surface. Cadence immediately rallies, bursting out from the shield amidst a surging wave of blue magic. It barrels down the corridor at the dark king, but he stomps his hooves and a small wall of black crystal springs up between them. The wave parts harmlessly around it, leaving Sombra untouched. I take advantage of the distraction to conjure an orb of light magic. It’s much more difficult than it should be – just how much did this guy take out of me?! At any rate I manage to form a pinkish-yellow orb after a few seconds and toss it at his back. Sombra rolls aside without even looking, leaving my attack to disintegrate his wall. I swear he must have military training, because he flows smoothly back onto his hooves just the way I’ve taught generations of recruits to do. Cadence pulls back her right wing, then uses it to fling a half dozen razor-sharp pink feathers at him. The enchanted projectiles strike true against Sombra’s chest armor, but do little more than scratch the plate before clattering to the floor. “How are you even alive?!” she demands. “We killed you! We just purged your spirit!” “A good necromancer never reveals all his secrets,” Sombra grins. “After all of this, did you really think I wouldn’t have a backup plan?” “It doesn’t matter,” I tell him. “Because you’re dying here. Once and for all.” “Brave words from the weakest link in the chain!” he taunts, pulling his head back as air is drawn towards it. “Ha!” Sombra levels his horn and a miniature whirlwind erupts from it. The vortex tears through the hallway, picking up every decoration, piece of debris, or loose object around and adding them all to the wild and lethal blender. But I’ve already conjured a protective dome about myself and Cadence. That, at least, is still coming easily to me. Hooray for special talents. Wild chaos rages outside of it as we’re caught in an extremely localized tornado. The wind and rain of objects come to a halt after a few seconds under my shield. Immediately the hallway becomes visible again, as does the wild array of crystal jutting from the walls and floor where Sombra had been standing, blocking off the hallway beyond. “We can’t let him get away!” Cadence and I shout simultaneously. Twin beams of pink and blue shatter the wall Sombra left behind. The effort required sends a brief spasm of pain through my wings and back. But then it’s over, and I bolt after my wife and the evil king. The sheer magnitude of dark magic he radiates leaves a trail that is easy enough to follow, for those who know how. Spending centuries with your soul attached by such magic doesn’t hurt your chances of picking it up either. I make a strained attempt to teleport ahead, only for the spell to fizzle out against all the wards pulsing around us. Figures. Sombra may have a head start, but both Cadence and I have longer legs and, from the sound of it, a good deal more athletic experience. The sound of the king’s hoofsteps grows closer and closer with each bend we round, and they’re growing more and more erratic. As though he’s getting tired, or maybe having difficulty keeping his balance. New bodies can certainly do that to pony. And his own spells won’t allow him to teleport in here. We race on after the king, my longer legs affording me a slight lead on Cadence. He leads us through the winding corridors of the Imperial Palace that I know so well, excepting of course the good number of holes and dark growths protruding from it. How long has he been here? Periodically we run into barriers of Sombra’s black crystal, but smashing through them is never that difficult. You can’t raise a truly powerful physical defense without a lot more time and effort. Seconds pass, and we’re almost on him. As we round one corner, I catch a glimpse of an armored hoof disappearing around another just ahead of us. We gallop after him, and… what’s this feeling? It’s a buzzing, nagging little sensation in the back of my skull. Like my instincts are trying to tell me something. What? … Oh. This is too easy. Sombra talked big, then turned tail and ran after a very short exchange. He wasn’t even injured or substantially outmatched. Why? Why manifest a body at all if all he was going to do was bolt? Hell, if he wanted to make it a straight up fight, why not do it while I was still writhing from the pain of having his spirit purged from me? That had to have taken at least a few minutes. Was he also trying to recover? Or was he doing something else? Something like… like… Setting a trap. I pour out all the magical energy I can muster in an instant, summoning another pink orb to encase myself and Cadence. She has time to give just the slightest aside glance before we round the corner and everything turns white. The entire world around us is engulfed in a blinding whirlwind of brilliant white. Hundreds of thousands of ice crystals shatter against my shield, while millions more consume the entire hallway beyond. Even inside my spell the temperature drops dozens of degrees in so many seconds, to the point where I can see our breath in the air. The floor beneath us begins to acquire its own coat of frost, the carpet on it turning hard and even cracking in some places. Despite all of that, all the considerable magic directed at my shield, it holds. Not to brag or anything – ok, to brag a little – it’s what I’m good at. When the storm finally fades away and I do allow the energy-consuming barrier to drop, Cadence and I get a good coating of snow and ice dumped on our heads. I notice that the cold and wet doesn’t bother me half as much as it might have unicorn me. My wife appears equally unfazed. Standing some thirty feet or so down the frozen corridor, atop the rubble of the throne room wall and the remains of some very large black crystal construct is Sombra. Floating about him are some thirty white creatures I instantly recognize for windigoes, including the single largest specimen I’ve ever even heard of. Blue-white mist is leaking from their mouths. “Damn,” Sombra frowns. “You are annoyingly quick on the draw, aren’t you?” “Nah,” I tell him with just the slightest hint of an irreverent grin. “You’re just really slow in your old age. Gotten a pudge, vision’s going, and all that. It happens.” Despite everything, despite the utter seriousness of our predicament, Cadence still manages to find a snicker. Sombra grimaces. I… have no idea why I did that. “We’ll see!” he snaps, opening his fanged maw to breathe a long cone of green fire. Cadence and I fall into our practiced routine. We’ve had centuries to go over this, to train ourselves how to fight in a tag-team formation. It’s never actually come to it in a serious context before, but we know what to do. We’re strongest in a pair, so we stick close together. Protective spells are my special talent, so I handle the defense. The green fire washes over another pink shield to no avail. You can’t do too much useful from the inside of an effective shield, so I drop it just in time to allow my wife to throw a half dozen conjured spears of light. Sombra and the winter spirits dodge most of them, save one that’s too slow. It gets impaled through the chest, then set aflame by the pink-white magic. Its agonized wails echo while the king and the windigoes launch their counterattack. But my next shield is already up, black and white alike doing little to it. You see how it goes? My shield spells have always been extremely effective and relatively low-maintenance. Freed from the need to take the offense, I can concentrate all of this body’s considerable energy on them. Cadence, close to me and safely shielded, can take the offense without fear of leaving herself vulnerable. It’s not a method for quick victory, and it doesn’t allow us to separate, but it makes my wife and I a very hard nut to crack. In a battle of attrition, I’m betting we can win. Judging from the expression on his ugly face, Sombra is thinking the same thing. Of course, neither the dark king nor the ice spirits are idiots. They pick up on the fact that we can’t move very fast or attack from inside the shield almost immediately and alter their tactics. Sombra and the huge windigo begin staggering their attacks, never allowing a moment to pass without something impacting on the shield while still allowing the other time to rest. The lesser demons surge forward in a wave, some just getting closer, others swooping around or beside us. They swirl around like a school of hungry piranhas, making certain to assail my shield from all angles at any given point, allowing for no let-up on the pressure. Beside me, Cadence has her eyes squeezed tightly shut in concertation. Luckily for us, we thought of this sort of scenario a long time ago. Remember when I said you couldn’t do anything from inside a barrier? I may have fudged the truth a bit. While it’s true that shield spells block things going out as readily as in, that only applies to whatever spaces the shield is actually covering. At the moment that does not include the floor at our hooves. Cadence’s hooves glow silvery-white, and she pounds the floor with enough force to send shards of crystal into my own pelt. Outside the shield, a wall of razor-sharp, brilliant blue crystal spikes tears its way out of the floor. Two of the nearest windigoes are impaled outright before they even have the chance to blink. Cadence immediately follows up by channeling her power through the crystals in the form of a localized lightning storm. The sapphire electricity leaps onto everything in the vicinity, electrifying demons, blowing out both walls, lashing against my shield, and setting the poor abused carpet on fire. Enormous forks of the spell leap down the hallway at Sombra and the more distant windigoes, but his horn shines and a red barrier springs up in their path. The two connect in a series of spectacular explosions that send a great wave of fire washing back down the hall at us. We hunker down as it washes over the dome. By the time it’s gone, there’s nothing in front of us but our thoroughly destroyed corridor. My wife is breathing hard from the sheer effort of her spell. “What do you think?” Cadence asks after a moment passes and our enemies fail to reappear. “The throne room?” “Well, it would be a dramatically appropriate place to find him, don’t you think?” Cadence smirks slightly and nudges me in the shoulder. “What? Where else would an evil king want to hold the final battle?” “Alright, fair enough, but do you have to joke about it?” “Call it a little mid-battle levity to raise the morale of my soldier,” I answer. “And after that spell, you could use a small break.” I’ll be honest, this is the first prolonged engagement I’ve been in in such a long time. And especially since I was last alive. The feel of adrenaline coursing through me, the sensation of power and being useful for once, it’s kinda… exhilarating. Like it was what I was born to do. Of course I haven’t forgotten what’s at stake, but still… “Oh!” I come to a sudden realization. “We need to watch out for changelings! One of them has been impersonating Twily and-” “No,” Cadence says, shaking her head. “We don’t. Just trust me on that. They won’t be bothering us.” “What do you mean?” “Sombra double-crossed them. Their queen is dead.” “…Oh.” Bitch had it coming. And if I don’t find Twily happy and healthy after all this, I swear I’ll hunt every last one of them down and make them wish they had gone with her. “No sense in standing around any longer, is there?” I ask after a few seconds. “Not really,” Cadence says. “It only gives Sombra more time.” “You feeling up to it now?” She takes a deep breath, then nods. “Yeah.” As one, we take careful, slow steps towards one of the many smaller holes carved into the wall by Cadence’s lightning and look inside. And wouldn’t you know it: Sombra is standing there on the throne’s dais, a calm and confident expression on his face. The chair itself looks to have been demolished. The windigoes are swirling around, looking agitated, save for the big one. But the king himself isn’t budging one inch. He’s just standing there… menacingly. How the hell does that even work? “Ready?” “Ready.” “On three: One… Two…” “Three!” The much-abused wall in front of us explodes inwards the moment our horns touch it. Simultaneously, we release twin beams of pink and blue, which entwine themselves in the air as they go. Before the combined attack can touch Sombra, a red glow tears a large hunk of rubble from the ground and tosses it into the spell’s path. The ensuing rain of crystalline shards would be dangerous were there any normal ponies around. The remaining windigoes open their mouths to counterattack, so I raise my shield again before the icy wind can engulf us. We again sit tight and endure it, though this time I’m sure to shield the ground as well. I’m certain Sombra’s clever enough to draw inspiration from Cadence. Seconds pass, but the frigid magic doesn’t let up. It’s still not enough, I have more than enough strength in this body to keep up a defense like this for hours before- The world dissolves into a blinding hellstorm of red and gold. My shield shatters like glass. I have less that a nanosecond to process it before I’m engulfed in a blazing inferno and thrown backwards like a ragdoll. I feel myself smash into something hard, and the through it. It hit several more objects before smacking into the floor, rolling a good distance until I finally come to another wall. I lie there, twitching and smoking, as my body scrambles to repair itself. “So…” my ears pick up the sound of Sombra’s voice, even at this distance. He’s breathing heavily, but sounds satisfied. “This is the power the preening old fool was keeping hidden in her back pocket. This is the wrath of the sun.” I open my eyes. I can see that I flew backwards out the hole we made, smashed through the wall on the opposite side of the corridor, crashed through two chairs, a table, and a potted plant before finally winding up propped up against a third wall. Much of my coat is gone, and my skin is blackened and covered with blisters… but I don’t feel nearly as much pain as I should from third degree burns. My body is already putting itself back together. I can see Sombra clearly from here. He’s still standing where he was. Behind him, the wall that once backed the empire’s throne has been all but completely destroyed. A vast, vaguely-circular hole is lined with glowing, melted crystal. More of the bright substance runs down the walls and towards the floor, past the flaming remnants of banners. Outside I can clearly see parted grey storm clouds – and Celestia’s sun blazing bright. No… he can’t possibly have. Can he? The sun brightens almost imperceptibly, and a massive pillar of golden fire flies thorough the hole above Sombra, out and out melting a considerable portion of the throne room floor. The molten rock crashes onto the floor below, shaking the palace. The king laughs triumphantly. Ok, so he can. The windigoes around him, especially the big one, don’t look as pleased. Their apparent leader gets right in front of Sombra, hissing and wailing in some horrible ear-rending language. “Really?!” Sombra sound frustrated. “Now?! Can you not endure another few rounds of-” The towering ice spirit screeches directly into his face. “Alright! Alright!” he hisses back. Outside, the sun’s glow dims as it seemingly retreats. The grey storm clouds move in to plug the hole in themselves, and almost immediately begin to unleash a blizzard on whatever in underneath. The temperature inside the palace drops markedly. “There!” Sombra snaps. “Happy now?” My coat is already almost whole again. I get back on my hooves with an ease that surprises even me, everything working just fine. I whip my head around immediately and practically tear off the door to the next room over. Cadence is there, and I can see her own injuries fading away. She smiles slightly as I help her back to her hooves. “Now look what you’ve done!” Sombra complains to the ice demons. “They’re back on their hooves! Get them!” “Plan B?” Cadence asks. “Plan B,” I affirm. Since hiding and waging a battle of attrition is clearly not going to work against whatever solar magic Sombra is using, we switch to rapid offense. We meet the oncoming wave of ice with a wall of fire. A huge cloud of steam emerges from where they connect, enough to be debilitating to any ordinary vision. But Cadence and I simply reshape the flames into a ball and fire them right at the ice spirits. And launch ourselves immediately afterwards. We race straight at them, horns blazing. Cadence is flying, but I obviously am not practiced enough for that. We burst through the steam cloud just as the fireball explodes in the center of the wrecked throne room. Cadence soars over the gaping hole in the floor while I skirt around it, but both of us are firing bursts of light magic towards the windigoes, starting with the smallest and slowest. A few are hit, but most of those remaining are quick enough to dodge. The ice spirits split up, with the largest one soaring up to meet Cadence and the group of smaller ones rushing to attack me. I throw myself to the side and roll behind one of the damaged pillars to avoid their magic, then smash it as hard as I can with both hooves. The towering thing trembles, cracks, and then topples over towards my enemies. One of them is even slow enough to be crushed underneath it. The windigoes promptly swarm me, which, to be honest, is exactly what I wanted them to do. Sombra can’t use his solar death ray or whatever it is as long as his allies are on top of me. I tackle one of the windgoes head on and pull it to the floor. I throw a tiny dome on top of both of us and proceed to beat it to death with my bare hooves. The others get wiser and back off into the air, where I can’t effectively follow. We trade blasts of magic – I take a few hits to get off a better shot, but I’m much more durable than they are. High above I can see the giant spirit and Cadence swooping about in what under other circumstances might be mistaken for graceful aerial ballet. She’s smooth and quick with hundreds of years of experience, transitioning from dodging to attacking and back with consummate ease. Unfortunately, the great ice demon seems just as slick, twisting its almost serpentine form around her spells. When the two magicks do collide, they seem almost evenly matched. I blast another wendigo out of the sky, immediately chaining a shield spell to block the retaliation. I give myself a little shake to break off the ice starting to form on my coat and feathers, before dismissing the barrier and shielding my face with my wings. Icy cold winds blast over me, freezing my feathers immediately. I counter with a wild burst of uncontrolled flame. The ice spirits screech. I lower my wings, trying my best to shake off the frozen coat, and- “ARGH!” I look up just in time to see Cadence hanging there in the air for a fraction of a second. Then she plummets, dozens of tiny black crystals embedded in her back and wings. The giant windigo opens its maw and unleashes a miniaturized storm at just the moment when she’s too distracted to defend herself. The icy cone engulfs her… And the deep-frozen form of my wife hits the floor. Sombra, still standing where the throne once was, laughs. I go into a blind fury, summoning every last ounce of light magic I can muster and hurling it in an enormous sphere at those windigoes stupid enough to be between me and her. Five of them are obliterated in a single shot, but I don’t give a damn and race across the floor. Cadence is right there and I have to- Instincts hurls me aside just in time as a lance of red energy blows yet another hole in the increasingly unstable floor. I hit the icy, slippery ground roughly and roll some distance. On the throne’s dais, Sombra is laughing even harder. The giant windigo now floats beside him, expression leering and malevolent. There are no other ice spirits left – either I killed them all or they fled like beaten curs. The king takes a step off the dais, radiating infuriating smugness. “Very cute,” he says. “But now you shall deal with ME, oh prince, and all the powers of the sun!”