The ground nearly shook beneath me, but I didn't flinch. Looking out into the sea of ponies around me I could see that, for the most part, they were holding strong. None of them moved. None of them glanced around nervously. We presented a united front to the endless tide of minotaurs that marched upon our homeland. Above us, a thick blanket of cloud rolled over the battlefield, almost completely covering the sky.
The scouts didn't exaggerate. I had never seen such a large force in life or even in the movies as the one that came to me with the intent of killing everything that I knew and loved. I scanned the horizon for any end to their army, but found none. From what I could see, most of them were protected by simple leather armor and armed with swords or axes that, while not top-of-the-line, would be deadly enough to anything that found themselves on the wrong end of them. I saw a few minotaurs decked out in plate armor. The commanders no doubt. I focused my attention on the small gem in my helmet.
See, in a particularly genius move, Celestia had all of the helmets that our soldiers received embedded with a small gem inside. Each of them were "coded" to a specific unit. That meant that not only could I give orders to individual units as needed, but also the entire force. The ones for the commanders could go both ways, allowing them to communicate back with me. It took a lot of doing to get them that way. Even Celestia, Luna and Twilight helped in their creation and distribution.
I lit my horn and the gem glowed green for a moment.
"Cloud snipers if you could focus most of your attention on the ones in plate armor, that would be great. Napalm units as well."
"Roger, Prince Antares," the voice of Commander Rapids said.
I lit my horn again, and the gem glowed red. "Flame units, shock and awe. You have a limited amount of ammo, so don't waste it on individual troops. Try to focus on large groups. Hit their flanks and, once you're out, come back for additional orders."
"Yes, Prince Antares," the voice of another commander said.
I lit my horn one more time, and the gem glowed blue. "All units, this is Prince Antares. You have your orders. Follow them as best you can, and we're going to send them back to where they came from with their tails between their legs. At least, those of them whose tails haven't been burned off. Think about your families. Think about your homes. Think about how they're not going to get within a hundred miles of either of those things. Think about your buddy next to you, and fight as hard as you can to make sure that he or she makes it home. You do that, and they don't stand a chance."
"Ooh rah!" seventy thousand ponies screamed back at me.
"Excellent. I'll see you all once this is done. Don't break ranks. Make them regret ever even looking at our country."
The minotaur army, which had been marching towards us, stopped completely about five hundred yards away. I tightened my grip on Reginald, the name I'd decided to give the hammer as a whole, not just the staff, and readied myself to give orders. However, two minotaurs broke free from the main force and began walking towards our army. One of them held a green flag. A flag of truce in this world. I sighed and activated the gem again.
"I'm going out there. They won't hurt me. If they try anything, and I mean anything, I'll evaporate them and be back in time for fireworks."
"Roger that, Prince Antares," Commander Rapids said. "The one on the left seems to be on your list here."
"Marller?" I asked hopefully.
"Doesn't look like it. Looks like one of the old clan chieftains. Johland, I think his name is."
I grimaced as I spread my wings to meet him. Johland had a reputation for sadism with defeated enemies. By all accounts, he was just kind of a prick in general. He'd stab you in the back no question if his culture didn't expressly forbid that kind of thing.
Just my luck that he also happened to be one of the greatest swordsmen in the world.
Johland and his squire stopped about two hundred yards from the main force when they saw me coming. The cloud cover had already spread that far, so I wasn't terribly worried that they'd try something, even if their culture forbade them from attacking under a green banner. Granted, Johland also had a reputation for being kind of a bastard like that, and his actions might be overlooked in the event that he managed to take out an alpha alicorn.
Well, if he even tried to poke me on the shoulder with his finger to irritate me, he'd break his whole hand.
I landed in front of the two of them and slung my hammer over my shoulder. We both inclined our head in small bows, as courtesy dictated.
"Antares, such a delight to see you out here," Johland said, resting his hand on the pommel of his sword. "I've been looking forward to this."
"So I've heard. Funny that Puggle can't come out here and face me himself. He has to send a servant girl to talk to me. Do you wipe his arse for him, too?"
Johland's grip on his sword tightened and his eyes narrowed a fraction, but he didn't rise to the bait. "King Purgle doesn't even think that you're worth his time. Why would he bother with some wind--"
"Window washer who was hit with shiny necklaces? I really hoped he'd come up with one better than that. It'd be like if I called him 'bull-headed.' No originality at all."
Johland paused for a moment to collect himself before speaking again. "I'm here to offer you one last chance to give us what we want. You've brought your army here to face mine, but you must realize how futile of an effort this is. We will break the back of your pathetic army with as much effort as it takes to lift a sword. You will beg for mercy, but none shall be given." Johland shot me a nasty grin and slid his sword out of his sheath a few inches. I didn't need to see much more than that to tell that it was a Nightmare Weapon. "I will personally bring your head back to King Purgle if you choose to go that route."
A thought crossed my mind that I filed away for later. Focus on the idiot in front of me.
"I'm sure by now you've heard about my human weapons," I began. "Well, if you had, you'd know that I really am not going to tolerate your army taking one more step into my country. Should you ignore me, I will destroy your army and then make your dreams about me destroying Schunie come true."
"So you admit that your plan all along was to take our capitol?" he sneered.
"If the best you can do to get legitimacy for your actions is to take a sentence and twist it until it no longer resembles what I actually said, you're going to have some real problems going forward. Now, I could reiterate my desire for you to turn around and leave us both in peace, but I know that I'd be wasting my breath. That's hard for an alicorn to do, since we have an unlimited supply, and even if we didn't we don't actually need to breathe. Still, even though I literally have all of the time in the world, I'm not going to waste a moment more talking to a being who just got done sucking at his cow of a mother's teat. I'd say that I'll enjoy hearing you beg for mercy, but you're so far beneath me that even if you screamed your pleas in my ear, I doubt I'd notice."
Johland glared at me and grasped his sword. He almost got it halfway out of his sheath before a crossbow bolt from the clouds thudded on the ground next to him about half an inch from his leg. He stumbled back and almost fell down. Top heavy things like him don't tend to be very graceful in full armor.
"Leave it on the field," I said, taking the bolt out of the ground and storing it in a pouch at my side. "We haven't said 'ready, set, go' yet."
"You will pay for your insolence with the blood of every single pony in your nation," Johland growled. "I don't think I'll kill you today. I think I'll have King Purgle keep you as a pet so that you can watch while I tear your unborn child right out of the parts of Celestia that I’m done playing with."
My eyes narrowed a fraction of an inch. Barely enough to be noticeable unless you were paying attention. I ignited my horn and lifted up my war hammer, feigning some sort of intimidation thing. He pulled his sword halfway out of his sheath again, but didn't notice that I was splitting my magic. Without him noticing, I picked up a tiny pebble and teleported it directly into the brain of his squire. It's nice that he stood still for me so that I knew exactly where he'd be when I teleported the pebble. Otherwise it probably wouldn't have worked.
His squire flinched back for a brief moment, then fell down dead without a single sound. Johland flinched back, his eyes wide.
"What did you do?!" he roared.
"Nothing," I said, lowering my war hammer with a frown. "I can't help it if your armed squire is so freaked out by the sight of me with a hammer that he faints." I shrugged. "If that's the stock of your entire army then you're in deep trouble." I began backing away, my gaze never leaving him. "We're done here. Leave and live. Stay and die. I promise you that."
Before Johland could respond, I teleported back to my original spot on the hill. My alicorn eyesight saw Johland stomp back to the main army, leaving the body of his squire on the field. I fired up the communication gem again.
"All commanders, if this was a bad movie or if I was dumb, I'd tell you all to leave him to me. However, I only need his head, so if you spot him on the field, don't hesitate to take him out by whatever means necessary."
"Roger," said the commanders.
"Alrighty, mares and gentlecolts," I said, flipping communication back to the whole army. "They're mad. Mad enemies are stupid. Like I said before: just do your job, fight for the pony next to you, and we'll come out alright. Don't die for your country. Make them die for theirs."
Just then, a deafening cry went through the entire minotaur army as they all raised their weapons to the sky. They instantly went silent for a few moments, then began stomping in rhythm and screaming chants in some language I couldn't understand. They beat their chests with their fists and slammed the ends of their weapons on the ground, just like their ancestors going back thousands of years.
The minotaurs went quiet, which was my cue. Even as mad as he was, I suppose that Johland felt that we should still observe protocol. I raised my hoof and shouted a curse in ancient Equestrian. The moment the last syllable left my lips, my entire army shouted their response. I slammed my hoof in the ground and screamed another curse, and my army responded in kind. As nice as it was to have a haka for my guard, I couldn't deny that the traditional Equestrian haka carried far more weight, especially when seventy thousand ponies screamed it across the battlefield instead of a few hundred.
Just as we finished our haka, the minotaurs began theirs again. I followed suit, and the two armies fought to have their haka overtake the other. I even noticed the Saddle Arabian, buffalo and zebra soldiers following along with the hakas of their cultures. We screamed, we pounded our chests, we slammed our weapons together, we united as one. Each side let the other know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was no going back now. We were going to fight to our last breath. If they wanted us to stand down, they'd have to make us.
The hakas ended, leaving the previously deafening atmosphere silent for a few moments. On the other side, a few minotaurs shouted something that I couldn't quite make out. A deafening roar went through the minotaur army, and within moments, the mass charge began.
Tens of thousands of minotaur hooves thundered at us, but none of my ponies so much as flinched. The front line raised their shields and shoved spears into the gaps between the shields. Any minotaur who got that far would hit a strong, spiky wall. Among other things, of course.
Three hundred yards.
The first arrows and crossbow bolts began raining from the clouds. Dozens of minotaurs fell to the ground as they were struck. Those that survived the initial wound were trampled by the tide of minotaurs charging at us.
Two hundred yards
A few minotaur crossbowmen raised their weapons to the sky and fired even as they ran. Few made it high enough to actually pass through the clouds, but a pang went through my chest when I saw a couple of pegasi fall through the clouds with arrows sticking out of them, the magic that allowed them to walk on clouds leaving them at death. The pegasi fired back, many aiming at any ranged troops they saw.
One hundred yards.
Too close, morons.
At about seventy five yards, the ground gave way underneath the front minotaur line. Hundreds of minotaurs fell into the hole in the earth and impaled themselves on the spike pits we'd spent the past few days making. Many tried to stop, but the sheer number of minotaurs charging us meant that any that slowed down for even a few moments were either trampled or shoved into the pits.
"Now!" I shouted.
A wall of unicorns ignited their horns, and ten foot long spiked poles emerged from the earth. Each unicorn focused on the one they'd been assigned to, so each one had the proper amount of support. The unicorns stuck the poles into the ground at about a forty-five degree angle, high enough that the minotaurs would have trouble getting over them, but not so high that my archers couldn't fire on them at their leisure.
The pits we'd dug were becoming so full of minotaur bodies that the advancing army found that they could just walk over their fallen brethren to get to us. Several vollies of arrows felled many of the ones who made it across the pits, but more kept charging forward.
"Mares and gentlecolts..." I took a deep breath. "I think it's time we introduced them to our human weapons. Fire at will."
With that, warfare changed forever.
Black napalm bombs began falling from the sky. I followed them with my eyes and held my breath as they got closer to the sea of minotaurs. Here goes nothing.
I didn't need to worry.
The instant the bombs made contact, they exploded in sticky fire, engulfing everything in its path. The ones directly underneath the bombs were almost immediately reduced to little more than ash, while the ones merely splashed by the fire began screaming and convulsing with pain. However, there was so little room between the minotaurs that in their attempts to run, they'd catch the minotaurs around them on fire, too, albeit to a lesser degree. I tried to ignore the smell of burning flesh as we dropped five thousand degree sticky fire on our enemies. The minotaur army slowed down considerably as they began to realize that they didn't really like the idea of running straight at a wall of fire. Unfortunately for them, I'd decided to space out the attacks a little bit. More napalm bombs began falling from the sky at points of about a hundred feet apart. Several walls of flame erupted on the battlefield, causing mass disarray among the army. Vollies of arrows continued to fly from the sky, striking many minotaurs not aflame down.
"That's it for us, Prince Antares," the commander of the napalm unit said. "We're switching to longbows."
"Thank you, commander," I said evenly.
Even with everything we'd done, we'd only taken out a small fraction of their army. Not nearly enough to send them packing back to Purgle. I had more napalm available for future battles, of course, but as for this one, we were out.
Thankfully I still had one or two tricks up my sleeve.
"Catapults ready?"
"Ready to fire on your command, Prince Antares."
"Fire now."
Dozens of boulders sailed overhead and slammed into the chaotic minotaur army, annihilating anything they came into contact with. The minotaur bodies began stacking so high that I began to wonder if we needed the spike wall at all. Their dead seemed to be doing that job for us.
"Catapults away, Prince Antares. We'll need a few minutes to reload."
"That's fine," I responded. "Send flame boulders next time."
"That'll tack on another minute or two."
"Do what you have to do. They're afraid of any fire we send at them. We've stopped their advance for the moment."
The fire of the napalm began dying down a little, just enough that a few minotaurs began charging at our defenses again. A volley of arrows flew forth from our main force, dropping many minotaurs as they charged. Still, even with those casualties, more kept advancing. I looked out into the field in front of us and saw that we'd barely made a dent in their forces. I still couldn't see the end to the minotaur army before us.
The minotaurs reached the spike wall and began trying to scale it. The archers in my ranks began to focus on them. After a minute of that, we were treated to a repeat of the situation in the spike pits. So many minotaurs died trying to scale the wall, that their bodies turned into a stepping stool of sorts, allowing the minotaurs to begin actually making it over the wall.
"Cloud snipers, focus your attention on the spike wall. They're about to make it over."
"Roger that, Prince Antares," Commander Rapids said. "Be advised: we're almost out of ammo."
I cursed and began wracking my brain for a solution to that. I'd left them up there with a ton of ammunition, but I suppose that I failed to grasp just how big the army was. I figured they'd run out eventually, but I'd hoped that it would take longer than it did. To make matters worse, the napalm fires had started going out. It did allow both sides to see the absolute devastation that it wrought. The minotaurs charging past the charred bodies looked scared. Really scared. Still, it wouldn't take them too long to figure out that we'd run out. I turned on my com gem again.
"Flame units, shoot at the front line of minotaurs trying to come over the wall. We've fireproofed the logs so you don't need to worry about that. Conserve your ammo! Shoot for exactly three seconds, then get out of there!"
At my command, about a thousand troops wearing pitch black armor and grotesque masks began filling the gap between the spike wall and the shield wall. They raised flamethrowers and fired into the minotaurs, setting many aflame before beginning their retreat back to the main army. To compound that, the catapults fired a volley of flaming boulders right at the enemy.
Now, I knew that the flamethrowers weren't the best open combat weapons out there. However, after the napalm attack, the minotaurs would be deathly afraid of any fire I sent their way. I counted on it more as a weapon to attack their morale rather than one to inflict mass casualties.
Suddenly, the ponies who made up the shield wall stumbled, as if an earthquake jolted the battlefield. Strange. I hadn't felt anything. I couldn't figure out what the issue was, unless...
My eyes widened as it hit me, but it was too late now. The ground underneath the shield wall opened up, and diamond dogs began pouring out of the holes in the earth. They began slashing at the shield ponies with sharp scimitars, or even just digging claws and teeth into whatever exposed parts they could, which tended to be the neck. To make matters worse, a fair few flame ponies found themselves caught in the middle, and most dropped their flamethrowers to take out swords to fight the dogs.
"I'm going down there!" I shouted to Grina, who was taking a potion out of her bandoleer.
"I expected no less," she replied. "We'll be joining you shortly."
With that, Grina downed the potion she'd just taken out, and I saw the berserkers around her do the same. A few of them even had rather large rottweilers that they fed the potions to before taking one of their own.
The second the potions kicked in, I found out firsthoof why no one want to fight a berserker.
The eyes of the berserkers began turning a solid blood red. No iris, no pupil, just a solid red. Their teeth actually sharpened themselves into fangs, and their hair began thinning out. I couldn't even begin to imagine what it reminded me of, but even I flinched back when Grina let out a shriek so terrifying, that I couldn't compare it to anything I'd heard before or since. The berserkers charged forward at speeds that Rainbow Dash would be impressed with towards the fray. I didn't want to be a diamond dog when they got there. I fully believed Grina when she said that she'd bitten someone's face off during battle.
I took wing and flew straight down to the battle, noticing that minotaurs were starting to come over the wall much quicker. Some of the diamond dogs were even digging underneath them to take the spike poles out of commission entirely. I landed right next to a diamond dog hole and smashed my hammer into the first dog that popped his head out. It briefly reminded me of shooting a rotten pumpkin with a shotgun. Suffice to say, he didn't have a head anymore.
I followed that up by picking up one of the fallen flamethrowers shooting into the hole until it was empty. I heard the screams of dogs as they burned alive in their tunnel with no way out. Open combat wasn't the best place for flamethrowers, but clearing out tunnels? That was exactly what they were for. I used my magic to cover up the hole and moved on to the next one. The berserkers had reached the battlefield by that point. They slashed and kicked and bit and tackled their foes into submission. I saw one tackle a minotaur and sink his spiked teeth into his neck. He jerked back and tore out a large portion of the minotaur's neck before slamming his hoof into the minotaur's head and tackling the next one he saw.
Despite my best efforts, the diamond dogs succeeded in taking out enough of the spike wall that minotaurs began pouring through our lines. The shield ponies did their best to hold them at bay, but many fell to minotaur weapons. A few more arrows hit the attacking minotaurs, but I could already tell that our archers had just about run out of ammo.
Time to see who the strongest really was.
I turned on my com gem once more. "Cloud teams! If you're out of ammo, start using weather!" I dodged a minotaur swinging his sword at me and returned it with a blow from my hammer that sent him flying. "Make tornadoes!"
Pegasi began streaming out of the clouds above the minotaur army and flying in circles by the hundreds. Even with the armor, the sheer number of pegasi creating tornadoes meant that they had more than enough wingpower to pull it off. Within minutes, at least half a dozen tornadoes began tearing through the minotaur army.
But still the minotaurs did not slow down. Both sides smashed into each other, no longer caring about formations. We couldn't keep them up anyway. Thankfully, the Saddle Arabian and buffalo soldiers charged into the sides of the minotaur army, collapsing their flanks. I tightened my grip on my hammer and began swinging at every diamond dog and minotaur that I could see. I didn't have to look for targets. Any of them that saw me knew my identity, so many a foolish enemy charged at me, hoping to be the one to slay an alpha alicorn. Most didn't get within five steps of me.
As I continued to fight, I saw one minotaur armed with a large black sword, swinging it at ponies and cutting many down. I narrowed my eyes and began running toward him. Johland. Even with his helmet covering his entire head, I recognized the armor and sword.
Johland turned around just as I fired a beam of magic into his chest. He stumbled back, but didn't fall completely, which would have been game over for him. His armor must have been strengthened with some anti-magic wards. They wouldn't hold up if I hit him with everything I had, of course, but a quick hit wouldn't destroy him.
Johland swung his sword at me, and I dodged with a few inches to spare. Like I said: I didn't really feel like testing to see if a Nightmare Weapon could actually do damage to my armor. He swung again, and I blocked it with the shaft of my hammer. Even with the combined strength of my magic and Reginald, I could feel the raw power behind his blow. I began doubting that my armor would completely protect me if he scored a hit. I couldn't make the whole thing out of mithril, after all.
I swung my hammer at him, and, foreseeing that he'd dodge it, twisted my body to the other side and followed it up with a swipe from one of my wing blades. The blade scored a hit and left a deep gash on his chestplate. A small trickle of blood began dripping out of the gash, but if it bothered him at all, he didn't show it. He used the fact that the momentum of my attack caused me to lunge forward faster than I probably should have, and he brought his sword down. I quickly raised a wing to block his swing, and the force of the colliding blades sent a vibration throughout my body. If I survived this, my wing would be sore in the morning.
However, my wing blade swipe had enough strength behind it that he stumbled back when his sword bounced off of it. I pressed my advantage and swung my hammer at his leg. It scored a direct hit and I didn't doubt that I'd shattered every bone in it, even with the armor he wore. He fell to the ground clutching his leg. His sword slipped out of his hand, leaving him defenseless, which suited me fine. I'd finish him off then teleport the Nightmare Weapon somewhere else so that no one else could pick it up and try to use it against me.
Before I could bring my hammer down, two diamond dogs jumped on my back, their surprise weight bringing me to the ground. One scratched my face with his razor sharp claws to no real effect other than severely irritating me. I reached out with my magic and snapped his neck before punching the other dog as hard as I could. His neck broke on impact, allowing me to get up.
My movement saved my life.
Just as I began pushing myself back up, pain coursed through my body in a way that I hadn't felt in a long time. I fell to the ground with a scream that was drowned out by the chaos of battle around me. I regained my senses long enough to see that Johland had picked his weapon back up and sliced my shoulder open with it. As I suspected, the magic of the Nightmare Weapon nullified the magic of my armor, and the force of the blow cut through the steel with relative ease.
He did make one mistake, though.
Even though it hurt a lot, I knew immediately that the wound wasn't nearly as dangerous as the crossbow bolt to the chest that Sinosis had given me. He'd cut me pretty deep, but not deep enough to take the leg out of commission completely. However, that wasn't his mistake. His mistake was not remembering one thing that happened when I got hit with Nightmare Weapons.
It tended to really piss me off.
With one powerful flap of my wings, I began hovering a few feet in the air and called upon Luna's ice dagger spell, creating dozens that I shot into every enemy even close to me. Then, I completely engulfed Johland in my magic. The anti-magic wards on his armor fizzled out as my power overloaded them completely. I pumped more magic into my horn and began crushing his armor like a tin can. His problem consisted of the fact that he hadn't taken it off yet. He tried to struggle free of my magic, but his bones began breaking as the armor designed to keep him alive crushed him to death instead. He screamed and wiggled his neck, the only bone left unbroken that he could really move. With one more burst of magic, the armor flattened completely, killing Johland almost instantly.
I released what was left of him and picked up the Nightmare Weapon, still stained with my blood. I teleported it back to my tent before flying straight into the air, focusing my attention on the half dozen tornadoes still wreaking havoc behind the main lines. I activated my com gem and ordered all of the pegasi to disperse. They began flying away from the tornadoes they had created, which did mean that the minotaur archers had an easier time picking them off. Not for long.
With no pegasi to keep the tornadoes controlled, they began to both disperse and move erratically. I reached out with my magic and took control of them, fusing my pegasus magic with my unicorn magic and lighting them on fire. Content that I had a suitably deadly weapon, I began whipping them all around the battlefield, pouring more magic into them to make them larger and more deadly. I flew over their army, casually shrugging off the arrows they fired at me while dragging the tornadoes behind me in the direction of the rear army.
Feeling my magic beginning to drain, both from the strain of keeping six giant fire tornadoes going and the wound from the Nightmare Weapon, I dispersed the tornadoes and spent the last of my magic tearing chunks out of the earth and bringing them down upon the heads of the minotaurs below. After throwing the last one, I flew down as fast as I could into the middle of the minotaur army, hitting the ground with enough force to both dent the earth below me and send out a shockwave that pushed a few troops back. I summoned my hammer and began swinging it wildly, smashing into scores of minotaurs. It only took a few moments for the minotaurs to completely give up hope that they could fight me, even with the painful shoulder wound.
I don't know how long I fought. I don't know how much extra damage I did to my shoulder, but I kept pushing. I needed to kill them all. It felt like ages before I heard several loud horns sounding. They didn't sound like pony horns. I pulled out of my blood lust just enough to see all of the minotaurs around me running back in the direction they came. Shouts of "retreat" and "fall back" echoed around me. At the same time another shout began, this one louder than the fearful cries of the minotaurs.
A shout of victory.
I slowly, gently took to the air and saw the remnants of my army raising their weapons high and shouting at the retreating minotaurs. It took my mind several moments to realize that I wasn't imagining it.
We'd won.
I flew back to my forces, ignoring the retreating minotaurs beneath me. I landed next to somepony I vaguely recognized as Commander Rapids. I guess she'd flown over to meet me.
"Prince Antares, should we pursue?" she asked.
I turned around and stared at the retreating minotaurs. Even as I watched tens of thousands of minotaurs fleeing for their lives, I slowly began to become aware of the bodies. More bodies than I could count on both sides littered the battlefield. My mind went absolutely blank as I tried to register it all. I just couldn't.
The last of my magic faded away completely, and my hammer thudded to the ground next to me. I slowly blinked once and sat down on my haunches, becoming more and more aware of my shoulder injury.
"No, Commander Rapids. We're done."