Lily - 10th of Midsummer ‘15 EoH - AfternoonLily - 10th of Midsummer ‘15 EoH - Afternoon
“Out in a minute, hold position!” Night Watch rapidly exclaimed, quickly tapping the gem to reset it in order to speak to somepony else. “Everypony on me, this is a VIP extraction. We’re heading for the safe room in the palace. Come in Everfree Command. Command, this is Sergeant Major Night Watch. I’m escorting VIP’s to Ess Three. Requesting status report.”
In the seconds between Night stopping speaking, and the other pony replying I noticed most ponies here just continuing to eat lunch.
This shocked me to the core. There was danger here! And yet the ponies just to the left of the stairwell were exchanging bits!
“I really thought it would be five months this time.” A cherry colored stallion muttered, sliding a few bits across the table to a cerise colored mare.
“Sergeant Major, this is Command.” Night’s stone informed. “We have multiple packs of Timberwolves inbound from the west. They circled around our perimeter without being detected, and have ignored bait. We are currently mustering the militia. Once the VIPs are secure, if you can make it to the west wall top, we are establishing a command post above the gatehouse.”
The five of us made it down the stairs, and headed for the door.
“If it’s just Timberwolves, then it’s mostly a problem for everypony outside the walls.” Lyra mused. “Sargent, you know who I am, right?”
“Yes Ma’am. Do you want to invoke Command Privileges?” Night asked carefully.
“Possibly. Depends.” Lyra sighed, and retrieved her own messenger stone with her magic. “Vinyl. Vi, Ponyville’s being hit by a large group of Timberwolves, is it safe to leave the fire for an hour?”
“Buck no!” A mare’s voice called back. “The thing just flared up! Nopony told me that they were containing it with their bucking Rainbow Powers. Lyra it just breached their shield, we had to close the portal because this stuff is jumping through any thaumaturgic link. We’re stuck here till it’s gone!”
Okay, David had some kind of psychic power. I’m calling that right now…
“General Advisory!” Night’s messenger suddenly exclaimed. “Eastern perimeter has been breached, two Hydra are inbound!”
“Yeah… Lyra, you deal with that. Don’t teleport up here, it might follow the link back through!” Vinyl exclaimed as Lyra’s gem cut off.
“Wait, two?” Scootaloo asked curiously. “Is that a Ponyville record?”
“No, we had three of them once a hundred and fifty years or so back.” Night said quickly before turning to Lyra. “Ma’am, I wouldn’t have noticed it if David hadn’t suggested it… But we have monsters flanking the city. With our big guns conveniently distracted.”
“Definitely enemy action.” Lyra agreed, moving up to take the lead. “Everypony on me. Where’s this David? I want a quick vote.”
“He’s easy to spot.” I mentioned, looking around as we stepped out of the diner.
Yup. Easy to spot, almost instantly in fact. As a pony, David kept his fur patterns. Multiple coat colors in a pony are really rare, so his Rusty red and cream border collie pattern might as well have been a neon sign. Also his dark brown mane was pretty shaggy and rough looking, not that pony like.
Come to think of it, he was less a pony, and more a pony shaped Diamond Dog… Maybe my spell wasn't as good as I thought it had been. At least his horn was okay…
David noticed us instantly and trotted over, frowning slightly. “I did not expect this many people. How many of you can fight?”
“David?” Lyra asked.
David nodded.
“I’m Sir Lyra Heartstrings, Knight of the Rampant Moon.” Lyra informed, “I’m thinking the six of us should help push the Timberwolves back, because Scoots has no combat training. But she is a Ponyvillain, we know how to keep our heads down. The Ponyville Militia are basically a well intentioned joke who I really should see about getting non-crap equipment. Those ponies need help, and we might be some of the best troops in the town right now. I want to put it to a vote.”
David nodded slowly. “I understand, and I agree. But tactically, and as a friend, Lily here is worth more alive than dead or injured. We will need a medic so-”
I gave David a glare. “Hey! I saved your plot from the griffons in Stalliongrad! I’m not totally useless.”
“Yeah that’s true… Just trying to look out for you. You have the start of a life going on now,” David objected.
He was right. I could hang back and be safe. I did have somepony I loved. But I also was a healer, and people were going to be hurt.
I turned to look at Scootaloo, giving her a grim but determined nod. “I’m of more use close at hoof to everypony getting hurt.”
Scoots nodded back. “Yeah, you are. I can help keep his flanks clear. It’s not like Timberwolves can fly, and I’ve always been okay at making lightning.”
“Alright, but what about the mare with the guitar. I don’t want to take a civy into a combat zone if they can’t look after themselves.” David said with a concerned frown.
Lyra, Ember, and I immediately snickered.
“Yeah, she’ll be fine. Everything’s fine.” Lyra said with a dismissive hoof wave.
“But the Timberwolves?” Scootaloo asked in concern.
“It’s fine… It’s fine.” Lyra dismissed again.
“Are you sure, cause it seems like she has zero adventurer training.” David asked with a thoughtful frown.
“Yeahyeahyeahyeah it’s fine, she’ll be fine. Weh-eh-eh it’s fine, it’s fine it’s fine it’s fine…” Lyra said as she flailed her hooves erratically.
“What was the thing those units say in that game you showed me, Lyra?” Ember asked before nodding in recollection. “Oh right!”
Her entire voice changed, a creepy enough thing without it shifting to a male voice with a mechanical tinge that included an odd hiss of air. “Ghost report’n,” she intoned, fading out of sight. “Never knooow what hit ‘em...”
“Oh... Well shit.” David and Night chorused said amid a double eyebrow raise.
“How the flying buck did you do that?” Scoots demanded. “I didn’t even see a spell being ca- wait, is she still here?”
“Yeah, I just stopped being visible. I’ll tell you later.” Ember said in her normal voice.
“Right, so everypony here is golden.” Lyra said nodding to herself. “Except… David, we are pressed for time. In one quip, summarize your idea of combat!”
David tilted his head slightly. “Uh, why a-”
“We are pressed for time! I don’t get to explain my methods, just do it!” Lyra barked in a tone that David must have found especially commandery.
“Sir, a shotgun to the face is the perfect cure for being an asshole, sir!” David instantly shouted.
Lyra grinned. “I like you. One minute.” Lyra quickly fished her messenger stone from her bag and taped it. “Everfree Command. Command, this is Sir Heartstrings. I’m taking command of the situation. Is Spike here or with Twilight?”
“I’m here.” A reptilian sounding male voice replied.
“Spike, take one of the Hydras down.” Lyra ordered. “All Royal Guard on this channel, redeploy into two units. Alpha unit to cover Spike, Bravo unit to engage the second hydra. All Militia Ponies on this channel, deploy to the west outer district and evacuate everypony you can behind the walls. All Lunar Guards on this channel, move to engage the Timberwolves, I’ll be joining you shortly.
“All Solar Guards on this channel, I would be very happy if you would hold the wall tops, and if I can get ahold of your CO, expect to be ordered to do so anyways. The enemy may send more forces soon. Everypony not affiliated with those groups on this channel, you are free to listen, but keep it clear of chatter.”
I gave Lyra an impressed jaw drop. “Where the buck was this you when we were investigating the lab in my basement?”
Lyra rolled her eyes. “One pony does not an organized fighting force make. David, how’s your spellcraft?”
She started to rush down the street as she spoke. Her thundering hoofsteps seemed like she could be going a lot faster if she wanted. It was nice of her to let me keep up.
“Crap.” David admitted. “I’m more of a weapons guy.”
“Are you armed?” She asked.
“Well, he’ll have his knife on him.” I pointed out helpfully.
“Knife, nifty deploying shield, knuckle duster. I’ve got a ranged weapon, but it’s in Twilight’s keep. Haven’t gotten my weapons license in the mail yet.” David grunted. “Don’t worry about picking up weapons for me. I’m crap with bows.”
“The buck nation are you from where you can be a soldier, but suck with a bow?” Night demanded.
“An industrial one.” David shot back. “What about you? Night’s unarmed.”
“Night’s got hooves.” Lyra said quickly. “My house is right outside the gate, I got a small supply cache. We pick it up, and book it for the west outer dist- Wait, the hay is a knuckle duster?”
“Bit of metal you hold onto while punching. Forces all the impact onto a few small points. Force multiplier basically.” David grunted.
“You use elbow and knee strikes?” Night asked curiously.
Oh yes, these ponies didn’t know anatomy. I should probably remove the confusion so everypony’s on the same page.
“He’s not talking about carpal or tarsal joints,” I said, chest heaving from the long sprint. “The joints between talon and finger bones are also called knuckles.”
“You have hands?” Lyra ask-exclaimed, whipping her head around so quickly she almost fell over.
“Yeah. Technically a werewolf but not really.” David replied. “I don’t fight in this body… It moves to different from my real one.”
“Well, our odds of doing something just improved.” Lyra said relieved. “Uh, so, what kind of hands you got?”
“The kind I know how to use.” David barked back, “What kind of question-”
“She studies bipeds for fun,” Night interrupted. “He’s got some odd ones, a lot like a monkeys, but with shorter digits. Powerful with one hay of a grip, he almost beat me in an arm wrestling contest.”
“Wait, how do you know he’s actually a biped?” I asked giving night a confused look.
“He’s the only person in town I can use as a sparring partner,” Night grunted. “Everypony else just breaks.”
“Yeah Night’s got a hell of a punch. I’d hate to be hit by you going all out.” David said with a wince.
“Nopony wants to get hit by an earth pony.” Scootaloo interjected.
“Doubly so when your special talent is being a strong colt, and you spent your first fifty years laying railroad track.” Night said with a grin.
“Ohhh so that’s why you’re not carrying a weapon.” Scoots noted with a slight flinch.
“Uh, what am I missing?” I asked, ears drooping.
I knew that earth ponies were strong, but-
“You’ll see.” Lyra called back from her position in the lead.
I smiled, doing my best to catch my breath as we continued to run. I was in okay shape, but we seriously had just sprinted full tilt about four hundred yards! The gates were just a few meters ahead. How did everypony have this much stamina?
As we passed through the gates, Lyra nodded to the small nicely decorated candy shop to our immediately left. “All right, that’s my pla-”
“Sir Heartstrings, warning red, repeat, warning red!” Lyra’s gem crackled, a male voice shouting to be heard over the crunch of stone and hiss of spellbolts. “This is Sergeant Anvil Thunder of the Solar Guard, acting XO. Hostiles have breached the walls. Repeat, hostiles have breached the walls. They burrowed up through Spur Street. Requesting reinforcements.”
“Hold on Sargent, that’s on our way. Keep them busy for five minutes.” Lyra instantly replied.
“You know, you never mentioned you were adept in the school of psionics.” I said to David in a bitter tone.
“It’s been less than a month since Chrysalis. I’m still on edge. Seeing enemies everywhere.” David grunted as Lyra threw the front door of her house slash shop open.
“What wars were you a part of?” Lyra asked. “For the sake of trying to understand what you can do.”
“Just one.” David replied, as we all quickly ran into the actually very nicely decorated candy shop.
I felt a bit bad that the first time I was seeing this place was during an attack. It seemed like the neighborly thing to do was to send the place a gift basket, not use it as a staging area for an assault.
“Must have been a hell of a war then,” Lyra noted, “you have the face.”
“Almost a hundred nations. Six years and a day.” David grunted, popping his neck in what I recognized as a nervous gesture. “It happened a very long ways from here. We can talk about it some other time. Right now, we have an enemy literally down the road.”
“It’s fine.” Lyra said as she moved over to a book case and gave it a push backwards with her magic, opening a secret compartment.
I instantly gave her a glare. Nopony hides things behind a bookshelf because ponies use bookshelves huh? I see what you did there!
“At the worst, we have a half hour until any Lunar guard not fighting that fire makes it to a teleport circle and can transport here,” Lyra informed. “We have a Class Five emergency here, Command will have reported it since the Hydras appeared, reinforcements are inbound.
“Yes we are in danger, but we have time to talk as we act. Which is good because I would like to know what you can do, so I don’t get any of us killed.” She said as she opened a floor panel, which had its latch hidden by the book case, and revealed a compartment filled with a few sets of armor and a few arcane weapons.
“Ah, that’s different.” David admitted. “Hold on.”
David was consumed by a burst of green light. Not the one I’d been expecting. It didn’t look like a changeling’s flare, it was more focused, a simple pulse of green as if from a mage light, not a fire. I frowned in concern, eyeballing the aura’s intense and focused nature critically. Something had definitely gone differently than planed…
Especially since he shifted and suddenly had his jacket, and even a pair of pants!
The flying buck? He should not have been able to conceal equipment and clothing in a given form! That was not something I had designed into the spell. I’d made an error someplace. Apparently a beneficial error, but who knew what consequences could come from it?!
On another note, I was very happy to see that David had been lying about his gun being in Twilight’s keep. I was pretty terrified of the fact that he could take it with him when he shifted, because Faust only knows where that mass went between shifts, but grateful he’d done that at the moment.
“Uh, David, after this, I think you need a checkup, you shouldn’t have been able to store things like that.” I said quickly.
“Eh,” he said giving me a dismissive wave of his hand. “Don’t sweat it kid, I worked this out myself. I can take about twenty pounds with me… Man it’s good to have pants again. I don’t know how you ponies do that all the time. It’s so uncomfortable.
“Anyways, Lyra, if you’ll look at the ribbon bars, and the patch on my shoulder here, I’m a well decorated Lieutenant. I have tools I know how to use, just tell me what needs doing.”
Lyra turned around, having just picked up some sort of spell amp, only to drop it, sputter something incoherently, then jump at David to grab his shoulders! Impressive considering he was now twice as tall as she was.
“Where the buck did you get this jacket?” Lyra demanded urgently and barely coherently.
David very gently reached up, grabbed the frenzied mare’s hooves and removed them from his person, setting her on the floor with a grunt of, “Oi! Get off. It’s my jacket. Military issue. I’m sure someone can make you a copy if it’s that good looking, but there’s a fucking war on! Get your head in the ga-”
“Buck the jacket! The flag on it! Red and white field, with a blue canton featuring a field of stars device. I dig that out of ancient ruins all the bucking time! It’s on EVERYTHING! Where did you get it?” Lyra demanded in the same urgent tone most doctors reserved for telling people to move out of the way while wheeling a dying patient to emergency surgery.
“I was given it when I enlisted! There’s a fucking war on! I can hear explosions down the road! We can deal with this later!” David screamed.
“Seriously Lyra, it’s a bucking flag! Talk later, save ponies now!” Night added firmly.
Lyra flinched. “Y-you're right. I’m sorry. There’s no time… Mark my words if you die before we have a conversation, I will find a way to force your spirit to answer every last question!”
Well. That was creepy.
Lyra quickly began tossing everypony things from the hidden compartment. “Scoots, put that harness on. It’s got shield charms and managems to fuel them. Should last you a dozen or so direct hits before you’re vulnerable. Don’t rely on it! David, you have a knife a punching thing, and what looks like a musket. Take these grenades.
“Lily, you know how to use a spellbow? I’ve got two and I’m taking one.”
“The hay is a spellbow?” I asked curiously.
“Dirt simple unicorn weapons.” Lyra said pulling a small silver rod about half a pony tall from the compartment and holding it out to me.
The weapon looked like it would focus your magic through three crystals, and some simple technoarcane mechanisms along it’s length.
“Ah, you push your magic through here and it… Amplifies your spell?” I asked.
“No. Hold it with your TK, point at the enemy, push some extra magic into it, and it fires a spellbolt faster and further than you can. Impacts almost instantly, nearly no travel time, can do about five hundred yards.” Lyra informed turning the weapon over to me. “Super illegal for a civy to use one, so um… Congrats you’re getting a field promotion to Squire for the duration of this conflict.”
“Shit! Right, do you have any mana crystals?” David asked quickly. “Apparently, my baby has a charge time of about a week, so it’s dry. She’s a conjured weapon, built in ammo supplying spell.”
Lyra nodded and tossed David a small lightly glowing piece of quartz. “There you go. If that thing’s conjured, it won’t last for more than a few months. Take it to Pattern Steel after this mess. That mare can make anything made of metal. Everypony ready? Shit, Ember, you still with us?”
“I’m here.” Ember informed flicking back into visibility for an instant, showing up just behind Lyra, before vanishing again.
“So, could you turn all of us invisible?” Night Watch asked hopefully.
“Sure, for about three seconds. Then I’d die due to running out of energy.” Ember said in the most casual matter of fact way possible.
That tone made her word choice all the more horrifying.
“Okay, good to know,” Night replied. “Ma’am, if we sprint and you don’t object to me taking out a few fences, we can be on Spur street in less than a minute.”
“Buck the fences.” Lyra said turning to head out the door before her head turned back to face David as if she were fighting doing so with every fiber of her being. “So, what is your homeland called? Why are they using ancient human symbols? Do you have any ruins you reverse engineer- Sorry, let’s go!”
I saw David’s eyes almost literally pop out of his skull the very instant Lyra said the name ‘humans’. I frowned, come to think of it, he’d never told me the name of his species…
I knew that he wasn’t originally a Diamond Dog. I knew he’s been reincarnated. But I never asked him what he used to be. That seemed…rude. He didn’t like talking about his old life.
My eyes widened in sudden terror, as I realized that he just might, possibly, actually be a-
No! Bad Lily. Danger now. Focus on conspiracy theories later.
No, scratch that, just ask Dusk once this was all over. You’ll want a drink anyways.
Everypony ran out the door. Night taking point, then Lyra, then David, then Scoots, and finally me. I’d made it ten steps before I felt an icy chill on my back. Barely keeping from yelping in terror, I looked back, only to see nothing.
“Sorry!” Ember whispered. “I want to keep close. Nothing knows I’m here, so I can whisper things to you.”
Oh, now that was an idea. Except…
“I appreciate the thought, but you are extremely cold!” I said, doing my best to keep up with the group, who apparently had bionic legs or something.
“Sorry… We can apparently warm up, Cole dose it, but I’m still learning how.” Ember apologized. “I’m not going to hurt you, and I can see magic, since the monsters can burrow underground…”
I nodded. “I get you point. Just… If possible can you hover over me?”
“Of course. Sorry, I didn’t think of-”
Ember was interrupted by a loud crack and thud as Night watch plowed into and through a wooden fence. Into and through being one single smooth motion. A single motion which left behind a pony and a half wide hole through the smooth planks on each side.
“One more fence to go. Everypony get your shit in gear!” Night called as he turned slightly to ram the fence across the now accessible street.
As I passed through the ruined section of fence, I could hear the sounds of battle. A sort of general noise had filled the air since the alarm began, but it had been a dull roar. Background noise. The sharp cracks of stone, screams of pain, and shouted orders which I could now hear blocked out almost everything else.
Every few moments I could see the flashes of light reflecting off of the buildings as a spell shrieked through the air. Each flash of light hit me as if the spells were being thrown my way. This was a real battle. This was happening. I was about to fight.
My heart sped up. I did my best to push the fear aside, I’d done this before. I’d faced a swarm of changelings. I could do this.
Yeah… My limbic system didn’t care about logic. Stupid emotions… Always with the fear.
Night Watch leveled his shoulder as he neared the simple plank fence, grunted, put on a burst of speed, and smashed into the fence. An instant later, the hole left behind was empty. Lyra and David rushed through with a practiced motion. Scoots tentatively moved through, blocking the entrance almost long enough for me to run into her before Night’s hoof reached from the left and pulled her aside.
The instant I was through, I saw the entire battle. The lot in front of us was empty, a building’s foundation filled the majority of the space, not destroyed, but under construction. The street in front of it looked to be a pile of rubble stretching as far as I could see from side to side.
Large ruptured blister-like protrusions of cobblestones and earth heaved up out of the street. Patches of molten rock glowed dimly in the afternoon sun. A group of golden armored unicorns were holed up on three separate rooftops to my left, desperately firing spell after spell into a writhing mass of three pony long, terrifyingly huge centipedes.
They were slate gray with blood red legs, mandibles the size of my head, and busily chewing the buildings the unicorns were holding up on to rubble.
Lyra instantly threw up a shield, a shoulder high series overlapping golden hexagons flashed into being. David crouched down, pulling his rifle up and resting it on the edge of the shield, immediately starting to fire into the rolling mass of monstrous insects.
There had to be a thousand of them. They swarmed over, under, and along one another, moving like a grotesque wave of scaly flesh.
Being soldiers, Lyra, Night, and David, began to pick off the spawn of Tartarus one by one in a tactical fashion. Unlike the professional soldiers present, Scootaloo and I had the appropriate reaction.
I screamed, firing every single last dangerous spell I knew into the horror before me. Ice crystals, flashes of fire, electric arcs, and plasma blooms shredded and burst hoards of the centipedes, forming mounds of gore and viscera which were far less horrific and grotesque than the creatures which they had been, and who's kin began to feast upon their twitching remains.
Scootaloo screamed, reflexively taking to the air in a panicked jump, forcing a storm cloud to coalesce in her hooves, and throwing a blinding bolt of lightning into the mass of pure disgusting evilness! A line of fire chased the bolt as grass ignited behind the flash of energy.
Night Watch vaulted the shield, had our blanket of death screech over his head, and immediately vaulted back over the shield and dive behind us. “Watch your fire!” He shouted urgently.
The mass of writhing way to fucking big insects turned surging towards our position like the arm of a single organism, lunging hungrily forwards!
“Everypony, fire into their flank!” A Solar Guard shouted as they monsters turned towards us.
Spellbolts of every color started to pepper the enemy, dropping the occasional monster, but the tide remained. Lyra shouted something as the creatures closed in. David pulled back from the shield edge as it flowed up into a dome.
A centipede leaned in over the shield edge as it closed. Night reared up, throwing a straight punch into it’s face, popping the monster’s upper body like a balloon!
The shield closed. The monsters swarmed over the shield, jiggling jelly-like eyes hungrily staring at us as they clawed at the barrier!
White!
Everything white!
Eye stabbing wh-
The rolling booms of twelve nearly simultaneous thunderclaps slammed into my head, sending it ringing as my brain finally registered the dozen bolts of lightning which had just struck directly in front of the shield.
Not the small bolt a pegasi could coax from a stormcloud. Real lightning. The natural kind. White and blue ribbons of pure electricity from the stratosphere.
Over the next twenty seconds an uncountable number of lightning bolts literally scorched the earth around us as if mother nature herself had decided, ‘Buck this area in particular!’ The constant streams of lightning hummed and crackled almost musically, drowning out the thunderclaps from each individual bolt as the five of us hunkered down beneath the shield, screaming as the smell of burnt meat seemed to displace the air itself.
Then, silence. As if the sudden bombardment had never been.
I looked out of the shield, noticing the carbonized remains of a few centipedes still clinging to the hardlight shield, and past that, hovering in the center of the now literally glassed patch of earth that was formerly a lot, was Scootaloo.
A blue-white glow slowly faded from her eyes as I watched, awe struck, as it dawned on me that the entire sky was covered in rolling black storm clouds, and she had done that. The eyes gave it away. The Eyes of Meadowbrook, a sure sign that a pony is or has just expelled more power in one moment than most could in an entire month.
My awe turned to horror as the glow vanished, a thick oozing trickle of blood ran from Scootaloo’s nose, and she dropped from the sky like an anvil, crashing in a heap atop a pile of ash.
“Holy bucking crap, Scoots!” Lyra exclaimed, her tone starting out awestruck but becoming horrified halfway through.
She dropped her shield. I sprinted forwards, pushing aside a Solar Guard who had also been rushing towards her who immediately tried to shove me aside as ell.
The two of us let out simultaneous cries of “Move I’m a medic!” before giving each other a professional nod and skidding to a halt on the actually melted into glass dirt to kneel at Scootaloo’s sides.
For a second, I thought she was dead. No moving, no breathing. Then with a loud gasp as if she needed to inflate her lungs from absolutely empty, Scootaloo jerked upright into a sitting position, immediately grabbing her forehead with both hooves and screaming in some of the worst pain I’d ever seen firsthoof!
“Ahhhhhh! Ow! Ow! Ow!” She began to loop, rocking back and forth for the three seconds it took for both the other medic and I to quickly cast painkilling spells.
“Scoots, can you hear me? What hurts and how?” I demanded.
“Brain! Brain want’s out… Of… Head!” She gasped, clearly still in great pain despite my efforts.
I looked over at the Solar Guard, giving him the look. The look which said, ‘I have nothing for this.’
The white furred unicorn gave me a small nod in return. He knew. And fortunately, he immediately began casting a few spells. “Don’t worry ma’am, this shouldn’t be… Ah. Right. Not to worry, I can fix this.” His horn glowed a deep lime green for a few moments, his aura sliding around Scootaloo’s head for a long moment before vanishing.
“Better?” He asked in concern.
“Yeah… Just throbbing now. No… No trying to push brain out of my head…” Scootaloo groaned.
“You gave yourself a hemorrhagic stroke. You’re very lucky you didn’t kill yourself outright. I recommend you eat lots of protein for the next few days. My spell’s fixed everything up, but definitely eat as well as you can for a while… And if you’re missing any memories, there’s sadly nothing I can do. Are you okay to move?” He asked.
I winced instantly. “Thanks. I don’t have any experience with the brain.”
Scootaloo nodded slowly. “I… I think I’m fine… It’s just a migraine now.”
Lyra stepped into view on my left side. “Damn Scoots… I’d say next time lead with that, but how about no?”
“Sounds great… Don’t even know how the buck I did it… Was really scared.” She mumbled, shakily climbing to her hooves.
I felt an icy hoof tap me on my shoulder. “Um, Lily, are the leather armored ponies on our side?” Ember asked.
“What leather armor?” I asked looking up, and then around, frowning. “I don’t see anything.”
“Special Operations use leather armor,” Lyra said looking as well. “We could use a few of them to trace where these holes came from. I didn’t know there were any in… Wait where are they?”
“Um, by the house across the street,” Ember said before quickly going. “Ohhh right, you can’t see thaumaturgic currents so-”
The door on the house creaked open, just enough for a pony to slip through.
“-okay that one’s carrying a foal.” Ember informed.
“Guards, stunbolts! Dust that doorway!” Lyra barked, thrusting one hoof towards the closing door.
The almost simultaneous volley of white lancing bolts of energy formed a sheet light. The concussive thuds of the bolts striking home sounded like a hail storm made from hatred. Around the doorway, a sea of red sparks shot out in all directions as a bright red wall of force intercepted the shots, aside from a patch of blue white sparks as the cloaking spell hiding a unicorn dissolved in a violent spray of magic as it dropped to the ground!
The unicorn was dressed in a full body leather jumpsuit, dyed literally pitch black. Most of the body was concealed under a voluminous slate gray cloak made of thin leather, and trimmed in crimson embroidered with silvery white arcane markings. The only hint of the pony beneath the leather was a slender azure colored horn poking through a slit in the cloak’s hood designed to keep the hood up at all times.
Immediately as the unicorn hit the ground, five identically dressed unicorns shimmered into existence behind the red shield wall! I had just enough time to notice each wore a full face silvery-blue metal mask under their hoods before their rapid vollies of ray spells made me dive for cover.
“They are moving to retrieve!” Somepony shouted.
“That downed foe stays the buck here!” Lyra ordered over the screaming hisses of spells whizzing overhead.
The spells flew overhead for a full minute, a thick haze of residual mana began to form a fog like cloud that hovered near the ground glowing slightly as the spells sliced along its upper level.
Then suddenly, over the noise of the firefight, a few shouted words drifted over the battlefield. “Sister, we can’t reach you.”
“Can’t… move…”
“We shall see you later in death. Farewell.”
“Oh like hell you are!” I heard David shout, the sharp crack of his rifle punctuating the sound of a spell being fired, and the tell tale glimmering, tinny sound of a teleport spell being cast.
“Great shot!” Lyra exclaimed, “Somepony make sure that one’s dead.”
“You heard her! Get moving!” A stallion’s voice bellowed.
I looked up in time to see the Solar Guards fanning out to secure the area, and to see an absolutely huge stallion in Solar Guard armor walk over with Lyra towards the two unicorns.
The dusty red and brown earth pony was seriously massive! Not just in muscle, but in height. The stallion was definitely using some sort of enchantment for the battle. There was no way a normal pony would be almost two ponies tall!
“Nice work there.” Lyra commented. “... Luna’s mane those storm clouds are still sticking around…”
I looked up, the rolling black storm clouds still covered the sky, hanging there as if pinned in place. Damn, the hell did she do? Earth pony magic mixed with pegasi perhaps? Whatever it was, that was powerful beyond my reckoning.
“Same for you. I’d offer to take charge of the prisoners, but I think the pony with direct access to a princess should have that honor,” the Stallion rumbled.
A messenger gem attached to a helmet that lay on the ground near me crackled to life. “Attention everypony! This is command. The enemy just broke ranks and is in full retreat. Do not pursue, repeat, do not pursue. Hold position and wait for reinforcements. Civilians listening to this channel, please remain in shelter until the all clear.”
“Oh thank Faust that’s over…” I groaned.
Scootaloo nodded. “Yeah… My place is close, and I’m so incredibly hungry now… Wanna make some sandwiches?”
“That sounds lovely.” I agreed. “Then we should go for a drink, and forget those giant centipedes exist.”
“Alcohol is a no go for the next few days ma’am.” The other medic said bluntly.
“Well that’s not fair at all!” Scoots mumbled.
I agreed. Battle was one thing. But a literal flood of hundred legged eating machines? Some things called for a little brain bleach.
“How about we talk until we forget this whole thing instead?” I offered.
“I’d love that.” Scoots said sincerely, giving me a shaky smile.
That smile went a long ways towards making the day okay again.