Stone Breaker charged headlong toward the enemy unicorns. It felt odd for the earth pony to be surrounded by others of his tribe, and so far from Sky Ranger, the pegasus mare he had grown so close to. It was extra odd, as she had lent him her knives, weapons she was a lot more adept with than he was, but given their useful properties it was the right thing to do.
They didn't have any Sin Eaters to work with on this front, they hadn't gotten enough manufactured in time, and it was an educated guess that these enemies would be vulnerable enough to more conventional attacks. But they did have several of the Mage Masher blades. Runic inscriptions along their surface were enchanted to disrupt magic, tearing apart any spell they came in contact with, even simpler magic like telekinesis. They were magnetized to make them easier to manipulate with electromagnetic fields, but the larger ones were designed like giant pairs of scissors with no handle, making them awkward to wield any other way. Sky Ranger's, however, were simpler in design, triangular blades, a half hoof in length, and a third of that in width at their largest point. They were throwing blades, meant to attack from a distance, and then be reclaimed with an electromagnetic tug, allowing the flying mare to avoid direct conflict. She may have gotten a lot braver since joining the Kingdom, but she still wasn't a scrapper.
Stone Breaker, however, was. He slammed headlong into a shadowy wolf creature, trying to bar his path to the enemy unicorns. The pair dropped into a rolling tumble for a few cycles before the stallion bucked the creature off of him and rolled back into a gallop, barely slowing his pace. There was more than just the one, but they had their own ponies to deal with. His foe, however, was not so easily deterred. It barked angrily at him as it rolled to its own feet and pursued.
It should have known better. On an open field like this, a pony should have been faster than a wolf, making pursuit pointless. It should have known something was wrong when it was able to close the distance. Its howls were meant to instill fear into ponikind, giving it something to feed off of. It should have known something was wrong when there was no fear to be found. It's teeth were meant to tear into pony flesh, using pain to enforce and amplify its victim's fear, and make it easier to scare in the future with the memory. It finally caught on when a sharp buck sent those teeth flying back into its own throat. It collapsed, taken down by wounds that would have surely slain an ordinary beast, if not instantly, suffering from the fact that its shadowy nature would allow it to eventually, painfully, recover. It knew no fear. Only rage. Sad, frustrated, impotent rage.
Sky Ranger missed her blades. It was painfully ironic, after all those months of training, learning to control the flow of energy through her Kingsblood in order to create magnetic fields, and even control them with enough finesse to direct six separate blades through the air at once. In a lot of ways, the blades were a much safer way to engage the enemy than what she was doing now.
She and her fellow pegasi had gathered as much moisture as they could the day before and condensed it into clouds, keeping it stuffed under the edge of the walls in preparation for this time. As the battle was joined, they had drawn it up, and now they were rolling it out like a massive carpet over the enemy behemoths. But they weren't just to make the field wet... though that could well help, if the muddy terrain was able to get the massive creatures stuck. They were also ionizing it as they went, disrupting the electrical balance. Making thunder clouds.
It was the ranged attack that was the pegasi birthright, but for members of the Itinerant Kingdom, it was stupidly dangerous. A lightning strike didn't have to hit one of them to incapacitate them; the magnetic pulse from the lightning could create a devastating current in the Kingsblood, overloading and frying the tiny machines that it consisted of.
Golden armor, borrowed from the local guards, offered some protection. It acted as a Faraday cage, cancelling out the magnetic pulse, but since it wasn't a complete coverage, it didn't offer complete protection. But it was enough to block out the signals that allowed them to keep their minds in contact with each other, and their fellow subjects.
Which was a problem, because Sky Ranger could really use the comforting touch of Stone Breaker's mind right now.
Flashes of light caught her attention. She had gotten too distracted by her feelings, almost let the chain of lightning strikes get too close to her. She drew up her wings, preparing for a powerful downbeat to gain some altitude, but stopped, stunned. She really had messed up. The cloud directly under her flashed with power, a deadly bolt of electricity arcing down into the behemoth below her, stunning the beast before she began to descend limply toward it.
Time seemed to slow down as her life flashed before her eyes. She hardly recognized the filly in the visions. Downtrodden. Hopeless. Desperate. It wasn't her. Not anymore. That was Apple Core. Apple Core was dead already. She was Sky Ranger now, and Sky Ranger was a pony who could keep pace with even the likes of Stone Breaker. She opened her eyes, seeing the fast approaching behemoth below her. It was recovering quickly, and she realized with some embarrassment it had managed to feed a bit of her mere memories of fear. Well, no more.
She had to think quickly though. What should she do? What would Sky Ranger do? What would Stone Breaker do? That last thought gave an idea, with barely enough time to implement it. The spiders got to quick work, even sacrificing some of their own number for raw materials to reinforce key bones, even fusing the bones across a few of her joints. They would unfuse them later, once this was done. A single hoof led the way, pointed straight at the behemoth's head as her wings angled just enough to perfect her aim.
Moments later she hit the ground, crumpling a bit before she could recover. With her forehoof stuck in the ground from impact, she couldn't dodge, merely brace for impact as the slain behemoth collapsed atop her. It was a dangerous position. If one of the others was observant, they would finish her off before she broke free. And even once she was, the enemy's remains would cling to her wings, making flight questionable at best.
These were all reasonable, legitimate concerns, and she considered them. But she wasn't afraid.
She was Sky Ranger.
Peach Seed braced herself, emotionally, with a deep breath, even as she braced her body against the wall, away from the fighting. As an earth pony, this was her front to fight, and she would be in the mix very soon. But she had a surprise to deploy, and that meant she wasn't in the initial wave.
[Okay girl, you can do this,] she assured herself. [Just like buckin' trees, only a little bit dodgier. But not if they don't see it coming.] She had been one of the earliest recruits to the Itinerant Kingdom, but she had been an itinerant in another sense from birth. Her muscles were powerful from years of farm labor, her body swift and lean from years of travelling from harvest to harvest, planting to planting. But now it was time to be something else. Now it was time to be a swordpony.
The fact that they were terrifying monsters and not your typical ponies gone bad made the matter much easier. Sadly, these ones looked far too much like typical unicorns themselves, aside from the smooth sharpness of their horns, the billowing blackness of their bodies, and the glowing green eyes. Even still, it was hard not to wonder if they really deserved what was coming for them.
[No time to hesitate. Stone Breaker is almost upon them,] she thought, just before the stallion in question started sending her updated coordinates. An image formed in her mind, the layout of the battlefield, locations of all the enemies, and an alert on which seemed to be trying to cast spells more complex than a simple energy blast. [Go time!]
Swiftly, she pulled the glittercloak about her. It lived up to its name, a full body cloak in white that glittered in the sunlight, much like a crystal pony. It was designed as a counterpoint to the shadowcloaks we had stolen from our enemies, which rendered a pony imperceptible to anypony without darkness in their heart. The glittercloak, instead, rendered one imperceptible to anypony with darkness in their heart. It was time to test it on the shadows themselves. But not without some other tools to go with it.
Namely, the Gate Crashers, a pair of bracers on her forehooves. The right bracer began to glow blue in an intricate pattern, reminiscent of a circuit board, as it started to project a pair of quickly expanding fields of magical disruption, one where she stood, the other right behind an enemy unicorn. The fields were generally ineffectual against existing enchantments tied into objects, but could easily cancel a spell in progress or a local magical field, even something as basic as telekinesis, in this case breaking Stone Breaker out of such a grasp. Two kinds of magic were intentionally exempt from the effect, one general and one quite specific. In general, transformation magic was unaffected, such as the changelings' disguises. And more specifically, the left bracer now charging up was able to wind a teleportation effect into the disruption fields themselves, not only travelling where magic was disrupted, but often able to punch a hole in an antiteleportation field to get in or out of places thought to be well defended.
As the wave of disruption washed over the unicorn, Peach was suddenly there, just behind him, already drawing and swinging her Sin Eater in a smooth, practiced downward slice. The blade made contact and moments later, the unicorn was no more, just a black mist rapidly drawing into the rune etched blade.
Now Peach was scared. The black energy flowing into her through the sword reminded her far too much of that place. The mines. The pit. This was fear and anger and ruthlessness all wrapped up into a nightmarish bundle of blackness and she wanted it gone, as far from her as possible. She pushed it out of her, and her king quickly grabbed it and pulled, drawing all the dark energy into himself before striking out with it against his own foes. At peace again for the moment, she turned, looking for her next target.
That one... the unicorn hanging back, working on an intricate looking spell. Peach braced her heart and readied her sword, beginning the next warp. Even before she shifted locations she could see her failure looming. A moment before the disruption could reach her, the unicorn vanished in a puff of blackness. Peach was already committed, her location shifting and her body bearing into a pointless swing through where the unicorn had just been, stumbling a bit to regain her balance when she failed to connect. Still, she was able to spin about, redirecting the momentum to slash into another enemy caster, one that had been merely firing black bolts of energy at her friends. It was something.
But something gnawed at her. The one that got away. She hadn't reappeared in sight of any of the Itinerants. But she almost certainly was not running away.