Being of Two Minds

by cosmofur

Canterlot's Red Day Part Two

In the wake of the scent of burning hair and the wail of frighted ponies, two ponies left the smoldering bodies of the city guard behind them. Spring Kicker was barely keeping up with Princess Twilight Sparkle as they galloped back the way their group had come. The murderous cult guards still well ahead of them. Twilight’s mind was racing, trying desperately to come up with a plan to keep the remaining Canterlot defenders from being overrun, any plan, but she was coming up blank.

The death spell the brainwashed guards had cast had drained the magic and knocked unconscious most of the cult’s unicorns. The cultists had charged back to encircle the Castle’s remaining defenders, carrying the unconscious unicorns on their backs. But even weighted down, the remaining earth ponies were more than dangerous enough to finish the job. Twilight seriously doubted that just herself and Spring, would be able to stop such ruthless ponies.

She turned to Spring Kicker and asked, “How many cultists do you think are still left?”

Spring replied with a questions, “You mean the group we’re following or how many are left fighting the Wonderbolts at the Castle?”

“Both!”

“There has to be close to sixty cult fighters left and it’s just you and me plus maybe twenty five city guards and Wonderbolts at the castle. At best we’re outnumbered two to one. At least they did us the favor of taking out their own unicorns its should be all earth ponies now. That gives us an advantage in magic.”

“No, you’re forgetting that the cultists left some unicorns in the castle’s towers, and their probably well dug in.” Twilight pointed out.

Spring Kicker blinked long and hard, his eyes were burning and tearing and this was not the time to let the memories of what happened distract him. “That spell, that death spell, do you know anything about it?”

Shaking Twilight nodded, “I’ve read the description before. Its one of the Cults spells from their book. I never thought they would be willing to use it, I thought even the Cult had limits. Don’t ask me to cast anything like that against them. I wouldn't ever, even with a hoof at my throat.”

“Without something that powerful, how will just two of us stop so many?” Spring asked puffing as the continuous running was starting to tire him out.

Twilight seemed still strong, but had no real answer. “There’s no more time to think, we’re here!”

The two turned the corner to find themselves at the edge of a battle.

The Wonderbolts were still fighting on the Castle’s entrance bridge. They hadn’t made any real progress into the Castle since Twilight left. She could see why, the cult unicorns that previously been in the towers, had moved to the Castle gate and were blocking it with multiple complex layers of magic fire.

There were two city guard unicorns with the Wonderbolts, part of the hoof full of ponies she had sent to aid them. But they were just barely holding out, just keeping up a shield around the magic fire but outnumbered they were unable to push it back or attack.

Twilight saw right away how she could be most helpful there, all she needed to do would be to blast back the magic fire and open a path for the Wonderbolts to make it into the entrance.

BUT there was a problem with that. Namely about sixty newly arrived cult guards, many with ropes and fresh spears to ward off the Bolts.

Twilight turned to Spring Kicker and said, “Put up a barrier to keep them from fleeing back into the city! I’m going to the other side!”

With a snap Twilight opened her wings and shot up into the air with a flap.

Spring watched her fly towards the castle, dodging and weaving through a sky full of weapons and Wonderbolts. Then moving to the narrowest part of the entrance path to the bridge, he took a clue from the Cult unicorns and summoned a wide magical fire, spreading it across the width of the bridge.

This drew some attention from the cult earth pony guards and Spring found himself dodging and leaping to avoid a volley of thrown spears. One came close enough that it passed through his tail, clipping several locks worth of hair.

“That’s getting too close!” Spring thought to himself, “Better find some cover!” he dodged and weaved some more, until he found himself behind a line of barrels and boxes that somepony had left near the ramp of the bridge. It was a good position, plenty of cover from the earth ponies trapped on the bridge behind his magic fire, and still close enough that he could keep empowering the spell.

Spring Relaxed slightly, leaned back on his haunches….

and then felt something hard and pointy press against his back…

“Oh! Shi…” he thought as he noticed that none of the earth pony cultists fighting on the bridge was encumbered with anything but armor and weapons on their backs.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Twilight flew over the mob of fighting earth ponies and avoided the attacking Wonderbolts. As they passed in the air, Spitfire gave Twilight a glance but there was no time to talk or pass information. Twilight pointed to the floundering city guard unicorns and then herself, to let Spitfire know she was going to aid them. The Wonderbolt captain nodded in reply and dived back into the fight without a spoken word.

Twilight landed right between the two defending unicorns. They had moved to the front of the battle and were a few pony lengths from the Castle’s main gate. Between them and the gate was the field of a magical battle, one where flashes and snaps of arcing power filled the space. Twilight could see though the flames and magic glow, five Cult unicorns empowering a bonfire sized pyre of pure destructive energy. Standing firm, just two against five, the guard unicorns were doing the best to keep the magic flames from sweeping onto the bridge.

Looking at the city guards, Twilight saw they were sweating tears as their magic was being drained by the shield spells they had been casting. Twilight could tell they were within moments of spell failure and both unicorns had already overstressed their sparking horns.

“Just ease off as I bring my magic up.” She told them as her horn lit up and with her naturally greater power pool, easily matched their spellwork.

Once she was certain she had the spell under her control, she turned to the guard unicorns and said. “Cool your horns for a minute, then start shielding the Wonderbolts. I’ll take care of this fire.”

With sighs of relief the two junior unicorns let their horns flicker out but not for long as they turned their attention to the battle behind them.

Meanwhile Twilight started moving forward slowly pushing the flames back. But this magic fire was not fed by oxygen but by magic itself, and would consume any spell she directed straight at it. Even her larger Alicorn power pool was not much help, as it would be like trying to snuff out a normal fire with piles of gunpowder. The feedback explosion could be worse than the damage the fire was currently doing.

Looking past the flames she tried to judge what weaknesses the casting unicorns had. She saw that they were casting the fire spell using a classic battle mage, three to two stack. Three of the cultists were acting as power batteries while the two forward casters were directing the spell, freeing their own power to defend the group.

Twilight considered how she could attack them directly, but how? The magic fire would absorb any spell cast towards it. Same reason she couldn’t teleport behind them. With the firespell centered right in the gateway, there was no angle or side shot she could pull off that avoided the absorbing flames and would allow her spell to get through to the cult guards. The brainwashed unicorns were protected from all sides.

‘All sides?’ Twilight thought to herself with sudden thought. ‘’All sides’ for a ground bound unicorn perhaps!’
With mighty flaps of her wings, Twilight took straight off. Above the gate was a barred yett to allow light down into the entrance tunnel. The narrow bars were sufficient to keep pegasi out but the castle defences were not planned around flying magic users and through those bars Twilight could see the tails of the cult unicorns.

One of the unicorns started to turn to look up at the Alicorn, with an expression that told Twilight that he had suddenly realized their exposed weakness.

Twilight did not like to think she was being vindictive, but she did take some pleasure blasting that cultists with an extra bright stunning spell, right along his horn. There was a sucking sound as the explosive energy blasted all five cult unicorns down the entrance tunnel, all unconscious and down for the count. The magic fire blocking the gate, sparked once, then blew out.

Twilight flew back up in triumph calling out to the Wonderbolt captain, “Spitfire! The gate’s open!” Twilight wasn’t a trained tactician but she read enough to know that the Wonderbolts would be able to hold the narrow gate against the larger number of cult earth ponies, compared to the wide open bridge.

Spitfire must have agreed because she gave Twilight a hoofs up and with a wave of her wings, directed the Bolts to dive towards the gate. While they were flying down to the entrance, Twilight picked out targets among the crowd of earth ponies and stunned them with tightly focused spells.

After stunning about four cultists based on how aggressive them seemed with their spears, Twilight was concentrating on her next target. A female guard who seemed a bit too skillful with her lasso for comfort, when suddenly there was a roar and a fireball as wide as a pony, flew down the length of the bridge over the heads of the earth ponies and smashed against the gate’s lintel in a shower of sparks.

Twilight dived down and covered her head with her hooves as a shower of sparks and secondary fires rained down from above the gate. She had to put out small smoky fires that had started in her mane and tail before she could turn her attention to the source of the fireball.

Twilight wasn’t the only pony caught by surprise, Spitfire had been directing the last of her Wonderbolts into the entrance way, and was caught in a cloud of the sparks. Now with a real smoldering tail she was flopping around on the ground next to Twilight, coughing and gagging from the smoke while rolling to put out her mane.

Shocked Twilight crawled back to her hooves and too stunned to focus cried out, “Where did that come from?!”

Spitfire had recovered faster and pointed to the far end of the bridge. “Look more unicorns!”

Twilight saw what Spitfire was pointing at. The majority of the cult unicorns, the very ones that had been knocked unconscious by the death spell, were grouped together. “They must have recovered from the spell shock!” Twilight cried out.

They weren’t alone, a few working together had engulfed Spring Kicker in a spherical force field and he was floating above their heads, kicking angrily at the sphere trapping him.

“Get in the castle!” Twilight told Spitfire, “I’ll handle them.”

“Handle them! Handle them Princess?” Spitfire cried, “Are you nuts! Where the rest of the city guards and the trainees?”

There was no time to explain what had happened in the street, Twilight gave Spitfire a meaningful glance. The wonderbolt captain’s eyes opened in shock, but just for a moment, her eyes hardened and she looked grimly at the approaching unicorns.

There was no more time for talk, the first fireball was just that, the first, several more were already flying across the bridge, and Twilight started powering up new shield spells to defend them.

Twilight stood there, the Wonderbolts and a hoof full of city earth ponies and pegasus stood behind her in a grim formation. A brightly glowing magic shield all that stood between them and the approaching wedge formation of brain washed battle mages. They were now continuously firing fireball and lightning spells at the shield.

Twilight was an alicorn, plus her special talent was magic itself, so in fair fight she would have been able to take down any one, two or even ten normal unicorns, but there were about thirty military trained mages. The advantage in power she typically had was just not enough.

The storm of spell blasts started weakening Twilight’s shields. It was no longer purple, it was sparking and arcing like blow torches were being applied to its surface. While most of the energy was being bounced back, some was making it though and it was like arcwelder was working over Twilight's head, as sparks dropped all around her, and skidded across the floor under her hooves.

The two remaining city guard unicorns who had come into the Castle’s gateway with the Wonderbolts, moved to help Twilight. But their own magic was so drained that without meaning to, Twilight’s magic field sucked them dry in an instant and left them unconscious on the floor at her side. It didn’t help much.

The magic draw was now painful, like nails through her horn and scalp. Twilight cried silent tears, too much in pain to vocalize her stress. She mouthed words clearly enough that Spitfire could read her lips, “I … Can’t … Hold … it … anymore!”

The glow on her horn was now sputtering, in danger of being extinguished.

Spitfire understood Twilights stress and arranged the strongest Wonderbolts in an arch behind her. They would fly forward once the shield failed and put up the best fight they could. Spitfire knew this would be a fatal last stand, they just had no chance against such numbers.

Then from behind the cult unicorns there were two flashes in the sky, like blurs of light, they flew along the sides of the bride, close enough to the approaching unicorns and cause them to spin about, and lose some focus.

Twilight opened her eyes wide and she found her will renewed as one of the blurs flew right up to her shield and flapping wings gave her a cocky smile.

“Not yet princess, still time enough for that!” The Wonderbolt replied. “We saw you and that guard run off, I guess you didn’t realize that most of us were just stunned, not killed!”

Spitfire stamped forward, her voice urgent. “Then what took your flank so long to get here!” She yelled out.

Fleetfoot frowned for a moment, “I said ‘most’, I sorry Captain we lost many good ponies and had to triage the wounded, I’m afraid Wave Chill and I are the only ones able to come help.”

Spitfire allowed herself only a single long blink which threatened to crack her face, there was a momentary battle in her expression, then when she opened her eyes again, her expression was cold as stone. “not now” she whispered to herself, “later”. Then she said out loud. “While the save was impressive, get Wave Chill and your flanks on this side of the shield! That distraction won’t last long and were still way too outnumbered.”

Fleetfoot smiled, “I have more good news, we saw re-enforcements approaching and they should be here any moment now!”

“Re-enforcements?” From where?” Spitfire cried out in surprise.

Before Fleetfoot could answer, there was another new blur of a pony flying over the Cult unicorns. Twilight opened her eyes in shock, as the colorful blur circled high, twirled around and pulling pegasus weather magic from the sky, the new pegasus did a high stepping trot in the air over the heads of the cultists. With each step fire shot out and left hoofprints of glowing smoke in the sky. The pony doing the flying seemed to be laughing and with an incredible twist, pulled the flaming horseshoe shapes into some sort of twisting fire tornado that followed her.

The cult unicorns were shocked and amazed to the point of paralysis. Mouths hung open and every eye followed the flying pony. The following air blast knocked nearly everypony of them to the ground.

Spitfire standing next to Twilight found her voice first. “Wow a Buckner Blaze!” Then before Twilight could respond Spitfire raised her voice and yelled out to the new pony. “Hey Rainbow Dash! Nice move, you should have used that at the academy!”

Rainbow did a victory spin and with an almost afterthought, kicked the spherical shield spell entrapping Spring Kicker in passing. Causing it to pop and dropping the stunned guard onto the backs of his former captors below.

While the cyan pegasus surprise entrance had shocked the cultists and knocked everyone of them off their hooves, none were truly hurt and in moments they were getting back up.

Laughing at their efforts, Rainbow repeatedly dodged spell blasts from the recovering unicorns More than a few earth pony cult guards wasted a spear attempting to target the rainbow pony.

Still Twilight knew Rainbow couldn’t keep it up forever, she started to calculate what sort of shield spell should could cast to protect her friend. “Rainbow! Get down here, to the entrance! It’s too dangerous out there!”

With a blur of rainbow light, the pegasus was suddenly in front of Twilight, inches beyond the shield. “No worries Twilight! I got this covered, besides I’m not alone.” With a casual flap of her wings, she dodged a spear that just missed her from behind, and then gestured with a hoof towards the sky.

Twilight looked where her friend was pointing and saw some distant dots, black against the sky, as she watched they grew closer and became clearer. There were five ponies suspended in individually blue bubbles of levitation magic, and a larger dark blue winged pony leading the way. Not just any pony, an Alicorn, Princess Luna! And the other ponies? I was all her friends!

Rainbow Dash was still flapping nonchalante in front of Twilight. “Yeah, Princess Luna pretty cool, she nearly was able to keep up with the Dash, all the way from the Everfree Forest.”

At this point Princess Luna was close enough that she could safely drop Twilights friends on to the bridge and land herself, her horn aglow with blue fire. The first to settle on the Bridge was an orange earth pony.

“Stop with that load of hooey Rainbow Dash!”, Applejack scoffed. “You know the Princess had to carry all five of us with her, even poor Fluttershy, otherwise she would have beaten you easily.”

“What!” Rainbow looked angry at AJ, “No way! I was holding back! Luna! We need a proper race!”

“My Subjects and Friends, this is not the time or place!” Luna admonished the two rival ponies. Then with a sly grin, “Before any proper race could be held, we must first deal with these miscreants!”

Twilight dropped the shield to stand with her friends and by the princess side. She was physically, emotionally and magiclay exhausted, but stood tall next to the Night Princess. The sudden appearance of another alicorn, had shocked the cultists into inaction, but that pause wouldn’t last much longer.

Flanked by the six Element Barriers and looking an impressive sight, Luna took point facing the mob of cultists. While Twilight was also an alicorn, there just was something overwhelming about Luna, a presence that made all the cultists freeze, wide eyed. And that was even before she started to speak.

In full Canterlot Royal Voice mode Luna spoke and not a single cultist failed to be blown off their hooves. “MY FORMERLY LOYAL GUARDS! YOU DARE ASSAULT THE ROYAL ABODE! YOU DARE TO HARM YOUR FELLOWS! DOWN ON YOUR KNEES AND BEG FORGIVENESS! YOUR PRINCESS OF THE NIGHT COMMANDS YOU!”

And too Twilight’s absolute shock and surprise, the guards obeyed! Even powerful mind control magic could not overrule decades of guard drilling and training, and the pure force of Luna’s personality left the formally killer cultists little more than shaking foals.

In a much softer voice directed at Twilight and the loyal city guards and Wonderbolts, Luna added, “Quickly before they recover, bind their legs and put horn blocks on the unicorns. You’ll find a goodly stock of the needed supplies inside the guardhouse behind you.”

With a crisp salute Spitfire shot off to organize the processing of the cultists, while Luna remained firm, cowing the prisoners with a hard cold glare. Soon more city guards had arrived and the bound and meek cultists were led away in groups of five, soon to fill up every lockup and drunk tank throughout the city guardhouses.

Twilight stood silent and firm, saying nothing but standing unmoving as a match for Luna, watching as the cultists were led away. No pony said anything until the entrance bridge was completely clear of ponies.

Then Twilight turned to Luna and said in a weak voice, “I think I’m going to lie down now.” and instantly she collapsed unconscious from exhaustion, right there in the middle of the entranceway while her friends gathered around in concern.