A role-playing gamer in Celestia's Court

by Gsarge9289

Rumble in the Mountain's Heart

So far Starswirl’s invisibility spell was holding up as we now had visual confirmation that the bipeds I had seen with my magic were in fact diamond dogs. They were all hurriedly digging at the walls and pulling out gems with their powerful paws as we kept our distance as I tried to catch any conversations they might be having.

“When is food time? Digging makes me hungry.” I rolled my eyes, not surprised that this would be a topic of conversation among diamond dogs.

“Keep digging or one of us’ll end up food for Jadescales. I’m not getting eaten because you’re lazy.” The smaller one next to them piped up in a smaller, more femine voice.

“She always threatens with eating one of us but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her live up to the threat, Frena.”

“That’s because we keep her filled with gems. Grik’s shoulder burn from him being mouthy in her sight. I’d rather not test her patience, Lunk.”

I’d moved up beside them as I could feel Starswirl cursing me silently as I spoke. “So would all the diamond dogs leave the mountain if someone were to end Jadescales? You’re too close to ponies and I can’t have that.” The two diamond dogs froze and looked around themselves as I couldn’t help chuckling as Lunk picked up a rock by his paw to look under it.

“Uh who says that?” Poor Lunk looked to be using all his brain power as I moved out of easy arm’s reach of the two of them.

“Depends, can you really kill Jadescales? She big and scary, Mr. Voice and well you’re just a voice.”

“Do any of the diamond dogs guard her?”

Lunk laughed in a bawdy fashion. “Guard her? Jadescale doesn’t need a guard. Mr. Voice is pretty funny, Frena.”

“If you can keep all the diamond dogs away from her chamber and leave the mountain. I’ll kill her.” That stopped Lunk’s laughing as Frena looked in the direction of my voice in awe.

“You- you really mean it don’t you Mr. Voice.” Frena began to fidget as I could tell she was thinking about my offer. “If you killed her, it would make you the leader.” I wasn’t sure if I would want to be the leader of a tribe of diamond dogs but only having to deal with one of the problems here would be much easier than having to deal with both at the same time.

“Get all the dogs out of the mountain. I’m going to fight Jadescale and I guess we’ll see who wins out.” I made my way from them as Frena huffed and pawed at the cavern wall a bit in a half hearted fashion as I willed a number of the gems around them to their feet as they gasped and Lunk picked them up looking around more.

“Woah, Mr. Voice makes gems appear! Good luck Mr. Voice, I hope you win and become the new boss.” Frena looked in thought as she gathered up the gems with Lunk leaving as I made my way with Starswirl to what was apparently Jadescales’ resting chamber.

It looked like the dragon lived up to her name, big, green, and pretty big. The dragon stirred and sniffed the air looking around as she stopped as she had her face pointed right at us.

“I smell you, trespassers. Much too clean to be any of those diamond mongrels. Come to bask in my glory and offer me tribute? Or more likely an invisible usurper comes to sate my thirst with blood?” She began to lazily stand up as I bolted from Starswirl’s side willing a two handed crystal mace from the floor into my hands as I became visible, my face twisting into a sneer flashing some teeth at her as I made a swing that she stumbled up from just in time to lessen the blow as the head impacted against her scales. She let out a deafening roar at me that shook my bones as I grit my teeth and fought my body from shaking, leveling what I hoped was a defiant or at least steadfast glare back at her while she shot a wicked grin at me.

“Oh quite a tall drink you’ll end up for me.” She lashed out to snap her jaws at me as I dodged with a left leaning back step and recovered my balance by swinging my mace down from an overhead position crashing the crystalline mass into the crown of her head. I quickly tried to back pedal a bit as it was going to be difficult to dance between being too close for her fire breath and being in range of all of her other natural weapons. I was lucky she hadn;t thought to take to the air yet as while she was still reeling from my hit, I willed a lance from the floor at high velocity to her tail while sidestepping and hammering her tail into the lance like a reverse nail as she roared out as blood burst from her. In an instant my lance had wicked barbs facing against the path she would likely want to pull it free as she was now rooted to the floor.

Her claws lashed out at me with frightening speed seeking to rend me apart as I wasn’t as lucky this time around and felt her claw rake into my arm denting it in as I pulled on the metal to keep it from hampering my movement. She came in for another bite as I made a defensive swing to force her away as it seemed I misjudged her intent as she caught my mace her maw like some kind of massive dragon lollipop slowly crushing my weapon in her maw with a wicked look in her eyes like this was some kind of powermove. I let the comically oversized macehead shatter as Jadescales’ mouth was now full of razor sharp spikes as I pulled the handle from her mouth to reveal an ax of matching sharpness and took a wild swing and suddenly a clawed hand was gone, her left forelimb a bloody stump.as she bellowed out in pain. I felt I’d be lucky if all I came out of this fight was tinnitus.

A peel of thunder rang out as Jadescales seized up as I was pretty sure Starswirl had just used a lightning bolt as I used the seizing from the second bolt to duck in under her knee letting the handle fall away into a hyper sharp dagger which I threw my weight into to pierce her neck and then then drag it to the other side to flood her throat with her own blood.

“Onyxian! Don’t cut there, you could catch her fire bladder!” It seemed Starswirl’s warning was a bit late as suddenly Jadescales erupted into flames from her neck and suddenly I was thrown back. The fire bathed Jadescales turning her into a small sun in the middle room. The problem I noticed was that she didn’t seem to be going down from all that trauma.

Her scales began to turn the color of coal and at first I thought we’d gotten her so hot that even her heat resistant dragon body was succumbing to it until I heard a voice that made my blood run cold.

“YOU WILL ALL BURN!” I don’t know how she was talking with a hole in her neck and sounded more like a demon from the depths of Hell than the haughty dragon I had been battling earlier.

“Chill of hard hearts and hard ponies! Wrath of the Wendigos!” That was the first time I’d heard attack magic that required a chant as Starswirl leveled a hoof and suddenly a herd of the spectral horses began to appear and charged at Jadescales with the sudden force of a raging blizzard colliding with the raging fire still surrounding. “It’s deathblaze, we have to smother the fire or she won’t stop until even her bones are ash!”

It was so hard to even hear myself think much less Starswirl’s explanation of what was going on over the cacophony of sound. “Run! I’ll put her fire out!” Big talk as my head was starting up that familiar ache as I dropped the dagger and reached up with both hands open to the ceiling to help focus myself in the moment and then clinched them into shaking fists as it felt like yanking a physical weight with my arms.

The ceiling tumbled down in an avalanche of rock and smaller debris that swiftly began to fill the room. I knew I should be running but instead there I was pulling more of the mountain down around us. I had no idea if it was working yet but I knew if I just kept pulling more to where the fire had been it would hopefully put her out like sand on a firepit. The world began to swim and go hazy around the edges but I kept pushing. It was like being in the zone, my head didn’t hurt anymore. There was only the mountain and Jadescales and I thought the two of them should get intimately acquainted. I didn’t care about myself as the room kept filling and I was surrounded by the mountain as well. It felt so right, the tight comforting feeling pressing around me singing the siren song that I deserved a rest and just give into the feeling. I couldn’t feel my right arm anymore, maybe it had been crushed.

A pang of regret traveled through me. I wished I’d made more friends, it was such a stupid thing to think right now in the middle of all of this. I wish I’d had a full adventuring party, that would have been a dream come true. Traveling Equestria, making it a safer place bit by bit. Sure there would be hard times, but with a good party anything was possible. I felt something leak from me in both a physical and metaphysical sense as I closed my eyes in the darkness with the faint sound of hoofs digging away rocks.

“Keep digging. Our new friend doesn’t look so good, does he?” A sure sounding femine voice pulled at the edge of my perception as I drifted off to darkness.

“Eyup.”

Comments

[JINXTHEINSANE]

Great work hope to read more of it

[djponyfl]

11218845

I am interested in seeing more of this story.