Kingdom in Shadows

by Istaran

Chapter 16: Sword of Confusion

Flash Sentry strode by a fellow guard on his way back to the pantries. An earth pony by the name of Bulwark, he recalled. They exchanged simple nods as they passed.

It was almost serenely calm in the castle, especially away from the gatherings of civilians. Flash couldn't help but hum a bit, following along with the song that barely penetrated the castle from its highest spire. It was a bit fast paced and intense for the calm he otherwise felt at the moment, but it was too hard to ignore completely.

The pegasus set his spear aside, against a wall for the moment as he reached up to a shelf to pull down a bag of flour. The moment it dropped to the ground under his care, he suddenly saw that he was not alone. In the shadowed corners of the panty, a unicorn looked up at him. It was too dark to make out much detail, but the horn was obvious. Something heart shaped glinted from her neck, even in the darkness.

She opened her eyes, looking into his, and the words he had been about to say slipped from his mind. A lot else slipped his mind as well, and he quietly grabbed his spear from the wall and headed back out.

"Weren't you going for some more supplies?" Bulwark asked as Flash approached him again. The pegasus took flight toward the larger stallion, charging in spear first. But Bulwark was just as well trained, and shifted his position to deflect the spear with his armor, while bringing up his own to face a similar fate. A few more blows were exchanged, Flash using his superior agility to keep Bulwark from landing any of his heavier blows, until they paused a moment, breathing heavily.

"What's gotten into you?" Bulwark demanded between breaths. Flash simply gestured over his shoulder with a flick of his head. That was enough to get Bulwark to look past him, and see the unicorn approaching sedately behind. His eyes met hers and he no longer questioned it. It all made sense now. Together, Bulwark and Flash Sentry continued toward the kitchens.

---

The cries of innocent ponies began to drift up to the throne room. The first were angry, annoyed. Then fearful. Then pained.

The other ponies in the room were getting restless. They knew what they had to do, but it was very hard for them to simply do it.

"Stay," I said, "protect the heart. Protect each other."

"But, the sounds... my ponies!" Cadance objected.

"A distraction, a way to draw you out to where you have less power and protection and they have more," I pointed out.

"We have to protect them," Shining Armor insisted.

"You have to protect her and it," I countered, pointing to his wife and the priceless crystal artifact between them.

"It isn't even stopping them... even though I can feel it's power growing more intense," Cadance said, sounding worried.

"Can you use its power for something concrete? Use it to reinforce your shield?" I asked.

It took a moment before Shining nodded, the barrier around them becoming nearly opaque.

"What about our ponies? You should go help them if we must stay here," Shining said.

"I have reinforcements on the way, but my place is here. You are the shield, I am the sword," I pointed out. I shifted my stance, a bit of subtle reshaping giving me a more human-like position, taking the handle of my Sin Eater in two hooves. I let one go for a moment to gesture for silence, before pressing back against the wall.

Slow, soft clopping made its way up the spiral staircase connecting the throne room to the rooms below where the civilians had been. Somepony was coming. Although it was soft, it sounded quite loud in the otherwise still air, eventually bringing attention to another fact. The music had stopped.

A rush of hooves in an intermittent gallop, broken up by short intervals of gliding, brought Alexander past the open doorway to the throneroom in a blur of pink and white, before he suddenly came to a rather swift stop.

The shadowy unicorn locked eyes with what appeared to be an alicorn, white horn clearly displayed while pink wings were clearly free from the cloak that typically obscured them. A moment of tension came and passed before a cruel smile crossed the prince's face and he began to trot past her, and she passed him.

Once they had passed, the Prince's expression quickly shifted to one of determination. [Sleep, dear brother. I will take care of things for once.] The trot continued unbroken even as a wave of green washed over the pony's form, with no obvious, outward changes, at least none obvious with her tail hanging low. However, she quickly picked up the pace, breaking into another gliding gallop down the curved stairway as the sounds of metal clanging against metal began to ring from below.

---

Sword rang against spear, then armor then spear once more. Ponies pressed back against one another in a crowd as tight as they could make it, despite the crush injuring some of those toward the middle. It evened things out a bit, as those toward the edge had injuries of another sort.

Six guards held the crowd in place, while a single earth pony fought back, holding all six at bay. She was stronger than them, faster than them, with better reflexes, and smarter than them all, in terms of sheer mental processing power if nothing else. Yet the difference in skill between trained, experienced guards and an itinerant farm worker rang through as every swing that wasn't meant to deflect their own weapons met with a skillful block. That despite the surprise factor inherit in teleporting all around the battlefield. That advantage merely managed to make up for the distributed pattern of her foes.

Peach Seed was getting worried. Her blade, one of the Sin Eaters, was devastating against the shadow monsters, but here it was having no real effect. She hoped that even a glancing blow would tear away the shadow magic controlling the guards' minds, but she couldn't manage to make such a blow, and armor strikes were doing nothing but make noise. The glittercloak was useless here: despite the magic controlling them, the guards were too innocent and untouched by darkness to be affected by it, and she didn't have time to try trading it for one of the shadowcloaks packed away in the fortress' basement, near the outskirts of town.

It wasn't just that this fight was a standoff, or that she was slowly burning through limited resources. The gatecrasher bracers were burning through magic reserves the earth pony wasn't used to being aware of, but her king was able to feed more power into her with his love, at least as long as there was enough for him to draw from his changelings. It wasn't even the fact that her fetlocks were burning up, the bracers' tendency to overheat improved but never fully fixed.

It was also that she was stuck fighting this ineffectual fight when outside a fight was raging that she could contribute a lot to. She had done so, before the call for reinforcements reached her, but she was one of the few who could reach the civilians in time.

Things changed though when a voice rang out, more effeminate than she was used to hearing.

"We are not afraid,
We're stronger than you're thinking.
We are not afraid,
Even if we're bleeding."

The ponies spread out a bit, injured ponies standing firm despite their wounds.

"We are not afraid,
We'll stand against the dark and,
We are not afraid,
We'll best this story arc and,"

Resolutely, they began to step forward, determination swelling in their expressions, while a few voices began to join in, even not knowing the words.

"We are not afraid,
Of spears and gleaming armor,
We are not afraid,
No shopkeeper nor farmer."

Sheer numbers overwhelmed the guards, pinning them down.

"We are not afraid,
You'll harm us now no farther,
We are not afraid,
Now all our will we gather."

They held the guards down as a slight slit on each left cheek from the Sin Eater drew the dark magic out of them, returning them to themselves. The guards alone sang the next verse.

"We are not afraid,
United again in purpose.
We are not afraid,
Our wills again resurface."

Stepping out into the room, Prince Alexander Gabriella Stormbringer I finished with a solo verse, her voice perfectly distributed by the acoustics of the room, as they lowered in volume.

"We are not afraid,
Our hearts are full of love and,
We're peaceful as a dove and,
We are not afraid."

With both the violence and the song ended, the ponies looked up at the two Itinerants, now sitting side by side as they caught their breath.

After a few seconds of stillness, Flash Sentry looked at Alexander with a quirked head and finally broke the silence. "Hay, weren't you a stallion?"

Blushing, she quickly responded with "...and... smash-cut."

---

Mirage stood her ground, dead center in the abandoned street, beckoning with one hoof toward the oncoming behemoth. The monster tore through the street, leaving the changeling to note in irritation how much labor was going to go into undoing all this damage. The creature bellowed, nearly reaching her before the Sin Eater made it to her hoof, thrown by a changeling one street over and given both an electromagnetic and telekinetic nudge from each of them.

The poor beast never knew what hit it, blade slashing through the creature and turning it instantly into a cloud of black mist, to be absorbed into the blade, and through it, channeled into the changeling. She shuddered a moment, remembering what this stuff had done to her earlier before she passed it on to her king. She didn't have time for recriminations.

Reeling back, she lept into the air with the aid of her wings and hurled the blade forward, a mix of magic and magnetics carrying it hurtling two blocks to the next one who needed it.

Another behemoth appeared nearby, this one bursting out of an abandoned bakery, causing the building to collapse in its wake. Without the blade, the changeling was much less equipped to deal with it, but did what she could, wrapping her magic around its horn and keeping it somewhat pinned in place while she hovered out of range, until Bardrick was able to dispatch the beast with a more conventional spear.

A new sound of destruction rang out from above, the sudden and violent shattering of crystal from an upper story of the castle, as the throne room gained a new view. There was going to be so much work cleaning this all up.