Spike's Doom and/or Destiny

by terrycloth

Small Village

It was a nice, long, relaxing walk across the open plains, with only the usual packs of bandits and wolves to fight every few hours. They kept heading west, because they didn’t really know where they were going – only that they were searching for the Forest of the Night, where the flutterpony village was ‘hidden in the leaves’. Fortunately, they still had the magic map, and after five long marches and five long rests, they saw a vast forest appear on the northwestern edge of the map, with a small village on the edge.

The village was nestled right up against the forest, surrounded by a high wooden wall, but the wide gateway had no gate to block it, only a small force of guardsponies, led by a bright pink earth pony who waved at them as they approached.

As they got closer, however, his welcoming grin slowly melted. The guards got in position to block the gate and set their spears, while he ran back into the village, screaming “Demons! Demons are attacking!”

“No we’re not,” Bon Bon said, continuing to walk calmly towards the gate and stopping just out of reach of the guards’ spears.

The fleeing pony froze, and turned. “You’re not?” he asked.

“Not attacking, or not demons?” one of the guards asked, a bit muffled by his full-face helmet.

“Not either?” Spike said.

“We’re demon hunters. We fought the demons and made armor out of their hide,” Bon Bon explained.

“A whole herd of them!” Derpy said, grinning.

“We’ve got some extra hide to sell, if you think anypony would be interested,” Bon Bon continued. “It makes fireproof, magic-resistant armor.”

The pink pony’s grin returned, and he pushed the guards out of the way, to either side. “Then come in, come in! Adventurers of all sort are welcome to Small Village! The inn is there –” he gestured to the right, where a massive three-story building took up almost a quarter of the town, “—and the church is there—” he gestured to the left, at a small building that looked more like a one-room schoolhouse than the cathedrals they’d seen elsewhere, “—and the market is straight ahead! We’ve still got an hour or so until resting time, so you should have time to get started at least.”

“Resting time?” Moondancer asked. “Is that like… night?”

The greeter laughed, and shook his head. “Oh, you adventurers and your crazy ideas! No no no, we simply encourage everyone to go to sleep at the same time of day, to better coordinate services. This is only a very small village, after all, and we have so many adventurers always visiting us, searching for the Forest of the Night. But don’t worry, the inn has more than enough room for everyone, and at a very reasonable price!”

“So if it’s not the Forest of the Night, what’s the big forest outside of town then?” Moondancer asked.

“The Forest of the Day, of course,” the pony said, with a thin smile. “You’re welcome to go exploring inside it, if you can clear out enough of the brambles and deadfall to make any progress. I assure you, however, that there’s nothing magical about the forest at all.”

===

Not feeling like they were in any particular hurry, the heroes spent the remaining hours before resting time in the marketplace, selling off their trade goods and some scavenged equipment (the orcs near Death Mountain had dropped several axes in sellable condition, for example) and using the money to refill their provisions and get Spike some new armor. He settled on a suit that looked a lot like his old armor, only made out of better material so it was both stronger and lighter. Bon Bon also traded in her cleaver for a dangerous-looking paring knife.

As the greeter had said, the town was full of other adventurers. Most of them had been stuck there long enough that they’d long since given up competing to find the flutterponies, and instead were sharing any information they’d gathered in the hopes that somepony would be able to put together a complete solution.

“Night time was traditionally the time that ponies spent resting,” Moondancer explained to a large green pegasus with an axe strapped to his back. “Has anypony tried searching the forest during resting time?”

The pegasus scratched at the ground. “Yeah, someone tried that once,” he said, “but the locals caught him trying to sneak out of the inn, and arrested him for disturbing the peace. Cut his head off.” He sliced his feathery wing across his own neck. “You know, as a warning. Then the priest here wouldn’t remove the resurrection curse from him, since he was a criminal, so he had to go home.” The adventurer shrugged. “No one’s tried since.”

When the bell rang that everypony around them recognized as the signal to head in for resting time, they followed the crowd to the inn, tapped the Giant Floating Crystal, and would have rented a room if the inn wasn’t giving them away for free. “Can’t have anyone missing out on resting time,” the innkeeper said, with a friendly smile. “They’d make too much noise and wake everyone else up. Don’t worry about me, I’m making all the golz I need selling food and provisions.”

So they let the concierge show them to their room. There was a suspicious click as the door closed behind them. “We’re locked in, aren’t we,” Moondancer said.

“Don’t try the door,” Bon Bon replied.

“At least we know what we have to do to find the flutterponies,” Spike said. “I don’t think they could have made it any more obvious.”

“Camp outside the town until night falls?” Derpy suggested.

Moondancer shook her head. “We camped outside the town for a week getting here, and never saw the sun set. I’d be willing to bet that this town is built over the entire transitional area. The ponies here know what they’re doing.”

“So we need to hide out somewhere in town,” Spike said. He frowned. “It’d be easy if we could just have Bon Bon do it but I think we all need to go.”

“I can scout for a good spot tomorrow, while the rest of you pretend to search with the other adventurers,” Bon Bon said. “For tonight, we might as well sleep.”

===

They were woken up by an explosion. Which explosion depended on the pony, but all of them were awake by the time the barrage was halfway done. Plaster sifted down from the ceiling, and there was shouting outside the window.

“We surrender! We surrender!” came the desperate, high-pitched voice of the village greeter.

“Kill them all,” was the response, from a voice distorted like one of Vinyl Scratch’s performances.

“What’s going on?” Spike asked.

Derpy was already at the window, trying to tug it open. “Oooh, it’s stuck!” She tugged a little harder, and the whole shutter assembly came off the wall, along with half the window frame. But at least they could see.

It was dark – obviously night time, with a full moon shining down to faintly illuminate the ranks of armored soldiers – some ponies, some dragons, some in weird shapes that didn’t really look like anything familiar – as they hacked and cut their way through the remnants of the city guard as they tried to surrender. Most of them were already dead, scattered around the craters left by the explosions they’d heard. Several buildings were on fire.

The leader was a pony – a unicorn – in black, form-fitting armor with a full helmet and face mask. “Latch the crystal so that we can capture their souls, then burn down the whole village. We know the heroes are here, and we can’t risk them blending in with the population – so leave nopony alive. I’ll be on the ship.”

“Well, this is convenient,” Bon Bon said.

“Assuming we can fight an entire army,” Moondancer replied.

Bon Bon smirked. “The other adventurers can do that. I don’t think this army realizes how many of us are here.”

While the others put on their armor, Bon Bon picked the lock on the door. Moondancer hadn’t actually undressed – the Battle Saddle was comfortable enough to sleep in, and braiding her legs and tail took ages – so she helped Spike fasten the straps on his platemail. It still took long enough that Bon Bon had time to wriggle into the Moth armor before Spike was ready to go.

A few adventurers were already out in the hallway, looking confused but already wielding weapons. “Do you know what’s going on?” one of them asked.

“It’s an invasion!” Spike said, waving his sword. “Wake up everypony! We need to defend the crystal!”

Half the adventurers ran down the stairs to engage the soldiers, while the others started bashing open doors or picking locks. Spike looked down the stairs at the battle there, then back at the hallway where the rest of his party was opening doors and urging the adventurers on. He was just about to run down and help when Derpy yanked him up into the air, dragged him back to their room, and flung him out the window, to join the others who’d already climbed down.

“The counterattack on the crystal drew off most of their reserves,” Bon Bon whispered. “If we’re really quiet, we might make it to the forest before they know we’re gone.”

Those hopes were dashed before they got halfway, as a horn blew behind them, and a glance back showed a patrol pointing and screaming something they couldn’t make out from a distance. There was nothing they could do but keep running, with the soldiers not so close behind, but still too close for comfort. There were a couple of loud ‘bangs’ as soldiers with hand-cannons took pot-shots, but nothing hit anypony.

The brambles that choked the Forest of the Day were nowhere to be seen – the Forest of the Night was coniferous, with a thick layer of pine needles choking out any underbrush.

“We made it!” Derpy said happily, as they ran under the tree cover. Covering them from sky, that is – the forest offered no cover whatsoever from the soldiers on their tail.

“So where are the flutterponies?” Spike asked, clinging to Moondancer’s back. Even with his new armor he was still much slower than even the least athletic pony.

“I don’t know. Somewhere in the forest?” Moondancer said. “We didn’t exactly get precise directions!”

“We’d better find them fast, or we’re going to see if we really can take on an army,” Spike said, then pointed to the side. “Look, there! I saw something glowing!”

It turned out to be a pile of golz, helpfully marked by a glowing mushroom. Bon Bon scooped it up, out of habit. Now that they knew what to look for, there were other glowing piles of treasure, all over the forest. Bon Bon led them towards the nearest one.

“Is this really our highest priority?” Moondancer shouted, as they zig-zagged through the forest, grabbing all the loot.

“Do you have a better idea for a search pattern?” Bon Bon asked.

“Watch out!” Spike said, and they all screeched to a halt as an enemy patrol appeared in front of them.

“Dark Eidous!” shouted Moondancer and a robed soldier, at the same time. Lightning crackled down randomly, hitting both parties. “Dark Eidous Dark Eidous Dark Eidous…”

As the two of them chanted, calling down the curse on their respective enemies, Spike focused on holding off an armored soldier who was trying to get at Moondancer, while Bon Bon and Derpy took care of the soldiers with cannons, in their own way. It was a little hard to tell for sure, in the dark of night, but Spike’s opponent looked awfully like a giant banana…

In the end, the enemies couldn’t stand up to the heroes – partly because the heroes were just stronger, and partly because the lightning storm barely tickled them in their demon armor, while the soldiers took the hits at full force. Spike was a little worse for wear, but nothing that a muffin couldn’t fix.

“That’s completely unfair,” Moondancer said, as Bon Bon quickly checked the corpses for anything valuable. “That’s my spell. I invented that spell! How come those jerks know it?”

“Maybe they work for… him?” Derpy suggested.

“But we haven’t even started the quest to find him!” Spike said. “And he’s already sending out the army after us? That shouldn’t happen until act 3.”

“That general of theirs is dangerous,” Bon Bon said. “If they’re genre savvy, we can’t count on them making the usual mistakes.”

“Those troops were level-appropriate, though,” Spike said. “So someone in the chain of command is following the rules.”

“I hope that’ll be enough to save us,” Bon Bon said. “Come on, we need to get moving before the rest of them find us.”

“Yeah…” said a voice from the darkness, as an armored unicorn lit his horn. “About that.” Looking around, they saw three more groups of enemies, encircling them on all sides. “This is where you surrender,” the soldier said.

“If we surrender, you’ll kill us,” Moondancer said. “Historically, that’s why armies have accepted surrender – so that people will surrender to them in the future. You might want to remind your general of that after you respawn.”

The unicorn chuckled. “You can’t possibly expect to defeat us all.”

“Why not?” Derpy said, grinning. “Come on, which of you wants to fight us first!”

A pegasus with a gun started to raise a hoof, but the unicorn grabbed it in his magic and forced it back down. “We’re not taking turns!”

“You have to,” Derpy said. “You were in three groups chasing us, so you have to fight us one group at a time. It’s just basic logic.”

“Which of you spotted us first?” Bon Bon said. “To be fair, they should get the first shot.”

“We’re not here to be fair!” the soldier complained. “The general wouldn’t want us to ‘take turns’ – we’re here to complete our mission, no matter what.”

“Is it really worth the risk?” Moondancer said. “If you attack us all at once, we can hit you all with one area-effect spell – and then that’s it, your mission fails. If you attack in groups, then you can watch our strategies and adjust for them, instead of risking it all on one roll of the dice.”

“She has a point –” said one of the robed soldiers, who looked a lot like a giant strawberry.

“No she doesn’t!” the unicorn said. “Ignore their lies. Attack, now! No prisoners!”

Moondancer put up a bubble around the party, catching the soldiers’ first round of attacks. “This won’t hold long,” she said, reaching into one of her cornucopia sacks and pulling out a firebomb. “Time for plan B.”

“We have a plan B?” Spike asked.

Moondancer tossed the firebomb at the bed of pine needles she was standing on, setting them alight. “Burn everything.”

As the bubble fell, the soldiers reeled back from the roaring flames – then backed up further as Spike’s fire breath made a nearby tree go up like a torch. A few of them fired their cannons blindly into the flames, but with no way to tell if it was even having any effect, they soon gave up and ran off, trying to stay ahead of the quickly building blaze.

===

“Oh, that was clever,” said the enemy general, from the deck of her airship, as she saw the forest below go up in flames. “Burning down the forest should keep anypony from trying to hide in there while we secure the town. Captain, find out who was responsible and give them a medal. We need to reward initiative!”

Comments

[howard035]

Uh oh, enemy soldiers as genre-savvy as the heroes. I love Moondancer trying to logic the enemy into following standard game rules.