Cards of Legacy

by SwordTune

A Job Well Done

"Ehar'thriil vaht tool'Um!" Twilight cast the words into the stone gateway and summoned a portal.

Both Highsight and Lander stepped back in shock. Magic at that level was rare, even among other mutant mages.

"Bet contracts come in every day," Lander said, whistling at the power of the portal. Though neither Highsight nor Lander could feel magic directly, their swords were forged with traces of night silver in the pommel, so they could feel the vibrations from it when they neared any strong source of magic.

Twilight shrugged. "Kind of, except I have to seek them out. After all, nobles can't tarnish their social standing by seeking out a mutant, and peasants fear a pair of wings and a horn just as much as a witch's curse."

"Yet you're famous from Far Coast to The High Mountain," Highsight added. "You must be doing something right."

"Speaking of witches and curses, what's the deal with this contract?" It wasn't uncommon for Lander to stray from the topic of the conversation, but he rarely strayed back onto the important things. "You wouldn't have asked us to travel here if it wasn't something important."

Twilight nodded. "I took a contract issued by a knight, a well decorated commander leading his king's campaign to unite the Far Coast. He marched all the way from the northern shore, and knew he wouldn't see home for another year or two. It's long but war's still war, yet, for whatever reason, he decided he didn't want to leave his fiance in the safety of his king's palace, so he brought her along."

"Adventurous youth," Lander chuckled, "never know what's good for them."

"Yes," Twilight said, "and this time it just so happened that a witch took a fancy to the knight's fiance. So, she kidnapped the poor girl and brought her to a cave sealed off completely by physical means. Now I'm here in place of the knight as the rescue party."

Highsight raised a brow. "So magic portals are the only way in or out? Damn paranoid, even for a witch."

"I figured she'd be dangerous, so after three days of preparations I went in." Twilight showed her friends her saddlebag. "Brewed poisons, potions, and elixirs just for the fight, and I still didn't stand a chance."

Her friends looked at each other with a moment of concern. "What made her so special?" Highsight asked.

"Well, her magic's stronger than any sorcerer I know," Twilight started, "and she also has a pet vurm with her."

"A vurm? Are you sure?" Highsight seemed skeptical. "Vurms haven't been around for nearly three centuries. Master Stonewood taught us-"

"-that the last vurm was killed two hundred and eighty years ago," Twilight finished hurriedly. "I know, Highsight, but I saw it myself. It fit the classification of a Guivre Vurm, a thick serpent body as thick as the base of a redwood tree and so long that both ends could not be seen."

Lander laughed nervously. "You're taking a piss aren't you?"

Twilight shook her head.

"So we're to kill this vurm, kill a witch that can control a vurm, and then find a probably dead fiance for a knight," Lander summarized with a hint of uncertainty in his voice. "Anything else?"

"The fiance apparently makes really good pies," Twilight added, "so... there's that."

"Perfect," Lander lamented, "now I just need to prepare my vurm killing kit."

Twilight was replied with two saddlebags stocked to the brim with poisons, potions, explosives, and even a few caramel apples with sugar cubes. "I got everything set for the fight. All we have to do is prepare our weapons and go for it."

The three of them quietly sat down and sharpened their swords on the grindstones Twilight had brought to their camp. She looked at the both of them. "So, good time to catch up?"

There was a pause from both her friends. "Sure, why not," Lander finally replied. "I heard Highsight has some good stories to tell. Maybe even the one about the wedding, if we're lucky." Highsight's eyes bulged at Lander, and he grinned back. "Word spreads fast when it's about a prince."

Now Twilight was interested. "Not sure about this fight. I want a good story to take with me if we don't win."

Highsight sighed, relenting to the pressure. "Had to kill a High Fiend that was hunting the apple pickers near The High Mountain. Winter was nearing then, and the king of the The High Mountain let me stay there 'till spring as part of the payment. He didn't mention he had a son who took a fancy to me, even when he was to be wed in a fortnight."

"Let me guess, it was your stunning personality?" Twilight teased.

Highsight shrugged. "My exotic accent he said, as if I appreciated being valued by how I talked. Also didn't know monster hunters are infertile."

"He found out?" Twilight raised a brow.

She shook her head. "I thought he knew until after everything happened."

"So, what'd he do?"

"Galloped strait of the wedding right before saying 'yes' and proposed to me outside the window of my room." Highsight laughed. "His fiance ran after him, begging him to come to his senses. He just started insulting her, saying how she never satisfied his 'adventurous spirit,' up to the point I rejected him. He didn't have much to say after that."

Twilight laughed along. "Breaking hearts and taking names. Guerrier would be proud."

Highsight raised an eyebrow and glanced at Lander. "Your turn lover boy, tell us about that time in Timbertown."

"Whatever you heard, I'm sure it was exaggeration." Lander paused to collect his composure. "Anyways, if you want to know what happened, just picture an injured succubus asking for help to flee the local inquisitors. Couldn't deny her, now could I?"

"Of course, you're so kindhearted." Twilight sheathed her sword after sharpening it and rubbing it down with draconic poison. "Hope this witch doesn't have the same effect."

"Oh, fuck off," Lander spat, shuddering at the thought. "That's disgusting Twilight, now you've got me thinking of wrinkly old skin and saggy muscles."

"Kill it and you can forget all about it," Highsight suggested. "I'm ready, how 'bout you two? Never too late to turn back if you're scared."

Lander stood with his sword in one hoof, gazing at the portal with confidence. "I'll show you both. I won't be the butt of your jokes any more after this."

"If we kill it, I'll owe you both," Twilight said, picking up her saddlebag and walking up to the portal. "Remember Stonewood's lessons on draconics?"

"Chapter sixteen of Scales, Tails, and Fangs." Highsight recalled. "Vurms: venomous fangs, acidic breath, and it swallows you whole." She removed a flask of a thick murky liquid and poured the bitter mixture down her throat. Twilight and Lander both drank the antidotes too. Though draconics were famous for fiery breath, a multitude of venoms were just as dangerous for certain monsters, and since each monster could be born with any combination of the venoms, the monster hunter's antidote had to account for all of it.

It was thick and packed with herbs, extracts, and even a few animal and monster parts for good measure. It tasted worse than rotting apples, but they were forced to get used to it.

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The portal wasn't what surprised Highsight and Lander; the sensation of teleporting was like walking through a hurricane. It was the witch's cave that stunned them. Despite being nearly pitch black, Highsight and Lander drank potions of Sight, showing them every detail of the cave. Parts of it were still natural, like the stalagmites and stalactites, but most of it was dug out with detailed architecture.

"It resembles the works of Royal Griffins, but it's older than anything I've ever seen," Twilight told them.

"So the witch's a historian and a vurm tamer," Lander mused. "Impressive."

They passed the typical decorations of the witch's lair, quietly moving around the mutilated corpses of monsters and animals, and the glowing black pots filled with things they did not intend on identifying. Then there were oddities, like ancient silver relics that didn't match the designs of the architecture, or the finely painted portraits of a beautiful young mare.

They passed most of the upper cavern before they heard the crying of a young mare from below them, echoing from a poorly repaired stairway. Twilight glided down with no trouble but Highsight and Lander took their time walking down the loose steps.

Twilight whispered to Lander. "The knight's fiance can't be in here when the fighting starts. Get her to the portal and come back as quickly as you can. We'll scan the area for the witch or the vurm and cover if needed."

Lander nodded and dashed around the caves, which were now becoming less and less refined their construction, and searched for the mare. Some were clearly prisons, made with metal bars and locks, while others were simply pits with a heavy stone lid dropped on top. He found the mare in one of those pits, its lid cracked open as if the witch didn't care to close it properly.

"Shh, I'm a professional," Lander whispered to the knight's fiance. "Your soon to-be husband sent us to get you. I need you to stay quiet now or we may get caught by the thing that brought you here."

The mare continued to sniffle but Lander's warning seemed to calm her slightly. "Are you just another trick? The hag's been tormenting every day with her conjuring and casting. If you're lying, I beg of you, just leave me be!"

"Woah there, you gotta stay quiet," Lander responded, adding a great deal of fear to his whisper to scare the mare into silence. "I don't feel like dying to witch just because weren't quiet enough. No, I'm not a trick, but I have a feeling we might run into a few if you don't stay quiet and come with me, okay?"

Lander could hear the mare pull herself off the stone floor. "Okay."

He bucked the stone slab a bit, opening a gap big enough for his hooves and heaved the slab aside until the mare could squeeze out.

"I'll take you to the exit. Stay close and don't make a sound." As Lander snuck through the cave back to the portal, Twilight and Highsight trudged through the rough shifting terrain of the cave.

"Tell me more about this witch," Highsight requested, "you fought her once already, right?"

"She's got weird spells," Twilight said. "She can make copies of herself -real copies, not just illusions- to fight in her place. On top that she -wait, hear that?"

Highsight froze and listened with Twilight. "Your echoing voice?" Then she heard the skittering and scratching along the cave walls. "Wait, I do hear it. It sounds like..."

Thousands of rats. The floor came alive like a wave and rushed for Twilight and Highsight, but only met an energy shield.

"Oh no, I'm not doing rats," Highsight panicked, her voice shaking as more rats piled around the shield.

Twilight followed Highsight's queues and dropped the shield the instant she struck her hoof against the stone floor. Carved onto her horseshoes, the glyphs of fire flared with magic and spewed a stream of flames from the horseshoe onto the rats. Twilight added her own wards to the ground, carving the symbols with beams of magic into ground.

The wards and glyphs worked wonders together. While the glyphs of fire burned rats with magic of its own, the wards fed on the residual energy of the glyphs, recycling the feedback magic to clear the cave with its own spouts of fire. But the arcane forces were nothing compared to the swarm of rats. More kept coming, and Twilight realized more would keep coming.

"They're magic!" she shouted to Highsight ,over the sound of thousands of rats. "It the witch's trap, she's summoning them."

Twilight resumed focusing her magic into a barrier, expanding her focus until the energy shield blocked off both sides of the tunnel like the walls of a castle. Safe for the moment, she didn't take a moment to rest. Twilight was on the floor immediately, drawing overlapping circles on the floor of the tunnel the picture resembled a twenty-petal flower.

At the tip of each petal went a candle, and at the center Twilight sat. "Jur ren ye'Um la'ehar kavak mo'rthulais!" She recited the spell into the chalk, and from the symbol a surge of power flowed into the tunnel. Commanded by magic, the rats tensed up and faced each other. Slowly, hundreds of rats began to vanish, seemingly turned to ashes and absorbed by just a dozen of their comrades.

"You can show yourself," Twilight called out. "Don't try hiding in the dark, we can see you."

Highsight drew her sword, looking around at every stalagmite in the tunnel. The witch walked casually out of a cave wall distorting the illusion enough to reveal the secret laboratory. Twilight shifted into a defensive stance with her sword and circled the witch.

To call the witch an old mare would be generous. Her skin was cracked and wrinkled, revealing the slick, blackened flesh underneath. Damaged over time by the use of black magic, the witch twitched uncontrollably, a motion that often shook off flakes of dead skin. Whatever patches of fur she still had on her coat glowed red, soaked with chemicals mixed with blood. Her teeth chattered as her frail body shook, gnashing against what looked to Twilight to be a rat's tail at first, but turned out to be her dried, dead tongue.

The witch screeched into their minds with her magic. Returning with more meat, hunter? You only doom your comrades.

Twilight took the advantage to attack while the witch threatened them, tossing a bomb that doused the witch in tar. Highsight followed Twilight's attack with her glyphs, spraying fire until the witch wore flames across its whole body. Despite being covered in flames, the witch still cast a shockwave of magic knocking down them into the damp floor.

Twilight rolled to the side and dodged the second spell, a blast of lighting, and built her momentum up in her sword with a series of spins, landing the strike on the neck of the witch. Magic made the witch far stronger than she appeared, and while her blade landed, Twilight might as well struck a plate of steel or a granite boulder.

Lander could hear the battle break out even from the entrance portal. "We have to kill the witch. The portal will take you to the forest just outside your husband's encampment. The mare turned to Lander and gave him a gentle smile.

"My fiance," she reminded him. "And as much as he claims to love me, he's never rescued me from anything like this." Lander backed away from the mare's advances but she was on him immediately, kissing him up and down his neck.

Lander gasped as the mare attempted to undo the straps of his armor. "You might be safe, but my friends need my help. I don't think two monster hunters can handle this witch."

"You're right," she said, frowning. She looked deeply into Lander's eyes, and slowly tore her gaze away. "That's why you have to die."

"What?" Lander felt his lungs collapse to a burst of magic, made worse as his back struck the hard stone wall of the cave. The mare was on him again, but this time her coat was discolored, going from a faint pink to a pale gray. From her head, a horn split through her her skin, and she lifted him up with a levitation spell.

"That stupid monster hunter sent you to rescue the damsel in distress?" The witch scanned Lander's body from head to tail. "Such a disappointment. I would have preferred the female companion, but you'll have to do."

Lander let the witch lower her guard as she carried him over to one her many work tables. The witch had a plethora of ingredients messily splattered along the cave, and most of them only needed a spark to start burning. Lander waited, and once he was in range of the tables, he threw a bomb from his saddlebag.

Twilight and Highsight could hear the explosion from where they stood, and even the witch stopped to face the sound. For a moment, Twilight saw the witch's expression show genuine fear, before she turned back to them and fired off more magic. Twilight and Highsight both kept on their hooves, avoiding the places being transmuted into pools of acid by the witch.

In the burning wreckage, Lander wrestled the witch onto the ground with his sword. Her body was half burnt and covered in wood and stone shrapnel, but none of that bothered the witch more than the night silver in Lander's sword that denied much of her powers from taking shape.

Two pairs of hooves grabbed at Lander's saddlebag and dragged him off the witch. He slashed at them, but they let go in time to avoid the deadly cuts. Lander rose to face the witch's assistants, and his eyes widened at what he saw. He was surrounded by three copies of the witch, and any one of them could have been the real one. Or perhaps none of them at all, if the witch was fighting safe.

He charged forward and dismembered a leg off one of the copies, and he felt his sword vibrate to the touch of magic. He swerved around the bolts of magic from the other copies and decapitated a second copy. Again, his sword vibrated, this time with much greater intensity. The magic came from the bodies of the witch's copies.

Slowly, the bodies began to grow back, regaining their lost leg and head. As for the missing parts, they started to grow their own bodies, becoming replicas of the thing they had been cut from. Lander counted five, and knew it would only grow faster and faster if he continued to fight. Choosing the smart route, he slammed his horseshoe onto the floor and activated the glyphs. Magic built up for a second before repelling the witch copies with a funnel of air. He repeated the action, blasting back two copies and opening up an escape route to his friends.

Twilight could hear Lander being chased, but was occupied with helping Highsight out of the jaws of the witch. She delivered strike after strike against the witch's skull, but each cut like a butter knife against a pumpkin. Fire only seemed to agitate her further, as Highsight exhausted her glyphs attempting to burn in mouth of the witch.

"Hey!" shouted Lander, descending the precarious stairs, "I think I found -the fuck is that?" He saw Highsight struggling to pry her shoulder free and galloped into the witch, slamming his horseshoe into her throat. She went flying backwards into the tunnel, crashing into a wall of stalagmites.

"What was with that explosion?" Twilight asked Lander.

He answered by turning to the stairway and pointed to witch copies watching from the top floor. "Witch used an illusion to disguise as the kidnapped mare. Night silver didn't even pick up on the magic."

Twilight and Highsight traded glances. "Wait, if that's the witch..." Highsight began.

Twilight turned back to the pile of broken stones where their witch had landed. "Acid pools, biting, armored hide." She sighed with disbelief that she hadn't seen the signs. "Shit."

Above, the copies laughed at the monster hunters lamenting their situation. They stood helpless in the tunnel with her pet, readying themselves for a fight as if they stood a chance. The mutant had reason to have confidence, but nonetheless they were as much of a threat as the young mare was.

Chills went down Lander's back at the shrieks of a painful transformation, giving way to a growing mass. Highsight quickly reached for a potion to stop the bleeding from her shoulder.

The vurm slithered down the tunnel, still growing in size as it charged for the monster hunters. As the last vestiges of its disguise melted away, the vurm expanded more and more until the tunnel could barely contain it. With her magic ready, Twilight plugged the tunnel before the vurm could reach them. The magic flared as the fangs of the serpent scratched the shield and spewed acid and venom, but Twilight did not falter.

"You two kill the witch," she said to her friends, "whatever control she has over the vurm should stop once she's dead."

"This won't be easy," informed Lander, "she heals fast and her dismembered parts grow back into copies."

Highsight nodded, preparing the countermeasure for the witch. The copies didn't give them the chance to catch them off guard, each breaking into a swarm of rats and flooding rest of the tunnel. Highsight detested the rats, but held her ground until the witch copies returned to their original form. Then, she threw two bombs of thick, flammable tar.

Lander added to its effect with his glyphs, blowing the tar across all five copies with a gust from his hoof. From Highsight, she scratched her horseshoe against the walls and erupted a spout of flame. The glyphs were strained, working with a limited pool of magic, but even the thin stream of fire was enough to set the witches ablaze.

They all squirmed and patted themselves down to extinguish the fires, producing water from their horns to flood the tunnel until the flames stopped. Lander reacted while they were still panicking and launched another bomb at the copies. Painted with glyphs of ice, the bomb's magic activated with its explosion, freezing the water all the way to the horns of the copies.

Twilight screamed, her shield cracking under the rage of the vurm. "It's going crazy!" she shouted, straining to contain the feedback of magic as more cracks formed in the shield.

No sooner did Lander and Highsight raise their swords than the vurm broke through the shield. It poked its head into the cavern, biting at the monster hunters and they ran for the prison cells where Lander had found the disguised witch. But while the cavern space was like a castle to the monster hunters, the vurm found it little more than a playground. It moved along the edge of the space, blocking off all exits, and circled back to entrance from which it came, its tail still lost somewhere down the tunnel.

It raised its head and lashed at the monster hunters, spraying drops of acid that sizzled on the stone and formed small puddles of the deadly fluid. Twilight ran to the edge and stabbed the vurm in its body, grabbing its attention while not even scratching the metallic scales of the beast. As the vurm retaliated with a bite, she dodged out of it way, slashing its right eye with her poison coated sword.

The cavern shook as a dry shriek left the vurm's mouth, deafening the trained senses of the hunters. Twilight clutched her ears the hardest, but her senses were amplified by magic, and nothing could stop the blinding pain from the vurm's voice. It flicked her aside with a bash of its head before she could form a protective barrier, and Twilight crashed into Lander, who had just recovered from the ringing in his ears.

Highsight took her turn to attack the vurm, tossing bomb after bomb, each one filled with blinding powder, until her saddlebag was rid of them. The mixture of powders exploded into the air and dispersed around the its head. The vurm's head was like a crocodile's, with a long snout to catch every crucial scent. As the powders irritated its eyes, they filled the monster's nostrils and blinded its sense of smell. With sight and scent damaged, the great beast could not hunt its prey.

Lander and Twilight barely had to move out of the way to avoid the jets of hot acid from its fangs, and the vurm could not spot the bolts of magic Twilight fired until it was too late and it had been struck. Enraged by its prey, the vurm rushed across the cavern, stretching more of its body into the cavern.

It crashed into the stone walls frantically, shaking more and more rocks onto the monster hunters. If it persisted, it wouldn't have been the monster that killed them, but the law of gravity and heavy rocks. The vurm continued to knot itself around the cavern, passing the monster hunters over and over while they slashed their poisoned swords across the vulnerable flesh on its face. The monster's eyes stung from half a dozen cuts each, and the hunters had even managed to find the soft spot of the vurm, right behind it head.

The vurm had little choice left. It opened its jaws wide and roared at the monster hunters, not as a tactic to scare, but to unleash clouds of venom into the cavern. Their lungs stung and their eyes teared up, but inside their veins ran the antidote that refused to let the venom take hold.

"We have to get out of here Twilight," Lander said, being the blunt voice of reason for a change. "I've seen every cell down here, and only found the witch in disguise."

Twilight rolled out the way of another stream of acid and venom. "Where's the witch anyway?"

Lander pointed to a few broken bits of frozen witch on the floor. In all the commotion with the vurm breaking out of its transformation, the frozen witch and her copies had crumbled into bits, defrosting on the ground. Twilight noticed a couple legs lying on the ground wearing the wedding band the knight had given to his wife. There was no telling which was the original, but she had a feeling the witch was thorough in her duplication, and any would work.

"You two head up to the portal," Twilight said, "I'll be right behind you."

Twilight lifted a wedding band off of one of the frozen copies and ran after her friends, climbing up the stairs as they buckled from the frenzy of the vurm. Holding onto the nooks and loose bricks felt like climbing the walls of Bach Tor'al again. Behind her, the vurm squirmed and struggled as larger slabs of basalt and granite crumbled and pinned the vurm down until completely burying it in a rocky tomb.

Highsight and Lander waited outside the portal for Twilight, both lying on the floor with heavy breath and laughter.

"Another good story to tell," Lander smiled. "Guerrier won't believe his old ears when I tell him."

"Make sure to tell him about the falling rocks," Twilight added. "It would make a great lesson for future hunters: Lander's Treatise on Lairs and Vurms -Hunting With Rocks.

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"Her bracelet is all you brought me!" bellowed the knight, slamming his armored hoof against his dinner table. He was a strong fighter, a simple motion and the edge of his hardwood table exploded into splinters. But Twilight barely blinked.

"The witch is dead and so is her vurm," Twilight reminded him.

"As if I care about a hag and an overgrown snake," hissed the knight. "I hired you to find my fiance, the love of my life, and you come back with a trinket you yourself admit the witch could have duplicated!"

Twilight let the knight vent his feelings, he lost his loved one and had a right to be angry, but Twilight wasn't going to let him avoid paying her. "She was likely dead before I even entered the witch's lair. Black magic rarely leaves its victims alive, and to make a disguise even night silver couldn't detect it, the witch needed to perform a death ritual."

The knight's stare was unrelenting, and he didn't back down from his stance.

"At least she was avenged," Twilight said. It was clearly the wrong choice of words.

The knight's eyelid twitched just a split second before he exploded in a fit of rage. "No amount of avenging will bring her back! If that's your excuse for a job well done, then you can just fuck off!" He threw his shield across the meeting room and it lodged itself into the brick fireplace. "Should've known better than to trust a sodding mutant. Can't even do one job right."

"I'm not leaving leaving without my payment," Twilight pressed. "I risked my life just to look for your fiance, as did my colleagues. The witch killed your beloved and planned a trap long before we arrived, and it nearly worked. I would say I'm sorry for your loss, but clearly you're not a stallion willing to pay for the job, even if it was just to check if she was still alive. I told you from the start, not many live wen they're taken by a witch."

"Half," the knight finally said, though the utterance of his offer seemed to fight against everything he believed in. "For eliminating the witch threat."

Twilight firmly planted her hooves on the knight's table and leaned into his face. "All."

They could have stood off for the rest of the day, but the ponies around the camp were already nervous about the three monster hunters among us, and they needed to leave as soon as possible. The knight didn't want to loose half his forces to take down three hunters.

"The gold is in the cart outside," he said through his teeth. "I don't want to see you again. Ever."

Twilight nodded and walked out of the knight's command post. Sent ahead by the knight, a squire pulled the cart of gold up to where Highsight and Lander were waiting for her. Lander took one look and whistled.

"After a three way split I still think I could retire," he said, grinning as he placed his hooves on the bags of gold bars.

Highsight looked at him with a disgust. "That stallion was willing to pay all this for his fiance. He could buy an army twice this size armor and weapons with all this gold, but he spent it on love instead. Have to respect that dedication."

Twilight nodded. "Don't be so insensitive Lander. It's too soon to swoon over money."

"Of course, I'll pay my respect to dead. While I'm at it maybe I'll stop by each grave of every soldier killed in this war of unification." Twilight scowled at Lander, but he wore his sarcasm proudly.

But, he also his justification ready. "This is war, Twilight. Every pony has loved ones who'd do anything, or pay anything, to keep them safe. It's not our job to mourn for every single life not saved. We'd never be able to do anything else. You save some, you lose some, and that's how it is. For me, I'd like to take my hard earned gold, and go save some pony else on the next job."

Highsight and Twilight both looked at Lander, unsure where he pulled the unexpected wisdom from. Neither of them like it or agreed with it, but respected Lander's deeper opinion on the matter and just let him be.

Twilight turned her attention to the overwhelming cart of wealth, trying to find a place to focus her eyes. "Lets split up the gold then."

Comments

[Sonic Rainboom Dash]

7386421 ah cool. would help if it had a link to the prequel.

[SwordTune]

7386443Good idea. http://www.fimfiction.net/story/281304/cards-of-prophecy

[Sonic Rainboom Dash]

7386523 np. still good story.