The Fiend that heralds Dark Skies

by Skijarama

Chapter 12 - Hybrid Ferocity

She could smell him. Drifter turned her nose up and sniffed at the air once more before turning slightly and continuing on her trek for Skeintooth’s little hideout. His stench was abhorrent; which was how she knew it was him. Fiends had a tendency to have particularly distinct aromas. Luna had already split off almost a mile back, ascending the mountainside with her wings and disappearing among a the snowy fog and mist.

It wasn’t snowy where Drifter was at, but it could very easily become so if the weather teams weren’t careful. Canterlot was visible in the distance, fairly far below and in the distance. It was just barely visible under the moonlight. Drifter looked up at the celestial body and grimaces. It, too, was getting darker. The light reflected from the sun was fading, making the night take on a subtle, crimson tint.

A ringing reached her ears at about thin point. Drifter instantly tensed up, folding her ears back and baring her fangs on reflex. Her claws shifted under her hooves, ready to spring free at any moment. Soon enough, the gradual incline she had been trotting along dipped into a sizable bowl in the mountainous terrain. There were a few dead animals scattered about, looking like Skeintooth had made a meal out of anything that got too close. The glowing blue pod was at the center of the bowl.

She grimaced as she realized there was a pegasus pony corpse among them. Probably a weather pony. His face, or whatever was left of it, was twisted into scream of terror that froze the moment he died.

With a scowl, Drifter strode to the pod and stomped it out, letting her ears stand up once that was done. It had been starting to get on her nerves, that sound. Good thing I’m half fiend. She thought to herself before looking around cautiously, eyes narrowing as she scanned the environment.

“Cannibal.”

Drifter turned and frowned as she beheld Skeintooth, looking down on her from an elevated piece of stone that stuck up from the ground like a spike. Saliva was dripping off of his fangs in obscene amounts and his tongue flicked out to lick his gums and lips. Drifter stood tall and glared at him. “I take it you’re Skeintooth?”

“Skeintooth was not expecting cannibal half-sister to show up here. Skeintooth wants Princess of Moon. Why is cannibal here?” Skeintooth asked curiously, nestling down onto the stone and letting one of his front legs dangle over the edge to swing lazily in the air. He looked about as casual as it was possible for him to look.

“I’m Moonrise Drifter. I eat monsters like you, remember? Or did Horizon neglect to educate you on such a simple detail? Considering how bad you are at speech, I can only guess so.”

“Skeintooth knows that cannibal eats other fiends. That’s why Skeintooth called her cannibal.” Skeintooth answered, pointing a clawtip at her with a frown forming on his face. “No, Skeintooth wonders why cannibal has come here to him? Skeintooth thought that cannibal would be looking for master Horizon, or perhaps playing mommy to orphan ponies.”

Drifter grit her teeth and let her wings flare out in a threatening display. “Are you trying to piss me off?” She hissed at him dangerously.

Skeintooth hummed and looked at his claws as if he wished to clean them of some unseen dirt. His eyes flicked down to her as he did this gesture, a smirk growing on his face. “Cannibal is evading Skeintooth’s question.”

“I came here to kill you and then eat you. You hurt my friend Twilight, you dug up Princess Celestia’s grave and desecrated her bones. I have no intention of letting you leave here alive, fiend.” Drifter answered, extending the claws from her hooves. She kept the claws in her right hoof pulled in, as they weren’t quite battle ready yet.

Skeintooth grinned widely before standing up slowly. Drifter had to admit, he was large and, from all accounts, he was fast, too. All of her focus was on him as she tuned the rest of the world out. Skeintooth let a sadistic cackle emerge from his lungs. This laugh soon turned into a gleeful howl before he knelt and sprung into the air, the stone platform beneath him crumbling into dust from the force of his launch.

Drifter looked up and leapt back to avoid the attack. Skeintooth landed right where she had been, his long, twisted claws rending the dirt and stone upon impact and kicking up a large cloud of dust. Without wasting any time, Skeintooth turned in place, using his tail like a whip and slamming it into Drifter’s side. She yelped in pain from the force of the blow, skidding along the ground before rolling back onto her hooves. Skeintooth was already in pursuit, teeth bared and angled to bite at her head.

With her own agility, Drifter ducked and thrust her good claws up into his chin. Skeintooth let out a pained roar as her claws punched through into his mouth, taking a few teeth out and thoroughly shredding one of the tips of his tongue. With a grunt, she made use of his momentum to tear her claws along his underside as he passed. He pulled up and off in a jump, her claws slipping free from his chest with a spray of blood.

Skeintooth turned and shrieked at Drifter, his teeth quivering in his mouth and the spines along his back flaring up. Drifter grunted and held a hoof to her head as the air seemed to ripple around her from the sheer volume of the noise he was making. Anypony else would be paralyzed by this kind of sound, maybe even lose their sense of hearing altogether.

Skeintooth maintained his scream until he was almost upon Drifter again, his head angled down. Drifter regained enough focus to jump up with a flap of her wings, evading his tackle by the skin of her teeth. She wasn’t able to fully evade the spines on his back as he rushed by, however. He belly and legs recieved numerous slices as he shot past her, their sharp tips cutting deep into her body.

“Gah! Son of a…” she gasped before giving her wings another hard flap to lift higher into the air. She glared down at the fiend, who was now circling her hungrily, snapping at the air and flicking his tail excitedly. “Alright, tough guy…” she muttered before shooting down at him.

Skeintooth rose on his hind legs to meet her advance, claws extended and jaws wide open to tear her apart if she messed up. Suddenly, just as she was entering his range of attack, Drifter tilted her wings before tucking them close to her body. She shot past his claws and mouth, rocketing like an arrow into a slight upward curve, tackling him in the gut. Skeintooth growled in surprise, the wind knocked out of him from the force of the attack.

Drifter was swift to get back onto her hooves, bringing herself up and stabbing her claws into Skeintooth’s hip as he fell toward the ground. A sizable cloud of dust was kicked up by the creature’s collision with the ground, briefly blinding Drifter to a lot of his body’s movements. This proved a problem. She let out a startled gasp as his front leg reached out, his claws grabbing her in a tight grip and yanking her from his hip viciously.

Skeintooth laughed maniacally as he brought Drifter down into the ground, pinning her down with his claws and smiling down at her with wild, excited eyes. “Skeintooth gets to kill the cannibal! Ooooh, master will reward Skeintooth so greatly!”

Drifter grunted before using her position to the best of her ability. She sunk her fangs into the skin between his claws, drawing blood and tearing away a substantial chunk of meat with a strong bite. Skeintooth hissed in pain, tightening his grip on her and slamming her down again. Drifter gasped, her vision exploding with swimming colors and sparks. Her body felt heavy, filled with lead before being jarred once more. Skeintooth laughed uproarisly with every slam he made.

Then he screamed. Skeintooth howled in agony as a beam of dark blue magic struck him in between his shoulder blades, burning the flesh and lighting what few hairs he had there on fire. Drifter slipped limply from his claws. In a bright flash of blue teleportation magic, she was gone. Skeintooth stood up once more and looked for the source of the interference. Another beam of magic lanced out from the newcomer, striking him in the right eye.

Luna smiled with satisfaction at Skeintooth’s reaction. He reached his claws up to his face and howled in indescribable agony, rearing up on his hind legs and thrashing wildly. “EYE! EYE! SKEINTOOTH’S EYE! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SKEINTOOTH’S EYYEE?!”

“Oh, if you think that’s bad, Skeintooth…” Luna began, shadows licking at the corners of her eyes, her horn lighting up with a sinister blue glow. “Just wait. We’re just getting started.”

Skeintooth writhed in pain before slamming back down onto all fours, the earth shaking beneath his feet. He glared up at Luna, revealing one entire side of his face had been partially melted from the blast, his eye on the right side of his face no longer functional and mixed in with muscle and skin tissue. It was a very nasty scar.

“Thanks for the assist, Luna… ack!” Drifter grimaced, slowly rising to her hooves again and wincing when she put weight on her hind legs. “Jeesh… he hits like a tank. Be careful.”

“You as well.” Luna said simply, flaring her wings out.

Skeintooth’s face shifted. Slowly to a grimace of frustration, then into a satisfied smirk. Suddenly, he screamed with a horrible bliss and lunged, dust springing up from his launch point. Drifter gasped at how fast he had suddenly moved. He hadn’t been this fast before!

With a shout of alarm, Luna managed to sidestep his charge, but only barely. Thinking fast, she discharge a concussive blast from her horn, sending Skeintooth rolling along the ground and past Drifter.

“He was not moving like this a second ago!” Drifter called to Luna before pursuing Skeintooth, flexing her claws in anticipation. She lifted into the air with a flap of her wings and shot for his prone form with the intention of tearing out his windpipe, if she could find it. She never reached him. The wind was knocked clean out of her by a strike from Skeintooth’s tail, which had whipped around and struck her in the side of her barrel.

“I was watching! I noticed!” Luna answered before lifting into the air as well, dark blue magic gathering around the tip of her horn into a concentrated ball of energy. Skeintooth rolled back onto his feet and sneered at her before charging once more. Come closer, you scoundrel… Luna thought. Wait for it… wait for it…

Skeintooth leapt for her, claws extended and teeth bared. He could practically taster her in the air. Her anger was prominently polluting the breeze, but there was another scent to be found on the wind. Her fear. Skeintooth’s eyes went absolutely mad with bloodlust.

Luna’s eyes, in turn, went wide as she unleashed her spell at point blank range. Skeintooth was hurled against the ground below by a large beam of magical energy, dust flying away from the point of impact. An angry scream tore itself out of Luna’s lungs, the ground below fracturing and cracking in a spider-web formation. Skeintooth’s agonized screams were being drowned out by the volume of the spell and Luna’s enraged roar.

She hated him. She loathed him. She saw how he had smiled at her a moment ago, how he had found such revolting glee and joy in this violence. How much he had desired to tear her apart, how he had enjoyed violating Tia’s grave and devouring her bones and destroying her statue’s base. Luna felt her blood boil with unspeakable hatred and an unquenchable desire for just one thing: To see this fiend die a painful death.

Abruptly, Luna’s spell faltered. The magical beam flickered and melted away, a small trail of smoke rising from her horn. She let out a gasp and reached her hooves up to her head and clutched them to it as if hoping it would suppress some unseen creature from bursting out of her skull. Her pupils twitched and narrowed slightly before she screamed. Thrashing wildly, Princess Luna could no longer sustain her flight and plummeted to the ground below in a dangerously accelerating freefall..Drifter watched with shock as tendrils of blackness began leaking out of Luna, faint wisps of red visible within them. Drifter knew what that meant. Luna let her anger get the better of her...

Without hesitation, Drifter shot into the air with a mighty flap, intercepting Luna’s fall and catching her. The lunar princess was thrashing wildly, groaning and growling in pain and effort. She opened her eyes and looked up at Drifter desperately.

“It’s okay. I’ve got you, Aunt Luna. You’re going to be alright, I promise.” Drifter said, using Luna’s actual familial relation to address the princess in hopes of helping pull her out of this state. For a moment, it almost seemed to work. Luna’s breathing gradually grew more controlled, her trembling body started to relax.

Then Skeintooth tackled them.

Drifter grunted in surprise as she was unceremoniously thrown off of Luna. She rolled to a stop on her side and looked up in time to see Skeintooth reach down for Luna with his jaws wide open. She was barely able to lift a foreleg in time to catch his teeth short of her neck, but still, he bit. Blood painted crimson lines down her foreleg as Skeintooth’s teeth sank in, digging into the flesh and pulling away a sizable chunk of her leg. Luna wheezed weakly, looking at her mutilated leg with wide, blank eyes. She twitched numerous times before falling still.

Drifter looked at Luna in disbelief, then to Skeintooth with wide, unblinking eyes. He… hurt her…

Skeintooth shivered in bliss at the taste of his newest victim. “Oooooh, so delicious!” he cooed, licking his lips and leaning back. “But master wants Princess of Moon to live. Skeintooth takes his leave, now.”

“No.” Drifter barked, slowly rising to her hooves on trembling legs.

Skeintooth tilted his head at her and smirked. “What is the cannibal going to do to stop Skeintooth?” he asked tauntingly. Drifter glared at him, her eyes glowing brightly in the darkness of the night.

“I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to rip your skin away from your body. I am going to pull your eyes from your skull and feed them to you.” Drifter growled, taking a step forward. Her claws clicked on the stone. “I am going to tear out your claws and pin you to the dirt with them. I am going to kill you, Skeintooth. I am going to kill you and I am going to make it painful.”

Skeintooth smiled at her in amusement. “Oh, how cute. Look at the cannibal! She can barely stand, much less kill Skeintooth!”

The sinister glow in Drifter’s eyes grew brighter and brighter. Saliva began to dribble from her mouth, dripping onto the dirt below as she licked her fangs. Her pupils went wide, taking in all light. Her gaze focused in on her prey, the fiend that stood so confidently over her. “I am going to eat you!” She screamed wildly before hurling herself at him in an animalistic rage.

Author's Note:

I don't have any clever .gifs to put to this chapter, so nyeh. It's 3:00 in the morning.

...I sleep. I swear.

SHUT UP, SIT DOWN, AND DRINK YOUR GODDAMN TEA! ENJOY THE GODDAMN STORY!

Comments

[tom117z]

hoping it would suppress some unseen creature from bursting out of her skull.

I wouldn't say no to a tactical Nightmare Moon.

She was barely able to lift a foreleg in time to catch his teeth short of her neck, but still, he bit. Blood painted crimson lines down her foreleg as Skeintooth’s teeth sank in, digging into the flesh and pulling away a sizable chunk of her leg. Luna wheezed weakly, looking at her mutilated leg with wide, blank eyes. She twitched numerous times before falling still.

Well... shit.

“I am going to eat you!” She screamed wildly before hurling herself at him in an animalistic rage.

Get him Drifter!

[Blank Page]

Luna let her anger get the better of her...

Got me hopeful that everyone's favorite Nightmare was going to make a short comeback. Wouldn't have objected, but I like how this turned out, too.

And all that build up just to get even more build up for round 2. Can't wait to see how this ends; I'm ready for this Skeintooth to get what's coming to him

i.imgur.com/NnoGhN1.gif

[Destiny Chaser]

This freak seems to be even stronger than Horizon
How is he easily taking down Drifter and a freaking enraged Alicorn?! OP to the point of ridiculous

[Skijarama]

9373675
Well, he was designed from the ground up by Horizon to be an Alicorn hunter, so...