Siege of the Crystal Empire

by Mystic Mind

Chapter 12: Berserk

(12: Berserk)

With a swing of her hoof, Meteor brought her hammer down hard onto the helm of a Phantom Stallion, crumpling it under the blow’s force. With a short, sharp tug, Meteor pulled her weapon back and twirled, swinging her hammer back around to smash the crystal. Then, guided by her fury, she tore her hammer from her opponent and hacked away at an advancing troll. The beast stumbled sideways but didn't lose its balance, instead roaring into Meteor's face and throwing its axe down at her. Not to be put off by a single, ineffective hit, Meteor charged under the troll's swing, colliding shoulder-first into its chest, knocking the air out of its lungs.

“You'll have ta be quicker than that, slowpoke!” she quipped, turning herself around and kicking the troll with her hind legs as it toppled forward. With her foe slain, Meteor raised her armament once again, ready to take on whatever faced her next. Instead of a troll or a Phantom Stallion behind her, her eyes met with an addition to the Canterlot guard she had not expected to see. With a broad mace in one hoof and a dagger in the other, a Lunar Pegasus swept the leg of a Phantom Stallion out from under it, smashing each armour piece until it was little more than a crumpled heap of metal on the ground.

“Well aren't you the furious one, eh?” Meteor quipped, snapping a troll's tusk in half with her left-hoof, using it as a dagger to stab it through the heart.

“You're not exactly half-bad yourself,” the bat pony replied, her breathing barely above resting rate despite how much she was weaving around the enemy. Though she wore the golden armour of her Solar Guard compatriots, the short, purple quip of her hair and her grey fur remained the same. “Name's Moonlight Eclipse. I advise you to keep your eyes forward, lest you want the next troll to follow your lead and use its tusks. Believe me, it's not a pretty sight!”

“Keep yer worries ta yerself, lass,” one step to the right and Meteor smashed a bulbous nose in, the sound of crunching cartilage giving her a sense of satisfaction on par with the smell of hot metal fresh from the forge. “Ol' Meteor Might has been in plenty a fight in her time. I know full well not ta know not to lose sight of the enemy.”

“If you say so,” Moonlight shrugged and leaped at Meteor, throwing her mace at the shoulder of the very same troll her comrade had just wounded. “Can't hurt to have a reminder with these things runnin' around. They're the most stubborn gits I ever did see.”

“Well, when ya put it that way,” mirroring Moonlight's mace, Meteor swung her hammer around, matching the angle of attack so that both weapons smashed the fallen troll’s head in simultaneously.

“Incoming!” the regal voice of Emerald called out, a warning which the mares were right to take heed off immediately. A huge boulder of ice hurtled overhead, falling short of the walls and instead landing on top of the Canterlot pole-hammer regiment. Those at the edges of the formation were the lucky ones, escaping with thick shards of ice cutting through the weaker parts of their armour with explosive force. It didn't take long for the survivors to realise what had happened to the ponies who had drawn the short straw.

“Look, there, in the distance!” Emerald pointed his rapier over the ranks of the opposing army, drawing attention to a figure who cleared a window in the storm to make himself visible. From what Emerald and his troops could gather, the figure was indistinguishable from any other troll, aside from the fact that it was much slimmer. A vivid crest of white hair spread over his head, the brightness contrasting its long, dark, grey fur robes and wooden staff laden with dozens of grim ornaments wrapped around it.

“Well I'll be a griffon's uncle,” Meteor gasped. “That thing must be Moonshadow!”

“I thought Moonshadow was a pony?” Moonlight asked. “At least, that's what I heard.”

“Couldn't tell ya,” Meteor shook her head. “Emerald an' Stellar are the only two ponies who've seen Moonshadow face-to-face.”

“I... I can't be certain,” Emerald said, detaching himself from his unit momentarily to meet his comrades. His memories of the raid were hazy at best, most of the images pieced together from what other ponies had told him. “Trying to remember specifics just gives me a headache. But whatever the case, we cannot dawdle over speculation. This troll is a powerful player in this war, so the sooner we kill it, the sooner we'll have our answer.”

As rays of magic flashed from the enemy siege machines, the trolls began to retreat, disengaging from combat with any ponies who pressed on the assault. “Hold steady!” Emerald called. He was no fool. He knew the strategy these trolls were playing with like the back of his hoof. This was a tactical retreat, aiming to reform behind the Phantom Stallions who had the greater physical resilience. Breaking into a gallop across the front lines, Emerald called for the Cavaliers to push the remaining enemy flanks inward.

This would prove to be a costly mistake.

With a wave of his staff, the shaman conducted the weather like an orchestra, pelting the Lancers with an outburst of gigantic hailstones. The Crystal Ponies were used to harsh weather like this; they had trained in it from day one of their life as soldiers, priding themselves on their resistance to cold weather. However, even they couldn't withstand the magical onslaught that besieged them now. Blinded by the blanket of hail clattering off their armour, the Phantom Stallions struck back, blasting the lancers with magic missiles from their horns as they charged, scorching their armour to expose more vulnerabilities to smash through.

The Cavaliers did their best to hold the line, throwing themselves forward to meet the opposing charge, listening carefully with each attack for the cracking of metal that revealed the point where they would strike next. These were the skills that gave them a fighting chance, focusing more on the sound and the feel of their attacks than their sight to reveal when a phantom would falter. The two sides exchanged blow after blow, the spiked gauntlets punching into shields and the blunt weapons clanging with the violet armour. When one stallion fell, coughing up blood from his punctured lung, another mare behind him took his place, using both hooves to bring her mace down from an overhead swing to break the phantom's horn.

The phantom struck back with an uppercut to the mare's chin, knocking her down before it reared up to deliver the killing blow. Another Crystal Pony stepped between the duellers, taking the blow on their shoulder before returning the attack; swinging their mace from under the phantom and smashing its crystal. Though all three cavaliers were now bleeding profusely, they fought against both their wounds and the advancing phantoms to stand firm against the assault.

This is getting bad... Emerald thought to himself, biting his lip in frustration. Leaping back in avoidance of a troll's club, Emerald smacked the monster right between the eyes with his buckler, jumping onto its back as it fell forward in a daze and bucking at the back of its neck. From this point, he could see a trio of Phantom Stallions moving towards him, but more importantly, he gained precious moments to assess how his Cavaliers were holding up on their own.

“Heavy infantry units six and eight, prepare to separate from regiment!” In contrast to his outward display of stalwart confidence, inward Emerald was offering a silent prayer to the Crystal Heart that he had chosen the correct number of ponies to send and support the Cavaliers. “Heavy infantry unit three, follow them and offer support. I want the rest of you pole-hammers to cover their rear. Make sure they are not followed, and prepare to face the harsh weather!”

Meteor Might was among the first of the soldiers to follow Emerald's call for aid. Unbeknownst to Emerald, however, when Meteor laid eyes upon the unfolding, deadly duel between the phantoms and Cavaliers, something snapped in Meteor's mind. Something that had been building since the battle began. Suddenly, she felt a deep, primal desire to cover her weapon in the blood of the trolls, then smother it against the shattered pieces of the phantom's armour. Any thoughts that had once been processing Emerald's order faded away, replaced by the vivid image in her mind of licking splattered troll blood off her lips, standing victorious over the endless array of possible injuries that her enemies would die from. Most of all, it was the thought of returning to her Highland pony ancestors—carrying a strew of severed heads in her hooves—that was too much to resist any longer. Unshackling herself from the organisation of her allies, she charged after the first line of trolls she could see, the veins in her eyes bulging to swamp her peripheral with the red tint of berserker rage. Regardless of anypony else, she would slaughter everything that got in her way.

“Meteor, fall back!” Emerald yelled, though his voice fell on deaf ears, as Meteor continued to swing her hammer with all the grace and accuracy of a wrecking ball. Worse still, there was now a large gap in the ranks of Meteor's unit, the remaining ponies turning their shields inwards to protect themselves from their berserker ally, a fact which had not gone unnoticed by the Trolls. Now he had to rack his brain once again to make the best of this horrible situation. A flash of purple magic whizzing past Emerald's head derailed his train of thought, forcing his attention back on the Phantom Stallions that were trampling over the Troll he was standing on.

Emerald was out of options; he had to call for the rest of the army to re-join the departed units and focus on his own survival, lest they fall a divided nation. As the Canterlot Guard came to a head with the supporting Troll core, the heavy infantry moved into position with Moonlight in the centre, holding her wings in close as she kept herself low, out of sight among the cluster of reaching weapons. More than a dozen of the Crystal Lancers lay dead, their eyes wide open as the ice lay claim to their wounds. Their reinforcements had arrived, only to be greeted by a secondary fight amongst their short-ranged warrior counterparts. With Emerald trapped in his own fight against the Phantom Stallions, he couldn't give any corrections to his commands. The heavy infantry had to take the initiative, stabbing the trolls in the shoulders and on their heads with the sharp end of their pole-hammers.

This was Moonlight's cue to do what she did best; twist, roll and dive through every gap she could find, unsheathing a pair of stilettos that she kept hidden beneath her wings to cut-and-run through all of the Trolls that failed to notice her. Her attacks were swift, seeking more to wound the Trolls than to kill them, giving her compatriots the opening they needed to exterminate the interlopers themselves.

Now that the heavy infantry was given their edge, it was now time to turn her attention back to the primary cause of this little distraction; namely one out-of-control earth pony.