Tales of Paradise

by unknown Graces

chapter:1

"So, you ready boy?”

Shining armor using magic, irradiates his horn, creating a warm glow in front of us. Though the sight in front of us was nothing but brick walls and a river of green water.

"Geez, I knew it would be bad, but this is something else, let's find this box and go."

From his pocket armor pulls out a key with a handkerchief tied to it, I sniff it. Getting a decent scent of the box.

"Well, did you get a good scent of its location? Alright then let-”

I began to walk moving away from armor heading to where the chest was, ignoring armor’s calls as he catches up to me.

We walk for what felt like an eternity, it was completely quiet between us aside from the sounds of running water and sewage armor kept stepping in. Every now and again armor would chime in with a question or some other nonsense. All the while keeping a positive attitude and a smile.

We make it to a large room, a nexus of sewer tunnels all pouring into a large dark pit below us. There’s only one catwalk across to the other side.

“Watch your step lance I don’t want you falling off.”

I ignore him and get on the catwalk following armor, every step we take on it makes the walkway shake and cry out as old age and rust seems to have taken it. The bridge sways with every step, we’re halfway across when the floor gives way underneath me, I manage to grab a hold of the broken ledge. Barely hanging on I can hear armor rush over to me grabbing my tail.

“Hey, lance you okay?”

I’m staring at the black abyss hanging by my tail with armor grabbing onto me, trying to pull me up. The platform kept sounding like it would break off at every pull from armor.

“Just hang on I'm going to try to pull you up with my magic.”

I feel lifted up as a rose-colored aura engulfed me, and dropped me next to armor.

“There, you okay?”

Armor outstretches his hoof in front of me, as I shake off the mold and dust. I look at him for a moment, I sometimes think that armor is different from “him”. But they act so Alike that I know otherwise, I would let the same mistake happen again.

I turn away from him as I look forward and get ready to fight. I can hear him sigh as he walks up next to me still smiling.

“I'll take that as yes, now then-”

I keep my eyes forward listening to the Loud footsteps echo throughout the room. As I see the source, out of the shadows was… a unicorn. But Its eyes were completely greyed out and its face was bleached white.

“Hey, you're not your not suppose to be down here. Are you lost?”

Armor walks ahead of me, though the pony before us doesn’t respond to him just keeps walking forward towards us, slowly revealing itself from the shadows. We look at the thing in horror as we see its body, The head of the pony was the only actual part of it that was a pony. Its body was also completely white, Its front hooves had claw intentions while it's hind legs were that of a dragon, and its wings were that of a pegasus.

“What the what is that thing?”

The monstrous pony’s horn begins to glow a white hue lighting most of the area. In an instant, three large fireballs ignite around us and begin to close in before converging on armor. He blocks it with a quickly timed shield spell blocking the explosion.

“Wait can’t we talk this through first?”

Again, no response as it sets up for another fireball spell, this time much stronger and in much higher magnitude firing them off at a time, before spawning more in their place. Armor looked exhausted under the stress of it all.

I sigh, knowing I have no other choice. Since dodging on this platform is damn near impossible. Another barrage of fireballs appear and attack, armor loses the last of his stamina and the shield drops, I push armor into the water nearly avoiding the fireballs as we drift away into the speeding current.

I try to keep my head above water, only to be dragged back down into the water. I manage to grab a hold of a platform and pull myself out, I didn’t think the current would be so fast. seems I lost armor in the current. I look around frantically for him, but i don’t see him meaning he’s still in the water.

I dive in to find him, letting the current carry, me I put my head under the water to see if I can find him, Armor was floating down toward the bottom, still being carried by the water. I manage to grab his hoof and begin doggy paddling back to the surface.

I lay down armor down on the floor, he didn’t seem to be breathing. So much to my dismay, I lick his face in an attempt to wake him up.

“Armor, wake up I can’t have you dying on me. Cadence would never let me hear the end of it if you do, now wake up.”

Nothing, no response from him whatsoever. I stepped away from armor, thinking of what to do next as I pace around.

“Great, he's dead. Man fury and cadence will never let me off the hook for this.”

“um, hey Lance?”

“Shut up armor, I need to think of…”

I turn around to see armor sitting up perfectly fine, smiling and all. I sighed in relief knowing that I didn't have to explain to cadence, how I drowned her boyfriend.

“Wow, I've never met a talking dog before. I know cadence said you were special but not like this”

Armor moves closer to me and begins to inspect me asking questions about myself in general.

“So, how do you talk? Magic, talismans, curse, No I got it potions!”

He begins to give me a full body check, feeling my ears, tail, and muzzle the once over.

“Knock it off already!”

I manage to shake armor off of me as I try to cover my blushing face. Armor sits back down laughing away at my embarrassment.

“Sorry, I guess my little sister’s curiosity in magic rubbing off on me, anyways thanks for saving me back there. I hope we can be friends even if it's a little bit.”

Armor, outreached his hoof to me smiling, but it just reminds me of him. I stay silent as I slap his hoof away with my paw.

“Let's get one thing straight, I will never be your friend. In fact, I literally despise you as a person, personality and all.”

“But why? We barely know each other.”

I turn my back to him, getting ready to leave as I sniff at the ground, finding the scent of the chest once again.

“But I know you and your type, the one who leaves everything you love to save yourself. So date each other as much as you want hell, you can even marry her, but I know deep inside you're just a coward who’ll run when they need you most. That’s just how you are, inadequate.”

I leave armor and move forward the chest that we’re supposed to get. I can hear armor get up and tail behind me with loud hoof steps against the concrete as we move.

After wandering around We find a large round room, probably the main flow point of the city. In the center of the room was a small wooden chest with the equestrian royal guard symbol on it. Armor looks around the room guess he was thinking the same thing I was, obviously, this whole thing was blatantly a trap.

"Hey, there it is!"

I draw my attention to the red eyes staring at us from the other side of the room, the monstrous pony we saw before had made its entrance. When it noticed us, its wings unfurled and a tremendous amount of magical energy blasted throughout the room. At that moment my heart was pounding in my ear, my body felt stiff, heavy even. Was I scared of this thing?

No. I can't let myself freeze up, not now. I shake my head trying to settle my nerves, and take the stance to fight this thing.

“lance, you can't be serious! That thing is giving off an insane amount of magical energy, There’s no way you can fight that thing.”

“You think running is any better? If that thing gets to the surface, it'll cause mass destruction, especially with that much magic pouring out of it. So you can go if you want but, you'd be proving me right in the end. Besides surge would still fail you without that chest .”

I can hear armor groans in annoyance as he draws his sword, encasing the handle in a rose aura.

“Damn it. Fine then let's go!”

Before armor can finish his thought a round of fireballs launch at us. We dodge each rolling away from the doorway. The monstrous pony conjures more fireballs, shooting them around the room. I duck under the barrage, charge at it and bite at its neck, digging my fangs into its throat as it wails in pain.

It takes flight, thrusting upward, trying to throw me off with loops and barrel rolls, finally slamming me into the wall with a loud crash. It hurt like hell, I felt my spine crack, I couldn't breathe and all trying did was cough blood.

Then the pony flew up and away probably back to deal with armor, I can feel myself begin to fall out of the large crater in the wall, doing a head-first free fall to the ground.

“Lance!”

In that moment I felt myself slow down gradually, eventually softly landing with a thud. But I still couldn’t move, armor ran over to me as I try to get back up to my feet.

“Lance, are you okay? That looked like a pretty hard hit, wish I knew healing magic…”

Armor tries to help me stand up, but that thing drops down right in front of us with a big gust of dust.

“Shoot, stay here I’ll be back in a minute.”

Armor leaves my side and readies his blade. The monster pony stares at him for a few seconds before it’s horn started to glow, a sword thinner than armor’s forms and floats down into the pony’s magic aura.

The two charge at each other, clashing blades against each other in a back and forth struggle. Armor was doing pretty well, managing to block and counter most of the attacks thrown at him.

The stained white pony knocks away armor’s sword with a swift hind leg kick. Coming back around it did a cross slash as armor jumped into the air, landing on a rose pink colored platform he had made with his magic. Once he landed his leg gave way, causing him to stumble before gaining his composer again.

“Geez, he stronger than I thought he would be.”

I can hear him gasping for air, exhausted from using so many spells together I assume. Though our opponent didn’t give him much time to rest as it soars right up to him in seconds. It brings it’s blade upward delivering a downward slash at armor’s face.

Armor blocked it with another shield spell, stopping it in its tracks and launching a spear he conjured knocking the guy away. The thing shook off the spiral and conjured up some more swords in the air before throwing them down, covering the whole area in them.

A Lot of dust was knocked up into the air, leaving me blind to the battlefield around me. The only thing I could see was a rose-tinted shield go down, leaving me in a room with swords, spears, and the smell of blood in the air. As the dust cleared I saw armor on the floor unconscious but alive, along with our abomination of an opponent standing on top of him. It wasn't doing anything but sitting there, holding it sword at armor’s throat, but moved it to his hoof and stabbed him.

“Ahhhh!”

Armor screamed out in pain if he wasn’t awake before he was now. Armor was sprawling on the floor trying to stop the bleeding, at this point I try to stand and actually manage to get off my ass this time. The abomination turned it’s attention to me and started walking towards me. showing a large toothy grin.

I take one of the millions of swords stabbed into the ground, as the abomination charges dead at me and takes a swing of its sword. I step back, narrowly dodging each one. I finally make a strike which he blocks no problem. I keep trying to hit him miss or it gets blocked.

I'm backed into a corner, and it tries to slash me and I jump up dodging away but my leg hurts like hell. I manage to land on the wall and bounce off of it, throwing myself even higher into the air. I began to run, fast, before falling, as I fell I ground the blade edge of the sword along the wall before the blade ignites and I crash down sending a massive fireball toward the abomination. Caught up by the blast it went flying into a wall.

Feathers scattered and fell everywhere, the pony we were fighting had completely stopped moving or at least it seemed that way. Exhausted, I turn my attention to armor who was sitting back upright holding his hoof to his chest, it seems like he took care of his injury while I was fighting because it was wrapped up in a white cloth.

“Hey, you okay?”

Armor nodded and tried to stand up, he barely managed to do it so I had to be his stand. We begin walking to the chest we had left behind, as we head to the exit armor looks up at the massive crater my final attack made in the wall.

"Lance, did you... Did you kill him?"

Armor said, seeing the sight, he just sighed. He seemed a little shocked.

"Maybe, or at least I hope so After all that thing, was monstrous as it was. and I thought surge was joking about that monster thing.”

We were in the arc of the exit when we heard a noise from behind us, we turn around as our attacker fell out of the crater, battered, bruised, and bleeding but it was alive. It tried crawling after us, but its body wouldn’t move anymore.

We stood there watching it trying to get up, but ultimately giving up and lying there on the floor with its hoof up in the air. Grasping at the light from up above, it said something.

“Freedom, finally free.”

It said With its last breath as its hoof dropped to the floor and it's body becoming lifeless. Armor was still staring at the thing, I decided to leave before I started to regret my choices about this.

We make our way to the grate we came out of, all the while armor was really quiet throughout the walk back.

“You alright Armor? I don't think I've ever heard so quiet before.”

“Oh yeah, I'm fine l. I was just wondering if we did the right thing fighting it, killing it.”

He looked down at the dirty brick floor sighing, he seemed a little sad. We reach the grate and I let armor off to climb the ladder up.

“Duty, armor.”

Armor looks at me with a confused glance.

"What do you mean?"

"It's your duty as a knight, a soldier to serve and protect Equestria from danger. Even if that danger seems harmless, soldiers fight so civilians can enjoy the freedoms they have now. That means making choices that don't look like the right choice to make."

Armor looks at me for a moment before smiling, a somber smile sure but a smile nonetheless. "After all, what's the point of fighting if you're not trying to protect something important to you." he leaves, heading up the ladder to which I can hear, screams and gasps from the two waiting for us. I turn back to the blackness, one more time if only for a second I thought I saw something moving in the shadows, which should be impossible. No one is allowed down here excluding, us and workers who all went home before we got down here.

I shake my head, clearing it of weird thoughts and begin to climb up. Readying myself for the report I have to give to fury and the chewing out I was going to get from cadence.

Comments

[unknown Graces]

8345591
thank you for your advice. I didn't even know about that last sentence, anyway I'm glad you liked what you read cause for a while I couldn't tell if I was doing okay or not because I was getting no feedback. so again thank you!