16 - Rampone: First Blood Part II
Princess Cadence - 5/16/2018
The Palace - Canterlot, Equestria
Cadence, Gleaming, and Harley roared down the palace hallway as fast as Cadence dared go. The hallways were quite wide, more than wide enough for a motorcycle to travel down, and even make corners. Nor was it the first time Cadence had driven indoors.
That being said, it was the first time she had driven anything other than a dirt bike indoors. It was also the first time she had driven a bike indoors during a major battle.
Changelings clogged the hall. They swarmed across the floor, walls, and even ceiling, suspended by their hooves arcane grip and exceptionally light bodies. Gleaming blasted away with a mix of stun bolts and concussion beams, doing his best to clear a path for them to drive down. It was much harder work than she had anticipated, and he could feel what little energy the mana potion had restored draining away even after the short five minutes she had been blasting.
Cadence swerved left and right, dodging as many changelings as she could, yet constantly sideswiping some while running down others. There simply wasn’t ever any truly clear path. The endless tide of glossy black exoskeleton covered “monsters” was too dense to thin out. Each and every pocket vanished almost as quickly as Gleaming made it.
Cadence grit her teeth and swerved to the left, slipping between a large changeling clad in blue plate armor, and a tiny one she swore to god had to be a child. It’s like that scene from aliens, except we're driving down the elevator shaft at them.
A changeling’s horn flashed green as it fired a spellbolt at Cadence. She ducked, and the crackling energy bolt sizzled over her head, scorching her left ear tip. Shining spun and fired a ray in the direction the bolt had come from, frowning as she realized he had no way to tell who had shot at them, or even if he hit someone in the dense ever shifting mass.
Cadence did her best to ignore the stinging pain in her ear. And they are wizards… BUCK! “Shiny? Did I just lose an ear?”
Shining spared half a second to glance at Cadence’s head. “No. The tip is burnt, but still there.”
“Good.”
Cadence turned left into the hallway which led to the Armory. The hallway which was now even more chaotic than any other part of the palace. A battle took place at the end of the hall, just in front of the armory doors.
The battle within a battle was separated from the chaos of the hall around it by a thin line of folding metal barricades and mages.
The ponies were not trying to get into the armory, but rather keep the changelings out. The shapechanging insects streamed in through the broken windows in the right hoof wall, and split where they entered. Two thirds turned and rushed down the hall towards the rest of the palace, the other third provided constant reinforcements to the changelings trying to break the pony held line.
Cadence winced and squinted through the changelings trying to spy a way in.
Gleaming leaned around Cadence’s back to try to see as well, but had to stop and immediately return to firing into the endless tide around them. “Why did you stop?!”
Cadence grit her teeth. “Fortifications. Ponies blocked off the armory.”
Their fortifications don’t seem to be improvised, Cadence noted as she inspected the line of pony soldiers.
Indeed, the fortifications were portable walls which had come from the armory. A score of Lunar Guards had managed to get to the Armory before anyone else, and set them up. Each portable wall stood two ponies high, was made from thick slabs of magically enhanced steel, and could be stood up much like a five panel room divider. Only, these also had folding legs to brace against enemy attack.
The walls were painted with Celestia’s personal seal, which made the Lunar Guards silver and navy blue armor stand out all the more as they fought from atop the folding wall battlements.
Cadence could see a total of ten thestrils in the group. The bat-winged nocturnal pegasi looked exhausted, not from combat, but from a lack of sleep. Cadence recognized the manic yet cloudy gleam in their eyes. She saw it in every sleep deprived soldier who had ever escorted her behind enemy lines.
Each thestril was using a different weapon from the armory to do their part. Bolts, arrows, and even a few sling stones flew in organized volleys. The haggard lines rounds would explode, burst into scintillating rays, coat targets in ice, or erupt into noxious smelling green slime which hardened almost instantly into clay.
The pony forces had an additional three normal pegasi, who were busy hurtling lighting bolt after lightning bolt from their ever diminishing supply of clouds into the changeling swarm. The remaining seven Lunar Guard were unicorn mages, all of whom had combined their sorcery to create a powerful one way shield to supplement the wall. The crackling silver barrier keep changelings from entering via the walls and ceiling, but looked to be just barely holding together as small bolts of energy crackled along its surface.
As far as Cadence could tell, the only thing preventing their position from being overrun was their consistent and high volume of enchanted weapon fire. The Changelings had to constantly drag their wounded, unconscious, or dead comrades from the hallway, otherwise they would form a ‘natural’ wall of casualties and corpses.
Cadence's ears lay back in annoyance. “Great! We don’t know if she’s in there, and if we look, those ponies will be overrun.”
Gleaming bit her lip and deeply regretted not asking the huge biker from earlier if he had a crossbow she could barrow. “What about your grenade trick? Clear the bugs out, get let in.”
Cadence slowly shook her head. “I can make it not kill, I don’t think I can make it stop where I want it too.”
“Then what do we do?”
Harley over pressured her pistons to make her engine sputter for a moment. The motorcycle equivalent to a polite ‘Ahem’. <They are thinner on the wall. I still have my changeling magic. If you hold on very tightly, I can drive up onto it, take us across, and we can drop down in front of the shield and ask to be let in.>
Cadence nodded once, then frowned, her wings twitching. “What if Chrysalis is already in there?”
Gleaming swore under her breath. “If I was still stallion-me I could get them to believe us via rank and—”
And we don’t have a better option. Wait! We do! Cadence gunned Harley’s throttle. “Hold onto me, Shiny.”
Gleaming eeped and tightened her forelegs grip around Cadence’s middle. The Pink alicorn gunned Harley’s throttle and the three shot towards the wall. I hope you know what you’re doing, Harley, because I don’t know how to make a vertical ninety degree turn.
They raced along, weaving through the changeling swarm as best they could. Harley’s engine roared loudly enough to pierce the madding drone of Changeling wings. The wall raced towards them. They would plow into it at any moment.
Gleaming yelped in fright and squeezed Cadence’s waist with all her might. Cadence winced, forcing herself to keep her eyes open through her fear and pain. Harley directed her natural magic to her tires and simply popped a wheelie.
She’d done this before. When no humans had been looking. Except for a few homeless people who still raved in the streets about the “ghost bike”.
Her front tire hit the wall with a sound much akin to an anvil falling onto a rubber mat. Pale green magic flicked between her treads, just as it did a changeling’s hoof, and secured her to the wall. With a spine-tingling jolt, and a whole lot more slowdown than Cadence was comfortable with, the three drove up the wall, plaster and tile cracking under their combined weight.
They moved up in a long arc, plowing through any changelings unfortunate enough to be in their way. Gleaming clung to Cadence’s back, far too terrified to clear the way with her spells. Cadence couldn’t do anything either. It took all of her magically enhanced strength to keep a hold of Harley’s handlebars thanks to the forty kilogram pony clinging to her back who gravity seemed to really have it out for.
The floor came flying towards them as their cross-wall ark came to an end. Harley popped a second wheelie and righted themselves as a lightning bolt streaked past her headlight. The bolt didn't ark to her, by some small miracle. Apparently, changeling exoskeletons were even more conductive than steel.
Harley filed that knowledge away for later. Unfortunately, her riders entirely missed that particular changeling weakness.
Cadence squeezed Harley’s brakes, skidding to a halt parallel to the Lunar Guard’s fortifications. She reached down to her side wither magic and levitated her grenade launcher into position, took aim at the mass of changelings, then elbowed Gleaming in her ribs. “Shield, in front of their line, NOW!”
Gleaming yelped as Cadence’s elbow dug into her, but understood what Cadence needed. She closed her eyes and began to concentrate, her horn glowing as the shield spell began to take form.
Cadence counted to two, focused on her attack as she had before, then fired a modified concussion-shot into the middle of the advancing swarm. The grenade went off with a thunderclap, it’s shock wave barely visible as a pale blue sphere which outran the fireball. The shock wave smashed into changelings, sending them flying in all directions.
Gleaming’s shield spell sprang to life, forming a solid barrier across the hallway just in time to keep changelings from flying into the pony’s line. Pink sparks flew with each of the dozens of impacts, showering the changeling’s below, and even igniting sections of carpet and tapestries which littered the floor as debris.
“Good work, hon!” Cadence turned towards the line and looked up at the first pony she saw.
He was an older thestril stallion who was brown, darker brown, and really dark brown. If Cadence didn’t know better, she’s swear he was actually made from various kinds of chocolate, held together by grit, determination, and a military bearing.
Cadence pointed to the armory’s open door with her left hoof. “These things are shapechangers, am I already in there?”
The thestril took one look at the shield blocking the hall, glanced down at Gleaming, then frowned. If the enemy was capable of shapechanging, then there would be a very big problem. Unfortunately, there was no way to tell what he should do at a glance.
The thestril cleared his throat, and in a rather hoarse voice shouted, “Sir, this is a very bad time to go mare. Finish this sequence: Alpha, Bravo, Tango, Charlie, Three, Niner, Seven… ?”
Gleaming’s ears perked immediately. She hadn’t expected they would run into anypony with time in the Special Service. After all, very few guards and Agents chose to transfer between those departments.
Gleaming looked up at the Lunar Guard and finished the agent-made pass code to enter the break room. “Charlie, Echo, Lima, Echo, Sierra, Tango, India, Alpha, Six, Hotel, Alpha, Sierra, Eight, Alpha, Two, Bravo, India, Golf, One, Papa, Lima, Oscar, Tango, Three!”
The Thestrals eyes went wide with terror, narrowed with grim determination, then settled on burning with indignation. “Well...” he began.
His soldiers winced, expecting a tirade of top-tier cursing to be unleashed.
“...we screwed the pooch there, didn’t we? Let them in!”
“S-sir?” One of the unicorns stammered from behind the wall. “If that’s the real Princess, uh, we keep enough spell power in there to level the city, sir.”
“That’s WHY we’re letting them in,” the thestrial groaned. “Princess, that bug is alicorn strong, it’s why we let her in… She really does seem to be you. We have to stay here and hold the line. Good luck.”
The Thestril waved a hoof and the unicorns let a small hole open in front of one of the panels just before two pegasi shoved the heavy steel barricade panel out of the way. The gape they made was just big enough to let Cadence, Harley, and Gleaming through.
Cadence pushed off the ground, rolling Harley inside to prevent engine noise. Chrysalis may have known they were coming, but it would be best if she didn’t know when until it was too late.
As she pushed them inside, Gleaming turned her attention towards the Thestril again. “I’m keeping my shield up. It’s one-way, feel free to fire through it.”
The brown bat-pony sighed. “Thank, Luna!” immediately used one of his wings to flip a canteen of water up to his lips and take a drink. “Men! Two minute rest. Mages, take your shield down and recharge. Use mana bars or pots if you have them.”
Cadence gently pat Harley on her gas tank as she climbed off. “Stay here,” she whispered. “If she gets away we’ll need to chase her.”
<No problem… I uh, I don’t have any guns anyways.>
Cadence nodded once and fished her pulse rifle and M60 out of her jacket pockets, levitating them at either side of her barrel, just under wing height. While they were not in firing position, they could easily be aimed and Cadence was well aware of the immense stupidity of shooting blindly into an armory.
It stood to reason that blind firing into a magical armory would be worse. Especially when the door was open during an attack on the facility which housed it.
Cadence turned her head to look at one of the unicorn mages. The light peach mare was busily cramming several bright purple granola bar-like mana replenishing snacks into her mouth.
“Why is the door open?”
The mare said something through her mouthful of snack, but it came out unintelligibly. The stallion to her left answered for her. “Maintenance bucked up, Ma’am. The door seals when there’s an emergency. It decided to open then lock in place instead.”
Cadence facehooved. “Buck! Even in magical kingdoms the brass is horseapples!”
“Aren't you the brass?” The snacking mare managed to say, before immediately eeping and trying to hide behind her comrade in arms.
Cadence smirked. “More like the tin… Gleaming, she won't know you’re no longer mind controlled. Get in there and distract her.”
Gleaming sighed and shook her head. “It won't work. My gem’s friend. I can’t be normal-me. If I go in changed, she’ll know something’s up.”
Cadence hummed and tapped a hoof to her chin. “Can you be other mares? Is it just stallions?”
Gleaming opened her mouth to warn against that idea, and everything went to hell.
A brilliant ray of prismatic light blasted out from the open armory and sliced a clean line through the air, floor, portable wall, and slammed into Gleaming’s shield, sending cracks racing across its bright pink surface.
Cadence barely managed to roll out of the way, losing her left wing tip and grenade launcher to the disintegration beam before she managed to dive to the floor and roll out of the open. God, bucking, damn it! That was the time to charge, not plan. Get your head in the game!
Chrysalis’ mocking laughter echoed through the terrified silence. “Did you think attacking me while I am surrounded by the most powerful weapons in Equestria is a good idea? Perhaps you should go back to the academy.”
Gleaming moved into cover beside the door. “She has a point, hon.”
Cadence sighed. “She does. We did a dumb. Let’s fix that.”
Cadence took a deep breath, winced, then floated her M60 into the doorway and blindly sprayed disruptor bolt sin a wide fanning pattern. “Gleaming! Shield! Now!”
Gleaming nodded and cast a shield spell in the doorway. The pink energy field popped into existence with a flash of white, pink, and blue, rippling as it grew to fill the large vault’s doorway.
Cadence nodded and stepped into the doorway, taking care to keep firing her weapon. The blue-white bolts zipped through the shield, making it ripple like a pond in the rain as the spell-disrupting bolts messed with the shield in spite of it being a one-way barrier.
Cadence moved right up to the shield and began scanning the room with her eyes for any sign of the bug queen. “Push this shield in! We advance behind it.”
Gleaming gulped nervously. “Uh, you do know I’m low on mana, and this won't take more than two shots?”
A short emerald and sapphire colored unicorn stood up from where he had dropped to the ground for cover and held out three mana potions to Gleaming. “Here, chug-em!”
Gleaming winced. She’d already had one and the drinks were toxic in large quantities. “I’d rather not—”
“Just do it!” Cadence shouted as she continued to provide covering fire, and her magic continued to run more and more dry with each bolt.
Gleaming gulped nervously, took the bottles, and began to uncork them.
Deep within the armory, from somewhere in the rear-left corner, hidden from sight by several racks of enchanted spears, halberds, and swords, Chrysalis snorted. “Please. A disruptor wand and a shield? Did you know a certain sentimental old fool kept my old armor in here? Would you like a demonstration of real arcane power?”
Cadence bit her lip. If the queen really did have some sort of magic boosting armor on her, she wasn't sure how she could be expected to beat her given absolutely no knowledge of magic at all.
Gleaming, on the other hoof, hoped reverse psychology would work on the presumably mad-mare. “That would be cool, actually!”
She tipped her head back and downed all three bottles at once.
Cadence’s ears lay back, her wings flared as wide as they could. “Why the buck did you say that?” she hissed.
“Reverse psy—”
An eerie green light flooded the armory. It oozed across the floor like vines growing through a stone path, or perhaps more like mold growing through meat. White marble tiles cracked, chipped, and popped as the dark energy bled through it. The process was slow, but unyielding, and with ever more branches oozing away from the four main lines, it was ever increasing.
Cadence wasn’t about to stick around and find out what the Queen was up too. She waved a wingtip at Gleaming and took a step towards the shield. “Come on! Before she finishes her spell!”
Gleaming nodded and closed her eyes tight. Her shield spell ballooned outwards, flowing over the floor, and keeping a solid hold on the doorway. Whatever was going on in there, she didn’t like it.
Cadence frowned slightly. “Why the balloon?”
“Chemical attacks. Air can’t pass through from that side to you.”
Cadence nodded and stepped into the shield bubble and began to spray the nearest oozing dark-magic line with disruptor fire. The magic hissed and crackled, steam bleeding from the crack as it withered and died.
Gleaming stepped into the bubble behind Cadence, horn blazing, sending wisps of mana into the air as she worked overtime to keep her spell growing and moving. The goal was obviously to lock Chrysalis down into one small area. Gleaming could do it, but only just barely.
The shards began to move of their own accord.
Cadence’s eyes widened in horror as every one of the thousands of marble chips raced towards the center of each of the three remaining ‘roots’. She shifted her point of aim to the roots of the next closest cluster and put bolt after bolt into the enchanted maelstrom the shards had begun swirling around.
“Oh, buck me,” Gleaming moaned as she recognized the spell.
Cadence grit her teeth, expecting the shards to explode outwards like a claymore mine. The root she was attacking smouldered and died, releasing a thick cloud of steam into the air.
A dull green light pulsed at the heart of the remaining roots, and the stone shards slowly pulled themselves into their final places, like a 3d puzzle assembling itself. The shards took the shape of Chrysalis herself, tall, insectoid, legs filled with holes, a clear corruption of the pony form. A dark green light shone from within the many thousands of small gaps in the marble golem’s bodies, a clear sign of dark magic.
Gleaming grabbed Cadence’s M60 with her hooves and pointed it at one of the marble-golems. “FIRE! FIRE NOW!”
Cadence needed no further prompting. She squeezed the trigger with her magic and blasted the animated marble with fifty bolts. The blue-white bolts splattered against the marble fizzling out as the marble itself wasn’t enchanted. It was merely armor for the living spell within.
Chrysalis laughed. “Fool! What an utter fool you are, Celestia. You recruited someone expressly for their tactical abilities, which deal only with their own kind, and who has never even seen true magic before. Honestly, there are foals who would know how to use your power better than you do. Shardlings, slay them! Painfully.”
The golems hissed and leapt forward, their wings thrumming and propelling them into the air despite their weight. They slammed against Gleaming’s shield, denting it inwards under their weight before backing off to savagely claw and smash the shield with their hooves.
Gleaming yelped in pain and took a step back, her tail raising in alarm as her head started to throb. Cadence shifted her point of aim and sent another volley of bolts into one of the monster’s faces. Half of her volley bounced off the creature's marble plates but some found their way into its glowing green eyes.
The arcane abomination screeched as Cadence’s shots blinded it. It stepped back from the shield then charged, ramming into the barrier horn-first in anger. The shield dented inwards, wrapping around its horn like cling wrap, and didn’t snap back into place when the creature stepped back for another charge.
Chrysalis stood up, appearing from behind a stack of ancient steel-bound chests. The Changeling Queen had abandoned her Cadence disguise.
After all, her plan depended on a Cadence being visible during the battle, and accomplishing great things in front of the eyes of many. She could afford to let the real one serve that role for now. Especially if it meant she could use an old toy to make the battle of Canterlot just a little more terrifying.
Cadence winced as she saw the Queen’s true appearance. Her body double had not done a good job imitating his queen. Flash’s imitation had been regal, alien, powerful, and with just a hint of beauty.
The real Chrysalis was battered, her chitin covered in scrapes, scars, pits, and even a few cracks. Her mane was a mess, as if she hadn't cared for it in years. Her tail was in much the same shape. It was as if the mare had been single mindedly focused on one thing, and one thing only for years and years.
Cadence felt her stomach churn slightly as she noticed the holes running through Chrysalis’s legs. Ew! How can she live like that? If we take her alive I am making Celestia let me go home and buy her some bondo and some fiberglass patches to fix those holes! Just, ew!
The second thing Cadence noticed was the Queen was clad in a suit of ice-blue half plate. The elegantly sculpted and engraved armor completely clashed with every part of her body, save for her mane. Despite, this, one could tell the chamfron, pauldrant, croupiere, and sabatons had been forged expressly for her thanks to their perfect fit.
Her pauldrant was studded with four pieces of carved amber, each of which had come from the Everfree Forest, and were the sources of her armor’s unique properties. Two of the four stones glowed with the same dull green light which shone within the marble monstrosities which continued to smash Gleaming’s shield as the Queen walked towards Cadence.
“Some mages enjoy their armor to host legions of defensive wards,” Chrysalis remarked.
Cadence snapped her pulse rifle up and fired. The weapon belched flames as it spat lethal bolts at the Queen’s chest. Her horn pulsed once, and a dull green shield enveloped her body just in time to make the bolts vanish in a shower of dark sparks.
“I have no need of crutches,” Chrysalis continued. “Some enjoy turning their armor into a weapon.”
Cadence flinched as a small prismatic gemstone which hung on a simple leather cord around Chrysalis’s neck pulsed with multi-hued light. She hadn't noticed the enchanted amulet before, a nearly fatal error.
The amulet, shimmered, twinkled, then erupted. An another primsatic beam of pure devastation as wide as a pony blazed through the air and struck Gleaming’ shield. Shards of solid light fell like bits of a broken mirror before vanishing in puffs of smoke. Gleaming screeched, clasped her hooves to her head and fell over limp, knocked out cold by the sheer stain of enduring the arcane feedback from the awesome blow her shield had been dealt.
Cadence took a step back and then jumped to the side to avoid a shardling’s razor-sharp horn as it tried to gore her. The horn missed most of her body, instead cutting a deep wound into her left flank.
Cadence hissed in pain. Chrysalis chuckled and held up her disintegration amulet with her magic while looking Cadence in the eye. “I carry enough weapons… Do you like this little toy? I made it. It’s an unsuccessful attempt to replicate an Element of Harmony. I believed it to be a total failure before I realized the beam disintegrates anything it touches.”
Cadence swung her pulse rifle like a club and smashed the face of the shardling which had gored her. The marble shards flew away from the living spell beneath, freezing in midair as the magic called them back. Cadence turned, ramming her M60 into the opening on the creature and fired, sending a two-second burst of disruptor bolts into the creature’s core.
The abomination shrieked, spasmed, and collapsed into a pile of rubble which leaked hot steam. One of the glowing gems on Chrysalis’s armor dimmed. Cadence flinched as she felt a fatigue headache immediately spring to life behind her eyes. Buck! This must be what low mana feels like...
The Queen shook her head and let her amulet drop back around her neck. “By all means, destroy them. I’ll make more. I’ll always make more. You see, there’s an old saying. Friendship is magic. I prefer the reverse, magic is friends. I have no need of more magic, so I make friends out of magic.”
Cadence jumped, snapping her wings open to hover over the other shardling as it charged her. As the monstrosity passed underneath her, Cadence had an idea. “I feel you, on that friends thing. I prefer cheesy sci-fi gimmicks.”
Chrysalis hadn’t been expecting her monologue to be interrupted, much less by such a geek statement. She raised an eyebrow and began drawing on her magic to feed to her amulet once more. “Oh? And why is that?”
Cadence hovered in the air for a moment, keeping an eye on the Shardling. It turned, buzzed its wings, and took off, performing an aerial charge. Cadence dropped at the last moment, closing her wings and landing on her hooves as the abomination soared overhead.
The marble creature slammed horn-first into a large wooden crate, and knocked over a pile of storage boxes, becoming very briefly entangled.
Cadence hadn’t even considered that could happen, and jumped on her good fortune right away.
The moment her hooves touched the ground, Cadence smiled. “Say I’m fighting a giant enemy crab,” Cadence stealthily pumped the under barrel grenade launcher. “Sure, friends would help. But they could get hurt. So you know what I’d rather do?”
The Shardling thrashed under the crates, beginning to throw them off. Chrysalis faked a yawn mockingly, then inspected her left hoof as if checking her hoof polish. “What’s that?”
Cadence adjusted both her weapons barrels, and fired. White-hot disruptor bolts screamed through the air and burst against Chrysalis shield. The Queen’s eyes dilated in anger and surprise as her shield crumbled before Cadence’s point-blank fire. She pushed her magic to her amulet, demanding it fire immediately. Cadence pulled the trigger on her pulse rifle first.
The under barrel grenade launcher fired with a dull wumph. Without any programming by Celestia, who had been wholly ignorant of the fictional weapon’s function, the prop gun fired what Cadence believed it would. An M38 HEAP shell.
The magically created 30mm High Explosive Armor Penetrating grenade flew out of the barrel, shot across the space between her and the Queen, smashed squarely into the center of the Queen’s chest, and exploded.
A fireball erupted as the round hit and scorched a hole through Chrysalis’s armor. The tungsten penetrator core continued through the hole it’s explosive component had made, and plunged into and through Chrysalis's exoskeleton, slicing a path through her body and out the other side. Half an instant later, her stressed breastplate exploded in a flash of dark magic, throwing her across the armory where she hit the wall with a dull crunch.
Cadence smiled woozily. Her mana was gone. The pink alicorn was bone dry.
“I attack its weak point, for massive damage,” Cadence mumbled, laughed, then fell face first into the floor, unconscious.
Queen Chrysalis - 5/16/2018
Armory, The Palace - Canterlot, Equestria
Chrysalis’s eyes slowly pealed open as she felt someling shaking her shoulder gently. A voice spoke to her, faint, echoey, and rather remarkably like it were coming to her from down about 80 feet of hose.
“My Queen? We need you. Please get up.”
Chrysalis looked down and winced. Her barrel was a mess. Shards of exoskeleton and steel mixed together in the massive green wound which had taken out one of her hearts and three of her air bladders.
Thank goodness I gave myself redundant organs. Chrysalis thought as she turned towards the sound, just in time for her ears to pop and sound to return to a normal level.
No sooner did she turn her head than a burning, near-blinding, horrible, rotten, soul-dick-punching pain burn along the wound channel the HEAP round had cut through her body.
“Aaarrrghhh!” Chrysalis screeched, making the changeling nymph who had been attending to her wounds jump in fright.
Chrysalis’s eyes fell on the young changeling. She looked like any other changeling, only much smaller, a bit shinier, and with a few glints of hope, happiness and independence left in her multifaceted eyes. And of course, she also had her messenger saddlebags on.
Chrysalis had laid her clutch approximately thirty six hours ago, last minute reinforcements and replacements for scouts, messengers, and pathfinders. “You, what are you doing here?”
The nymph gulped. “I was sent to give you a message, My Queen! I uh, I picked most of the metal out of your barrel.”
Chrysalis looked down, and spotted a small pile of shrapnel laying on the floor next to her. The Queen groaned and as deftly as she could, pulled the rest of the fragments out of her wound and added them to the pile.
“You! Drone,” Chrysalis painted. “Do you have any healing potions?”
The nymph shook her head. “No. I just have a human first aid kit.”
Chrysalis sighed, winced, and stood up, ignoring the screaming pain her body was in. “Then your care will have to do… What was the message? How long was I out?”
“I— I don’t know, your majesty. But the battle is still going on. We’re starting to loose. It’s not because of our numbers, we have plenty, it’s because we cant fight Luna and the bears at once.”
Chrysalis triple blinked. “Bears?”
The nymph nodded slowly. “Y— Yeah… The Element of Kindness can command animals. She got some bears from the zoo and asked them to fight for the ponies, so they did.”
Chrysalis rolled her eyes then facehooved, groaning into her frog. “Of course a few bears are a problem for you without my guidance!”
The nymph laughed nervously. “It’s… It’s not a few. We think some of the bears left the city and went up the mountain, because there's at least five hundred very angry mountain bears that started attacking the southern side of the city about uh… ten minutes ago?
“Princess Luna is able to keep the south side safe with their help, and the pony soldiers are now free to start securing the western side as well.”
Chrysalis blinked as she pictured hundreds of bears running down Mount Canterlot in a glorious war-charge. The Queen slowly shook her head. “I had plans for so many eventualities, but not bear cavalry. Why did it have to be bear cavalry?”
Chrysalis thought for a few moments then slipped her disintegration amulet off her neck and handed it to the nymph. “This is a powerful disintegration charm. Get it to Quick Study and have him engage Luna.”
The Nymph nervously shuffled her hooves. “Um, Quick is missing, My Queen. We think he is dead, we found one of his bodies.”
Chrysalis grit her teeth. “Great! I’ll have to do his part then… Okay, in that case take it to Blazing Glory and tell him to make like his namesake,” Chrysalis ordered, then suddenly leaned down to look the nymph in her eyes. “But you warn him that this amulet is cursed. If he tries to use it against me, it will hit him instead, understood?”
The nymph nodded twice and buzzed her wings to take to the air. “Understood, my queen. What will you do?”
Chrysalis searched around the ruined remains of her armor for the small bag she had tucked behind her left shoulder. The HEAP round had cut the strap cleanly and dropped the bag to the floor. The Queen winced and picked the bag up, slowly opened it, then sighed in relief as the delicate decorative lantern inside was still intact. “I still have the vault key. I’m going to proceed as planned…”
Chrysalis’s eyes fell upon the unconscious and limp form of Cadence. The Queen smirked and shook her head. “Silly, silly, Carter… Nopony told you what happens when you run out of mana, did they?”
The Queen took several agonizing steps towards her fallen foe, each hoofstep sending a fresh surge of agony through her entire body. After her fifth step, Chrysalis realized there was no battle taking place outside the doorway. The sound of battle could be heard in the distance, but not in her immediate vicinity.
She looked up, hoping the doorway wasn’t full of horrified Lunar guard who were ready to fire upon her. It wasn’t. Instead, several platoons of changelings simply stood atop the slain remnants of the pony battle line, watching their Queen get up.
Chrysalis narrowed her eyes and bared her fangs. “You!” She took several more steps forward, letting magic flood her horn so it crackled intimidatingly.
The changelings moved back as one, and Chrysalis snarled at them. “You see your Queen laying wounded and leave her to bleed to death like a commoner? Fools! I know your faces. If you do not prove your loyalty immediately, I will force feed you all coffee once this battle is over. Do I make myself clear?!”
The changeling shuddered almost in unison. One towards the front snapped a salute. “Yes, your majesty! Come, we’ll reinforce the western garrison.”
Few ponies would have understood that threat. To them, too much coffee simply meant the runs. Hardly a punishment. Changelings on the other hoof knew full well that caffeine is an insecticide.
Chrysalis watched as the swarm turned and flew out of the palace through the broken windows. She could feel herself growing weaker by the second. Her natural body was dying, and she couldn’t spare the magic to heal herself now. Not when she would almost certainly have to fight Celestia in the next ten minutes.
I must change… But into what?
The Queen’s eyes glazed over briefly as she weighed her options. If she hadn’t been wounded, or perhaps is she hadn't fragmented her mind into hundreds if not thousands of pieces to give her drones personalities, she might have come up with something better than what entered her head in that moment.
Chrysalis smiled and turned around slowly, trotting over to a rack of spears which had been overturned when her armor exploded. The Queen pealed the remaining scraps of her armor off her body as she walked.
“You know, Cadence… I think I underestimated her plan. I would never have thought about using that weapon as it was intended. I would have used it as a wand, and only a wand.”
Chrysalis reached the rack and began looking down at the spears, running her hoof across them slowly, searching for exactly the right one.
“I’ve been… De-humaned, so to speak. If she taught you magic, the same would happen to you. Celestia is… Well, a pacifist. In the worst way. Her sister was the one who forged this nation through war, she only ever had the guts to rule it in peace. I don’t know how she managed to keep her kingdom safe for the thousand years Luna was absent… At least, not for sure.”
Chrysalis’s hoof found a spear she liked the feel of. She picked it up, not with her magic, but with her hoof, and let the haft slide through her grip to test the balance.
“If she’d not tried to train away the aggression our species is infamous to her for… Well, things would have been different. The funny thing is I have a feel if she got the chance, she would make you into another me. Not intentionally, but simply by failing to understand you can’t teach a human like she teaches ponies without breaking us.”
Chrysalis flicked the spear, idly experimenting with the sharpness. She nodded in satisfaction at this hissing sound it made as the sharp blade whistled through the air.
“If I had chosen to recruit you instead of replace you, I think we could have been friends. At the very least, we could have been well matches allies. My knowledge of the mystic arts with our intact human spirit and the power of two alicorns at our disposal… This plan wouldn’t have been necessary. I wouldn't have had to fight you, and you wouldn't have to have spent all your magic, thereby removing your natural protections. Ah well, such is life…”
Chrysalis turned and trotted over to Cadence. Her dark green magic took hold of the alicorn’s jacket and unzipped it while Chrysalis used the spear’s haft to push Cadence’s legs out to her sides so she could slip it off her.
The Queen closed her eyes, focused through her pain, and took Cadence’s form once again, taking care to match every injury she could see on the young mare’s body as precisely as she could. When the arcane flames cleared, Chrysalis drew a deep breath and smiled, speaking once more in Cadence's voice.
“Ah! Much better. I forgot how nice it was to have an intact chest cavity,” Chrysalis said as she slipped into Cadence’s jacket and collected her two weapons from the floor. “There, the plan is back on schedule. The Cadence they saw fighting was wearing this and using these, and now I have them…”
Chrysalis took a moment to enjoy breathing with all of her lungs working at once. It was nice.
The Queen opened her eyes and looked down at Cadence’s still limp form. “You were remarkably close to killing me. It’s only polite to show you how to properly kill your opponent.”
Chrysalis flipped the spear around, gripped the haft with both forehooves, and plunged it into Cadence’s chest. The queen let go of the spear, leaving it where it was, then walked out of the armory without a word.
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*plot twist* it's a fake cadence that got stabbed with the spear
9156312
in before its a mana oversaturatian spear, that only alicorns can use safely.
Properly kill people chrysalis. Jesus. Didn’t even check your kill.
9156312
The author just wants to make you believe that it is a plot twist.
Calling its Harley baby saving her mommy
lol, these keep getting better and better
CELESTIA HAS A BIG PLOT
Do the numbers or the first part mean anything?
Some changes:
arc, both times
with her
fried
peeled
Taking that jacket is gonna bite queen bug in the butt.
Transformation magic undoes other magic induced transformation, following this stories rules.
Since she put on the enchanted jacket AFTER she turned herself into Cadence, the magic in the jacket is gonna cancel her own transformation at a most embarrasing moment.
That is what I think will happen.
Given all the weapons in the armory, whats the chance that that spear among many was one thats used to disable and pin an opponant without killing them no matter how its used?
Exuant Left, persued by A Bear.
Weird to see a bit of my wit immortalized. Awesome though.
Chrysails dose not know about the jackets significants so why did she take it instead of forming one with her magic?
The only difference between this Rampone and the Stallone's flick was that Stallone operated alone under the darkness while Cadance did it as a team effort under the broad daylight. I didn't know CIA train their assassins to do things openly.
she said she had so many plans but did she plan for banjo?
got a feeling she killed a changeling and not Cadance.
Curse you keep for leaving it there
1: You used the wrong arc, and you spelled thestral wrong.
2: Great chapter!
3: I decoded your message.
ABTC397CELESTIA6HAS8A2BIG1PLOT3
YOU.
CLEVER.
LITTLE.
SHIT.
actually I thought it would be encoded in ROT13 or something similar but NOOOO
learn to encrypt your hidden messages brah
Aim for the brain. And dispose of the body maybe?
Also where has second monster gone?
9156456
Maybe was a lightning spear, which effectively a field make-shift AED?
A angry bear cavalry charge five hundred strong is so Russian that the Soviet C&C theme could be heard all the way to canterlot castle
Poor guards, they'd be alive if they also went in and killed the big queen while she was down. But then we wouldn't have any more story, so they're sacrifice is not in vain
For fuck' sake Chrysalis, how the hell can you insinuate teaching a lesson if you not only didn't confirm you kill but also only stabbed her chest? At least decapitate the body, your incompetent brain dead cock leach!!!
>show you how to properly kill a target
>doesn't double-tap
I hope Harley was smart enough to spy on this and steal the amulet from the nymph as she left.
9156327 Right? At least triple tap!
9156360 Vengeful bike noises!
9156367 Those are a cypher for Tia's measurements...
9156400 o,o Hey that's not bad! I think I should read your stories.
9156474 It was good, why wouldn't I use it when both I and the commissioner thought it was good?
9156483 Changelings can't make clothing or items other than their own body. They need to have SOME weaknesses.
9156571 Oh man you're gonna HATE the next one...
9156587 It's just alpha numerics so people could figure it out :3
9157174
That's even more hilarious
Impressive and dramatic way to clear the assault on the armory. Or at least to pause it.
Oh hey, that's convenient.
This, on the other hand, is bad.
Lots of work to clear just one of them. Plus we're down Shining.
Ooooo.
Oh dang, talk about super effective. No need to keep clearing the adds if you can knock out the boss, particularly if you're lucky enough that they'll despawn afterwards.
Good work Fluttershy!
Dang. I was concerned when it was a changeling that woke Chrysalis up.
That last bit seems pretty bad too.
9157174
First: if Kevin Mitnick and Erin Colfer can hide encrypted messages in their books you can at least put it in hexadecimal.
Second: I know that because I've decrypted those.
Third:
Have fun figuring this out.
SSBhbSB0aGUgRW1wZXJvciBvZiBNYWphZGFuLCBEcmFnb25zbGF5ZXIsIENvbnF1ZXJvciBvZiBXb3JsZHMsIENydXNoZXIgb2YgU2t1bGxzLCBSRVpBIFpBWURBTiENCkknbSBhbHNvIGEgcG90YXRvIQ0K
9157853 Please. There's an ARG hidden in two of my earlier works which to this day NO ONE has even FOUND let alone solved. ALso:
Base64 isn't a cypher :P It's just machine language. You want a proper cypher? Try this one, it's a proper enigma :3
VOPC NRZM EBVQ GWJD ELLH XXYZ SQKH TNKX BHSW ABNV OEIY CHUR DTDO FSVI OFCW IWEM EUTN EROF BLKI IZCW RNBO HQXZ LHDU OBBS ZKXT PWWF MLHE YBZJ LBEA GXOC YTXQ JACG ZZKU BQUO NLWW QNHD MSAN TOEH FDJQ TFBC LRLR RESI NXRH JFYS OUEH SEGN
9157174
Please don't read my stories. I tend to not finish them... And they're mostly bad crossovers and wish-fulfillment.
9158224
At least tell me which work and which chapter, because I am going hunting.
Also, "proper enigma" followed by cat face.
You bet I'm trying the actual Enigma code.
9158224
What even is an ARG? if Google is correct, which I doubt, it's a Caesar cypher.
The bigger problem, akin to the Stellar Wraith in Stellaris' Leviathans expansion pack, isn't going to be cracking it. It's going to be finding it.
9158234 Too late! And TBH, I enjoyed,
- MLP: FiM
- Adventure
- Comedy
Fluttershy finds a wounded tiger and decides to take care of itYes, it was short and could use some polish, but it's a cool idea and I would deffently read more of it.
9158255
Augmented Reality Game. TLDR; there's a little game you can play to find out what a characters plans are before the characters do. There's still time. I canceled that particular story. So if anyone wants to know what Phee's plans were, go re-read the story, find the first clue and good luck!
9158286
Really?
My writing hasn't improved and funds don't allow for proof-readers and editors... also I don't have time to write between work and my other hobbies.
To be honest, I almost forgot about my first work on this site.
But really, your kind words towards my story kinda make me wanna revisit and continue it. Thanks.
How doth oneth cometh backeth from death like that? Other than Chrysalis actually hallucinating and being dead, as the line was originally fine, and Cadence or Gleaming would’ve woken up by the same time
9158322
Yes :3 It's a fun idea and exactly the kind of thing I like in fanfiction. If you read any of my other stories, you'll not ethey are all int he same vein, I just usualy do the crossover elements more subtly and blend them with original elements. The most blatent crossover I did is when after fighting what amounts to a Chaos God's Deamon Prince, Twilight Sparkle is banished to another universe, which happens to be the one from ARK Survival evolved.
The funny thing there is trailers the Aberration DLC came out halfway through me writing that story. Before that, well... TLDR a lot of readers thought I was a member of Studio Wildcard, because I called the ARK being a giant space station XD (All I did was point out to a friend that the Moon was huge, and the parallax was weird, then we went full nerd and mathed out that we had to be halfway between the Earth and the Moon for it to look like that.)
TLDR; I like it when the MLP setting is mixed with outlandish premises to forge something new and interesting. You did that in a very cool way. Fluttershy meets the Beastmachines. Buck the hay yes!
It hasn't improved because you need to do more. My first stories here suck too. This is my 24th, and I do epics mostly. Lots of practice!
As for editors, there's several groups on this site that will do editing and or proofreading for free, simply because many people enjoy editing as a hobby.
HARLEY YOU SHOT ME!
9158465 Stab wounds are a funny thing. They can kill instantly, or in hours. Depends on what gets hit.
9158617
Ya know what I’m referring to? Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man?
9158617
Well a spike is similar to a spear; if I remember correctly Vlad got his victims alive up to half an hour after being hoisted in place.
9158829 Yep. It's all about the angles. Those spikes even went close to hearts, lungs, and other so called "one shot" organs.
He was an older thestril stallion who was brown, darker brown, and really dark brown.
thestral (you spelled it with an i)
The typo shows up in nearly every version of the word. I suggest a mass find and replace for the two.
My gem’s friend
fried
Chrysalis’s eyes slowly pealed open
The Queen pealed the remaining scraps of her armor off her body
peeled
But the battle is still going on. We’re starting to loose.
lose
or perhaps is she hadn't fragmented her mind
if she hadn't
At the very least, we could have been well matches allies.
matched
and you wouldn't have to have spent all your magic
have needed to spend
Chrysalis blinked as she pictured hundreds of bears running down Mount Canterlot in a glorious war-charge.
Is that a reference? I recall a story, whose name I cannot recall, that had that as a scene.
9158471
I am not sure at what to be more surprised -- that you actually managed to work that out from inspection of a video game, or that they actually managed to put that much detail into the game's code (and also such a large spoiler!).
9159483
It's more impressive that they had a plan all this time. ARK's "Story" is only discoverable through random letters you MIGHT find if you literally scower EVERY nook and crany of EVERY map. Which you CANT do on a PvP server... Also, SW is notorious for being terrible at their job. ARK is a fun game in spite of it's flaws.
Of course, of God damn course I finally catch up with the most recent chapter and you end it like that. Might as well snap your fingers and kill half the universe with an ending like that.
9156312
It could be Shining, he can transform into any mare after all...
I didn't know there were any men there