Case Eleven, Chapter Nine: The Storm Strikes
The light faded from Phillip’s vision and he landed on solid metal, nearly collapsing to his knees. Instinctively, he drew his pistol, forcing his head to stop spinning so that he could aim properly. He sucked in a few breaths, commanding himself to breathe slowly to calm his racing heart.
He was inside some kind of cabin, with a bunk set into the metal wall. There was a wooden bookshelf set into one wall, the books within written in Griffonese. The shredded remains of a blue naval uniform were hanging up in the corner, the rags barely hanging onto the hanger. A safe was embedded in the wall, the door open wide: a cursory examination told Phillip that the keyhole had not been jimmied open.
“Cold?” Phillip asked, turning around to face the unicorn mare in the black trench coat behind him.
“I’m fine,” Cold said, her own weapon raised, her eyes wide and alert. “You?”
“I’m good,” Phillip nodded as he lowered his weapon. “We’re on the Talon. Captain’s cabin, looks like.”
“Agreed,” Cold said, and Phillip realized that they were both whispering. Deep in his former partner’s eyes, he could see the faint tinges of fear.
“Can you teleport back?” Phillip asked.
“No, not unless I can see the destroyer,” Cold replied. “We need to get back to the main deck.”
“Right.” Phillip was about to turn around when a familiar scent that was lurking in his nostrils suddenly jumped up and seized his attention. He hadn’t met that odor in a long time, but he recognized it instantly and followed it towards a door in the back of the room that was slightly cracked open. His insatiable curiosity led him to pull the door open.
“Finder, we need to go!” Cold urged.
But the sight in the small room was enough to grab Phillip’s full attention. The altar, woven green rug, and the golden serving bowl indicated that it had once been a room for worship. But the entire room was now in upheaval: the rug had been flung to one side, the altar overturned with the idols of Kriga and Fantisera thrown onto the ground and broken into pieces, and the bowl was lying facedown next to them. What looked like melted lumps of gold and silver and bits of burnt meat and bone were scattered around: sacrifices to the gods, he guessed. And across the floor were burnt remnants of red powder...mixed with morphine, if Phil didn’t mistake that second flavor. And there were recent, mostly dry puddles on the carpeted floor that smelled of water and salt. Sweat and tears, Phillip concluded.
Casting his gaze around, Phillip noticed that there were words violently etched into the wooden walls with claws. “Övergiven. Vilse. Varför? Vad gjorde jag för fel?” And over the far wall, where the altar had once stood, was a particularly large message, the sawdust from the recent scratches still on the floor: “GUDARNA ÄR TYSTA.”
‘Abandoned.’ ‘Lost.’ ‘Why?’ ‘What did I do wrong?’ ‘The gods are silent,’ Phillip mentally translated. Whitestone’s off her bloody rocker.
“Finder, let’s move!” Cold barked.
Phillip nodded and turned away, following Cold to the door. She opened it and they quickly cleared the dark, narrow hallway outside. The two proceeded up towards the bow with great trepidation, weapons raised, listening carefully for any sound beneath the soft echoes of their own hoofsteps against the metal. The cruiser, which was intended for a complement of 75, was completely, eerily silent.
“You know where the nearest stairs are?” Cold asked.
“Thirty meters ahead to the left,” Phillip replied, recalling the map of the Sparv-class cruiser that the crew had studied on the way to the coves.
A tapping at the wall made them both look up. There was a hippogriff at the porthole, tapping at the window to get their attention. The sailor pulled out a notepad and scribbled a note that he held up to the window.
“Trying to get into hatch: door magically sealed. Keep moving, will get you out soon!”
Cold and Phillip nodded and continued forward as the hippogriff flew off again. As they approached a corner, another scent assaulted Phillip’s nostrils: the coppery odor of blood, mixed with the harsh sting of cordite and the stomach-twisting miasma of burnt flesh.
The bodies were around the corner. Griffons lay sprawled across the hall: the blood that had oozed from the various wounds was only barely coagulating, still lukewarm beneath their hooves. Bullet cartridges and discarded weapons littered the floor, and the walls were stained with shrapnel and scorch marks from a frag grenade, along with the remnants of a few pirates that had been standing a little too close to the blast.
“They were trying to retreat,” Phillip concluded, noting that many of the pirates were laying facedown, with bullet holes in their backs.
The body of one pony lay amidst the carnage. Phillip bent down to study the light orange unicorn who was sprawled faceup across the bloodstained metal, a sizeable hole having been blown through his chest with a close-range shotgun blast. The pony was staring at the ceiling, a few remnants of rage and pain left on his face. There was a trio of dog paws tattooed on his neck.
“Cerberus merc,” he concluded.
“Fascinating. We need to move,” Cold said icily, continuing on.
Phillip followed her further down the hall. More bodies, blood, and scars of battle were scattered across the passageway, telling of the terrible attack that had fallen upon the Talon. Dismembered limbs, severed heads, and torsos that had been cut in half lay amidst the carnage. Some of the guns looked like they’d been seized and twisted or broken with monstrous strength, and tossed haphazardly about were squashed and deformed bullets.
“There,” Cold said, pointing to an open hatchway up ahead. Through it was a narrow ladder that led up to another hatch upon the main deck. They could hear muffled voices from above and hammering upon the steel as the responding Marines tried to cut through the door; the sound of other voices, other presences so close by, was a comforting sound to them both.
But as they approached, the lower hatch suddenly slammed shut with a deafening crash that made them both instinctively flinch. Black and gold energy snaked around the edges of the doorway, sealing it shut with a low crackling sound as the energy solidified into a tar-like substance.
Panic turned to rage in Phillip’s stomach. He seized the handle to try to pull it open, despite knowing that it would be a futile effort. Sure enough, the door was unnaturally cold to his touch, so cold that he had to bite down a yelp of pain as he pulled at the circular handle. The handle didn’t give in the least, even when Cold Case added her magic to the effort. He finally pulled away with a grunt, shaking out his numb, frostbitten hooves.
“Cover me,” Cold stated, lighting up her horn. She started to cast her ice magic on the oil that sealed the door shut, solidifying a section of the ooze into ice. With a grunt, she punched the ice and shattered a small section. “Ha,” she grunted in satisfaction, continuing her work.
And then she cried out in shock as something started to pull her through the floor. Both ponies looked down to see that a puddle of black ooze had formed beneath her hooves and was currently sucking her down.
Phillip grabbed her forelegs and tugged, bracing his own hooves against the terrible suction that was pulling her down. Cold gasped in shock as she slid in: the slime was freezing cold to the touch and it writhed and squirmed against her flesh like a living thing. Grunting desperately, Cold began to blast magic into the puddle, trying to get the unnatural ooze to let go of her even as she was pulled down past her waist.
But instead of releasing her, ropy tentacles slithered out of the puddle and snaked around her limbs and neck, pulling harder. She choked and spluttered, letting out a desperate cry as she felt her hooves slipping from Phillip’s grasp, sinking to her chest.
“Cold, hang on!” Phillip cried, tugging with all his might.
But with a final jerk, one of her hooves was yanked from his grasp and Cold sank down to her armpits, yelling in panic as she futilely scrambled to grab something, anything. Then, with a final yank and a cry of terror, Cold Case vanished beneath the surface of the puddle, which instantly disappeared. Phillip Finder was left alone in the hallway, breath shallow, heart pounding, staring at the now-dry patch of the floor as he desperately tried to think of what to do next.
From somewhere down below, he heard a familiar scream, then a laugh. A familiar, forced laugh with no humor behind it. He turned towards the sound, which had filtered up through an open hatchway: one that he knew led down into the deeper bowels of the Talon. He glanced back at the door behind him and saw that the section that Cold had damaged had already repaired itself. He could not hear any sound from above.
Phillip’s heart rate slowed with resolution, though his hooves still shook as he raised his pistol and descended the steps to find his partner.
“Dispatch, come in,” Prowl repeated into her radio, staring up at the ceiling of the living room. “Dispatch, do you copy? This is Rook Three-One.”
Her only answer was static. Hissing out a curse, Prowl dropped the radio back into her coat. “Dammit,” she snarled. “I can’t get through.”
Outside the window, a blinding flash of lightning and deafening blare of thunder caused all eight ponies and one dragon to flinch.
“Maybe it’s just a rogue storm,” Flash offered, looking into the near-pitch darkness outside and squeezing Twilight’s hoof reassuringly with his left hoof; his right had his .38 strapped to it.
Twilight was pale, her nostrils flaring as she breathed slowly and deeply, sniffling with every other inhalation. “Right,” she nodded with a slight cough. “Just a rogue storm...nothing to worry about.”
“I could get rid of it,” Rainbow Dash offered, buzzing her wings with irritation as she paced around the room.
“It’s too big for one pony, kid,” Daring pointed out, still staring out the window. Like the three officers, she had her pistol secured to her forelimb, her left hoof lightly pressing against the trigger. Through her night-vision contacts, she could see the back yard, the trees that lined the perimeter convulsing in the howling wind that rattled the windows. Nopony was out there.
Nopony that she could see.
“What are we just standing around for, anyway?” Rainbow protested, still pacing. “We should be doing something about this! If this is an attack—”
“Charging headlong into it won’t help any of us,” Daring pointed out as another flash of lightning rumbled outside. “Until we know what’s going on, it’s best—”
At that moment, the lights all went out with a snap, drawing screams from Twilight and Night Light. “What happened?” Night Light asked.
“Velvet, check the phone line,” Daring ordered, raising her pistol slightly.
Velvet snatched up the phone, then slammed it down with a noise that was part irritation and part fear. “It’s dead,” she reported.
At that moment, the purple wards in the walls all flashed brightly and a loud noise like a sharp whistle pierced the air. The whistle began sounding again and again on a loop, and beneath it, they detected another sound: a blade cutting through wood, coming from the ceiling above.
“They’re here,” Flash announced needlessly as four guns were aimed upwards, their owners encircling their principals. “Sarge, what’s the call?”
“The charm will probably be summoning help by now,” Prowl said, her slit pupils darting everywhere as she thought.
“Basement?” Bumblebee suggested.
“No, we’ll be trapped down there,” Flash pointed out.
“We need to get them out of here,” Prowl said, nodding towards the shivering family. “But if we run now, they’ll catch up to us.” She glanced around. “Twilight, can you teleport us out?”
“I can’t,” Twilight said. “Not past the circle.”
“Then we’ll have to get you past it,” Prowl nodded as the whistling alarm continued. “Rainbow, once they’re inside, your job is to get Twilight and her family outside and past the circle so they can teleport out. Get as far away from here as you can.”
“What about you?” Rainbow asked, her eyes wide.
“We’ll hold them off,” Prowl said curtly. “We’ll follow you.”
“Easy for you to say,” Bumblebee said with a nervous chuckle. “You’re not the only one who can’t fly.”
There was a snap and a clatter: it sounded like a section of the ceiling had just been cut out and fell to the floor. “Here they come,” Daring hissed.
There was the sound of hooves on the floor above, floorboards creaking under the intruders’ weight. Rainbow grabbed Twilight’s hoof and Twilight placed Spike upon her back. For a few moments, all was quiet.
Prowl exhaled sharply and her ears twitched once. “Four of them up there,” she reported. “They’re stacking up. Rainbow, get ready—”
The attack came from the window. With a great shattering that coincided with another roar of thunder, a blade with twin black suns sliced through the glass, causing everypony to turn around with a gasp. Roaring was outside the window, his thick cloak flapping in the wind, ripping his blade through the warded window. Oily blood ran down the blade as he forced it through the magical constructs.
Prowl turned and raised her pistol, but a thumping down the steps made Daring turn around. Her eyes widened when she recognized the black cylinder crashing down the stairs.
“Flash grenade!” she yelled, ducking and covering her eyes.
The grenade went off with a roar as soon as she had shouted the warning. The flare was as bright as the rising sun, so bright that Daring could see it through her shut eyelids. The concussion wave hit her like a baseball bat to the head. Her head spun and her ears felt like they’d been plugged with cotton. Every sound was muffled—cries of pain, thumps of hoofsteps down the stairs, and the crash of Roaring reaching inside and yanking the window open to allow himself entry.
She raised her pistol towards the sound and squeezed down on the trigger, but metal claws dug into her foreleg and she felt more than heard herself scream in pain as her weapon was ripped from her grasp. The wind from a rushing blade slashed towards her neck and she ducked, the machete blade glancing off her pith. Daring snapped her head forward, grimacing as her helmet met a beak. Daring’s vision slowly returned as she rapidly blinked: the blurry apparition of Roaring was before her, eyes narrowed in hate, the Sword of Asocrac in his tail already snapping down towards her head.
And then something slammed hard into Daring’s back, nearly knocking her off-balance. A purple wave of energy rushed past her and shoved Roaring back out the window that he’d come in through with a crashing of glass. The four other griffons that had been charging down the stairs were shoved against the landing wall and tumbled down the stairs in a heap of tangled limbs and weapons. Before any of them could get up, purple lines of magic snaked through the air and turned themselves into chains, wrapping tightly around the pirates. They struggled and thrashed, cursing in a mixture of Griffonese and Equestrian, but the magical bindings held.
For a moment, everypony stared in confusion, then turned to Twilight. The young unicorn was standing in the center of their little group, her horn flaring with purple magic. Her face was drawn with sudden exhaustion, and she panted and huffed, sweat running down her mane and brow, but her back was straight.
Daring grinned. “Good job, Twil—”
With a bellow, Roaring flew back in through the window. Daring jumped aside, narrowly avoiding a machete blade that would’ve taken her head off, then ducking just as the Sword of Asocrac whistled over her head.
Moving past her with blinding speed, Roaring pushed aside the other ponies and made a grab at Twilight, who screamed and dove out of the way.
“No!” Flash cried, jumping on top of Roaring’s back. With a furious shout, the pirate threw him off and sent him crashing into Prowl, knocking them both over. Night Light and Velvet both backpedaled, throwing up hasty shields to protect themselves and their daughter as the others jumped into the fracas of whipping blades and flapping wings.
A clinking of glass made Spike look up and his eyes widened in horror when he saw two other griffons trying to climb in through the shattered window to join the fray. Instinct bade him draw in a breath, and then expel it in a rush of green flame.
But both griffons merely hunched their heads and drew up the heavy cloaks that they wore. Spike’s flames struck them, but no matter how hard he blew, he failed to set the cloaks aflame. Before long, Spike ran out of air and fell, puffing and gasping in exhaustion.
And so he was unable to react when the taller blue griffon whipped a sawn-off shotgun out from beneath his cloak and centered the bead over his forehead.
“Spike!” Night Light cried, but his shout came too late: the shotgun barked out flame and fury, and Spike fell with a grunt as the buckshot hammered into him. Blood flew from his head and chest.
“NO!” Twilight screamed in horror. Her shriek coincided with the challenging shout of a .38 revolver as Prowl fired from the floor. The griffon who had shot Spike collapsed like a broken puppet as his head snapped back and his partner was forced to retreat from Prowl’s suppressive rounds.
A mule kick from Roaring sent Rainbow tumbling back, teeth and blood flying from her mouth, then he sent Flash spinning to the floor with a feinted machete strike that led him to duck right into his rising fist. Seizing Daring’s kusarifundo as it snapped towards his head, he yanked her close and rammed his head into her face, letting out an exhilarated laugh as he felt her nose break, her blood streaming down his face. His machete cleaved toward her head, but Bumblebee rammed his shoulder into his chest, knocking the breath from his lungs and making his swing miss.
Snarling, he snapped his tail down at the annoying pest, who dodged too late, his own laziness and bulk proving his undoing. The Sword of Asocrac cut through flesh, fat, and tissue like a hot knife through butter and he relished in the pain and fear in the green eyes as the yellow earth pony gasped and wheezed. Yanking the blade out, Roaring shoved his foe aside, leaving him to curl up on the ground and choke on his last, bloodied breaths.
He turned back towards his target, who was cowering with her parents inside her magic bubble. The fabled weapon proved more than a match for the shield, bursting the little bubble with a loud crack: Twilight screamed in pain and stumbled, her head ringing from the magical feedback. His free claw darted forward and clamped down around a skinny foreleg.
The foreleg of her mother, who had instinctively thrown herself in front of her daughter and was now trying to push him away with a combination of her own strength and magic. Ignoring her sparking horn for a moment, Roaring glanced behind him: the dragon and one of the other ponies were down, but the others were all recollecting themselves, preparing to attack again, guns coming up to aim at his back.
Releasing Velvet’s foreleg for a moment, Roaring instead grabbed her around the throat and squeezed tight enough to cut off her air: she gasped and choked, her horn fizzing out. Spinning her around and hugging her to his chest with one foreleg, Roaring flew backwards, carrying his hostage out the window before anypony could stop him.
“Velvet! No!” Night Light cried, trying to grab his wife’s tail but missing completely.
Roaring exited out into the pouring rain, ascending several yards into the air, then deftly grabbed Velvet by the tail and held her upside-down, drawing a startled cry. His tail snaked around and he placed the cutlass at her neck, close enough that she could feel the blade against her vulnerable flesh. Velvet went completely still, every shuddering breath a stifled whimper; her tears mixed with the rain, running down into her mane.
“TWILIGHT SPARKLE!” Roaring shouted to the house as his last two remaining cohorts descended next to him. “You have until the count of five to come out and surrender, or I’ll cut off your mother’s head and have her corpse for dinner!”
No response from inside, though he could imagine the panic, the desperate race to think of a plan. A race that he intended to win.
“ONE!” he shouted. “TWO!...THREE!...”
Phillip descended to the bottom deck of the cruiser, pausing before the final hatchway. Through the small window, he could see nothing but darkness. He paused, checking to ensure that his snub-nosed .38 was still strapped tightly to his foreleg.
I must be insane, he thought.
Another scream from behind the door, louder and closer this time. His partner was close by and needed help. Help that only he could provide as long as the doors remained shut by Zugzwang’s power.
And so he took in a slow breath, attached his flashlight to the strap on his vest and switched it on, then pushed the door open before he had a chance to think.
The corridor outside was dark, all the lights smashed. Like the rest of the ship, this place was eerily quiet save for the creaking and groaning of the metal as the Talon bobbed in the water.
The bodies were sprawled across the walkway, every corpse covered in blood and slime. The Marines that they had sent in had died hard, falling over themselves as they rushed to retreat towards the stern. Their slime-stained faces were all frozen in horrid expressions of pain and fear, and Phillip noted with a small shudder that all of their eyes had been burst like wet balloons, leaving behind ragged holes that still dripped vitreous humor and brain matter. Spent cartridges and shattered weapons lay in the viscous pools around them, and the odor of cordite and bodily fluids was so nauseating that Phillip had to hold his breath as he proceeded forward, carefully stepping over the corpses.
Another familiar scream came from an open hatchway ahead, followed by another cold laugh. Phillip’s heart thudded in his chest and he moved as quickly and quietly as he could to the door: not easy when the puddles on the floor were so thick that every step splashed audibly. He paused outside the door and winced: a horrid smell of rotting meat emanated from the open doorway, so thick that it almost formed an invisible wall. Grunting, he pushed the door all the way open and stepped inside.
What he saw made his stomach twist into knots. The smell of meat was coming from racks and racks of corpses: ponies, griffons, and other species, stripped of skin to show bloodied muscle, hung from hooks in the long, narrow room, the chains groaning as they swayed. Enchanted refrigerated buckets and totes were filled with offal: intestines neatly coiled around stomachs, hearts carefully stacked and brains sliced into hemispheres to reveal pink-gray meat.
Phillip staggered for a moment, struggling to swallow down several waves of bile. Taking slow breaths through his nostrils, he banished the smells and sights and nausea from his mind and proceeded forward into the larder, trying to move as quietly as possible. The light from his flashlight revealed the stripped carcasses, but there was no sign of Cold, nor of Zugzwang. The only noise was the groaning, creaking melody.
Then his ears picked up another strange noise: soft, high-pitched, irregular breathing interspersed with faint murmurs and whimpers. He frowned: that was definitely not Cold’s voice. He turned towards the sound and rounded the corner, weapon up.
Whitestone was laying on the floor, her back against the wall, and a sword in her talon. As Phillip’s light fell upon her, she snapped around to face him, pointing the sword at him. He recognized the twin black suns on the bloodstained blade: she must’ve stolen it back from Zugzwang. Her eyes were wide and streaked with red; the myokymia of her shuddering orbits was so severe that it was impossible for her to keep eye contact with him. That, and the faint powdery marks around the nostrils of her beak and the sickly sweet odor that he picked up from her breath, confirmed that she was high on red poppydust.
Phillip’s eyes went to the object that Whitestone was clutching to her side. It took a moment for him to recognize the severed head for what it was. A blue griffon female’s head, the eyes ripped out and jaw hanging open.
“Are you here to kill me, too?” Whitestone hissed at Phillip. There was hate in her voice, but it was partially cloaked by the quavering of exhaustion and terror.
Looking at her, Phillip was suddenly reminded of a Royal Guard toy that he’d owned as a foal. His convictions of the brave soldier’s invincibility were crushed one day when he accidentally stepped on it, breaking off the wooden head and one wing and leg. Grief-stricken, he had attempted to fix it with far too much paste and too little care. The result was that the toy had lopsided limbs and a deformed head.
That’s what the once-proud pirate looked like. A broken toy that had been badly put back together.
A broken toy that was still holding a cursed sword in his direction. “Put it down, Whitestone,” he commanded, holding his weapon steady.
“I don’t understand,” Whitestone whispered, continuing to hold the tip of the cutlass out at him. “I followed the visions, did what the gods commanded. Why have they abandoned me now?”
A bitter comment about her “visions” being no more than drug-induced hallucinations had to be forced down. “Drop it!” Phillip repeated.
There came a low, liquid sound of something sliding across metal from behind and Phillip whirled around.
He realized his mistake when he heard the flapping of wings behind him. He dived out of the way as the Sword of Asocrac cleaved through the air where he’d been standing, rolling across the cold metal and turning to fire at Whitestone. The griffon flapped into the shadows with a snarl.
And then he heard a hoofstep behind him, detected the odor of Saddle Arabian tobacco. He whirled around and instinctively fired, but only caught a glimpse of Zugzwang before he ducked behind cover.
“Where’s Cold, you bastard?!” Phillip shouted, chasing after him.
“Liebling, I brought you over here to play and you’re only concerned about her?” Zugzwang taunted from up ahead.
Phillip turned the corner and his flashlight fell upon Cold Case, stripped of her coat and gear, hanging upside down from a hook that was embedded into her hind leg. Her front hooves were cuffed behind her back and sweat ran down into her mane as she struggled; distinct spider web-like marks of magical burns were sliced across her belly and chest.
“Cold,” Phillip breathed, rushing forward.
A screech of hatred heralded Whitestone flying at him again, cutlass brought back for a swing. Phillip snapped the revolver up, but the blade struck at him and he dodged too late: the enchanted sword sliced through his weapon and he had to dive into a roll to avoid what would’ve been a final cut at his head.
Not again, he growled to himself, shaking the ruined sidearm off his foreleg as he tumbled. Hope Twilight can repair it again.
As soon as he came back to his hooves, he snatched up the boomerang from his back pocket and tossed it at the banking form with a snap of his wrist. Whitestone spat out a curse as she sliced the weapon in half in midair, already swinging around to attack him again.
“Shit,” Phillip hissed to himself, snapping his baton open. Cold’s eyes widened as she watched death approach her partner on swift wings. Time seemed to slow in Phillip’s mind as he considered vulnerable targets on his griffon foe: his baton suddenly felt as fragile as a twig, but it was the only weapon he had left.
The blade swung. Metal clashed against metal.
Whitestone was hurled back against the wall with a screech of pain, staring up in horror as both Phillip and Cold gaped in shock.
Zugzwang had appeared in front of Phillip in a flash of golden light, parrying Whitestone’s strike with the cutlass in his hoof and shoving her away with a telekinetic strike. He twirled the second Sword of Asocrac in his hoof, a smile stretching across his face. Pleasure glittered in his black eyes, but his once-pristine suit was now ripped to shreds: wounds that had been hastily closed with magic lined his body and crisscrossed the circular runic tattoos...which, Phillip noted, seemed even less complete than before.
“No, Whitestone,” he declared, stepping slowly forward. “He is mine. And so are you.”
The fear in Whitetone’s eyes turned into rage and she let out a shriek that seemed to make the hull shake as she launched as herself at Zugzwang. Their blades clashed together in a cacophony of metal, with Zugzwang’s laughter and Whitestone’s cries of rage providing a horrid counterpoint. They danced around each other to the deadly music, moving away from the other two ponies.
Phillip wasn’t about to bemoan his turn of fortune. He hurried over to Cold, keeping an eye on the two combatants, and pulled a set of hoofcuff keys from one of his pockets, unlocking the cuffs. Then he reached up and, with some difficulty, managed to undo the hook from the chain. Cold fell to the ground with a grunt and rolled to her hooves. Gritting her teeth, she grasped the hook in her magic, then backed it out of her flesh with a tug, gasping in agony.
Phillip quickly wrapped the bleeding wound in some gauze, then stooped down and lifted Cold up, wrapping one of her forelegs around his shoulders. “Where’s your gun?” Phillip asked as he started to carry her away.
“Don’t know,” Cold grunted, using a cold spell to numb her limb. “We need to retreat.”
A howl of pain made them both turn around. Zugzwang was kneeling on the ground, parrying Whitestone’s downward cut with his right hoof. His left foreleg was lying on the ground next to him, severed just ahead of the knee.
A golden light rammed into the griffon’s chest and sent her skidding along her back, but the effort of the spell seemed to be more than Zugzwang could handle, for he simply sat back on his haunches, panting and sweating.
Whitestone sat up, shaking her head and grunting, and her golden irides locked onto Phillip and Cold. She shrieked again and charged at them. “Die!” she screamed, thrusting the sword at Phillip.
Shoving Cold to the floor beneath the captain’s charge, Phillip lunged inside her swing and locked his forelegs around her sword leg in a python-like grip as his elbow crashed into her jaw, cracking her beak like an egg. With a grunt, he twisted his entire body and slammed Whitestone to the floor. A beam of white energy whooshed past him and struck the gray-plumed wing, encasing it in ice.
Whitestone’s beak drilled into Phillip’s shoulder, drawing a grunt of pain and a spurt of blood as she kicked him away. Phillip had to fling himself down onto the floor to avoid another cutlass swing as Whitestone rolled back to her paws, snarling.
Her snarls turned into a yelp of shock as her hind paws shot out from beneath her, skidding across a patch of ice that had suddenly appeared beneath her. Cold grinned to herself as Phillip lunged, knocking the Sword of Asocrac from her grasp with a baton strike and ramming her to the ground.
A sound made Cold turn around and she blinked in surprise. Zugzwang had grasped his severed foreleg and was holding it before the bleeding stump. Black tendrils slithered from both stumps and joined together, pulling the limb back together. Zugzwang grunted and stood up slowly, massaging the wound: some of the runic tattoos faded away into wisps of smoke as he rose.
Cold snarled and stood up as well, her horn lighting up. Ice formed around her forelegs and chest, shaping themselves into armor, and then a pair of knives appeared in her hooves with a crackling sound. She stood in a combat stance, gritting her teeth against the protests of her wounded leg.
Zugzwang stared at her for a moment, head tilted to one side, then shook his head before vanishing in a flash of golden light.
Turning around, Cold spotted Whitestone shoving Phillip away and scrambling for the dropped Sword of Asocrac. Yanking the sword away with her magic, Cold charged forward, stumbling on her wounded leg, and stabbed down with the ice dagger. Whitestone ducked beneath the attack and slashed at her: Cold grunted as the talons dug into her ice armor, sending shards of snow flying and a wave of fresh pain rushing across her body.
Blocking a followup strike with her frozen gauntlets, Cold pushed the griffon away with a blast of cold air: Whitestone tumbled across a table, knocking over buckets of stomachs and entrails. Cold snapped her wrist, sending one of her ice knives tumbling through the air. Whitestone grabbed a hanging carcass and blocked the knife with it: ice spread from the stab wound over the rotting flesh.
A spinning blur whistled through the air and struck Whitestone in the head, staggering her as Phillip charged in. He caught his backup boomerang in his mouth as he vaulted the table, his hind hooves smashing into Whitestone’s chest. Ribs cracked like splintering wood as she yelled in pain, but managed to duck another ice spell from Cold Case.
“I’ll kill you both!” Whitestone shrieked, yanking the ice knife from the carcass and lunging at Phillip. Phillip rolled out of the way and struck back with his baton, a vicious duel beginning once more. Cold pulled herself over the table with a grunt and jumped into the fray, stumbling on her wounded leg.
An elbow crashed into Cold’s jaw and the second knife tumbled from her grasp. Blinded, head ringing in pain, she raised her armored gauntlets to block a knife strike, but talons seized purchase against her head, digging into her mane. Grunting, Cold rammed her knee into Whitestone’s gut and managed to seize the foreleg that clutched the knife, but Whitestone let out a screech of fury and shoved hard as she kicked Cold’s wounded leg out from beneath her. The last thing Cold felt was a ringing thud as her skull rang against the metal table: she slid to the floor, unconscious.
Huffing and snarling, Whitestone turned back to Phillip, who was picking himself back up from a slip. Howling, she threw herself at him, the ice knife raised to finish him off.
His boomerang spun through the air with a flick of the wrist. She spat angrily and slapped it out of the air and then she was on him, slashing at him from every angle. With every parry, more ice spread across Phillip’s baton, and she heard him hissing as the cold bit into his hoof.
She feinted with the knife, then slapped at his foreleg when he went for it, smacking the baton from his grasp with a clatter. Shrieking in victory, she tackled Phillip to the floor and they slid amongst the spilled offal. Mounting him, she pressed down with the ice dagger: he pushed back as hard as he could, trying to squirm out from beneath her, eyes wide in desperation as the enchanted blade inched closer to his face. Panting excitedly, she pressed down with her entire weight.
Something cold and squishy nudged Phillip’s cheek as he wriggled beneath Whitestone: a glance told him that the object in question was a dropped stomach, the ends both tied off to contain the ground meat inside.
Desperation pulling him forward, he seized the stomach in his mouth, cringing at the dry, sour taste, then flung it at Whitestone’s face. Meat exploded everywhere and she flinched with a grunt, her grip on the weapon loosening.
Seizing her wrists, Phillip wrenched them apart as he sat up, driving his head into her chest and knocking the breath from her lungs. The ice knife fell from her clutches; he seized it and drove it forward, letting out a yell that tore at his dry throat. The impact of blade against flesh and bone shuddered up his foreleg and she fell off him with a scream as ice spread from the wound. Her claws dug into his flesh, his face, but he relentlessly drove himself atop her, foreleg pumping maniacally, both of them screaming and yelling.
Her desperate clawing weakened, slowed, then she fell back with a final, feeble swipe at his face, eyes rolling back.
Panting, wiping blood from his eyes, Phillip pulled himself off her, crawling a safe distance away. Whitestone’s heaving chest was covered in red and white, the blood from her many wounds crackling as it froze against the enchanted ice. Her breath came in low gasps and Phillip realized that she was dryly sobbing as she lay dying.
“Kriga...Fantisera...where are you?” she whimpered, tears leaking from her fearful eyes. “What did I do wrong?”
Whatever was in her departed with a final rustling noise and her body went still.
A groan told Phillip that Cold Case was waking up, her ice armor breaking apart as she sat up, holding her head. Up above came the sound of hoofsteps pounding down the ladders: Marines arriving to back them up.
Sighing in relief, Phillip leaned back against the metal table and allowed himself to relax. “It’s over, Cold,” he declared, the weight of exhaustion dragging at his eyelids.
“FOUR!” Roaring shouted, pressing the blade tight enough against Velvet’s trembling throat enough that it drew blood that the rain pulled down into her mane. “FI—!”
“STOP!”
Roaring and his two companions grinned in victory as Twilight Sparkle exited the house, her head lowered in defeat and her steps slow. She looked up demurely at the pirates.
“I’ll do what you want,” she declared over the wind and rain. “Just don’t hurt my mom!”
“Oh, you’re done giving instructions, tik,” Roaring sneered and dropped Velvet. She screamed helplessly as she fell, and Roaring and his companions dove towards their target, claws reaching out to grab her.
And then many things happened all at once. First, a rainbow blur rocketed out of the house and snatched Velvet before she struck the ground, bringing her safely back inside.
Second, Twilight’s posture suddenly snapped up to the confident stance of a trained shooter, advancing forward. The .38 pistol that had suddenly appeared on her foreleg fired twice and the two pirates who were with Roaring plummeted out of the sky, their craniums split open by a pair of rounds. Roaring narrowly adjusted his trajectory to avoid a pair of shots that zipped past his belly, his jaw dropping in shock as the illusion spell faded away, destroyed by the gunpony below crossing the magic circle.
Daring Do grinned at Roaring and adjusted her aim, firing another volley that he had to spin in midair to avoid.
Snarling in rage, Roaring dived at her like a hawk swooping towards prey, closing the distance before she had a chance to reload. His machetes scissored through the air, forcing her to retreat: he saw pain appear across her face and she stumbled, her wings slow to respond. With a grin, he stabbed with the cursed sword in his tail.
Daring’s screech of pain as the blade drilled into her shoulder brought an even larger grin to his face and he advanced, his blades whirling like the winds of a cyclone, aiming at her weak side. Daring reeled away, panting and wincing, the blades coming closer and closer to her flesh. A machete kissed her foreleg and drew off another chunk of flesh, drawing another cry. The scent of her blood in the rain drew Roaring on: already he could taste her flesh—
And then a cannonball rammed into his side, nearly bowling him over. He tumbled over and swung with his blades, but missed the blue pegasus as she looped through the air to come around again.
Daring quickly retreated a bit so that she could reload safely. Unfortunately, her plans for that were quickly dashed when the Sword of Asocrac once more cleaved her pistol in half with a strike. Not again! she thought with a growl, ducking a followup strike.
"Rainbow, get back inside!" she ordered, throwing off the ruined pistol.
“Nah, you need my help!” Rainbow replied, flying circles around Roaring. “Hey, come and get me, fugly!” she taunted.
Roaring screeched and launched himself at her, and Rainbow flew back, tossing something at him. With a crackle and a roar, the storm cloud that she’d been hiding fired off a bolt of lightning at Roaring, who was momentarily frozen in midair, his coat standing on end and an almost comical expression of pain and shock on his face.
And then he bellowed in rage and threw himself at Rainbow once more, blades whirling like a living mower. Rainbow yelped in terror and spun in midair, the blades kissing her flesh and wings.
Meanwhile, Daring pulled a pocketknife out of her coat and snapped it open. The four-inch blade clicked as it locked into place.
“Hey, salt for brains!” Daring taunted as she threw herself at Roaring, gritting her teeth against the dull pain of her injuries, ordering her bleeding shoulder to work. Roaring turned and just barely managed to avoid the deadly strike at his neck, yelling in pain as the knife dug into his shoulder instead. Eye for an eye, Daring thought with a bitter grin.
Roaring tried to throw Daring off, but she clung to him, stabbing into his wounded foreleg. One machete tumbled from his grasp, spinning to the ground.
The Sword of Asocrac whooshed at Daring’s head and she ducked, but a cold shock of pain ran down the side of her head, followed by the warm rush of flowing blood; as she spun away with a grunt, she caught a glimpse of her left ear falling to the ground.
She also caught a glimpse of the other machete ready to cleave her head off.
Suddenly, a pair of blue limbs wrapped themselves around Roaring’s foreleg, halting the killing strike. Rainbow pummeled Roaring’s sides with her knees, grunting with every blow that fractured ribs and bones.
Roaring growled, then flung his head back and Rainbow broke off with a muffled shout of pain as blood shot out of her broken nose. The machete blade whistled through the air and Rainbow ducked with a gasp.
The cutlass came down. Rainbow threw herself aside too late.
A terrible scream of pain and horror rent the air at the same time as another clap of thunder. Rainbow began to fall, her eyes and mouth open wide. Her left wing fell beside her, severed at the joint.
“DASH!” Daring cried out, momentarily frozen in horror.
To her relief, a purple aura of magic grabbed Rainbow Dash, halting her fall as Twilight emerged from the house. Roaring yelled and dived at his target once more.
Daring lunged and wrapped herself python-like around Roaring’s body, stabbing maniacally with her knife, every strike sending more blood flying into the rain: the other machete fell from his grasp and Twilight gasped as the blade clattered onto the porch next to her.
“Get off!” Roaring snarled, grabbing her weapon and jerking it from her hoof. Spotting movement out of the corner of her eye, Daring reached back and grabbed Roaring’s tail: the Sword of Asocrac writhed like an angry serpent, the blade missing her by inches as the two tumbled in the rain and wind. Roaring bucked like a flying bull, trying to toss Daring off: she felt her grip slipping off him, the blood that ran down his chest hindering her hold.
A flicker of lightning rumbled through the clouds above, and an idea sparked in Daring’s mind. Grabbing Roaring’s tail in both of her hooves, she yanked him up towards the clouds, yelling aloud as her wings protested against the weight. Roaring shrieked and struggled, flailing as he tried futilely to grab Twilight.
They reached the low clouds and Daring reached out and grabbed a tuft, yanking it free from the larger mass. Focusing her pain and rage, she channeled her will up from her gut, mixed it with the magic that buzzed and tingled beneath her aching wings, and sent it through her foreleg into the cloud, stroking it with a wing in between desperate beats to keep herself aloft. It began to crackle and quiver in her hoof as the energy built up.
Roaring turned upon her, his eyes burning as hot as the lightning above him. "Die!" he snarled, turning towards Daring.
Please, please, please work! Daring thought and threw the cloud at the struggling griffon beneath her.
Lightning streaked out of the makeshift weapon, the light burning into her cornea. The electricity struck her in the belly and her every nerve cried out in pain, but she felt the static buzzing of her flight magic cover her like armor. She screamed, and she realized that Roaring was screaming as well.
Her wings failed her and gravity took hold. Her vision recovered in a blur of colors and she saw Roaring falling from below her, stunned by the lightning strike. She also saw the Sword of Asocrac spinning past her.
Instinct bade her seize the sword and dive down towards her foe, sending one last effort through her wings. Roaring flared his wings, but they both knew he was too late: his eyes widened in horror as she brought the sword back in both hooves.
Daring swung hard. Blade cut through flesh and bone like paper. Gore and blood showered over Daring’s face and chest as she fell through Roaring, streaking right into the ground with an exhausted flop. With a pair of wet smacks, the two halves of Roaring landed on either side of her, guts spilling out onto the lawn: beneath the rain, she heard him give a final wet, shuddering gasp, and then he was still.
Grunting, fighting through the pain and fatigue, shaking off the blood and flesh that coated her, Daring forced herself up and dropped the sword, staggering over to the porch. “Rainbow,” she gasped, hauling herself up the steps. “Rainbow.”
Twilight and her parents were now outside, standing over the blue pegasus’ still form. They’d wrapped a blanket around Rainbow’s body and projected a shield over them all to block the rain, and Night Light was now wrapping her red-stained torso with makeshift bandages that were already soaking through, but Rainbow still shivered, gasping and whimpering in pain and fear. As Daring approached, Rainbow’s eyes, wide and full of panic and tears, locked onto her.
“Stay with us, Rainbow,” Daring said, collapsing next to her. Rainbow reached a hoof out from beneath the blanket and Daring seized it, gripping it tightly.
“D-Daring…” Rainbow whimpered, tears in her eyes. “I don’t...I don’t want to die—”
“Shh, shh, just stay still,” Daring whispered, stroking Rainbow’s mane as the sound of sirens approached. “It’s okay...you’re gonna be okay…”
Stats
Page generated in 0.026 seconds
Total duration
958 users online
1,474,136 hits today, 2,280,440 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Okay.... okay, I think I need time to process this. ....Hooooo boy, oh shit. I swear, if you really did what I think you did... Also, if you ask me the gore in Whitestone's scene was... needlessly gory. Like, it felt like slasher film shock value if anything else.
10019458
Mmm, yeah, I guess you're right. I'll go back and dial it back a bit.
10020133
Yeah, most of the gore in this chapter felt like it was done for shock value or because. Gore for Gore's sake is just hopelessly edgy, if you excuse the bluntness. It's cheap horror.
10020151
Well, I've established that they eat meat, so it made sense to me that they'd have a larder where they prepare and store their food. I guess I just went a little overboard with the descriptions.
And i have been confirmed! Zugzwang is now a fucking lovercraftian monster!
Honestly, the writing in this chapter is great, and i’m happy that it wasn’t cut down as the tension in the scene with Twilight Velvet held hostage, the wing cutting of Rainbow (F in the chat for RD), the seemingly unbeatble Zugzwang in that scene.
Oh, it was a ball of violence!
Wow... Just... Wow... That was awesome!
10022631
Thanks!
10021118
Glad you enjoyed it! And indeed, you have been vindicated. I can't wait to show him off in his full glory!
10023630
Suddenly turns out he’s Chutulu
This Chapter was fucking Awesome! Amazing job, also people got fucked up in this chapter.
Well damn, that chapter was intense. You claim big action scenes are your weakness, but this chapter says otherwise.
Good job on this!
10595688
Appreciate the thought!
Oh that was intense.