Meta Gamer in Equestria: The Blight of Bane.

by reflective vagrant

Chapter 25, Battle for the Rift, Part 6.

The fireball was over almost as quickly as it came. As soon as Speaks with Talons got off of me, I called out "_Ba^ra_da," with as nap of my fingers to extinguish the flames on my shield and furs. They were still intact enough to finish the mission, but they would definitely need to be replaced soon after.

Standing up, I saw every creature in a mild panic, rushing around and checking on each other. The Griffin mercenaries were firing more arrows than I could count at an unseen target on the other side of a sand pit, while the changelings swooped around to tend to the wounded.

The dragons were flying about and looking for any remaining enemy troops. Meanwhile, I looked around and saw a pony laying on the ground, burnt black and presumed dead, suddenly flinch and strain.

Running over to him, I recognized Plasma Wave, unlucky enough to be caught in the middle of the blast and apparently taking it in full force. Had it not been for his barrier, he likely would have been dead already.

Thinking quickly, I carefully placed my hands in a specific pattern and verbally called out to Archimedes to perform a healing spell. "Partner, hel-!"

Before I could finish making my connection to Archimedes, I felt a strong set of talons knocking the wind out of me and pushing my scorched side down into the sand, ending the spell before I could even get it started.

"Save your energy!" I heard the dragon leader, Wild Storm, call out before he hunched himself over top of me.

I twisted my face enough to see the dragon biting down on the cork stopper of a large bottle. After spitting the cork out unceremoniously, he poured a small portion of the pungent potion over Plasma Wave's throat, letting it heal, then promptly lifted his head slightly and carefully aided the pony in drinking it.

Charred skin flaked off and new, tender skin emerged in its place. All the while, I could see the muscles in his body relaxing with relief while his face clearly was forcing himself to drink the potion. I could tell the potion tasted as bad as it smelled just by the way he had to force each mouthful down, eventually grabbing the bottle in his mouth as soon as his mouth could.

Once the bottle was empty, Plasma Wave weakly stood up and Wild Storm got off of me.

I stood, brushed off some of the sand and called out "_Ni^kt_o" with a sweeping motion of my hand a few times to clean out the sand that found its way into my blisters.

By this time, the battle had died down and the griffins were dragging in a corpse with what looked like five or six quivers worth of arrows sticking out of it.

Seriously, it looked like a dense forest of arrows with shafts thicker than my thumb sticking out of him.

With the pitch black skin, delicate features that definitely weren't human, small frame and pointed ears, I wasn't entirely sure what I was looking at. The best guess I had for it was a drow, or a dark elf.

My eyes also seemed to want to twitch back and forth as I looked at the corpse, as if trying to focus on something that wasn't quite there.

"It was a solo attacker. Must have had a death wish taking on a group with as many archers as we had."

Tempest looked at me for whatever Intel I could give. In response, I summoned Archimedes to my arm as I pressed my amulet.

"If the books are right, any male of the dark elves are considered expendable, and are severely punished for disobeying orders by any females that rule over them. This guy having a death wish is entirely possible to avoid that wrath."

I shook my head in uncertainty, and asked the only known ally that had first hand experience of the other world. "Is that right, partner?"

Archimedes was looking at the corpse with a slack beak, his eyes likewise twitching ever so slightly back and forth, as if trying to focus on something that wasn't quite there.

"Partner?" I called to him mentally when he wasn't responsive.

With this, he snapped out of his daze, looked at me and nodded vigorously. "Yes! Yes, this is a dark elf, and they do indeed punish failure severely." His tone seemed to be holding back a sense of joy.

With seeing his nod, Tempest gave a sigh and looked around to get her bearings. Every one of the element bearers and the ponies who were apparently called the "pillars of light" were being medically tended to by changelings, but weren't much worse for wear. Fluttershy was the only one that was unharmed, and still had a few flakes of the coal like glitter on her, aside from the griffin mercenaries. Most of them were out of the blast range.

"Scraps," Tempest called into her bag of holding.

With this Scraps jumped out of the bag.

"Scraps, I need you to escort the creatures that are too wounded to fight back to the Appleloosa camp. Wild Storm, do you have a spare sky claw that can scout for them?"

Wild Storm came forward, stroked his beard and looked back at his dragons. He pointed at the smallest among them and gestured him forward.

"Slate. I'm trusting you with this. You are my sharpest eye and fastest wing among the young drakes under my command. I know you want to join in on the fight, but you will do this first."

He looked deep into the young drake's eyes and glared at him in dominance. "You will escort every one of the injured sent back to the pony town safely before returning. If even one creature isn't safely returned then you had better not join the fight unless you want me to skin you alive then feed your bloodied carcass to a roc when I find out."

I thought he was joking at first, but when the older dragon took his claw and carefully scraped it on the belly of the young drake, I wasn't so sure.

Noticing that there were indeed children among the dragons, I whispered. "Drakes?"

I raised my hand to my amulet so as to be ready to press it if it had shut off, but Speaks with Talons caught my wrist.

"Dragons are different among the races of Equis. Any dragon that can fly is considered a worthy warrior, even the children. Some even gain this title through deeds before they are able to fly. Slate may be young but he is more than capable. I can teach you more about them later if you wish, but do not question it here."

I lowered my hand as he let go and gave him an affirming nod.

After it was all settled, Scraps, Slate, Plasma Wave, one griffin and another two pony guards and one of the specialists ponies were ordered back to Appleloosa. The injured changelings decided among themselves which one that was deemed the most injured and would be the one sent back to tend the others. The rest of them simply tended to their wounds and shook their heads when offered the chance to head back.

A quick mass spell was used to reinitialize the "body buffer" by the pony with the now singed beard before we parted ways with the injured.

---

Once we caught up with the main forces at the area near the rift, we were met by the prince.

"Shining!" The princess called.

"Twily! You made it here safe! I was worried." The prince called back as they hugged.

After a few seconds, the prince grew grim. With a bitter look on his face, he pushed out of the hug and looked at the group.

"Though many of the enemies fled into the surrounding area, we've solidly secured the rift, even more thoroughly than we had hoped for."

He looked squarely at Tempest, then at me.

"But there's been a development at the rift. I need you to follow me."

---

Upon reaching the rift, we found the area surprisingly not all that scarred with the signs of battle. There just a few small bits of derbies from smashed barrels, tents and the like and that's about it.

When I saw the rift, itself, however, it was an amazing sight. A fluxing ribbon of white energy, almost moving like a piece of fabric in the wind, and at the same time almost like a flame.

It was at least several yards taller than any tree in any normal forest. Near the center of the rift at the ground I could see the insides of a temple stone on the other side. Within that temple was a well dressed holy man carrying a shield not too dissimilar to mine in structure, save that it was made of metal. One big difference was the emblem of an open scroll on his, where as mine was otherwise blank besides the charring.

He stepped forward at the sight of me and fell just short of passing through before he stopped.

With a voice that echoed as if spoken from the back of a water filled cave, he called out to me in a thick accent.

"Greetings, Champion of Oghma." He turned to Archimedes. "And you too, old friend. It is good to see you both alive and well."

Author's Note:

Yep. It's a short one, but it's there.

How dense were the arrows?
This dense.

Comments

[Spc jacko]

The link there bbn is a dead end.

[reflective vagrant]

9878066
That might fix it for a while, I hope