Meta Gamer in Equestria: The Blight of Bane.

by reflective vagrant

Chapter 7, The First Mission, Part 5

We came to a clearing that looked rather barren. I soon discovered it was because it was created by some meteor crashing here a few months back. It was strange, because I didn't recognize the area from when I lived in the woods.

Tempest sighed and mumbled, "And it all comes full circle," before shaking her head and focusing on a battle plan.

The second fight was fairly easy, three on four with a solid ambush taking one out quickly. I could have sworn I saw Speaks with Talons deflect a scimitar with nothing but his talons.

After the fight, however, we were exhausted. I hadn't been permanently harmed, but some of those blows really stung and Tempest looked like she was powering through the pain of a solid mace blow to a flexible point in her armor.

In spite of her injury, she had managed to solo the second enemy while Speaks with Talons, Scraps and myself had tackled the last one.

"Think you can use that thing?" Tempest asked Speaks with Talons as she pointed to the leftover mace. "It might bash skulls in faster than your talons if you can."

"..." The griffin looked at her with as cold a prideful stare as I had ever seen.

"Not to say your claws aren't good, but my hooves seem to be getting better results on these than both your talons and Moss's claws combined."

"Why can't the Beast-kin or your minion use it?"

"Scraps can't fight normal way," Scraps said as he picked up the mace and clumsily swung it once. "Scraps must find opening to strike with controlled blow to make blow count. Metal club too awkward to use with control. Claws and sometimes thrown thing about all Scraps can do. Scraps would love to try griffin string stick that shoot pointy stick some time, though." With this, Scraps promptly went to lightly gnawing on the weapon's different parts with a look of curiosity.

Speaks with Talons rolled his eyes and turned to me.

I pressed my amulet to speak. "Borrowing a bear's claws and fangs would still be better than me swinging that mace. I barely have any muscle to swing that thing in this form and I can't use it as a beast. It might be a improvement over my spear, but only a minor one. I'd rather have someone use it right and keep me from having to use my frail normal form in a fight in the first place. So... can you?"

The Speaker came down from the tree at the edge of the clearing and interrupted. "We are sorry, but you need to move or a much larger group will find you." He gestured us in a direction.

The griffin grimaced at this news.

"We need to find a safe place to rest," he said as he took the mace from Scraps, "I will take the mace with me for the sake of time, but realize that this one was wielding a shield and armor while yours was naked." He promptly pointed to a small buckler still strapped to the corpse's arm and rusted chain peaking out from under a tattered tabard with an image of a claw on it. "My talons were working fine. It was just harder to land a blow."

We were just leaving when both Tempest and Fluttershy heard a rustling off to the side of the path.

"What was that!?" Fluttershy cried out.

A few seconds went by as Tempest walked closer to the source.

A loud chittering could be heard as Tempest looked up and around the tree, centering in on something higher up.

"Just a squirrel yelling at me from its nest."

With this, she went back to point alongside the Speaker.

We walked for a little ways when I saw Fluttershy was still uneasy.

I nudged her in a way that we had developed for me to ask what was wrong without using the amulet.

She whispered in my ear, "I know my animals, most by heart. Whatever that chittering Tempest heard, it may have sounded like a squirrel to her, but it was just mimicking a squirrel."

"What?" I asked more in expression than word.

"That squirrel wasn't a squirrel."

---

We tracked a long way, but eventually we arrived a safe place to rest. Though, by then it had gotten dark. The speaker said it was surrounded by a cluster of nodes in their web or something like that. All I saw there was a skeleton sprawled to the side of a chest.

The Speaker said the bear that I borrow the form of had taken out the human and scared the others enough for them to be scattered when the Fey first put the full power of their web against them. The chest was magic, being larger on the inside, but it was also empty. Such magic wasn't a tactical advantage that couldn't be circumvented with less effort than they had been giving in trying to reenter the forest, so the Fey had no idea why the enemy were constantly trying to get back to it.

After tending wounds and getting some basic but functional rations in us, we talked and sat for a bit to rest. Tempest spoke with Scraps and Fluttershy on supply management while also keeping one ear pointed towards me.

Speaks with Talons was sitting notably on the far side of the circle from Tempest. "So that stone on your neck takes the words of the pony tongue and puts them in your tongue?"

"I think so? It's based on a spell that was in the books that were sent with me when I came. I think it was intended to let understand how to read any language too, but that part was lost in adapting it."

The griffin thought for a moment, briefly glancing at Tempest. He then spoke in what I could only describe as a thick accent. "Does the unicorn soldier ever stop spying on you?"

I gave a raised eyebrow for a moment before returning my gaze to the fire and answering. "Not really, but I've gotten used to it. She still has the idea that I'm secretly with them-" I pointed a ways away from the circle we were in to the skeleton still grasping its sword. "-in the back of her mind, and I can't really blame her. I wouldn't really trust one of my kind in her situation either."

The griffin smiled as Tempest stood up in shock.

I looked back and forth at both of them. "What?"

Tempest spoke up, "You understood him just now."

"Well yea," I retorted defensively, "That's what the amulet does, isn't it? Translate Equestrian?"

Tempest pulled her head back slightly with her mouth agape. "You didn't even realize it..."

With a feeling of awkward confusion, I turned to Speaks with Talons.

He gave a chuckle. "Just now, I asked my question in my native tongue, not the pony tongue."

He looked over at Tempest with a sense of pride. "Even though I am not versed in the intricacies of pony magic, I still managed to discover something about it even your demi-mage did not know. Even if it allows you to speak it and it alone, your amulet lets you hear far more than the pony tongue."

I had seen many a variant of sourness from Tempest in my time, but just then I discovered a new flavor of contempt being radiated from Tempest's face. She had just been one upped, and she didn't like it.

A faint whistle could be heard in the woods around us while the metaphorical lightning shot between their eyes.

Tempest finally backed off and called to the whole group, "It took us a while to get here, and none of us have very good night vision. It seems we are bunking down for the night. Who's on first watch?"

"That won't be necessary," The Speaker called out with a slight slur before swallowing the last bite of food up in his tree. He steadily swung down from branch to branch in a much more casual fashion, eventually landing on the chest.
"We are watching you and everything surrounding you. Short of our village, this is about the safest place you can-"

Fluttershy screamed just as everyone else saw the sword stab right through the Speaker's chest from behind. The rattling of bones showed the skeleton rising and pulling the sword out of him, ready to fight.

The next things happened almost before I could even react.

The Speaker fell to the ground as Fluttershy ran up to him with one of the red vials of healing potion, knowing she needed to apply it post haste. Speaks with Talons sprang out of his seat, flying straight into the fray and swung the mace at the skeleton that had become animated, only to miss.

I couldn't get up fast enough, and as much as I wanted to, my shape shifting was still exhausted. But when I saw the skeleton turning its attention towards Fluttershy, my mind went into an adrenaline filled focus.

The hairs on the back of my neck rose as I released my good luck charm into Speaks with Talons' back swing. It landed solidly, crushing the sternum and passing right on to the inside of the front of the skull, which in turn shattered as the mace went through.

The remains of the skeleton that hadn't been shattered fell apart into a pile of bones. The fight was over as fast as it had started.

The Speaker gasped as the potion reconstructed and reconnected his severed organs within the wound and managed to stop the bleeding.

Fluttershy called out to us in a shaky voice, "The wound is going to need further rest to heal properly, but he's OK."

With confirmation of the Speaker's condition, Speaks with Talons looked back at the mace. "The unicorn was right. It is good for crushing skulls."

The Speaker looked up at Tempest as she towered over him. In a suddenly cold, but calm voice, she spoke to him, "Like I said, who's on first watch?"

Author's Note:

yes, I know zombies don't have a weakness to bludgeoning in 5e. Moss got that part wrong.
Also, the tabard over the zombie's armor isn't hiding the armor, it's just displaying the image over top it. Kinda like this:

It wasn't special armor, just also had a tabard with an insignia.