Saros

by shortskirtsandexplosions

Battered

Panting, bleeding across random spots of his stone-gray body, Myrk reached a hoof back to feel the thick round contents of his saddlebag. He managed a slight breath of relief upon feeling the shape of the canister within. As a wave of hot air struck him, he gazed straight down towards where he was furiously diving.

Through the concrete pits beneath New Whinniepeg, a large vertical chamber loomed. The Imperial Battery Shaft of the subterranean city housed gigantic columns of glowing blue crystals. Stretching as far as Myrk could see, enchanted strips of moonrock coiled together, funneling waves of priceless energy through metal coils that fueled the skyscrapers. Several rusted black platforms stretched around the columns at random intervals, providing walkways for workers and engineers to monitor the gigantic sources of mana production.

Through the edges of his sarosian ears, Myrk could hear the whine of four pursuing Rune Guards. The sound of Captain Stellar's conjured engines stood out the most. He knew that with their combined magic, the Guards would enter firing range in less than a minute. But Myrk also knew that he was nearing the final stretch. This was the Imperial Battery Shaft, and while it also had to channel mana to New Whinniepeg above, it also had to vent exhaust and mana dust. Where there was the need to vent, there were lateral corridors, and those corridors led in only one direction: up.

Myrk's black eyes scanned the pale walls of the subterranean shaft, struggling to find the ventilation corridors that would take him to the moon's surface. His cloak was tattered in so many places that the sheer glow of the industrial lights were starting to burn patches of his exposed skin. Fighting for concentration, he decided to let loose a burst of sonar so that he might sense the way out. What he discovered instead was a cluster of armored equines two platforms below his current descent.

He looked towards them and immediately wished that he hadn't. A line of unicorn soldiers were forming a solid phalanx, but instead of launching manabullets or cannon fire his way, they were illuminating huge beams of light. Swaths of burning gold shone over Myrk from afar. He was instantly blinded, and he felt his skin sizzling through the thin layers of the cloak around him.

"Nnngh—Aaaugh!" He howled in pain, covering his clenching eyes with his forelimbs. His descent turned into a spiral and his spiral into a plummet. He fell limply past the platform, sailing towards certain doom. His sonar screamed through the burning agony, telling him that the last platform was about to streak by, and beyond it was nothing but jagged rock.

With a heave of his stone-gray muscles, Myrk spun his body and stretched out his wings. He glided to a bumbling stop along a rusted sheet of grated walkways. The air around him rang with reverberating metal as he stopped finally, lying limp in the middle of the final platform that bordered a drowning strip of vertical mana batteries.

He lay there for several agonizing seconds, feeling his whole body throb in its extremities. His wings twitched and his burning joints struggled to pull himself up. Through a numb cloud of sonar he sensed the two dozen bodies of unicorn soldiers several hundred meters directly above. They were scurrying down the spiraling walkway to reach his body and finish him off.

No matter how badly his coat burned, Myrk knew that he had to keep moving. However, the very moment he sat up, he felt his saddlebag finally shredding and the canister rolled out onto the middle of the platform. Gasping, he lunged forward and gripped the precious cargo in his hooves. Less than two seconds later, the bodies of four unicorns landed in front of him, their hooves clanging loudly through the metal. Wincing, Myrk pried his singed eyes open.

The first thing he saw was the leering gaze of Captain Stellar. He stepped ahead of Razsaleen and the others as he stared with raging disgust at the body of Myrk below him. "Chase is over, Discordant filth," he said. "Hoof over the beacon, or else I won't make this quick."

Comments

[Csquared08]

Why didn't they use light before? It would have been far more effective than the manabullets...

[AppleTank]

1206512
Maybe cloak was in their way? Or Skirts forgot.

[FOXTrot2]

Heat of the moment, probably