Brutality
Silent Edge stared at the campsite from his perch among the branches of a tree. Amber sat next to him, watching it just as intently. Every so often she would glance his direction, a question clear in her eyes. Eventually, Silent shot her a look from the corner of his own. “What is it, Amber?” he asked in a whisper.
She jumped, clearly not expecting him to speak so suddenly. She was quick to compose herself, though, focusing on the campsite. “Nothing, sir.”
“Do not lie, Amber. You have been looking my way for the last hour. What is it?”
The pegasus mare was quiet for a few seconds before turning to face him more directly on the branch. “With all due respect, sir, I feel we may be wasting our time following them like this. Their tension is clearly lessened since their departure, so should we not strike now?”
Silent hummed in thought, considering her words. In truth, they had been in an open window to attack for the last couple of days, but he had so far neglected to give the order to step in. His brow furrowed, his lips curling into a displeased frown. What was holding him back? Amber was right. They had their chance, they needed to act on it before it slipped away.
He looked up at the camp again, his eyes finally catching sight of Scarlet’s distant form as she idly trotted around the edge of the camp. It clicked with him, then. He grimaced, cursing his own sentimental attachment to the red-maned mare. She was what was holding him back. She and the fact that he did not want to kill her.
“...Sir?”
Silent took a quiet breath to steady himself before rising up to a standing position. “You’re right, Amber. The time has come to make our move,” he decided, forcing down any affections he held for Scarlet. “I’m going to infiltrate the camp and eliminate the target.”
“What about me, sir?” Amber pressed, rising to join him. “Shall I create a distraction?”
“No,” Silent quickly dismissed. “Stay back and keep an eye on the situation. If I should call for assistance, lend it. Otherwise, do not intervene. Do I make myself clear?”
“Sir, I-”
“Amber,” Silent hissed at her, leaning forward and glaring into her eyes. “Do I make. Myself. Clear?”
Any further protests died in her throat. She nodded her head before taking a step back. “Yes, sir… good luck.”
Silent’s lips curled up into a very rare smile. “I don’t need luck, Amber,” he told her with confidence before allowing himself to fall backward off of the branch. His wings snapped out and slowed his descent, and he alighted on the grassy ground without even a rustle. He moved quickly, darting from his position and making his approach to the campsite. He kept to the shadows, his wings held close to his body to reduce his size.
He could see Scarlet maintaining her patrol, her eyes warily scanning the environment, especially the sky. Every so often, she would look up at the heavens as if expecting Silent to dive into her from above.
“Smart,” he thought to himself before making use of one such glance to slip in under her vision and dart behind the tent he knew Primrose rested in. “But not smart enough.”
He waited for a few seconds, holding his breath, to ensure that Scarlet had not noticed him. When he heard nothing to indicate he had been detected, he allowed the very tip of one of his wingblades to slide free. With slow and careful movements, he put the blade against the fabric of the tent and pushed through…
The night had been peaceful thus far. Scarlet had kept a diligent eye on everything around her, though nothing had yet to raise any alarm or suspicion. It was a little hard to focus, though, when her mind kept wandering back to the conversation she had with Lens a few hours prior to him going to sleep.
She briefly paused partway through one of her rotations to give off a quiet sigh. There was still a lot about their child that he didn’t know, and it pained Scarlet to no end that she didn’t have the time to tell him of it all right now. Or rather, that she wasn’t brave or strong enough to tell him.
Ultimately, that was what it boiled down to. It hurt too much for her to even think about Crystal, much less talk about her openly for any stretch of time. If it wasn’t so draining, she might have found it frustrating. Her ears drooped, and she idly kicked a small pebble at her hooves, sending it rolling away to disappear into the grass around the campsite.
A sound caught her attention, then. A rustling, like fabric shifting. She immediately perked up, her ears at attention and swiveling to face the noise. It was coming from behind her.
And then she heard Primrose scream.
Her blood turning into ice in her veins, Scarlet immediately spun around, her swords snapping into existence. Her eyes widened in shock at what she saw. Silent Edge was somehow in her tent, looming over Primrose with his wingblades extended and poised to thrust. The foal had just woken up, pinned on her back, with her eyes wide with terror and her hooves frantically reaching to pull herself away.
“PRIMROSE!” Scarlet cried out, starting forward.
Silent’s blades plunged into Primrose’s gut and chest.
Blood spluttered free from the small pony’s mouth alongside her injuries, her scream silencing in her throat. Her eyes, wide with shock, began to go unfocused and lose their shine. They rolled back to look at Scarlet, one of her hooves weakly reaching out towards the trembling unicorn before falling to the ground with a deafening thump.
Scarlet froze at the sight, her heart feeling as if it had just stopped in her chest. All of the warmth fled her body, leaving nothing but ice. She watched, dumbstruck, as Silent then pulled his blades free from Primrose’s body, allowing more blood to spurt free. A few flecks of it appeared on his face and chest, marking him. He looked up at Scarlet as if in slow motion, his eyes cold and focused.
It was getting hard to breath. Scarlet’s blood began to melt from ice and burn like magma in her veins. The edges of her vision tunneled and turned dark, focusing entirely on the sight of Primrose, the foal she had devoted herself to protecting, laying on the ground in a pool of her own blood, her eyes drifting closed.
And standing over her, his blades dripping with crimson...
Scarlet’s pupils dilated, and a furious scream unlike anything she had heard before tore out of her, making her throat go raw. Her swords flared and crackled with energy before she charged, a blast of magic flying from her horn.
Silent lifted his wings in front of him just in time to catch the blast, but he was not prepared for the sheer force behind it. His eyes widened, and he cried out in surprise when it sent him hurtling back through the air. The tent was uprooted and sent flying overhead, allowing Scarlet to continue her pursuit unobstructed.
“SILENT!” she howled as she chased after him, not giving him a moment to recover. She came down on him hard, and he barely caught her opening overhead slash on his wings. His eyes were wide, his hooves digging into the earth to keep himself planted. Scarlet glared down at him, hyperventilating and with tears burning in her eyes. “YOU BASTARD!”
Silent grunted and shoved her back to try and get some room to breathe, but the fire in her body made it impossible to stop herself. Scarlet charged right back in with a powerful horizontal slash that he barely managed to back away from.
She chased after him, the rest of the world fading away, save for the wretched creature before her. The creature she intended to kill. “You heartless son of a bitch! How could you?!” she continued at the top of her lungs alongside a flurry of blows. “She’s just a foal! What did she ever do to you?!”
“Dammit!” Silent hissed when one of her swords managed to put a small cut on his cheek. With a battle cry of his own, he ducked below another one of Scarlet’s assaults and leaped back while fanning his blades wide, putting a pair of sizable gashes into her legs. “Amber, support!”
Scarlet didn’t register the burning pain in her legs. The fire under her skin burned far hotter. “Why, WHY, WHY?!” she roared, dispelling her swords and unleashing another wave of magic at Silent, sending him once again flying back, this time into a tree with enough force to knock a sizeable chunk of the bark loose. Scarlet huffed and resumed her advance.
Movement, to the left.
Scarlet’s horn flared into life just in time to catch the oncoming orange-furred Nightblade that had been about to impale her in the side. She hauled the squirming pegasus in front of her, glaring into her eyes. “Get out of my way!”
The mare didn’t even have a chance to scream before Scarlet’s swords rematerialized and scissored her head off. She discarded the corpse to one side, seeing Silent picking himself back up from the tree with a hoof held up to his chest. He took a breath and looked up at her, his eyes only briefly registering the corpse of his companion.
Scarlet lunged at him, another miserable wail echoing out of her. She brought her swords against Silent’s defenses in a powerful swing, making him stumble.
She pursued him relentlessly, striking over and over with enough force to knock him off balance and force him into a retreat. “Damn you!” she shrieked with every strike, her voice cracking and breaking more and more. “Damn you, damn you, damn you, DAMN YOU, DAMN YOU!”
Silent finally ducked past one of her swings and shot past her, raking his left wingblade along her barrel and leaving a large gash in it. She growled through clenched teeth before spinning around to face him, firing off a shot from her horn. It glanced off of his flank, breaking his flight and sending him rolling to the ground.
Panting heavily, Scarlet advanced, her swords sparking dangerously. Silent looked up at her from his position on the ground, his eyes wide with an emotion Scarlet had never seen in him before.
Fear.
He was afraid of her. As well he should be.
Scarlet brought her blades over her head for a heavy downswing. Silent seemed to get his composure back at that moment, one of his wingblades snapping out and slicing across Scarlet’s chest. It was a shallow cut, but under any normal circumstances would have been enough to force her to back off.
Not this time.
She brought her swords down on him, his other blade only just lifting in time to catch the first one mere inches from carving into his skull. The second one bit into his shoulder, though his armor prevented it from digging in any more than an inch. He hissed in pain through clenched teeth, shaking from the strain.
Scarlet leaned down until her nose was right up against his, pressing down harder with her swords and forcing him into the earth. “I’ll kill you…” she snarled before rearing up and blasting him point-blank with a burst of raw, concussive force. Silent cried out as he was sent hurling through the dirt, creating a trench as soil and stone flew all around him.
Scarlet dispelled her swords and focused on her horn, gathering as much energy as she could. A purple sphere began to form, its shape distorting and rippling as she pumped more and more power into it. Even when her skull began to burn, and her eyes bulged in her skull from the strain, she kept charging. She didn’t plan on letting there be anything left.
Silent groaned in pain from his position in the dirt, half-buried as he was by loose stone and soil. He forced himself to sit up on his haunches, his body shaking. He shook his head as if to clear away a daze before looking up at Scarlet. His eyes widened, and she could see her spell reflected in his eyes.
“DIE!” she roared before unleashing the spell. The kickback was enough to send her skidding back several feet, and the sound was deafening.
Then the explosion came. Scarlet cried out when the intense winds it kicked up were enough to send her sailing back through the air a solid fifteen feet before she crashed into the ground, rolling and sliding an additional ten feet before finally coming to a stop. The air fled from her lungs, leaving her gasping desperately for breath. She didn’t dare stay down, though and forced herself to rise in spite of her pain. Her eyes focused on the result of her work.
Where Silent had been was now a large flaming crater, almost fifteen feet wide. A purple inferno blazed within, sending a plume of smoke rising into the air like a signal fire. Scarlet stared at it for several seconds, waiting for the flames to die away. She wanted to see the body. She needed to see the body.
But as the flames began to lessen, so too did the pillar of smoke begin to grow thin. Scarlet’s eyes widened, her heart pounding with fury when she spotted the silhouette of a pegasus hovering within.
Silent was alive.
His armor had been discarded in a hurry, and several injuries now covered his body, including an enormous and very ugly series of burns along his underbelly. His wing flaps were weak and somewhat out of sync, a visual display of his waning strength. His hooves were curled over his abdomen, his face twisted into an agonized grimace.
Scarlet snarled, moving to advance. “You fucking coward!” she roared, her swords appearing at her sides again, ready to carve him into pieces. It didn’t matter to her that they were flickering, now, she still had enough fight in her to see this through. “GET DOWN HERE!”
Silent winced, drifting back a few inches in the air. His eyes danced frantically back and forth between Scarlet, the corpse of his comrade, and the campsite not far away. After several seconds of indecision, Silent took a deep breath. Then, with no other warning, he turned and flew away, heading for the east.
He was running. Scarlet could barely believe it. The assassin was actually running away from her. But more than that, he was running from his punishment.
With white-hot rage flooding her veins, Scarlet dispelled her swords, trying to charge another artillery blast to incinerate him once and for all. “DON’T YOU DARE RUN AWAY FROM ME!” she cried after him, though the strength had long since left her broken voice.
Sadly, no matter how hard she tried to pour energy into the spell, she just did not have enough power left to form one. Sparks flew free from her horn’s tip, sending spikes of pain through her skull and forcing her to end it. Swearing, she watched as her enemy made good on his escape. In but a few moments, Silent was little more than a rapidly fading silhouette against the night sky, before disappearing altogether.
Scarlet stared after him, sending one last wordless shout after him into the void before everything finally fell still. For what felt like an eternity, she remained perfectly motionless, save for her heavy, exhausted gasps. A soft breeze washed over her, sending her disheveled mane drifting lazily through the air.
And then, with the adrenaline beginning to wear off, she slumped to her haunches, her eyes screwing themselves shut. Tears ran down her cheeks, her entire body shook, and her chest convulsed as anguished sobs and wails forced themselves past her lips. She reached her hooves up to cover her face and her eyes, hoping that maybe, just maybe, she could wipe away the horrible image that was starting to fill her mind.
But she couldn’t do it. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t force herself to think of anything but the sight of Primrose’s bloodied corpse on the ground.
She’d failed…
“Scarlet!” Lens’ voice echoed from the campsite some ways away, desperate.
Scarlet’s hooves slowly dropped from her face, all of the energy seeping out of her as her wounds started to catch up to her. Not that she cared all that much, just then...
“Scarlet, I need you!”
Primrose had needed her. But just like it had been with Crystal, when it really mattered, Scarlet had been unable to do anything to save her. Her one chance to make up for her past mistakes was gone, now… she’d failed.
“Scarlet, PLEASE!”
She was starting to feel tired… and she didn’t want to go any farther. What was even the point? Maybe she should just lay down and get some rest? Yes… rest. Rest forever. That sounded nice…
“Scarlet, she’s alive, but she won’t last much longer! HELP ME!”
That finally snapped Scarlet out of her miserable stupor. Her eyes snapped open, adrenaline flooding her veins once again. Primrose was alive? But how? She had been stabbed through the gut and chest! There had been so much blood...
Scarlet forced any questions out of her mind. It didn’t matter how. The fact was Primrose was alive, and that meant there was still a chance to put things right. She forced herself to rise, shaking and wobbling on her hooves as she did so. Bolts of white-hot agony shot through her entire body, but she forced herself to power through it.
“Please, please, please,” she begged to whatever would listen as she sprinted back towards the camp. “Don’t let her die!”
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Oh.... shit....
Well...this chapter was extremely well-titled. The absolute just...struggling to find words here. The fact that Amber's death comprised of all of two sentences. Silent was very efficient, but he still seemed to hesitate to kill Primrose. At least for a moment. That or Scarlet was just quick. Well as far as he knows, Silent accomplished his mission. And lost several Nightblades in the process to Scarlet's magic.
9869640
Half his mission, at least.
9869647
Ah, he needed to recover the lamp, too? Forgot about that.
Well… hell hath no fury like a mother. And, aside from not wanting to hurt his former friend, we learned why Silent really didn't want to face scarlet in a serious fight. And now I'm pretty sure that there's close to zero chance for Silent and Scarlet to salvage their friendship. Not after that.
I honestly thought Prim was dead until the end there. While I'm glad she's still alive, I'm afraid this is going to reveal some stuff about her that Scarlet may not like.
9869862
If you mean how thoroughly she bested him in this chapter, then that's not it at all. It's pretty much exclusively because he didn't want to harm Scarlet. Under any other circumstance, she would have been heavily outclassed by him in a straight fight, as has been displayed both of the previous times they have fought. In this instance, Scarlet's unbridled rage and mama bear instincts are what drove her to push him so hard, mostly due to her ignoring her own injuries and pushing a relentless offensive that he had not been prepared for.
9870129
Yea, honestly, that makes more sense.
I almost feel bad for Silent. He's lost his team, and what feels like one of his only real friends. I just hope that when everything is done, we understand why he's so hellbent on putting Prim into the ground. Not saying that Scarlet should forgive him, but I just hope we, as readers, learn why he's going to such great lengths.
a fast death is to good for the ass hat i am thinking nice and slow vary vary slow keep him alive for weeks wishing he was dead.
a grate chapter with a amazing amount of wow factor.
That... escalated quickly,
Holy shit she's pissed, Amber was barely even an annoyance.
Well... Mama Bear has strike her claws and another random solider of Silent we won't get to know much about has died.
Hopefully Prim has survived
when Silent stabbed Prim, I jumped.
He is pathetic...
This isn't the first time he has posed for heavy metal album covers before a kill but man is that not just pathetic? What kind of assassin waits for their target to wake up and scream? What is the point of all this stealth if you're not going to be stealthy?
I'd Imagine it's something like this
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10466393
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