The Burden of Hope

by Mykola

Chapter 11: Battle

The metal cellar door clanged, and a hoof-sized dent bulged from the ground. A second passed, before the cellar door was knocked off of its hinges and was sent flying several metres before it struck the burnt wooden floor, leaving a large bruise in. After a moment a figure rose from the depths of the cellar that pushed through the smoke and smothered the flames with his step, pulling up his utilitarian rebreather up over his muzzle.as he took in a deep breath.

Soon enough three other figures emerged from the cellar, the pegasus fanned her wings over the blue flames and extinguished flames from the scene immediately and the smoke vacates. Skyline approached Defender’s side and pulled on her own rebreather as she looked up to the bladed flower.

“Thanks for clearing the smoke,” Defender huffed, “helped me to focus my anger to a more appropriate source.”

“Whatever this is,” Skyline added, “it’s making the skies a bit of a challenge.”

“It dares challenge us in our own domain? It dares to set our nation afright, and to slaughter those that seek a dream?!” Defender roared, “No longer! The Ministers want their answer? How ‘bout we give them a show and pull out that weed!”

“You mean--”

“Yeah, I do!” Defender responded, “Skyline, Snowstorm: get to Project Valkyrie! Time to prove that Grad will not budge a micrometre!”

The pegasus and the griffon immediately spread their wings and took off from the scene as they shot off together through the night’s sky. Defender stood still and Light walked beside him, she looked up into the dark sky and stared at the bladed flower in the sky. The unicorn pulled on her own rebreather and her eyes lightened with a brilliant white light, offering nearly as bright as the spire was.

The two stood proud while they watched a blue light spark within the storm once more, expecting it to strike toward them… but instead the Dark struck a target elsewhere. Defender’s wondered why it would do this, but he was reminded to his task at the moment: protect the civilians who hid in the cellar below.

Defender was expecting the hordes. And he knew they would come.

“Starting to feel like old times.” Light sighed.

“Taking a walk down memory lane, are we?” Defender responded, “Best not to forget those times, because that’s what makes us vulnerable.”

“I was just hoping that we would be able to get a bit of a breather.”

“We will… only after we beat it out of the hollow-headed freaks that forgot how we’ve pressed them like grapes in the winery of our victory.”

“You really do have the oddest ways of putting things.”

“I’m just too clever for my own good…” Defender responded, “we’re holding the line here until we can ensure that those below will be safe. Not. One. Step. Back.”

“Aye, Lord General.”

---

The streets seemed to be fogging up the closer that Void got to the centre of this… what could he call it? Invasion. His hooves wrestled anxiously as he pulled up the rebreather over his muzzle and tightened the filter that was already attached. He couldn’t take any chances because if this fog was the ‘dark mist’ that Silver and Nyaruguru had mentioned, then it was certain that his mind would start to degrade.

Void had been continuing through the streets with the hope that if he could make it through, he would be able to reunite with other guardsmen. But the further and further he got toward some hastily placed objective, the more lost and confused he got. Ever since he pressed on from where the ‘lightning’ had claimed the team he assigned himself to, he hasn’t seen a single body. The shouting had muffled and left him with an eerie quiet that he couldn’t quite place, but it felt all too familiar to the moments before he was attacked by the timberwolves beyond the Wall.

Too familiar.

Void immediately stopped, and threw his head in whatever direction he possibly could. He couldn’t see a thing while he walked backwards. Ten sets of eyes appeared through the dark fog, piercing the black veil that seemed to be consuming Void at an alarming rate. His heart raced as his throat dried from the tension, these offending gazes nearly set the new light into a panic. Void nonetheless held his ground and challenged the creatures he couldn’t make out, knowing it would only take a moment before they pounced.

The creatures flashed their wings and within a second four of the creatures lunged at the exposed pony. Void fell to the ground in a desperate attempt to avoid the claws that were certainly swiping at him… but no luck. Some daggers struck into his side and the stallion roared in pain. He was immediately sent airborn--hitting a brick wall--Void felt something move out of place in his chest and the air was knocked out of him as he rolled to the floor with a thud. Weakly, the unicorn attempted to make a stand with a pain surged through his chest.

“Y-yeah…” Void whispered to himself, “that hurt!”

Claws wrapped around his throat and he was slammed into the wall again. The eyes of the creature stared past him it seemed, tightening its grasp. Void’s hooves battered uselessly against the scaley armour the beast boasted, as the eyes drew closer and closer to him and the sharp eagle’s beak exposed itself.

A plan for escaping this predicament immediately formulated in Void’s frenzied mind. It wasn’t savoury by any means, but it would at least grant him another few precious seconds of this life he had been given. Summoning what strength he could, Void reared his head back before he thrust it toward the dark eagle’s head. Impact was positive as eventually his head came to a stop, but it didn’t make a grisly crushing sound… rather, it sounded like a knife cutting through ripe fruit.

The eyes of his captor darkened as the grasp around his throat loosened, and the two slid down to the snowy ground. Void’s head sunk down with the eagles, before he realised what had happened. Pulling back with what strength he could muster, he pulled his horn free from the head of the shadow that now appeared to disintegrate in front of him. Void looked up challengingly to the nine eyes that remained as he recognised that their hatred seemed to intensify.

Void stumbled.

As he stood in defiance against the dark eagles that had swooped upon him, he realised that they were pausing for far too long. Had he really intimidated them with that display, when they outnumbered him nine to one? No… there was definitely something more to this than just intimidation. They wanted him, dead? Pacified? Whatever it was, they were waiting intentionally for something.

He couldn’t stand still, he needed to act.

Void Walker drew in a deep breath as he tried to relax himself and ignore his pain, with no result. He blinked with the one eye he could, before he made his own all but certain suicide charge. The creatures didn’t react when Void roared, mustering the strength that a yak could respect… that he hoped one could respect. He leapt up with his weak legs, he felt a punctuating energy surround him as it did before, and the dark and light seemed to blend and falter.

Striking one of the creatures with his own body, Void stretched out his legs and the field of energy that surrounded him seemed to expand and collapse on itself. It fanned out like a detonation as greyish-purple power lashed out with the sound of a thousand cracking whips. The dark eagles who could escape did, but those that were too close seemed to evaporate with the energy that broke them to pieces. The brick walls that caged the stallion in were torn apart, bricks seemed to float aimlessly and effortlessly through the air.

How…? A hunger gnawed within Void’s bosom following this display of power, as if it demanded more. The whispers filled his hearing and the stallion tried to shake them loose, soon enough he recognised the remaining four shapes circle above him like vultures to a dying horse. Void watched them far out of his reach, his panting and shortness of breath transformed into a choking.

Falling to his knees, Void shook as he attempted to muster the strength that he could stand.

A shouting… not unlike the first time soon replaced that fear. Several winged shapes flew overhead, they seemed to battle with the dark eagles above. One shape slipped below the conflict and attempted to help Void to his hooves.

“You’re going to need to stop getting yourself into trouble,” the familiar voice chuckled, “we can’t keep meeting up like this!”

“S-Skyrunner?” Void choked, grabbing his side with definitive pain. The pegasus immediately responded and helped him to a wall to support himself on. Soon enough, the three others joined her.

“Shh!” Skyrunner hushed, “You look no better than when we first sent you off!”

“Is that…” First Flight asked as he started to draw his own conclusions, before erupting in laughter: “Did you shove your horn into the head of one of these monsters?”

“T-thought it’d be a good idea…” Void quivered with a smile, “seemed to work for some other ponies…”

“We can laugh later!” Skyrunner interrupted as she looked at Void’s side, “No… this is no good at all. We need to get you to a medic ASAP!”

“N-no…” Void responded, staring into Skyrunner’s panicked eyes.

“You’re in a delirium! You are in no condition to continue this battle… ‘specially against whatever the Darkness this thing is.” Skyrunner responded, “Look, I know you want to help, but this is far too out of your league at the moment!”

“It’s here for me!”

There was a deafening silence.

“If that’s true…” Skyrunner responded, “then there is all the more reason to send you away! Defender wouldn’t handle losing another life--”

“With all due respect, your ‘majesty…” First Flight interrupted, “if he’d be willing to continue this fight, you can bet your rations that I’ll carry him.”

“First--”

“You remember my story as well as I do…” First Flight looked down to Void with an encouraging smile, “there was this foolishly brave pegasus who charged into a battle he wasn’t prepared for. It shattered his wing in several spots, but he figured that he had come so far, why not finish the fight? So with a beyond injured wing he continued the flight, only holding on enough to glide back to safety… when Defender saw him, he asked a question this pegasus would never forget: ‘What was that? Your first flight?”

Void listened intently to the pegasus.

He was willing to do what was necessary.

“If anypony is willing to chase after the future, they’ll be beat in at some point… but it’s that willingness to continue that fight that determines whether their worth their metal, ma’am.” First Flight concluded.

Skyrunner stood for a moment of consideration, but only for a moment.

“Fine,” she sighed, “you’ve got me there. But we’re going to need a plan, and if we’re going to account for a wounded groundwalker… that’s going to complicate matters.”

“That storm…” Void offered, “it’s like an eye… we need to blind it.”

“Blind it? We can certainly do that…” Skyrunner wondered aloud, “alright! First Flight: you carry our friend here. New light: do whatever you did to those eagles, and hopefully that’s enough to wound that abomination enough to give us room to chase it out!”

---

Bursts of light flashed through the clouding darkness.

Hundreds of eagles swarmed around Defender and Light, attempting to viciously rip the two ponies to pieces. But the resistance the Lord General and Prosecutor offered were legendary. They had seen several fronts against the Dark together: whether it was decimating armies of timberwolves on the plains, or challenging the bears of the north to close quarters combat, the symbols of might and light had always persevered.

As Light blinded the creatures with the rapid flashes of the light she manipulated, Defender always followed up by breaking the grounded beasts into pieces. They had only been fighting for all but five minutes, but their seamless cooperation had already claimed over four dozen of the dark eagles that attempted to swarm them, so much so that the eagle’s natural self-preserving fear had replaced the instinct to murder that they had been instilled with by the force they swore alligence to.

Defender knew all too well how dangerous these creatures were, but they were also the easiest to frighten.

“Seems just like old times!” Defender roared over slamming one of the blinded eagles to the ground, he felt it shatter like precious glass.

“You miss those times?” Light called out, having successfully managed to blind another eagle.

“The fear of it all? Nah!” Defender responded as he took the now-blinded eagle and threw it into one of the concrete walls, “The pleasure of setting them to scatter? Absolutely!”

“I think you are getting slower, Lord General!” Light responded, rolling out of the way of a diving hawk. It crashed to the floor before she offered a deft kick to the side of the exposed creature.

“Slower?!” Defender roared, stomping on the head of the dark eagle, “Why, I’d never!”

“Just an observation!”

“And a mighty bad one at that!”

Defender stopped and looked up into the night sky toward the bladed flower that still lingered over the district. He had prayed that Project Valkyrie would have been ready at that moment, something that he was all but certain would’ve set the scales of this battle proper… and within that moment he got his answer. Several whale-like shapes seemed to materialise on the horizon, followed by dozens of v-shaped things that set upon the bladed flower.

The Lord General smiled, the swirling storm of eagles seemed to be caught in a panic relenting on their attack on both Defender and Light and tore off to the shapes that now intruded the space they hoped to dominate.

Project Valkyrie.

Bright beams of lights suddenly flashed from the bases of these aircraft: blimps and fixed-winged planes cutting through the dark fog that leaked from the heart of the bladed flower, suddenly the dark night’s sky was sent in a flurry. The armoured blimps vibrated and soon enough, the sound of war trumpets ringed across what was the entire cityscape of Grad. Eagles caught in the blasts of light and sound were sent in an immediate craze, either losing all sense of navigation or throwing themselves at their targets.

The blimps started a formation around the storm, the lights that they bore concentrated on the centre of the intrusion. Hundreds of more shapes broke free from the flower, swirling like angered bats whose cave had been attacked. Defender smiled underneath his rebreather with the same satisfaction a hunter would have.

“Wasn’t fighting slower…” Defender continued, “I was just stalling for this!”

Author's Note:

Second to last, thank you for reading this far! I truly appreciate it!