Meta Gamer in Equestria: Champion's Folly

by reflective vagrant

Of Hunters and Prey. (Pain, Part 2)

The first few days were fruitless in a way, but it did let us narrow down the search to the upper areas of the Canterlot mountain.

The alicorn princesses, Luna and Twilight, could be seen in the skies alongside pegasi, searching the area from above.

Meanwhile, ground troops combed the outskirts of the city, having it be the one area left on the mountain not searched besides Canterlot itself.

Tensions were clearly getting high from the lack of results. After arguing with one of the guards, I went out on my own to sit on a rock well outside earshot of the city and just barely visible to it.

And I sat their, doing my best to breathe in and out. I wanted to calm down, and clearly needed to for the inevitable battle, but the tension in the air just wouldn't let me.

So I just sat and kept trying.

* * *

It felt like an hour passed before anything happened, but I knew it had only been a handful of minutes. Stepping out from behind a tree along the path near where I sat, I finally saw him. I saw Dalock.

"You are a fool to break away from the search," he spoke to me from a distance just out of the range of the bulk of my spells.

Knowing that if I stood, I would surely provoke a fight, I did my best to put on a brave face. Gripping my hand on the cuffs of my scale mail, I did my best to mask a single finger scraping along the inside of the armor, as if drawing it alongside something hidden. As I did so, I faintly heard a bit of the dirt behind me shift the way I told it to.

"And you look like shit compared to when I saw you last. You lost weight? Or is that just a side effect of becoming a lich?"

His gaunt face made him look like a man that hadn't eaten in the longest time, on the brink of starvation, and yet he stood properly upright. His elvish features were barely recognizable and one ear was missing a good portion of the lobe where something had cut it off. The wound didn't look like it had any signs of healing.

He glanced briefly at the hand that held his staff, and how bony it had become, then back at me. Without any hint of wanting to entertain my banter, he shrugged off my remark and called out again.

"Are you going to get to your knees and pledge loyalty, or not? I need a new translator after I couldn't find a new familiar that knows the local language and English."

I held off answering for as long as I could, buying me a few seconds, but ultimately his gaze told me he was out of patience.

"Aren't you afraid I'd stab you in the back some day?"

He cocked his head and smirked. "No. You're far too weak, too smart and too much of a bleeding heart to do that. I have this land in the palm of my hand and you can't do anything to me permanently without killing them too. All you can do is obey. It's the only option that lets most of them live."

I gave him a suborn face. "So you know the side effects if we destroy your artifact turned phylactery and think that means you're exempt from consequence."

"My favorite play." He smirked as best he could, straining some of the dead flesh in the process. "Slavery or mutual destruction. It's not much of a choice, but it is still... Your choice."

I shook my head, trying to think when I realized I had heard that phrase before, in my home world.

"Wait..." I looked back at him. "Have you ever heard of a game called Dungeons and Dragons?"

The smirk on his face disappeared instantly. With a harsh tone, I heard his response. "No. Now make your choice already."

I didn't need to use my portent trick to tell he was lying, and I really needed to save it for a fight. But as I read his face, I started realizing I knew just who this really was. "I think you have, and I think you were plucked from earth like I was. You're that guy that regularly murder-hoboed on that D&D podcast and designed your second character after that corny TV show's villain. Weren't you kicked off after season two for almost running the game into the ground?"

His face went from serious to straight up angry. "I think it's time for you to die now."

Putting his staff forward, he called out "_Ur^o!"

Fire barely started to sputter out of the staff, but then nothing happened.

It was then he noticed Starlight standing a good distance from both of us, just within range to cast her counterspell spell, breaking her illusion of cover in the process. Her face had veins pulsing with anger as she lightly panted from the strain of her newfound prototype upcasting.

Right as that happened, I jumped up and screamed, "Now!"

All around Dalock, creatures came springing up out of the ground where Scraps had dug the tunnels for them to hide in.

Speaks with Talons and his brothers were on opposite sides, the trio ready to heal with their combined power when they fell. Princess Cadence and Princess Celestia came up to, horns ready to join Starlight in their assigned roll to counterspell him and slow his progress. Only Starlight was able to upcast and have a guaranteed counter spell to his nearly limitless pool of level five spells. While she was still working out the kinks of her prototype technique, even a chance of a counter spell working at the base level was a massive help in the fight. It would break up his momentum significantly.

Tempest, though she couldn't counterspell with her broken horn, was also there leading a group of elite soldiers in tactical formations, and Wild Storm was able to substitute for any of the griffin apprentices if they fell, as well as his own natural power as a dragon.

The guards also came in, but acted as a spread out, secondary barrier to strike at him from all sides if he tried to flee, instead of swarming him like he would have wanted them to. The Pillars of light were also on standby with their artifacts to try to smack him good if he broke the inner and outer circles.

And the apparent Alicorn, Princess Luna, came barreling down from the sky, only to become engulfed in green flames, revealing Changeling General Pharynx. My wand of lightning bolts gleamed from the spot where it was carefully wrapped around his horn attuned to the one battle ready, flying spell caster that could make use of it. A spell caster that could shoot it to just one spot on the ground where it would stop safely instead of running the risk of hitting someone behind him after it hit him, primed and ready to go.

We pulled out all the stops, and were about to let our power out full force to take him down.

Looking around at the veritable army suddenly swarming him, Dalock tipped his hood in a begrudged respect. "You came prepared. Well so did I." He tossed a pouch into the air and yanked a string coming from it. When the baggy exploded, a strong wind also came forth, stirring up the dust from the pouch into the air, covering every creature remotely near him, even some of the nearest guards surrounding us.

Immediately, I felt something off. I was physically fine, but something was off with my magic, like I was suddenly naked and alone. I couldn't feel the presence of Archimedes, or the Animus Mundi.

"A parting gift from my late familiar and his amulet's anti detection magic. Divine casters can't cast if they can't be heard by their divine catalysts. Say bye bye to your precious healing magics, my lesser half."

Author's Note:

This chapter is short, but I'm releasing it separate because it's largely setup for the next part that I want to give the care it deserves... and I find fight scenes hard to write... If I put them together, it will cause issues with flow and make me want to constrain the next part for word count guidelines. So this is just a short chapter to itself.

But since the setup is accidentally mildly similar to another story, I figured sharing a video that (from 2 min 8 seconds to 2 min 34 seconds) shows how serious Equestria is taking this threat. (though admittedly this is the BBEG vs a borderline villain/antihero in the video)

Just be warned this video is not for the faint of heart.

Comments

[Golden_Reflection]

How an artificer would work through something like this:

The portable hole/bag of holding ballista, which works to push the former into the latter and create a tiny black hole to the astral plane which should pull Dalock in and would probably get him to the point where he is constantly floating and can’t do anything, so he eventually just stops thinking.