Werewolves of Knicknik

by Atuhor Name

CH. 32 Pomology Pear

Pomology Pear

You couldn’t assign an emotion to the thousand yard stare of Pomology Pear the prime ghoul. There was no anger there, no pity, no happiness, her gaze was empty, and it saw right through you in a calculating way that told you there was something behind you, beyond you. And the second you did look behind you, she would claw out your throat.

That wasn’t even counting the deformed maw of the lichenthrope thrall she was poking her head out of. These thralls were no longer simply badly made spells in Twilight’s view, they were genuinely some sort of offshoot lineage of spells that had stabilized in this horrid state. They didn’t have a consistent number of heads, or limbs, or tails, but whatever number they ended up with they knew exactly how to use them perfectly. They were so well put together that they could pull off an intimidating strut.

It was then that Twilight realized that the eight thralls behind Pomo weren’t hollow anymore, they had those strange “guards” in them, which were themselves hollow. But this was not a good sign for Twilight’s group. She could already tell that these monsters were a far cry from the paper thin and limited things they had been fighting so far.

As a test Twilight slung a clump of lichen at Pomo, who effortlessly slapped it out of the air, her extra limbs allowing her to not even break stride. She didn’t even flinch, but her unfocused eyes met with Twilight’s. The seemingly fluid and boneless extra limbs starting to weave about like snakes.

After they reached a certain point away from each other the group of monsters stopped. Twilight’s group wouldn’t move, they were dug in here and here is where they would stay.

They stared at each other. Twilight had already mentally put the defensive line out of action, they could fire as much as they’d like into this battle but she already knew this was beyond them. It was Twilight, Naudia, and nine malformed monsters honed to a fighting edge with magic stolen from her skills in combat.

Oddly enough for Twilight they had been fighting so long there was a kind of clarity in her mind. She had started off this fight far too angry, and over the course of time that had cooled off to a dispassionate hatred. She WOULD win this fight, and the next one, and however many fights she needed to, to ensure that the nerteln on the other side of the field died.

As they crossed an invisible line Twilight knew that this was the time to start pelting them with ranged attacks. But Naudia wasn’t willing to wait.

With a feral insectoid snarl Naudia charged after the abominations. Twilight felt herself pulled along behind Naudia, she couldn’t just let her face these new monsters alone.

The first blows of the battle were struck by Naudia, who Twilight realized had not fully grasped onto the situation. Twilight couldn’t see her face but it was clear that she wasn’t thinking this through. The attached bacteria were effortlessly sliced off and these monsters had plenty of energy to spare.

Naudia for her part only got away being hit 3 times by their first barrage of attacks, a lucky thing too. Two of the three lumps of lichen were part of a group of weaker attacks meant to all hit at once. Unfortunately the third attack was a water shield bash from Pomo and that left her off balance, an easy target for follow ups.

This all happened extremely quickly and it was only as more attacks were sailing at Naudia did Twilight finally make it into the battle. Nearly every one of the attacks hit Naudia, Twilight for her part sliced off one or two of the hanging lichen infections as she blasted past to engage Pomo in melee. She couldn’t use any of her big abilities yet, those parts of her were too tired. So she was forced to try and be the shield for Naudia physically.

Twilight traded blows with Pomo, doing her best to dodge incoming attacks from the other thralls and Pomo’s extra arms. For her this was a brutal fight as the group she was fighting seemed to be exceptionally well coordinated. They weren’t as strong as her or Naudia, but the gap had closed significantly, and there were nine of them.

Out of the corner of her eye she spotted Naudia finally pass her to come into the battle, she had cooldowns to spare. The horde of bacteria that she had build up latched onto the thralls and started to pulse and quiver. Inside of the bacteria you could see strange acorn shaped things swimming about.

The bacteria suddenly opened up releasing a horde of acorn shaped hoof sized microbes. Swarms of them, far more than should have fit inside the bacteria they were in. They were buzzing around like flies snapping at the enemy group with their acorn stem-like mouths.

Twilight recognized them as being based off of didinium, their mouths were called a cytostome, that little acorn stem on the front. The little things were extremely fast and hard to keep track of under a microscope because of their two rings of pectinelles. And they were known to eat things many times larger than themselves.

All of these traits were demonstrated here as they moved almost too fast to hit, nipping and snapping away chunks of lichen shielding, their bacterial insides starting to grow with a green blob of snipped off lichen. The thralls were so distracted that Twilight managed to get in some very cheap shots. The thralls were also distracted from the bacteria that had spawned the didinium slinking away back to Naudia almost entirely unopposed in the chaos.

This sort of attack would have killed most of the “normal” weak thralls several times over by this point. These new ones had none of their frailty, Twilight noted that Pomo in particular only seemed annoyed by all this. You could turn your head away from one only to find that when you turned back the snipped off piece of lichen was already growing back.

Suddenly the oversized bacteria pulled back, and Twilight felt the pressure of combat back on her again as she was being attacked from multiple sides as the thralls mechanically switched back to her on losing their distracting bug-like targets. Even while she was being savaged by these monsters the gears in her head were turning, trying to find the time in between getting beaten down as to what these monsters were and how they thought.

Things abruptly let up once again as Naudia came back into the fight, it turned out those biting ciliates were only one part of an attack from her. Now Naudia was flanked by several bacterial wolves(it was difficult for Twilight to count while Pomo was trying to tear her throat out, but it was a least four) that had suspiciously green lumps inside what could be called their stomachs.

Once again the thralls started mechanically attacking what was in front of them. They seemingly effortlessly pulled off attacks that Twilight had done, but there was no thought behind it, no technique. They even tried attacks Twilight had accidentally messed up, or tried attacks that didn’t make sense to use right now. It seemed like the nerteln behind all this had reached some sort of limit as to how fast he could learn how to fight.

The problem with all this was that there were nine of these monsters and they were far closer in terms of how tough they were to Twilight and Naudia than the thralls previously. Probably even on par with them, there wasn’t really time to check when she was dodging a cavitation spike of water at her eye.

That was one thing they were good at, Twilight thought as another attack attempted to go after her throat. They were good at making shots at what WOULD have been a vulnerable point on a pony, and out of reflex she acted like it was. But it was just a shield, it looked alive, and it bled, but Twilight didn’t need her shield’s throat anymore than she needed it’s eyes.

The one constant throughout this was Pomology Pear’s smile, her expression never changed so much as a muscle, as if she never needed to blink, as if she never needed to breathe.

-------------------

From an outside perspective Twilight and Naudia’s fight with the monsters was almost too fast to follow. Chunks and shreds of that shielding were being torn off from places that would have been fatal to a living body. The things that were flying off were basically just chunks of plants and bacteria covered in blue food coloring.

Expat Eclipse noted something though, Twilight was learning how to use these shields a lot better than the thralls were. The thralls kept going after her throat, her eyes, vital points like that, things that a pony needed to protect. And with every pass Twilight was taking advantage of that. Even from here Eclipse could see the nasty bite on the back of her neck closing up already, healing over like it was never even there in the first place. He also noticed the rat draping itself over the back of her neck underneath the shield. He wasn’t sure what that was for.

In contrast Twilight was using one of the werewolves clamping down on her throat to get in some devastating hits in.

“Oh dear.” Expat said out loud as Twilight’s claws finally pierced through the shield of the lichenthrope. The ghoul inside shattered like glass, his lichen shield falling apart where he stood.

There was no place for Eclipse in this brawl, and none of the other ponies here had the skill to lob an attack into the brawl without hitting Twilight, Naudia or one of the harassing bacteria Naudia was sending in.

-------------------

While Twilight was adapting to this new fighting style masterfully Naudia was having a lot of trouble with it. She was traditionally trained to fight, the kinds of fighting where if something clamped down onto your neck it was over.

And she had fought lots of things that would clamp down on your neck, or your leg, or could bite down on her entire barrel. So her fighting style meant that she was going through her bacteria friends way faster than she normally would have. It wasn’t one sided, they were injuring these monsters, but Naudia was coming out behind in these vicious exchanges, and it didn’t help she was outnumbered four to one.

It was very probable that she was doing just as much damage as Twilight was. The way the bacteria bit back when they were bit was surprisingly effective. Against any kind of normal enemy that level of damage inside their mouth would put them out of commission very quickly.

There was a juicy crunch as the lichen making up the lichenthrope’s mouth was infected, it’s watery teeth cracked. And while the wolf was crushing the bacteria in it’s mouth Naudia could generally get in some nasty attacks in on it’s head. She was more than able to avoid the amateurish swipes of it’s claws.

The problem was that she was relying on hitting these vital areas to try and wear her opponents down, precise strikes and all that. She was beginning to realize that wasn’t effective in anything but the short term, especially not when they could just rotate out the worst damaged among them. It’s just that she was realizing this too late.

Naudia tried to focus even harder to make up for her depleted number of bacteria, to squeeze every ounce of skill she’d gained fighting monsters for any edge she could get.

She dodged another attempt to get at her throat and punished the ghoul with a bacteria infection at the back of his neck. But that was a feint, they were coordinating, and she stepped directly in line to catch a lichen projectile from the one they’d switched out to heal.

Even with all her skills she was used to fighting as a group, in a formation with other changelings. Her frontline position as the strongest generally meant she was fighting a bit more alone than the rest of the changelings, but four on one was well beyond her capabilities to control this battle, even with the strength disparity between her and these ghouls.

She was just barely holding her own when the fourth ghoul came back into the fight, no trace of the injuries she had made to it’s face. It wasn’t fresh, they couldn’t fight forever and it wasn’t rested, but it’s shields were fully intact, even an arm that was dangling before was grown back.

The ghoul went directly for one of Naudia’s legs while she was looking away and for the first time Naudia felt pain on her body as the watery teeth pierced through her bacterial shield.

-------------------

The First Administrator was distracted, he kept glancing up at the clock on the wall.

“Sir?”

The clock mocked him, hanging there on the wall and in the back of his mind like a sword.

“Umm Sir?”

He honestly wasn’t sure if the clock wasn’t actually mocking him, Vatermorder artifacts were like that, powerful enough to have a life of their own.

“What?”

The aide flinched back feeling the gaze of the FARVP snap back at him from all directions.

“Princess Naudia was injured in the fight.”

His attention bored into the display monitor to see Twilight trying to fight back at the minions of the nerteln. There were only seven left but she clearly wasn’t doing that well. And then he felt his gaze being pulled back to the clock.

-------------------

Eclipse just had to try something, these weapons he knew could target things, so he was going to try and not target Twilight. There really wasn’t anything left for him to actually do or try. He started letting loose blasts into the edges of the fight to distract the monsters or shave off parts of their lichen fur.

Naudia was down and Twilight was not doing well against those seven remaining monsters.

And then something changed about the fight. It took him a long while to actually notice it but Twilight seemed to be doing better, much better, dramatically better.

She started dodging attacks like she could read minds. As if this entire fight was planned out beforehand and she had already won.

Renewed with confidence Eclipse shouted:

“Fire! Take those monsters down!”

And they did fire, and he was right, their weapons couldn’t damage Twilight.

-------------------

The First Administrator was standing still, an island of seething angry stillness in a sea of panicked chaos. Staring, raging up at that clock.

“Sir!” A panicked aide almost seemed on the verge to try and touch the First Administrator.

“WHAT?”

“Twilight Sparkle has entered into a dea-, er a martial trance!”

The First Administrator’s head moved slowly to turn to see for himself, his empty eyes met the screen.

“FFFFFF-”

-------------------

Naudia was in awe, she had never seen fighting skill on this level in her entire lifetime. She had never HEARD of martial skill like this. People didn’t even tell tall tales of themselves on this level. Twilight Sparkle was fighting seven on one, and her enemies were learning from her, actively, every exchange was more precise, more perfect than the last.

Twilight could see through these monsters like she was fighting a training dummy, her focus set, they would attack and she would respond perfectly. They would learn from her and copy her and once again Twilight would respond even more perfectly once more.

There could be no greater peak of martial ferocity than this. This perfect form tore at Naudia's heart... Because it wasn't enough.

Twilight pulled ahead of the ghouls, the gap between them was growing larger and larger. One shattered, and then another. It was only five on one now. The attacks thrown in by the ponies from behind their barriers didn’t help nearly as much as they had against the thralls.

But it just wasn’t enough, even sprinting ahead in skill like she was now Twilight could not keep this up forever. Even if the ghouls had stayed like they were at the start of the fight this wouldn’t have been enough.

Twilight was grazed by an attack from Pomo and it was positioned directly where another attack was just barely healing up. As Twilight just barely dodged that attack there came another, three even pincering in on where she had dodged to. She defeated one, even a second, but the third caught her directly.

Twilight pivoted on her right hoof to dodge an attack and Naudia’s heart stopped in her chest.

-------------------

Twilight lay on the ground disoriented, staring up at the sky.

It took her the briefest second to figure out what had happened.

Her artificial leg couldn’t take the maneuvering she had done and had snapped at the knee.

She could see Pomo’s face come into view above her. Doctor Willow felt like the type who would want to savor this moment. Rub things in.

Turning her head she saw him approach horn glowing with magic.

“I should thank you, that little stunt you pulled there has taught my minions quite a bit.” He said. “Should I keep you though, that’s the question.”

Entirely unfazed by the cacophony of fire coming from the ponies behind the barricades now his ghouls blocked every shot effortlessly. They were of no consequence on this battlefield anymore.

“You look like a mare who can appreciate prowess in magic.” Willow seemed to be on his own little tangent in his head, like there were conversations with other ponies happening somewhere else. “Yes the spells I’ve been working on should get me a doctorate, you should appreciate that Twilight, even a seat on the medical board.”

His eyes finally met hers.

“STILL NOT IMPRESSED ARE WE?!” He screeched at her, horn flaring. “WELL HOW ABOUT NOW?”

The shattered pieces of the ghouls started to glow that sickly brown-green color and re-assembled themselves into those ghoul guards, mismatched pieces forming together to fill out the cohort. Immediately they started summoning in their lichenthrope armor.

Those guards were back at full power, Twilight could tell just by looking at them, despite their mismatched jigsaw pottery look they were whole again where it counted for combat.

She didn’t have time to think about that much though because a pillar of bright red light shot up from inside the group of ponies. It was clearly the glyph reaching full power.

Everypony’s attention was instantly drawn to the glyph, even the ghouls and their unfocused stares couldn’t look away from it.

There was a slow commotion growing as ponies started to notice something on the horizon.

A moon was rising, huge, alien, the crystalline moon rose over the horizon and into the sky like an omen. And then the light of another crested the northern horizon then again in the south and the east. Each alien moon loomed huge in the sky.

As Twilight looked upwards to where the moons were going she could feel a pit of dread forming in her stomach. The moons were rising towards the point in the sky where the glyph was pointing.

As they came closer to that dim red point Twilight was worried that they would crash against each other. But when the first alien crystalline moon approached that point it began to stretch and warp as if it was being forcibly pulled into some deep pit.

The entire moon vanished into that single red point of light.

And so did the other three unknown moons, vanishing without so much as a trace into the endlessly hungering darkness that glowed red around the edges.

All who witnessed it could only watch in dread for what could come next.

Then the sky tore open.

-------------------

Celestia walked out onto a balcony, her chariot wheelchair making no sound as it’s perfectly oiled wheels carried her healing back legs behind her.

Something was going on, the sun… felt strange to her, like there was a delay that wasn’t there before. This feeling had been following her around for a while time now, she couldn’t quite figure out when she had picked up on it though. It was like she was seeing the sun as it was a little while ago, not just because the sunlet was orbiting Equestria, but as if the sun itself was lagging behind where she wanted it to move even moreso than it used to.

Celestia honestly couldn’t recall a time when she wasn’t used to moving around the sun, only that there had been one in the far distant past.

There, on the horizon, thin red line, it seemed to go up, and up, forever, it terminated in a single black point wreathed in red as if something had burned a hole in the sky. As if the sky was slowly being pulled into a hole.

By the time the moon rose she had woken Luna up.

“Is that- did you-?” Celestia could barely find words at the crystalline moon rising above the horizon.

“Nay, I feel nothing from this alien moon sister.” Said the changeling queen.

They watched in horror as the four moons fell into that point of emptiness. And then the sky tore open.

A great rend in the sky, terrible in it’s depths, immense, it stretched from horizon to horizon. It made no sound, but Celestia could feel a drop in her stomach just looking at it.

The edges of the chaotic portal burned as if reality itself had been set alight. Inside the great portal there was only metallic fractal chaos. It looked almost familiar, like she had seen it before.

Looking up at the machine reflection of mountain Canterlot was perched on she realized this was some reflection of Equestria. A terrible machine barrens that stretched from the mirror Canterlot across the entire sky.

She felt that if she stared up at the mirror Canterlot for long enough she would see some terrible reflection of herself there looking back at her unblinking.

She began to see the things, too small to be made out at this distance, but there were easily hundreds of thousands of them, little dots crossing over from the other side of the portal over Equestria.

Celestia stared up utterly speechless at the spellwork above her. There were no words in the face of it.