Chapter Ten
After a few hours of climbing, avalanches, climbing, fighting half-bull, half-serpent ophiotauruses and more climbing, Gusty finally made it to the summit of the mountain, where she found a rather small cave, a perfect place for the bell to be hidden.
After she placed the artifact inside, she set up a magical barrier covering the entrance, preventing even the wind from getting in. She walked away from the cavern, hoping the location would never be revealed.
After walking a few dozen meters, she turned around, and used her unicorn powers to shatter the ground between her and the cave, and make it fall into the newborn abyss, which separated the mountain peak into two individual spires, rendering the cave inaccessible. But not from the air.
The cave could still be reached by flying over, and even though the barrier was in place, she knew it couldn't be impregnable forever, so she called on her special talent to create wildly raging everlasting winds above the rift.
"Well, you sure aren't negligent about this!" her guide noted jokingly.
"No. If the bell were to be recovered by anyone, they would grab ahold of Grogar's magic. No being should ever have that power in their hooves again."
"Right enough. Do you believe it won't come to that?"
"I'm hoping that it, along with Grogar, will be forgotten about..."
She arrived in the the village of the crystal ponies in the morning that day, and the adventure consumed a big part of the day, with them returning to the settlement late in the afternoon, when the villagers strongly discouraged her from setting off into the freezing darkness. After the coldest night of her life, Gusty said goodbye to the villagers, and embarked on the long way home, once again put up in an earth pony household.
While staying there, she actually had the time to learn about their way of life, and she came to appreciate their simple, traditional lifestyle, which was very different from the standards of her aristocratic kin, but she liked it nonetheless, and her admiration wasn't a belittling, patronizing one.
She also learned that just a few days prior, the mayors of the earth pony villages called capable, strong stallions to arms, as they were visited by curious ponies - with wings -, who asked them to come and fight with them against Grogar. The Pegasi had apparently found their way to the earth ponies too.
After she moved on, and finally neared Hornfort, she was surprised to see Cloudsdale dominating the twilight sky above the capital. As she got closer, she saw Pegasi soldiers, unicorn warriors and earth ponies bustling about around Hornfort.
The ponies, when they saw her coming, either saluted her, gave her a nod, or smiled at her, then she heard a distant voice shouting "Hail to Commander Gusty!"
Only a modest smile welcomed the hurrays and yays that encompassed her.
A good friend ran to Gusty and hugged her. "Thank goodness you're all right."
"Astral! Glad to see you're okay as well. So how did the battle go after I left the scene? Let me guess: we won?"
"You bet! We kicked the sleazebag's bally tail! After you took his bell, he couldn't fare against us, so he fled. We have him on the run, Gusty. And it's all thanks to you."
"Indeed," they heard a rusping voice. They saw a beefy Pegasus in body armor, accompanied by King Taxis. "I have been told about you, Commander Gusty."
Taxis said, "Gusty, allow me to introduce Archon Alestheus, sovereign ruler of the Pegasi."
"Your actions made it possible for us to score a victory against the tyrant." Alestheus continued. "This vicrory is a turning point in our fight."
"We now finally stand a chance. We will hunt Grogar down, if the coward doesn't come to us, and end this menace for good," Taxis solemnly announced, dauntless determination on his face.
"So Astral, what's up with all these ponies here back home?" Gusty asked, while taking a look at the busy warriors.
"Hornfort has kinda become the base of operations for the war against Grogar. The archon was kind enough to lend his troops to form a unified army to face Grogar. But they didn't want to leave Cloudsdale unguarded, so they brought it with them."
"And the earth ponies? I met them on my journey, and they said the Pegasi recruited them."
"After the battle, a Pegasus tracker squad went looking for you. They didn't find you, instead they found another pony tribe, so they invited them to join the party."
Gusty looked at a group of earth ponies, and was delighted to recognize one of them. "Hey, Broadhoof!"
"Ah, nice to see ya, ma'am!" the earth pony greeted.
"You too! I heard the earth ponies came to join the fight."
"Sure thing! We ain't have no magic like y'all or fancy tactics like 'em winged ponies, but we earth ponies are strong as a bull in matin' season, and there's a lotta us. Our strength is in our numbers and our... well, strength y'know."
Gusty looked at the earth ponies equipped with pitchforks and straightened scythes. Simple, but practical. "Great to have you around, Broadhoof. See you later," Gusty said with a wide smile. Though they shouldn't be the first line of defense..., she thought.
After finishing their 'tour' of the castle defense perimeter, Gusty voiced her worries, "Astral, I can't help but feel that the king and the archon may be too carried away by our recent victory, and think that this struggle will be won by armies and weapons."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that Grogar is still very powerful, even without his artifact, and we make a mistake if we underestimate what he's capable of. Losing his talisman caught him off-guard, that's why he retreated last time. The next time we meet him, you can bet he'll be prepared. And last time he came alone. After what happened, he surely won't be that foolish again."
"Okay... well um, thanks for cutting back on my enthusiasm and hopefulness..."
"Astral, this is serious! If we rely on brute force solely, we fall into a trap again. We need a sort of safeguard. A magical solution to a magical problem. I should convene a meeting with the Guild."
The Sorcerers' Guild gathered for their session under the bare night sky. The benches were placed in a circle. Approximately thirty unicorns gathered for the occasion, young and old alike.
After the aged leader of the Guild opened the session, Gusty stared speaking. "I asked for this meeting to discuss dealing with Grogar. Although deprived of his talisman, his power might still be unmatched, and we shouldn't be unprepared. Not to mention the beasts still out there. It's possible the armies won't be able to eliminate him. If that were to happen, we'd need magic to permanently get rid of him."
"Maybe we could turn him to stone?" asked one unicorn.
"Then we'd need to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't escape," said another. "And I wouldn't be comfortable having him around. Stone or not."
"We could banish him. Somewhere far away, where he can't cause trouble and can't escape," proposed Gusty.
"Where? To the Underworld? The Realm of Tartarus?"
"No," the old one said. "He has been there. He knows that place. That's where the Windigos resided until he released them. Should we send him back there, he may be able to make use of the inherent darkness residing there."
"Then what do you suggest?"
Gusty looked up. The starry sky always cleared her mind, and made it easy to think. But this time, simply seeing the night sky itself gave her inspiration. "The sky..."
"The sky?"
"Let the sky be the place of his exile! He can't harm anyone there. He will be locked away from the beings down here!"
"Can it be done?"
"If we can control the Sun and the Moon, we must be able to send him up there."
"She's right," the leader said. "But it would take a very advanced spell. No such spell exists, so we'll need to write it ourselves. And it will take some ti-" He was cut off by the clang of the sentry horns around the castle perimeter. The sorcerers were all astonished: it meant that enemy had been spotted approaching.
In the middle of suddenly emerging cries for occupying battle positions, getting armed and preparing for attack, Gusty ran closer to see the enemy better. She saw an entire front line just revealed on the horizon.
Grogar was stepping gracefully at the front of his own 'army': he gathered thousands of his children from across the whole country - but mostly manticores and chimeras, they were the wildest of them all - to assault that one city, the citadel of the pony resistance, Hornfort.
Ever since Gusty stole the Bewitching Bell, he tried to ask his orb for help in locating it, to reveal before him just a sensation, just a taste of his lost power, but to no avail. He knew it was intact, somewhere waiting for him to reclaim his stolen right, before it turned into his lost legacy. He also knew Gusty was the only one who knew where it lay. It seemed that he still needed to take her alive, but for completely other reasons now.
After what she did to him, he would have just snuffed him out with pleasure. He revised his earlier stance on her. He no longer wanted her feculent essence. Retrieving his former greatness would have done it for him. But for that, he needed Gusty to spill her guts. And he was going to make her do it. But he wasn't going to let her die prematurely.
The others were nothing to him. They were even less in his eyes now than before. The ponies went too far. He really didn't want to deprive his shapeshifting creations of the pleasure of eradicating the ponies' race themselves, but he might just do it for them.
Gusty ran back to the sorcerers, who were busy getting inside the castle. "We need that spell, now!"
The gates of the city opened behind them, and Alestheus raced out from inside, wearing full body armor, to assist in the defense of Hornfort. He was a soldier, and he always led his troops from the front.
Taxis was a different kind of leader, he didn't have much competence in the profession of warfare. Nor was he allowed to get involved in battles. That royal protocol beautifully manifested itself by the king being girded by his bodyguards as he exited the castle. When he noticed what they were up against, he clearly flinched a little. Getting struck by reality was all he needed to cut back on his boldness, apparently.
"Majesty, we have a plan to exile Grogar, but we have to write a spell that can make it work," Gusty rattled off.
"Yes, of course. Get inside, you will not be disturbed. And I know such things cannot be rushed, but please hurry!"
"Alright, everypony! Listen up!" The divisions of the three tribes froze in place and stood at attention at the archon's thundering voice. "That ram right over there has been the greatest scourge in history that befell us. All of us. No pony family, be it Pegasus, unicron or earth pony, remained unaffected by the banes that sadistic, cruel, merciless monster made us endure. But we successfully endured them all. We remained. We haven't perished, instead here we stand, united and strong and unbroken! And now the tyrant is coming to obliterate us. Let us shout from the top of our lungs, to reach his ears: We will not be subdued ever again! We will not surrender, but we will bucking kick his sorry butt for good!" After the exploding exultation abated, he finished his speech, "This is going to be the last battle, the most glorious one ever to be fought. We must not, I repeat we must NOT fail this time, for everything depends on what happens here, tonight. Let's give them the best we've got, and do our children and offspring a favor, so that they'll only encounter tales of this darkness in tenebrous legendaries at best."
When Grogar and his regiment of abominations closed in, Grogar stopped, looked around but couldn't see Gusty anywhere. "Wipe them out," he gave the order, and the mass of predators behind him pressed forward at once.
The charge of the beasts was countered by the usage of catapults, with which the ponies slung barrels full of oil and powder, inflamed moments before launch. Each impact was accompanied by explosions that took out multiple attackers at once.
The catapults were an effective tactic until the enemy reached the defenders. The creatures were numerous, and the catapults didn't have enough firepower to hold them off, so they inevitably got to the first line of defense.
The unicorn warriors on the front blasted the attacking adversaries while the Pegasi soldiers assaulted with their weapons from above. The spears and arrows pelted down on the beasts with flawless precision, slashing their skulls and piercing their torsos. The unicorns lifted the monsters and threw them at one another, then eliminated them in their short immobile state.
But the scores of foes they faced were starting to overwhelm their first line, so the unicorns behind the front lines joined their beams as per established custom, and the Rainbow Beam fired at the first line of monsters keeping the pony front line busy. The huge blast annihilated most of the attackers and cleared the area of the perimeter, allowing the fighters to catch their breath for a short time.
The second wave closing in was met with heavy resistance from the ponies, who fiercely fought back, but suffered casualties nonetheless. There were very few ponies left of the first defense line, and the ponies of the second line went and reinforced their peers.
The unicorns shot deadly rays at the creatures, which burned holes through their bodies. The first line Pegasi, who had depleted their munition, landed on top of the beasts, and used daggers and sabers to take them out, though each take-down cost a lot of stabs and a lot of blood, and the beasts violently tried to shake them off.
The second line Pegasi, who still had ammunition, were on helping their kind out, targeting those who were distracted by ponies on their backs. The earth ponies fought bravely, and used their 'home-made' weapons with competence, going for the throat. Their raw strength came in handy as well, the heavy kicks of their hindlegs dazed them, while the explosives launched from the catapults decimated the far-away portions of the enemy force.
Gusty and the sorcerers heard the noises of the battle, but they completely disregarded it and focused on finishing the spell. They searched spell books to piece together the ingredients to make the spell work. And then, they had to fill in the missing parts on their own. Writing a spell of that magnitude, which was never seen before was a real challenge, and it required the collective intellect of the most competent sorcerers of the unicorns. Gusty only hoped they would finish the spell before it was too late.
The operators of the catapults ran out of ammunition, so they switched to using auxiliary projectiles: previously amassed piles of rocks. They didn't inflict as much damage as the fiery casks, but they were quite brutal and messy cartridges when they scored a hit and squashed a predator.
In the meantime, Grogar's creatures got dangerously close to the main force of defenders, to the point that the ponies couldn't really hold their positions, individual and attack-at-will tactics got more and more common by the minute. The unicorns fired their beams at the foes and occasionally erased them from the site of the fighting with their rainbow power, when they assembled enough strength. The Pegasi used 'hit and run', or more precisely, 'stab and fly away' tactics against the attackers. The earth ponies often banded together to wreste with a monster.
The castle gates opened, and unicorn guards rushed out, pulling chariots packed with more explosive barrels for the cannons.
Grogar saw the flaming missiles flying high, then precipitously raining down, and blowing up not far from him. One projectile was headed his way, but he shot a bolt and detonated it just before the impact. He commanded his troops stil waiting for his order, "Attack."
The ponies outnumbered the monsters, but that didn't automatically mean they had the vantage, and they wanted to come through with the least possible loss of life. And however large the ponies' main force was, many on the front fell victim to the sudden swarm of the enemy.
"We're taking heavy casualties, sir!" shouted Astral to the archon.
"Set up the shield!" ordered Alestheus.
The unicorns set up a protective aura around their positions, preventing more creatures from entering, and cutting the ones already inside off from the rest, which made them easier to take out.
The ponies' strategy was briefly lifting the shield each time the protected area was cleared of the enemy, letting some in, then closing the barrier again. The strategy was labeled the 'flood-gate', and its point was to deal with the enemy in small groups, rather than all at once.
But Grogar wasn't having it. He walked up to the shield, and the ponies inside gazed at him with rage.
"Don't let him in!" commanded Alestheus, but Grogar didn't need to be allowed entrance. Rather than letting a stand-off occur in the middle of the battle, he leveled a dense, golden ray at the transparent wall of the aura, weakening it with every passing second.
After about ten seconds of awaiting, the barrier shattered to shreds, and the ponies were exposed.
"Kill him!" shouted the archon, pointing his hoof at Grogar. The ponies all charged at the ram, but he obliterated his attackers with a blast, then bent down his head, rushed on those in front of him, and brutally gored them, as the monsters themselves took the offensive, tearing into the main force.
The catapults were ineffectual at close quarters, so the unicorns used their telekinesis to smash the enemy with the unmanned machineries' sheer weight. The scene had now become really nasty, as both sides entered all out fighting.
Alestheus came to shortly after he got knocked out by Grogar's shockwave, and found himself lying next to a derelict catapult. He looked up and saw torches, used for lighting and igniting the barrels.
As Grogar and his creatures fought the ponies, a manticore next to him was shot in the head with immaculate exactitude. The beast collapsed, two ends of an arrow sticking out of his two temples, where it entered and exited his brain. Grogar noticed the archon holding a bow in his hooves and smirking. He and the beasts escorting him targeted him, and encircled the Pegasus ruler.
"Well, archon, you deserve credit for helping the poor unicorns out, after their devastating trauma," he gloated. "Thank you for gathering all my worthwhile enemies in one place, so I can destroy them at one blow. It is most revered, your courteousness will not be forgotten."
"I don't know about that... but I know wherever I'm going, you're coming too." Grogar noticed too late the pile of barrels on fire, cowering behind the unattended catapult. It was now the Pegasus' turn to gloat. "See y'all on the other side!" Alestheus said, straightening himself up and saluting, going out a true soldier.
The deafening explosion drew the attention to the gigantic fireball enlightening the night. Both sides stopped fighting suddenly. The lingering quiet moment was disrupted by the faint sound of the castle gates opening.
Grogar - who was lying on the ground a few dozen meters away from the site of the explosion, injured in the blast, but living - opened his eyes and saw Gusty standing at the gate.
The unicorn engaged Grogar. As she charged at him, she dodged the shots he fired, then returned it. Her instant beam of magic knocked the disconcerted Grogar over.
"Enough!" he roared, and got to his hooves. "Where is my bell?! Where did you take it?!" he demanded, then shot his own beam at Gusty, who countered it. The two rays net half-way between them. "Give... me... back... my... bell!" Gusty struggled to fight off Grogar's direct power, but the sorcerers quickly came to her rescue, and used their magic to match Grogar's. Their joint efforts cut back on Grogar's beam, and he was overwhelmed.
Gusty looked around, and her attention was drawn to Broadhoof. He was lying in his blood, unmoving. Gusty's wrath was now ignited. The winds piercingly screamed as they came to life.
Soon, a raging squall reigned over the terrain outside Hornfort's walls. Gusty treated Grogar like a lifeless rag-doll, slamming him into the ground and burying him under everything she could lift with the wind, be it the catapults or trees or whole watchtowers.
Grogar freed himself from the pile of rubble atop him, and sent out a shockwave, that thrust away the sorcerers in awe at Gusty's impetuous behavior, but not Gusty, who successfully evaded it with a magic barrier. And now it was her turn.
Gusty made the winds crash down on Grogar and press him to the ground. This time Grogar couldn't resist her power, and was finally forced on his knees. "And in the end, you are the one, who kneels." Gusty echoed what Grogar said to her earlier. Grogar got struck by the realization that the he may be in serious danger. He could not teleport, because he was paralyzed in the unicorn's hold.
But there was something he could do, that needed to be done. With his mind, he left Hornfort and traveled far away, to his lair. If he was about to be defeated, the ponies could find the larvae in his hideout. He didn't think they would kill them, but in order to prevent them from learning about his youngest children's existence before the time was right, he used his locomotion spell to shut them away on a distant land, away from ponydom. Whatever was about to happen to him, Grogar knew that the Changelings would grow up to be a formidable force and wage war on the pony race.
"Grogar!" thundered Gusty. He turned his attention to the unicorn, and saw her horn being ignited, and forming a glittering orb above her head, nourished by her magic and getting bigger and bigger. "You have come to our domain, abused the power you had, and damned us to eternal suffering." Pure magic vividly flew through Gusty, her mane and tail began to float, her eyes were glowing with white brilliance, and she was lifted up in the air, along with her foe. "But tonight your reign ends. Say goodbye to this world, for you will never set hoof on it again. Despite all your best efforts, however, we can be grateful to you for one thing..." From the orb, she shot a blinding trail of light at Grogar, whose flesh seemed to start to evaporate. "...for showing us that strength can be found in unity, and if we come together, we can overcome any obstacle." Grogar's body had become translucent and dotted by small, bright spots; in one word it looked like the coat of an Ursa. "Thank you for this valuable lesson, Grogar. We'll never forget it. Unlike you. Now get lost, and never return!" Gusty gave him one last push, that banished him from the Earth, carried to his heavenly prison by the spurt of light. When he arrived up there, four stars spread out, forming a new constellation on the face the night sky: the Ram.
"From today onward, the pony generations to come will look up to the sky, and be reminded of the tyrant's ultimate defeat, that brought the race of the ponies together!"
The ebullient burst of magic disappeared from Gusty's body, who weakly fell to the ground.
The monsters who had witnessed the banishment of their master had only one option: retreating. They dispersed, and disappeared into the night.
"Gusty!" Astral rushed to her aid. He held her in her hooves, and pleaded, "Gusty, answer me, please!"
After a while, she responded with a faint voice. "I'm so cold." When she opened her eyes, her formerly beautiful turquoise irides were now pale.
"Gusty! Your cutie mark!" Astral was horrified to notice that his friend's mark had disappeared.
"My magic deserted me, Astral..." Gusty could feel it, even if she didn't try to use her power. She could feel the void inside of her. The absence she felt made her a dead spot in the web of life. She had been disconnected from the universe. She had paid the ultimate price. "But..." she looked at the sky, "...at least Grogar is gone."
Astral helped her get up and get to the others. "Gusty..." the leader of the Guild saw what had happened. He knew how much magic that spell consumed.
"But it's just temporary... right?" Astral asked hopingly. Gusty turned to the old one, waiting for his answer.
"I-I don't know. Carrying out an act of that magnitude alone... her magic may be drained forever..."
Gusty looked around, and saw flames, dead bodies, tools of war lying all over the place and blood. The surviving ponies gave her sorrowful glares. She walked to Broadhoof, a husband and a father of two, and a simple but valuable person, who might be gone forever. When she reached the body, she checked his pulse, and her fears were proven right. He was dead. Gusty's thoughts centered around the widowed Sheen Blossom, the warm housewife, and the orphaned Daisy and Petunia, the snappy sisters, who'd all lost the most important stallion in their lives. Gusty decided, that she had to bring the news to the family.
"Was it worth it?" asked Astral.
Gusty laid down the cold arm in her hooves. "It should be easy to say 'yes'." After a long pause, she added, "But it isn't."
After thousands of years of oppression, the ponies were finally free. They were their own masters at last. But victory always comes at a price, and the bigger the victory, the bigger the cost...
By the morning, much of the mess had been cleared away. The fires had been extinguished, most the corpses of the monsters had been burned, and the heroes who gave their life for pony freedom were being escorted to their families.
Gusty was on her way to Broadhoof's family, having volunteered to take him home. Her magic hadn't returned, and she had spent time on evaluating the situation, and prepared to live her life with that deficit, but anything was possible.
"So, it is done," King Taxis said, after signing a document with the representatives of the Pegasi and the earth ponies. "Today, an alliance between the three tribes is established," he announced to the people gathered for the historic occasion. "The Era of Grogar, as well as the era of our isolation has ended. Let us start a new chapter in the history of ponykind. A chapter of cooperation. Where each tribe uses their special talents to contribute to our prosperity."
The document ruled that in the future:
- unicorns would be responsible for bringing the day and night and the magical defense of the land,
- Pegasi would take over the management of the weather all across the land,
- earth ponies would take care of supplying food.
The King concluded his speech, "We must never forget those brave ones, who made our liberation possible. Above all, we must honor the heroism of the unicorn Gusty. May her memory be preserved by the posterity as Gusty the Great, the pony, who freed her people from the age of darkness, and the pony, who brought about the long enduring coexistence of the tribes in harmony and friendship..."
Sealed away in narrow darkness buried under the snow, high above the icy surface, there resides the Bewitching Bell, waiting to be reclaimed by its master, or anyone daring enough to seek it out...
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1st: i love Sawtooth Waves
2nd: This nearly made me cry. Good job
Can i do a humanish version of this story? Plz. The Earth Ponies will be Pixies the Pegasus Sylphs and the Unicorns Elves (also crystal ponies atlantiens but that's a long story)
10458646
Sure, go ahead. Just give me credit for the original.
10458665
thx
I've finally worked up enough motivation to read this.
10504427
Go somewhere else
10504777
No.
This story is very underrated. Great job!
10626225
You're too kind. :D
Seriously, thank you for reading! I'm glad you liked it! Have a nice day!
Oh, and welcome to Fimfiction! You're in the right place.
I liked your take on the tale of Gusty the Great!!! Very good for your first fanfiction!!!
10959916
Thank you very much for the kind words, and for reading the story of course! I'm glad you enjoyed my work, it means a lot. And thank you for adding it to your favorites.
I wish you all the best, friend.
could you help me write a fanfic
11158968
You know, I'm very inexperienced myself. Era of Grogar is the first and only fic I've written so far.
However, I'd still be happy to help you and answer questions you might have.
4 Great! I'm planning to write my first fanfiction and I need help! Here is a look at my Ideas https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/979896/tambelon
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/979163/ideas-for-alternate-season-9
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/979864/my-version-of-cozy-glows-backstory