Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Source | Trice

The area was empty. Much emptier than it should have been. If on one hoof it was undoubtedly great news and it allowed them to retake a huge chunk of the city, on the other Twilight couldn't help but feel uneasy about the situation. All the soldiers in the area had seemingly just vanished. Had they all run back through the portal before it closed? Why would they have done something like that? They'd been chasing her still after she'd withstood the weapon's fire, why were they gone?

And why had they closed the portal in the first place? What had happened there? Her questions only grew once she travelled far enough to find the library near which the portal and the weapon had been. The latter was still there, what remained of it at least, and she could see clearly it had been deliberately damaged by something. Someone had helped them there.

She did not have time to figure out that mystery though, not with everything else going on. She noted down the broken weapon as something she'd study afterwards, like the giant mark she'd left on the ground where she'd stood against it, and stationed the constructs with her to hold the area as she headed back to the centre of town. Something didn't add up there, but so long as the end result was in their favour she was willing not to treat that as an issue.

---

Trixie stood petrified against a wall, watching the scene in front of her like she was watching the world through a window outside it. Things moved in slow motion to her perception, painfully dilated to highlight every detail, and yet as a whole events still felt like they were tumbling over each other too fast for her to grasp onto them, too quickly for her to react.

Starlight was on a stretcher, the same one she'd been carried inside the room on. At some point it had been a colour other than red. So had Starlight's coat, but if Trixie hadn't known that she wouldn't have guessed it by looking at her. Especially with how her eyes never quite focused on the wound in the mare's side, always drifting around it as if refusing to acknowledge it.

There were other ponies around Starlight. Aside from Sunburst, Trixie failed to recognise them, sometimes even to realise they were there. She looked at Starlight's chest and neck, hoping to see something there. Ponies were speaking, but she didn't understand what they were saying. She heard sounds in place of words, muddled and without reason or order.

Finally a splash of foreign colour tore her attention into itself. White bandages. Bandages that stayed white, only slightly tinged by a transparent magic aura that held them in place over the wound no longer gushing. Sounds came into focus a little more. Words she could recognise, though she still didn't bother to.

Then another sound. Sharp, hoarse, sudden. Starlight breathing, her neck tensing slightly as her head raised itself just a bit before dropping down again. It was like Trixie's body had suddenly been freed from a spell, and she immediately rushed to the mare's side.

Comments

[Speckle]

[FanOfMostEverything]

Hmm. Starlight may have done more than she realized in disrupting that weapon. Let’s just hope she lives long enough to find out what.