Chapter 37
Celestia stared down the mandrill and ran through her options.
So long as the creature had those thronestone “daggers,” any magic she used would stop as soon as it got within range. This immediately cut out any offensive Energy, Mind, and Image spells. Ironically, her initial choice of Control Matter would work the best here. Any physical objects she threw at him would keep their momentum as they reached the anti-magic radius.
The only other spells she could really use were all of the Transform branch of magic that she could cast on herself. Anything that would permanently last even if she got into the range of the daggers.
Celestia and the mandrill slowly circled each other, getting ready to charge each other as they searched for an opening.
The real problem with using the Transform spells would be that Zalxayl would charge when her horn lit up. Realistically, Celestia might be able to cast one incantation before the monkey lunged for her, and then who knew what she’d be able to get away with. She needed to choose her opening spell very carefully.
Celestia smiled, and her horn began to glow.
Zalxayl charged, closing the distance and bringing down the daggers toward her back. She answered with a punch of her forehoof, and the force slammed into the mandrill hard enough to throw him back to the other side of the room.
Transform Body was an excellent spell. Being able to increase one’s physical strength in a blink could turn any fight.
What’s more, it gave her more time.
She cast Transform Body again, changing her fur into plates of bony armor, and then cast Transform Mind to rewire her sense of pain to taste like green tea, and that was all the time she had before Zalxayl recovered and charged again.
He brought both knives down onto the alicorn, who blocked the strikes with a raised forehoof. The strength in Celestia’s magically-enhanced limbs kept the blow from even moving her. Before she spun and kicked with her hind legs. Celestia felt the mandrill’s chest collapse as she knocked the wind out of him, but he managed to keep his ground this time.
Celestia answered by shooting into the air and hitting the room’s ceiling before casting two quick spells. She used Control Matter to pull a series of rocks out of her surroundings before she used Transform Matter to change them into a steel greatsword.
Now armed, she took a quick moment to glance down at Marble, who faced off with Dusk, and hoped that he’d make it out alright.
She took another moment to breathe in and shot back down to face Zalxayl.
---☼---
Dusk moved faster than Marble thought she had any right to. The mare shot across the floor, leaving a trail of lightning that arced from the feather in her teeth. Her singular wing knife cut through dangerous arcs that forced Marble to leap back to safety.
Dusk charged him again, swinging wildly before he took to the air to get out of her reach.
“No!” she roared before she pointed at him with the feather. A bolt of lightning fired from its tip and ran through the pegasus in mid-air. The electric bolt tore through him, and if he weren’t a pegasus, he’d have been rocked by the blow. His wings froze up, and he plummeted back down to the ground, landing hard before he glanced up to see Dusk charging him.
He rolled out of the way, just barely missing the one-winged pegasus’ charge before he stood up and realized that the burn from the lightning didn’t hurt as bad. He glanced back down at his dagger and noticed a thin coating of blood on its edge.
He glanced back at Dusk and noticed the thin line of blood on her leg. She must have cut herself as she passed by, but he could see that the tiny wound was making her pause. Dusk would put pressure on her leg before lifting her leg again and wincing.
He thought back to the darkened spot on the bark of the tree. Did the dagger leave a festering wound? Was that another—
Dusk leveled the feather again, and another bolt of lightning shot toward him. He dove to the side before leaping into the air to increase the electrical resistance in his body as he attempted to dodge.
The bolt of lightning arced across the room and then suddenly stopped as it got close to the cage.
The coatl feather didn’t work next to the cage either? Would his dagger? Then again, his dagger would still be a sharp edge even without magic. Maybe he could—
Dusk charged him again, not giving him a moment to gather his thoughts as she closed the distance again.
He cursed and held out his dagger, hoping that he might be able to slash at her again and possibly slow her down.
For a moment, he glanced over at Celestia and blinked.
If Sunny had been a dancer on the battlefield, then Celestia was a panther. Celestia leaped through the air, bouncing off the walls and landing blows that he could hear across the room. She swung a greatsword like it was a rapier, moving it through the air with the ease and grace of the conductor’s baton.
Dusk shot past him, missing by a hair and leaving his nose feeling numb with the electricity pouring off of her.
He shook his head and refocused. He needed to get out of this fight alive first. After that, he could talk with Celestia.
---☼---
Celestia spun her greatsword in a wall of steel and death. Zalxayl could not cross the line of her blade without being sliced by the sword. He tried to get through once with one of his daggers, but he only wound up shattering his weapon for his trouble.
He still wielded one, and while he had that in his hand, the mandrill was still immune to any magical effects that could stick to him, but at this rate, Celestia might not need it. Maybe she should stick to being more physical the next time her kingdom gets invaded. This was going far better than when the changelings invaded.
The alicorn stopped her blade in the middle of her drop before spinning it around in a wide, horizontal arc. Zalxayl leaped back, forced onto his back leg as the weapon came around.
Celestia watched as the mandrill tried to recover and quickly realized that, despite her advantages, she wouldn’t be able to get past his own defenses without distracting him somehow.
She needed something to take his attention away from the fight, and honestly, the best she had was her ability to turn anything into a speech. “You have a great deal of loyalty to Lady Dusk,” she noted. “A very noble attribute, if I must say so.”
The mandrill dropped into a crouch, still holding the blade in his hand as he bounced his body back and forth. “Isn’t she worth being loyal to?” he asked rhetorically.
The bouncing said a lot. Boxers typically bounced to stay light on their hooves, but any swordspony would say that one shouldn’t waste energy doing so if they were to move. The mandrill probably wasn’t trained for combat. He probably only fought on instinct. That was normal for brutes that were used to punching when they didn’t get their way, but it also meant she might just be able to break him.
“I just wonder why,” she said. “It’s not every day that you find a primate working for a pony. So why do you?”
The mandrill’s chest pumped as he fought to catch his breath. According to Celestia’s sergeants, this was a typical reaction. Teaching a pony to breathe through every strike was a life-long job. “I am merely repaying a debt.”
The bone-plated alicorn raised an eyebrow. “Dusk saved your life?”
“By accident, but that doesn’t lighten the debt any.”
Celestia glanced at Dusk with a quick glance of her eyes for just a fraction of a second so that the mandrill couldn’t jump her. The maimed pegasus shot across the floor, powered by some sort of magic, while poor Marble held up his lone blade in his defense.
She refocused on the mandrill just as he was gathering himself to pounce. “Debts to be paid, then? I cannot fault you for that.”
The mandrill had almost caught his breath. Celestia would need to strike soon if her gambit were to pay off. “But then,” she said with a growing smile. “I hope you cannot fault me for what I am about to do.”
The alicorn’s horn lit in a blaze of magic, and a line of stone shuddered before it began to rise in the shape of a wall just in front of Dusk. The pegasus’s eyes went wide, and she tried to stop as the rock began to rise in front of her.
The mandrill shot forward, panicked. As soon as Zalxayl got close, the thronestone stopped Celestia’s spell, and instead of crashing into the wall in a head-on collision, she just barely managed to jump over the foot-high barricade.
But that’s what Celestia wanted. Grabbing her greatsword in her hooves, she began to swing the massive weapon in wide arcs that forced the mandrill to try and dodge as she turned the space in front of her into a blender.
The mandrill took blows, deep cuts forming in his legs, arms, and chest, but now he didn’t dare retreat. He kept his single dagger of thronestone close to Celestia, lest she cast another spell to stop Dusk.
It was exactly what she needed.
---☼---
The little wall Celestia pulled up was exactly what Marble needed.
Now that he had some form of cover, he had a chance. Dusk couldn’t make her rushing charges toward him anymore. Dusk had to make arcing attack lines, avoiding the wall so she wouldn’t crash into them and nearly take herself out.
With that one move, Celestia changed his fight from a frantic defense to a more even face-off. Dusk shot by, again trailing lightning as though she were the storm itself before he managed to hold out his dagger and slice down her side.
The fact that she was running into his blade would have been funny if things weren’t so life-and-death.
“You don’t need to do this!” Marble said, trying to offer her something. “You can stop.”
“It’s mine!” she roared in response. “I get to control the storms!”
“Look,” Marble said before jumping onto the other side of the wall. “Flying and storm control isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s just like walking, except harder and in more directions.”
Dusk shot past, trailing lightning and reaching out with her bladed wing. “It’s mine!”
The blade came close before Marble suddenly thought to himself, “Why aren’t I getting onto the other side of the wall? Opposite her wing?”
He jumped back on the other side of the wall and made sure her good side would have a lot of space between him and the edge of the wall. If she wanted to reach him at all, she’d have to get on the other side and swing her wing around to her other side.
“And storms? That’s just asking for all kinds of work-related accidents. Most pegasi I know don’t even bother.”
“So they get to waste the opportunity I never had? And I am supposed to be happy about it?” she asked, fury pouring out of her voice.
“Okay, not the best line of conversation, but come on, you need to think of something!” He jumped back onto the other side of the wall and kept his distance, driving the fight to a standstill. “Look, I get it, but this isn’t the way to do this.”
“And what way should I do this? What way should I take what was mine?” She stopped charging for a long second, just long enough to stare at Marble. “Please, let me know! Unicorns with regeneration spells are nearly impossible to find, and healing small gouges in flesh takes so much energy that it could leave some of the most powerful unicorns in bed for weeks. Regrowing a limb? Impossible, they said. So tell me, how should I do what you suggest? How do I finally take what I should always have had?”
Marble didn’t answer.
“No? I didn’t think so.”
Before anyone could say something else, the figure of the mandrill soared over them and landed on the floor.
He didn’t move.
Dusk and Marble turned to see Celestia hovering on the other side of the room.
“You can stop now,” Celestia said. “You can stop, and no one else needs to get hurt.”
Dusk glared at her for a long moment. “Stop?” she asked.
“You can surrender.”
“And let all the work I did go to waste?” she asked.
Celestia narrowed her eyes. “I would have accepted many answers, but not that one.”
Dusk charged her.
Celestia merely cast a spell.
And then it was over.
Dusk was gone.
Marble blinked before looking back up at Celestia with confusion on his face.
“She’s back in Canterlot now,” Celestia explained, trying to talk about anything other than Sunny. “I have a cell that I’ve designated for teleporting criminals long distances. I’ll need to send Twilight a letter about it, though, so she doesn’t let the mare go or anything. I should probably do that very soon, but she also knows that I’m one of the few ponies with the power and knowledge to get her there.”
Marble stared up at her.
“If...If she had said something about the ponies she hurt and killed, I might have done something. Instead, she just went on about her struggles, which speaks to a pony that doesn’t care about killing someone else. So I did the only thing that felt right at the moment.”
Marble got closer to her.
Celestia scrambled to think of something to say. She needed to say something that wasn’t about Sunny and the lie she told.
“I, uh...I guess we can start sending the ponies here back to the homes, though I’ll probably have to send them back in groups, and most of them will have to be arrested. But I’m sure that—”
“Celestia,” Marble said.
She couldn’t stop the shame from reaching her face. “I’m... I’m sorry, Marble. I just...I wanted an adventure and...I didn’t mean…,” she trailed off before she gathered herself and got ready to take whatever came her way with the dignity befitting of a Princess.
Marble sighed. “You went with Sunny? Do you not have a subtle bone in your body?”
She blinked, clearly not expecting that. “A—I, um, are...are you not mad at me?”
“A little, yes,” he replied, annoyance obvious in his voice. “You could have just dropped me off somewhere safe, and instead, you decided to drag me across the entire jungle. But…,” he said, his voice softening, “I also wouldn’t have had it any other way.”
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The way you ended that battle was oddly fitting for an alicorn vs not an alicorn duel. The mandrill is an interesting character, but got exactly what he deserved.
So do we next have cleanup in the jungle or the climax at the mansion?
Absolutely love this story, just binged the whole thing. Top notch stuff.
Oh of COURSE you end the chapter right when things between Celly and Marble 😑 get interesting. Guess I'll have to wait for the payoff.
:)
Nice.
Also pretty great. I do love a badass Celestia.
Ahh, so no magical contract to break or anything like that.
At last. Dusk by herself is nothing vs what Celestia is bringing to the table, unless something goes drastically wrong this should be over fast.
Yep.
Hah!
11054177
:D