A Shimmering Intellect

by DungeonMiner

Chapter 22

“Get down!”

Flash flew inches above his fellow ponies, trying to keep Hoplite’s spear in his hooves as he came around to face their second golem now.

“Unicorns, fall back!” Night yelled from the rock he stood on.

As Flash began to climb with the squad of pegasi, he took another look at the battlefield.

As the pair of platoons passed by an open cave mouth next to a dizzyingly precipitous drop, the golem emerged, seemingly by accident. When it had, though, it began to tear into the unicorns. When the platoons recovered, the others attacked, but the monster continued to attack the unicorns, ignoring everything else.

A squad of pegasi pulled away, streaking through the sky to catch a unicorn the golem threw over the cliff edge. They caught him, but the greave crushed around his bleeding leg had Flash worried that he wouldn’t make the rest of the trip up the mountain.

He didn’t have time to think about it now, though.

Flash held his spear tightly as he began a dive.

The golem, in response, picked up a boulder to throw, but instead of hurling it at Flash and the pegasi, it flung the stone full-force at some of the retreating unicorns.

“Get down!” Night yelled again before the rock winged him in the shoulder. He yelped in pain and dropped into the snow, just in time for Flash to wedge his spear into the space between the golem’s “chin” and its “neck.” With all the speed behind him, he yanked the golem’s head nearly off its shoulders before the spear bent and sprang back, throwing him down into the snow.

A muffled voice yelled above him, and Flash sat up.

He sat just a few feet from the cliff edge.

“Charge!”

Flash’s head snapped over to see the Earth ponies rush the golem toward the cliff where Flash was sitting. He cursed before taking off, leaping into the air as the charging ponies kicked at and threw their bodies into the golem. With its single-minded focus on the unicorns, it didn’t even fight back. The golem teetered at the cliff’s edge for an interminably long second before tumbling over it.

The remains of the two platoons waited, holding their collective breaths for a long moment before relief flooded through them.

“Spymaster!” someone called.

“I’m alright!” Night called, sitting up in the snow. “I’ll need someone to set my shoulder back. It’s been twisted out of its socket.”

“Does anyone else need medical attention?” Flash asked.

“Help…” came the weak reply from the snow.

“Let’s regroup,” Night said. “We’re not going to move until we’ve figured out who’s hurt.”

Flash nodded before looking for a place to sit. After his first step, exhaustion hit him like a golem’s fist. He stumbled forward, and he just caught himself before he started looking for a stone to sit on. He planted his butt down on a rock and gasped for air. He breathed heavily for a second or two and slowly became aware of the soreness in his ribs. He might have broken something there. That would just be his luck.

He gasped once more before he focused on the world around him, just so that he could keep his mind off the pain growing in his side.

The unicorns took some heavy damage this time around. A lot of the ones left were unconscious, many with broken legs or worse. From the frowns of the guards moving through the ponies, Flash could tell more were simply dead.

They started as fifty ponies strong. Now, there were maybe thirty left.

Night’s cry of pain snapped Flash from his thoughts, and he looked over to the pony, slowly standing up, cursing as he cradled his leg. It seemed someone finally set it for the Spymaster. “What’s the count?” he growled.

“Four more dead. Jade, Sentinel, Stalwart, Opal, and Arrow are all hurt.”

Night cursed again. “Alright, pick one of the Crystal guards to take the injured back to the Empire. We’ll have to continue on.”

“Sir,” one of the Equestrian guards said, standing on shaking legs. “I can keep going, sir. I just need to rest for a bit, and then I’ll be ready to go.”

“I appreciate it, Stalwart,” Night said. “But we can’t afford that. If you’ll be good after a good night’s sleep, then it’ll be your job to protect the injured on the way back down.”

“Y-yes, sir,” Stalwart said before returning to his haunches.

“Two more minutes, then we make sure the injured are on the way down, and then we continue.”

“Yes, sir,” came the chorus of replies.

As everyone went to work, Flash watched as Night approached and sat beside him on the rock with a sigh. “I don’t think we have a lot of hope on this one. What about you?”

Flash grunted. “It’s pretty dire, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I could be wrong. It’s happened a lot in my life.”

Night smirked. “I know that feeling.”

They sat silently for a second before Night spoke up again. “Do you think your friend Sunset could make this easier?”

“Easily,” Flash said, without even thinking about it. “She knows enough spells to tear these things to pieces.”

“Yeah, sounds a lot like the Princess.”

“You think Twilight could have done this?” Flash asked.

“She could do this all by herself if needed,” Night said. “She not only knows all the spells, but she also has enough magical energy behind her to tear the mountain apart if she had to. Thronestone’s just about the only thing that could slow her down.”

“What’s Thronestone?”

“It blocks magic.”

“Ah.”

Another moment of silence.

“Kinda wish we had your friend with us.” Night said.

Flash grimaced. Sunset definitely should be here, risking her life with these ponies. She brought them all here after all. She found the stupid gem, so why wasn’t she out here miserable like the rest of them? Maybe if she actually wanted to be a better person instead of just going through the motions, she’d be here.

Didn’t she see that?

“Maybe,” Flash said. “It might not have worked out.”

A long beat passed between them.

“Maybe we should have had Twilight with us instead.”

Night was quiet for a long time before he shook his head. “Maybe. It might not have worked out.” Night stood with a grunt. Alright, we’ve given them the two minutes. We can’t afford to stay here if we want everypony else to get to the mountaintop. The golems would tear us apart. Alright, everypony! It’s time to get moving. Do we have a guide for the injured?”

“Sir!”

As the others began to move, Flash watched them for a moment before he got up with a grunt. They did need to keep moving.

---♢---

Everhoof decided that their journey wasn’t hard enough, so it brought summer storms down on them. A thick blizzard came down on the platoon-and-a-half of ponies amid lightning strikes.

“Sir!” One of the pegasi roared over the thunder. “Permission to clear some of the storm? It’s starting to slow us down.”

Night glanced up through the heavy curtain of snow. “Permission granted. Don’t stray too far.”

“Yes, sir!”

The pegasus took off, picking up a few more to go with him, taking to the air to open up some sky to make the journey easier.

Twilight could have teleported the whole platoon up to the gem instantly, and we wouldn’t have had to deal with this at all, but you had to open your mouth, didn’t you?

Night shoved the voice down. The whole point was that he didn’t need to think about it. He was here to focus on being the Spymaster, nothing else.

If that’s what you wanted, Twilight would be here, making your job easier. You were the one who pushed her away.
It was for the best.

The pegasi worked carefully above the cloud line, opening the sky and thinning out the storm. The thick curtain of falling snow pulled back, revealing the path ahead of them.

And the golem waiting in ambush.

“Golem!” an earth pony yelled before disappearing as a boulder smashed into him.

The ponies scrambled for weapons and shields, spreading out in case the golem started throwing more stones.

“It’s holding a chokepoint!” one of the ponies yelled. “We can’t get around it!”

Another boulder flew and took an earth pony down.

“He’s hitting the earth ponies!” Night yelled. “Scatter!”

The earth ponies moved, spreading out.

“Don’t let that thing catch you! Unicorns, move up to—”

Night’s words caught in his throat as a rock the size of his head flew past his face, barely missing him. Night dropped to the ground, panting, as his life flashed before his eyes for a moment. That’d been too close.

“Stagger upward!” a new pony yelled. “Stay low to the ground, and make sure it doesn’t see us coming!”

Night took a deep breath, his hooves shaking, before he swallowed and started moving forward, digging through the snow. They needed to stop that thing if they wanted to get off the mountain alive, much less secure the crystal.

Another boulder slammed into the snow beside Night, leaving a crater in its wake. He whispered another curse before he rolled in the snow, trying to stay out of sight, only for his warmth to be sapped away by the cold. If he managed to survive the attack, he’d freeze to death shortly after.

Small comforts, he supposed.

He peeked over the edge of the snow and saw the golem’s arms windmilling as it threw boulder after boulder at the platoons.

A mangled corpse lay fifteen feet away, cooling quickly.

Night ducked down and rolled further to the side before looking over the snow’s edge and casting a spell. The range strained the magic, and Night had to pour on energy to sustain it, but it reached the golem and turned its stone casing to air.

The windmilling arms picked up speed, throwing stones faster now, first drilling into the snow where Night was a second ago before it began to arc across the entire area, covering the space where the platoon was hiding.

“We need to stop it!” Someone yelled.

“Somepony get up there!”

Night grit his teeth and rolled again, hoping that moving was the right play. If he stayed out of the way, he could make another strike. All he had to do was—

The sound of crashing stone roared above them, and Night poked his head up in time to see the pegasi push a landslide down the mountain. A rock the size of a pony slammed into the golem’s torso, splintering the crystal, and the whole construct began tumbling away, caught up in the avalanche of stone.

The pegasi landed, watching the thing crash at the bottom of the cliff, and Flash sighed. “Well, I guess that means they’re going to focus on us next.”

---♢---

They had six more casualties, and another guide had to lead them to safety. They were down to a single platoon and still had leagues to go before they got to the cave where the Doctor was working. Both Flash and Night had to fill in spots in the platoon, with Night taking the role of Sergent and Flash slotting into the Pegasus squad. Flash was on watch now and kept his eyes peeled as he stared into the cloudy night sky surrounding the remaining platoon of ponies. He grimaced as the wind bit into him, and he wanted his shift to end so he could return to the fire.

Sunset probably had a spell that would keep him warm until the shift was done.

He sighed.

He might have made a mistake.

The thought had been hovering around the back of his mind for the past three days. Sunset sounded very concerned about what she was doing, not even acknowledging that she was only helping the entirety of Equestria by doing only what was necessary. In fact, she was so worried about manipulating ponies that she was ignoring that Sunset was probably the only reason she was doing any of that, to begin with.

Still, he should have said something about it instead of reacting the way he did. She hit a raw nerve, threatening to leave him, but he should have done better than that, anyway. If he’d kept his own temper in check for another three minutes, he might have been able to convince Sunset to stick around for a little bit longer.

If she really wanted to become a better person, Sunset would try at least. She had to know that somewhere deep down.

Maybe she did know and didn’t want to be better? That made a lot of sense to Flash right now as he stood freezing his tail off on the side of a mountain.

His mind argued. The thought was unfair. She put too much effort into becoming a better person over all those years. There’s no reason to think she wasn’t trying other than his own bitterness. The same bitterness he’d been dealing with for years now. Sunset wanted to be better, but she must not know. But how could she not? How could she not see that this was the best move? She was smart enough.

Flash sighed.

Then again, he should know better than to blow up on her. He only made things worse every time he did that in their old relationship.

Wasn’t that ironic? He was the one making the same mistakes of their old relationship now.

He shivered.

Maybe everything was falling apart, and perhaps he was to blame. Maybe Sunset was.

Everything could work out perfectly, and there would be no problem in some strange universe that was indeed possible. Not this one, though.

No.

No, things were going were going down the toilet. And, in the most charitable of worlds, both he and Sunset were at the center of it.

How did things go so wrong so fast?

“See anything out there?” a voice asked behind him.

Flash turned and saw Night standing behind him, tightly holding his cloak.

“Just clouds. It helps that I’m looking in the one direction that the golems can’t come from,” the man-turned-pegasus said, motioning to the cliff’s edge a whole five feet away.

“Until they’re made to start flying.”

“Oh, could you imagine?”

“I really don’t want to.”

The wind buffeted the pair for a moment.

“Having trouble sleeping?” Flash asked.

“Something like that. We’ve got a lot of hurt ponies up here that can weigh on a pony.”

“Survivor’s guilt can do that.”

Night smirked.

They both stared out into the darkness for a bit before Night sighed. “You ever feel like you had something great, and you messed it up?”

Flash chuckled despite himself. “What, is it written on my face?”

Night glanced at him. “No, no…this one’s mine, I guess.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, we’re in the same boat at least. Both up a creek and not a paddle in sight.”

Night snorted. “I hadn’t heard that one before.”

“Never heard up a creek without a paddle?”

“Nope. Is that from over in the human world?”

“Yeah. I’m surprised you guys don’t have it.”

Night shrugged. “Don’t know what to tell you.” They went quiet again before Night spoke up a bit later. “So, what’s the problem that you’re running into.”

“You really want to know?”

“It might distract us from the cold,” Night said.

Flash smirked. “Easy for you to say. You can walk right back over to the fire.”

“It could distract you, then.”

Flash shook his head. When Night didn’t walk away in the moment after, Flash spoke. “I thought someone could change.”

Night nodded. “And they couldn’t?”

“No, they probably did,” Flash said.

No response.

“They probably did change, but I didn’t…I tried to count on her, and she doubted herself. Instead of reaching out to help her, I made it worse.”

Night still said nothing.

“What about you?”

“I couldn’t change,” he muttered. “Even when she reached out to me.”

“Oh,” Flash said, not looking at him.

“If it makes you feel better, I don’t know if you reaching out would have helped much. Trying to be what you’re not takes a lot of effort. Maybe more than a pony can have,” Night sighed. “We can try, I think. But sometimes, it just isn’t in us.”

“It has to be!” Flash said, surprised by the anger in his voice.

Night looked back at him.

“It has to be in you. It has to be in her. I can’t accept the fact that it’s not.”

Night shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you, Flash. I’m here, making things worse. You’re friend’s back where she is, not making anything better. Actions speak louder than words, right?”

Night didn’t say anything else. He just walked away, leaving Flash on watch, staring into the darkness.

---♢---

Night returned to his tent, his heart threatening to beat out of his chest. The words Flash roared, so angrily and furious, rang in his head like a battle cry.

“It has to be in you.”

Flash had to be wrong. He had to be. Night knew he’d never forgive herself if the pegasus was right, and he could have…could have made Twilight happy.

No. No, Flash had to be wrong. Night knew himself. He was a pony of secrets, shadows, and crime while she was High Princess. He didn’t belong in her world. It was good enough that he could help her. Nothing else was needed.

“It has to be in you.”

It couldn’t be in him. It was best to give up now before things got worse. He knew exactly who he was. He was a Master Thief, nothing more than that and nothing less. Spymaster was a new title to add, and it didn’t fit him. He’d do his best, but he wouldn’t fit it.

He knew that.

He couldn’t change. He simply didn’t have the capacity.

“It has to be in you.”