Battle of Hollow Shades Part 6
I messed up last chapter and unpublished it by accident! 
Check to see if you didn't accidentally skip over it before reading this one!
This is the last of the guaranteed dailies, everyone. It's been a pleasure to write for you this past week, and I hope you're enjoying yourselves! We're back to irregular posting, but don't worry! I don't intend to let posts get too far apart!
...don't laugh! 
This time it's for realsies!
The Battle of Hollow Shades Part 6
Speech Increased To 2.5
Under the shadow of the Machine a pit formed in the Guard’s chest—an emptiness that made the breath freeze in his lungs, and his heart stop dead in his ribcage—as he watched his friend fall. His muscles lost all strength they still had, and he collapsed fully into the hold of the dreadful contraption from beyond. In his shoulder the proboscis sunk deeper, as it searched for more to take away, to eat and grow strong from his misery... but how much more could there be?
The nord and thief were quiet now. Not even the faintest groan could be heard. Across the field all the brave toads and frogs were on the run or fallen, and soon the rest of his friends would be lost too. What more was there to take from him? When he’d finally found something... in this strange little world, where he’d become more than just a guard... the Mayor, the Machine, had taken from him everything. So what else was there?
And the Guard trembled. His bones shook and his muscles quivered under a new, powerful feeling. Something he’d never felt before. A deep, burning rage mixed with so much sorrow filled his mortal frame, and it gave him strength where before there’d been none. And it gave him defiance, and stripped away all pain and agony. He lifted his gaze to the robed shape of the pony who had tied him down and taken his friends from him, and he realized that his hands were fists, and his arms raged against the iron and leather that bound him. But more than just that...
...they were winning.
He stood and threw his weight against his bindings. His breathing was hard, his forehead was coated in sweat, and his every joint screamed against the force his muscles exerted on them. But so too did the leather straps around his arms and chest, and those that held his neck and legs. He pushed, groaned, and raged wordlessly as he strained against the Machine, and he could swear it fought back with evil intent. But it could not contain him. Not anymore.
Pierre glanced up from his book, and though the Guard could not see it, his expression blanched. Whatever it was that the Mayor saw through the eyeslits of his helmet gave him pause, and when he finally smirked, the smugness was gone from the gesture.
“Heh... you should just give up, Monster,” he said. “I’ve won! Take a look arou-”
And the first of the straps broke.
Pierre shrieked! as the iron rivets popped loose and the leather strip that had held the guard’s left wrist broke apart to shreds.
“N-no! You can’t do this... I won’t let you!” The Mayor pulled open the book. The effect was immediate—through his skin, the Guard felt the searing power of the Machine intensify and flare to life—but it still wasn’t enough. In the distance the Guard could hear the desperate croaking of the toads that still fought on, trapped by the mudcrab tide. He could hear the sad howling of a goo-pony mare as she fought hard to reach her fallen toad. His friend.
The second strap ripped! apart and his leg was free. Then his head.
And the Mayor slammed a hoof against the panel, and a burst of pain ignited inside the Guard’s shoulder as the proboscis drilled into him. He screamed but did not stop. With his free hand he grabbed the evil machinery and roared as he forced it out of his body, and before the wide, fearful eyes of the Mayor, he snapped it off the Machine.
It landed at Pierre’s hooves with an ominous clang!
The Mayor watched the proboscis with quivering lips. It sputtered with malignant energy, spasmed for a moment, and went completely still. For a moment frozen in time nothing happened. All sounds around him dulled and the battle seemed so far away, it was like part of a distant dream. But then the final straps snapped, and reality brought Pierre crashing back to the real world.
Before him the Guard stepped out of his prison. Blood trickled down his armor, and he walked with an unsteady limp... but he could walk and he could fight.
“You're going to rot in the Dragonsreach Dungeon,” the Guard said. Pierre felt his blood run cold.
“N-no! Never!” he hissed. “I’d rather die!”
The Guard smiled under his helmet.
“That can be arranged.”
The Mayor felt the fist slam! into his face before he ever saw it come.
***
Midflight Indigo soared over the battlefield with a smug little grin on his face. He was having a rather good day! Even if not much of it made sense... but he’d come to expect that ever since he started to work with the Mayor. Normal just wasn’t in his daily routine.
‘Three o’clock,’ he signed with his hooves to his wingpony, as they banked West and back into the fight. The pony in question, Grim Withers, nodded curtly and took off on a hard dive with a collision course with the ground. Midflight didn’t bother to watch the rest of the dive—he trusted Grim to do his job—and he had other things to do.
‘Well, hello there...’ he thought as he caught sight of a rather peculiar sight. On the ground, some thirty or so meters ahead, a huge white horker was in the middle of a duel with a large toad in shining armor. Hundreds of mudcrabs surrounded them, many of them crushed or smashed to pieces by the duelists, but none dared interrupt the fight.
Midflight watched the fight for a few moments, completely enthralled as the toad leapt and dodged out of the way of the horker’s fierce attacks. It was a losing battle, however. The toad was clearly slowing down, and the horker had only just begun. It would only be a matter of time.
Midflight chewed on the sight for a moment. No way he was getting involved, he decided in the end, after another glance at the squashed mudcrabs all around. These monsters the Mayor summoned barely tolerated each other! Luna only knew what they’d do to a pony!
With that thought, he banked slightly to the South and back the way he’d come to scout out new targets. It didn’t take long. Frog and toad strongholds had popped up everywhere after the rout, and now he had at least a dozen different desperate holdouts to pick from for a dive-bomb.
It was then that he realized Grim never came back.
Midflight frowned. ‘What?’ Grim was a professional, and they’d flown dozens of missions together since waaay before they took up work with the Mayor. It wasn’t like him to mess up his dives... he should be back by now.
The confused bat pony flight leader turned his head from side to side. Then he banked hard to make a full scan of the entire battlefield.
Midflight Indigo felt a cold chill run down his spine.
There was nopony up there with him. No sign of Grim, Blackberry, Cherrytooth, or Grizzle... nor anypony else. To his left he had the glade where the Mayor’s eerie Machine glowered and hummed with supernatural powers he didn’t dare begin to wonder about... and to the right he had the swamps, and the endless darkness of the midnight sky.
But there was no sign of his flight team.
Perhaps they’d headed back to the town hall? Midflight swallowed hard. He didn’t believe it for a second.
Then he saw it. A shadow, a flicker of starlight high above his position, at an altitude that was impossible for anypony in his flight team to achieve. Midflight stared, slack jawed, as the mysterious figure glided far above him with an ease and grace unlike anything he’d ever seen before... did the Mayor summon a flying creature?
...did the Mayor summon an alicorn?
By the time Midflight realized who it was, it was already too late.
“WHO DARES DISTURB OUR BEAUTIFUL NIGHT?!”
Princess Luna fell upon the shocked bat pony with all the strength of a missile.
***
And the tide turned for the final time.
The Great Grandmaster of the Knights of Toad hit the ground hard as the White Horker pressed one mighty flipper over his battered and dented breastplate. Greatly bloodied and bruised, it glared over his broken body, filled with horker wrath and eager to crush him. The mighty beast reared back its tusks for one final strike, and the Great Grandmaster closed his eyes.
But the strike never came. In that moment a dozen colorful blasts! tore through the mudcrab ranks, and a magical shield enveloped the Grandmaster. The full power of the White Horker slammed! with terrifying ferocity against it, and was deflected. Shocked, the beast reared back to try again, when a second volley of magical blasts peppered its blubbery side and made it groan. Then another, and another, until the air was so full of magic bolts it was impossible to keep one's eyes open because of the glare.
In inexpressive awe, the Grandmaster turned his gaze away from the thrashing and blaring of the White Horker to watch the trees. It was then that he saw them.
From the forest emerged the golden gleam of Royal Guards’ helmets and barding. At least a full platoon of unicorns, led by a white-coated captain with a blue mane. And they advanced as they blasted away the mudcrabs with volley after volley of well-aimed magic shots. The toads and frogs that remained rallied behind them, and soon the Great Grandmaster croaked in tired joy. His battlelines had formed anew. His banners fluttered in the wind. His struggle was done.
With an exhausted but contented sigh, the Great Grandmaster of the Knights of Toad croaked his last *Ribbit*, and passed on to join his mighty ancestors, under whose guidance he would know no shame... only endless bogs and mires, with lily pads strong enough to hold even his voluptuous size... clouds of flies, as thick as chimney smoke... bugs as large as a grown toad’s eyes...
His eyes fluttered shut. The Grandmaster was home.
***
Juniper shuddered under the cool breeze of the early morning hours. Sunrise should have arrived by then, but it took little more than a glance at the sky to know the reason it hadn’t. The vampire mare watched as Princess Luna soared over the battlefield, her horn alight as she wreaked havoc upon the mudcrabs and horkers.
At least a half-dozen Night Guard had arrived with her, and they’d made short work of the traitor bat ponies. The entire lot of them, along with the Mayor’s main henchpony, were cuffed and tied together a ways behind the chaos of the fight. Or whatever it had turned into... between the Royal Guards and Princess Luna, it sure wasn’t much of a battle anymore...
With little more to do, Juniper sat next to Jelly Squish and held her as she cried.
Her coltfriend was in bad shape. Two of Princess Luna’s best medponies were on the case—after they’d been thoroughly assured it wasn’t, in fact, a prank—but they made no assurances.
“Uhh... I mean, I guess we technically can operate on a toad... right, Sugar?” the medpony had said, and turned with a quizzical look to her partner. The other mare had nodded sagely, as she chewed on her lollipop.
“Just like Highschool, Little Bee. Just like Highschool.”
“Yeah!”
Now they waited as the battle died down all around. The Royal Guard and the toads had all but cleared out the mudcrabs and horkers, and it was just a matter of time before they finally reached the Machine...
Juniper watched that dreadful thing in the distance. She hoped her friend was alright...
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O ho ho! Those bat ponies in big trouble now!
Victory and huzzah! Three cheers for our triumphant warriors! Hip hip! *ribbit!* Hip hip! *ribbit!* Hip hip! *ribbit!*
You fought valiantly, Grandmaster of the Knights of Toad.
Rest easy, king.
The King is Home... Rest well, king.
----
The Guard to save the day!
----
Welp, that's gonna harsh his mellow...
It was at this moment that Midflight knew: He'd F***ed up.
This entire fight gives off massive Battle of the Pelennor Fields vibes from The Lord of the Rings.
Did you take inspiration from that? The Horkers being Oliphants and the Grandmaster of the Toads being King Théoden? Because I wouldn't be surprised at all.