Chapter 1: Gladiator
Equestria had been witness to many strange and rare sights in its history, some rarer than others, and some that had gone unviewed for so long even their very existence had grown into myth and legend. One of those was the sight of a fully armed and armored force of ponies marching to battle with both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna at their head.
“Sister, are you certain this is wise?” Luna asked, keeping an eye on the disposition of the troops behind them. Though unblooded and unseasoned, the ponies making up the force were far from untrained, marching in measured ranks with earth ponies in front and to the rear, unicorns in the center, and pegasi above and to the flanks. All textbook.
“Not entirely, no,” Celestia admitted, rolling her shoulders yet again to settle her barding. Despite her attempts at diet and exercise, the dimensions of the solar alicorn had changed over the years and the difference was making itself known in the fit of her armor. “But Cartage has to be made to realize they can’t just settle down someplace and call it part of their empire. Even if that empire is only a single city.”
“I will admit I was surprised when you told me that of the two old pegasi empires, t’was Cartage, and not Roam that had survived through the times of my banishment,” Luna replied, grimacing slightly as she heard the ponies behind them bantering back and forth. Looking back, she could see that instead of viewing their expedition as a military operation, the ponies of the Guard were treating this as just another exercise. Something for jests and japes, and not a serious endeavour that could end in blood and thunder.
“Are you certain our troops are ready for a military adventure against a power like Cartage?” Luna asked, giving voice to her concerns as she turned her attention back to her sister..
“The Cartagenians aren’t like what they were back in the old days,” Celestia replied, nodding as she heard and saw the same things that so concerned her sister. “Believe me, I’ve tried for decades to find a peaceful solution to their raiding, banditry, and random annexations of remote valleys and mountain plateaus.”
“I was surprised when you told me that they had engaged in a nomadic lifestyle. Spending a season or two in one place, then pulling up stakes in order to return their entire city back to the clouds before finding some new patch of land to claim,” Luna commented, checking the skies for signs of winged hostiles.
“When Roam closed in for the kill at the end of the Ponnic War, it is how they managed to survive not only the final attack, but continue to evade Roam for centuries afterwards,” Celestia recounted, smiling a bit. “Historians say that exhausting themselves chasing the so-called ‘Phantom Empire’ is a large part of what caused Roam’s final collapse.”
“And from the report we received Cartage has apparently retained many of the old ways,” Luna replied, a low growl in her tone as old memories resurfaced.
“Gladiatorial combats, prisoners fighting wild beasts to win their freedom, battles to the death?” Celestia responded, a rarely heard growl in her own voice. “When I heard about what Cartage was doing to their own ponies. Barbaric blood sports. Games of life and death… I can’t let that keep going on, Luna. I can’t.”
“We shall arrest the organizers of these vile practices for crimes against Equinity. We shall free the soldier slaves, pardon the criminals worthy of pardon, and take the others into a far gentler custody than they have known before,” Luna declared, stiffening somewhat as her resolve steeled her sinews. “You are wise, sister. Perhaps seizing the place of these vile contests shall gain Cartage’s attention and cause them to treat with you in earnest.”
“That’s what I’m hoping for,” Celestia admitted, before adding. “According to the scouting reports we’re about four hours from this… arena of theirs. Perhaps we should—”
“Say no more ‘Tia,” said Luna, before turning to a soldier whose harness held a large curling horn. “Sound ‘Halt’, followed by ‘Make Camp’. We shall rest the detachment before we press on to the encounter.”
Some time later…
“Hey Lighting Strike,” yelled a rough looking thestral stallion, as he smashed his metal truncheon against the bars of one of the cells. “Get your lazy ass up.”
“What the fuck do you want?” growled a feminine voice from the shadows of the barred enclosure. “There aren’t any fights scheduled for today.”
“Seems like the fight is coming to us,” replied the stallion, his face lighting with a cruel smile. “Bunch of Equestrians are headed this way. Royal Guard.”
“That sounds an awful lot like a ‘you’ sort of problem,” answered the mare, a wet ripping sound punctuating her statement. “Fuck off, Dark Fang. Let me finish my lunch. The fish is only a little rotten today.”
“How’d you like to be wearing that fish?” growled the stallion, lifting his truncheon, which began to glow a sickly green.
Grumbling, the mare in the cell got up from the fur covered stone bench that was her resting place and made her way into the light on her side of the cell. Strong for her breed, the mare’s muscles moved and bunched under a silver grey pelt that was seamed with the lines of multiple scars showing her pedigree as the veteran of dozens of close fights. On somepony else the sky blue streak in her cloud white mane and tail would have been called “striking”, but on Lightning Strike it only served to add to her dangerous air, acting as a warning rather than an attractant.
“One day I’m gonna jam that thing up your ass,” Lightning snarled, but making sure she was standing in the correct spot for her cell to be opened. The answering green pulse from the manacle around her left fetlock had told her that the arena master was ready to unleash the enchantment in his baton if she didn’t obey.
“Anytime you feel like spending an hour stumbling around in your own piss and vomit after I turn off your sense of balance, you just go ahead and try it,” grinned Dark Fang, hefting up the truncheon in one leathery wing. “Maybe next time I won’t do you the favour of having you hosed off afterwards.”
“You made your bloody point, Dark Fang,” huffed Lightning Strike. “But seriously, why are those party loving cake gobblers coming here? They can’t be coming to watch me fight.”
“Word is they wanna take a poke at Cartage by shutting us down,” Dark Fang explained, unlocking the door and pulling it back. “You’re the arena champion, the ‘Lady’ of the arena. The big wigs figure you and the rest of the gladiators can stop ‘em cold.”
“So, they let us do the bleeding, while they sit way up high and watch. Typical,” Lightning Strike replied, with a rueful chuckle. The mare stepped out of her cell and into the stone passageway, along which could be seen other arena workers opening up multiple cells. Lightning Strike glanced up out of habit, making sure that there were indeed more ponies watching to make sure none of them tried to run amok or rebel.
“How many?” the mare asked, walking forward towards the armoury.
“A thousand ponies. Over ten full cohorts,” Dark Fang answered, following in Lighting Strike’s wake. “And better yet, apparently the princesses are with them.”
“Wait, seriously?” Lightning demanded, stopping dead in her tracks to look over her shoulder for confirmation.
What she saw was that the arena master had raised his weapon in automatic response to her sudden halt, and Lightning Strike didn’t need the infamous pegasus hearing to also pick up the creak of several bows being bent in her direction. Being the arena champion meant that you were taken as a serious threat, your every action and inaction being considered the possible beginning of an attack. One reason why even with her restraint, Dark Fang didn’t take any chances around her.
“Seriously,” Dark Fang replied, adding with a sing-song voice as he realized she wasn’t about to attack him, “Do you wanna kill a princess?”
“Yes, I’d like to kill a princess,” Lightning sang right back, muzzle splitting in a grin as she turned back down the passage toward the promise of blood and war.
“Ponies of Cartage,” Celestia bellowed out, a few hours later. The sun princess stood in front of her guard, resplendent in her heavily enchanted, gold chased armor. A broad headed halberd floating at her side in a golden aura of solar magic completed the look of a princess gone to war.
“Ponies of Cartage,” Celestia repeated, in full Canterlot voice. “We have no quarrel with you. Only with those who make you fight and bleed and die for their entertainment. Lay down your arms, and no harm will come to you.”
The words of the sun princess echoed without reply for several long seconds before a portly black and tan pegasus emerged from a mixed crowd of other members of that particular pony tribe.
“I’m Cold Numbers, and I’m the Administrator here,” the pegasus stated, looking a little larger as he puffed up his chest in pride. “Last time I checked, this wasn’t Equestrian territory. You have no authority here, Princess. Go home, and eat a cake or something.”
Raucous laughter and inaudible jeers rose up from the crowd of gladiators and guards behind Cold Numbers, drawing frowns from the far better armored ponies standing behind Celestia.
“Always with the cake,” Celestia muttered, before raising her voice again. “If you will check your maps, your… arena lies ten miles within our borders. Under Equestrian law, bloodsports are illegal. I ask you again, lay down your arms and come with us peacefully.”
“Cartage annexed these lands years ago, Sunbutt,” Cold Numbers shot back, contempt colouring his every word. “And I really doubt you didn’t know that, seeing as you brought all those pretty boy soldiers with you. Or did you bring them here to watch you get plowed by a real stallion?”
Some of the Royal Guard began to sweat as the temperature around their sovereign began to rapidly increase.
“You will stand aside and allow us to dismantle that… obscenity behind you,” Celestia ground out.
“The varlet is goading—” Luna began, stepping up to stand beside her sister.
“Oh! I get it now!” Cold Numbers interjected. “You’re an ‘incest is best’ sort of mare, eh? We could sell a lot of tickets showing off the pair—”
No pony was sure whether it was solar or lunar magic that hit Cold Numbers first, sending him flying back dozens of yards, where he landed in the rear of the crowd of his haphazardly armed and armored fighters.
“GET THEM!” came a cry, and the horde surged forward.
The Equestrian forces were trained, they were well armed, they had the best armor that their princesses could provide them, their officers were practiced and skilled in leadership, and as a whole they could stand toe to toe against the forces of any of their neighboring nations.
But almost none of them had been in a true battle before, and fewer still had taken a life, and so when the mob of gladiators who experienced bloody fights and death on a weekly, even day to day basis, struck their line it was like taking a hammer to a block of glass. Unit cohesion came apart almost instantly as the pegasi that composed the vast majority of the gladiators used swarm tactics to assault every part of the lead company simultaneously.
Blasts of magic flashed through the air in violent exchange with arrows, darts, spears and the odd bolt of lightning. The lead company’s pegasi skirmishers tried to intercept their foes darting attacks that aimed to hamstring shield-bearing earth ponies or deliver stunning blows to unicorn horns, but all they did was add to the swirling chaos, with many of them taking hits from their own soldiers as they lashed out in blind reaction.
The chaotic whirlwind of violence was the daily bread of the Cartagenian gladiators, and far cry from anything the Royal Guard had experienced in over a hundred years.
Seeing that their foes had gained local superiority, despite being outnumbered three to one overall, the two companies on either side of the already bloodied and battered lead group moved to reinforce their friends and even the odds. It was a move straight out of the textbook, and it was done in textbook fashion by the numbers, but all it wound up doing was adding to the chaos.
“Pull them back, we need to regroup,” Celestia ordered, seeing what was going on. Every scream from her wounded ponies was like a dagger to the heart.
“Watch out!” Luna cried, raising a shield just in time to block a pair of lighting bolts that had sprung from the wings of a white and blue maned pegasus mare in leather armor. Luna threw back a pair of answering blasts from her own horn, but her target seemed to dodge the shots almost as Luna fired them, pausing only to make an obscene gesture before diving back into the main melee.
“Thanks Luna,” Celestia replied with a nod.
An hour after the first clash began, the two forces had mainly separated, or more to the point, the Equestrian force had retreated until they had passed a point that their enemies seemed unwilling to pass. A small stone obelisk marking a spot some three miles away from the arena.
“Our lead company is all but gone,” Luna reported, as Celestia herself maintained a massive shield of golden magic that warded off the odd arrow… or hunk of dung flung at them. “Nearly all of its ponies are either dead, wounded, or captured by the foe. The second and third companies have lost roughly half their number. The rest of our forces are intact, but shaken.”
“And the Cartagenians?” Celestia asked, jaw clenched.
“We have accounted for roughly one-sixth their number,” Luna replied, looking over at the enemy who was now in a loose skirmish line. Some of them were eating, and Luna could see Royal Guard helmets being used as cooking pots. Luna’s eyes also picked out the fighter who had shot lighting at them before. As if feeling the lunar monarch’s eyes on her, the mare lifted her head to stare right back at the Princess of the Night.
“Can we still win?” Celestia asked, with a deep breath. “This was a mistake Luna, but we’re committed now. If we turn tail and run after this, Cartage will start biting off chunks of Equestria at will.”
“The Guard is now aware of what they face, and what tactics the enemy is using. They will not be caught unawares or fail to bombard from long range again,” Luna responded, keeping her gaze locked on the distant pony who made a show of stripping a filet off a raw fish and eating it. “We can win this, but it will be a grinding fight, resulting in many injuries and deaths, on both sides.
“I need options,” Celestia said, frowning in thought. Despite the size of the shield she was maintaining it only took a trivial amount of her vast willpower to maintain. “I’d rather not just wipe the place out.”
“Indeed, particularly as what captives the Cartagenians have taken have been imprisoned in their arena,” Luna confirmed, her own brow wrinkling in thought. “An idea occurs to me, sister. They may be willing to honour a battle of champions.”
“Oh?” Celestia asked, curious.
“They are gladiators, and of Cartage,” Luna explained, taking her gaze away from the insolent pegasus in the enemy ranks. “Though they may be the scum of their society, they still respect martial prowess, and above all, victory. Should we challenge and win, they will honour it.”
“And if we lose?” came the instant question.
“Then we will have projected strength by making the challenge in the first place,” stated Luna. “Either way, any further bloodshed will be restricted to only the two ponies involved.”
Celestia thought over her options for a moment before asking, “Do we have any ponies who would be willing to be our champion?”
“Several,” Luna replied. “Including myself.”
Even though Celestia knew Luna’s prowess as a fighter, the thought of risking her sister sent a chill down her spine even as she stepped forward, drawing the immediate attention of the ponies on the other side of her shield.
“PONIES OF CARTAGE,” Celestia bellowed, once again in full Canterlot voice. “Even though I or my sister could simply bring celestial destruction down on you, you have impressed us with your martial prowess.”
“We kicked your flanks, you mean,” cried a heckler, which Celestia ignored without skipping a beat.
“As such, we offer you the option of a battle of champions to decide the matter,” Celestia thundered on. “Our champion matched against a fighter of your choice. Should you prevail, we shall leave you in peace. Should we win, you leave this place, never to return. Do you accept my challenge?”
A thestral stallion stepped out from the crowd of Cartagenians to ask, “To the death?”
“I would prefer not,” Celestia replied, moderating her volume somewhat. “Let us say, until one fighter cannot continue. Would that suffice?”
There was a flurry of hushed discussion on the other side before the stallion replied, “Only if the winner gets to keep the loser as their personal slave.”
Celestia hadn’t meant for her hissing intake of breath to be heard as she was forcibly reminded that the Cartagenians kept slaves, but she was still using the Royal Canterlot voice and the sound from the alicorn was like something from a great serpent, roused from its slumber.
“Agreed,” Celestia said at last, fearing she had just condemned one of her ponies to a fate possibly worse than death.
“Fine,” yelled a voice from the crowd. As Celestia watched, the blue and white maned mare who had struck at her during the battle stepped forward. “I’m the Lady of the arena, its champion, and if I’m going to be fighting one of you cake gobbling party ponies I want a shot at the best you’ve got.”
The mare paused a beat before extending a sword point directly at Celestia’s chest.
“I want to fight you,” the mare declared. “I’ve always wanted an alicorn of my own.”
“I accept,” Celestia replied, dropping her shield. “Would ten minutes be sufficient for you to prepare, Lady…”
“Lightning Strike,” the mare replied, a wolfish grin lighting her face. “Remember it.”
“Think you can take her?” Dark Fang was asking, a few minutes later.
“She’s big, which means she’s slow,” Lightning Strike answered, checking her weapons as she did so. “I can get inside her reach and tear her apart.”
“What about her magic, or do you think that thing on her head is just for show?” Dark Fang growled back, nodding as he did a final check of his champion’s armor.
“Probably hasn’t done more than lift a fork in the past decade. Besides, it’s not like I don’t have some myself,” the gladiatrix tossed back, shifting her body side to side and giving her wings an experimental flare to make sure her armor wasn’t limiting her motion more than it should.
“Yeah,” Dark Fang admitted, pushing Lightning Strike toward the field where the fight would be. “Just don’t fuck this up or we're all fried.”
“We don’t have to fight,” said the big white alicorn, stepping out from the Equestrian lines to meet Lightning Strike. “Take my hoof in Friendship. Join us in Equestria.”
“Put your head down, your ass up, and maybe I’ll use some lube,” was Lightning’s reply, to the vast amusement of those behind her. “Or not. Either way, you’re fucked.”
“As you wish,” Celestia replied with a sigh, lifting an ornate halberd into a ready position.
With that, the fight was on as the smaller pegasus fairly blurred into motion across the ground, closing the distance almost before anypony present could blink. Once, twice, three times the gladiator’s katana-like swords lashed out, only to be caught each time by the metal shaft of the great polearm as Celestia spun the weapon from one guard position to the next.
Lightning Strike bounced away from the initial clash, placing herself outside the halberd’s longer reach, and a brief frown crossed her face as she realized that the alicorn had yet to make a single offensive move. The princess seemed content to defend, for the moment, perhaps thinking that Lightning Strike would tire herself out, leaving her open to a later counter-offensive.
“Dream on,” the pegasus murmured, before diving in again.
Once more a three strike combination flashed out from Lightning Strike, and once again Celestia moved to counter the blows, but this time, when the pegasus pulled back to her guard position everypony bore witness to something that hadn’t been seen in living memory.
The blood of an alicorn.
A long shallow cut had been opened up along Celestia’s left hip, just above her cutie mark. The wound wasn’t even remotely life threatening, but it was bloody, and the sigh of despair that rose from the Equestrian lines was music to Lightning Strike’s ears.
“Give it up, princess,” demanded the pegasus. “You just aren’t cut out for this.”
The only reply was the great polearm being lifted back into a ready position.
“Have it your way,” Lightning Strike replied with a shrug, attacking again before the motion was even finished.
Three more times the pegasus closed on the larger mare, and three more times Lightning Strike’s weapon drew fresh blood, but not the fourth time. The fourth time it was Lightning Strike who bled, having had the spear tip on the end of the princess’s weapon poke a full inch into her meaty flank.
“I am old,” Celestia admitted, with a smile, “so it took me a while to remember how that disengage goes. Shall we continue, or would you like to sit down and have some cake with me?”
The alicorn was mocking her, and the realization made Lightning Strike's blood boil. The pegasus mare reached deep inside of herself and opened a door to a power beyond what pegasi had, or even should have.
Five years ago, the fighting pits had been terrorized by a griffon cock who made a point to break or remove every one of his opponents limbs… before using their crippled or dying bodies to satisfy his lust. Lightning Strike had been matched as his twentieth opponent, and while she was no slouch, the griffon had utterly overwhelmed her.
Her wings torn out at the roots, legs either severed or crippled, she felt the griffon lift her into the air before setting her down on his fleshy sword. A dying capstone to his victory.
As she bobbed up and down, instead of giving into shame or despair, a great fury rose up in the mare at the utter injustice of it all. Of how she was being used and abused in death just like she had been her whole life, and that realization coalesced her rage and fury into a burning star in her breast.
Lashing out, she sank her teeth into the griffon’s throat, ripping it out with a savage jerk, and as she lay dying beside her now fallen foe, Lightning Strike heard a voice in her head:
Well done. It takes much to draw my attention but you have done so. You were Lightning Strike in name, now be so in truth.
Power had filled her, healed her, giving her access to the original arcs of lightning that had graced the cosmos at the origin of all things. The raw power of Energy manifested into reality, and that Voice told her that she was now that power made flesh, an avatar of the Origin of Lightning itself.
Those primordial energies now gathered in Lighting Strike’s wings, and she sent them slashing out at the great white party pony with a flick of her wings. Celestia’s scream of agony as her body was wracked by several hundred thousand volts of electricity was a song that Lightning Strike hadn’t known she needed to hear.
Celestia writhed on the ground, limbs jerking as she was hit again and again by primordial power, and after the fifth unopposed strike Lightning paused to see if she had either killed the princess or knocked her out. Either of which would have been just fine by her.
Then power filled the air, and it carried the same feeling of the gladiatrix’s own. Power from the origin of the universe came at Celestia’s call, and like the sun, the princess of Equestria rose in Fire. Where once a cake eating party pony had been, there now stood a warrior princess whose flowing mane and tail were now sheets of living fire.
It was clear that the next clash would decide the fight, fire against lightning, and Lighting Strike charged in determined to win or die a glorious death. Celestia moved to match her and something in Lightning’s breast leaped in joy to see the solar princess reborn as an opponent worth fighting.
Riding their individual powers, the two ponies closed the gap almost before the onlookers realized either of them had begun to move. Lightning Strike’s practiced eye saw a gap in Celestia’s shield of solar plasma, as well as a mistake in the angle she was moving towards Lightning at. The pegasus shifted her own angle of attack slightly, just enough to take advantage of the opening so that she could drive her blade in and either cripple the alicorn or kill her outright.
She could win this. She would win this.
Then the flat of Celestia’s halberd appeared in her vision, and Lightning Strike had just enough time before impact to realize that Celestia’s charge had been a diversion to get her to dive in on a predictable path, and that she had fallen to a ruse laid by a fighter at least as experienced as she was.
Fuck.